eBay anyone?
Posted on July 22, 2003
Filed Under Misc. | Comments Off
My friend Wendy just got a job in Rhode Island and is getting ready to move with her husband and two children from Maine. Now, when it comes to pop culture, Wendy and I are kindred spirits. We both got addicted to soap operas at a young age and know way too much about what’s going in the entertainment industry than is probably healthy.
She sent me boxes of memorabilia that she has collected since the early 80s and I’m putting it up on eBay for her. If you’re interested in some classic books and lots of old soap magazines, then check out what we have to offer.
Tod’s Blog
Posted on July 22, 2003
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I finished working on Tod Wick’s blog. He already had a blog in Blogger Pro, but he was getting a little confused in the transition to MovableType. I took his existing template and modified it. It was a fun project.
Cingular
Posted on July 18, 2003
Filed Under Misc. | 2 Comments
Erik says:
Y’know, I like Cingular . I really do. They’ve got good coverage, decent rates, and sales offices all over. They’re not too bad. They’re certainly not Verizon, that’s for sure!
I agree. He’s also right that they don’t have the best selection of phones. I currently have a Motorola 120t and while it doesn’t have all the bells & whistles of other phones, it’ll do. Cingular has the best coverage around here. My cell phone works here in Connecticut where T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T won’t. I also have a good plan that’s hard to find in other providers: $69 a month for 850 weekday minutes, 3500 nights & weekend minutes with *true* nationwide long distance and no roaming. Most so-called “nationwide” plans only cover about 85-90% of the country. Which is fine until you happen to be in that 10-15% area and you get socked with astronomical roaming charges.
Speak of which, my mother is very mad at Verizon. Last month, she used her cell phone to call me. I happen to have been in Bridgeport, CT at the time. This morning, she told me that she got her cell phone bill and she got hit with roaming charges for that call. That really sucks. She was in her home area, and because I happened to be in a part of the country that Verizon doesn’t cover she got the charge. That makes no sense. I could understand if she called a Bridgeport phone number, but why should she have to find out where I am on my cell phone before she calls me? I know that wouldn’t happen with Cingular, even with other plans that include long distance. What matters is where you call *from* not where the person is on the other end as long as it’s in the United States.
Dive into MasterJuggler
Posted on July 17, 2003
Filed Under Macintosh | Comments Off
MasterJuggler 3.0 was just released last week. Here’s my report. Mind you, I’m assuming basic familiarity with font management. If you have never purchased an extra font beyond what came with your computer, you can probably skip this entry.
Note: If you bought MasterJuggler and it came with a serial number than begins with “R” I’ll save you the phone call to Alsoft. Change the “R” to a “G” and it will work.
Now my review -
What’s good:
* It doesn’t have any noticeable effect on other applications while it’s running (as opposed to FontAgent Pro which slowed some of my applications to a painful crawl of spinning beach balls).
* You can see samples of multiple fonts in one window. Click on a set on the left, samples of a single line of text of all fonts are on the right. This is great when you have a look in mind and you want to see how a company’s name looks in all different fonts.
* Like Suitcase, it activates fonts in place instead of moving them to a specialized database or directory. I think this is why it’s not dragging down the system.
* It does font checking. FontReserve said it did, but FontReserve never met a font it didn’t add no matter how messed up it was.
* Within each window, it’s rather fast. (it slows down in switching between panes).
* Alsoft said it shouldn’t have any problem running in Panther (FontReserve had to be updated with every major system release)
What’s bad (or at least needs some work):
* No auto activation (the Alsoft rep said it’s coming in the next version)
* There’s no way of telling at a glance which fonts are activated. If I’ve activated a bunch of fonts to design a page, I’d like to be able to quickly deactivate ones that I don’t need so they don’t clutter up the menus in other applications.
* There’s no “find” function (or filters). I know I want to activate Palatino. I have to either click on my library of 3,000+ fonts and scroll down to “P” or find the set that also contains the font and click on it there. I would love to be able to “find” Palatino. Or all TrueType fonts that begin with the letter “P”. FontReserve is the winner here.
