Can You Replace Photoshop with Pixelmator?

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Tidbits tries to find out. My answer is “not yet.”

You can do a LOT with Pixelmator, but every time I use it I miss Photoshop’s Smart Objects.

A Smart Object is a way that Photoshop can place another graphic file into a photoshop document and it always looks great because it is being drawn from the source file. Pixelmator doesn’t do that. If you place a high res file, like a logo, in a Photoshop document as a smart object and resize it a bunch of times it always looks great. Try that in a Pixelmator document and resize it down, just once, and it looks blurry and grainy.

The Sound Card Variable

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

If you’re into game music you should check out the Retro Game Music Bundle. I put $10 on this and got FLAC versions of all this stuff.1 What’s interesting is how they went about it:

Most of the games had available audio files, or an audio test mode – one of those things we never really understood when we were younger, but found ourselves profoundly grateful for now. Some of the games had neither, and needed to be played entirely through with the music on and SFX off – Ryland got stuck with that task, and performed admirably. Then, Ryland and Josh mixed and mastered the recordings to bring out their original magic, and our designer, Amanda, created beautiful album art for each game. In the process, the soundtracks were transformed them into professional-quality albums.

PC game music from the 90′s oftentimes relied on whatever hardware you had in your PC. What was your sound card capable of?2 Just FM synthesis? Did you have an AWE32? Did you configure it right?

Because of the sound card variable, playing a game with one sound card may feel differently than playing it on another. Doom isn’t as scary when it sounds like a Sega Genesis game because all you had was hardwire capable of FM synthesis. I always wondered what the TRUE sound card was. Which audio hardware did I need to experience the game and its general MIDI soundtrack the way the developers intended?

Anything they needed to play through and record was likely one of these soundtracks. No word on what sound card was used.

  1. Ever since iTunes Match and a hard drive upgrade I always get lossless versions when possible. Their FLAC version of the Myst soundtrack is at 44/24, but it doesn’t MAGICALLY make a Mastered For iTunes version. Also, LOTS of music here – which is a bummer because now I’m having to cull my music collection to fit under the 25,000 iTunes Match limit…again. ↩

  2. People USED TO, and still do I suppose, spend hundreds of dollars on sound cards. Sound Blaster used to be THE name because of their sound banks. Final Fantasy VII on PC is my favorite example of this. You could have the STANDARD sound track, but if you had a Soundblaster card you could use the custom FF7 soundfont, which was basically a sound bank that made the game sound more like the PSX version. I wonder how many Soundblaster cards were sold because of that. ↩

This 15-year old girl figured it out

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

“I like Tumblr because I don’t have to present a specific or false image of myself and I don’t have to interact with people I don’t necessarily want to talk to,” one 15-year-old girl said.  

I wonder if blogging is about to get its second wind.

Also this deep thought.

Facebook is the living dead: the most popular, least relevant social network where teenagers and adults alike gather out of fear of missing out on things that don’t even make them happy.

Chat Heads and Chat Stickers Are Dumb

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Chat Heads and Stickers are stupid

Cancer Boy

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

On Kids In the Hall’s Brain Candy character Cancer Boy:

Reprised from the final episode of the TV show, in a sketch that satirized the idea of being as offensive as possible, Cancer Boy is Bruce McCulloch dressed in a bald cap, with pale white makeup, using a wheelchair. He relays depressing information with a cheerful smile and releases a hit pop single entitled “Whistle When You’re Low.” Many found the character to be in exceedingly poor taste. Paramount Pictures fought extensively with the troupe to cut the offending scenes, to no avail. The group has expressed some regret over their hardline position years later, feeling the battle left Paramount bitter and reluctant to fully market the film.

Vine Attribution / Super Mario Dog

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

I’ve seen an animated gif of this Vine floating around.

I wanted to post it here because I like it and everywhere else I’ve seen it they don’t give MarLo Meekins credit.

The Internet destroyed the middle class

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class – Salon.com:

“Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?”

Efficiency and automation made America a knowledge-based economy. Nerds replaced low-skilled labor.

Others often make the point that new industries have emerged to replace the previous labor market, but there’s no acknowledgement of how those markets don’t employ as many people as the older industries did.

Why not? Because there’s no need to. Because computers.

And this is where things start getting weird. If you are in favor of automation and efficiency (and who isn’t) you are indirectly supporting the hollowing out of the low-skilled job market – and you begin to sound like a heartless Scrooge when the only thing you can think to improve the quality of life for low-skilled laborers is that they need to catch up, and fast.

Previously:

The new Xbox isn’t for you. It’s for everyone.

