Leopard: Customization heaven.

From the same source as the stack drawers, I found that a new little application had been released that turns Leopard into the premiere point release of OS X when it comes to desktop customization. Susumu Yoshida, a talented icon designer, released his very elaborate set of brightly colored and nicely textured stack drawers, which I tested during the last week and thoroughly enjoyed. See this desktop screenshot;

Click for original and fullsize at Flickr.

I found that a software company, CocoaMug, has put together a tool to customize every aspect of your dock. It’s called Palette, and costs a mere $6.90 for a full license. It doesn’t just allow you to choose a color for the background of your 3D dock, but it also allows you to set these beautiful ‘drawer’ icons for individual stacks - making using stack drawers as simple as drag and drop. Click here for an impressive video demo on Susumu’s blog. Thanks for sharing, Susumu!

Orion set sheet preview.

Click for full size at flickr.

For those of you holding out on Orion (for whatever reason) or those that are curious, I compiled a sheet with Orion’s icons at all special sizes. Of course, you can find the (high-resolution 512 pixel) icons in the icon set itself.

New freeware iconset release: Orion.

( Go to icon set directly)

For the last month, I have been working on a freeware icon set to supersede all my older work. I was interested in how much I could learn by attracting critique from the most valued artists and criticasters I have in my buddy lists and address book, and I took it all to the heart. I decided to make a folder set that would find the middle ground between the flat front-on perspective of Mac OS X Leopard and the old, spatial perspective of folders in Tiger.

Continue reading New freeware iconset release: Orion….

FuzzMeasure 3.0 released.

Supermegaultragroovy released the upgraded Fuzzmeasure today, a very powerful application for recording, live sound and acoustics professionals. The new icon was made by yours truly, and I will blog about the making of this icon soon - it was an interesting tour of concepts.

For now, check out the free trial and website.

Oh help, iPhones are evil!

News has hit digg that Apple receives iPod Touch / iPhone IMEI numbers when someone queries the Calculator, Stocks, or Weather applications on the aforementioned devices. What I am about to tell you might be too harsh, but consider it fueled by the thousands of comments streaming in about “… fanboys justifying this …” and “if Microsoft did this!…”.

Operators of cellphone networks use IMEI numbers, or model-specific serial numbers, to track subscriptions, usage, and identity of devices on the network. It’s in the specification for GSM and UMTS. You IMEI is transmitted at every communication with every cell tower in your vicinity. And now people are crying wolf that Apple might or might not service you Weather and Stocks if your IMEI number isn’t valid? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a standard part of a standardized specification that is over 20 years old. Get over it.

Creative Review interviews Peter Saville.

Peter Saville is one of my favorite graphic designers from the U.K. and as such, I thought this was a nice interview. Especially nice if you don’t know him very well, although you may know his work, like this Joy Division cover.

edit: Forgot to link the actual interview. Doh!

Physical computer dashboard gauge.

It’s been a bit silent around here lately, but this is just incredible. I’m going to get me one of these. Via Infosthetics.

For Spite.

Gedeon Maheux writes up how the ‘Marble of Doom’ website came to be.

Scary enough, I realized after reading this that ‘Marble of Doom’ slipped into my vocabulary after I had seen the website and my girlfriend laughed when I first used it out loud. Memes, anyone?

EVE Online: A game and not so much a game.

I’ve been playing the massive multiplayer online RPG (is it an RPG?) EVE Online in 2006 - I left at some point, having played for several months and gotten to a point where I couldn’t find any excitement in it. CCP (the company that makes an maintains EVE Online) also promised my account, with all its assets, would remain saved, if I would ever want to reactivate it when there had been another upgrade or such. A few weeks ago, the Mac client (which is actually the windows client wrapped in Transgaming’s Cider engine) was released, and I couldn’t fight the temptation to join EVE again and see what it had to offer. A lot has changed for me, personally, which inspired me to write a bit about the curious system that keeps EVE alive as a game, and the parts of EVE that aren’t really a game anymore.

Continue reading EVE Online: A game and not so much a game….

Clarify those Leopard stacks

In browsing my RSS feed, I found that Susumu Yoshida’s blog had a link that pointed to several ‘drawer’-like icons containing the stack icons behind them in a Leopard dock. With a bit of guessing (I can’t read Japanese ;)) I found the original website, Optica Optima. Here’s the ‘Leopard Stack Drawers’ in action;

There’s but a few things that I really rush to download and use for usefulness, aesthetics and innovation; this one’s one of them. I wish I could write some Japanese so I could comment ‘Domo Arigato!’ to Susumu Yoshida, whose blog made me aware of this pretty cool idea, and the creator of the icons of course!

Get the Stack drawers here.