Rob Huddleston's Blog

My 2009 Reading List

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:29:00 -0600

Inspired by my friend Nolan Erck, and helped of course by Evernote, I kept track of all of the books I read this year. I was going to hold off until the actual end of the year to write this, but it's pretty clear that I'm not going to finish either of the books I'm currently reading in the next three days, so I figured I'd go ahead and write it up now.

The numbers: I read 37 books this year. 30 were fiction and 7 non-fiction. My top two authors Bernard Cornwell and Stephen White, with eight books each. Adding two books each by David Baldacci books and Micael Connelly to the Stephen White books and you have a mystery as the clear winner in genres at 12, just under half of my total. Historial fiction was second, with the eight Cornwell books added to one by Conn Iggulden. I also read five Star Wars novels. The two novels that don't fit either of those genres were the one fantasy novel I read, by Terry Brooks, and the one contempory fiction, by my friend Jake Lurie. In non-fiction, I read four history books, and one each in technology, psychology, and, uh, well Disneyland.

Below are brief reviews of each of the books. I decided early in the year to keep track of books by category (fiction and non-fiction), and then in order of reading within them. I now regret that choice and wish I had just kept a straight chronological list, which I will do this year.

The novels:

Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell: I had heard of Cornwell before, but never read any of his stuff. Those that know me, however, know that I'm a sucker for anything written about Agincourt, so I didn't have to think twice about picking this one up. It follows the adventures of Nathaniel, a down-on-his-luck archer in Henry V's army. The book follows what I now know is Cornwell's formula, but it's an entertaining read and Cornwell does, as much as possible, get the history right. My only real objection to the book was that Nathaniel isn't a terribly likable character.

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell: Despite its flaws, I did enjoy Agincourt, so I decided to check out some of Cornwell's other works, and for no particular reason began with this, the first in a series of books about Alfred the Great and his quest to recapture England from the Vikings. The story follows Uhtred, an English-born but Viking-raised boy who must constantly battle between his devotion to those who raised him and his loyalty to his native people. The Last Kingdom follows Uhtred from his violent childhood through his upbringing as a Viking.

Millenium Falcon by James Luceno: The Falcon is without a doubt by favorite vehicle from Star Wars, so I was looking forward to reading this story that promised to follow its history. Unfortunately, the book fails to deliver, instead providing a disjointed story that tries, but fails, to mingle the Falcon's early days with the current post-post-Return of the Jedi storyline in the Star Wars novel. Not nearly as horrific a novel as Death Star, but still, if this is the way that these one-off Star Wars novels are going to go, then I'm going to have a hard time continuing with them.

Invincible by Troy Denning: This marked the fantastically disappointing conclusion to the Legacy of the Force series. The series as a whole was good, following the descent to the Dark Side of Han and Leia's oldest son. But this book felt like an after-thought of sorts, and the supposedly epic confrontation between Jacen and Jaina was so poorly written that I almost felt cheated after having read the previous eight novels in the series. Again, not a good sign for the future of Star Wars novels.

Order 66 by Karen Traviss: It's becoming increasingly clear that novels that focus on the characters from any of the Star Wars movies are going to be a let down. Fortunately, Karen Traviss has gone in a different direction in her series about a group of Clone Troopers during the events between episodes II and III. The books follow a group of young Jedi and their increasingly close bond with the troopers under their command. Since the beginning of the series, you cannot be help read these books with a sense of dread, knowing as we do what happens between the Clone army and the Jedi in Episode III, events chronicled in this book. The army's assassination of the Jedi would seem to paint Traviss into a corner, and while I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that she very nicely, and believably, finds a solution.

Lost Light by Michael Connelly: I started reading Connelly a few years ago on something of a lark, and have enjoyed his novels ever since. The only reason that he appears but twice on this year's list is that I've already read all of his older books, so I am now mostly at the mercy of waiting as he writes new ones. Lost Light was one of the few older novels I hadn't caught yet. This story follows detective Harry Bosch trying to cope with his retirement from the LAPD. Now a PI, he takes on the case of a murdered Hollywood executive and $2M in missing cash. This is standard Connelly fare, meaning highly entertaining and completely readable.

The Pale Horsemen by Bernard Cornwell: Book two in the Saxon series follows Uhtred as he joins Alfred's forces in their darkest hour. Driven from his kingdom, Alfred was close to defeat, and the book nicely describes these pivotal events in English history. Cornwell does a great job of developing his characters, from the angry and violent Uhtred to the taciturn Alfred. Another great Cornwell read.

Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell: One of the joys of playing catch-up on existing series is the ability to go straight from one book to the next. In this third book of the Saxon Stories, Uhtred returns north to free his step-sister and attempt to regain his inheritence. Again, Cornwell brings pre-conquest England to life in a way few others can.

The Program by Stephen White: My mom introduced me to Stephen White a year or so ago with his fantastic Kill Me, still his best book to date. The first of many of his books that I would read this year is about a woman placed in the Witness Protection Program, but unsure if she is safe there. What I like about White's books are the interesting characters who get to follow from one story to the next and his familiar settings: almost all of his books take place in and around Boulder, Colorado, where I went to college and one of my favorite places on earth. What I dislike is his habit of rushing into unfulfilling endings, and this book has both.

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell: The fourth book in the Saxon Stories details the English attempts to take London and establish Alfred as ruler of all England. I thoroughly enjoyed all four of these books, and cannot wait until the publication of the next book, The Burning Land, sometime soon.

Genghis: Bones of the Hills by Conn Iggulden: Genghis Khan is perhaps the greatest military commander in history, but at the same time, he is perhaps the least known, at least to us in the west. We know a lot about the exploits of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and yet so little about Khan, who founded the largest land empire the world has ever known, stretching from the China to Europe, Siberia to the Middle East. It was larger than either Rome or Alexander's empire, and it was created in a mere 30 years by men on horseback under the leadership of a single will: Khan. Even as a history buff, I knew little about Khan, so it was really on a lark about two years ago that I picked up Iggulden's first book on Khan, a series which concludes with Bones of the Hills. If you're looking for good historical fiction that will also introduce you to one of history's most important figures, you should read these books.

Bronze Verdict by Michael Connelly: Connelly joins his two main heroes, Harry Bosch and Mickey Heller together to solve the murder of a defense attorney. The story is good, but the melding of Connelly's fascinating Bosch character with his much-less-intriguing Heller character has mixed results.

Outcast by Aaron Allston: The first in a new series of Star Wars novels. With the defeat of the evil Darth Caedus, the republic is trying to rebuild, but suspicions abound about the Jedi. A totally unconvincing election of a former Imperial to lead the republic, combined with a boring sub-plot about insane Jedi and a contrived story of Luke being exiled combine to drive all hope from those of us looking for the Star Wars novels to return to readability.

Cold Case by Stephen White: I mentioned earlier that the advantage of catching up on an established writer's works is the ability to read a lot of his or her books over the course of a year. The disadvantage is in not realizing that they may loosely fit together in some order, and occasionally encountering books that foreshadow events that you already know the outcome of, thanks to having read a later book. This early White book follows psychologist Alan Gregory, the hero in most White novels, as he tries to solve a decades-old murder. Decent, without White's normal rushed ending.

