holding steady.™

first of all, i love the name. destroy labs, sounds like something a team of alien scientists cooked up to save or, you know, destroy the planet.

secondly, this thing is more enjoyable to use than flickr. between this and photonic (how i upload photos, details on why this is cool here and here), i rarely even visit the flickr website anymore. the adobe air app phenomenon is getting me excited, because the idea of little apps that do specialized tasks is what i perceive as the future of the web. gone are the days where everything needed to be done through your bookmarks when you open up safari/firefox. i can go entire days now without EVER opening my browser. if you think about it, iphone apps follow the same path…widget-like efficiency that saves time, energy and battery life.

enough with the brouh-hah. this app is clean, crisp, uses one of my absolute favorite color combinations, and takes what i consider to be a novel approach to showing pictures. opening up an individual shot gives you almost all of an item’s info, and i even really enjoy browsing through my own photos.

currently, my only complaint is an inability to see set information/tags on the item info page. maybe there should be a way to browse one’s sets/collections, and to see what groups a photo belongs to.

so, i use a really handy freeware program called schoolhouse. it’s basically an assignment management software, and it’s one of those things that i’ve come to depend on. to the point where if one day it suddenly stopped working, my heart would probably stop. (note: this isn’t a review.) as it turn out, i’m gonna not be in school for a year, but when i get to grad school, you’d better believe i’ll still use it.

so, anyways, i just opened the program a few minutes ago (using a trigger via quicksilver). and nothing happened. i experienced an emotion i haven’t felt since i made the switch to mac. i tried it again. nothing happened. i figured quicksilver (being in beta) was just having a temporary bug. so i tried another trigger, this time to open up safari. workedlikeacharm.

clearly, i did something here. so i figured i’d navigate to the program in finder, and figure out my trigger problem later. only, once i navigated to the program…there was a big circle with a line through it watermarked over my custom icon (a swiss army knife, in case you were wondering). i double-clicked on the icon, with trepidation, as i’ve come to depend on this program immeasurably. all my grades and when my assignments are due are only in this program (or maybe also in ical, i’m spotty). the program apparently “is not supported by this computer’s architecture” (whatever the hell that means).

after a quick check to make sure no other program was having the same issue (since i just upgraded my hard drive and memory), i went to the website, and downloaded the software again. copied it into the app folder. hit my quicksilver trigger, and schoolhouse opened up, with all my old assignments and alerts just as i’d last seen them.

now, i understand. this is pretty minor. permission, plist files, etc. all stayed the same, though i technically “reinstalled” right on top of the old program. what i’m trying to get at is that as a longtime Windows user (and all-time Mac aficionado), there’s no way that a similar situation could arise without me tearing my hair out. my stuff would have been gone. this is not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last, that i’m just so incredibly glad that i made the switch.

there’s nothing going on. nothing. at all.

it’s one of those situations where i could bother to take the time to feel sorry for myself. but i’m simply too lazy.

i have started to use earthdesk. i am kind of falling in love with it.

sadly, i don’t use flickr all that often. however, i have recently acquired a pro account, so it has occurred to me to use it more actively.

so, i am trying out this new app called photonic. it’s been showing up in my mac-related RSS feeds for about a week. ergo, i gave it a little looksie. the demo is supposed to last until march 20 (UPDATE: i bought it. because it rocks (especially for uploads).

i like the interface, very leopard (sidebar with the finder/itunes drop down menus). it allows for browsing of my sets and photostream, as well as the browsing of all streams. there is also in that same sidebar an allowance for the viewing of my favorites, contacts and groups, which is totally awesome. as some sort of bonus, it also includes a section on photos uploaded in the past couple of days. i’m tired of typing the word “also.”

the uploading portion allows for a group of photos to be recognized by the program, and you can upload them all, or the selected photos (arguably those which you have finished tagging, description-ing, title-ing, assigning to a set/group pool, and establishing prefs with regards to visibility, type and safety).

one of the best features that i’m noticing is an instant ability to favorite-star a photo ( a cute little button in the bottom-left corner.

so. yeah i like it. hopefully this will make me use my flickr account that much more.

i am supposed to have a test today. i’m probably going to skip it.

i read an article today on going paperless, something i’ve been doing/meaning to do for some time. having a laptop is a sort of invaluable mental ascent in terms of boosting your productivity and organizational capacity.

i am listening to the song “reflections”, off of the newest mae album (singularity)
“Reflections are all we have and when it’s over
Reflections of the path that sends us searching”

i just downloaded yep (for .pdf file archiving/tagging). once i have completed tagging all of my pdfs, next i’m tackling my bookmarks (using webnotehappy). i’ve been keeping track of my tasks with things.

ok, i have been a hard-core aperture user for about six months. ever since i bought my camera, and really, even before then, i had every intention of using the program. the second i could get it into my grubby little hands, i did. i have been fairly content with it. until yesterday. i got ahold of adobe lightroom, mostly because i just wanted to play with it. i’m a pretty big fan of everything else they do (nothing in my life would be correct without dreamweaver and fireworks), so i figured i might as well give the damn thing a shot. i sorta now wish i hadn’t. i wish this program weren’t faster than aperture. i wish that it didn’t have the same nondestructive capability. i wish it weren’t sexier looking. i also with that it supported .pngs. eventually, i hope to write a review of some software. reading the work of shawn blanc has inspired me a tad bit. (it’s also making me want to do a little redesign…)