The thing that many people are really missing out on with Pages is that it really is a DTP program.
Yes. It is not a word processing program. If you want to write a simple paper, do not use Pages. When we first installed it, I tried using it to do the sort of things I used to do with Word, and ended up tearing my hair out trying to find and override the default settings for things like margins and line spacing.
Like another poster below points out, TextEdit is for word processing. Pages is for layout.
I guess I'm about a decade older than you, so maybe somewhere in-between is the VCR cut-off line. I have a TiVO, but I have no earthly idea how to move shows from it to my Mac. So when one of my friends says they missed an episode of a TV show, I'll record that show off onto a VHS tape and send it to them.
My friends all have DVD players and computers, and could probably watch the kind of disc you're describing making, but once again: no idea how to do that. Seems much more complicated than sticking in a tape and hitting "record." And the kinds of TV shows we watch generally don't end up on BitTorrent (believe me, I've looked), so that's not really an option. The trusty VHS tape to the rescue!
It could even be argued that the conformists have the greater sense of self, since they don't have the overwhelming need to show the world that they're an individual.
This reminds me of one of my art teachers in college. She looked like a stereotypical tennis-playing blonde suburban mom. She was a sculptor and produced some very edgy work, and loved the "YOU made that?" reaction she got from people who thought she had to have blue hair and wear all black to be a serious artist.
Keep in mind, though, that in research work your continued employment is usually directly tied to grants. If your salary is being paid by a 3-year grant, for example, you'll likely need to go through a review process every year to ensure that the money keeps coming in. And if new grants aren't written and approved, the money will dry up and you'll be out of a job.
I've worked for a research group for the past 4 years, and I can tell you a good deal of time and effort is devoted to writing new grants and keeping the ones we have. You may not be the person responsible for seeking out funding and writing grants. But if the grant-writing process appeals to you, you can do really well in a university research environment.
at no point are they ever in charge, in normal clothes, homely, or out of the control of some male superhero
That was partly my thinking when I created the Super Flippy character back in high school. She's skinny and plain, the polar opposite of Wonder Woman. Instead of physical strength, her powers are mental: she can convince people to change their personalities and give her stuff, sort of like the Jedi Mind Trick. She was actually based on a girl I went to school with who was a skinny little know-it-all.
I originally bought the domain "superflippy.net" with the idea of putting all my old Super Flippy comics up on the web. Of course, eight years later I still haven't gotten around to it.
I hope that part of the significance is that it will encourage people who copied MS's example to change.
For example, www.state.sc.us does not take you to the official web site for the State of South Carolina. No, instead they have chosen to use the non-intuitive and unbearably cheesy www.myscgov.com.
If that's a public school site, they are not complying with Section 508 accessibility standards. It's a simple thing to do, and it's required by law for all federal government sites - requirements for other sites vary by state.
But even if GA doesn't require 508 compliance, there is absolutely no excuse in this day and age for building a site with content that's only accessible to a specific browser. I am amazed that people still pay good money for sites like this.
I used to take my breakfast to work as well. A packet of instant oatmeal, milk, and a bowl and spoon are things you can probably keep either in the communal fridge or at your desk.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is absolutely the ideal entry. Many bloggers love nothing better than to compare status and talk about blogging. The Blogebrity site panders to both of these desires, plus, it has the added benefit of offending some people, thus guaranteeing plenty of linkage.
So the problem is that if I fail to see sarcasm, it's because I don't have reason to respect the speaker's intelligence.
This is a pretty good explanation for something I've observed in my own life. I'll occasionally meet total strangers who will answer an honest question of mine ("Is this the way to the auditorium?") with what I guess is an attempt at sarcasm ("Sorry, the auditorium is flooded and the lecture's been canceled."). I'm only guessing that it's attempted sarcasm because these statements are always said with a wink and guffaw implied, like the guy expects me to giggle and flirt with him because he's SO FUNNY.
But he's not funny, he's unhelpful, so I pretend to take him literally ("Oh, that's too bad." *Turns around and walks away*) and he says he was just kidding and gives me the information I was asking for in the first place. Then I'll say, "Sorry, I don't have a sense of humor in the morning/afternoon/evening."
