Ranting...

I've not ranted about anything in a while, and I'm bored out of my mind this evening, so I've come to rant about what I don't like about Macs and specifically, Mac OS X.

The past few months, I've been taking a photography class in school. At first, all the class projects were film projects, but then as the class progressed, we moved into the digital side of photography. The first things we (the class) did was scan out black and white film prints into the comouters, which are all Macs in the classroom.

Scanning in my prints was pretty simple: Put the print into the scanner, plug the USB cable into the side of the eMac, open Photoshop, go to File > Import > Epson 2480/2580 > Preview the scan set the DPI, and scan away.

Since we're scanning the prints for one reason: to put them into our digital portfoilo,they had to be cropped, and then saved. That's where my first major issue is: the save as/open dialogs. I cannot find a way to drag and drop files between varoius folders in the dialog, or drag files into/out of the dialog. If I want to do any quick file managment from within a program's Open dialog, I'd have to open Finder, and do it there.

And that leads me into my next issue: One day in Photoshop, I created a whole lot of PDF files in Photoshop to use as slide backgrounds in my portfolio. When I opened Finder to put the six or so files into a new folder, I found that the file's icons had been placed ontop each other. Accustomed to a Windows environment, I right (context/control/command/whatever) clicked in a blank space in the Finder window to try to find a 'arrange icons' menu entry. I saw none. So now I was stuck having to root through the folder, trying to find the "stacked" icons, and move them into a new folder.

Then just today, I was playing around in Finder, and I discovered a small icon in the bottom left corner of the Finder window that aligns icons to a grid.

My next issue is with iPhoto, which we use to import digital photos to the computers. First, the process involves opening iPhoto, connecting the camera to the Mac, then iPhoto recognizes the camera, and imports the photos. Fair enough. But when it comes to managing the photos, that's where I find trouble. First, since up to eight students use the same machine, we have to save everything with our names on it. So I'd put somthing like "miller-photos" as the name for the "roll" in iPhoto. But, you enter the roll name when you import the photos. If you forget, like I did a few times, I have found it next to impossible to rename the roll after importing the photos. Then there are Aphoto "albums," which you can remane, but I have yet to find a difference between a roll and an album.

Then there were a few photos that I knew I didn't want. I should be able to delete them, right? Not too easy, though. First, I simply tried to drag the photo to the Trash Can icon on the dock, but nothing happened. Then I did a right click on the photo, and looked for some kind of 'delete' or 'remove photo' option, and was dumbfounded to see nothing. Then after a few minutes, I finally discovered, I could just select the photos, and hit the "delete" (not backspace, which is also labled "delete") key on the keyboard.

Personally, I find iPhoto difficult to use, and photo managment near impossible to understand. For me, Windows Explorer is great for managing my digital photos. If I want to rename a photo or folder, I can right click the icon, and rename. If I want to move photos around, I drag and drop from folder-to-folder. If I want to delete, I can easily do that.

Sure I may be a little biased here, but I see iPhoto as kind of a watered down program for new computer users, and that same theme seems to follow all the iLife applications.

I'm now a licensed driver

Nine-and-a-half months after getting my driver's permit, I racked in my "required" fifty hours of guided premit driving last night, and at 7:30 this morning, I rolled out of the school's parking lot in the school's driver's-ed Civic for my test.

Since I knew what route we'd take on the test from hearing what other people told me, my mom and I practiced the the same route over and over again until I had it down pretty good.

Overall, the test was very easy, and since I did take it through the school, I didn't have to do parallel parking. But I was somewhat concerned over one part, and that was changing lanes on Eisenhower Drive (a four-lane dividedroad), since you turn left onto the road, and must turn into the left lane, then switch to the right lane, then less than a mile later, switch back onto the left lane to turn left off the road.

When we returned to school, the instructor stampted my driver's permet, saing that I'd completed and passed the test. In a few weeks, I'll be getting a letter in the mail, saying that I can go to get my photo licence taken, and that'll be my real laminated licence.

Now that I have my licence, all I need is a car to drive around and then pay for gas. :-)

But I don't feel any older

Well, today is my birthday, but for some reason I don't feel older. Infact if feels like any other day around here.

The celebrations (if you could call it that) started yesterday, when my mom, dad, sister, both sets of grandparenst, and I went out to eat dinner at Damons. I got my usual meal, chicken tinders, and cheese sticks. Then, we told the waiter that it was my birthday, and at the end of the meal, they gave our party a small chocolate cake, but everyone was too full from dinner to eat it, so we took it home in a styrofoam "doggy box."

After dinner, the grandparents came over, and after we let our stomachs settle a bit, we ate some of the ice cream cake that my mom bought.

I also opened the gifts I picked out for myself last night. I got Tetris DS for my DS and F-Zero GP Legend for the Game Boy Advance. Then, my sister gave me a larger package. At first, from the shape of the box, I thought she bought me a shirt, but as I opened it, there was a sheet of paper with "Happy 17th Birthday, Billy!!!" on it, and a picture of the box of the new Super Mario Brothers game for the Nintendo DS on it. The game won't be released until May 15, so she preordered it for me.

Today, seemed like a more normal day for me. No one at school wished me a happy birthday, since I told so few people about it...