Last year, Adobe bought out Macromedia and acquired their product catalog (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, etc.). The Macromedia products for a while were kept separate under their “Studio 8″ brand while the big Adobe products resided under the “Creative Suite 2″ title. Ready to start integrating the two, Adobe dropped their web design program, GoLive, in favor of Dreamweaver as part of CS 2.3. Well, with CS 3 approaching, Adobe is finally integrating the product lines even more. ImageReady is being dropped in favor of Fireworks, and (with the exception of Acrobat and Flash), all Adobe products are being re-iconified under a unified system. At least for the near future, this will go down as something along the lines of the “Periodic Table of Adobe”. Don’t believe me? Look for yourself.
Now, the appearance of the icons on that wheel I don’t really think is fair to the design team because that’s not how people are going to ultimately see them. I agree that like that the concept looks really bad, and having just one of those on my desktop would probably look strange also. However, since a bunch of applications are packaged with each version of CS, I can conceptualize the idea of seeing 5-7 of those together as a pretty cool idea. People have also made some mockups of what it would look like, and the result isn’t that bad. A bunch of the existing users are complaining that these icons are “too difficult” to recognize instantly and just plain ugly on top of that, but let’s face it, a feather doesn’t represent Photoshop any better than the blue “Ps” symbol does. I’d even bet that most people after working with their computer long enough don’t even bother looking/processing the icon itself, but instead just know what position the icons are in on their desktop/dock and launch them that way. To summarize, I think this is largely just a knee jerk reaction and most people (who don’t change them to CS2 style icons) will cope just fine.
Personal - Dallas
Granted, it’d not like my birthdays in the recent past have been all that exciting, but not many people get to claim that they have a party at their house on their birthday that has absolutely no relevance at all to them. My dad had a business party tonight, and while the only thing it really kept from happening was be eating out with my parents somewhere, it was just an odd occurance. I got the expected games and money from my parents, and then all I really did all day was watch TV and play video games. Yep, this being 20 sure is a whole lot different… :)
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Either in a matter of minutes (or hours, depending on whether you want to go with “day” or “actual time”), I will turn 20 and no longer be a teenager. Now, I don’t expect anything life altering to happen immediately, but I can already think of a couple things I’d like to happen in the not too distant future. So basically, I’m still going to be Goob, but I’ll be a dynamic Goob. :)
Also, approximately 365 days from now, I’ll be in Vegas for the first time in 5-6 years!
Personal - Dallas
After having to reference a guide today only to figure out I was doing the right thing and the game just wasn’t responding correctly, I should be able to finish up Okami before I go to sleep tonight. My plan is still to start FF Tactics after it, but I seriously doubt I can finish that by the 24th, so I’ll either have to hold off on FFT Advance or just start it anyway. Before Christmas break is over I’d still love to get started on some of the .hack games, and I’ll probably also play MGS: Portable Ops while we’re up in Hot Springs visiting my grandparents.
Unfortunately, my birthday and Christmas is not going to help my game stacks in the slightest seeing as how that’s all I asked for. I’ll admit that a couple of the games are ones that if I wasn’t getting them as presents I probably wouldn’t pick them up at all, but that’s the beauty of getting them as presents and not having to pay for them myself.
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I like to think of myself as an “above average” user on the computer. I can open up pretty much any new program and instinctively navigate through the basic features, I can find out how to do something when I’m not sure, and I can generally help others with their problems. The one thing I’m not good at is design (both web or application), and that’s tied to my extremely limited art skills. Well, drag and drop GUI creation in Visual Studio isn’t too bad, but any website that I try to make without just modifying an existing template doesn’t end up looking very “professional”. I’d like to work on this, and considering that I’m likely to get a tablet for Christmas (or if I don’t, I’ll probably end up getting one), I think it’s time to start using Photoshop and/or Fireworks more to at least be able to produce respectable results.