Divine Justice by David Baldacci: Baldacci is another author my mom introduced me to. While I enjoy most of his political thrillers, his recent series on the so-called Camel Club has been less than thrilling. This novel follows the club's leader, Oliver Stone, as he wanders meaninglessly through the Virginia countryside, stumbling upon a bunch of uninteresting characters and stories. This is the first Baldacci novel I actually had trouble finishing.

The Whole Truth by David Baldacci: Fortunately, Baldacci returned to form with this interesting story of an overly-rich man attempting to start a war for profit. It's scariest bits are how it shows how easily it could be done.

Harm's Way by Stephen White: Alan Gregory tries to figure out who killed his neighbor and friend Peter. The story is interesting and the plot engrossing, but once again White rushes the ending.

A Princess of Landover by Terry Brooks: I first read Brooks in junior high school thanks to a recommendation from a friend, and I've been hooked ever since. I anxiously await his once-a-year release of a new book. Here, he returns to his light-hearted Landover series with a story of the now-grown daughter of the King of Landover having a series of misadventures. It's an interesting look at adolescence, but honestly not one of Brooks' best works.

The Archer's Tale by Bernard Cornwell: While waiting for the next book in the Saxon stories, I decided to check out another series. This trilogy of books follows Thomas of Hookton, an English archer a generation before the one in Agincourt, as he searches France for the Holy Grail. The Grail is really nothing more than a sub-plot here, though - in reality, the series is about France during the Hundred Years War. In this opening story, Thomas sets out on his quest, but ends up getting sidetracked by a beautiful French girl and the Battle of Crecy.

The Friday Night Club by Jacob Lurie: This is the odd story on this list. I don't particularly care for contemporary fiction, and honestly this story would not have held much interest for me. However, it was written by a good friend, and when he offered to send the manuscript for me to read and review, I agreed, and I'm very glad I did. The story is fairly straight-forward: a young man, on the eve of his wedding, looks back over the last few years, questioning the decisions that have led him to the altar and whether he's marrying the right girl. Part of the appeal of the book was admittedly the once-again familiar settings of Boulder and Denver, but what really drew me in were the exceptionally well-developed characters. There are no throw-away back-ground characters here: every person in the book is a well-rounded, totally believable person. Even if the author is a friend, I can honestly say that this is perhaps the best book I read this year.

The Best Revenge by Stephen White: Alan Gregory returns yet again in White's most over-thought and least believable book. It had something to do with some people getting a guy out of prison for a crime he didn't commit so that they could torture him for another crime that he did, or maybe didn't, commit. Convulted? Yes. Interesting? No.

The Siege by Stephen White: Perhaps it was an unfair contrast with Revenge, but The Siege is one of White's best, right begin Kill Me. Sam Purdy, a secondary character in most White books, takes center stage here, but what makes this book so good is the realism behind the story. It's both comtemporary and scary.

Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell: Book 2 in the Grail Quest series follows Thomas of Hookton as he returns to England to search for the Grail, getting caught up in the Scottish invasion of 1347, the tragic events of which lead him back to Brittany to continue his quest.

Sharpe's Tiger by Bernard Cornwell: Thanks to a TV show, the adventures of Richard Sharpe are perhaps Cornwell's best-known books. Here, we meet Sharpe as a private in the British Army in India in 1799. Determined to desert, he is instead thrust front-and-center into a bloody conflict as the British attempt to take the stronghold of a local Indian warlord. While the story drags at points, it does provide a good introduction to Sharpe.

Critical Conditions by Stephen White: While written over a decade ago, this book could have been written this year: a young girl is dying, thanks to her insurance company's refusal to pay for a heart transplant. When the head of the insurance agency turns up dead, Alan Gregory has to figure out if his patient, sister to the dying girl and niece to his friend Sam Purdy, could be guilty of the murder. This book was really good until the last 50 pages, when White's usual weak ending is made worse by a completely unexpected and unnecessary action set-piece.

Death Troopers by Joe Scheiber: When I first heard that they were doing a horror novel set in the Star Wars universe, I was excited. That excitement, however, only lasted through the first 30 or 40 pages of his mess of a book. It isn't the least bit scary or even suspenseful. Instead, it's predictable dreck, weakened even further by the totally unnecessary introduction about half-way through of two of the Star Wars universe's most well-known characters. This was the point at which I really began to doubt whether or not I was going to be able to continue to read Star Wars novels, since they do seem to be getting progressively worse. Hopefully, though, Death Troopers will mark the low point: it's almost hard to imagine how they can get much worse.

Abyss by Troy Denning: Yes, I'm a glutton. You would think Death Troopers would have turned me off Star Wars novels for awhile. You might also think that, given the disappointment of Outcast, I might think twice about reading the follow-up novel. But sometimes, habit takes over, and the habit of getting and reading Star Wars novels as soon as they come out is a hard one to break. This series, however, might just do it. This second novel in the new series is every bit as boring and contrived as was the first one.

Heretic by Bernard Cornwell: The final novel in the Grail Quest series finds Thomas on the run even from his own people, having chosen to save a beautiful woman comdemned by the Church to burn for heresy. (Two common themes of Cornwell's books are his hero's weaknesses for beautiful women and his disdain for the medieval Church.) The series is brought to a close very nicely in this third book. Fans of medieval historical fiction should definitely check out all three books in this series.

Privileged Information by Stephen White: White's first novel introduces Gregory, Purdy, and the other characters about whom I already knew a great deal, thanks to reading the later books. The story here is interesting enough, putting Gregory not in physical peril as most of his other books do but rather in professional peril, but the ending is, as usual, unsatisfying.

Higher Authority by Stephen White: An interesting twist on the Gregory novels puts Gregory's then-finance Lauren Crowder at the center of a mystery involving the Mormon Church. You'll learn a lot about Mormon theology here, which I did find interesting, but the mystery is a bit flat, and need I comment on the ending?

The non-fiction books:

A Whole New Mind by David Pink: This very interesting book challenges the traditional "right-brain" versus "left-brain" idea by discussing how almost all activities actually involve both sides of the brain. The most interesting bit from the book, however, dealt with the author teaching himself to draw. The reasons why most people have such a hard time drawing faces are that we tend to put the eyes too high up (the eyes are in fact exactly in the middle of our heads), and we tend to draw the eyes either too big or too small (the width of the eyes is actually the same as the distance between the eyes.)

Genghis: Life, Death and Resurrection by John Man: After completing Igullden's Genghis books, I wanted to learn more about the "real" history, only to discover that biographies of this oh-so-important figure are few and far between. Man's biography is as accessible as any. The first two-thirds or so of the book are good, being as they comprise the actual biography. Unfortunately, the books veers off-course after that, becoming a sort of personal travel journal of the author's adventures through Mongolia.

Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough: The Michael Mann movie of the same title inspired me to check out this book. Fortunately, the movie is only very loosely based on the book. The movie focuses on Johnny Depp as John Dillenger, but the book is a broader look at the pivotal years in which Dillenger, Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, the Barkers, and several other gangs ran rampant across America. More important than the criminals, though, were the law enforcement agents who pursued and ultimately captured or killed almost all of them. At the start, the FBI is a collection of incompetant rookies who consistently allow the bad guys to get away. At the end, only two years later, it had been transformed into the professional crime fighting force that we know today. It's a history much more fascinating than what is shown in the movie.

Disneyland: Little-known Facts about Well-known Places by David Hoffman: We're taking the kids to the Happiest Place on Earth in February, and when we go this time we'll know to always go to the food line the furthest to the left, since it is consistently shortest, and to ride the purple teacup, which spins the fastest, and to get in the line at the Matterhorn on the right, which leads to a faster, longer ride. These facts and more are outlined in this great little book.

The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland: In 800, Christianity was still little more than a sect practiced in a few corners of Europe, and the continent was divided into a series of tiny fiefdoms rules by petty warlords. By 1100, the whole of the continent had been converted to Christianity, and the nation-states we know and recognize today, including England, France and Spain, were established and on their way to becoming the dominant powers in the world. This history chronicles these pivotal centuries, and discusses the rise of the papacy, the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, and much more. It's a fascinating period that is brilliantly told by Holland.

Defenders of the Faith by James Reston, Jr.: I was first introduced to Reston years ago with his Warriors of God, a history of the conflict between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade (although some readers might be more familiar with him thanks to his being portrayed by Sam Rockwell in last year's Nixon/Frost). Here, Reston takes on another infamous west versus east conflict, that of Emperor Charles V and Suleyman the Magnificent. Interestingly, just as these two great leaders were moving head-long into a clash that could decide the fate of Europe, each was also dealing with conflict and heresy at home: devout Catholic Charles was fighting Martin Luther's reforms and Henry VIII's marital woes, while Suleyman had to deal with the rise of heresy in his empire as well. The long-term impacts of the clash still resonate today: it was in this period that the power of the pope was weakened, both by Luther and Henry and also Charles himself (whose army sacked Rome), while Suleyman's conquest of the Balkans laid the foundations of the religious strife that led to the bloody Balkan wars only a decade ago. While I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I did Warriors of God, it was nonetheless a fascinating read.

The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 3 by Scott Kelby: In a perfect world, ever digital SLR would include copies of the three volumes of Kelby's Digital Photography books. This being a less-than-perfect world, you'll just have to settle with buying them separately. But buy them you should. Not only will they teach you a lot you didn't know about your camera, they will also teach you how to take better pictures and become a better photographer.

So there it is, my reading list for 2009. I've already started on books for next year (my arbitrary decision is to include books I finish each year, rather than those that I start in a given year.) I'm already working on two books I got for Christmas: The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson and Cold Zero by Christopher Whitcomb, but you'll need to wait until next December to read what I think of them.

Word 2010?s Navigation Pane

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:52:00 -0600

I've been using Office 2010 for several months now. I'm not sure what combination of lucky circumstances combined to have Microsoft invite me to be on an early "technical preview" of the beta, but what the heck.

My first impressions were decidedly un-impressed. The interface is mostly the same as that of Office 2007. (For the record: I very much like the Office 2007 interface. I'll admit it takes some getting used to, but it's mostly an improvement.) Outlook has been given a facelift to match the rest of the Office suite. The File menu (what Microsoft called the "Office Button" in 2007 has been renamed back to the more appropriate "File Menu" this time around) takes over the whole screen ? which I'm not sure I like ? but has some useful additions. I am particularly a fan of the new Print dialog, which at long last includes Print Preview.

Mostly, however, I just dug in and started working in Word 2010. When I said above that I wasn't overly impressed it wasn't because of anything partiularly wrong with the software; I just didn't see much that was different. Because its interface was, as I mentioned, mostly the same as the 2007 interface, I didn't really spend much time playing around trying to discover new features. Okay, I'll be honest. I didn't spend any time looking for new things. Thus, I was pretty shocked this week when I stumbled upon what has to be the single coolest feature of Office 2010.

First, some background. Over the last three years, I've spent a lot of time in Word, an obvious side effect of writing books. Quite often, I thank the years I spent teaching Word, since there is no doubt that being a "power user" makes my life much easier today.

My books all have to follow very specific formatting rules. My publisher provides me with a template that I use for writing. The template is actually nothing more than an empty Word document with a bunch of predefined styles. Back when I used to teach Word regularly, I would tell my students that using and understanding styles was the single most important thing to know about Word. With the introduction of the Navigation pane, styles just became even more useful.

The Navigation Pane is in fact something that I stumbled across purely by accident, thanks to another change that was made. I recently had cause to do a find and replace in one of the chapters of my latest book. Word has long had separate shortcuts for Find (ctrl-F) and Replace (ctrl-H); however, since both traditionally occupied the same dialog box, I have always used the ctrl-F shortcut, even when I needed Replace. I did this mostly because every other program in which I regularly use Find and Replace combines them into a single dialog, with ctrl-F as the shortcut. So, when I went to use the feature in 2010, I was a bit shocked when ctrl-F did not open the normal dialog box, but instead, this strange Navigation Pane suddenly appeared down the right side of my screen. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out where the heck Replace was, before finally determining that that functionality hadn't been moved from its original location along with Find. (That does mean that unfortunately I'm going to have to train myself to use ctrl-H from now on for Replace, which is the one bad point in this saga.)

I quickly discovered a nice feature of the new Find in word: it now searches as you type. For instance, in the picture below, I only needed to type "bur" for it to find Burke, the fictional realty company used in the class. It also displays the results more like a search engine, giving a few words or sentences to either side of the found term, and allowing you to click to jump to that spot in the document. Both the search-as-you-type and display of the results should make finding instances of terms in Word much, much easier and far nicer than the old method, whereby you had to keep repeatedly clicking the "Find Next" button to get to the next result.

(Due to confidentiality agreements, I can't show anything from the book, so I'm using a practice file from a Word class for these screenshots.)

Find, however, isn't what's great about the Navigation Pane. Instead, it's the other two tabs that make this feature so nice. The middle tab is a Browse Pages feature. If you've ever looked at a PDF document in Adobe Acrobat, you'll be familiar with this: it shows a small thumbnail of each page in the document. Again, you can simply click on a thumbnail to jump to that point in the document.

The other tab (which is actually the first tab, since I'm doing this in reverse order) is what really got my attention. I'm currently writing a book in Wiley's Bible series. As such, each chapter has a series of main headings, with one and sometimes two levels of headings below each main heading. The first page of each chapter has a list of the main topics, and the last page, a bulleted summary. In both cases, I need to be sure to go through the chapter and be certain that each topic is in the list. Prior to discovering the Navigation Pane, that required a ton of scrolling up and down through the chapter. Now, thanks to this feature, I won't have to do that anymore.

