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.

Down for everyone or just me asks a simple question: Is [_____] down for everyone or just me?

I will definitely be using this service. I just wish it has some sort of explanation about what’s going on behind the scenes, since as things are you pretty much have to take it on faith.

Sometimes you need a linebreak in an Excel spreadsheet cell, but when you hit return or enter it always jumps you to a new cell. On Windows, you can just hit alt-return (or maybe alt-enter; if one doesn’t work, try the other). On Mac, you’ll need to hit control-option-return.

Took me a while to figure this out, and I figured it could be useful for others. Enjoy!

I’ve seen a few reviews of StuffIt Deluxe online, but they never seem to mention the truth about StuffIt, which is that you should never, ever consider buying it. Here’s why it will be a major waste of money:

• StuffIt Deluxe 7 included minor bug fixes up to version 7.0.3.
• StuffIt Deluxe 8 ($30 upgrade) included minor bug fixes up to version 8.0.2.
• StuffIt Deluxe 9 ($30 upgrade) included minor bug fixes up to version 9.0.2.
• Stuffit Deluxe 10 ($30 upgrade) included minor bug fixes up to version 10.0.2.
• StuffIt Deluxe 11 ($30 upgrade) included minor bug fixes up to version 11.0.2.
• StuffIt Deluxe 12 ($30 upgrade) is currently at version 12.0.1.

My personal story is that I bought it back at version 8. They released version 9 about a month afterward (and I had to pay the upgrade fee). I didn’t mind upgrading, though, because the .sitx format’s JPEG compression looked awesome.

Of course, it didn’t actually compress JPEGs like they claimed, so StuffIt was virtually useless. I figured that they’d release an update to fix the problem, though, and they did.

It was called StuffIt Deluxe 10. And it was still buggy and not fulfilling their promises.

According to my records, I also bought the update to version 11. I’m not really sure why. I must have been taking stupid pills. Apparently, I’ve given whoever the hell owned or owns StuffIt (it seems to change every other year) almost $180 for software that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

Now we’re up to version 12 (which I have not purchased an upgrade for; gee, go figure), and I will bet you money (how’s $30 sound?) that we’ll see version 13 before we see 12.0.4.

StuffIt Deluxe will not help you. Smith Micro will take your money and laugh all the way to the bank, then turn around and sincerely ask for an upgrade fee.

Admittedly, .sitx files are pretty cool and a helluva lot more effective than zips (as long as the rest of the world doesn’t need to see your compressed files). Of course, you could always just buy PathFinder 4 ($35, or $18 upgrade from version 3; currently at version 4.8.3), which includes .sitx compression and decompression.

Why this completely out-of-the-blue rant? I had to compress an image file way, way down and found myself at the StuffIt website wondering if I should upgrade. Fortunately I neglected my stupid pills this morning, and I remembered that PathFinder had added .sitx compression. After that close call I decided to remind myself (and others) once and for all why you should never even remotely consider buying StuffIt Deluxe. I’m actually a little perplexed how the software has persisted this way for so long without someone with actual clout calling it to the carpet.

Every once in a while my girlfriend and I will take her Wii remotes over to my Dad’s house for some Wii bowling, and having to synch the remotes every time was getting really annoying. I couldn’t find any information about using your Wii remote at a friend’s house in the manual, but after digging through the Nintendo support pages I finally found how to use your Wii remote with a friend’s Wii without synching it. It’s called One Time Mode Synchronization.

One tip: in my limited experience you need to add the remotes after you’ve loaded the game (instead of doing it in the Wii menu) or you’ll have to do the process twice. Definitely nice not to need to resynch your Wii remote when you get home, though.