I’m getting some strange kind of Spam recently. Check out my Photoshop Script Positing! Around every week I’m getting one or two comments saying “great script!” or something similar and the URL obviously point to sites that have nothing to do with design or somebodies personal website. Instead they look like marketing websites. At first I didn’t realize it is Spam but it became more and more obvious.
So far these comments don’t annoy me as they are very subtle and few but if it continues with these ‘camouflaged’ thank you comments it makes me wonder if man or machine is on the other side.
Some links to nine articles about the topic on ‘becoming an Independent Game Developer‘, found via Digg. Some more interesting, some less, the last one from a Mac perspective. There seems to be a lot of discussion about if it turns out to be paying off or not etc., in short, things that don’t interest me that much, I’m just creating games because I have fun doing it and I like the practical side, I’m more of a hobbyist! Either way, here are the links …
Introversion
Cliffski’s Mumblings
GameProducer.net
Lemmy and Binky
Reality Fakers
Zoombapup
BoneBroke
They Came from Hollywood
gusmueller
“…Once you activate the product, then you would assume that you are golden to go ahead and use the product, right? Wrong.
You see, even after you activate the software it will, according to
the EULA, “from time to time validate the software, update or require
download of the validation feature of the software”. It will once again
“send information about the…version and product key of the software,
and the internet protocol address of the device”.
Here’s where it gets hairy again. If for some reason the software
“phones home” back to Redmond, Washington, and gets or gives the wrong
answer – irrespective of the reason – it will automatically disable
itself. That’s like saying definitively, “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I
can’t do that…”
… So basically add some regular activation annoyances to your almost weekly Windows security updates to keep you from working on the PC!
Read more here … Vista’s EULA product activation worries | The Register
Need more reasons to switch to Mac or Linux?!
This is not really a true productivity tool but I think it has enough value that it deserves to be mentioned. If you’re on Windows and work with the Command Prompt a lot, you might be fed up with the overly dull look of the black Windows command console and you look over to the Linux guys with their stylish terminals with envy. Then it’s time for you to grab and install Console, a Command Prompt enhancement that adds several useful features like multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types and – the real deal – transparent background. This alone is reason enough to throw the old console look overboard. The console font as well as window size and position can be configured. Get the latest release version 1.5 at sourceforge.net/projects/console/ for free.
Just found this yesterday via Adobe Consulting Blog … Converse – Chuck Taylor, Jack Purcell, Basketball Shoes, Design Your Own Converse Shoes. Click on the first shoe under Collection. You can design your own sneaker with your own style of color combination and even add a personalized text at the side or back. I first thought its a nice gimmick for playing but in fact you can order your designed shoe in your preferred size! I’m a big fan of classic sneakers but I have rather large feet and finding large sneakers in Japan is more than just a challenge so I thought I’d make my own couple of neatly colored Cons and order them … until I saw the Shipping in U.S. only sign! Damn! Well at least I could print my design out. Here’s my low top suede model ‘Venice Nights’ 
…
This shoe designer is a nice example that shows that Flash really needs to support 3D! Imagine you could freely rotate and texture the shoe model! Wouldn’t that be cool?!
If you’re working with XML on Windows and you like your tool full-featured there’s a good chance that you have worked with Altova XMLSpy, a first of all very good and powerful XML editor but on second look becomes a nasty bugger that calls home as if there is no tomorrow.
Thats fine and good! Let them try it to call it home as long as they want, I can block it with my Firewall! It was noted by some other blogs that XMLSpy not only transfers data to check the legal ownership but also transfers private data that is none of Altova’s business, so there is good reason to block the spy (what a fitting name!) off!
