Is the upgrade to Lion OS X worth it?
November 3rd, 2011 @ 7:21 PM

Apple released the newest update to the constantly growing OS X in Lion. I was skeptical at first after reading online reviews from Apple's App Store, but I finally gave in and forked up the 25 dollars to upgrade. The download and installation took a quick and painless thirty minutes. After completing the installation I left my computer to sit for a few hours, an important step after upgrading the operating system so it can re-index all of your files. When people give poor reviews based on lack of speed or improvements, their displeasure is usually self-inflicted.

One of the most noticeable changes to the OS are on the touchpad. Natural scrolling is the term associated with the new direction everything scrolls. Steve Jobs named it as such because it felt more natural to the fingertips, as it is with smartphones and tablets. The first thing I did when I started up Lion was open System Preferences and turn off natural scrolling. I prefer the scrolling on my computer to be the conventional way, different than that of my phone. I don't see anything wrong with the direction pages have always scrolled, so I don't see a need to change it now. There is something about scrolling the opposite direction on my touchpad that I didn't like. Sure, it would only take a few days to get used to, but I don't like the idea of having to switch to the old ways when I use a PC. Another upgrade related to scrolling was the springy kickback effect that occurs if you scroll past the top or bottom of the page. It's not much, but it's certainly one of the reasons why I appreciate Apple's design team for always going all out.

In the previous operating system, you could swipe 3 fingers up or down when in your internet browser to command page up or page down. This is no longer possible, unless you download BetterTouchTool. With this plugin you are able to create a custom gestures, such as 3 finger gestures allowing page up or down commands to be executed. Some of the other new gestures are being able to zoom in and out by pinching the touchpad like you would a smartphone, and also zooming by double tapping the touchpad with two fingers. In System Preferences you are able to set up what commands you would like executed with three or four finger swipes in most any direction.

One of the new features I use quite frequently is Mission Control. Mission Control is one of the biggest new features for OS X Lion, and it lives up to the hype. It is essentially Expose~ on steroids, as you can see a piece of every window from every running application, unless you have it minimized. In addition to that you can see all spaces and full screen apps that are running. In the same area where your other spaces show up, there is also a thumbnail for Dashboard. It is possible to remove the dashboard option, but I see no reason to. The spaces are so well integrated with the touchpad that all it takes to go from your home screen to a full screen iTunes app is a three or four finger swipe.

Other alterations worth noting in the new OS are full screen apps, FileVault 2, and the ability to pick up right where you left off after rebooting. I love the full screen apps. I immediately changed iTunes and Mail to full screen, and started using iCal just because it also had the option. Many native programs were redesigned to run in full screen mode, and everyone should give them a chance. In addition, the App Store also now has options to download full screen apps in their search criteria. FileVault was an atrocious disaster at first, but the second version is completely revamped. It was completely rebuilt, and is worth your time to look at for safe disk encryption. Lastly, when you restart or shut down your machine you now have the option to reopen your windows as you have them at power down. I've been waiting for this for years, so I don't have to shut down all my programs just to wait for them to be manually reloaded as I need them on startup.

Overall the new operating system is a good buy. Lion is well worth the 25 dollar upgrade, which is fairy cheap considering the prices of the last few. Apple claims to have over 250 new features, which is great, but most people will probably only ever use up to 25 of them. You should try to use as many as you can, and just enjoy the wonder of technology at its finest.

Future of portable technology
April 9th, 2011 @ 4:47 PM

The advancement of portable technology has been rapid in the past 10 years. The iPhone came out in 2007, and has since sparked a rise in smartphones. The popularity of smartphones led to the creation of tablets, more specifically the iPad. There's no question that Apple has been the leading pioneer in the category of portable technology. Samsung has recently released their version, the Galaxy Tab. This tablet runs the Android OS, which has shown to be the best competitor for Apple's iOS. I see the iPad as a very innovative product that will stay above the competition for the next few years. Apple also has product support that is second to none, which is why they will only have a few main competitors in the near future. They may be number 1 in the market for portable tablets, but I think Apple is currently second in the tight race for smartphones. The Android OS hasn't been around for near as long, but they have a great base with some excellent products already released.

