Patrick Hansen.com

I just returned from Adobe MAX 2008 in San Fran! It was an awesome event and Adobe did a really great job putting it all together and ending it with an awesome party at the Academy of Sciences and De Young Museum!

There were some really great sessions, showing off the new features of CS4, best practices of development and design, techniques, other products like Pixel Bender, and of course Flash Catalyst (Thermo) was a major focus.

San Francisco is an awesome city too. Although I did not get to venture out very far from the Moscone, what I did see was great. I did miss Uncle Joey and Jesse & his Rippers .

I was introduced to this game last night and after the first game, I was addicted and determined. It is a great game to help build visual coordination and to test it.

It is fairly simple, you’ll catch on in a minute, so no need to really explain it. In short, you will try to perform geometric tasks such as bisecting angles, and finding the center of a circle, and the more accurate you are, the lower point score you average. The better you are doing, and the less variance you are off by.

I got a 5.8 on the first try, but after a few more rounds I was getting the hang of it. By my last attempt for the night, I ended up with a 1.38! Yeah.. I’m going to brag, and I have the screenshots to prove it. I suck at Halo and Guitar Hero, but I can play this game.

I had my 15 minutes of fame as 1st place on the best of the last 500 and 2nd on the last 10,000 games. So many games are played, that you will probably be wiped off the list in less than a day, since it goes by best score within # of games played, not simply the est score.

The institute for interactive research developed a site to test an interface that requires no click of the mouse button. The interactions are driven by simple mouse rollOvers.

http://www.dontclick.it/

This is a very interesting interface and experiment, as it removes an aspect of interaction that most every computer user has made second nature. Although the mouse click is an extra interaction for a user to accomplish a task, I’m not sure how I feel about removing that action from the UI. I almost feel handicapped, although it actually does drive information and UI deeper levels to the user with faster time and less effort on the user’s part.

A couple concerns I have about this though:
Removing a common interaction seems to force me to think my actions more than if I could simply have to click. As for the psychometrics, I’m not sure if that would measure more effort in the brain, compared to the less physical effort of the click. This is also based on habit though. With anything new, the learning curve and acclimation period is high. After immersing myself in this UI, I may become more accustomed to it. The issue here is actually being able to immerse oneself in a non clickable UI, without the interference or influence of traditional UI’s which already exist all around.

Real estate becomes a huge factor with this type of interface. You must rely on visuals for all interactions, and this calls for displaying all interactions in a visual way which will inevitably take up screen real estate. I must admit, the design on this site is well done and looks clean. Their management of the visuals was handled nicely and the interactions, transitions are very clean. The only thing is that it was hard to define consistency or patterns, which assist users with using their intuition. When the content is presented differently for each type, it becomes difficult to determine relative and unique items from one another.

Multi-tasking becomes highly difficult. The content is so heavily dependent on the mouse position, that if you move to another location, you will lose the content you have navigated to. even attempting to take a selective screenshot became difficult and impossible, I had to opt for a full screenshot and crop it for the image in this post.

The experiment overall is an awesome idea. It can help solve UI problems on both sides, when you should implement a click, and when you shouldn’t. As an experiment, I am taking into account practicality concerns, just as with any experiment, it is usually a concept still attempting to prove the concept or what direction it may go. Almost like the idea of a flying car… engineers are currently working on this, and many would argue about the safety concerns with the concept. People can not even drive grounded cars 100% properly and safely, how are we going to allow them to fly? even with practical challenges and barriers, it should not hold up the innovation, research and testing of an idea.

I am glad to see people are out there doing research like this. Although some may have only negative things to say about exploration like this, at least the people behind it are actually doing something and publicizing it.

Want to get the Flex 4 early release SDK’s (aka Gumbo)?

Visit here:

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4

Download it and place it wherever you want, possibly in your Hard Drive root, Documents, wherever, it’s your preference, just don’t plan on moving it.

You can still use Flex Builder 3 as your IDE, and point your project to compile with the Flex 4 SDK.

Create a project and then right click on the project to pull up the Properties menu, choose Flex Compiler in the nav menu on the left.