This first tab shows the Outline view. Word has long had the ability to read its Heading styles and generate an outline from them. In fact, for many years you've been able to take that outline and automatically generate a table of contents or even a PowerPoint presentation from it. However, from the work I need to do, it still wasn't terribly useful, as it was a completely separate view that only displayed the outline levels. In Word 2010, they've taken that outline view and placed it in the Navigation Pane, where it is more easily accessible. It's also really useful, since you can simply click on a heading in the view and jump right to that point in the document.

Another issue I've been having throughout the development of the book is numbering figures. In each chapter, I need to reference each figure sequentially. For example, the first figure in chapter 7 would be 7.1, the second 7.2, and so forth. My problem is that often I'll add a figure, and then write for quite awhile before I hit the next one. By that point, I can't quite recall which number I'm on, so again, I had to start scrolling up the document to find it. Even more challenging was the editing process: if I add several figures in the middle of a chapter, I not only have to figure out what number to use to start, but then be sure that every subsequent figure gets renumbered as well.

That problem is now gone as well. The Navigation Pane is set to work with Word's outline level, which is part of a style definition. This again is nothing new ? it's just been made more useful. Because Wiley was already requiring that I format the figure references with a style, all I needed to do was to go into the style definition and add that the figure style was part of the outline. Once I did that, each of my figure references appears in the Navigation pane as well, meaning that I can tell at a glance which number I'm on and as easily tell if any figures have incorrect numbers.

It's impossible for me to tell exactly how much time this feature is going to save, but it'll be a lot. For me, there's no question that this feature alone will justify the cost of upgrading to Office 2010 when it is finally released.

13,375 miles

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:40:00 -0600

This month has been absolutely insane. I've been on the road more than I've been home, and I've hardly had any time off. Yikes! Given that I haven't been a good blogger lately, I thought I'd share a few things I've picked up this month about airlines.

The travel began on Oct. 3, when I flew down to LA to attend the Community Summit before MAX. Most folks who know me likely know that I run an Adobe User Group and that I'm an Adobe Community Expert. I get a lot of folks asking why I invest a lot of time and money into those two things when I'm not getting paid, and I can sum it up in one word: community. Through the User Group and Community Expert programs, I've had the opportunity to meet and become friends with an amazing group of people around the nation.

A few years ago, Adobe began a tradition of holding a Community Summit, where all of the User Group Managers and Community Experts could get together, learn new things, and more important (at least to me) socialize and network. This year, the decision was made to hold the Summit on the day before MAX. While I was quite disappointed when I found out that I would not get to attend MAX itself (especially when I learned that missing MAX meant missing Mark Hamill), I decided early on that I would fly down to LA for the Summit.

As I almost always do when I fly to LA, I took Southwest. While I may joke that they are "Greyhound with wings", they really do what they do well. I'm discovering that they manage to provide more in their "no-frills" approach to travel than many of their competitors do with the "frills". So I am and will likely remain a big fan of Southwest.

The reason I couldn't attend MAX was that I had accepted a teaching assignment in Fort Lauderdale, beginning Monday morning - the day after the Summit. So I made arrangements to fly from LA to Fort Lauderdale. I had heard people raving about AirTran, and since they met my two main requirements, cheap and at the time I needed, I decided to go with them. And I regretted it.

First off: I'm glad that some airlines are waking up that it's the 21st century and installing WiFi on their planes. But you know what? On a 4 or 5 hour flight, WiFi doesn't do me a lick of good without power. To me, offering WiFi on a flight without installing power jacks at the seats is like eating pizza without being able to drink Coke. I'm supposed to be excited that I can pay to surf the Internet and drain my battery even faster? Really?

And second: you want to know something that Southwest does right? Comfort. Maybe it's a Boeing thing: Southwest's fleet is made up entirely of 737s, while my AirTran flight was an Airbus A320. But whatever the reason, the seat wasn't comfortable at all. And I was in First Class to boot!

To be fair, they did have one thing I liked - satellite radio at the seat. It's nice to have a ton of channels, instead of the 5 or 6 that "real" airlines offer.

When the time came to return home, I thought I had booked a flight on United to come home. But it turns out that I didn't, thanks to "code-share", which is airline speak for "screw customers over." Because you see, there is one airline that I already know I hate, so much so that when I search for fares, I immediately ignore theirs: US Airways. So imagine my surprise when I go to check in and discover that the flight I had booked via United.com, the flight I had paid United for, was in fact a US Airways flight. Screw you, United.

(And on a side note: when I tried to check in on United.com, I got a message that said, "Your flight is being handled by another carrier, and you need to check in on their site." That was it. Notice what's missing there? Really, United? It's that damn hard to tell me which airline I need to check in on? Maybe even provide a link? So again, screw you, United.)

The flight home was fine, even if I was flying on the World's Worst Airline, and even if I was still feeling slighted by having been screwed over by the winner of the World's Worst Customer Service Award, 50 years and counting... The upside was that I flew through Philadelphia, which to the best of my knowledge I had never been to before.

I got home from my LA-Ft. Lauderdale trip on Thursday. I spent Friday with the kids, and then Kelley and I got up at stupid o'clock to drive to San Francisco and catch our flight to Seattle. Why SF, you ask? Well, because we had been talking about a trip for a long time, and then found out that Virgin America had $49 each way fares to Seattle. So that settled it. The only catch is that we had to fly out of SFO.

Virgin America is, of course, the domestic off-shoot of Virgin Atlantic. They only fly to a few cities here in the US, all of them along one of the coasts. So I bet that I lot of people haven't flown them. But if you get the chance, do it. They rock. They really make flying an "experience" again.

What's so cool? Well, for starters, the plane itself. The interior lights are pink and purple. Seriously. Boarding a VA flight is like boarding some sort of space ship. Second, in SFO, they had a special boarding process: of course they started with First Class and handicapped folks, but then, rather than boarding back-to-front, they said that anyone who was travelling light - anyone whose only carry-on was a backpack or purse or something similar that could fit under the seat - could board. Then, they had the people with the rollers. So that was cool. (Well, I thought it was cool because we got to board early, but still...)

Every seat has one of those little TV screens, and you can watch live satellite TV, listen to a wide variety of music, and even play games. All for free. (They do have pay-per-view movies as well.) You can also watch a map of your flight. And it's all controlled from a remote in the armrest that actually comes out, so you don't have to contort yourself around to use it.

They offer WiFi, which I assume you have to pay for. But guess what? They also have power. Real, normal power jacks, as well as USB jacks. At every seat. Kel and I were able to spend the entire flight watching movies on her laptop, without having to worry about the battery.

I actually think that Virgin America rocks so much that, once they begin service to Ft. Lauderdale next month, I'm going to seriously consider taking the extra time to get to SF just so I can fly with them. I know that that seems silly, but time on a flight or train tends to be my most productive time. While I appreciate and use the 2 hours I can get on battery, being able to write for the entirety of a 5 hour cross-country flight would be awesome.

After our return from Seattle (we also went up to Olympic National Park, Victoria and Vancouver, and loved it), I got to be home for a whopping 3 days. Then began my Two Weeks From Hell (which isn't even over yet...)