I keep running into variations on Trying To Be Funny Guy, often enough that I've sometimes wondered if my sense of humor really is deficient. But now I prefer to believe what Dunbar says: it's not me, it's them.
In that case, I'd like to suggest you become a math major. On a project I'm working on, the people who create the mathematical models which are crucial to the project are all from China. I guess there aren't too many locals with graduate-level math skills plus computer programming knowledge and some background in climatology or physical oceanography.
Come to think of it, physical oceanography might also be a good choice. It's hard science that lets you work with computers but also spend time out on the ocean.
The highly useful Netscape DevEdge site used to have a CSS support chart for all major browsers before it went down. But until the content resurfaces elsewhere (I think the Mozilla org has said they will resurrect it eventually), here are some useful tips for working around CSS browser bugs: Hide CSS from Buggy Browsers
I mostly use media="all" to hide stylesheets from old browsers, then use the child selector trick to hide stuff from IE. For example: #container {margin: 0px 3px 2px 0px;}/* style for IE */ body>#container {margin: -2px 2px 2px -2px;}/* for all other browsers */
We're also tweaking our pay-per-click landing pages in an effort to close the sale on the initial visit.
When I click through an ad, it's not because I want to buy a product. It's because that product sounds interesting or useful or something and I want to check it out. If I like the site, I'll bookmark it so in the future when I do want to buy [x], I can go back to that site.
If these retailers had a clue, they'd make it easier to bookmark product pages and post them on blogs and forums.
In a religion class you can discuss who or what created the world: God, nothing, the Great Green Arkleseizure.
In science class, it doesn't matter who did it, what matters is how it works, because whoever created this world did so in such a way that the critters on it evolve over time.
I also thought the movie was funny. It's been 15 years since I read the book, so I wasn't comparing specifics, just revisiting characters and a universe that I remember enjoying back in high school.
I liked it a lot, though I'll admit I did laugh in a lot of places that no one else in the theater did. I guess that means I'm either smarter than them or more easily amused.
I'm a fan of the show, and I also thought the trailer was just OK until the final 5 seconds.
BOUNTY HUNTER: I am unarmed. MAL: Good. *shoots* ME: Awesome!
The scene in - I think - The Train Job where they spaced the guy who was threatening to track them down and kill them was one of my favorites, and this reminded me of that. I love it when the characters do the obvious, most expedient thing instead of doing whatever will create the most contrived drama.
I've never heard a non geek complain about picture quality on an average broadcast TV.
I was at a Super Bowl party this January with an HDTV. The HD channel was having bandwidth issues, causing the game to freeze-frame then jump ahead every now and then, so we'd occasionally switch back to the analog channel so as not to miss any of the action. But on the analog channel, the game looked like a bunch of fuzzy blobs moving on a green field, even on this big-screen TV. On the HD channel, you could see the players' numbers and names, you could see exactly how they were throwing and catching the ball. I'm not even a huge sports fan, but the HD made the game more exciting (when it worked).
It's when the spreadsheet becomes useful that people realize it's not scalable (maybe they don't use that word, but I do) and can be tough to maintain.
At a former job, I had to keep track of the hours employees turned in on their timesheets. It was simple enough to set up a spreadsheet to do that, it was just basic addition. But I got bored and set about making the spreadsheet fancier.
People often asked me to check how much vacation time they'd accrued. So I added a formula to the spreadsheet that would estimate it, accurate to within a fraction of an hour, so I wouldn't have to always ask the office manager to call corporate HQ. People were happy with the vacation estimates and the quick answers and the office manager was happy not to be interrupted.
Then the company went through a bad patch and people started cashing in a lot of vacation time to make up for lost work hours. Keeping track of the vacation time they had got trickier. Then came the sudden layoffs.
People had gotten so used to asking me to estimate vacation time instead of calling corporate that the office manager actually asked me to tell her how much vacation time someone had left so she could add it to their severence check. I had to tell her that I couldn't in good conscience let her use my little Excel spreadsheet for that, because even though I was using corporate's formula for vacation accrual, I knew for a fact it might not match exactly the number HQ had on any given day (I think mine accrued continuously and theirs didn't, and mine rounded differently.)
