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This is why Omni Group is great. Less than a month after they release a full-version paid upgrade for OmniGraffle, they unveil a beta for the previous version to fix some Leopard bugs.

Omni Group may be the classiest software company I know. Kudos to them.

Here, in a nutshell, is why I hate Adobe:

Photoshop: Window→Workspace→Keyboard Shortcuts & Menus…

Illustrator: Edit→Keyboard Shortcuts…

Do the Photoshop and Illustrator teams not have one another’s phone numbers or email addresses? Do they work on opposite sides of the country? Why the hell would you have an inconsistency like this? Small things like this needlessly increases the learning curve for two similar and interdependent programs (published by the same company!). This is just one minor inconsistency, too. Illustrator and Photoshop have some features that seem at first glance to be identical, but with just enough inconsistency (particularly in keyboard shortcuts) to make switching from one program to the other ridiculously frustrating for a new user.

And by the way, the reason I dug these menu items out was because Photoshop and Illustrator both by default use command-H for something other than hiding the program. Classy, Adobe. Real classy.

Of course there’d be a giant outcry if Adobe did go through Photoshop and Illustrator to tighten them up and make transitioning between the two easier since the professional design community has long since learned to use the two programs despite their different quirks. I just have to wonder why Adobe didn’t keep these programs in sync all along; they’ve controlled both programs from their earliest roots, so it’s not like they didn’t have a chance to keep them congruent.

The Sight by David Clement-Davies is a bit of a let-down. I had picked it up at the same time I bought Fire Bringer, and while the plot and idea behind The Sight are interesting (who doesn’t like prescient wolves?), the quality of writing hasn’t improved any since Fire Bringer. Clement-Davies has a really bad habit of using exposition to describe every stupid thing in the book. If a wolf mentions a mystical city, then Clement-Davies instantly goes off into a tangent about how actually the Romans built it back in blah de blah de blah, which pretty much kills the momentum of the story. I like it when authors research their topics, but not when they beat me over the head with their findings.

Add to that the fact that he constantly tells about emotion rather than showing it, and you’ve got a book that feels much longer than it should. I was hoping that these tendencies in Fire Bringer were part of the first book syndrome, but I’m beginning to think that Clement-Davies is simply a mediocre writer. To add insult to injury, every dang myth in the book is a rip-off of some human myth, religion, or story (Little Red Riding-Hood as one of the earliest wolf stories? Shoot me now), making the whole wolf culture feel forced.

If you like anthropomorphic animal stories, then I recommend reading The Sight rather than Fire Bringer (evil psychic wolves are a bit more believable than fascist Hitler deer), but overall Clement-Davies’ work has left me feeling more frustrated than anything else. His creative approach to animal stories has a lot of potential that isn’t quite realized thanks to the quality of the storytelling.

Feast of Love should really have been called “Sex and Sadness”. My girlfriend rented it from iTunes and told me it was like Love Actually but more realistic. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Love Actually, but the cover of Feast of Love made it look like a romantic comedy and after a weekend otherwise filled with realistic, tactical shooter violence I was in the mood for a light comedy or romance so I grabbed my girlfriend’s computer and watched it.

Oops. Now I am sad and shall need to eat ice cream. Feast of Love is a bit of a downer, even if it overall has a happy message. If you like montage-style movies that are very true to real life, then you’ll probably enjoy it. It doesn’t really have anything earth-shattering to say about the human condition, but it is a surprisingly realistic portrayal of life for something with big-name actors in it. Overall feeling: meh. Not a bad movie, but not great. And like I said, now I’m sad. Watch it if you’re feeling bittersweet; I recommend renting over buying.

I’m not usually a big fan of the realistic anti-terrorist shooters, but Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for the Xbox 360 (and other systems) is growing on me. My cousin has always been really into the Rainbow Six series, and he convinced me to buy Vegas 2 this week and attend an Xbox party with him and a bunch of his Xbox Live friends on Saturday.

It was a blast. Xbox Live already has voice communication going for it, but it’s so much more fun to actually be in the same room with the people you’re playing with. There were a bunch of people at the party (about 14-15 playing Vegas 2 at any given time, and a few others doing their own thing for whatever reason). Definitely more fun than hooking up to matches with total strangers who all too often turn out to be idiots (or twelve years old).

As for the game, Vegas 2 seems like a pretty standard entry into the tactical shooter genre. It only takes a few shots to kill you, taking cover behind walls, boxes, and so forth and peering out as you wait for an enemy is a standard tactic, and half the time when you get killed you have no idea where it came from (thanks to said hiding and peeking around corners). Normally I find these kind of games really frustrating; I was introduced to shooters (specifically online multiplayer shooters) playing Aliens vs. Predator which was filled with claustrophobic maps where your best survival tactic was to simply never stand still, so retraining myself to approach the map one room at a time is difficult.

The controls for Vegas 2 also threw me off. They’re quite different from most shooters I’ve played, and vastly different from Call of Duty 4 (which I’ve been playing recently).

Where Vegas 2 stands out is the variety of multiplayer options available. The entire campaign can be played through cooperatively, either via Live or split screen, and the various multiplayer gametypes are quite fun. Particularly appealing is the fact that if you can’t find enough people to pull off a good team deathmatch, you can do a “terrorist hunt” which allows you and up to three friends to fight bots on the multiplayer maps. I really enjoy coop games and the occasional bot fight, so the variety of options available in Vegas 2 is great.