I can remember back to when I was a freshman in high school, when the almighty iPhone was released. One of my friends bought it and flaunted it at school whenever he had the chance. Back in the flip-phone age, the iPhone was very impressive. Taking the capabilities of a personal computer and moving them into a handheld device was unheard of. You could see your SMS message in a casual chat-like application, without the business feel of a Blackberry. Surfing the internet on a 480x640 pixel screen never seemed so cool. The interface was beyond what was the current standard for cell phones. Some phones already had cameras, but the iPhone screen was so crisp and clear that it added a new dimension to mobile media. As the years passed, more people bought iPhones, and the upgrades that came with them. Now, over five years later, I look up before the start of my calculus class and see that everyone has our a smartphone. There were iPhones, Evos, Blackberrys, and even Palm Pres. It seems like everyone nowadays has a smartphone in their pocket. Some look at it as a product they cannot live without, and others use it as just a phone, and fail to use all the features it offers. I would bet that the majority of people only use their smartphones for social networking, whether it be text messaging or Facebook applications.

When I see someone holding an iPad or a Galaxy Tab, I see them holding the paper of the future. ESPN had a report that the Dallas Cowboys were considering scrapping their old playbooks, and using an iPad app instead. This would allow players to see the plays just as they would on paper, and even scroll through the pages like a book. Rather than drawing on a whiteboard, players and coaches could watch animations play out before their eyes on this new electronic binder. Instead of wasting countless amounts of paper, team personnel can simply connect to a server via WiFi and download the new plays for the week. This isn't the only potential simplification I see tablets making. On the topic of saving paper, as the world wants to "go green", college and maybe even high school textbooks could be replaced. They can be limited in use, just to allow students to use them for a certain application during classes. That eliminates the argument that students will just use them to play games rather than study. Restaurants could replace menus with iPads, as it could serve multiple purposes. You could view the menu and even place your dinner orders, and the waiter could simply exchange your meal for the tablet back. This could make printing out checks easier, and also provide some great family fun while waiting on food to cook. Newspapers are close to being discontinued altogether, so why not design a version specifically for tablets. You could recline back in your living room, and switch between the Dallas Morning News and New York Times while drinking coffee.

I'm sure some of these ideas have already been put to use, but a more global implementation could save money and time. There will always be arguments that a worldwide technology take over is a bad idea, but they're not always valid. People have argued that making text books and best selling novels available on handheld devices would put book stores out of business. This could happen eventually, but I see it as very unlikely. Maybe after the next generation of baby boomers comes around, but certainly not until then. There are still millions of people who read paper printed books because of problems with their eyes. Staring at an illuminated screen for hours is never good, and certainly takes a toll on your eyes. There is a fair balance, and people are aware of their limits. No one can keep staring at a screen if their eyes feel like their on fire.

Y2.011K
January 1st, 2011 @ 3:28 PM

Eleven years ago to this day, people were out of their minds, thinking the world as they knew it would end. And what could possibly be the reason for this mass chaos? The problem known as the Millennium Bug, or simply, Y2K. This issue pertained mainly to data storage systems that abbreviated four year dates to two year dates. It was anticipated then, that the year 2000 would be read by computers as the year 1900. Reactions ranged from not worried at all, to 2000 being the end of technology and the way economies were run. People were overbuying on non-perishable food items, and stocking up on bottled water and first-aid kits just incase everything collapsed on January first. The government and media played a large role in the over-hyping of Y2K, and it was almost a team effort. News reporters would formulate bogus stories about what could happen if technology shut down, which led to people thinking the worst possible thoughts imaginable. Then the government would come out the next with a statement saying that people should not fill up their bathtubs full of water at 11:59, because water might somehow get shut off. This went along with the media's nonsense and caused people to overbuy in groceries they normally wouldn't purchase in bulk. But lo and behold, the clock struck midnight, and as the new millennium began, everyones lives continued normally. And then, to the shock of the world, everyone woke up on January first to a perfectly normal day. The New Years Day Parade and Tournament of Roses Parade were in action as normal, and everyone went about their new year traditions. Only a few minor problems were found throughout the following months, which mainly involved coders having to change web scripts.

The reason for panic among PC users was fairly simple, but still gets overlooked by everyone. The simple concept behind the Y2K bug is that a long past of abbreviating dates from two to four digits has caught up at the turn of the century. The reason why lies in the backend of the Windows operating system. The BIOS (basic input-output system) is what tells the PC what the date is, and the operating system never asks twice. It uses the date given for all applications that run. This could include your email program, Microsoft Office, or any calendar applications. Your email program could be set to delete any emails that are found to be 100 years old. Microsoft Excel could be a hassle if you abbreviated any dates to two years, since it would initially change anything labeled "00" to "1900", if thats what BIOS was reset to. Any calendar or time management program could scratch any appointments made during 2000, since it would be read as 1900 and therefore already past. Macintosh operating systems don't use BIOS, and were more than likely to be unaffected by the date changes. Their system would add one to the current year of 1999, which is simply 2000. This all caused stress for Windows users, but it wasn't anything the everyday user could fix and avoid beforehand.

