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An Open Letter to Adobe

by thomasfitzgerald on 13. May, 2010 in Apple, Design

Dear Adobe

You’ve been letting off a lot of steam lately, perhaps understandably, about Apple refusing to support Flash on it’s iPhone OS platforms. You’ve repeatedly stated that there should be no problem with Flash running on these platforms and that Apple’s refusal is political rather than technical so I have one simple request for you: Put your money where your mouth is and show us Flash running on an iPhone, an iPod touch or an iPad. Seriously. Sure you won’t get it through the App store but there’s no reason why you can’t develop an App that at least demonstrates that it’s possible on an iPhone OS Device. I’m not talking about Applications developed using Flash Packager, I’m talking about flash itself.

By trying to claim that this is all about Apple threatening freedom, while ignoring comments from other companies, such as ARM, Microsoft and Opera you are associating a quality brand like Adobe’s with cheap Fox News-esque politics of phoney outrage. If you want to continually contend that Apple’s motives are political rather than technical then it’s time to “put up or shut up” and prove your point rather than expect everyone to believe your rhetoric.

Yours Sincerely
A once Loyal Adobe Fan.

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Something Fishy in Flash Town

by thomasfitzgerald on 12. Apr, 2010 in Apple, Design, iPad, iPhone, iPod

There’s something fishy about this whole flashgate saga that’s been going on for the last week or so. Ever since Apple published the new terms and agreements for iPhone OS4, the web has exploded in outrage. Much of that outrage stems from the very public temper tantrum by Adobe’s flash evangelist Lee Brimlow. His reaction, and those of many Adobe supporters could be best summed up as shock, disbelief and anger. It’s the shock part that I have a problem with. To me, that reaction is somewhat suspicious, especially from an Adobe employee. Why? For the simple reason that I can’t believe that they didn’t see this coming.

Apple made it pretty clear that they didn’t want Flash on the iPhone. So Adobe goes and does an end run around Apple and announce, not only a way to bring flash to the platform in a round about way, but to bypass Apple’s developer tools all together. They didn’t do this with Apple’s approval, they sprung it on them like they did everyone else. They could have worked with Apple to let flash help create interfaces or animations that worked with Apple’s developer tools and helped developers, but instead they tried to bypass Apple all together. Anyone who’s ever followed Apple knows that that’s not something you want to do, so I really can’t believe that anyone at Adobe is shocked by this. They musty have known that Apple wasn’t going to take this lying down. Lee Brimlow expresses his anger at Cupertino by saying “Screw you Apple”, but Flash CS5 was already a big “Screw You” to Apple and Adobe knows it.

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Pixels: Incredible Short Film

by thomasfitzgerald on 09. Apr, 2010 in Design, Entertainment

Check out this incredible short film by One More Production. Simply awesome.

PIXELS: Retro Gamers from addwork on Vimeo.

PIXELS: Retro Gamers

Written, directed by : Patrick Jean
Director of Photograhy : Matias Boucard
SFX by Patrick Jean and guests
Produced by One More Production

http://www.addwork.net/pixels-retro-gamers.html

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New Look

by thomasfitzgerald on 30. Mar, 2010 in Design, Site News

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Regular readers of this blog will undoubtedly have noticed that the site has undergone a makeover again. It’s not that long since I last changed the theme, but over the last few months I have grown dissatisfied with it the way it was. It’s not that it was particularly bad, it’s just that it didn’t support some options and some plugins wouldn’t work with it. When I was setting up The Aperture Blog, I used the highly flexible “Headlines” from WooThemes and I was impressed with it and how it worked on the back end, so I set about using a modified version of that for the new look.

The cool background image is from Graphic River. One of the nice things about this theme is that it sports a handy social media sharing function at the bottom of every post, as I know some of you have been asking for that. Anyway, feedback as always is welcome.

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1000fps Pedigree Commercial

by thomasfitzgerald on 03. Mar, 2010 in Advertising, Design, Entertainment, Technology, Video, You Tube

Check out this amazing commercial for pedigree, shot at 1000 frames per second on the Phantom.

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Lego Dreams

Lego Dreams

by thomasfitzgerald on 08. Feb, 2010 in Design, Lego, Toys

There’s an interesting article and video up on the BBC website about some hardcore Lego Modellers. I’m a big lego fan although I am not nearly as extreme as these people. It’s worth a look if you like all thinks brick and minifig! Incidentally, if you are a lego fan and you haven’t seen it already, check out “The Brothers Brick”. It’s a great site with lots of great models built by people.

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Incredible CGI Shuttle Animation

by thomasfitzgerald on 26. Jan, 2010 in Design, Entertainment, You Tube

I just came across this incredible CG animation of the remains of the Space Shuttle after a mythical disaster, floating in orbit. What’s incredible about this is that it’s all done in 2d. There’s no 3D animation here other than what I presume is the use of 3d layers in After Effects.

(Via Gizmodo)

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This Is Why I love Woo Themes

This Is Why I love Woo Themes

by thomasfitzgerald on 18. Jan, 2010 in Design, Internet, Technology

I’ve been running my various blogs off wordpress fore years now, and over that time I’ve tried various themes. Originally I used free themes and then progressed to using some premium ones. But even then I was never really happy. Then I discovered Woo Themes. Woo is a purveyor of premium wordpress themes, but they do it really really well. What impressed me about the company was not just that they created some really nice and high quality themes, but that they gave them a really good back end, and that they continued to upgrade them. But what I really like is the way they structure their themes.

All their custom functions, the “woo framework” as they call it is regularly upgraded, and they’ve just issued an upgrade again. However, as I’ve extensively customized the themes on my blog, this would be a pain to upgrade, right? Well, on some of the themes I’ve owned in the past this would be true, but not now. Thanks to the way they’ve organized the layout of the backend, I just have to replace one folder within the theme I’m using and hey presto, framework upgraded. Simply brilliant. In the past when I’ve had to upgrade a theme it’s been a nightmare, trying to locate all the files I’ve changed then paste those changes into the new version and so on. This is so much simpler. If you’re looking for a premium wordpress theme then I can’t recommend the folks at woo themes enough.

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