Monday 10.11.2010 | 11:23 AM EDT

Yer Outta Here! Bye-Bye Bobby Cox

Art nerd, rocker, slacker, Don Juan, music geek, shutterbug… I’ve been called many things. Rabid sports fan is not one of them. But baseball is one of only two sports close to my heart (tennis eeking out first place in the list).

As a New Yorker, I’ve never developed filial warmth for either the Mets (junkyard dogs) or the Yankees (wealthy over-achievers, though they do have the best uniforms). But as a former southerner growing up in Atlanta, I’ve rooted for the Braves from their dismal years in the early 80′s through the insanely exciting early-mid 90′s. And though my love for the team was temporarily dampened by redneck John Rocker’s shocking, ignorant and racist remarks about my adopted home city of New York, I remain a fan to this day (despite the totally tired and obnoxious crowd cheer known as the Tomahawk Chop. Dudes, enough already, really).

Today, with the Braves heartbreaking loss to the San Francisco Giants in the National League Division Series, baseball fans everywhere bid a sad farewell to one of the most modest, dynamic and successful managers in Major Leagues history. His tearful post-game exit interview tonight brought back 30 years of Braves baseball memories (Bob Horner hitting 4 back-to-back home runs in one game; Sid Bream slowly chugging to home plate for a thrilling 9th-inning come from behind win of the 1992 NLCS). Not to mention one mischievous night in the early 80′s when me and my high school entourage spent a debaucherous teenage evening in Mr. Cox’s home in Atlanta, sneaking swigs from his liquor cabinet (at the time, one of our tribe briefly dated his daughter Keisha). Thankfully, he was on the road, or surely we would have been ejected with extreme prejudice.

So long, Bobby, and thanks for all the fish…

Selected highlights and stats:

• Manager of the Year four times (1985, 1991, 2004, and 2005)
• One of only four managers to have won the award in both the American and National League
• Named Manager of the Year eight times (1985, 1991, 1993, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005)
• Fourth-winningest manager in major league history, with a record of 2,195 wins and 1,698 losses
• Led the Braves to a division title every season from 1991 to 2005
• Won a World Series Championship in 1995.
• In 2001, he took sole possession of first place for most wins as a manager in Braves history
• Fourteenth among the all-time winningest managers.
• One of only four managers in Major League history with over 2500 career wins
• Despite a calm demeanor, as of the end of last season has been ejected 158 times, currently holding the all-time record for most ejections
• The only person among all players and managers to be ejected from two World Series games

More about Bobby Cox

Thursday 10.07.2010 | 10:23 PM EDT

If I Hear the Word “Facebook” One More Time
I Swear I’m Gonna Beat Someone

As a designer, web developer and recovering media junkie, I’m both required and inspired to keep up with the Interweb and it’s noisy, bleating spawn. But as I get closer to joining the old-fogey demographic, I’m often left with a cold metallic taste in my mouth at the end of each day spent in front of Photoshop, Twitter, Maunet, Wikipedia, Google, Email, YouTube, Flickr, etc… Notice I didn’t include Facebook? Yeah, I fucking hate Facebook. Nothing against you personally, kind reader, but still… it’s the Antichrist– a douchy, narcissistic, time-sucking Tupperware party. Not unlike this blog, I guess. Oops. But let’s move on…

The iPhone hasn’t helped calm my frayed early-middle-aged nerves either, as I compulsively reach for it’s perfect, shiny, enticing form every 5 minutes to do… what? Check my email for the 10th time in 10 minutes? See if anyone mentioned me on Twitter? (no one ever does). Play Angry Birds for two minutes before checking the weather as I sit on my balcony on a chilly grey Brooklyn evening? You don’t need an iPhone to know which way the wind blows…

So what I’m sayin’ is, I’m kinda really fucking over the whole Social Media thing, even as I reluctantly skirt it’s fringes (no, I do not have a Facebook account, did I not make that clear?). Boy am I glad I don’t plan to have children. All my parents had to get crotchety and protective about was the Led Zeppelin blaring from my room as I puffed on a doobie while leafing through Penthouse and downing a six pack of Coors Lite at alarming speed. No instant access to porn, no sickeningly violent video games (Donkey Kong still rules in my book) and definitely no medium as addictive and pervasive as Social Media. It really is the new crack and we’re all gonna shrivel up into ashy little prunes as we suck on that bandwidth pipe…

Nevertheless, I guess it’s here to stay. Sigh. Hopefully someone will start a rehab program as the Mark Zuckerberg Clinic for Social Media Addicts. Hmm… maybe that’s the billion-dollar idea I’ve been looking for. Anyone got some loose investment capital to lend me?