Happy New Year.

The fate of the Internet
December 15th, 2010 @ 8:18 PM

Tomorrow, December 16th, the US Sentate will be voting on a bill to increase the Department of Justice's authority over the Internet. This bill is known as the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), and was proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy (D). If passed, this bill will give the Attorney General the power to blacklist any domain name that he finds is "dedicated to infringing activities", as stated within the bill. This is quite broad, and it seems it was purposely written as so. According to the bill, the Attorney General can request to a court that a site be placed on this blacklist if infringement is a main theme to their website. This is not so bad, except that it is giving Eric Holder, our current Attorney General, too much power. He plays the role of God in determining which sites are placed on the blacklist, rather than meeting in court to decide upon the issue. Eric Holder is the former senior legal advisor for President Barack Obama's election campaign, and the same man who is seemingly over opninionated for his current place in office. This is the same Eric Holder who was opposed to the passing of the Patriot Act, claiming that it was "destructive in our struggle against terrorism." I'm not the biggest advocate of the Patriot Act, but I do know that it was designed for the sole purpose of fighting terrorism, making his accusations towards the Bush Administration outlandish. This is the same Eric Holder who claimed he would prosecute Californians who possess marijuana, regardless of whether or not the recently failed Proposition 19 bill passed. This would be impossible, seeing as that is a local government's right, something he has no business in. This is the SAME Eric Holder who describes our United States of America as "a nation of cowards." This man does not need any more power, especially any regarding the internet, which is a world-wide phenomenon. Shutting down an internet site would not only affect our country, but also the rest of the world. The blacklisted sites will be shut down from multiple points, including service providers, transaction providers, online ad vendors, and their respective domain name servers. Blocking a site from its domain name server will essentially remove it completely from the Internet. This could potentially have a huge impact on our economy. If sites such as DropBox, YouTube, or other high traffic sites were to be shut down, there are a multitude of consequences. PayPal loses business through donation and membership fees to those sites. Ad comapnies such as Google Adsense lose money from removed online ad space. DNS companies lose money on domain names, hosting space, and extra customer service products. This could have a massive snowball effect far beyond anything the senators could imagine. COICA has already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with a unanimous 19-0 vote. Tomorrow the full senate will decide on the passing of the bill, and possibly deciding the fate of certain websites. I can only imagine the cyber war that would insue if our goverment makes a wrong move.

Web 2.0 typography standards
October 25th, 2010 @ 5:49 PM

When writing text on a website, there are many things to consider. For some, these ideas have long been solidified in their design checklist. But for others, these concepts are new or difficult, and require much time and patience. The way text is layed out on a site can result in how many people stay long enough to read any of it. This article will go into depth and analyze factors such as text color and size, as well as margins and white space. These ideas reflect Web 2.0 blog concepts that are aimed to help those new to typography.

The most important things to consider are contrast and size. If your site visitors can't read your content, don't expect them to stay long. Contrast is the most important, because font size can always be adjusted manually. Black text on a white background is the best contrast you can get, but it doesn't always fit the flow of your website design. Finding the right color scheme of light and dark or warm and cool colors is sometimes the hardest part of design. Once your colors are set, don't let the text be unreadable. It is a good rule of thumb to not make your font size any smaller than 12 pixels. Typography in Web 2.0 gets very creative, and usually space is maximized with smaller fonts. The best way to maximize space is to make good use of the margins. Put a little extra space between paragraphs. Put some between the header and paragraphs. Put even more space between your articles or posts. People love to use their mouse wheel or touchpad to scroll up and down web pages. The best way to keep your Web 2.0 style with smaller fonts is to add more white, or negative, space on your page. This will give your page the illusion of more content being present on the active screen. With practice, it will become second nature to design your sites this way. Another important concept about any sort of typography is distinguishing between headers, sub-headers, and the content itself. A good example of this is a newspaper layout. Newspapers have headers with large fonts, sub-headers with a font size roughly half that of the header, and content with a comfortably readable sized font. In most of my designs, those three elements of an article all have different sizes and colors. Keeping a consistent spacing is also important to the aesthetic aspect of your content. If one paragraph is justified, the rest should match. Spacing can be added between letters CSS, which can be very helpful with certain font families.

Practicing these ideas in typography will help with consistency among projects. These concepts apply best for Web 2.0 designs featuring more text content than images, but could also be used for other general formatting. Text within graphic design is different, seeing as you should be more creative and original with your typographic designs. You have more freedom to do what you want then, as opposed to the web design community that has a certain standard for general layouts.