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Jamin Warren makes the case for why Xbox One has a good chance:

I asked my girlfriend, who does not play games, what she thought about the Xbox One announcement. All of the Kinect bells and whistles and media features were attractive to her and she said they were incredibly appealing as a consumer, but not as a gamer. However, she added, “If I owned an XBox One, I’d probably be more likely to play games.”

If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.

That’s a big “if.” If you don’t play games, why would you buy an Xbox One? So you can connect your TV to it? That’s like buying an aftermarket satellite receiver.

The strategy of trying to appeal to a more general audience appears to make sense, but isn’t that what Nintendo tried with the Wii?

Judging from what’s been announced, Xbox One represents everything that I hate about recent dashboard redesigns and Kinect gimmicks. I don’t want to “have a relationship with my TV.” I want to chill out on my couch and play good games on my Xbox.

And for all that other stuff I have an Apple TV.

Let them eat industrial waste

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Modern Farmer | Whey Too Much: Greek Yogurt’s Dark Side:

…as the nation’s hunger grows for strained yogurt, which produces more byproduct than traditional varieties, the issue of its acid runoff becomes more pressing. Greek yogurt companies, food scientists, and state government officials are scrambling not just to figure out uses for whey, but how to make a profit off of it.

Speaking of fluoride, one of the conspiracy theories on adding it to the water supply is that it’s an industrial waste product that’s hard to dispose of – if only there were a way to get rid of it on a grand scale…like by having people ingest it.

I’ve heard the same thing about soy.

I don’t know if either of those are true, but this article about what to do with the waste produced by the booming greek yogurt industry brings both of these things to mind.

You and your friends are freaks

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Fight Over Fluoridated Water Splits Portland’s Left – WSJ.com

Many “No” activists say they oppose fluoridation because it represents lack of choice. “The government does not have the right to make a major medical decision for the public at large. That decision flies in the face of everything it means to be a Portlander,” said Tacee Webb, who runs what she calls “an all-Gluten-Free Preschool.“

Emphasis mine.

Nearly every article and argument I’ve read on this thing tries to dismiss the position of the anti-fluoride side and counters with “Well, you all are freaks and you don’t know what’s good for you, so we should just do it anyway because you are weird.”

Daft Punk’s Puzzling New Album

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Sasha Frere-Jones:

Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Clichés that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of “Random Access Memories” feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?

I really really like this album, but1 I feel like I’m being tricked into it because every track is something/someone other than Daft Punk. The formula is overwhelmingly riffs on top of a drum track that never progress. The closest we get to that is the “come on come on come on come on Come on Come on COME ON COME ON COME ON COME ONNNNNNN” of Lose Yourself To Dance.

Still the best new music I’ve heard this year.

  1. I know it’s nitpicking, but the bar was raised REALLY high already. ↩

No Fluoride In Portland’s Water

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Slate reports on the city of Portland, OR and how the citizens there have repeatedly voted down measures to fluoridate their water supply.

I don’t understand why this is a big deal. Put aside all the quackery that these people are accused of. I believe that’s a red herring. Over and over again the people of Portland have voted that they don’t want this – that should be the end of the story, but it’s getting pushed onto them anyway.

Why?

I really thought of this, if people WANT fluoride in their water – say because for some reason they aren’t getting it from toothpastes or whatever, or they just like the taste of it (which is an odd reason, but fluoridated water tastes different) – why couldn’t there be some kind of Brita filter or something that ADDS fluoride to your personal drinking water? Does that sound stupid? If so, then why is it okay to do that to a city’s entire water supply?

The vote was yesterday. I haven’t seen results yet, but I suspect that it was voted down again.

Snobby Wine

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Eric Mortensen:

I snapped a pic of this wine listing because I found it so pretentious. Then I found another vintage online that is somehow even worse:

This wine defines the term elegance.

There’s more, but that opening is already pretty bad.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

Tell me a politician who is up here and doesn’t try to minimize his taxes… Tell me what Apple has done is illegal. I am offended by a government… that convenes a hearing to bully one of America’s greatest success stories… If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress. I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple.
Rand Paul

OOOOH. Snap!

Senator Paul, you can apologize if you wish but that isn’t what this hearing is about.
Levin

OOOh – another snap! Politicians are so catty and passive aggressive.

The Great Shatsby

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Dan Studnicky

This is a movie that grants equal literary weight to the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Lana del Ray. This is a movie where characters’ accents enter the room before they do, like bad aftershave. This is a film that features a grown woman squealing in ecstasy because a man is throwing dozens of dress shirts at her.