So for our family xmas present this year we picked up a Flip Mino HD. So far I’m really enjoying it. It’s super small, shoots great video and is fun to have around for all the funny moments with Kari.
I wasn’t about to carry around 2 full-size devices (we already have a nice DSLR) and I’d rather have really good photographs over really good video.
Without further ado, Jackie, Kari and I putting up the Christmas Tree.
Two years ago when I purchased my MacBook Pro I was interested in getting some sort of case for it. My colleague Jeff had this awesome sleeve for his Powerbook that I was in love with. Jeff and the other guys from the office all pitched in to get me the sleeve as a graduation present.
About a month ago the zipper broke. 🙁 I used this sleeve daily and always took great care when zipping it up. In fact it was almost always stored in my book bag, for added redundancy.
I thought to myself, “Crap. I’m going to have to buy a new one. No way there is any sort of warranty.”
Just to make sure I contacted booq, the makers of this great sleeve. They have a 5 year warrany! Since the sleeve was a gift I asked Jeff if he still had an copy of a recipt, invoice anything. Luckly he did. I sent off the sleeve, waited a few days and recieved a very polite email saying they recieved my sleeve.
They noted that it appeared to be defective and were going to replace it free of charge! The best part is that this apparently is a newer model sleeve. It is much more sturdy with a thicker foam insert.
I was impressed with my original sleeve*, impressed with thier customer service and the fact that I ended up getting an even better product is just icing.
I highly recommend booq if you want a great product and great service.
*So much that once my wife got her Mac we bought a sleeve for her as well
Update: John Nack from Adobe mentions a simpler solution for this particular menu behavior.
CS4 brings back the joy of the default ‘Show all Menu Items”. As I’ve previously written when CS3 came out, there is a way to manually modify the Edit>Menu options to enable all menu items to be displayed. It’s kinda lame that they enable this by default and offer no simple one-click solution to show all menu items.
I’m happy to report that my custom menu file works in CS4 just as well. Just double-click the Everything_on.mnu file and Photoshop will launch, putting the settings into place.*
<rant>
As to why Adobe has this default probably goes into issues designing the interface of a complex application. By hiding what they believe to be the least used items, it makes things appear simpler.
However, as a professional application I find this to be a bit oxymoronish. Why not prompt the user on first run with a simple series of questions.
What do you plan on doing with Photoshop?
Ok, while that’s by no means an ideal set of default options I hope you get the gist of what I’m trying to say.
Ask the user, don’t make assumptions and then make it possible to easily show all menu items.
</rant>
*With my limited testing this didn’t effect palettes or keyboard shortcuts, but YMMV.
$40 bucks later I have 5 new keys and have discovered how this all happened. The people/person living here before us replaced a few of he bulbs under the cabinet with the wrong size. They were too large and were putting out too much heat and too much stress against the covers. Those two mistakes lead to my Mmmmeling Macbook Pro.
Lesson to be learned? When buying an old house make sure to check your under the cabinet lights!
Last night while the wife was out shopping I thought I’d play some Ace Combat 6 (great game, btw). Before I started playing I set my Macbook Pro up in the kitchen to download some files for me. We have this awesome kitchen with some swank under-the-cabinet lighting. After setting up my Mac I had left the lights on for my wife so when she came in the kitchen wouldn’t be totally dark. I went into the living room and quickly became oblivious to the outside world. Now we have 3 cats and they’re often bumping into things or knocking stuff over. So when I thought I heard a small crash coming from the kitchen I thought nothing of it.
A few minutes later my wife came back from the store and I helped her put groceries on the kitchen counter. I took a look over at my Macbook Pro to check the status of the downloads. On my keyboard was the cap to one of the under-the-cabinet lights.
I picked it up laughing to my wife that it had fallen off. How strange. Apparently the heat caused it to warp just enough to fall off the little clips that hold it in.
Then I looked down at my Mac.
ZOMG! The light cover was so hot that it had melted some of my keys!
Luckily enough the only part that was damaged was the plastic keys themselves, the underlying hinges and scissor mechanism was untouched. Even the little rubber buttons were fine.
So for the short term I’m missing a few keys. Luckily they’re not keys I use every day. I checked out a few shops online and replacing these 4 keys is going to cost me close to $40, which is much cheaper than a) Having Apple repair it or b) buying a whole new keyboard.
I’m now concerned with the safety of these lights. What could have happened if they had fallen on some paper or other more flammable items? (Not that I have a lot of these things laying around, I’m just saying)