HTC Evo: Solving the bottomless battery
October 18th, 2010 @ 3:56 PM

The new 4G phone from Sprint, the HTC Evo, has received much criticism about its battery life, or lack thereof. This was my only concern when choosing this phone over the summer since the other specs were amazing. After owning the Evo for about three months, I can say with confidence that my battery is not an issue. The so called "bottomless battery" of the Android-run phone has the potential for disaster, but I have taken the necessary steps to avoid that.

The first thing I did after I set up the phone was download a program from the Market called Advanced Task Killer. This application lets you choose which background-running programs you want to end, and also shows you how much free memory you are left with. After about a month, I realized that anything network related drained the battery significantly. That includes everything from 3G and 4G to WiFi and GPS. Baton Rouge doesn't have 4G coverage now so I rarely have that feature enabled anyways. I found that the best way to use WiFi and 3G is to only have them turned on when I want to use them, rather than all the time. 3G grabs a signal within seconds after turning on, and my phone has enough remembered WiFi networks that it will connect quickly as well. I don't try and access the internet from my phone too often, since I'm usually near my computer which is much easier. The last method of saving battery life is a concept used with with almost all portable electronics, and pertains to the screens backlight. The Evo has a widget for the main screen that allows you to toggle between three screen brightness settings: Low, medium, and high. The low setting is nearly impossible to see, and the high setting is pretty bright but drains the battery. The high setting makes everything look better, but with the medium setting you can see everything perfectly. It is plenty bright enough so that you are able to see the screen clearly in direct sunlight. So when people complain about their miserable Evo battery life, it is apparent that they haven't tried very hard to do anything about it.

Back to school again
September 9th, 2010 @ 2:39 PM

I didn't update over the summer, but that does not mean I didn't do any work. New revisions are soon to come, and they will look nice. With four summer school classes, and the excitement of the World Cup, I didn't have a whole lot of time for updates, but the work was steady. So now, back at school, I am taking four classes as well as tiger band and powerlifting. Our national championship rings will come in sometime in October. I have recently had many changes come upon my life, and I think all of them are for the best. I have not forgotten about the baseball predictions I threw out many months ago, and so far they're looking good. Baseball postseason is on its way, and the start of football season has already arrived. I was in Atlanta last weekend for the Chick-fil-a Kickoff game between LSU and North Carolina. I would rank that as the second best LSU game I've been to, behind the 2009 Arkansas game and ahead of the 2009 Florida game. Fun times, with certainly more to come.

Flash: Down, but not out
May 24th, 2010 @ 5:58 PM

I've been developing within Flash for about three years now. In all of my time working with Flash, never have I said, "Wow, this project would be easier done with [insert alternative program here]." Flash has a way of simplifying things that other programs would have a hard time with, like HTML5 for example. HTML5 has the capabilities to make projects as extravagant as anything you've seen in Flash, except they are more demanding to make. Sure Actionscript isn't the greatest language to code anything in, but it is straight forward enough to make most projects viable. I don't foresee Flash going away completely, no matter how much people think Apple wants it gone. That is just not the case. I also don't see HTML5 as trying to run Flash out of business. It just so happens that HTML5 is adding features to the web that Flash has dominated in the past. But Flash is not going anywhere, especially with all of its prior success and promising future.

Flash has recently been scrutinized by web business professionals everywhere, saying that Flash lacks security, reliability, and can't compare to the new combination of HTML5 and CSS3. Steve Jobs even threw a stick in the fire, saying that Flash will not succeed in the "mobile era" that we now live in. Flash was created during the personal computer era, and was especially made for people to use a mouse to navigate the user interface. I haven't seen any mice that come with Apple's latest touchscreen products. Flash websites with rollover and rollout effects are hard to view via touch. I'd like to say that's why there is no Flash on the iPad, but it's not the whole story. Apple has already decided to move on and take the ideas HTML5 creators had with video. The new way that HTML5 is encoding video will make them load faster and playback smoother. HTML5 also offers ways to create websites and applications equal to that of Flash. But every positive side has a corresponding downside, and this is no exception. Flash has always boasted simplicity in creating rollover and creative effects. An HTML5 equivalent of a semi-complicated and creative Flash-made website navigation would be difficult to code. Flash gives you the tools with its IDE to do anything you want. It has a built in word bank so that you can code anything you want, without even knowing Actionscript. HTML5 will be an addition to the already well known HTML 4. As soon as Apple announced an iPad without Flash compatibility, and everyone assumed Flash would fall from existence. I don't see this being the case at all.