But what if you want to use the Eclipse (or Visual Studio) XMLSpy PlugIn? If you block Java’s JRE, Eclipse also can’t connect to the web anymore. But fear not, there’s an easy solution. Here’s how to block off XMLSpy …
Go straight to your WINDOWS/system32/drivers/etc/ folder and add the following line to the host file:
127.255.255.255 link.altova.com
This redirects every access to link.altova.com to the local machine, thus blocking of connection attempts. With that you’re free to let Eclipse access the net while XMLSpy has to stay inside the system.
[ad#ad_content]I’ve made a partition with Windows Vista RC a while back to check out how well my used Software will run. First off I like Vista, I really do! It’s polished Aero Look is reason enough for me to switch from the vomit-colored Windows XP. But I soon realized that something important is currently missing … compatible Software! That means compatible drivers in first line. Ok, it’s still about two months away until Vista will be in the shelves for anyone (with license volume release at the end of this month) but Vista has been how long on public beta? One year? Two years?
Checking the Logitech website for a driver for my beloved MX310 mouse … nowhere to be found! Not even a working 32bit driver! Not even a word mentioned about a future driver release! How about sound? I check M-Audio’s website to get a driver for my Delta Audiophile; Their 32bit WinXP driver doesn’t install while their 64bit Beta driver installs but Vista gives me an error afterwards that it wont accept unsigned drivers! There’s a ton of other Peripherals that I’m using for which I’m sure no compatible drivers are available so I don’t even bother searching for them now.
How about applications? Flash runs fine, though it’s tool windows look a bit odd with thin borders/corners around it. Photoshop runs smooth as if it never did anything else while ImageReady’s tool palettes seem to be not style conform anymore. Illustrator then goes completely bonkers with Molasses style window-dragging and tool palettes that sometimes have round corners and sometimes not. At least Eclipse runs fine! Well, on 32bit that is! On 64bit it will spit out an error about an incompatible DLL.
That said my Vista Experience went a bit limiting so far! Dynamic Font Management is a foreign word for Microsoft too! It seems nothing has changed about how Fonts are handled! They are either installed or not. I guess I hang a little longer with MainType! Let’s hope other companies aren’t sleeping and have drivers ready until release, even if they don’t loose one word about it. It would suck otherwise!
Fotologue which was Japanese only for a while has been translated into English and opened up it’s gates for anyone else around the globe! Not only does it look much more stylish than Flickr or any other photo sharing site, it’s also completely done in Flash! Check out my gallery for a quick preview of how the user galleries look.
via If Then Else
I’m really missing one great invention that has yet to come for global consumption … books made of electronic paper! I’m not talking about these LCD display-like books or these foil-like papers that are already used for some advertising purposes. What I’d love to see available is a pocket notebook made of finely woven ePaper that I can plug via USB to my PC and load documents on it, which then are displayed on the paper and can be read just like a normal paper book. I prefer reading long texts on paper rather than on the screen!
I often find texts on the web, tutorials or other interesting information that I could read while on one of these long Tokyo subway rides or simply while hanging out in the living room but it would be too elaborate to print them out and fold them into my Hobonichi Techo.
One could argue that I could need a notebook PC but that would be too much, all I’m asking for is a book for reading. Hey it would be cool if it also uses Solar cells so it doesn’t need to be recharged and while we are at it the pages could glow so it can be read in the dark too … oh well, one can dream, but this definitely doesn’t sound like a far away utopia!
I just had to refuse the second job offer this year where I would have to fix somebody else’s written ActionScript 1 spagetti code! I don’t know what is the reason for agencies trying to give such jobs but it’s save to say that the troubles of digging through the messy and often timeline-spread code is enough to justify an estimate that sounds too high for the client.
The question comes up why they don’t just ask the person who originally wrote the code! That could have many reasons but if a client comes back to me and asks me to fix something in a years old project then I’ll do it for a measly payment simply because I know my source code. It’s a total different thing to fix somebody’s code, especially if it’s pre-AS2.
I always feel uncomfortable rejecting jobs, even such ones so I would be interested how others handle this situation! Do you usually reject such jobs or do you accept them?
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