Radiant Core: Alistair Morton

iCommute - A Call for Spring

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:00:00 GMT

I live in Brockville, but I work in downtown Toronto, so the distance I travel one way is 341 kilometers from door to door. I only have to make this journey twice a week, since I'm lucky enough to only work three days a week in the office and the remaining two from home. The drive can take anywhere from three hours to almost seven depending on traffic, accidents, power surges, or weather. This commute puts me in a growing category of workers called Super-commuters.

In 1990, only 24% of all North American workers were a part of this Super-Commuter group, which has grown to well considerably leading up to today when well over 50% of all new workers are now considered super-commuters. The largest part of this newly developing demographic is traveling the great distances in the search for ever more affordable housing, which is true in my case as my wife and I are restoring an 1880‚ Upper Canada home that we just love. Others choose to live closer to children or ex-spouses. Regardless of the reasons, Super-Commuting is here to stay.

I've been doing the drive for exactly four weeks now, and I calculated my time being in car for the month at just under 40 hours - your average worker's full work week. In that time, I have travelled over 3200 kilometers. The biggest reason for my long drawn out periods of time in my car is that the weather in Ontario for this past February has truly sucked. Two massive blizzards plus a typical eastern ice storm. I imagine once the weather improves I will be down to a much more deal-able 20 hours of monthly commuting, which at the moment sounds really fantastic to me.

So I call on you, God of Spring, who was so well represented by Michelle Pfeiffer in the talent contest of Grease II, to relieve me of my frozen feet, my underlying emotional panics of seeing semi-trailer trucks in ditches or drivers without the sense to purchase proper snow tires. I call on you, for open window road travel, and the ability to actually enjoy the b-side of whichever Meatloaf album the classic rock stations along my Thousand Islands Ontario commute decides to play.

I call for Spring.

Give Me My Leopard!

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:00:00 GMT

When I installed Mac OS X Tiger on my computer near the end of April 2005, I thought to myself, it really can't get better than this. Spotlight has changed the way I use the computer, Dashboard brought forth all these little applications that I used to have to hunt and peck for, Calculator, sticky notes, and even local weather updates: all just an F12 key away.

Now, a year later, I am reading about the upcoming release of Mac OS X Leopard, I find myself already thinking about how I'll just barely be able to live without the new features included inside Apple's next major operating system update. I'm not even talking about the fact I'll be able to skin my mail with fancy new themes, or add animated backgrounds to my iChats with the team here at Radiant Core ( oh, I will ) - but these aren’t the things I am waiting so desperately for.

Alistair’s Key Awaited Feature List

Spaces: This basically turns your desktop into several individual Spaces or desktops, each of which can be customized for a specific task or type of work. As with the introduction of Exposé a few years ago, if this is utilized properly, it can seriously increase the productivity of anyone using the computer for more than just sending email. Designers, Developers and Digital artists of all stripes can organize their workspaces for tasks and whip through them to work on whichever project is the most pressing, or subsequently a chronic solitaire user can set up a overloaded work screen they can quickly switch too in under a second if the boss pops around a corner.

Time Machine: If you have ever felt the slow oncoming dread while you are looking for that file you need to present in 20 minutes which you might have deleted in a frantic desktop cleanup, Time Machine has you covered. You can go back through saved states of your computer to find the last version of the missing file, make your meeting and receive your kudos. This will eliminate the overload of panic and generalized collapsing into a fetal position you currently go through after losing said file, enjoy!

iChat Theatre: Imagine running a keynote presentation to clients over the internet. Well now its completely possible, with much more. Wireframes and mockups now come with the best part of any internet delivery: you! Let’s face it, things in projects can change fast and sometimes you have to make a call on certain design elements without the client’s approval. Now, upon you showing off your digital mockups, you can also offer your explanation of any changed elements alongside your visual delivery. If you have found yourself in the past trying to type in one of these rather longwinded explanations, you’ll know, face to face is so much simpler for your clients.

