Comes A Time

January 28, 2009 — Brian

Comes a time when
You can’t judge no more
Go out shopping
Can’t see the store

I can’t believe that
We’re really all good
One of us has gone
Where they never should

Comes a time when
You really can’t judge
Should go walking
You don’t even budge

I can’t believe how
Far we have gone
One of us has
not come along

Get up and tell the sun
That you don’t feel love
Get up and tell the sun
That you don’t feel love

How long can you
Keep circling round?
Like paris, texas
’til she found out

- nada surf

Posted in Nostalgia. Leave a Comment »

Helvetica

January 11, 2009 — Brian

Christine and I just watched the documentary Helvetica and we both found it very interesting and enjoyable. The movie talks about the origin on the font, how its use and perception have changed over the years and has interviews with a number of designers on their feelings and uses of the font. Some of the designers were pretty ecentric!

When the movie was over we had this quick discussion like this:

Brian: “I though it was interesting.”
Christine: “It makes me never want to use Helvetica again.”
Brian: “Really? ‘Cause I was thinking of going and trying to use it on something.”

Christine did like the film. She just feels like the font is too corporate/mainstream.

I loved the soundtrack after only 3 songs in and was excited to hear some bands I’ve gotten into recently such as The Album Leaf and Battles later on in the film.

Posted in Movies. Leave a Comment »

A Year of Mac

January 11, 2009 — Brian

While the MacBook Pro I got last January wasn’t my first Mac, it’s the first Mac I’ve had that I’ve used on a daily basis. It is a purchase I am glad I made.

I do wish I had gotten a bigger hard drive, though. I feel like I’m always close to filling up the 110GB I have. I find it funny that I’m worried that I only have 20GB free on it at this moment. The biggest culprit in that is the 20GB Windows XP virtual machine for VMWare Fusion (and now a 10GB Windowx 7 beta one). After that it’s the iMovie projects for SRD but I keep the majority of the assets for that on an external drive. Then mostly downloaded apps and such which I like to keep around for some reason…

Over the course of the past year I’ve:

  • Switched form OpenOffice to iWork.
  • Used iMovie like crazy and am very excited about iMovie ’09.
  • Bought a lot more music using iTunes – something I used to be very hesitant to do.
  • Used TextMate a whole lot for Rails development and taking notes.
  • Cross-graded my Photoshop and Illustrator licenses from Windows to Mac.
  • Used VMWare Fusion a lot for working in Windows when I need and used Spaces to switch back and forth.
  • Bought a fair number of games for the Mac: Puzzle Quest, NWN2, Weird Worlds, DROD.
  • Enjoyed a number of Windows games using CrossOver.
  • Used the Terminal most every day.
  • Made at least 16 different videos for Suburbia Roller Derby.
  • Bought a lot of programming books on PDF as well as a physical copy.
  • Never regretted buying a Mac.

The only problem I’m having right now is that the battery doesn’t last more than 30 or 40 minutes after charging, but I’m guessing this is somehow caused by the large dent the battery got when the laptop fell off my bedside table one day. I need to get myself to an Apple Store and get a replacement battery.

I guess my only other disappointment was MobileMe. Christine and I gave it a try for a while but it was always very flakey for us. I was excited by the prospect of having our calendars synced together but when we tried it it just didn’t work that well. Christine also wasn’t a fan of the web interface (she’s on a PC) and was always getting frustrated with it. But MobileMe is an optional service and doesn’t reflect on the MacBook Pro itself.

I don’t plan on buying a new desktop machine anytime soon (I say that now…) but when I do it will definitely be a Mac. I don’t feel like I need a PC for gaming anymore because I prefer gaming on the Xbox 360 these days. And there’s always VMWare Fusion if I need to run Windows for something.

Posted in Computers, Mac. 2 Comments »

Dungeon Bastards

January 4, 2009 — Brian

I’ve decided to move this post over to MesaGames.com in an attempt to start doing more D&D and board game blogging over there.

Posted in D&D, Gaming. Leave a Comment »