Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Everyone who owns an Apple laptop and uses a MagSafe adapter understands that they can be a bit fragile. After some time the thinner cord at the intersection of the “power pack” can become frayed and the adapter stops working. I have had to replace mine three times in three years, but to be honest part of the problem was the way that I handled the adapter. I pack and unpack my laptop two to three times a day and, in the past, did not always take the time to wind the cord and store the adapter properly. That would have helped with regard to the life of the adapter so some of the blame for the failure rate falls on me.
Apple has recently updated the design of the adapter. Whether or not the changes will help with regard to this particular isssue will be seen in time. I still feel though, that the cord is not very sturdy and having to be sooooooooo careful with it is a bit of a pain.
That said, the last time I needed to buy I new cord I tried to go cheap. I found a vendor on Buy.com advertising new, not refurbished, brand new 85w MagSafe power adapters for around $50.00 plus shipping. This seemed like a great deal so I went ahead and bought one. Below are the pictures of what I received from the vendor.
Needless to say I was more than a little miffed.
The good news is that the vendor quickly refunded the purchase price of the item as well as the shipping costs (after some not so subtle coercing). The bad news is that, as my first Buy.com experience, it has soured me to the entire site. I receive emails with all of these great deals on Buy.com but I am too scared to take advantage of them. I could be missing out on some great stuff but, this one vendor made Buy.com look so bad in my eyes that I am not willing to take another chance by purchasing from another one of their vendors.
Again though, part of the blame falls on me. I tried to go cheap at the price and get a deal that was too good to be true. Even the refurbished adapters I have found online cost $55.00 to $60.00. I should have know that anyone telling me they were selling a brand new one for $50.00 was not telling the truth. I bought a brand new adapter from an authorized Apple reseller near my home. It cost me $79.00 but, you get what you pay for.
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Saturday, June 12th, 2010 at 2:23 am
I have been flirting with 3D animation for years now and have nothing tangible to show for it, but I do have a pretty good understanding of the principles of animation. I have decided to take a little time and see what I can actually implement.
I started with something very simple to build my confidence. A joint chain that mimics an arm swinging back and forth with a single bone representing the hand. I tried to implement the principles of follow through and overlapping motion. Before I started I thought that this would be so easy but just like the bouncing ball animation (which I hope to tackle soon) it is deceptively difficult to capture motion that is both appealing and believable.
My goal is not to become a professional animator here (although if I had the time I would become an Animation Mentor student) but to learn something new that I enjoy. With that in mind, your constructive critiques would be most welcome and appreciated. I don’t mind if you state, “dude, that doesn’t even come close to looking good” as long as you elaborate on why it doesn’t and offer me some suggestions on how to improve. If you are an Animation Mentor student or graduate, you can say anything you like. 
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Friday, May 14th, 2010 at 11:27 am
I wonder if this glowing screen could be keeping me awake? Duuuh!
I mean that’s kind of the point. Who wants to fall asleep when they would rather be using an ultra-cool iPad. Read this article on CNN and tell me that you already knew this. I don’t have an iPad (yet) but I use with my laptop almost every night right before I go to sleep. I don’t need a degree in neuroscience to tell me that it’s probably keeping me awake later than if I were to avoid it. It just makes sense that staring into a glowing anything would be stimulating enough to keep a person awake for awhile. I tend to view Twitter posts, blog entries and tutorials from my favorite designers (and the occasional Cheezburger Network post) until I fall asleep. That could be anywhere between 10pm and midnight depending on the day but I just about always get my 8 hours.
I am not saying that J.D. Moyer wasted his time. Not even close. He conducted a valuable experiment and got great results. He also got mentioned in an article that was featured on the front page of CNN. You can’t buy that kind of exposure. Well, not on the cheap that is. And I know what he was talking about when he said “I had the experience, a number of times, just feeling kind of unreasonably happy for no reason. And it was the sleep”. I agree with that wholeheartedly. I have had that feeling myself and I believe, as J.D. does. That feeling is a direct result of getting enough sleep. How much is enough? It varies person to person but if you are one of those people who say “oh, I can get by on 4-6 hours a night” you are correct. You can “get by”. But wouldn’t you rather be “unreasonably happy”? I know I would.
Don’t be too worried though. As usual with every “new finding” there is a group of people on the opposite side who say either the problem does not exist or that it’s not nearly as bad as it’s being made out to be. The latter is the case here with another researcher commenting that “People shouldn’t be concerned about reading on backlit electronic devices at night unless they’re experiencing insomnia, in which case they should dim the screen”. So there you go. You are not going to die if you use your iPad, laptop etc. every night before you go to bed.
However, I know that if I had to go to bed without my laptop for a month I would die. I don’t mean that I would feel terribly inconvenienced or that I would feel lost or vulnerable and uncomfortable. I mean DIE like dead and gone die. So I will continue to use my laptop (and soon my iPad) before I go to sleep. That is until I develop insomnia.
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Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Well, I finally started a blog. I hope to provide some interesting topics for discussion as well as helpful ideas. A future goal of mine is to post video tutorials on everything from web design and development to illustration for comic books. I welcome your comments and ideas so please let me know what you would like to see. Until next time, ciao!
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