Something is uniquely jarring about hitting one-thousand twitters. You really want to say something prolific in those 140 characters, but prolific things limited to 140 characters are saved for dead writers or dead politicians. What a dilemma. What a service!

I first signed up for Twitter at SXSWi ‘07, as did many others, and I must say it only holds more promise as more and more people adopt it. Upon coming back from SXSWi ‘07 I did a few things - the first was becoming a bit of a Twitter evangelist, I told everyone about it (hi mom!). I also signed up my good friend Brian - who is soon to be the best man in my wedding.

Poor Brian, you see, I didn’t tell him I signed him up - he just started receiving SMS updates every time I twittered. Brian isn’t a geek either, he appreciates technology when it accentuates other parts of his life - and it doesn’t seem to be an end in itself for him. So instead of embracing Twitter, Brian told me, “What the fuck is Twitter Geo? And how do I unsubscribe?” I never told him - he went and figured it out. I guess the 3am twitters about Internet Explorer 6 became too much.

Once he had unsubscribed he would start texting me random moments like, “just saw a slip and fall in the grocery store,” or, “these white people and their bagels.” But never the, “is feeling…” that my twitters tend to lead off with, Brian doesn’t let his guard down. Anyhow, every time he did this I would just respond, “Twitter.” And eventually I think it set in just what Twitter would bring to accentuate his life - a monologue of his inner “B.”

So if you get the chance follow JustB, or JeongSeouk, or JeffReynolds, or J_P_S, or newtypeofjuice, or ldub, or simulacra09, or just follow my whole list - it’s all entertaining and I feel connected to these people even if I don’t see them every day - or every year.

It has been a year, almost to the day, since I first signed up for Twitter. Here I am posting this blog entry (which auto-twitters every time I write a new entry) as my 1000th twitter. With each new friend that signs on it becomes more interesting and valuable. From the ad-hoc organization to the random ramblings of my good friends abroad - I hope I feel the same at two-thousand twitters.

I didn’t really say anything prolific, but I hopefully amused - so hard to do in these 140 character limitation days.

Twitter is a one-to-many short push messaging service to your most loyal, “followers.”

Popularity: 32% [?]

When I first read about “Spaces” and saw the screenshots in OSX Leopard, I felt like it could be a huge potential productivity booster. Those from the Linux fold have been rotating cubes and “spaces” for quite some time - and of course when Leopard came out with it, they all chirped in to remind me, “that’s been on Linux for awhile.” Yea yea yea - but is it sold by an egomaniac who only wears black turtlenecks? Didn’t effin think so…

Anyhow, when I actually got Spaces - it ended up being anti-climatic. It didn’t really work how I thought it would (in my many pre-Leopard, about Leopard dreams) and it seemed like it was a bit buggy. I have seen many people turning spaces off, frustrated with it’s apparent shortcomings - but I am not one to let initial excitement die so easily - so I rolled with the punches for awhile. Fast forward three months and I am now moving from space to space like a Puppeteer on a powder day (sci-fi/drug connection makes reading all the better).

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Popularity: 45% [?]

Most publications start making predictions around this time of year, but I hate being wrong. It’s not so much that I don’t have ideas of where things are going - it’s more the fact making future predictions is a bit trite. Rarely are there any groundbreaking revelations and the novelty wears off quite quickly, usually by the third bullet point. In light of keeping it lite, there are three innovations which I feel are noteworthy for 2007 - the iPhone, the Wii, and Twitter.

Granted the Wii came out in November of 2006 and Twitter in March of 2006 - they really didn’t “blow up” until 2007. The Wii continues to have shortages and Twitter ballooned after SXSW 2007, where I first signed on. I had a conversation with Snook once and he talked about (and continues to blog about) staying away from hopping on any bandwagon as well as staying fair and balanced. This post will not be that way - I will gush and adore praise for my three favorite things of 2007.
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Popularity: 47% [?]

Frustrated!

I’m throwing this post out as a last resort. Somebody throw me a life ring here. Some people post solutions to problems, I’m posting a question.

Does anyone know if the most recent update to IE6 supports the “progid:DXImageTransform…” filter to get PNGs to work properly? Another potential issue could be that I am running IE6 in Parallels on my Mac. Either way, IE6 doesn’t work with any PNGs. This includes an entire backlog of sites that I have done in the past.

I’ve tried multiple things and none of the usual tricks work. Burn M$ Burn. Anyone?
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Popularity: 18% [?]

Traditionally, when cutting up a Photoshop layout, we all used to think of the entire thing like a jigsaw puzzle. Overlapping elements were an illusion because the element that appeared to overlap was really being cut up and then fit back together.

And then came the png. While the PNG most definitely has issues across the different browsers, there are ways to get it to play nicely with whatever site being built. Yes, it usually involves a CSS hack. No, it does not validate. However I believe it is more important to start thinking of a layout as a series of layers overlapping, versus the traditional jigsaw puzzle.
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Popularity: 19% [?]

When I finally got the Photoshop CS3 beta working on my Mac, I hailed it a steady stable release. I hadn’t had one crash up until tonight. This crash proved fatal, and I no longer can get it to save anything. Anytime I tried to do anything in Photoshop it gave me this error, “Could not complete your request because of a program error.” When I tried to save a document, Photoshop would crash with no warnings or errors.

I can’t have this happening, there is a ton of work I need to be doing. Where does that leave me? Heading back to CS2 and hoping whatever caused CS3 to crash, will not effect CS2. My OSX chops are fairly new, and I know the next big OS change from Apple will include some kind of time machine so I can go back to a date with Photoshop was working. This sucks.

I found this page in the interim, and if anyone stumbles on a solution, please let me know.

Thanks.

** Update - I had forgotten how slow CS2 runs on the Intel Mac. Anyhow, CS2 seems to be running fine with no errors. I guess I had my fun.

Popularity: 6% [?]

What a difference this beta makes. Sure that are tons of cool new features, but running photoshop natively on an Intel Mac is ten fold better, maybe more. I hear a lot of people complaining about the new icons, but I like them for their simplicity, Ps means Photoshop, got it?

I really like the new palette system as well, everything seems flexible enough to suit everyone’s needs. Not to mention it isn’t overwhelming. There is also a nice way to keep whatever you are working on from going behind the palettes. Just click on the bottom button in the new toolbar and select maximize screen mode.

The biggest difference is how quick everything moves. It loads quicker, handles documents quicker, and looks prettier. If you are worried about getting a beta version, worry no more, this beta is more stable than CS2 ever was.

Popularity: 6% [?]