Here’s a good example of user interface design on the part of Google. I wrote an e-mail just now to a client in which I was sending them a download link for some materials which I had uploaded to my server. When I went to send the message Gmail realized I had said “I’ve included”, however I had not attached anything, and gave me the above dialog.

This is great user interface feature which would have saved me many times in the past, I’m sure. I can’t remember how many times I’ve forgotten to attach files to an email when I should have.

This thing is massive. Over 100-pounds massive. But you would expect nothing less for a $30,000 lens.

Be sure to check out its Amazon page and read the hilarious, sarcastic reviews left by people, as well as pictures supposedly taken with the lens.

On a serious note, I am curious to look at a few photos actually taken with the lens. It must have an insane range.

So far, it’s a very nice app. It is very simple—but this kind of app is perfectly suited for simplicity.

The app took a while to open the first time, but once it loaded I was greeted with a Register screen which allowed me to register the app with my Amazon account and associate it with my Kindle account. The process took only seconds.

Books in your Kindle account are automatically loaded into the “Archived Items” tab, which acts as a sort of bookshelf—books you have access to if you want, but not important enough to be sitting on your desk. When you go to the Archived Items, you download a book to read by double-clicking on your choice. After it has downloaded, the book will automatically be added to your home page and then opened for reading at your farthest read page. As I have been reading a few books on my iPod Touch for a while, it was very nice to have them appear on my MacBook Pro at the exact page I had left in.

Reading in the app is also nice. You can resize the window to get as much text as you want (or don’t want) on the screen at a time. It has support for your bookmarked pages, and the user interface controls are pretty simple. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard or the scroll wheel of your mouse (or in my case, two-finger scrolling with TouchPad). The mouse/touchpad feature is nice, however it is entirely too sensitive to be used carelessly—you’ll turn five pages before you realize it.

All in all, good job Amazon. There are a few little bugs such as the scrolling problem, but this is Beta software after all. It could be argued that the interface could be nicer, but for what the app is designed for it performs its function well—especially for being beta.

When the Kindle app for iPod/iPhone came out, it opened up the world of Kindle to me. I already owned an iPod which serves so many functions for me—spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated book reader didn’t make financial sense (or cents) for me. However, when the Kindle app was released it was perfect because I was able to enter the Kindle world without any further investment.

And that’s exactly what Kindle for Mac is doing for many more users: opening the world of Kindle up, free of charge, to anyone with an Apple computer.

When I first started developing for Palm I was a bit skeptical of the framework because it seemed thrown together and needed a lot of polish. The most annoying part was (and is) the lack of accurate documentation. Yes, I said accurate. Palm’s Developer website doesn’t offer complete documentation on everything, and even less of it is actually accurate. Often times if you copy-and-paste the sample code into your project it will not work due to either a typo in their code or the fact that the code is from a previous version of the framework and no longer works.

Palm’s own developer forums often are a frustration. If you take a look around you’ll notice a trend: most people’s posts have many more views than replies—which tells me nobody else can help them either. This isn’t to discount the webOS/Mojo ninjas out there—it just grows both aggravating and disappointing. I am currently trudging through writing a follow-up app for my last one, with progress alternating between very quick and very aggravatingly slow (as in, spending an entire day trying to figure out a problem no one has the answer to, and eventually deciding on another path that actually works).

Although this post sounds like a rant, I wouldn’t classify it as one. I haven’t lost faith in Palm. I understand it’s very early in webOS’s lifespan (indeed, the App Catalog itself is still in Beta), and being a developer I can accept that 1.x software is seldom perfect. Although being in the Palm camp this early on is a bit frustrating, seeing the ratings and feedback from your users after your app has finally shipped makes it all worth it.

Well, I’ve decided to do away with Peacefully Adrift altogether and migrate all of me to my namesake domain here. I’ve got a lot of further stuff I’m going to do to this site that I haven’t finished yet. This is just day one of fleshing out the new Thesis 1.5.1 and creating a new theme for my site on top of it. Expect minor things to change. This is a work in progress.

Designing

Typically if I’m designing I’m listening to ‘creative’ music. Typically these are the songs that would get me the weirdest looks by people if they were around. Admittedly, a lot of this music is weird but that’s exactly why I choose to listen to it: it’s different. When I’m designing I’m obviously trying to think creatively and flowing. Metaphorically, I enjoy the creative, flowing avant-gardé nature of the music, but also appreciate the underlying structure which typically adheres to the rules of music. This is exactly the way good design is! Refreshing, flowing, and different, but while adhering to the standards of design—both social and natural laws such as line-width and -height.

Typically when I get an album that inspires me, I stick to it for a while until it doesn’t. For a while this was The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan, which is still a monumental album in its rawness. For a while it was Jack White’s other band The Raconteurs and their second album. It truly depends on my mood at the time but others I’ve listened to while designing: Chevelle, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, The Derek Trucks Band (check out their new album Already Free now), Evanescence, Five for Fighting, Hootie & the Blowfish, James Morrison, Jamie Cullum (this is a relatively new find for me), John Mayer, Kings of Leon, and even Tenacious D.

