I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.
— @joahua
I was just flicking through a video to check it imported into the fairly-horrible thing that is Avid Free DV (most powerful of the freebies but also probably the least reliable) correctly, and there are people saying “Um” (one “er” just for variety) at every point I randomly clicked to. This scares me somewhat.
And in other news just in, Avid must die. I mentioned it was least reliable–I actually meant “most unstable piece of crap”.
I discovered this today. It upset me.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 4, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that the next version of Adobe® Production Studio, the integrated video and audio postproduction tool set that is part of the Creative Suite family, will be available for both the Macintosh and Windows® platforms. Film, video and web professionals currently using Adobe After Effects®, Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® on the Mac will soon be able to harness the power of completely new Macintosh releases of Adobe Premiere® Pro, Adobe Encore® DVD and Adobe Soundboothâ„¢ — all key components of an upcoming milestone revision to Adobe Production Studio. The software will have its first public demonstration during the Macworld 2007 Conference and Exhibition at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, January 9 – 12 (Booth 901). The next release of Adobe Production Studio is expected to ship in mid-2007.
Are they trying to convince me to buy a Mac? Ever since someone showed me what you can do with Objective C and Quartz to any video source on a Mac I’ve been wishing it were practical to buy one and use it for everything I wanted to, but couldn’t bring myself to consider FCP on account of lack of snazzy integration. Ah well. I’m sure something else will crop up before the elusively-dated “mid-2007″ to help me reconsider…
Not that I was using it for that, but it’s really quick and easy file sharing — I hadn’t setup port forwarding since we got our new router, so MSN was the way to go for lots of little things… and today I had to send 750MB of photos to someone and didn’t have a working server here.
So, just for kicks, we tried via MSN. At this point it’s also worth remarking that ADSL2+ upload speeds kick butt — we were done in two hours fifteen apparently (I went AFK but believe MSN’s logs). And the file even got there intact. I know.
Not as much bandwidth as the Odyssey (car I drive), but quite enough for when you’re feeling lazy/out of blank CDs. Double ewe oh oh tee.
I’m having one of those “you’re not in preschool so why does everything you come up with look as though it’s been designed with extra-large crayons?” days. Bad times. The stupid thing is I am starting to become really well acquainted with the GIMP’s capabilities (beyond just making photos look less-bad) and now its interface is what feels limiting (especially the way it handles layers and masks versus the way Photoshop does). So now I’m up for a grand worth of software (that I so can’t afford) just to make myself feel better about the tools I’m using, etc. and hopefully get more productive accordingly.
Anyone wanna donate to the buy-Josh-Creative-Suite-2 (even though 3 is about to come out) fund? It’s my birthday tomorrow, if that helps! ;-) Hehe. (No, really, it’s my birthday tomorrow… I’m joking about the buying me CS2 bit though)
Frustratingly, there are free CS3 betas to be had on the Adobe site, but only if you’re an existing CS2 user. Sigh. I could use it at work, but lack of acceptable Internet connectivity and no dual monitors is pushing me to stay at home, instead.
Speaking of software, though, as soon as I buy that it’s time to finally get Premiere as well. So. Sick. Of. iMovie/WMM/Avid Free DV/whatever. The few times I’ve had opportunity to use Premiere for a while have been fairly pleasant experiences — obviously it’s a lot more powerful than free crap, but that doesn’t seem to have a massive usability trade-off. Which is, you know, kinda nice. Only, again, kinda expensive.
If I pay any tax this year after having claimed all this software I’ll be slightly horrified :P
So it’s fast. But it’s not so fast during the day. And not so fast when dealing with Australian servers. By way of example, when dealing with AARNet’s server, I was getting a measly 30KB/s download. So I go and start grabbing the same file off a US server and all of a sudden I’m cruising along at 500KB/s. Yeah, go figure.
Me, I blame the crappy web proxy they make everyone use. It’s so cheap, though, that I’m not too fussed about it.
Just in case you cared, I’m syncing at 16418/1021… it’s acceptably snappy. The performance isn’t amazing during the day (and you’ve really got to wonder why–it’s not like many businesses use TPG, is it?) but it tends to behave itself more (i.e. with Australian servers) at night. I haven’t had a chance to hit up a bit of CS/Q3/UT/UT2k4/other network game for “testing purposes” yet… maybe this evening. Maybe.
In other news, I’ve discovered I’m generally more productive working from home than in the city. Something to do with a little more sleep, a little less aircon (it’s oppressively warm compared to super-chilled offices, but I prefer it that way), a little more monitors (I’ve only got one at work), a little faster Internet (aforementioned speeds versus a 4Mbps link shared between about 150 people, 20+ servers and channelled through a craptacular proxy), and more natural light. Perhaps.
Now the only problem is juggling freelancing commitments with “employee” commitments… but I’m using a computer for one and textas for the other at the minute, so it’s fairly clearly delineated right now.
It all drives you slowly crazy, but I was never a huge fan of sanity, anyway.