Click on Configure Flex SDK’s link. In this wizard, click “Add” and pull in the the new Flex 4 SDK you just downloaded. Check off Flex 4, then click Apply.

You should now see this:

Make sure that the Flash Player version is set to 10.0.0 – or you may get a Matr5ix 3D type error since Flash Player 9 cannot handle the new 3D matrix framework.

After doing this for your first time, you will not have to add it anymore. Simply just choose which SDK to use from the list.*

*note: they do release new versions frequently, so if you do download the latest, you will have to Add it and remove the older version.

This is a very unique UX and UI which incorporates the use of gloves and body movement.

I’ll write my feelings about it later.

http://oblong.com/

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Look at this!

Ever-Real.com posted this the other day. A great post revealing some awesome business card designs. Some are amazing, some are good, either way, a nice place for inspiration.

http://ever-real.com/blog/the-75-hottest-business-card-designs-youve-ever-seen/

I returned my Apple TimeCapsule that had a HD failure after 3 months. I was in the middle of backing up my music to another drive when it happened. Lost 94GB of music (

I wanted redundant back up now!

The Drobo drive is an awesome solution, but way out of my price range for now. I have actually seen price drops to under $400 for the shell (no drives).

I wanted a RAID 1 capable drive and only need about 500GB right now. WD recently came out with the My Book Mirror which supports RAID 1, but unfortunately on has USB 2.0 interface. I know the reports state how fast it is and how it compares to Firewire, but in the end, firewire is still faster in both directions of transfer.

They have had the My Book essential II (dual drive) out for awhile, but hardly promote the RAID 1 ability of it. They promote the RAID 0, but I’m interested in safe, solid, secure and redundant. The other awesome aspect of this is the quad interface.
It features:

You can pick a 1TB one up from $206 up to $300. I would recommend a Search for current pricing.
B&H Photo supply tends to have great prices on these items. I am not endorsing B&H Photo over any other retailer, just had good luck with them.

It does come with its own software for backup which I have not used, but reports say it does the job. It also comes with management software to format it from RAID 0 to 1, as RAID 0 is the default.
note: this software is only active when plugged in.

It is fully compatible with Leopard’s TimeMachine back up software. It was very easy to set up and use.

RAID 0 vs. RAID 1:
RAID 0 will stripe the discs an d in this case, make two 500GB drives appear and behave as one 1TB drive. A seamless tie between the two.

RAID 1 will create a mirrored or redundant drive storage system. In this case, if you get a 1TB drive (dual – two 500GB drives), then you will only have half of the total available since it will mirror/duplicate everything on the other drive. In the case of a 2TB drive (dual – two 1TB drives), then you would only have 1TB available.

Keep in mind, this is only applied to drive systems that support RAID, and have more than one drive in the system. You cannot RAID a single drive.

If you have an Apple product that you’re not sure is under warranty, you can simply check online at:

https://selfsolve.apple.com/GetWarranty.do

This goes for iPods, Notebooks, iMacs, towers, monitors, anything from Apple.

This will help you gauge if you should schedule an appt. at the Genius Bar or not for warranty issues. If your product is out of warranty, the Genius Bar may still be able to help restore it or fix it, but replacement is probably out of the question. The Genius Team is very helpful and they will do whatever they can within their power to ensure your needs are met.

To schedule an appointment at the Genius Bar (highly recommended over just going to the store and getting in stand by), simply to the Apple.com site, click on “Apple Retail Store” link near the bottom.

Then choose your store location from the drop down menus.

Then click “Reserve” under the Genius section.

Unless you have a membership with their one on one program, you will sign up as a Guest.

The next steps are fairly straight forward, enter your info, choose your type of help, type of device, choose your date and time range, then time slot. It only allows up to 4 days out, so if you do not see any appts. after that, then check back in later.

* This post is not endorsed or supported by Apple Computers Inc.
The Apple logo is a registered trademark of Apple Computers Inc.

I recently was looking for a used Les Paul. I saw a Les Paul Supreme on Craig’s List for only $750! – They normally retail at $3,400+.