No matter how you look at it, coding the same advanced project in HTML5 will be easier to do in Flash. Actionscript is certainly not the most ideal scripting language, but it is still an object oriented programming language. HTML5 is a web script. They do not compare at all. The video tag for HTML5 looks promising enough to take 99% of Flash videos off the web. Even then, Flash would be far from gone. Flash websites have become more popular over the past few years, since people are becoming more concerned with aesthetics. Flash as a program gives you more freedom to create than CSS and Javascript by far, and Adobe is too powerful to let Flash die completely. They have the secret of all secrets in their magic bag. Adobe has yet to come out with a solid program that can create 3D scenes like 3DS Max or Cinema 4D, yet we all know they have the capability of doing so. Once Flash becomes endangered, Adobe will have no problem encorporating more 3D features than ever into Flash, which will make it the "go to" program for many designers. Until then, Flash will be okay. Most Flash developers are in the business because of the interactive abilities of Flash. I can say with confidence that I learned more about interactive design through Flash than I could have with any other program. The abilities of Flash cannot be duplicated, and the uphill slope of advancement grew even greater once Adobe aquired Macromedia.

The war between internet kings
May 17th, 2010 @ 7:34 PM

For the past ten or so years, there has been a standard set on the Internet when it comes to searching for information. That well known web standard is also known as Google. Google has become a household word, as well as a booming company out in California. Whenever I turn to the Internet with a question, Google never fails to provide an answer. From starting out as a small company with similar aspirations as Yahoo, they have grown to become one of the most successful companies dealing with new developing technologies. Now, just as Google challenged the power of Yahoo and others, Microsoft's Bing, previously known as Windows Live, has arrived as the next worthy opponent.

During the previous week, I have been experimenting with Bing, while still using Google as my primary search engine. There are a few differences that immediately stand out in my mind when comparing the two searching engines (and no, I'm not talking about the fact that Bing advertises on television and Google has never had to). First off, Bing's layout is very similar to Google's, but this is a blurry comparison to make because Google has made so many slight visual changes to their site in recent weeks. Besides a strange and striking resemblance, there are a few more reasons why I don't see Bing overtaking Google as the dominant search engine in the near future. Microsoft's advantage is their advertising, which has always been a plus for them. Bing commercials are strange, but they have a good marketing strategy going on. Google has always been subtle when advertising. Their logo would appear on the commercials of affiliates, say the powered on screen of a cell phone. Google's best shot at advertising came with Apple's iPhone, where they have always been Apple's search engine of choice. The Google search app on the iPhone really boosted them the extra mile to become the best search engine. There have been rumors that Bing would become the next default search app on the iPhone because of Apple's growing relationship with Microsoft, and their deteriorating relationship with Google. That is also something I don't see as very likely. I wouldn't expect Apple to promote anything from Microsoft other than Office.

As far as the technical stuff goes, Google is still in the lead. Personally, one thing I love about Google is that it shows me exactly how long it took to generate my search results. That is something I would like to see out of Bing. Google usually generates its pages within a fraction of a second. Bing doesn't exactly say how long it takes, but I would imagine it to be very close to Google. The one thing I found Bing to be superior to Google in is page indexing. Bing does a great job indexing new pages to the overall search query, and takes about an hour to do so. In that hours time, Google has just started its indexing process. This is Bing's strong point, and also how they can catch up to Google. But if Bing is that much better at indexing new pages, one would think that Google is right there working to get better and faster in the same category. WolframAlpha reports that Google is the most visited site on a day to day basis with over 7 billion daily page views. WolframAlpha also reports Bing to be 22nd in the same category as Google, with approximately 210 million page views daily.

I ran some tests between Google and Bing to find out some information on quality and quantity of page results over the same topics. When I type the word "search" in Google, I was returned with almost 5 Billion results. Compare that to the 3.8 Billion that were returned when I searched "search" in Bing. The irony in this is that the first page result in Google for "search" was for Bing. Google was seventh on the list for "search" on its own site. Bing did not return Google on the first page of its results. It appears that Bing's search engine optimization is better than Google. Yahoo finished in the top three of both Bing and Google. Next, I searched "powerlifting" to see what kind of results both engines would generate. Bing returned less than half the number of pages that Google did. The thing I like about this search in Google is that it returned not only page results, but also image and video results over the main feed. Obviously, image and video results would be available over both engines when you search them specifically, but Bing did not provide any alternative information about multimedia results on their main feed. They provided the same pages as Google, just without the extras.