So that's an example of how a spreadsheet, even with the best intentions, could have cost someone the money they deserved. Of course, for all I know, corporate HQ was using a spreadsheet less accurate than mine, but I really hope they were using a proper database for payroll information.
By contrast, people can still update quite old Photoshops for a very reasonable amount.
Not true. I skipped the upgrade from Photoshop 6.0 to 6.5, and when 7.0 came out they wanted me to pay full price. So I'm still using 6.0.
As for the vector art thing, when I'm designing a web page I need to use both vector and bitmap art together in the same document. Photoshop doesn't do that very well, IMO.
I have 6.0 at home and CS at work. I am familiar with the weird shape layers thing and the Paths palette and the bezier tools. But I find using them cumbersome and non-intuitive for certain tasks. For example, creating four small rounded rectangles stacked on top of each other. I mostly use Photoshop's Paths palette for creating detailed masks of objects I want to knock out.
In Fireworks, I can just draw shapes as if I were in Illustrator: align them, resize them, add strokes and fills. The shapes are actual shapes, not masks on a solid-colored layer.
Perhaps it's because I do not have a background in print design, but I have trouble using print-centric Illustrator or Photoshop for web design. I use both to create graphics that end up on the web, but for creating a mock-up of a layout, I find Fireworks so much easier to work with. I know a lot of professional designers use Photoshop. But I just find it inefficient for web design.
I am a professional and I use Macromedia software to do my job. Therefore, it's professional grade as far as I'm concerned.
Designing a web site with Photoshop is like trying to mow the lawn with a hedge trimmer.
I will concede your point on Freehand, though. Illustrator is a better product from an user interface point of view, though it lacks some of Freehand's great features like contour gradients and the awesome variable stroke pen tool. The latest version of Illustrator (which I have at work because they're paying for it) is as crash-prone as Freehand, though, so I'm not so sure Adobe's moving in the right direction.
How nice for you. Perhaps I should have bought the educational version of Photoshop instead of the professional version. I chose not to upgrade from Photoshop 6.0 to 6.5, waiting for 7.0 instead. Then when 7.0 came out, I couldn't upgrade without paying full price, so I'm still using 6.0.
Just great. Now all my reasonably-priced Macromedia products are going to be replaces with Adobe's expensive bloatware.
Macromedia has a generous upgrade policy and great educational discounts. Adobe charges out the yin-yang for their software ($1000 for CS, can only upgrade if you own the next most recent product.)
Macromedia's web design software was built expressly for web design: Fireworks and Dreamweaver. Adobe tacked a few tools onto Photoshop (which, by the way, does not deal well at ALL with vector art, not like Fireworks does). I don't know how well GoLive works - never used it. But I know that Dreamweaver has made great efforts to allow front-end developers to create standards-compliant XHTML.
If Adobe rolls Macromedia's great software into their own mediocre offerings, I may never upgrade again.
Mystery Meat navigation. The only way I was able to find their Widget Showcase was by clicking on teeny tiny text in the top blog post. If you want people to come to your site to *get* widgets, you need to make it easier for people to *find* widgets. If it's a site for developers, you need to make it easy for them to find useful developer stuff like code snippets, examples, and discussion forums.
<rant>What are those icons supposed to be, anyway? Home, Interrogation, Folder, Bookmarks, Search? That's my initial impression after staring at them for probably several seconds more than casual visitors would. If I bother to roll over the pretty pictures, I get Home, Showcase, Forums, Links, About. What is so freaking hard about putting text on the normal state so people can see that they are buttons and see where they go?</rant>
When I went to AIA, I had the option of testing out of the "Intro to Microcomputers" class (no joke, that was the name). Unfortunately, I missed the test and had to take it. Most of it was useless and boring, but I did learn one important thing in that class: I learned how the school's intranet was organized. I ended up teaching my friends who had skipped the intro class how to use the intranet and how the various community peripherals (scanners, etc.) were set up.
An hour-long seminar on the peculiarities of the school network could be useful to all students.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing that many people are really missing out on with Pages is that it really is a DTP program.
