What I want

FTW, make dark explosive art. Sentimental photographs of things we loose and forget. Travel. Collect all kinds of music. Have an extraordinary life, regret nothing. Have one and only love that sticks to me forever and also supports me when I am an ass. Work no more, because it is totally pointless as a goal in life. Fuck religion, because it distracts us from our own possibilities, our responsibilities, kills people for no reason, makes people think they are invincible, is a tool for politicians to fuck with our brains. Say what I think, and feel. Write what I think and feel. Observe. Tell stories with pictures. I lie to protect my principles to those who deserve it and want to hear it. I am honest to the ones I love. Seek the boundaries of my own limits and cross them. Stay open for differences and learn from them. Gather knowledge and use it for my passion for art. Seek souls with the same mind but not likewise opinions. Create in any possible way, to express what I need to let out.

Hanneke in videoclip

The office of the 90's

And here is a video that I picked from the Adobe site. It is showing the way we used to work in the offices during the 90's. It's almost incredible that we did it this way. Take a look at this video and be surprised on how fast we evolved. (this was even when we already had computers, imagine the time before).

The beauty of Flash

How flash can be used in media; short films and trailers.

Really worth watching!

I am hooked part 2

For a week I am working now with my new Mac Mini from Apple. Parallel to the Mac I use still my windows PC. The reason is that I still have some Windows based programs for working in 3D, and some other stuff. Some things came to my attention, some real significant differences in performance and ease of use.

I work with PC's since 1993 and I can describe myself as a heavy user. I know all the little tweaks and backdoors to make Windows run smoothly. I worked with Win 3.1, 95, 98, Windows ME, XP Home and XP Pro. So I am pretty much familiar with the stuff. But you see there starts the problem. Working with Windows is actually asking the user to know the tweaks and backdoors to make things work.

 

Anyway, my last install of XP Pro, I did a near 5 months ago. I run also Panda protection for firewall and virus scan. It also deals with all the other things like pop-ups etc. It never worked smoothly. I always had some firewall problem, or loosing connection to the net. It also slows down the use of browsers and mail. And believe me, Panda deals even better with it then Norton. Norton steals a lot of your computers resources. Anyway, some things came to my attention and here they are.

1. Startup time of the Mac is a fraction of the time the Windows machine needs. 25 seconds is about it, while the PC needs about 4 minutes. 

2. While working on the PC I get all kinds of annoying messages, about latest updates and ready to install, firewall down, thread because the virus program crashed and needs a restart, about secure pages that are to be opened and I have to confirm. With the Mac I had nothing like this at all. I did one check on updates myself and they were fast installed in the background. Any new program I install has to be confirmed with a password. Something I really like because it gives me total control. 

3. Problems: The windows machine crashes regularly, something that is going on for a year now and reinstalling Windows didn't solve the problem. Sometimes when I close the PC he will even startup again. The error I get is vague and even Microsoft can't give a satisfying reason for the problem. Furthermore my PC can go get busy with some disk activity while I run no programs, using a lot of resources. It's hard to figure out what he is doing and why. None of these problems so far with the Mac, no crashes no bad things. Though it's a new machine and a clean sheet, the problems described with the PC also occurred also after a clean install.

4. Networking. I tried before with the Windows PC to share disks and folders with a laptop that was hooked up thru a network hub. Sometimes it would work but mostly it didn't. There was no solutions to make it work consequently. Because I have many files on the Windows PC I thought I give it a try to share the disks with the Mac. But I wasn't expecting it to work flawless. To my surprise it works totally without problems. Whenever the Windows PC is on, I see it appear in the Finder of the Mac. It gives me total freedom in working shifting files from one to the other.

5. Overall performance, it runs smooth and beautiful. I couldn't install Aperture from Apple because the Video board on the Mac is not sufficient for this program. But that is more the choice of having a cheaper Mac. Graphics are smooth and the operating system works totally instinctively and I did adept really fast to this new environment.  It works totally logic and I feel really more familiar and secure with the Mac OS interface.