* It’s a little awkward when moving between the panes. Look at the interface:
In the first pane “files” you see all the fonts by family. That’s great. I don’t care whether it’s OS X or Classic, so I removed that column. Let’s say I selected “Helvetica” from halfway down the list. I click on it. Now I want to see what it looks like. I click on the “Waterfall” pane which shows fonts in a variety of sizes (I could also click on “Sample” to a see a single line in comparison to other fonts). When the Waterfall pane loads (which happens slowly, probably due to the size of my library), all fonts are deselected and the scroll bar is at the top of the list! So if I want to see Helvetica, I have to scroll down the list. Page down key does not work as the focus is in the blank window. It’s redundant and more than a bit annoying. I should be able to click on a font in one pane, and have it be selected in the next pane.
* It has font checking. It doesn’t have font fixing. It’s more than happy to tell you what problems it finds with your fonts. But then you manually have to go to the font’s original folder and deal with the problem.
Bottom line: MasterJuggler is adequate, and for what it does better than other font managers it does very well. But it’s more like MasterJuggler 1.0 for OS X than a true version 3 application. I’m tolerant and hopeful for its future. I’m not in love.
More about fonts
Posted on July 17, 2003
Filed Under Macintosh | Comments Off
As you know, I’ve been in search of Mac OS X font nirvana, and I haven’t found it yet. I’m a font junkie. I knew that I wanted to be a graphic designer back in middle school where I would doodle alphabets all over my papers. Anyway, after years of Mac ownership I now have about 3,500 fonts give or take. Maybe more on CDs that I haven’t added to the hard drive.
Yesterday at Macworld, the Apple booth had rows of G5s with Apple employees there to demonstrate how the G5 works with specific applications. One was labeled “Font Management.” In particular, he was demonstrating FontReserve Server and I think Suitcase. After confirming that the man in the Apple t-shirt was indeed an Apple employee (rather than a local sub-contractor that Apple hired just for the expo) I asked him about font management in Panther. I told him that I worked in InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator and I had tried all the font management programs and none were perfect. Would Panther’s FontBook fit the bill? His answer (and I’m pretty close to quoting here): “No. Serious graphic designers with large font libraries will be disappointed in FontBook. It’s more for the casual user who wants to organize 60 or so fonts.” I said, “So, it’s like what iPhoto is to Photoshop?” and he said, “Exactly.” I said, “But Steve Jobs made it sound like the answer to ‘professional’ graphic designer’s prayers!” and the guy just shrugged.
::sigh::
So it’s back to the 3rd party stuff.
You name the font utility, and I can show you my license for some version of it.
Suitcase: This was the first font utility I ever used. It was under System 7 in 1992. I think it was called Suitcase II back then.
MasterJuggler: This was also under System 7. I stopped using Suitcase because it wasn’t stable. MasterJuggler was stable, but the interface was confusing.
Adobe Type Manager Deluxe: The strength of this one was that it worked with ATM and it was the first to have auto activation.
Font Reserve: I’ve had a hate, love, hate relationship with FontReserve. I tried version 1.0 after seeing a demo at a Macworld or Seybold conference. But that first version was very buggy on my system. So buggy, that I only used it for a few days and then asked for a refund (I bought it with a guarantee from DiamondSoft). I went back to ATM Deluxe for a while. Then FontReserve 2 came out and folks were raving about it, so I decided to try the demo again. It was much, much improved. I repurchased the program and used it for the next 3 or 4 years, making the transition to OS X and FontReserve 3.
But as my font collection grew, FontReserve started to show its age. It was fine for activating/deactivating fonts and it had some nice features, but I was running into system instability and database errors. Fonts wouldn’t preview, sample books were hard to print, etc. I got the sense from FontReserve’s website that the application had been abandoned. In fact, Extensis (the makers of Suitcase) recently purchased FontReserve. Whether they’re going to roll its features into a super-Suitcase or kill it off completely remains to be seen.
Font Agent Pro: I tried this one on the recommendation of some folks in the InDesign mailing list. Font Agent Pro has some nice features. It’s based on the shareware-turned-commercial Font Agent (same developer, of course). FontAgent Pro does a much, much better job of examining and fixing font problems than FontReserve did. My fonts have never been in better physical shape, and the problems I had in InDesign and Word completely disappeared. I bought an upgrade license (I had a version years ago). Then things started going south. FontAgent Pro itself was fine. But other applications dragged terribly. Particularly Internet Explorer, Studiometry (a killer freelance management app) and Color Consultant Pro. It takes forever to startup and shut down. I’m sure it’s fine for small collections of fonts. But I have 2,700 fonts in one library and about 800 in another.
MasterJuggler: Which leads us back to the OS X version of MasterJuggler, just released. As I posted earlier, I bought it yesterday. I’ll dig into it in my next entry.
