gus torres: illustration - animation - design

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the cheesy title. Today is the official release date for Mac OS 10.4 also known as “Tiger”. Even though I’m chomping at the bit to have “Spotlight” and “Dashboard widgets” to play with, I’m one who waits on the sidelines a couple of months before plunging head first into a major operating system upgrade. I have too much to lose dealing with bugs of an initial release. And I know I’m not alone here.

When I finally upgrade (generally on a weekend), I’ll follow the same time-tested routine that I have since System 7. I know, Apple has this automated system that is suppose to make the process a lot simpler, but old habits die hard and so far my upgrades have generally gone without a hitch. Except for trying to print using early versions of Jaguar, (thank goodness for CUPS and Gimp-Print).

First I’ll toss out many of the older applications (I have various flavors of Macromedia products I’ve upgraded) and shareware demos that I’ve tried out and let expire (if I haven’t used them this long, then chances are I don’t need them). I’ll toss out preference files, burn DVD’s of client file backups, archive old emails, and generally do a thorough bit of housekeeping. In the old days you’d just drag and drop everything to some external source but now that’s nearly impossible with invisible files, aliases, and permission issues. So I’ll then backup my entire drive to an external firewire drive (using Synchronize! Pro X). And yes I guess I need to “deauthorize” all those pesky applications (and songs?) that require that additional and annoying step.

Only after I’ve checked and double checked my backups will I erase my PowerBook’s hard drive and do a clean install of the new system. Once that’s in place and functioning well, I take on the arduous task of reinstalling the applications I need. By doing this manually, I’m hoping not to bring over the quirks that sometimes plague the application previously and any brand new quirks can now be traced to the new operating system install.

Once complete, I will probably do a little happy dance and move on to the two other Macs in our house and repeat the process once again…

Every Calvin and Hobbes comic ever printed, four full volumes coming to book stores October 2005. Needless to say, I’m thrilled. I’m a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan from its original run to currently owning pretty much many of the compilations out there. Including Calvin and Hobbes Sunday Pages 1985 - 1995, my recent favorite (at least until the release of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, that is).

Find out more from Amazon.com…

On the eve of Adobe’s announcement that it is buying out Macromedia for 3.4 billion, I’m feeling the same mixed sense of shock and the pangs of nostalgia as expressed by this MacWorld editorial…

I still have my original copies of Claris HomePage (which got me hooked on Web design way back when…), PageMill (Adobe’s answer to HomePage - remember the BBEdit plug-in “PageMill Cleaner” that had to fix the lousy markup generated by PageMill?), DreamWeaver 1.0 (it came bundled with BBEdit Lite so hand coders could straddle both realms of web design), and GoLive CyberStudio (which was bought out by Adobe to replace PageMill and challenge the surprising popularity of Dreamweaver). Looks like Adobe got tired of toying with Macromedia and decided to just eat it for lunch…

Read the article here…

Finally… a way to use all those bad photos (you know the ones, caught mid blink, bedhead, etc.) that you hold onto in iPhoto.

Uh oh, I’m going to get myself in a heap of trouble at home with this cool application…

Find out more here…