I had high hopes that this was a seller who just wasn’t aware of what he/she had and I would score. Luckily, the seller was honest and emailed me back with info stating that it was NOT a USA made Gibson and it was a replica.

I was surprised, since the photos showed “Gibson” on the headstock and even the truss rod cover, fret inlays, and the supreme headstock detail logo was all in place. These were low quality photos, so you couldn’t see all of the details clearly.

I was baffled and upset that there was a company making replicas that actually say GIBSON on them. I understand that Epiphone is Gibson’s sister company that does make their products overseas for a lower price, but they clearly say Epiphone, not Gibson.

I did some research and found this posts which sells several replicas. There are pics, and I would say, from the images, these replicas are pretty dead on and look nice. Neck thru body construction, and they even have what appears to be Grover tuning knobs.

http://www.ioffer.com/bi/guitarworld688–GIBSON-LES-PAUL-SUPREME-CONDITION-W-GIBSON-CASE–67394871

That site also has fake Ibanez Jem 7′s, and a few other models. Although the site does not promote the products as real Gibsons, and Ibanez’es, they do not make a huge attempt to indicate they are NOT real. An experienced guitarists or buyer, would realize that the low prices ($180 – $250) are sign that something is wrong. But, there are those younger and less experienced who may be fooled. The other issue are those who are purchasing with intent put them back on the market as a true Gibson! I am choosing NOT to support this market, and I hope others make that choice too. It only leads to a contaminated market and makes buyers, and collectors weary about buying one of the best guitars ever made.

I was really pissed when I saw an image that they imprint a serial number and “Made in the U.S.A.” on the back of the headstock! You can even see that they package it inside a Gibson branded cardboard box, almost identical to the actual ones. This is more than a replica, it is a premeditated counterfeit!

I understand if a company wants to replicate one of the best guitars out there as many have, but don’t try to make a counterfeit.

I found a nice post about this on eBay from a fellow guitarist who is also concerned about this. Here are his tips, although, you can see from the photos, that some will be hard to tell, as the truss rod cover in these images do only have 2 screws and the logo looks very convincing. Down to the angle and placement.

1. The guitar is located in China or some other Asian country. No Gibsons are manufactured in China, all Gibsons are US Made. Gibson has satellite companies like Epiphone that manufacture overseas and are much less expensive.

2. The sellers sometimes state that the country of origin is China, apparently in a half hearted attempt to dispell that the guitars are real, even though they stamp Made in USA right on the guitars.

3. There are some subtle differences between the fake Les Pauls and the real thing. Look closely at the headstock front. Most of the fakes have a Gibson logo that is of a thicker font than the real Gibson logo and is aligned almost horizontally at the top of the headstock. The real Gibson logo is a thinner font and is angled with the G started near the post of the D string tuner. The real key is to look at the truss rod cover. Real Gibsons have a bell shaped truss rod cover with TWO screws. Every fake I’ve seen has a cover with a similiar shape but with THREE screws. Also, the copies of Les Paul Standards often say “Gibson” right on the truss rod cover, NO Les Pauls say Gibson on the truss rod cover, some Epiphone Les Pauls do but those aren’t made in the USA and say Epiphone at the top of the headstock not Gibson.

4. These guitars that are often stamped with legitimate looking serial numbers but they don’t always match the true manufacture years of the real Gibson guitars.

5. All high end Les Pauls come with nice Gibson cases, these fakes rarely include a case.

6. ASK THE SELLER – many of them will admit that the guitars are made in China, and remember, no Gibsons, especially those that say Made in USA, are made in China.

Click here to view his original review/post

Gibson Counterfeit Site
Here is another post about the fakes and unfortunately, tells the sad story of a 15 year old who was scammed with a fake Les Paul.

http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/CounterfeitGibsons/

Check your serial number
You can visit this site and enter in the serial number for a validation check. The only thing is, this will only tell you when and which Gibson factory it was manufactured at, it will not tell you the model.

http://www.guitardaterproject.org/gibson.aspx

It is possible that a fake could be using a true serial, so please be aware of that when making a Gibson purchase.

Just beware when buying one. Know your seller or retailer and make sure to double check every little detail!