Time-Suck [news]

So, a couple years ago, my very good friend Mike (who I've been friends with since about our sophomore year of high school) decided he'd get me an X-Box as a birthday present. Along with the game unit he gave me several games. I was quickly addicted (the reason I had not bought one for myself in the first place). He had sent the original "Splinter Cell" along and I loved it, even more than I liked Halo (which is saying a lot).


I have some friends from film school that create computer animation and one friend that worked his way up to becoming a big-wig at a company that makes games for the Playstation; so I have some appreciation of what goes into the work (each game can take years to create). So, besides the game-play, I was impressed by the animation that the artists at UbiSoft put together.

Anyway . . . I've played all of the Splinter Cell series and been constantly impressed by the evolution in storylines, game-play and animation. The latest installment, "Splinter Cell: Double Agent" is no different. I'm playing on the older, black X-Box, but I hear that the game is even more amazing on the new X-Box 360. If you have the 360, it will play the older games as well.

I've only just begun to play the new game (for those who care, I'm still breaking out of prison), but already I can see some cool improvements in the game-play. So, as if I don't already have a procrastination problem, I now have this calling to me, tempting me away from my work. It's my own fault; I bought the game, but as I said, I'm addicted. Even though it is a potential time-suck, I think the whole series is great and I recommend them all.

As a matter of fact, before you run out and get the latest one ("Double Agent"), I'd suggest that you start with the second installment (if not the very first) and work your way forward. That way you'll get to enjoy the improvements from installment to installment.

The saga starts with "Splinter Cell," next is "Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow," then "Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory," and lastly "Splinter Cell: Double Agent." Check them out. But don't say I didn't warn you!

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I'm Back... [news]

Whew, it's been a while. I've been pretty busy, plus I had some computer madness. The picture you see up there is one you don't want to see in your own life. That's the image that comes up on your screen when the internal hard drive fails. Not good.

On the positive side, I had backed-up my Avid editing projects and a DVD authoring project -- good habits saved me there. On the not-so-positive side, I hadn't backed-up my laptop for over a month.

Long story short, the hard drive and labor were covered by Apple Care (extended warranty) and I was able to recover all the data. The downside is that it took three weeks at the shop to get the new drive installed and the data recovered. It then took me over a day to get my applications running properly again -- that's a whole other {boring} story. In the end, I couldn't get my Dreamweaver and Fireworks applications to run (even after going back to OS 10.3.4). I guess it worked before because I had updated the OS from 10.2.8 to 10.3.4 and whatever components it needed were still there. So, it was just the push I needed to upgrade.

I'm now the happy father of a whole bundle of new applications. I'm already enjoying lots of the new features in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Dreamweaver and I'm beginning to become familiar with Adobe's "Bridge," "Version Cue," and Acrobat-Pro applications. Plus, the access to stock photos is so useful. The bundle is a great deal. Here's what it includes:

Adobe Creative Suite 2.3 Premium
• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Adobe Illustrator CS2
• Adobe InDesign CS2
• Adobe GoLive CS2
• Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional
• Version Cue CS2
• Adobe Bridge
• Adobe Stock Photos

Macromedia Studio 8
• Dreamweaver 8
• Flash Professional 8
• Fireworks 8
• Contribute 3
• FlashPaper 2

And of course, I'm all about backing-up now. You should too (benefit from my sad tale of misfortune!). It's not that expensive for a 120 GB drive. The backup software comes with the drive (well, at least the brand I buy) and is really easy to use. The drive can connect either with USB or Firewire (IEEE 1394). Here's a link to the Seagate drives I have been using lately. They come with a stand so they can sit like you see in the picture, or you can stack them horizontally without using the stand, which is what I do (and don't you want to be just like me?). I've got four of them now of varying capacities.

Of the four Seagate drives I have, the newest is a 750GB drive to backup the media and graphics files for current editing projects. I also dug out an older 200GB drive to backup my laptop files in a second place. Yep, I have one drive to backup my old G3 and my laptop and a second drive just for my laptop. I'm not taking any chances again! :-) My friend Ron, who's helped me with my computer questions for years and has often lent a helping hand, also recommends backing-up important files on a remote server. I'll have to look into that.

Also, I found a shareware application called SMARTreporter that monitors ATA and SATA drives, so hopefully I'll be warned before any future failures. You can find it here. I haven't found an application that does this for Firewire drives yet.

So, that's it for now.
Updates on The McPassion, Movies Are Better and more coming soon.

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