Coding

Writing code is another story. Arguably, the process of writing code is typically not as creative as designing, assuming you are coding an existing design. Coding is often simply repetitive tasks. Music I listen to during this phase of development typically reflects this. Often I’ll listen to music that, though sometimes repetitive, has a driving force that “pushes” me along. Examples include: NIN’s Ghosts albums, Blue Man Group (haha, yes), Deftones, Kasabian, The Killers, Rage Against the Machine, She Wants Revenge, and System of a Down. You’ll notice most of these are “heavier” than the ones I listen to while coding. Quite literally, I need that extra drive to fuel long, boring coding spells.

Feedback

What about you? What inspires you to creativity, or pushes you to develop your work?

I’ve received a couple suggestions via Skribit but I’ve yet to act on any of them—something that will be fixed shortly. In the meantime, be sure to make some post suggestions by using the Skribit tab on the right. You don’t need an account to suggest topics.

True to Apple’s nature, they’ve made switching between the functions easy to do. Simply go to the Sound pane in System Preferences and change it from the dropdown box:

Simple, but annoying. The other day I had my electric guitar and wanted to amp it through my friend’s MacBook Pro 13″ but I ran into this problem: if I plugged my guitar directly in using the audio port as Line-In I couldn’t connect his laptop to a sound system–meaning I was forced to use the Mac’s built-in speakers to hear my guitar. Lame! Obviously this could have been remedied by using an external audio interface, but that’s still inconvenient.

Sigh.

It’s really a simple process that can be done very cheaply–most of the time. If you want to plug straight into your Mac instead of any kinds of external devices such as a Digidesign M-box 2 (which I use) you don’t really need a whole lot. Assuming you’ve got instrument cable for your guitar, you really only need one other part: an adapter.

Note: This article assumes you have an electric guitar, an acoustic-electric guitar, or at the very least a pickup for your acoustic guitar.

This article is specifically written towards Macs, which seem to have very nice sound cards built into them–even the MacBook line. The MacBooks and Mac Pros all have Line In ports which you can plug an 1/8″ connector into to pipe sound in.

Note: The new 13-inch MacBook Pro has a combined audio in/out port. I’m guessing this has to do with trying to cram so much into such a small laptop. In System Preferences you can switch between these functionalities and use it as a Line In port for your guitar. The downside to this is, if you’re using external speakers or headphones to monitor your recording…you simply can’t.

Getting the adapter

The main hurdle you have now is that instrument cable as used to connect guitar to an amplifier has 1/4″ connectors on the ends. You’ll need an adapter to convert that 1/4″ to 1/8″ so you can plug it into your Mac’s Line In port. You can find these wherever you normally look for electronic/audio components–RadioShack for me. The adapter looks something like this:

I got mine at RadioShack for $2.69. Not bad, huh? Note that this adapter is a mono adapter. You could get a stereo adapter if you wanted, but as most instrument cable is mono so you would have a wasted channel.

Volume

Now’s where things get a little variable. I have a Stratocaster which has Seymour Duncan pickups in it, which provide a very strong signal. With this setup, I can go to System Preferences>Sound, select Line In as my audio in port, and then go to GarageBand, Audacity, or whatever recording program I want and record perfectly fine that way. I don’t have to turn my volume knob all the way up in order to get a good signal for recording. However, depending on your guitar you may have a really low signal or a really hot one.

If your signal is fine, then you’re done! You’ve got a basic but functional way to record your guitar into your computer. From there you can amplify the signal using software amplifiers (such as Guitar Rig or the amps built into GarageBand). Or, if you have another instrument cable you can run your audio out from your “real” amplifier into your Mac but be careful about how hot your signal is coming into your Mac–too loud can damage things.

If your signal’s not fine

In the case that your signal is so low you can barely hear it, even with the guitar’s volume knob and the volume setting in System Preferences dialed all the way up, you may need to invest in a pre-amplifier to boost your signal.

In my previous article I suggested Griffin’s iMic, which will work, but if you’re going to be setting up a personal home studio-type environment you may want to splurge and get an M-box from Digidesign or something like a PreSonus Audiobox USB. These are more than pre-amps: they are audio interfaces. Consider them a seperate, dedicated sound card for your Mac. These types of things are handy for when you need to minimize your latency by “outsourcing” the processing of your guitar signal.

A note about latency

If you notice that there seems to be a delay between when you strike a note and when you hear it come through your computer you may need to get an audio interface like mentioned before in order to free up some of your system resources. Varying factors like amount of RAM, processor usage/speed (don’t be ripping DVDs with HandBrake while trying to record something), and even hard drive speed in some applications can cause your recording to lag behind. Although you can adjust this lag in your recording afterwards, it can be annoying when trying to record tracks to a drum beat and you’re always off a few milliseconds.

Overview

Hopefully, things have gone well for you. As I said, in most cases with Macs you should be fine with just the adapter. Please note that going straight through the sound card in your Mac is not the best way to do this ‘professionally’ but for simple home projects and song demos this is definitely an effective and much cheaper way to try things out without spending hundreds in pro equipment.

Feedback

Have fun jamming and please leave your comments below if you have questions and if this article has helped you in any way.