My hellish schedule was entirely my fault. Let me explain. I had agreed to do a class in Ft. Lauderdale on the Wednesday - Friday of that week; shortly thereafter, agreed to the class I'm currently teaching in SF the following week (today through Wednesday). A bit later, I heard from both of those training centers that the classes had low attendance and would be unlikely to run. So when I was offered a class on the Monday and Tuesday of last week, and the Thursday of this week, I took them, assuming that those would be the only three days I would work in that two-week span.

In addition, I had applied for and been accepted as a speaker at BFlex and BFusion, a conference sponsored by the University of Indiana and hosted at their campus in Bloomington, IN. The conference was Saturday and Sunday. Things were looking OK: I would teach Monday and Tuesday, fly to Indianapolis on Friday, do the conference, come home Monday, and teach Thursday. Not a bad two weeks.

But then, within the span of about two days, I heard from both of those other training centers. Despite the low enrollments (2 students each, as it turned out), both centers had decided to run the classes. So now, I would be teaching in Sacramento on Monday and Tuesday. Somehow I would have to get from Sacramento to Ft. Lauderdale Tuesday night to teach starting Wednesday morning. Then Friday, I would fly to Indianapolis and drive to Bloomington (about an hour south), only to drive back to Indy Sunday night to fly to San Francisco and teach Monday - Wednesday. I'd then come home Wednesday night, and teach in Sac again Thursday. In essence, 11 straight days of work, in 4 cities on opposite sides of the country. Sound exhausting? Yeah.

The most efficient way to fly from Sacramento - Ft. Lauderdale - Indianapolis - San Francisco, I discovered, was to book a series of one-way tickets. And thus began my little Odyssey: six flights in as many days, on three different airlines.

I began by getting from Sacramento to Ft. Lauderdale Tuesday night. This time, I picked another airline I had heard nice things about: JetBlue. Unfortunately, all you need to do is go reread that paragraphs above about AirTran, and replace references to AirTran with JetBlue. The only difference? JetBlue didn't have the satellite radio, but they do have satellite TV in the seat back in front of you.

I flew from Sacramento to Long Beach, the world's strangest airport. No jet bridges - you board the planes via ramps - and the airport isn't even a single building. I actually had to walk outside to get from one set of gates to the next, and all of those gates are housed in what really look like temporary buildings.

At about 9:30 at night, my flight left for Ft. Lauderdale, due to arrive at 5:30 AM. Yup - I'd be flying all night. If you haven't done that before, let me assure you that it is exactly has horrible as it sounds.

My Ft. Lauderdale to Indiapolis flight was on Delta, so that of course meant that I had to change planes in Atlanta. I seriously wonder if it's even legal to fly Delta without a stop in Atlanta. This was a nice enough flight - it was a 757, and they let me choose an exit row seat when I checked in, and didn't charge me for it. (I assume that that was a mistake, and that whomever was responsible for missing this chance to milk customers out of more money has been fired.) Once I arrived in Atlanta, I headed to my gate, thinking I had 2 hours to kill, but then I noticed that there was another flight leaving for Indy in only 20 minutes. Figuring there wasn't any harm in asking, I went to that gate, and got right on board the flight. That ended up meaning that I was checking into my hotel in Bloomington at about the time I had originally been scheduled to arrive in Indy.

My homeward bound flight was on United. Yeah, I know - why do I do that to myself? Well, in this case there wasn't a choice. It turns out that for some stupid reason, you can get a late-evening flight (due to the time the conference ended and the time needed to drive to Indy, I wasn't able to get a flight that left before 8pm) from Indianapolis to Sacramento on a Sunday night, but you can't fly to San Francisco. However, you have to be willing to fly United to do it. I know, it doesn't make sense, but in this case, I didn't have a choice.

There was a bright spot: when I bought the seats, I was given the opportunity to upgrade to First Class for only $50, and knowing how tired I'd be by then, I took it. When I went to check in this time, I was of course surprised that I wasn't being told to go to some other airline. Just as you must always go through Atlanta if you're on Delta, flying from anywhere to anywhere in the East on United means a stop in Chicago. Out flight was fast, and actually arrived about 20 minutes early, which was awesome since I knew that I only had 20 minutes scheduled between my flights, but of course it's against corporate policy at United to do anything nice for customers, so they made us sit on the tarmac. Not for 20 minutes, mind you, but 30. I sprinted off the plane, only to discover that I would need to wait 10 minutes to catch the shuttle to the other concourse. Chicago, it seems, figures that even if the airport is insanely busy (as it was that night), they only need a single 14 passenger van to serve as the shuttle between concourses. Ugh. But in the end, I made my flight, all went well, and I got home.

I got home, that is, at 12:15 AM, only to drop immediately into bed since I needed to wake up at 4 to make my train to SF, since the stupid airlines couldn't get me directly to San Francisco. Grrr...

So anyway, here's my breakdown. I've done a total of 13 legs of flights this month, on 7 different airlines. According to WebFlyer.com's mileage calculator, I flew for 13,375 miles. (The really bad thing about flying all those different airlines is that those miles are scattered across 7 different frequent flyer programs.)

My rankings of the airlines:

Virgin America. They freaking rock. Five stars out of five.
Southwest. They do what they do well. Three and a half stars out of five.
Delta. For a "traditional" airline, they still seem to get you where you need to go, so long as you need to go through Atlanta. They do nickel-and-dime for most things, but again, I like the exit-row-without-a-charge thing. Three stars out of five.
JetBlue and AirTran. These two are all but indistinguishable. They're trying to market themselves as discount carriers like Southwest, but then they also want to be taken seriously. The resulting schizophrenia doesn't work. Two stars out of five.
United. Proof that companies can survive, and by all appearances thrive, purely on momentum. Have you seen United Breaks Guitars? Pretty much sums it up. (Here's the story behind it.) It would be nice, by the way, if United employed even a single web designer who actually knew what he or she was doing. Oh, and I forgot to mention something above: in First Class, they have the life preservers between the seats, which results in a great big box under the seats. This means that there isn't actually the normal amount of room under the seats for your carry-on. That's right: you pay extra for less room. Nice. One star out of five.
US Airways. There's really nothing at all I can say about them that's even vaguely polite. So I won't. Zero stars out of five.

In closing, let me just say that I can't wait until I get home from work on Thursday and can relax, at long last.

Speaking at BFlex in October

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:40:00 -0600

I have been invited to speak at BFlex at the end of October.

BFlex is a full-day of hands-on-training on all things Flex. I will be doing a session on Flash Catalyst. While there are a lot of tutorials out there on Catalyst, and conferences and user group meetings have been awash with hour-long overviews of it, this is going to be one of the first opportunities for people to really take time and go in-depth with this exciting new product.

BFlex will take place on Sunday, October 25. The day before, Saturday, is BFusion, a full day of hands-on ColdFusion sessions. Both are being sponsoring by the University of Indiana in Bloomington, and are being held on their campus. It only costs $10 per person per day - an incredible deal. If you plan to be in the Bloomington area at the end of October, come on out and join us!