This video from Socialnomics presents some frightening “facts” on the subject. Its claims are astounding, alarming, inspiring and ultimately exhausting. But the typography’s pretty sweet…

Thanks, Knight, for passing this along. Rob, if you tell me you posted this on Facebook last month one more time, I’ll break your face with your bass at our next rehearsal, I fucking swear I will ;-)

Thursday 06.17.2010 | 2:23 PM EDT

The Oatmeal: Time To Pretend

So work has kept me from posting in a while. Stupid Work. But something of substance is forthcoming, with new photos of The National European tour coming soon.

In the meantime, the guy from The Oatmeal is quickly becoming my new hero:
Why It’s Better To Pretend You Know Nothing About Computers

Don’t get me wrong. I love providing friends and family with Tech Support. Just love it. It gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

But maybe it’s Time To Pretend…

Saturday 05.01.2010 | 1:23 PM EDT

Smoke + Mirrors: Adobe CEO
Shantanu Narayen Responds to
Steve Jobs’ Position on Mobile Flash

Guess what? My Mac’s Safari browser just crashed while watching a Flash video on The Wall Street Journal (scroll down to watch it). The subject? Adobe’s response to Steve Jobs’ recent arguments agains using Flash on Apple mobile devices. But let’s put that aside for now. In my last post on this debate, I did my best to be humble; to refrain from partisanship as much as an Apple fanatic is capable; and to give any of you the opportunity to fill in the gaps in my knowledge on this subject.

When I read Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash, I noted how struck I was by what seemed like Steve’s relatively dispassionate position on this subject. Maybe my vision is blurred while reading between the lines, but Jobs’ arguments were not delivered with his typical bravado (i.e. arrogance). It seems to me that point by point, Steve proposed lucid, practical reasons for not embracing Adobe Flash’s on Apple mobile devices. Maybe that’s just me. But:

What was glaringly obvious to me during Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen’s rebuttal was his delivery of the same lame corporate marketing bromides you hear at every mid-level management meeting across America: “value proposition.” “world vision.” “delivery mechanism that allows us to amortize investment.” Who is us? Whose investment?

The interviewer points out that Steve’s response seemed “personal” and “nasty.” It’s no secret Mr. Jobs can be an arrogant ass and a real tyrant. But you don’t see many titans of industry adopting the genteel protocol of Victorian drawing rooms (nor the watered down language of corporate marketing). Asshole he may be, but he delivers innovation like no other technology company in recent history and does it with a confidence and panache that comes from nowhere if not straight from his heart. Even with all his faults, his recent response did not feel like the tantrum of a man that is used to having his way. I detected no belligerence or defensiveness in the tone of his language. More importantly, I felt informed by Jobs’ response. In contrast, Adobe’s response felt like a sales pitch worthy of an alternate Glenngary Glenn Ross script.

I was sincerely hoping to hear countering arguments that completed the picture for me. I have no interest in debunking Adobe in favor of my beloved iPhone. I simply wanted facts, straight up. I wanted specifics that would enable me to defend either side of this debate with informed intelligence. Unless I forgot to take out my earplugs (I did not play my drums last night), I couldn’t cobble together a single lucid piece of information from the smorgasbord of Narayen’s clichéd language. He even uses the word “factoid” to bolster his own weak arguments. Consumers, and certainly technology professionals, are not interested in something as politically slanted as a “factoid,” which is defined as “a brief or trivial item of news or information. An assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.” Seems like Mr. Narayen needs to polish his rhetorical skills if he hopes to present viable arguments to this debate.

Narayen uses the word “smokescreen” multiple times to describe Steve’s “allegations”. That’s where this man’s credibility completely fell apart for me. The interviewer repeatedly asked him to respond to the specific points in Jobs’ agenda. He responded to none of these in any substantive, factual manner, choosing instead to continue using corporate platitudes to deflect pointed questions. Wait a minute. Isn’t that a smokescreen? His whining tone, flimsy language and closed body language tells the real story.

Narayen goes on to state that “technology is not the issue.” Do what? Ok, you lost me with that one, sir. Then he goes on to mention that InDesign, a print application, can bridge a development gap for an interactive platform? C’mon.

There’s plenty more in this interview that I could dissect and debunk. But I have little interest in tearing down a company that has gifted the world with Photoshop– an application that shakes my atheistic leanings through the sheer depth of it’s capabilities. But the bottom line is: hey, it would be great to have Flash on the iPhone/iPad. But if the rhetorical and business positions of these two guys are to be my only guide, then I’ll side with Steve and wait till a better solution comes along. Apple ain’t dumb. It can’t be that far off.