Although Bing is owned by Microsoft, one of the strongest technology companies in history, Google is becoming more of a superpower themselves. They became known as the standard homepage for many Mozilla Firefox users. Google owns companies like Youtube, GrandCentral, and GeoEye. Google turned GrandCentral into their type of VoiceOverIP called Google Voice. GeoEye partnered with Google to launch a satellite, forming the program known as Google Earth. Other important partnerships of Google include Sun Microsystems and NASA. Another thing that easily gets overlooked is Google's recent purchase of the product BumpTop. This is a desktop application used for sorting and organizing folders. Google has a variety of ways that they could use this, be it on their Internet browser Google Chrome, or possibly on an updated version of their operating system, Google Chrome OS. With all this in mind, Microsoft will be one of the most powerful companies in the world as long as Bill Gates is in charge. He is a business master mind and will do anything for his company. It will be interesting to see the battle of searching engines play out, but in the end, I still see Google coming up victorious. If anything else, because of their slight edge of experience and resources.

Finishing my first year
May 5th, 2010 @ 11:04 PM

Weeks after our first place finish at Collegiate Nationals, I'm back into the swing of things. It's about time too, since my first year is almost over. I've been working on a few articles about modern hacking, search engines, and superior artificial intelligence. As soon as I finish at LSU this year, be ready for the design juices to flow again. I can't wait to get back into design and development for the summer when I can focus on it. I've also been working on an interactive typing interface, designed to mimic the iPhone's texting application. It will be coded in Flash with Actionscript 3.0, and you can see the preview on my deviantArt account. That was just a "for-fun" project that I worked up in a few hours. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Baseball predictions
April 6th, 2010 @ 3:52 PM

As the baseball season starts, everyone has been looking at spring training teams and making season predictions. It's now that time for me to make my predictions public. I'll go as far as to say who wins playoff spots, and how I see the playoffs turning out. This season seems to be very predictable, but I do see some surprise teams sneaking out of the shadows. One of those teams is the Texas Rangers, who I see winning the AL West. I think Nolan Ryan will be correct when he said that the Rangers will be a 90 win team this season. The Seattle Mariners will be shortly behind Texas, in an exciting race for the Wild Card with Boston. Moving across the American League, the Twins and Yankees will take the other two division titles. Despite losing their closer for the season, the Twins will have no problem with any other teams in the Central because of their offense. With Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, Minnesota will certainly be a threat. The New York Yankees will be challenged by Boston, but like last year, the Red Sox won't be able to stop my Bronx Bombers from taking the East again. New York has too much offense, and although the bullpen needs work, the starting rotation is killer. Boston will take the Wild Card spot over Seattle by a few games, thanks to their five starters who will be nearly unstoppable. A few teams to take note of will be the Anahiem Angels, who won't be nearly as strong as they have in the past, and the Tampa Bay Rays. Both of these teams will end up third in their respective divisions, but Tampa will have a much more promising season. Over in the National League, things get a little more sketchy. Obviously the Phillies and Cardinals will be powerhouses, but the other two playoff spots are up for grabs. I think the NL West will be a one-two show between the San Francisco Giants and the Colorado Rockies, even though neither team will win in the playoffs. The Giants look good with the addition of Mark Derosa and their ace Tim Lincecum pitching strong. The Rockies will make something out of nothing with their pitching staff, beating out the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs for the Wild Card.

Now for my postseason predictions. The first round will be an easy victory for the Yankees and Rangers, as they beat out the Twins and Red Sox, respectively. Texas' Offense and rock solid infiled will hold off the Red Sox, who will collapse like they did in the playoffs last year. The Yankees will sweep the Twins, as Alex Rodriguez continues to play strong in the postseason after getting the steroid monkey off his back. The National League Divisional Series will go just as smoothly as the American League, as the Cardinals and Phillies move on. The Phils will sweep the Rockies, as their pitching dominates Colorado. The Giants will make a series out of it, but the Cards will eventually finish off San Francisco with multi-homer games from Albert Pujols. The Yankees will beat the Rangers in the ALCS, and the Phillies will conquer the Cards in the NLCS. St. Louis will get swept by Philadelphia, as they reach their saturation point and choke out of the playoffs. The Rangers will keep it close, but New York's pitching will take them out of their first postseason play since 1999. This will ultimately lead to an epic, seven game rematch between the Yanks and Phils in the 2010 Fall Classic. I think the Yankees will take the series again, giving them their first back to back championships since the late 1990's. Once we reach October, I'll look back at my predictions and see how good, or bad, I did.