Yes. It is not a word processing program. If you want to write a simple paper, do not use Pages. When we first installed it, I tried using it to do the sort of things I used to do with Word, and ended up tearing my hair out trying to find and override the default settings for things like margins and line spacing.
Like another poster below points out, TextEdit is for word processing. Pages is for layout.
I guess I'm about a decade older than you, so maybe somewhere in-between is the VCR cut-off line. I have a TiVO, but I have no earthly idea how to move shows from it to my Mac. So when one of my friends says they missed an episode of a TV show, I'll record that show off onto a VHS tape and send it to them.
My friends all have DVD players and computers, and could probably watch the kind of disc you're describing making, but once again: no idea how to do that. Seems much more complicated than sticking in a tape and hitting "record." And the kinds of TV shows we watch generally don't end up on BitTorrent (believe me, I've looked), so that's not really an option. The trusty VHS tape to the rescue!
It could even be argued that the conformists have the greater sense of self, since they don't have the overwhelming need to show the world that they're an individual.
This reminds me of one of my art teachers in college. She looked like a stereotypical tennis-playing blonde suburban mom. She was a sculptor and produced some very edgy work, and loved the "YOU made that?" reaction she got from people who thought she had to have blue hair and wear all black to be a serious artist.
Keep in mind, though, that in research work your continued employment is usually directly tied to grants. If your salary is being paid by a 3-year grant, for example, you'll likely need to go through a review process every year to ensure that the money keeps coming in. And if new grants aren't written and approved, the money will dry up and you'll be out of a job.
I've worked for a research group for the past 4 years, and I can tell you a good deal of time and effort is devoted to writing new grants and keeping the ones we have. You may not be the person responsible for seeking out funding and writing grants. But if the grant-writing process appeals to you, you can do really well in a university research environment.
at no point are they ever in charge, in normal clothes, homely, or out of the control of some male superhero
That was partly my thinking when I created the Super Flippy character back in high school. She's skinny and plain, the polar opposite of Wonder Woman. Instead of physical strength, her powers are mental: she can convince people to change their personalities and give her stuff, sort of like the Jedi Mind Trick. She was actually based on a girl I went to school with who was a skinny little know-it-all.
I originally bought the domain "superflippy.net" with the idea of putting all my old Super Flippy comics up on the web. Of course, eight years later I still haven't gotten around to it.
I hope that part of the significance is that it will encourage people who copied MS's example to change.
For example, www.state.sc.us does not take you to the official web site for the State of South Carolina. No, instead they have chosen to use the non-intuitive and unbearably cheesy www.myscgov.com.
If that's a public school site, they are not complying with Section 508 accessibility standards. It's a simple thing to do, and it's required by law for all federal government sites - requirements for other sites vary by state.
But even if GA doesn't require 508 compliance, there is absolutely no excuse in this day and age for building a site with content that's only accessible to a specific browser. I am amazed that people still pay good money for sites like this.
I used to take my breakfast to work as well. A packet of instant oatmeal, milk, and a bowl and spoon are things you can probably keep either in the communal fridge or at your desk.
The more I think about it, the more I think this is absolutely the ideal entry. Many bloggers love nothing better than to compare status and talk about blogging. The Blogebrity site panders to both of these desires, plus, it has the added benefit of offending some people, thus guaranteeing plenty of linkage.
So the problem is that if I fail to see sarcasm, it's because I don't have reason to respect the speaker's intelligence.
This is a pretty good explanation for something I've observed in my own life. I'll occasionally meet total strangers who will answer an honest question of mine ("Is this the way to the auditorium?") with what I guess is an attempt at sarcasm ("Sorry, the auditorium is flooded and the lecture's been canceled."). I'm only guessing that it's attempted sarcasm because these statements are always said with a wink and guffaw implied, like the guy expects me to giggle and flirt with him because he's SO FUNNY.
But he's not funny, he's unhelpful, so I pretend to take him literally ("Oh, that's too bad." *Turns around and walks away*) and he says he was just kidding and gives me the information I was asking for in the first place. Then I'll say, "Sorry, I don't have a sense of humor in the morning/afternoon/evening."