Some extra's. I discovered that the in and outlet for audio contain also an optical connection. In the beginning I was really puzzled about it. I mean from my own conditioning I couldn't believe that it would contain different interfaces. This is true innovation. All that is needed is a optical fiber cable that you can buy at any audio store and a small special adapter. The sound is remarkable and it also puts surround and DTS when watching DVD. 

These are my first findings on working with the Mac. Over time I will probably find some flaws. One thing I discovered was that you can't use a microphone directly on the Mac. It's not something that is the first to notice, and in the beginning I thought that my Mac already was broken. But Google was very  helpful. It turned out that the mike needs it's own amplifier. So I found this nifty little device called iMic that amplifies thru USB. It has in and outlet for headphones and mike. Thus creating even an extra in and outlet and gives me freedom to use the optical port for my Aiwa computer speakers. Besides that the iMic can also be used to hook up your old recorplayer and turn those valuable records into mp3. Until now I am really enthusiastic. In the next weeks I plan to work on different websites and movies. I am curious how the overall performance will be. My creational fire started burning again. I keep you posted. 

Here the story about my journey to Taiwan will be told in different blogs. Kate will be my co-author. Enjoy the ride. For more info on this, see the former blog "Impressions of Taiwan"  

I am hooked!

One thing that I like to tell here, is the fact that I bought my first Apple computer, the Mac Mini. I took the bigger model with 2 Ghz and expanded the memory with 1 gb making it now 2 gb. I bought it in Taiwan because I found out that it's about 230 euro's cheaper then Europe. Furthermore Apple delivers it with an adapter that takes 110 - 240 volts, so only the wire I had to exchange back home. And it's really remarkabe. This is a small box with magic. It performs so good, it's beyond my expectations. I am really impressed and I feel my creative juices running again. I hooked up my Lacie drives and I can now exchange all the files from my PC. Even migrating iTunes was a small effort and so smooth that I am still jaw dropping. I will keep my PC as backup and garbage can for all the internet clutter. Sorry Bill, but that's how I see a Windows machine these days. For backing up the garbage.

Ok let's be fair, I still have some pretty games and other 3D design programms running. But that will be about it.

I've been playing (I can hardly call it work) now for 2 days and I still discover new things. Because I am used to Windows, I am a real digger when it comes to software, and boy, I found some pretty neat tools. I bought also an extra Lacie for the Time machine function, and making a second partition was not more effort then a blink of the eye. Yeah, yeah, I know I am drooling and over enthusiastic, but hey let me have my moment of glory ;-)

 

Of course I am aiming for the iMac 24 inch, but that's a matter of time and money. For now I can start enjoying working on my tiny lovely Mac. Thanks Steve, for being innovative, smart, thinking from the user point of view, and making the first step affordable. I don't mind if you make bigger bucks and are more expensive, though this last statement is just depending on how you look on things. I don't mind your "reality distortion field" capabilities, as long as you keep making these kind of innovative products, I will be a loyal customer. Apple RULEZ!

 

Impressions of Taiwan

Taiwan,travel,Asia,culture,long distance relation,food

Where do I start after this overwhelming and impressive short journey. I am actually pretty speechless. The moment I stepped out of the airport after a warm embrace and kiss with Kate, the adventure started. New sounds, scents, views and feelings started to trigger my senses and attracted me deeper into her world. I am amazed, flabbergasted, impressed, confused and happy. I want to write many things about this experience and I think it's pretty useless to do that in one article, so I will make an effort to publish my adventures in different articles, and also I would like to focus on different topics that came to my knowledge and really made me think about some cultural interesting differences. Things we could learn from, things that are worth thinking about, things that also triggers the critic in me and that I want to share. But above all, my adventures with Kate, and the growing love between us. The bridge we are building hence, the differences in age, culture and language. 

Because there is pretty much material I will publish it all on a new blog, and Kate will be my co-writer. We are still thinking of the name, but once it's ready I will put the link right here. So keep checking and within a few days you can join us in the ride.

With kind regards Pieter.