Time for a work break
March 23nd, 2010 @ 4:48 PM

I have recently finished up the website for BotanicLink LLC. It can be viewed at botaniclink.com. I can't upload this to my portfolio, since it was done through Intuit's CMS servies. So I didnt develop the site as much as design it. A quick word about using Content Management Systems for creating your website: be carefull for traps. The people who work at Tempest Bio got stuck with Intuit, after they had bought a domain through GoDaddy. Intuits prices were lower, but you get what you pay for. Intuit's available resources were limited, and customer support was nearly absent. I made due with what I could, because someone once told me to never lower my standards for any reason. So I worked hard for them and finished the site to their liking. They sell anti-aging facial creams, as well as tea and hangover preventing drinks at fair prices. I would certainly reccomend buying from them. As of right now, my next project has been put on hold, since I need to take time for schoolwork.

If you were to look at my last post, you would see that I had the Colts winning the Super Bowl by 34 points. Instead of shying away from that and forgetting about how incredibly wrong I was, I will just say that I am still shocked that the Saints won, and good for them. And I expect them to lose to my Cowboys next year in Big D. On to a different sport, I recently lifted in the March Madness Maniacs Meet, put on by Paul Fletcher's House of Power in Baton Rouge. I was 5 of 9 in my lifts, missing all of my final lifts. My total was 890, with a 345 squat, 210 bench press, and 335 deadlift. I couldve had a larger total, but instead I went with the "go big or go home" mentality and failed my last lifts. I feel good about where I am strength wise, and now I'm just going to work on gaining weight. And the only thing I'll say about our intermural softball team is that we've been outscored 54-2 after two games. Ouch.

An update with more to come
February 6th, 2010 @ 6:10 PM

Its been a long time since the last update on this site, but as promised, I finished the LSU Powerlifting site. And no, I haven't been working on it since October. It was a fun project, and I especially enjoyed it since it means so much to me personally. I am currently working on a website for Mewa Singh of Tempest Bio. I can't add the website to my portfolio, but I can advertise for them. They are selling topical facial creams through their smaller company, botaniclink. Besides that, I have a few other pieces in mind but they will have to wait. Jobs and schoolwork both will come first, but without doubt, the pieces will get finished sooner or later.

On a smaller note about the super bowl, I am dissapointed with who is playing this year. The Colts are a very good team, and surely deserving of a Super Bowl spot. Although the Saints had the best record in the NFC, I still think there were a few teams better than them. The Vikings smashed my Cowboys, a game which should've been the best of this years playoffs. Those are the two teams that i think are better than the Saints. The Cowboys beat them head to head, and I was confident that they would even weeks before the game was played. I still think that if it came down to it, Dallas could've beaten the Saints again to make it to the Super Bowl. The Vikings are an amazing team, led by who I think is the top top quarterback in the league, Brett Favre. They were extremely off their game against New Orleans, and I think they should've won. But either way, I'll be watching the Super Bowl as a football fan, rooting on the Colts to victory over the Saints. My prediction for the game is that the Saints will have no answer for Peyton Manning, and the Colts smash the 'Aints 41 to 17.

Great time for sports
October 13th, 2009 @ 2:26 PM

It has been a pretty good month for sports, and hopefully the good fortune continues. The Yankees are unbeaten in the playoffs, and are looking for another World Series title after finishing the regular season with the best record. The LSU Fightin Tigers are now 5-1 after suffering a miserable loss to the Gators, but I know we'll bounce back. After the bye week, we'll have to play Auburn and Alabama in the next month. It's not going to be easy, but if we can beat Alabama, we can better our chances for a rematch against Florida in the SEC Championship game. In other sports, the Cowboys have a winning record - for the time being. Who knows where they'll go with their inconsistent quarterback.

I haven't had much time to work on graphics lately, especially with the mix of Tiger Band, Powerlifting, and Mid-terms. But look forward to a new web site design in the near future, possibly for the LSU Powerlifting team. A personal piece dedicated to the Yankees may pop up as well, but it all depends on time.

Snow Leopard in review
September 8th, 2009 @ 2:11 PM

If you have an Apple computer, and were wondering whether or not to upgrade to Snow Leopard, you should do some research before purchasing. I'm not going to advertise or brag for apple (like I usually do), but I did recently purchase the upgrade for $10 and found it useful. There are not many asethetic differences comparable to that of the transition from Tiger to Leopard. Most changes made for Snow Leopard are backend coding differences, that will boost the running speed of your machine. Apple's main gimmics for upgrading are within Exposé, Safari, Microsoft Echange, and the smaller coding refinements. I personally do not use Safari since I like the Web Developer toolbar that Mozilla Firefox offers, and I have no need to use Microsoft Exchange. However, I can offer insight on the changes in Exposé, as well as the smaller refinements such as visual differences and backend changes.