ActionScript: Your visual blueprint for creating interactive projects in Flash CS4 Professional

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:11:00 -0600

Last night, when I got home, I had a big box waiting on my porch ...

It is available now from Amazon and your local bookstore. Enjoy!

Adobe BrowserLab and Flash Catalyst

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:13:00 -0600

This week, I did a user group meeting on two exciting new technologies from Adobe - BrowserLab and Flash Catalyst. Briefly, BrowserLab is a new hosted service (meaning that it's an online tool hosted by Adobe) that allows you to test web pages in a variety of browsers that you may not have installed on your computer. Currently, it tests on Firefox 2 and 3 and IE 6 and 7 on XP, and Firefox 2 and 3 and Safari 3 on Mac. So as a Windows user running IE8 on Vista, I at last have a way to find out what my page looks like on IE 6 and on a Mac. Pretty cool.

Flash Catalyst is the newest tool in the Flash Platform. Catalyst allows you to take designs created in Photoshop or Illustrator and easily convert them to Flex-based Flash applications.

You can view the recording of the meeting if you want to get more information on either technology and to see my demos.

Because the Catalyst demos ended up taking longer than I had planned, we are going to continue the discussion about Catalyst at our August meeting. This session will also be recorded, and I'll post the details then.

Comment Moderation

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:40:00 -0600

Sorry, but I have been forced to turn on moderation for comments here. Nothing against any of the legitimate folks - it's the ***hole spammers who are, once again, ruining things for everyone else.

Rest assured that the only thing I'm going to be blocking is spam. I appreciate the back-and-forth that comes from comments - even the negative ones - so I won't be rejecting anything other than spam.

Twitter Spam: I don't get it

Wed, 06 May 2009 11:10:00 -0600

Those who know me know that I've become quite the Twitter addict. Tweetdeck is one of three apps - Firefox and Outlook being the others - that are always running on my machine. In fact, I check Twitter far more frequently than I check email.

For those that don't know, Twitter is what is called "micro-blogging". Essentially, you say what's on your mind ... as long as what's on your mind can be said in under 140 characters. Why do I do it? I think that Twitter is the ultimate social media tool. It's like Facebook in a way, in that it allows you to connect and stay in touch with people. But it's like Facebook without all of the extra crap. No, I don't want to join you in Mob Wars. No, I don't want your Flair. I just want to know what's going on in your life. So when you sign up with Twitter, you not only start having people follow you; that is, they can log in and see your posts. The much more important aspect of it, at least to me, is that you also choose to follow other people. I follow a few celebrities, such as Wil Wheton of Star Trek:The Next Generation fame, John Cleese from Monty Python, and Felicia Day from The Guild.. (My dad thinks that their posts are actually done by publicists; in the case of Cleese, that's likely true, but I think that both Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day are geeky enough to be posting for themselves.)

But following celebrities (and for the record: you have my permission to ban me for life if I ever follow Ashton Kutcher or Oprah) isn't what it's about. Twitter is about staying in touch with friends I've made at Adobe and people with whom I've connected at conferences. It's about connecting with two cousins: because of a sizable age difference, we were never close growing up, but thanks to Twitter, I know have a relationship with both for the first times in our lives. It's also turned out to be a good communication tool with local friends and co-workers.

However, like everything else on the internet, there are folks out there who seem hell-bent on ruining Twitter for the rest of us. Ever since Oprah got onto Twitter, I've seen a huge spike in my followers. All of them are quite obviously spammers. Every radio station in Sacramento follows me. A bunch of "single 22-year old" women follow me. But here's what I don't get. One of the great things about Twitter is that it's automatically set up to filter out the noise. I only see posts from those whom I choose to follow. So then what's the point? If you're a spammer and you're filling your Twitter feed with a bunch of worthless BS, who cares? I'd have to be stupid enough to follow you to see your crap. So then where's the business in it? Yes, Twitter is free, and yes it only takes a few seconds to create a post. But still ... I may be good at ignoring them, but at least I actually see your spam emails.

I guess it's just one of those mysteries in life...

Ems versus Percents

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:53:00 -0600

Recently, a post came through on the Yahoo! Dreamweaver list about ems versus percents for sizing in CSS. Basically, the question was whether or not there was actually a difference between them and whether or not it mattered which one you use. This comes up quite a bit, and I can completely understand how it can be confusing, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on the issue. I want to start with an explanation of what, exactly, an "em" is. An em is a unit of measurement defined as the height of the given font; specifically, it is (at least in theory) the height of a capital "M" in the font. In practice, that means that one em = the font size, so if you have your font size set to 16 pixels, 1em = 16px. If your font is set to 12 points, then 1em = 12pt. However, in 16px text, 100% is, obviously, 16 pixels. If your font is at 12 points, then 100% is 12pt. And that's the root of the question: if 1em = the size of the font, and 100% = the size of the font, then what's the difference? The answer is that when dealing just with font sizes, there isn't a difference. If you have your body's font set to the browser default (16px for most browsers), then there is no difference at all between setting your h1 to 120% or to 1.2em. They are identical. Box sizes, though, are a different creature altogether. Percentage widths on a box refer not to the size of the font, but to the browser window. So if I say that I want my "mainContent" div to have a width of 80%, I'm saying that I want it to span 80% of the browser window, however big that may be. But it's also legal to say that I want my "mainContent" div to be set in ems. So I might decide to set the div to, say, 48em. And here's where the power of ems comes in. Assuming that I'm using that browser-default 16px, then a box with a width of 48em would be 768 pixels wide. But ... and here's the trick behind using ems ... if you then resize your *text*, the box will also resize. Why, one might ask, would you want to do that? Quite simply, for accessibility. It's not about YOU, the designer, resizing text. Rather, it's about tying your design to the browser's resize text functionality - an important accessibility tool. You can actually see this in action. Using Firefox*, visit both cnn.com and yahoo.com. On CNN, resize your text (View -> Zoom -> Zoom Text Only, then View -> Zoom -> Zoom In or ctrl-+)**. Then do the same thing on Yahoo's homepage. What you'll see is that CNN's layout breaks pretty quickly, since their layout is pixel-based, but Yahoo's does not - their boxes expand with the text. *You need to use Firefox for the above example because IE's text resizing feature only allows for resizing if the font size on the page is set in percents or ems, and CNN's is not, so the text will not resize. ** Until very recently, Firefox defaulted to only "zooming" text when using ctrl-+ and ctrl--. I'm not precisely sure when they switched to zooming the whole page (including graphics), which IE has been doing since version 7 was released, but I know that it was very recent - one of the dot releases since 3. I'm personally not a fan of zooming the whole page. If I'm on one of those blogs designed by a moron who is using 3 point text and I need to make the text bigger to read it, I don't want the whole page to expand to the point that I have to scroll left and right and to the point that the images pixellate, but the browser designers forgot to ask my opinion before they changed the feature. So I hope that helps explain things a bit. By the way, in DW CS3 and CS4, the starter pages contain a bunch of layouts called "elastic" that size their boxes using ems for exactly this reason, so you might try playing with them to see what happens. For example, change the font size in the CSS for one of the sidebars and watch what happens to its width. The book "Mastering CSS Using Dreamweaver CS3" (or the CS4 version) has a chapter on using these layouts. (Stephanie Sullivan, one of the co-authors of the book, actually created all of those starter pages, so she knows of what she speaks.)