I’d definitely recommend Vegas 2 if you’re looking for a good tactical shooter with great multiplayer options. It might not be anything special in the sub-genre of realistic anti-terrorist shooters (I wouldn’t know), but it’s the first one that I’ve been able to get into, and is a lot of fun to play with friends.

Via Daring Fireball:

A decade ago, Wired was my favorite magazine. Today, they print mind-numbing tripe like Leander Kahney’s 3,500-word cover story, “How Apple Got Everything Right by Doing Everything Wrong”.

Nothing special (just another of John Gruber’s brutal tear-downs of an illogical article about Apple), but I completely agree that Wired has gone downhill (I’ve pointed it out before). Although I still sometimes find a good article in Wired, most of the articles I’ve read recently have made me wonder if there is an editorial staff, and if so why they don’t appear to have any idea what good journalism is.

You know it’s bad when a guy whose primary interest throughout school was printing lies is able to spot a publication that has lost its sense of what makes good journalism good.

Shoot ‘em Up is a movie that is in all ways gratuitous. Gratuitous sex (only one scene, but it’s really gratuitous). Gratuitous gore (lots). Gratuitous violence (lots doesn’t cover it; “constant” comes closer). No real character motivation, plot, or relationship with physics unless you’re willing to take your disbelief out back and shoot it.

I had mixed emotions about this movie. On the one hand, really over-the-top violence is sometimes hilarious (Kung Fu Hustle is possibly the greatest action movie ever). On the other hand, I’m often very uncomfortable with realistic violence (trying to watch Braveheart was a disaster). I probably won’t watch Shoot ‘em Up again because it was a little too violent/graphic for me, but I did laugh most of the way through. Your mileage will vary; rent first.

Objectively, it’s a really bad movie. But bad intentionally, and pretty hilariously.

I’m just going to step right up and admit that I love Scribbles. The simplicity of the program and the beauty of its interface make it a joy to use; takes me straight back to my KidPix days, but so much more elegant.

Now Scribbles 1.2 is out and it adds the only two things I was sorely missing: an eyedropper tool (that lets you pick colors from anywhere on screen, not just in Scribbles) and the ability to move, rotate, and scale single layers (instead of only being able to move the whole document). Here’s the best bit: the addition of layer-specific moving/scaling/rotating necessitated the addition of a single tool and a contextual interface element. Hey Adobe, Pixelmator, and even Acorn: are you watching? You could learn something about how necessary all those buttons and menu commands are.

The update also adds the ability to hold down shift to draw straight lines, automatic Sparkle updating, an optional grid, and several welcome interface tweaks (more details in the Scribbles blog). If you haven’t tried Scribbles, you’re missing out on a great little app. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes to occasionally scribble something on-screen.

I just watched the most original movie I’ve seen all year, and it was a Japanese animated movie called Paprika. Paprika was a fantastic movie with stunning animation, an original plot, and just enough reality intermingled with the dreaming to keep the action coherent and you on your toes. This is one of those movies where you’ll want to watch it twice to make sure that you didn’t miss anything.

My favorite scene is where two characters are driving in a car in the rain. As one of the characters talks about how several dreams have merged into a collective dream the camera focuses on a water droplet slide down the windshield, growing bigger as it subsumes other droplets and finally flying off with its own momentum.

It’s a beautiful piece of visual metaphor, and pretty much encapsulates the detail and design that made me fall in love with this movie. Keep in mind that although animated, this isn’t necessarily a kid-friendly film, mainly thanks to a couple scenes that could turn into nightmare material (and some female nudity). Other than that, though, I recommend Paprika without reservations.

I can’t believe that I haven’t blogged this yet! Last weekend I noticed Apple was selling refurbished iMacs for a steeper discount than normal, and after a little soul-searching I bought myself a refurbished 24″ glossy widescreen iMac. I hadn’t intended to buy it for a couple months, but I couldn’t pass up $400 off.

It arrived on Wednesday, and after spending most of the day migrating stuff over from my MacBook Pro I was able to start using the iMac for work on Thursday. It is now my work machine, and I’m a multiple-Mac owner.

I am ecstatic about the iMac. The screen is huge (which was why I wanted one; I’ve been getting frustrated with my ability to do detailed graphics work on the MacBook Pro), and absolutely gorgeous. It’s perfect for the image work that I need to do, too; when I started using it Thursday, I instantly noticed some fairly severe JPEG artifacts that I’d missed on the laptop. I am continually impressed with Apple’s design ethic, and the iMac is a great example of why Macs are a better choice than just about any other computer out there.

The move from a single computer to computers that are designated “work” and “personal” has been an interesting one. I decided before the computer arrived not to use Apple’s migration assistant to move my data. The iMac has plenty of room, of course, so synching my home account wouldn’t be a problem space-wise, but frankly my Home folder is a disaster. I try to remember to use AppZapper, but there are possibly hundreds of unused preference files from apps I installed once and never touched again, not to mention the hell of my desktop and downloads folders. My documents folder is slightly better off, but still suffers from a number of folders that third-party software dropped inside without consulting me.

In any case, migrating to a new computer seemed like an ideal time to clean things up, so I did everything by hand. Took a while, but the spotless iMac desktop tells me it was worth it. I also discovered some tools to ease multiple computer problems, but I’ll share those another time.