I picked up some more Wii accessories today (a controller and 2 nunchuks, but I’ll probably sell a pair to a friend) but so far no Wii for me yet. I honestly did think that I would have one by now, but I’m not complaining since this means the Wii is likely to be more popular than the Gamecube. A larger userbase typically isn’t bad for a system. :)
Personal - Dallas
So yes, my post yesterday was #300 making today’s…*drumroll*…#301!! I have about 5 months or so to get ~60 posts in order to stay on track with my posts per year. Shouldn’t be too difficult, I don’t think.
I’m still in the middle of Okami, but the end is in sight (I think). Pretty sure I’m in the last “major” area now, so I should just have 1 or 2 more sections of the story to go. After that, I’ll probably start on Final Fantasy Tactics as my next new game so that I might finish it before starting on FFTA over Christmas while I have to sit in a car for 8+ hours. Yeah, they’re not directly linked story wise, but I figure it can’t hurt to play the first before the second. This also is probably a good example of how not using a guide may help me to beat the game faster. If I’m not told where ever single hidden item is, I probably won’t get the vast majority of them which equates to less time spent not directly accomplishing the main goals of the game. See, I’m so smart. :)
I went to go see Eragon today and my general feeling was “good but not awesome”. It’s similar enough to LotR to draw comparisons, but I don’t think that’s fair. LotR is the better movie, but this one is still very good on its own. Overall, I probably prefer Eragon slightly more because I found more of the movie itself entertaining (very likely because it’s only 1:40 long). My rating: 7/10.
Personal - Dallas
So, Wind Waker is officially completed now, but I did have to reference a FAQ for about 30 seconds. The problem I was having was something that I most likely would have solved on my own given enough time, but it wasn’t something blatantly obvious that I had been overlooking. I needed to travel to an island that I hadn’t been to yet in order to get a chart that would allow me to enter the ghost ship.
Yes, this post is being made earlier than usual because I’m off to go play games once again out at UTD. Because I finished Wind Waker, I wanted to go ahead and get this post made today rather than waiting until tomorrow (or later). So, back to Okami and the rest of my “in progress” games. Hopefully I can beat a couple before going back to school.
And one more thing: Happy 300th post!!!
Personal - Dallas
This week, I could have probably beaten Okami and maybe even FFX or Kingdom Hearts. Who knows, maybe Metroid Prime would have gotten completed. Instead, my gaming time has been consumed with Wind Waker, and you know what? Overall, I’ve enjoyed it.
Granted, this isn’t to say I enjoyed it more than I would have those other games, but I haven’t been miserable playing it or anything. I’ve gotten stuck a couple of times (now is one of those, going for the last Triforce shard chart) since I’ve been playing without a guide, but overall things have gone very smoothly. I was hoping to finish today so that I could go onto those games that I listed above, but if I don’t get “unstuck” in an hour or two tomorrow, I will reference a FAQ. After all, that’s what they’re supposed to be there for.
Personal - Dallas
Yeah, so I didn’t get that game list up Monday night. And I didn’t get it up last night either because I was playing games out at UTD again (hence the reason for no post). But didn’t you all get the memo about how “before I go to sleep tonight” means “before my next post”? Man, you definitely need to reference a dictionary occasionally.
And even that’s a lie. I am in the process of writing it right now, but this post will be posted before the list is. Hopefully you’ll be able to forgive me for not telling the truth. All 0 of you that read this blog.
Personal - Dallas
Well, that’s a lie. It will be arriving before I go to sleep tonight is the more accurate statement. Basically, this is the list of the games that survived my pruning, and I think with the exception of PS2, I was able to get the unplayed ones down to 10. The games I had started but not finished I didn’t count against me since the vast majority of those really just require the last boss to be beat.
Tomorrow I’ll be preordering 3 games for a system I don’t even own yet (Xbox 360), but in the next few months I’ll likely get one. Wii games I have 2 on preorder, but PS3 I’ve yet to have any, as the first game I think I’m really going to care about will be MGS4. This already isn’t looking good for the future of my backlog…
Personal - Dallas