The two biggest mistakes made by designers with hyperlinks

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 18:00:00 -0600

The web was originally developed, at least in part, to provide a means by which documents can be linked together. Hyperlinking is one of the very first things you learn when you get started in web design. Yet, as with a lot of other things, a lot of people consistently get it wrong when working with links.

I'm going to cover two basic, but common hyperlinking mistakes here. The first is used to be much more common than it is today, but it still exists: not using logical text for the hyperlink. "Click here" was perhaps the first cliche of the web - a sure sign that a designer wasn't really thinking through their pages. I hesitate to go right out and call it lazy design, but ...

One of the blogs I follow every day is scottkelby.com. Scott, in case you're not familiar with him, is the President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He's also the best-selling computer book author out there. More important, at least in my eyes, is that Scott is also the grand-poobah when it comes to Photoshop knowledge. If you use Photoshop at any level and want to get better, you owe it to yourself to so as I have done and add his blog to your daily read list. I have nothing but complete respect for Scott, but that said, there is one thing that I wish Scott would change: his approach to links. Take a look at the screen shot below, taken from Scott's blog today (March 6, 2009):

See what he's doing there? He's not using the words "click here", but he might as well be with that "Here's the link" at the end. What purpose does that serve?

There are several problems with the "click here" or "here's the link" approach. To begin with, it's a bit insulting to your reader, if you think about it. They know they're supposed to click; they know it's a link. So why tell them. It's kind of like giving someone directions to a store in the mall by saying, "OK, so you need to go out in the mall, turn right, and then go downstairs. Oh, and by the way. That big hole in our wall? That's the door. You need to go through it to get started."

Instead, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to just link the relevant phrase in your text to the page in question? Take the second paragraph from scottkelby.com above: instead of the useless "Here's the link" stuff, why not just link the words "check out the work of photographer Loretta Lux."

That approach is also a lot cleaner. It reads better. It's more accessible: a screen reader will often present all of the links on a page to the user separately. Often, a blind user on Scott's page would be presented with a list of links that all said "Here's the link", and have no way of knowing which one belongs to what text. Oh, and one more key element: search engines like Google do a lot of their indexing based on the text provided by links. Having a site as prominent as Kelby's link to yours would be a big boon for search engine rankings, but unfortunately for Ms. Lux, most of that boon is lost because Google is going to index the words "here's the link" with her page, not the much more important words like her name or the fact that she's a photographer.

So please, take a moment to think about your link text. I'm going to go so far as to say that there is never, ever a time when you need meaningless "click here" text. If you think you have an example where it's simply impossible to word the text differently to get rid of it, let me know in the comments. I'm willing to bet that I can come up with a rewording that will make more sense.

The second problem I want to mention here, and the one that actually inspired this post, is much newer, and unfortunately becoming much more prominent these days. Ironically, in many ways, it's an offshoot of fixing the problem above. If you are going to have words in the middle of a sentence serve as your link, please make sure that the text is obviously different! Here's the example that made me decide I needed to write this post:

There are two links in that paragraph. Can you find them? If you were to visit the actual page from which the screen shot was taken, you could of course hover over each word with your mouse, waiting for it to change into the hand and let you know there's a link. This is in fact exactly what I had to do when I visited the site: I could tell from the context that there should be a link in there somewhere, but I certainly couldn't see anything, so I had to start mousing over stuff. Seriously? In what design school, exactly, is it being taught that you should make your links into some sort of Easter egg hunt?

In the original design of HTML, links were to be blue and underlined. Blue was chosen most likely because it is the darkest color that is most obviously not black, while underlining links made sense because no real designer would use underlining for anything else. But both were there because it was understood that it's important that links stand out: that there be contrast between them and the surrounding text.

Link many designers, I'm not a huge fan of underlining links on things that are obviously navigation: look at the sidebar to the right of this article, and you'll see that the link's aren't underlined. That's because I believe that it's obvious from the context that those are links, and because in every case, the entirety of the text in question is a link.

The body of a document in a difference story, however. Assuming that you read and took to heart the whole first portion of this post, you know by now that your links should be embedded seamlessly within your text. However, they still need to stand out. So I will always underline the text of the links in the body of a page when I create it from scratch, as well as making them an obviously different color. Rob Sommers, however, pointed out (correctly) that this blog actually contradicts that, since as you can clearly see links in the body on this page are not, in fact, underlined. So the correct statement would be simpler: just make sure that the links are the page are nice and obvious. Underlining is probably best; making the text bold I think works well, too (although if you disagree - if you think that the links within the text are hard to find - please let me know in the comments.)

So there you have it. Rule #1 for linking: link meaningful text, instead of garbage like "click here" or "here's the link." And rule #2: Never make your users have to search for that link within the text.

Dr. Syn

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:44:00 -0600

One of my favorite shows growing up was "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh." It was a 3-part mini-series produced by Disney, starring the recently-deceased Patrick McGoohan of "The Prisoner" fame. Originally produced in 1964 under the title "Dr. Syn", it's a kind of Robin Hood tale of a preacher in south-east England who, during the Napoleonic Wars, disguises himself as a scarecrow and runs a smuggling operation, the proceeds of which he gives to down-and-out locals.

You always have to be careful with shows you loved as kids, because frankly, few shows are able to stand the test of time. One of my favorite regular TV series as a kid was "Emergency", which I made the mistake of getting when it came out on DVD a few years ago. To preserve the memory, I've so far avoided getting "Land of the Lost" from Netflix.

I couldn't resist, though, when I saw that Disney had, at long last, release "Scarecrow" on DVD. I actually found it at Disneyland last weekend; I'm sure I could have hunted around and found it somewhere else, but I didn't want to wait.

When I saw it as a kid, I neither knew nor cared that it was already 20 years old. (I assume that I saw it on "Wonderful World of Disney"). I'm not sure precisely when I saw it, either, but I know that, when my family first went to Europe in 1983, one of the places I absolutely wanted to visit was Romney Marsh, where the show supposedly takes place.

We did in fact go to Romney Marsh (which, given the lack of smuggling scarecrows or even a marsh, was quite disappointing) and found in a little bookstore in some village in the area the books upon which the show was based. The seven book series, written by Russell Thorndike and published between 1915 and 1944, is really fairly bad. I've tried reading them several times, and like the Lord of the Rings, it's a series of books that I really want to like but that I just can't.

So back to the show. That series (which I remember being considerably longer than only 3 shows) that made such an impression on my ten, eleven or twelve year old mind is actually just as good today as I remember. I'm surprised, as I watch them now, how much of the show I actually do remember.

Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't appear to have this available: you can find it, but it says that the DVD release date in "unknown". The good news is that the DVD is available on Amazon, and it looks like the books have even been reprinted. If you enjoy action-adventure stories, you should definitely check these out.