Can’t we all just get along? Watch the video below. Hope it doesn’t crash your Mac.

Friday 04.30.2010 | 8:23 PM EDT

Stick It To ‘Em: Steve Jobs Responds to
Mobile vs Adobe Flash

I could easily be accused of partisanship on the side of Apple. I’m a die-hard Mac-head and an iPhone addict. But in this case, Steve Jobs’ recent rebuttal to the ongoing mobile Flash support debate offers the most compelling arguments I’ve yet heard on the subject.

I like Flash. It does some cool things. My own design + development company has used it extensively over the years. But as SEO becomes a higher priority to our small entrepreneurial clients, we have begun to move away from it in favor of JavaScript/CSS/HTML (though we still love SiFR to render branded, system-agnostic typography–without the mobile device/SEO penalty). Not to mention that, as a closed system requiring a very specialized skill-set, professional-grade Flash developers are much scarcer than their HTML-based counterparts. It’s also harder to pass on a Flash/ActionScript code base to new vendors, and it’s typically more expensive to execute and more unwieldy to maintain, particularly when used in conjunction with a Content Management System.

I have a considerable financial investment in the Adobe software suites that are crucial to running my business. But as a compulsive iPhone user, I’m only occasionally frustrated by the lack of Flash support, though to such a negligible extent as to be almost irrelevant. And although widespread adoption of newer technologies like HTML5 is still a ways away, I’ve begun to lean towards Steve’s point of view.

Though I found his points regarding “Touch” user interfaces extremely compelling, one could argue that DHTML navigation (as much as I f’ing hate it) suffers similar disadvantages as Flash on a touch-screen device. Moreover, his arguments do side-step the glaring fact that, despite Google’s embracement of more “open,” non-Flash technologies, Flash is supported on their own Andorid mobile operating system. But friends don’t let friends drive Androids (and most definitely not BlackBerries) ;-)

I’m just a graphic design guy in love with user-friendly Interface design and Information Architecture, so I’m by no means an expert on the mobile Flash debate. I’m sure many of you could counter with your own, more well-informed arguments. And of course Jobs by definition must promote his own agenda–but his recent, uncharacteristically open rebuttals make a lot of sense without coming across aggressive or excessively partisan.

Read Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash vs Mobile Devices here.

In the spirit of non-partisanship (and humility in admission of my own incomplete grasp of the subject), fill in the gaps in my arguably tenable position by commenting below.

Monday 03.22.2010 | 12:23 PM EDT

Windows 7: Apple’s Idea. Shocker!

Have you seen these ridiculous adverts for Windows 7? I know us Mac geeks are wont to take any shot we can at our old nemesis, but this one is a slam dunk.

Pretty girl in bad British accent revels in the fact that W7 now has a “new task bar…Now I can see everything I have open!”

Wow! Revolutionary! How did we ever get along without this new feature? Well, 10 years ago we all got Mac OS X. That’s how.

I’ve spent an hour or so on W7 (I feel so dirty) and it is an improvement from XP and Vista (a monkee could have improved those). But as always, those improvements were pilfered from functionality that’s been native to the Mac OS for 10 years.

Apparently some illustrious souls have shot back at these ads with pretty much the same sentiment. Cheerio, chaps! Suck it, Windows!

–

–

–

–

Tuesday 03.02.2010 | 1:23 PM EDT

Mixology: Shitty Beers, Great In a Can

Beers in a can suck
They lose their crispness and body and deny us the eye candy of a glistening, sweaty golden bottle of lager or the thick foam of a chocolaty, full-bodied stout. (Sorry, I got carried away there, but I’m sure there’s such a thing as beer porn out there).

Now, cans certainly afford us a pseudo-manly display of strength as we punctuate our last slug with a crushing hand (shark hunter Captain Quint did it best). But the canned beers’ charm ends there. At least until recently. Three beers negate the theory:

1. The Sapporo tall boy: Housed in a tank of a can, it’s a stalwart silver monster that will defeat all but the manliest hands. It’s crisp, flavorful, delicious. Drunk from a glass bottle: Insipid and lame, tastes like ass.
2. The Heineken Mini Keg. Also quite the sturdy vessel. When offered the same beer in a bottle, I opt for wine, whiskey, gin, hell – even a Coke. But not so in the mini-kegger. It’s delicious, crisp, relatively full-bodied. But don’t be fooled – the run of the mill canned version also tastes like ass.
3. Tecaté: For some, it’s Mexico’s Budweiser, except, you know, actually tasty.
   Add a lime and it’s sublime.