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A Signature Experience

by Krishna on May 17, 2012 at 11:02 am

I’m taking a quick detour from the storyline to address a tech topic that’s been weighing on my mind: Microsoft Signature.

So, here’s what it is:

In a nutshell, you can buy a MS Windows PC directly from their store without any trialware or crapware pre-installed. Each Windows Signature PC comes pre-tuned and optimized for the hardware it’s on. In other words, the way it should be sold. But if you didn’t buy a PC directly from the MS store you get to PAY Microsoft for the privilege of having all that crapware removed for the grand price of $99. Amazing.

Too bad the Windows signature PCs are still littered with stickers across them. Nascar anyone?

The story continues next week. Stick around…

-Krishna

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Pro Tip: Improve your Focus by Blurring Your Desktop Wallpaper

by Krishna on May 16, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Posted In: Mac, News, Tips

I love desktop wallpapers, but the problem I have with most backgrounds is that they make it more difficult to see folders and files that I have on my desktop. Take the image below:

crisp desktop

It’s a great image – full of contrast and color – but the crisp detail of the photograph has a nasty side-effect: it makes the text underneath the hard drive icons more difficult to read.

What’s my work around?

Simply take the image into Photoshop (or your favorite image editor) and add a Gaussian blur to it.

blurry desktop background

You’ll still have all the wonderful color and contrast that makes the image so appealing, but now it’ll be much easier to discern the icons from the background. Give it a try. You might actually like it.

-Krishna

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Software Pick of the Month: DragonDrop

by Krishna on May 10, 2012 at 10:35 am
Posted In: Mac, News, Reviews

If you’ve ever been in the process of moving your files and realized midstream that you need to open a folder on your hard drive, you’ll come to appreciate the power and simplicity of DragonDrop.

DragonDrop is an elegant and useful Mac app that lets you set down what you are dragging without worrying about keeping the mouse button held down. It works great with files, folders, text snippets, etc. and has already improved my productivity ten-fold. It sells for $4.99 at the Mac App Store, and is easily worth its asking price.

How does it work?

Drag a file or set of files and shake your mouse cursor back and forth. A transparent DragonDrop window appears. Stuff your contents in the window and retrieve them when you’re ready to move them into their proper location. That’s it!

If you’re not a “mover and shaker”, you can use DragonDrop’s Menu Bar icon instead. DragonDrop’s prefs (shown below) are simple and self-explanatory.

DragonDrop Prefs

In the snapshot below, I’ve selected three files and shaken my mouse cursor. The DragonDrop window (or portal, as I like to think of it) appears.

DragonDrop in action

Drop your files into the portal until you are ready to retrieve your files.

DragonDrop bin

DragonDrop is one of those little apps that quickly makes itself indispensable. I can’t imagine using any Mac without it. DragonDrop has eliminated the need for me to use a dual-paned window (a la Forklift or PathFinder) to move files because I can invoke it at a whim.

I’ve tested DragonDrop version 1.1.5 for about a day now and I’ve already given it a hefty workout. I haven’t run into any snags or bugs in my usage, but I’ll update this review if I run into any problems.

Conclusion

If you move files on a regular basis (and who doesn’t, really?), DragonDrop is easily the best $5 you’ll spend and earns a mighty 5 Bob Weiners. Highly Recommended.


-Krishna

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ShiftyLook: Celebrating 30 Years of Dig Dug with a Webcomic Collaboration Project

by Krishna on May 9, 2012 at 1:02 pm
Posted In: News, Plugs

DigDug30thSK

DIG DUG, one of the celebrated 80′s coin-op arcade classics, is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a webcomics collaboration project. Below is a snippet of the official press blurb, which contains the list of cartoonists who have been asked to contribute to the project:

Dig Dug is one of those iconic games that means a lot to retro gamers, especially those of us who grew up constantly trying to inflate many a Fygar, so we wanted to do something very special for the webcomic,” said Rob Pereyda, Producer & Editor-in-Chief of ShiftyLook for NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc. “And I think we just might have the comics team-up of the summer and a must read for video games and webcomics fans alike.”
Each creative team will craft self-contained Dig Dug stories, with a different angle brought each time. A partial list of talent is as follows (additional talent to be announced):

  • Raynato Castro (Buttersafe)
  • Jeff “Chamba” Cruz (ShiftyLook’s Sky Kid)
  • Javier Charro (Soul & Sword)
  • Brian Clevinger (Atomic Robo)
  • Mike Costa (Smoke and Mirrors)
  • Alex Culang (Buttersafe)
  • Omar Dogan (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo)
  • Joey Esposito (Footprints)
  • Greg Fisher (Vivian)
  • Dax “D-Gee” Gordine (ShiftyLook’s Bravoman)
  • Dean Haspiel (ShiftyLook’s The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies)
  • Marko Head (Vivian)
  • Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade)
  • JJ Kirby (ShiftyLook title to be announced at London MCM Expo on 26 May)
  • Mike Krahulik (Penny Arcade)
  • Erik Ko (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo)
  • Scott Kurtz (PVP)
  • Nick Langley (Rocket Llama)
  • David Maliki (Wondermark)
  • Ben McCool (ShiftyLook’s The Five-Dimensional Adventures of Dirk Davies)
  • Matt Melvin (Cyanide & Happiness)
  • R. K. Milholland (Something Positive)
  • Matt Moylan (ShiftyLook’s Bravoman)
  • Hoang Nguyen (Carbon Grey)
  • Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)
  • Robert “Robaato” Porter (Title to be announced Summer 2012)

