In an effort to start updating this blog more frequently, I have decided to begin writing a series of occasional articles entitled “One Good Apple”, in which I will try and outline some of the problems and advantages of being the only Apple Mac user in a Windows environment.

I started work at Full Fat about sixteen months ago, and spent the first nine months wrestling with a Windows XP machine. I tried to like it, really I did, but eventually the boss got fed up of my whinging and sulking, and invested in the mighty Mac Pro that I am using now. Luckily for me, as well as having management willing to invest in relatively expensive hardware to keep me happy, our IT department (Mat) was also willing to support a new OS in what has previously been a Windows only environment. Overall, integrating the Mac into the companies network has been relatively painless. However, there have been a few minor technical hurdles and “gotchas” to overcome, so I thought I would use this blog to outline some of the benefits and burdens of being the only Apple in a company of some thirty plus Windows XP users.

Most of these posts are likely to focus on technical issues, but I thought it might also be nice to discuss some of the perceptual problems that have ensued from being odd man out. Many people still have a distorted view of Apple and the Mac OS; most often the Mac is dismissed as being “too expensive”, or “just a toy”. Some of these attitudes are just leg pulling and banter intended to provoke my inner Apple Evangelist; others arise from a genuine, or even sometimes wilful lack of understanding.

My intention is to be as forthright and unbiased as possible, but as a Mac user for more than 10 years now, there will inevitably be a bias towards my preferred platform. After using a Windows XP as my primary OS every day for some nine months, I feel I can at least attempt an informed comparison between XP and OS X, but I will state right from the outset that, in my experience, and in terms of usability, XP is markedly inferior to OS X. Given that XP is several years old now, this perhaps isn’t surprising, but given the reception Vista has received from the press and from people I know, it doesn’t seem that Microsoft has made up much ground.

And Leopard is only a few weeks away.

Not that anyone will notice, but I’ve made some very minor tweaks to the site. I think I’ve now updated all the references to my employment status (they should all now say that I’m working for Full Fat and I’ve fixed the problem with the promote page. If you find anything broken, let me know using the contact page.

If you are interested in my artwork and have visited the site before (I know I have at least one or two regular visitors), then you may have noticed that I haven’t added any new images to my portfolio for quite some time. There are a number of reasons for this, not least being that my wife and I moved house at the beginning of this year.

The main reason though is that I am no longer working as a freelance illustrator. Since May 2006, I have been working full-time as a concept artist for Full Fat, a small independent video-game developer. As well as concept art, I also produce pixel art, 2D animation and interface design.

I have worked on 3 published titles to date, with our current project just entering the beta phase and due for release towards the end of this year. I am hoping to put some samples of my video game artwork on this site soon, but as all the work I produce for Full Fat is subject to licence restrictions and (in some cases) NDA’s, I haven’t been able to add anything as yet. I am in the process of preparing some samples, and hopefully will get their use approved shortly, so check back if you are interested.

Spam, spam, spam.

I’ve been deluged with it of late. The scumbags that masquerade as SOEs have been using my contact form to send me useless links to useless sites. I’ve been slowly tightening the restrictions on what could be sent via that form; first I banned BBCode, then I was forced to ban web site addresses altogether to try and reduce the deluge. Even that didn’t deter the scripters, and I’ve recently had dozens of emails that are variations of this depressingly idiotic theme:

Hi! Very Good Site! Keep Doing That!
Would you please also visit my homepage?
<a href=  ></a>

or

Hi there! Just couldn't resist your guestbook!
Please also visit my site:
<a href=  ></a>

Seriously, what is the point in sending these sort of messages? What possible value do they have, even to the morons that send them? Apart from their obvious uselessness (there is, after all, no actual link in them), they only come to me. They don’t get forwarded anywhere; the only function they serve is to jam up my inbox, and piss me off.

So, as of today, I have introduced a major change in the way my contact form works. It now uses email authentication, meaning that anyone using it must supply a valid email address, and then click a link that is sent to that address to deliver their message. I realise this is an added inconvenience to legitimate visitors, and I’ve resisted implementing it for as long as possible. But I have to do something to rebalance the signal-to-noise ratio.

It does mean that I’ve been able to relax the restrictions on message content a little (URLs are back in, BBCode is still out), as hopefully anyone who takes the time to verify their email actually has something useful to send me.

Fingers crossed that I’ve managed to slow the spam down a bit, even if it’s just for a while, and my apologies to the genuine visitors who have to go through an extra couple of steps because of the actions of unethical morons who, to quote Google

have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results.

This poor blog has been languishing, unloved and untouched, for quite a while now. A lot of things have changed since I last posted, and I’ve finally decided it’s time to pull my finger out and start updating the site again. I realise not many people (if any) actually read this blog, but it’s here, so I should be updating it.

Now go away, or I shall taunt you for a second time.

I’ve been using Adobe Illustrator almost every day for years now, so I’m always surprised when I discover something new by chance.

For instance, I constantly use the cmd-space and cmd-opt-space shortcuts to zoom in and out while working, usually by drawing a marquee around the area I want to zoom to. What I just found though is that if you draw the marquee in the wrong place (something I do quite regularly), then releasing space bar and pressing it again (keeping the cmd and/or option key pressed) allows you to reposition the entire zoom marquee. Release space again and you can continue resizing the marquee. Genius.

While playing with this discovery, I also found that after pressing cmd-space to select the zoom tool, you can release the space bar and the zoom stays active. Am I stupid for not finding this sooner?

I have been really busy lately, and have generated a lot of new illustrations that I am pretty pleased with. I’ve added samples of some of this new work to my portfolio. There is still a fair bit of new stuff to be added, but I’m waiting for clearance from the client before I publish it.

After been nominated at the start of the month, The BBC Indus Valley site has made the shortlist of Finalists for a Digital Media Award.

I am very pleased to say that I have been invited to attend the award ceremony with the members of the BBC production team who worked on the site. This is the first time I have been to a Black Tie event, so I have had to hire a dinner jacket. It should be an interesting night, and hopefully the site will scoop the eLearning award too.

Steven Jay Cohen has released a new version of Iridium, my favourite theme for Mac OS X.

Iridium gives all application windows a smooth, uniform theme. I combine this with a 50% grey desktop background to give me a subtle interface that stays out of the way and doesn’t interfere with my colour perception while I’m working. If you are not a fan of Brushed Metal (why would you be?), and miss the uniform look of the Platinum UI, then I recommend giving Iridium a try.

It comes with it’s own installer, and creates a backup copy of the default Aqua theme if you want to restore the “factory” look. I have just installed this new update; everything works perfectly and looks great.

The BBC Indus Valley site that I provided the illustrations for in March 2005 has been nominated for a Digital Media award.

The first ever Digital Media Awards launched in Dublin in January 2003. The objective of the event was to raise awareness of the emerging digital media sector in Ireland and more importantly to act as a showcase for the creative and dynamic work of Irish companies and third level institutions across a broad spectrum of categories. The first event attracted 220 entries across 20 categories. Over 500 people attended the event. The main sponsors for the inaugural event were O2, Nokia, The Irish Film Board and the Department of Communications.

Since then the event has grown both in terms of entries and attendees, culminating last year in an entry level of 350 and an attendance level of 650.

The Digital Media Awards continuously seeks to recognise and reward excellence in the digital media sector by introducing new categories, involving more companies and generating more press interest with each event.

The 4th Digital Media Awards will be once again seeking to reward the best and most innovative companies and pieces of work.

Fingers crossed!