Jeff Carlson (.Thought)

Projects Project Projects!

The past few months have been some of the busiest of my professional life, mostly due to a confluence of deadlines that I expected would be spread out over a longer period of time. But since I mostly write about Apple and the Mac, I never know when new products are going to hit. In this case, they hit all at once. Here's what has kept me up until 1 or 2 a.m. most nights over the last three months.

iMovie ’08 & iDVD ’08 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide: When Apple announced iLife ’08 with a completely rewritten version of iMovie, I knew I was in for a lot more work than I expected. I just received my first author copy of the book, and it looks great! I've almost completely rewritten the iMovie section to account for the changes in this version, including a new chapter on managing video (one of iMovie's hidden strengths, with keywording and marking features), and of course tips and tricks for using iMovie to its fullest. Amazon has the book now for just $16.49; if you click the link above, I get a small piece of the purchase, in case you want to help your favorite author (and hopefully that's me).

I've also just finished helping another Peachpit Press author update portions of his book, but since I'm not a listed co-author, I'm hesitant to name the title until it's available (which is very soon). In this case, I ended up doing most of the work in an extremely short amount of time due to scheduling issues. Getting 12 hours of sleep over three days while also entertaining visiting family is fun, to a degree, but not something I recommend often.

In addition to book projects, I've recently written several articles, in reverse-chronological order:

• First Look: Final Cut Express 4 (Macworld.com)
• Apple's so hip Part II is a must, some noteworthy features of Mac OS X 10.5 (Seattle Times).
• Apple's latest cool cat, a review of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for the Seattle Times.

In the midst of this, I've been preparing to become a father, a big project indeed!

You've Got to Be Fucking Kidding

I don't throw that out there as a title lightly:

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.

Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.

Again, anyone who says the Bush administration supports the troops is deeply deluded, full of shit, or both. (And I know it's "the Military" doing this, but guess whose desk that falls on?)

Accessing My Home Music Library with Simplify Media

When Apple first added the capability to share an iTunes library with other iTunes users on the network, my friend David Blatner loved the fact that he could sit on his porch at home with his laptop and stream music located on his computer at work. The Internet is just a big network, after all. At the time, I didn't really care because all the music I needed was already on my laptop.

Unfortunately, Apple locked down the Internet sharing aspect in a subsequent release, so now you can only share over a local network. That's what I do at home: my entire music library lives on an external hard drive connected to my old PowerBook G4, and I carry a (still large) subset of it on my MacBook Pro.

Recently I was introduced to Simplify Media, a utility for Mac OS X or Windows that opens a connection between two machines, no matter where they are connected to the Internet, and enables you to stream music within iTunes (or Winamp). You set up a free account with Simplify Media and run their software on each computer you want to make accessible. Specify your music folder, log in, and forget.

When you launch iTunes with Simplify Media running, your machines show up in the Share category of iTunes' left column. Click one and you'll see your library as if it were loaded onto your computer's hard drive.

Now, when I get a hankering to hear a specific song or artist that isn't on my MacBook Pro, I can tap into the big library at home. It is almost time to start listening to holiday music, which I hate to add to my computer and then remove in January to make room for other music.

Chocolate Typographic Goodness

This appeals to me on so many levels that I can barely stand it: http://typolade.de/ .

Shiny Foil Trademark

Shiny Foil Trademark
Originally uploaded by Jeff Carlson

At the beginning of the year, I applied for a trademark on a logo I designed (which is the best-selling design at my Never Enough Coffee store). It involved a fair bit of time and paperwork (and some money, of course), along with a little back-and-forth from a very helpful trademark attorney at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

I didn't expect to receive anything more than a perfunctory letter, but today I received an official Certificate of Registration printed on good paper and with a shiny foil USPTO stamp. (Yeah, I've been out of grade school for quite a long time and I still think shiny foil stickers are cool.)

Neat.