Here’s my contribution to Cedric’s coding challenge.

SMOP = Simple Matter Of Programming

Damn. Today I was really hooked by a few great conversations…I was FIRED UP about some things…and Twitter GOES DOWN AGAIN. So I made this. Enjoy.

Inspired by @dalmaer.

This is my first comic using Adobe Illustrator CS3. First impressions:

• Illustrator is very expensive, so it had better kick ass.
• Keybindings are highly unexpected and surprising, not like other graphics apps I’ve used. Why not Ctrl-D to duplicate the selection? Or Esc to unselect?
• Selecting was awkward in many ways.
• I really found myself wishing I could easily drag with the mouse to pan around.
• I really missed Xara’s ability to draw gradients and transparencies by simply dragging interactively on the drawing, rather than clicking through tiny little popup windows.
• Drawing lines, like the arms on the little people, did some unexpected fills between points, obscuring graphics beneath.
• Export to PNG is broken. Wow, unbelievable. Regardless of the resolution I tried, I always received an error. I had to copy to the clipboard, and then paste into another program in order to generate the PNG shown above.
• Getting that gradient right was extremely weird, it took quite a long time with many failed trips back and forth between those annoying, tiny little toolbar windows before I figured out how to adjust the colors.

Overall, Illustrator feels very old-school, with lots of tiny menus, toolbars, popups, and tedious context switching. Contrast this with something like Sketchup. First impressions with Sketchup are generally along the lines of: Holy crap…this kicks ass! I have no doubts I could slog through Illustrator and perhaps eventually become proficient, but this is my hobby and should be fun.

The whole reason I’m looking at other illustration programs is because Xara’s export filters are weak. I’d like to be able to share my original source material, in vector format, so other people can copy, modify, and play with the drawings. Xara’s format is too obscure, and it is unable to export to more common vector formats without bad corruption or crashing.

On the flip side, Xara is an absolute joy to work with, its bitmap exports are first rate, and it is incredibly fast. It uses direct manipulation and mouse dragging whenever possible, avoiding most menus and toolbar windows. There is a new version of Xara that I will definitely try.

Illustrator is probably off my list. I plan to try PhotoShop for the next comic.

The joke forwarder never seems to grok basic cut/copy/paste techniques.

Is it Norovirus…or something more sinister?

This is what I learned from today’s JavaOne news…

You can see the QuickTime demos here.

And about those crashes:

Unfortunately, the application, using the new Java Update 10 browser plug-in, kept crashing. “It’s the size of the pipes in Moscone Center,” Green complained. “This is the Moscone terror moment.”

With Javalobby, Eclipse Zone, and DZone…his empire continues to grow. Now, Rick Ross takes on his latest adventure:

Lifehacker just ran their Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters. My inbox — and every other folder — is a disaster. Thus, my list is far shorter:

This pretty much sums it all up.