Apr

29

Tiger is unleashed today– Extensis says Oops!

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 1 Comment

Ok- so as a Mac user I’ve been looking forward to this new iteration of the operating system– Tiger. It’s a beauty in functionality and GUI, and offers some serious enhancements for all levels of Mac users.

Enough evangelising. Here’s the funny bit: I got into my email this morning to find that Extensis, (makers of Suitcase, Portfolio, Intellihance and a handful of other truly functional professional grade tools that I use), had sent me a no frills notice with the subject line of, “Important info about Portfolio 7 and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger compatibility.” I opened it to find the “oops… erm, uh, we like, forgot to make Portfolio, like, compatible and stuff” email of the year. It’s beautiful. No fancy HTML encoding with little logos on the notice. Nope, just a text email saying roughly, “Houston– we have a problem.” on the day of Tiger’s release.

Now, I’m no developer, but isn’t it common practice that these software houses have had a development copy of the new OS for around six months or so to work with? I remember seeing the Keynote broadcast where Steve Jobs announced that all the developers would be going home from the conference with Tiger in their hands…

Extensis seems to be banking on the professional users not jumping onto the Tiger bandwagon right away. Most creative professionals will wait until the first patch/update is released for the OS before installing it on their money making Macs. Extensis is clever enough to buy time in this area. Well… I’m still disappointed. As a professional Mac user and a paying customer of Extensis, I would’ve expected such a major software company to have been on the ball with this one. This version of the Mac OS is the “Longhorn?” address from Cupertino. It’s not a minor upgrade, folks. I use Portfolio in my work and now need to reconsider installing the OS I’ve been waiting nearly a year for just because one of my necessary apps isn’t up to speed.

Who am I kidding… I can live without Portfolio for a few days or weeks… I want to play with my new OS toy! Where’s the damn delivery man! I want my Tiger!

Oh- for kicks, here’s a clip from that email I got today:

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is incompatible with the current version of Extensis Portfolio 7. We are aware of this issue and will deliver a Tiger compatibility update very soon. For more information, please visit our Extensis Products Compatibility web page at http://www.extensis.com/en/support/product_compatibility.jsp

If you have any specific questions regarding your version of Portfolio 7, please contact the Extensis Product Support Team http://www.extensis.com/en/support

Thank you.

Extensis, Inc.
1800 SW First Ave.
Suite 500
Portland, OR
97201 USA
503.274.2020
800.796.9798

© 2005 Extensis, Inc., a Celartem Company. All rights reserved.


That’s all for now, kitties. (At least they’re not owned by Adobe yet… ;) ) Have a great day!
smooches~
jEN

Apr

25

I never played Risk…

Filed Under irregular, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

Everything I know about military strategy I learned from Xena.

Neil says I shouldn’t admit that in public…
You won’t tell, right?
;)
smooches~
jEN

Apr

24

Cars Cars Cars!

Filed Under expat, regular, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

There few things more expressive of individuality, freedom or mobility than the mode of transportation you choose to own. I left my 2001 PT Cruiser in the states to move here to the UK. I loved that car! It was a tiny bit more expensive than Aaron and I should’ve been eyeing, but after we sat in one on the dealership’s lot, well- we were hooked like a 15 year old streetwalker on crack. We ordered one that day and waited six months for it to be manufactured just for us. Ahhh. I miss that car. Enough pining- fast forward to present day.

I live in the UK where I have a multitude of new considerations regarding my methods of transit. I don’t mind the Underground (or as Americans would understand it, the subway), but it’s not always convenient, it’s not always reliable, it’s not easy to do big shopping… It’s a cheap way into London, yeah, to be certain, but it’s not always the answer. Especially if you’re an American girl who’s been driving for nearly 20 years and not been without a car available for more than a spell in college.