    • 

  • Krishna Sadasivam (PC Weenies)
  • Elliott Serrano (Geek to Me)
  • Edmund Shern (ShiftyLook’s Scar)
  • Kris Staub (chainsawsuit)
  • J. Torres (Power Lunch)
  • Zach Weiner (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)
  • J. N. Wiedle (Helvetica)
  • Marv Wolfman (ShiftyLook title to be announced at London MCM Expo on 26 May)
  • Jim Zub (ShiftyLook’s Wonder Momo, ShiftyLook’s Sky Kid)

It was an honor to be invited to participate, and I hope you guys will check back on their site to see my contribution. You can visit NAMCO BANDAI’s ShiftyLook website for more info, and make sure to listen to their inaugural podcast while you’re at it.

-Krishna

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Four Font Resources Every Cartoonist Should Bookmark

by Krishna on May 8, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Posted In: News, Tips

As a follow-up to my earlier post on using Photoshop to create word balloons, I want to highlight a few font resources you should be aware of if you’re a cartoonist.

  • Blambot: the grand-daddy of comic font sites on the web, run by cartoonist / letterer Nate Piekos. (You can read Nate’s weekly webcomic, Atland, on the Blambot site.) Blambot has numerous fonts (dialogue, design, sound effect, alien, etc.) to choose from that are free to use if you’re an independent creator. In addition, Nate offers some really nice, affordable fonts that you can purchase.
  • Comicraft: A wide variety of professional comic book fonts can be found here, but unfortunately there are no free fonts to be had. Still, the quality of fonts here are excellent. You’ll find many custom lettering fonts from the masters of comic book art, including Dave Gibbons, Joe Kubert, and Tim Sale, among others, available for sale. Tip: Don’t miss Comicraft’s New Year sale, where each font can be purchased for $20.13 (each year, it goes up a penny!).
  • DaFont: If your tastes lean towards finding type beyond that of the comic realm, investigate DaFont. A really unique feature that DaFont offers is the ability to preview what your custom text will look like before you download them. It’s a huge time-saver, to be sure.
  • Chank: Dubbed as cool fonts for smart designers, you’ll find a fresh collection of free fonts to add to your collection. Each font is custom-made in Minnesota.

Of course, if you have something specific in mind, you can also make your own custom fonts, too. And if you’re looking for web fonts to spruce up your site, check out Google fonts.

Which font resources do you use for your comics and/or designs? Share your favorite font hangouts in the comments below!

-Krishna

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Adding a Rocket to a Dinosaur: The Mac Pro Solid State Drive Rebuild

by Krishna on May 6, 2012 at 11:45 am
Posted In: Mac, News

Two weeks ago, shortly after I wrote my blog post entitled “Mac Spring Cleaning: Rethinking How I Organize My Data”, I ordered myself a shiny new 120GB Other World Computing Mercury Electra 6G solid state drive for my Mac Pro.

IMG_1437

I’m no stranger to solid state drives; I’ve been using them with both my Macs for almost two years now. SSDs have given a new lease on life for both my machines, which are over 4 years old (ancient by computing standards).

Three factors influenced my latest SSD purchase.

  • My 40GB OWC SSD was no longer cutting it for all my apps / OS.
  • The prices on larger SSDs have come down within the past 3 months. (I paid $150 for my 120GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G.)
  • I wanted to perform a complete rebuild of my Mac Pro as a performance tune-up.

Rebuilding an OS and apps is like moving into a new house: it takes time to move your stuff (installing apps) and it takes a little longer to settle in (adjusting all your apps settings the way you like). It’s tedious, but in the end, you have a clean, organized place you really like coming home to.

Carrying the moving analogy, not everything made it into the new “house”. First and foremost, Corel Painter X didn’t make the cut. While Painter is a good program for what it does, I can do everything I need to do illustration-wise with Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop.

Setting up most of my apps was pretty easy. Ironically, the apps that weren’t as easy to reconfigure were iTunes and iPhoto. I manage all of my media and photo data on a separate internal drive; it took some Googling on my part to properly configure both apps to find their content.

Side note: iTunes is in desperate need of a make-over. My suggestion would be for Apple to split up iTunes into separate apps to manage music, movies, etc.

With the new 120GB drive, performance screams. Part of it is because of the extra head-room on the SSD. Sketchbook Pro, Photoshop, etc. all make use of the extra fast scratch disk space on the drive.

Furthermore, reinstalling Photoshop cleared up some wonky behavior (such as the delay encountered when typing text using the Text tool) and allowed me to modify, remove and optimize a few of my workflow actions / scripts. Sketchbook Pro runs like butter now: super fast with no lagging whatsoever.

In the end, while rebuilding the OS and apps was a bit tedious, the expended effort was totally worth it.

-Krishna

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