Hurry Up and Wait

Apple hasn’t announced a date for the release of Leopard, but speculation on the internets (which Jay assures me is a massive interconnected series of tubes) is that we should all be buying a copy as soon as the end of March.

Photoshop CS3 and a MacBook Pro

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 15:00:00 GMT

As one of the lucky ones, I had the chance to grab a beta copy of the Photoshop CS3 about a month ago. Like many designers, I have been struggling using CS2 on my shiny new MacBook Pro due to the brilliant yet somewhat boggy Rosetta translation software engine.

First off, I would have to say that I am a fairly heavy duty photoshop user: as we speak I have five two hundred megabyte files on my desktop, and I have been known to shoot off the odd three gigabyte file. So I felt that I was the type of user to put this new native version through its paces, especially since it had been so long since I had achieved the speed I was once used too.

Interface Changes

At first glance the freshened up interface was just wonderful to me. All the palettes have been cleverly compacted into small movable icons which, once you get the knack of them, allow for amazing expansion of your screen real-estate. This is very handy when you are working on the limited dimensions of a notebook. Kudos to the interface designers - if they utilize this front-end for the full CS3 suite, we all will be working happier!

The initial load times are about the same as the CS2 load time on my Intel mac, which means slow, but the similarities stop there. Once inside I am easily zooming and moving around my large files like I am once again working on a desktop rig. Progress bars zip by and wait times are easily cut in half for functions like image loading or running any of the math intensive filters. Layers are flipped and moved about in real-time and gone are the wait times for the layers palette to catch up to what you have been doing.

The only problem I noted was that the type tool seems to crash the beta once in a while, usually when I am flying a little too fast and getting snappy with the mouse. Doing due diligence I checked the forums and found that Adobe has identified this problem and will hopefully correct for the final release.

It would seem that Adobe, for all the griping I have been doing for the last year, is aiming to really please us for our patience. The learning curve is slight and the differences are amazing. With the purchase of Macromedia in the last few years, maybe some of that user driven intelligence has also crossed over, and now Adobe is truly listening to us, and our wants and needs.

New Features

“Zoomify” is a new way to export your larger graphics to the web. Effectively creating a flash file that loads an image and allows you to zoom and move about the pixel eating behemoth with quick load times and high detail. Zoomify is a great way to present your larger print projects to clients over the web without the need for any downsizing of the image, allowing clients to see the full detail of the ad or zoom out to take in your breathtaking layouts. For those of us familiar with working on print, this could be a very beneficial tool to speed things up with your more far off clients.

“Auto Alignment Layers” can remove or add elements from a series of photos you choose to overlay, without having to airbrush for hours to get your desired result. So if you had a few shots of your friends all taken from a similar angle, where in one of your friends wasn't looking at the camera, or not smiling you can use this tool to select the parts of each image you want. Then you can piece them together in almost flawless fashion adding or subtracting to add the smile. For any of us who have tried to paste someone’s face into another photo before, this is a great timesaver, and the final results will look as good as your old-school 4 hours of airbrushing.

"Smart Filters" creates another layer for you to go back and re-edit your filters, so there is no more backing up a spare layer in case you mess up. You can go in and re-adjust the filters after the fact, just like you would a new layer. Clever.

The "Quick Selection" tool allows you to “paint” your selections in realtime by simply holding down the shift key. If the four lattés you gulped down in the morning cause you to accidentally shift out too far past your selection, you simply hold down the option key and gently ease the selection back. The difference between this and the old magic wand is that this tool actually “learns” where you are trying to go. It isn’t just based on just the colours you go over either: it just selects where and how you want it, and feels like magic! You can control the quick select brush size as well, allowing getting in close for much more detailed selection work. Once you have finished selecting what you want, a new refine edge tool allows you to contract or expand, add feathering or tighten up the final selection. For whipping up a fast mockup, or photo montage this tool is going to give you some new found speed.

Speculation for Adobe’s full CS3 Suite release is on or around May 1, 2007.