Adobe Community Expert status renewed

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:13:00 -0600

I'm pleased to report that my status as an Adobe Community Expert has been renewed for another year. The Community Expert program is a way by which Adobe rewards folks like myself that spend time volunteering online to help other users. There are lots of benefits to being in the program, but the two biggest for me are that I have a connection to other experts, many of whom I've become friends with, and an insider access to Adobe, which is where I can get all of my up-to-date information (although often that information is covered by the non-disclosure agreement I signed when I first joined the program, so it's not always information I can share.)

Sierra MMUG Meeting - Weds. Feb 4, 6:30 PM Pacific - Adobe Video Tools

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:37:00 -0600

Tomorrow night is the monthly meeting of the Sierra MMUG, the Sacramento region's Adobe user group.

This month, we'll be doing an overview of Adobe's video tools. We'll be looking at recording live video using OnLocation, editing video in Premiere Pro, editing audio in Soundbooth, adding effects in After Effects, and finally creating menus and burning a DVD in Encore.

If you'll be in the Sacramento area, please join us. If not, feel free to join us online. Details of both the location of the meeting and the URL to log in online are on the group's website.

JVC TOD Format Update

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:43:00 -0600

My friend Olen reminded me that I didn't post the follow-up to the video camera problem, so here goes.

The retailer from which I bought it is R.C. Willey. I know they are based out of Salt Lake City, but I don't know how "national" they are. They are mostly a furniture store, but oddly they have a pretty good electronics department. When I took the camera back, I immediately asked for a manager. The nice woman at the front (they have a "greeter", sort of like at Walmart, but without the ridiculous blue vest). Anyway, she said that I just needed to go back to Customer Service and they could help me. All the way back, I was rehearsing in my head all of the arguments I needed to make to avoid the 15% fee. In the end, I wasted a lot of mental energy rehearsing it. As soon as I mentioned to the woman in customer service that I didn't feel that I should be required to pay the fee, she simply said, "OK. We'll waive it." That was it. So plus one point to them for that.

As a store - as a company - I think that Willey is really good. However, like any sales organization, they can occasionally hire really bad salesmen, which is unfortunately what I encountered almost immediately after leaving the customer service counter. I went back over the cameras and found another salesman. I explained the issue, and he had the gall to actually argue with me about whether or not JVC used a proprietary format. I tried to explain that I had spent several hours Saturday night dealing with it and Googling it, but he wouldn't believe it, because after all the little tag on the camera says that it records in MPEG2. That's right: he wasn't insisting that I was wrong because he knew better, but rather because of what the stupid tag on the camera said. Knowing by this point that I was dealing with a salesman who wasn't burdened by an overabundance of education, I simply pressed on, asking if it was alright if I tested a few cameras on my laptop. He said yes, but then commented that I was going to have a problem returning the camera I already bought. I explained that no, I didn't - I had explained the situation to customer service and they waived the fee. His response, and I only wish I was kidding: "Well, I guess if you sold that to them ..." Yup. He basically accused me of lying. A**hole. Needless to say, I promptly left after that remark.

I did head over to Fry's to see what they had, and actually found a helpful salesman there. (Finding a helpful salesman at Fry's is a rare occurrence indeed.) In the end, I decided to get ... nothing. I'm going to spend some time researching this further. I have some emails out to some video people I know whom I hope will be able to help recommend a good camera that will actually do what I need it to do.

Why do companies fight standardization; or, why you shouldn't buy a camcorder from JVC

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:41:00 -0600

My wife and I have been talking recently about buying a new camcorder. Our daughter has a school play coming up next week, so we decided it needed to be sooner rather than later. My wife finally decided that she just didn't care too much about the details of the camera, so I went out this afternoon to get one.

My first stop was Circuit City, since they're going out of business and I thought I might find a deal. They had a few HD cameras left, but in the end I decided to go to a different retailer. I chose this other store in part because I was nervous about spending that kind of money at a store that I know for a fact will be gone in a month, but also because I found what I thought was a helpful salesman at the other store.

The camera I bought was the JVC GZ-HD5. It's an HD camera with an internal hard drive for recording. I had thought I had done the necessary research before going to the store, but there was one key element I didn't look into, and that turns out to have been a huge mistake. (But in looking for solutions tonight, I know that this isn't something I would have been able to find in advance.) As all of my readers should know, I have a bit of a bias towards Adobe products. I'm getting into the whole realm of video editing in part because as an owner of the CS4 Master Collection, I have all of Adobe's video editing tools, including Premiere Pro and OnLocation. A big part of the reason why I want a camera at all is so that I can use and learn these tools.

And here's where the fun begins. It turns out that JVC is one of those damned fool idiotic companies that insist on making cameras that record in completely non-standard formats. In this case, their cameras record to a totally useless "TOD" format. And from a new round of research online, I've discovered that pretty much, only the POS software suite that comes with the camera can actually read or do anything with these files. Great. I spend $850 on a camera but can only use worthless tools to produce crappy DVDs that look as unprofessional as it's possible to look? Does that sound like a good plan to ANYONE outside of JVC's boardroom? Seriously? (Fun fact: the software tool that they provide to create DVDs has a menu item that says, and I kid you not: "Right to DVD". Yup. They can't even take the time to spell check their menus.)

In particular, no Adobe product recognizes the format. I found a tutorial online that shows how to use 3 other tools to re-encode the video so that it can be supported by Premiere at least, but that doesn't do me a damned bit of good - there's no way I'm spending several hours on each clip I need to import before I can even start editing it. And it doesn't let me use OnLocation.

You may have noted above that I didn't mention the name of the retailer. Here's why: I plan to take the camera back to the store on Monday (they aren't open Sundays) and get them to make things right. Why, you ask, do I think that they have any share of the blame here? Well, because when I was at the store, I specifically told that nice salesman that I was looking for a camera that I could use with Adobe OnLocation and Premiere. His response: "Well, if you were just a soccer mom off the street who didn't know anything about the software, I'd suggest a Sony. But since you need to use those tools, you need to go with the JVC." Yup. THEIR salesman suggested that I buy this exact camera specially because it was the best one to use with OnLocation and Premiere, when in fact it is the one brand of camera that will not work with those tools.. Like other electronics retailers, they have a 15% "restocking fee" on opened camcorders. So I'm not mentioning their name because, as I said, I hope that they will make it right. I'm going to take the camera in, ask to speak with a manager, and calmly explain the situation. I'm going to ask that he take this camera back, with no fee, and allow me to exchange it for the Sony model that will do what I need it to do.

So check back here on Monday. I will be revealing the retailer at that point. Hopefully, it'll be in the context of "this retailer is a good one, because they care about customer satisfaction and made it right"; and not "please do not shop at this store."

And either way, I would definitely recommend that if you're in the market for a camcorder, steer away from JVC. Even if you're not planning to use the Adobe products, rest assured that you will not want to use the software that comes with the camera, but that seems to be the only choice the company gives you.