Maniacal Rage

Photo

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:36:57 -0800

Will you be purchasing the iPad 3?

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:22:05 -0800

I wasn’t going to answer this question, because I think the answer is probably obvious to most readers, but then I received it about 10 times in the last week so perhaps it’s not as obvious as I thought.

Yes, I will definitely purchase an iPad 3. Putting aside the fact that I’m a huge gadget freak (especially considering Apple gadgets) in my personal life, I do design and build iOS applications for a living so even if I wasn’t terribly interested in the upgrade for myself, I’d definitely purchase one to test on for clients. That said, I’m terribly interested in the upgrade for myself. Retina screen on an iPad? Professionally, that’s scary (2048x1536 is a very large screen to design for), but personally that’s a dream.

Art of the Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:42:40 -0800

Art of the Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo:

One of my favorite title sequences of the past few years. I love reading Art of the Title—they’re thoughtful and thorough and it’s so much fun to read how these things get made.

Thank god Clear finally came out.

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:34:59 -0800

Thank god Clear finally came out.

Photo

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:12:35 -0800

Do you think you could ever get a house on a freelancer's "salary"?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:11:12 -0800

I know plenty of people who have freelanced their way into owning a home. It depends a lot on where you live, how much you make, and how secure your incoming work stream is. If you live in New York City, buying a co-op or condo or a house in the outer boroughs is various levels of insanely expensive, so you’d better be doing pretty well. Los Angeles is the same. But if you’re a freelancer who lives in, say, Kentucky, it’s probably quite a bit easier to buy a place. Location counts when it comes to purchasing land and homes.

To get to the core of your question, I think the simple answer is yes: It’s definitely possible to make a large salary freelancing. You’re going to need great clients with appropriate amounts of money and spending habits. And you’re going to need to work a lot. Eventually, you’ll hit a maximum income that’s based on the physical reality that you’re only one person and you can only work so much. When that happens, you’ll hire people.

The Marshall (More CS Crash Reports)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:22:18 -0800

The Marshall (More CS Crash Reports)

What is your word processing software of choice?

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:35:06 -0800

I use Pages for template-based Karbon documents like estimates, statements of work and master service agreements (and any other needs-to-look-nice items I create).

I use iA Writer for any creative writing. Short stories, long blog posts, et cetera.

I use TextMate for everything else. It’s still my favorite app if I need to jot something down quickly and edit it, wrangle text, or batch operate on HTML or anything like it.

Fountain: A markup language for screenwriting

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:29:26 -0800

Fountain: A markup language for screenwriting:

I’ve wanted something like Fountain for years. It reminds me of the TextMate bundle Oliver Taylor wrote back in the day, only this time it’s not a single-app hack, it’s a true, Markdown-esque formatting syntax for writing screenplays. And because it’s only a syntax, it can be used my any application in the future to render correctly-formatted scripts on the fly, while maintaining a completely text-based original that’s easy to update, modify and archive. This is huge.

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve been invited to speak...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:32:32 -0800

I’m thrilled to announce I’ve been invited to speak at this year’s Valio Con 2012. I hope you don’t have any plans for the beginning of June, because you’re going to want to be in sunny San Diego with us. Look at this amazing line-up of speakers:

Rich Thornett, co-founder and developer of Dribbble
Cameron Koczon, of Fictive Kin and Gimmebar and Brooklyn Beta
Ian Collins, designer and developer at Simple
Kyle Neath, Director of Design at GitHub
Krystyn Heide, Senior Product Designer at Squarespace
Dom Leca, CEO and co-founder of Sparrow
David Desandro, developer at nclud and creator of the popular Isotope
Jonathan Moore, founder of Style Hatch and New Ezra
Even more amazing people to be announced soon…

I don’t even belong in the same room with these people, they’re too awesome. I’m going to have to change the title of my session to “How I managed to trick Drew Wilson into letting me speak alongside industry giants at Valio Con 2012”. But seriously, I heard nothing but amazing things about last year’s event, so I could only play it cool for about ten seconds after Drew asked me to be part of this year’s conference.

Valio Con 2012 takes place June 7-10th at the Hyatt Mission Bay resort in San Diego. The $999 conference pass includes three nights hotel stay, beach bonfires, breakfast, local catered lunches and a chance to hang out with some of the best designers and developers in the industry. Check out the Valio Con 2012 site for more details.

(And thanks to Jonathan Moore, from whom I reblogged/stole most of this post. I’ll try to make it up to him at the conference.)

Which camera(s) do you use to take your pictures and videos?

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:41:47 -0800

I shoot nearly all video with the Canon 5D Mark II. Photos these days are about 60% 5D, 40% Fujifilm FinePix X100. Both cameras take great photos and it’s mostly a matter of convenience which one I choose for the day. I tend to shoot with the 24-70mm f2.8 lens on the 5D, and it’s a pretty big, heavy lens. So generally when I take the 5D with me it’s because I plan to shoot a lot or record video. The X100 is much smaller and lighter and easier to carry around, so it’s a great casual camera and I don’t feel as bad if I take it with me all day and never shoot a photo.

Oh, and I take hundreds of photos with my iPhone, the best of which go to Instagram (@garrettmurray).

Photo

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:37:00 -0800

Apple redesigned the Airport Utility app for OS X. It now looks...