I have a bicycle. I like to ride. Erm… but have you seen the way motorists drive in this country? I’ve got a helmet, sure, but I would certainly feel safer with a large steel cage around me. The UK is such a compact network of roads that many times automotive traffic is pushed and pulled into seemingly unsafe practices. To be a bicycle, moped, scooter or motorcycle rider can be the most hazardous position to be in on the road. I had a Vespa in the US and loved it, but here?- no thanks. I’ll take airbags, seat belts and some doors thank you very much.

Another consideration is that I not only need to be able to drive on the roads here, using different markings, lanes, sides of the road and roundabouts, but I also need to rewire my brain to accept right-hand driving mechanics. It’s not easy to gauge the distance to the edge of the passenger side when it’s been exactly opposite for 20 years! I’m find myself getting a little too uncomfortably close on the left side of the car when negotiating past parked cars and kerbs. (Yes, I said “kerbs.” That’s “curbs” in the US…) I’ll adjust, but it’s certainly going to take awhile to tweak my ingrained judgements.

Thankfully, one major stress factor has been eliminated: I am going to drive an automatic. You see, nearly all the cars available here are manual gearboxes. I’ve only recently been exposed to such a thing. I blogged about it in the past, but it’s been thought about, discussed and decided that I need to eliminate the additional stress of learning how to mechanically operate a transmission and focus on the massive differences in the UK driving rules and methods from what I’ve always known in the US. I can get my bearings on the basics now and learn to operate a manual vehicle in the future. I really don’t need both tasks now, so we decided to take the automatic v manual out of the equation for now. * Phweew! *

So, to make a long post shorter than Homer’s Odyssey, Neil and I spent the weekend looking at replacement cars. We decided to get something similar in size to the PT for my best chance at size/shape awareness transition, and we needed an automatic. Believe it or not, we bought an American car! We pick up our deep metallic red Ford Focus later this week. It’s used, in nearly pristine condition with really low miles, comfortable for us both and was under our budget amount. Eventually, I plan on learning how to drive a manual transmission. For now, it’s about getting me on the road. It’s been almost half a year since I’ve driven, (not counting a week in the states with my PT during a visit there), and I’m ready to spread my wings (or should I say wheels?) for a little independence in my newly adopted country.

Vrrrrooom vroom!
smooches~
jEN

What I’m listening to right now:
Drive That Fast from the album “Strange Free World” by Kitchens of Distinction

Apr

22

Brains be drained

Filed Under me so g33ky, regular, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

I’ve been hard at work learning and debugging some CSS over the past couple of days. I’m so tired of looking at curly braces (like these: { } ) that I could scream. I strapped on my iPod for a bit of noise therapy earlier. Now I’m determined to not go back into the code for the rest of the weekend… er, maybe most of it… I’ll try. Honest…

I hate leaving a miserable task unfinished, but I understand that I’m putting a bit of undue pressure upon myself with the issue I’m having. So, sod it. I’m breaking away for some good old fashioned pizza, video games and perhaps a movie. I’ve got Silent Hill 4: The Room to work on (PS2) and might do a little Killzone or GT4… I know, I should go get some fresh, non-technology infected air into my lungs, see some birds, feel some grass beneath my feet… whatever. I want to shoot things first.

Relax and breathe, jEN.

I’ve got a couple of draft posts for you in the works… I’ll give you more attention over the weekend. I still have pictures of Kidwelly Castle to put up as well as a map of Wales showing the area we covered on holiday.

Until then,
smooches~
jEN

Apr

20

What does it mean to speak English?

Filed Under creative stuff, expat, tout le fromage | 3 Comments

I like being a mutt of linguistics. Though not a scholar, not trained in writing, no expert on language at all- I am fascinated by the English word. (I was a successful competitive speaker for many years, but I digress…)
I found this little quiz on another site, (the link of a link of a link escapes me), and thought I’d give it a stab… Here are my results:

Your Linguistic Profile:
75% General American English
10% Dixie
5% Midwestern
5% Upper Midwestern
5% Yankee
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