I keep running into variations on Trying To Be Funny Guy, often enough that I've sometimes wondered if my sense of humor really is deficient. But now I prefer to believe what Dunbar says: it's not me, it's them.
In that case, I'd like to suggest you become a math major. On a project I'm working on, the people who create the mathematical models which are crucial to the project are all from China. I guess there aren't too many locals with graduate-level math skills plus computer programming knowledge and some background in climatology or physical oceanography.
Come to think of it, physical oceanography might also be a good choice. It's hard science that lets you work with computers but also spend time out on the ocean.
The highly useful Netscape DevEdge site used to have a CSS support chart for all major browsers before it went down. But until the content resurfaces elsewhere (I think the Mozilla org has said they will resurrect it eventually), here are some useful tips for working around CSS browser bugs:
/* style for IE */ /* for all other browsers */
Hide CSS from Buggy Browsers
I mostly use media="all" to hide stylesheets from old browsers, then use the child selector trick to hide stuff from IE. For example:
#container {margin: 0px 3px 2px 0px;}
body>#container {margin: -2px 2px 2px -2px;}
We're also tweaking our pay-per-click landing pages in an effort to close the sale on the initial visit.
When I click through an ad, it's not because I want to buy a product. It's because that product sounds interesting or useful or something and I want to check it out. If I like the site, I'll bookmark it so in the future when I do want to buy [x], I can go back to that site.
If these retailers had a clue, they'd make it easier to bookmark product pages and post them on blogs and forums.
If I may say so, Amen.
In a religion class you can discuss who or what created the world: God, nothing, the Great Green Arkleseizure.
In science class, it doesn't matter who did it, what matters is how it works, because whoever created this world did so in such a way that the critters on it evolve over time.
I also thought the movie was funny. It's been 15 years since I read the book, so I wasn't comparing specifics, just revisiting characters and a universe that I remember enjoying back in high school.
I liked it a lot, though I'll admit I did laugh in a lot of places that no one else in the theater did. I guess that means I'm either smarter than them or more easily amused.
I'm a fan of the show, and I also thought the trailer was just OK until the final 5 seconds.
BOUNTY HUNTER: I am unarmed.
MAL: Good. *shoots*
ME: Awesome!
The scene in - I think - The Train Job where they spaced the guy who was threatening to track them down and kill them was one of my favorites, and this reminded me of that. I love it when the characters do the obvious, most expedient thing instead of doing whatever will create the most contrived drama.
I've never heard a non geek complain about picture quality on an average broadcast TV.
I was at a Super Bowl party this January with an HDTV. The HD channel was having bandwidth issues, causing the game to freeze-frame then jump ahead every now and then, so we'd occasionally switch back to the analog channel so as not to miss any of the action. But on the analog channel, the game looked like a bunch of fuzzy blobs moving on a green field, even on this big-screen TV. On the HD channel, you could see the players' numbers and names, you could see exactly how they were throwing and catching the ball. I'm not even a huge sports fan, but the HD made the game more exciting (when it worked).
It's when the spreadsheet becomes useful that people realize it's not scalable (maybe they don't use that word, but I do) and can be tough to maintain.
At a former job, I had to keep track of the hours employees turned in on their timesheets. It was simple enough to set up a spreadsheet to do that, it was just basic addition. But I got bored and set about making the spreadsheet fancier.
People often asked me to check how much vacation time they'd accrued. So I added a formula to the spreadsheet that would estimate it, accurate to within a fraction of an hour, so I wouldn't have to always ask the office manager to call corporate HQ. People were happy with the vacation estimates and the quick answers and the office manager was happy not to be interrupted.
Then the company went through a bad patch and people started cashing in a lot of vacation time to make up for lost work hours. Keeping track of the vacation time they had got trickier. Then came the sudden layoffs.
People had gotten so used to asking me to estimate vacation time instead of calling corporate that the office manager actually asked me to tell her how much vacation time someone had left so she could add it to their severence check. I had to tell her that I couldn't in good conscience let her use my little Excel spreadsheet for that, because even though I was using corporate's formula for vacation accrual, I knew for a fact it might not match exactly the number HQ had on any given day (I think mine accrued continuously and theirs didn't, and mine rounded differently.)