Exposé has some new features that will make life easier if you are in a hurry, or if you are like me and prefer shortcuts for everything. Once in Exposé, you have many options to help you choose which window you want. You can hover over a certain window and press the space bar, which enables Preview, a full screen view of what you are looking at, without actually selecting anything. If you don't like that option, you can always hover over icons in the Dock to select a specific window. Say you have fifteen windows open for some reason, and you just want to reopen Dreamweaver. Instead of looking on the screen at all fifteen windows, you can just open Exposé and click on the Dreamweaver icon in the Dock.

Apple has also redone Finder. It may not look that way, but in Snow Leopard, it has been completely recoded in Cocoa. This makes it more modern and quicker to respond to your tasks, which ultimately results in less RAM being used by your computer. They also changed up Stacks some. You can now scroll in Stacks, as long as it is in grid mode and not list mode. My favorite upgrade to OS X 10.6 is the Stacks because it now acts just like a Finder window. In Leopard, clicking on a folder in Stacks would bring up that folder in Finder. In Snow Leopard, however, clicking a folder in Stacks just opens that folder, so you are still viewing everything within Stacks. The only time you would leave Stacks is if you click on an actual file, or if you close it. The last change that I found was pointless in my opinion, and will probably not be used much. You can use Preview on icons now, which serves no purpose. If you weren't sure in the first place which movie you wanted to watch, you could open it with preview and check it out. Preview at least opens the movie to a watchable size. Now you can watch a movie by clicking the play button on it's icon, which is probably about a 50 pixel by 50 pixel area.

These are obviously not the only changes in Snow Leopard, just the ones that I found reasonable enough to talk about. If you were to ask me if the price of 25 dollars for Snow Leopard was worth it, I would say probably not. But if you quallify for the $10 upgrade for purchasing a Mac between a certain date, I would say go for it. I paid $10 dollars and I certainly got my moneys worth. There is just not enough change here for $25 for my taste.

Summer coming to a close
July 22nd, 2009 @ 1:36 PM

Summer has gone well, even though it's almost over for me. I've just been relaxing and hanging around. Louisiana is just a few days away, beginning with STRIPES Camp, then Computer Science Camp, then Tiger Band Camp. Those three week-long-each camps will lead right up to the start of school. At least I'll be able to move in to my dorm a week early. I'm excited about the start of college, but really not looking forward to my classes. 19 hours a week, and a 7:30 calculus class every single day. Maybe Calculus wont be as hard as I've heard since I sort of enjoy math. The thing I am looking forward to the most is the computer science camp and all the football games I get to go to for FREE! I haven't started packing yet, but that will probably get done the day before I leave. We've gotten all the necessities for living in a college dorm: towells, kleenex, pizza cutter's and a pizza pan. I just recently got a small fridge, and just bought my new Trek mountain bike.

I am typing this post from my birthday present: a 17" Macbook Pro. The best birthday/graduation combo I could imagine. Along with the Macbook, I got a medium Wacom Intuos graphics tablet. It is definetly something that I will use for a long time and that will help me pursue my goals of getting better in the graphic design field. My new laptop has a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and an upgraded 8 GB of DDR3 RAM. I would reccomend this to anyone into computer graphics without hesitation.

GEAUX TIGERS!
June 26th, 2009 @ 5:14 PM

Way to geaux LSU! I just got back from Omaha, Nebraska, where the LSU Tigers beat the Texas Longhorns in the College World Series. That was by far the best sporting event I've ever been to. The fans were crazy, and I was on TV quite often.

Since we were in the outfield, we gave Kevin Keyes, the Texas right fielder, a pretty hard time. It was all in fun though, since he signed our giant picture of him jumping on the wall only to miss a ball hit by DJ Lemahieu. It was a pretty awesome trip, since LSU beat the "tiger bait" Longhorns 11-4 in game 3. Definetly worth the 11 hour drive from Dallas. I cant wait for the 20 hour drive next year from Baton Rouge to watch them defend their title. Before that trip, I was in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. We went to Orange Beach and Pensicola Beach, and then took the long drive back home. During the Omaha trip, I traveled through Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. Including Texas, I've been in ten states in two weeks. I enjoyed what I assume to be my last family vacation for a long time to come.

If you didn't notice, or if you haven't been here before, my website has changed from ryanpproductions.com to ryanprimeaux.com. Typing ryanpproductions.com into the address bar will still send you here. I think it's more efficient for the website address to only include my name, mainly for search reasons. It was something that I decided I could afford, kind of like a birthday present for myself, since I'm turing 18 tomorrow.