My favourite part of the exercise was rediscovering colloquialisms that I’d long departed from after having lived in three very different places in the US… not more than a few states apart, but staggeringly individual locations nonetheless.
I started life in a medium-sized town on the border of Indiana to Ohio, where the English language is a gentle blend of North and South. You can’t get more typically midwestern than where I grew up. I then moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to attend private art school. The city-slick vocabulary I encountered there permeated my own, fusing a certain worldliness to my daily speech. Years passed, and I found myself an hour or so North of Chicago in a town not so dissimilar to that which I grew up in, but with one major difference: It was a Northern town. This was the definition of “bigger-better-faster-more”. SUVs littered the landscape like cherry blossoms in the spring. Excess is expected in that town. If the grass is greener at your neighbour’s… time to take that SUV to the DIY for a cure. Language is faster, more direct, and certainly became another facet to my own increasingly motherless blend.

I call it “soda.” I call it “pop.” I sometimes ask for a “Coke.” (Truth is, I don’t drink any of that anymore, but when I did, I shifted terms more readily than a used car salesman.) I grew up knowing that a crick is a creek is a stream is a brook. I used “route” as “root” and as a rhyme for “bout”, depending on the usage at hand… I’m a veritable linguistic chameleon at times, but that’s certainly a useful trait.

Now I find my language developing in a new way. I am not just a mutt on my birth soil- I’m an expat mutt. British English is different to American English and it’s not altogether without it’s friendly infiltration. I am melding again with my surroundings. I’m “hoovering” up the local speak as I “acclimatise” to this adopted abode. ;)
“Where are you from?” is becoming a more and more tedious question to answer these days. It could be worse- I could’ve never had these experiences- lived and died knowing only the language of my surrounding community. I am a grateful girl. Ta, thanks, cheers, thx, gracias, thanks much, and thank you. I’m having a linguistic blast!

smooches~
jEN

Apr

18

The apocalypse is near when…

Filed Under me so g33ky, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

You know the apocalypse is near when you’re used to hacks and fixes in CSS to make otherwise simple things look as intended in Internet Explorer, but for some reason, as you tinker in the code cross-platform, you find that the only compliant one is that which typically vexes you… IE- you bastard.

This vague and alienating rant was really just for my own benefit. I’ve been chugging away at CSS for a drop-down menu bar today, (no- not for this blog, and yes, I know I never fixed my own navigation for IE… *tut*), and I’ve been through coffee, tea, wine, tears and semi-triumphs today. I’m tired and IE-pc is mocking me.

Fucker.

I’m done for the night. *pthhhbbbttt* :P
smooches~
jEN

What I’m listening to right now:
Monsters In The Parasol from the album “Rated R” by Queens Of The Stone Age

Apr

16

More pics of Wales on my dotmac

Filed Under expat, photos, tout le fromage | Leave a Comment

Hi all!

I’ve got two more pages of photos from our trip to Wales up on my dotmac. Use this link to skip straight to the Welsh stuff.

You’ll see pics from Brecon Beacons, an amazing mountainous region in southern Wales as well as lots of shots of Castell Carreg Cennen. It’s a really spectacular castle- the stuff of fairy tales… perched high atop a mountain top cliff, it has plenty to explore and climb around in as well as boasting a secret cave beneath the castle! Enjoy the photos and I’ll have even more up in the next day or so.

smooches~
jEN

Apr

16

A few shots of Wales are up

Filed Under expat, photos, tout le fromage | 2 Comments

Hi y’all!

I know I promised photos of Wales several days ago, but hey- gimme a break. I’m a busy girlie. :)

I’ve got two new pages up on my dotmac site in a new directory all about Wales. In it, you’ll find a cave that was visited, (Porth-Yr-Ogof), as well as a small castle ruin called Dryslwyn. I’ve got lots more to add to the Wales section of my dotmac, so stay tuned. I’ll have loads more up over the next few days. (Some are absolutely amazing!)

That’s it- just a quickie post about that update. I’ve got a couple of other posts in draft status, so I should be able to let those fly over the weekend as well.

Mucho smooches!
jEN

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