So that's an example of how a spreadsheet, even with the best intentions, could have cost someone the money they deserved. Of course, for all I know, corporate HQ was using a spreadsheet less accurate than mine, but I really hope they were using a proper database for payroll information.
By contrast, people can still update quite old Photoshops for a very reasonable amount.
Not true. I skipped the upgrade from Photoshop 6.0 to 6.5, and when 7.0 came out they wanted me to pay full price. So I'm still using 6.0.
As for the vector art thing, when I'm designing a web page I need to use both vector and bitmap art together in the same document. Photoshop doesn't do that very well, IMO.
I have 6.0 at home and CS at work. I am familiar with the weird shape layers thing and the Paths palette and the bezier tools. But I find using them cumbersome and non-intuitive for certain tasks. For example, creating four small rounded rectangles stacked on top of each other. I mostly use Photoshop's Paths palette for creating detailed masks of objects I want to knock out.
In Fireworks, I can just draw shapes as if I were in Illustrator: align them, resize them, add strokes and fills. The shapes are actual shapes, not masks on a solid-colored layer.
Perhaps it's because I do not have a background in print design, but I have trouble using print-centric Illustrator or Photoshop for web design. I use both to create graphics that end up on the web, but for creating a mock-up of a layout, I find Fireworks so much easier to work with. I know a lot of professional designers use Photoshop. But I just find it inefficient for web design.
I am a professional and I use Macromedia software to do my job. Therefore, it's professional grade as far as I'm concerned.
Designing a web site with Photoshop is like trying to mow the lawn with a hedge trimmer.
I will concede your point on Freehand, though. Illustrator is a better product from an user interface point of view, though it lacks some of Freehand's great features like contour gradients and the awesome variable stroke pen tool. The latest version of Illustrator (which I have at work because they're paying for it) is as crash-prone as Freehand, though, so I'm not so sure Adobe's moving in the right direction.
How nice for you. Perhaps I should have bought the educational version of Photoshop instead of the professional version. I chose not to upgrade from Photoshop 6.0 to 6.5, waiting for 7.0 instead. Then when 7.0 came out, I couldn't upgrade without paying full price, so I'm still using 6.0.
Just great. Now all my reasonably-priced Macromedia products are going to be replaces with Adobe's expensive bloatware.
Macromedia has a generous upgrade policy and great educational discounts. Adobe charges out the yin-yang for their software ($1000 for CS, can only upgrade if you own the next most recent product.)
Macromedia's web design software was built expressly for web design: Fireworks and Dreamweaver. Adobe tacked a few tools onto Photoshop (which, by the way, does not deal well at ALL with vector art, not like Fireworks does). I don't know how well GoLive works - never used it. But I know that Dreamweaver has made great efforts to allow front-end developers to create standards-compliant XHTML.
If Adobe rolls Macromedia's great software into their own mediocre offerings, I may never upgrade again.
What is your problem with Dashboard Widgets?
Mystery Meat navigation. The only way I was able to find their Widget Showcase was by clicking on teeny tiny text in the top blog post. If you want people to come to your site to *get* widgets, you need to make it easier for people to *find* widgets. If it's a site for developers, you need to make it easy for them to find useful developer stuff like code snippets, examples, and discussion forums.
<rant>What are those icons supposed to be, anyway? Home, Interrogation, Folder, Bookmarks, Search? That's my initial impression after staring at them for probably several seconds more than casual visitors would. If I bother to roll over the pretty pictures, I get Home, Showcase, Forums, Links, About. What is so freaking hard about putting text on the normal state so people can see that they are buttons and see where they go?</rant>
When I went to AIA, I had the option of testing out of the "Intro to Microcomputers" class (no joke, that was the name). Unfortunately, I missed the test and had to take it. Most of it was useless and boring, but I did learn one important thing in that class: I learned how the school's intranet was organized. I ended up teaching my friends who had skipped the intro class how to use the intranet and how the various community peripherals (scanners, etc.) were set up.
An hour-long seminar on the peculiarities of the school network could be useful to all students.