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:55:00 -0800

Apple redesigned the Airport Utility app for OS X. It now looks much like the recently released iOS app and gives you a prettier, more useful look at your network. They’ve streamlined the settings themselves too… this is a huge win UI/UX-wise.

Update: Dan Wineman pointed out that version 6.0, while pretty, removes several useful features (including IPv6 configuration and wireless client monitoring). Turns out you can now install both this version of Airport Utility and the older version, 5.6, which has been updated. You must install 6.0 first and update your Base Stations, then you can grab the 5.6 build and install it as well. Looks like Apple is going for a consumer version for its mainstream release (the version pictured here) but keeping the older, more “pro” version updated as well.

Been a While (More CS Crash Reports)

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:11:00 -0800

Been a While (More CS Crash Reports)

Do you ever let your wife eat food?

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:14:48 -0800

Only after she does all the dishes, cleans her room, and gets her homework done. And even then I only let her eat a little bit, and no dessert. Sometimes, on weekends, I don’t let her eat at all just to remind her who’s boss around here. I’M THE BOSS. I CONTROL THE FOOD.

(Actually, she eats plenty. She’s just naturally ridiculously thin and attractive. No matter how much I berate her or hide the food, she still eats and she still looks like that. I swear, I’m not starving her.)

For Stacey’s 32nd birthday we went roller skating at...

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:51:35 -0800

For Stacey’s 32nd birthday we went roller skating at Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale. For the next five months, she’ll be two years older than me, but we both felt like teenagers doing 200 loops on a Saturday night to the tune of terrible pop music.

What made you choose the 27" iMac over the Mac Pro?

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:35:31 -0800

Convenience, cost and environment. The iMac is an extremely convenient computer—one cable, one piece of hardware, a relatively small footprint. It fits well on my desk and looks very nice.

It’s also very affordable for what it offers. I got the top of the line 27-inch model with the 2TB HDD + SSD option, bumped it to 16GB of RAM (not through Apple) and I still paid less than $3,000 USD before shipping. That price includes a lightning-fast computer with tons of storage space and an insane amount of memory, plus a beautiful 27-inch LED display. Mac Pros start at $2,499 USD without a display. Now, you can build an insane Mac Pro, but I don’t need that kind of raw computing power. My iMac is the fastest computer I’ve ever owned by leaps and bounds. Cost-wise, it just doesn’t make much sense to buy a Mac Pro any more (for me).

One complaint I’ve heard in the past is about the iMac’s lack of user-replaceable drives or that the limit of two is a problem, but I mostly disagree. If you have a very extreme need for storage I could see you having to buy many external hard drives. But I have 2.5TB built in, and with Thunderbolt (which the Mac Pro doesn’t have) I added two 1TB Thunderbolt drives that are lightning fast, and I have hundreds of GB to spare right now. I shoot lots of video and photos, have thousands of Photoshop files, et cetera, and I’m not at all worried about space. With Thunderbolt and the larger built-in disk options, this isn’t an issue so much these days.

The iMac also uses only 25% of the power the Mac Pro uses. Even at peak activity, the iMac with a built-in display uses 40% less power a Mac Pro uses. This might not be an important aspect for everyone, but it’s something I think about.

Our first “winter” in LA has been pretty great.

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:14:00 -0800

Our first “winter” in LA has been pretty great.

Given your experience with the Jawbone up (of which I had similar), what are your thoughts about the Nike Fuelband? Bullish or Bearish?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:10:00 -0800

I’d say bullish in general—Nike makes excellent products around its Nike+ line. I’ve been using Nike+ to track running since 2006, starting with an iPod Nano, then moving to the SportBand, and eventually switching recently to the SportWatch GPS (which I love). The service is great and without it I would probably never run.

That said, the FuelBand isn’t exactly what I’m looking for in this kind of product. It looks very nice (and significantly better than the UP), but it looks like Nike is targeting this more at “active” folks in action. You can set goals and try to achieve them, which is nice, but I want to track things like sleep habits as well, which the FuelBand doesn’t do. While it seems entirely possible they could add that feature later with software, I doubt they will given the branding of the device is highly skewed toward activity.

There are some huge pluses, though. Perhaps the biggest is that it uses Bluetooth to communicate with the app. Also, it has a built-in display and really nice design elements. I’ll definitely keep my eye on the FuelBand when it’s released and see what people think.

Monday Night

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:59:43 -0800

Me: Would you rather... read all of the Harry Potter books, back to back... or eat a Subway Philly Cheesesteak three times a day every day for two weeks?
Stacey: Oh god. Harry Potter. Can I eat just one per day?
Me: No, you have to eat three. Just three cheesesteaks and water, nothing else. Two weeks.
Stacey: Yeah, Harry Potter.
Me: Okay. Would you rather eat Subway Philly Cheesesteaks three times a day for two weeks or... drink a cup of urine?
Stacey: Urine.
Me: But you don't know whose urine it is. The only guarantee is that it's human and disease-free.
Stacey: Urine.
Me: But it could be some dirty old homeless man's urine!
Stacey: Yeah but it's disease free... oh, god. Ugh. Is that Harry Potter offer still on the table?
Me: No.
Stacey: Just as well, I think I'd still choose the urine.