Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Yeah, I Don’t Get It Either

In the past few months on the web and in my daily Mac-related life, I’ve collected a small stash of oddities as I’ve flitted to and fro on my travels.

Since I’m not really one to complain all that much, let’s just categorize these things as “dome scratchers” and not full fledged rants. Just things that make me go “hmmm, how strange.”

First, if you are behind the Great Firewall of China, you probably aren’t reading this.


What is so strange about this is that I can’t think of any content I’ve ever offered which would be objectionable. Unless the Powers That Be™ in Beijing don’t like persnickety four year olds and balding, pudgy forty year old men. It’s a mystery. You can check and see if your favorite site has been “banned” in China here.

Adobe never ceases to amaze me. They are a hydra of a company. Some of their products are excellent, logically made and rarely crash. Others seem like they were built by third graders who’d been given a couple copies RealBasic and told to go to town. In other words, really bad stuff. (I’m looking at you, Adobe Acrobat 6, 7, 8 (pick a version, they are all nasty)).


This isn’t so much an oddity or stupidity (it makes sense that there might be an update to an updater program), but rather, I question the language. Try reading that dialog box aloud a few times fast and see if you don’t get tongue tied.

This next one is from Illustrator. Mind you, my personal loathing for Illustrator runs deep as I have been vexed and frustrated by this program for YEARS, so I know I’m biased. What are you Adobe Illustrator? A broken page layout program? A deranged way to produce bitmap/web art? A completely convoluted method to make vector art? What do you really want to be when you grow up? And by the way, you are at version 13, it’s about time you decide, my young padawan.


Since when can I not save an Illustrator EPS file with a zillion spot colors in it? Why is this suddenly a problem? Because for YEARS we in the graphic design/pre-press/art-making world have dealt with having numerous spot colors in our files. We know, no one in their right minds would really print a file with 42 ho-jillion spot colors, that stuff will become 4-color process, and transparency and spot colors present a ginourmous set of problems, but was this such a problem that you needed to interrupt my life and tell me how to handle my stuff? And! Doesn’t 27 seem like a completely arbitrary limit? OK, now this has officially started to resemble a rant, when really, I’m just slightly confuzzled.

Just a small weirdness in iTunes. Here at work, when I set up machines for people, I turn on iTunes music sharing. It’s great, since the folks at work have very diverse musical tastes, it’s a nice way to find new music/artists and plus, sharing is good! But the UI for iTunes’ Preferences doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.


There is room in the “Sharing” area of Preferences for the “Shared Name” box. So it’s an odd choice to have the Shared Name in the General area. Dome scratcher.

A few weeks ago this ad showed up here on my site via Google Ads.


Yeah, I clicked on it. I had to be sure they weren’t kidding around. Plus, I found a darling halter top in slate blue that looks DIVINE on me.

Finally, Amazon.com has a nice algorithm which looks at your purchase history, your Amazon search history and your Amazon browsing patterns to come up with suggestions. Ostensibly it’s so you can spend more money, but really, it’s pretty spiffy. You bought this, other people bought that, too! Hey, you might like some of this same stuff they bought. Nifty. Except when the system completely borks out and you get a page like this one. (this one is a little large, so click to make the image larger.)


Everything else on that page interests me. MacBookPro? Check. Battlestar Galatica? Hot Cylon Chick-Check. Woody Allen? Neuroses filled-Check. West Wing DVDs? Fantasy Political World-Check. Neal Stephson Tome? Really Long, Slightly Boring Book-Check. All good. But women’s underwear? That one is a mystery. Even if I were in the market for camisoles, I’m dead certain I’m not buying it from Amazon.

Jon scribbled this mess on 11/21/07 at 04:07 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Twitter

    Favorite Entries

    If you are new around here, the following entries have been reasonably well received. You might want to peruse these.

     

    Holy Crap! Look at all this STUFF down here. It's awesome!

     

    Really, I'm glad you made it down here. Almost no one ever comes down here. I'm like in a freaking dungeon down here. I get lonely. But not you. YOU made it all the way to the end of the page. For this I think I've a little crush on you. I don't know, is "love" to strong a word to use in this situation? Well, if it's not "love," then it's very strong "like." I'm totally in like with you for coming down here. You are awesome. Please love me back! I know, I know, I shouldn't be all needy, it's not attractive at all, but you don't know how it is to be stuck down here. Who scrolls all the way to the end of a page anymore these days? Anyway, thanks for shedding some light down here in the depths. I appreciate it. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a dollar, OK?


    ©2005-2008 Jon B. Deal All Rights Reserved. I'm not kidding around here, I know people who know other people who would be willing to beat you up or similarly infringe on your rights, should you happen to infringe on my rights.