Houston H. Haynes » Computing

Desktop Tweaking: Vicarious Winter

Houston Haynes — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 23:05:48 +0000

I’m a bit spoiled living on in Southern California. OK – I’m *a lot* spoiled. But I do miss certain moments in the winter season, particularly when you get that early morning light on freshly fallen snow. So I put together a new theme for my laptop in honor of the season. I used Object Desktop, which is super easy and a lot of fun to play with. I may even design some of my own audio-related themes during the holiday season down-time. And of course the kicker is that much of the “heavy lifting” is handled by the graphics card, so the difference between running a “flat” desktop theme and a fancy one is minimal.

So here’s my homage to this time of year:

A specialized Windows Desktop for the winter season

I like how I’m able to play with transparency, and can also change the look and feel of the little details, like the window layout and desktop icons. Anyway, it’s just a little way to get into the spirit of the season – and I can use all the help I can get with it sunny and 70F outside.

My personal blog spot

Houston Haynes — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 23:03:31 +0000

Today was a simply gorgeous day, and it seemed to be a crime to stay cooped up in the studio (at least until the sun fades for the day). So I decided to take my laptop desk and perch it on the porch to blog for a bit and enjoy some sunshine through the trees.

It’s really nice right now, but later on in the summer it will be unbearable except for the earliest and latest parts of the day. So I’m going to enjoy this while I can. As you can see, I’ve got my laptop, an external mouse and a drink (a screwdriver mixed with fresh-squeezed OJ and Boru vodka, if you *must* know)

What you *can’t* see is that I’m wearing a stereo bluetooth headset and playing a selection of tunes from my Blackberry – something I usually only do when I’m working out. It’s a really nice experience to have a playlist of non-frenetic music piped into my head – most times I’m playing tunes that keep me going on the daily run or workout. Every once in a while a sound from the street below or the sky above (like the helicopter going overhead right now) will encroach, but just enough to let me know that the world is still turning.

For now, I’m going to sound off on my studio blog about some product updates that have me really excited about cutting a new, wide swath in the studio. Until then, cheers!

A new kind of Apple Pie

Houston Haynes — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:01:03 +0000

I sometimes get into [ahem] conversations about the relative merits of paying the premium for Apple hardware, versus staying with PC. It’s a lot less of an issue now than it was five years ago, as Mac-o-philes have grown more tolerant of the PC format now that their hardware is essentially a PC with a bit of Steve Jobs’ “New Apple Smell” on it. I saw the graphic below – and it just made me laugh. Partly because it’s a bit absurd – and partly because there’s an aspect of truth to it.

The wedge described as “Cost of downtime for designers, engineers, and software writers who sit at their desks in awe of what they just created” and “‘Just because we can’ charge (Fanboy Fee)” are my favorites. Now that I look at it – I’m surprised that there’s not a large wedge of this pie graph dedicated to those silly Mac vs. PC ads.

The Mojave Project – a little fresh air

Houston Haynes — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:56:29 +0000

I’m an unapologetic Windows Vista power user. I have been quietly using Windows Vista for audio production since (and to a certain degree before) Vista’s initial release. It hasn’t been as smooth as I would have liked, but compared to the Apple slam dance of the PPC-to-Intel transition, it was a picnic in the park. The two main reasons for the outcry over Vista and the gleeful cheer over the MacIntel seems to be a combination of the sheer number of users affected by the Vista rollout, and conversely the cult of personality that Steve Jobs and Apple seems to enjoy.

I’ve watched the unbridled Windows bashing for months now – wondering when people (particularly power users) were going to notice that it’s actually a pretty decent operating system. Granted, there was a lot of homework to do for vendors to come up to speed building drivers for third party devices, but I know people that are *still* waiting for Mac Intel drivers for their audio devices (well, ones that work reliably, anyway) on the Apple side of the fence.

As usual, the hype has far outstripped reality, with snarky Apple slacker TV ads smirking at a Windows geek falling all over himself – Apple panders in a way that would make P.T. Barnum blush. Everywhere you turn, Steve Jobs creates a kind of group amnesia – then the love fest continues as Apple is given a free pass on everything from poorly designed devices to web services that don’t deliver as promised to undercutting third party developers as well as numerous other anti-competitive practices. They get a free pass because of their relatively small portion of the personal computing market, and through that they’ve stirred up a relative perception that is so far from reality that it’s almost funny.

So the Mojave Experiment has been a little breath of fresh air. Notice that I didn’t say “dose of reality” or some other nonsense. But it’s hard to ignore the irony that people are so enamored with “Mojave” right after declaring the Vista was “awful”, “buggy”, and is “too slow”. It’s a bit of a straw-man presentation – but then again, Apple has been getting away with straw-man tactics for years, it’s time that Microsoft grew some stones and ripped off more than Apple’s Fisher-Price warm and fuzzy UI.

Food for thought.