Love this photo of Jack Kerouac (via the impossible cool). Great balance.

I’ve tried twice now to read through On The Road and always feel like I need to finish it. I love the writing style and the story is intriguing at first, but something about that book causes me to lose interest about halfway through. I think maybe it’s because I fail to establish a real connection with the characters and care enough to see where the journey ultimately leads Sal. Have any of you read it? Is it worth finishing?

Over the weekend I scanned in the covers of my Tintin comic book collection for a project we’re doing in our house. As I was working on them I realized that they would make awesome iPhone wallpapers, so I sized them down and packaged them up in a zip file for everyone to enjoy. I don’t have all of the comics, so there are a few covers missing. I did make a grid layout of 16 covers which is included in the folder.

A couple of notes. I obviously don’t hold the copyrights to these covers so I haven’t added them to my iPhone wallpapers collection. I also noticed that the last wallpapers I created where at a slightly different screen size and resolution than the native specs of the iPhone (320 x 480 @ 163 ppi), so these new ones are at the correct specs. The difference is noticeable, mostly in clarity, so I hope to re-save my other wallpapers when I get a chance.

I’m very excited for the Tintin movie which is being directed by Steven Spielberg and currently in post-production. I severely hope the films line-up well with Hergé’s classic Ligne claire style. I know I’ve written about Tintin before, but allow me to encourage you again to pick up a couple of books and discover his stories and adventures if you haven’t yet. I’m can’t wait to share these with Ethan once he’s old enough.

I recently finished reading the book Foundation Fireworks CS4 from Friends of Ed. I’ll be upfront and tell you that I’m a Photoshop user and have been ever since the beginning of my career as a designer. I’ve heard numerous people over the years say great things about Fireworks, but the only times I’ve launched the application have been once out of curiosity and a couple of other times when I double-clicked on a PNG, Fireworks’ native file format, and forgot to set those to open in Photoshop instead. Despite my lack of use with the program I’ve never uninstalled it and have been curious about what lingers under the hood, wondering if it’s features could be of benefit to me. So when the opportunity came my way to read this book I took it so I could have a proper introduction.

Content Structure
The  chapters of the book are grouped into 3 sections: “Part 1: Learning Fireworks”, “Part 2: Using Fireworks”, and “Part 3: Fireworks in Action”. I found the structure of this content to be well organized and easy to pick up for someone like myself who has such limited knowledge of the application. The book smartly assumes that you are familiar with the Adobe ecosystem, particularly Photoshop and Illustrator, as it often discusses how Fireworks fits into the Creative Suite as a whole.

I think this is a strategic move by the authors. Fireworks’ history is tied to Macromedia, the big software competitor to Adobe before Adobe acquired them in 2005. I would assume that the majority of Fireworks’ biggest advocates are either users who had adopted the application before the acquisition or are new to the field and Adobe. Fireworks has the battle of promoting itself to Adobe users who predate the acquisition, such as myself, and explaining why it’s useful even though these users have lived without its features for years. The angle of not saying “Fireworks is better than Photoshop and Illustrator because…” and instead showing how its features can compliment the work-flow of a Photoshop user has a much greater chance of getting that user curious enough to engage with the application.

The Authors
Foundation Fireworks CS4 is co-authored by 6 individuals who have varying areas of expertise in the field of web design and development and obviously use Fireworks. I’ll admit when I first picked up the book I was expecting a full-on Fireworks lovefest and Photoshop poo poo session. Thankfully I was proven wrong. Their love of the app comes through, but they remain objective about it’s features and write from the perspective of the user. The tone of the book is relaxed and the writers offer up a lot of screenshots of what they’re discussing which is critical for this kind of book. You can tell that they are fluent Fireworks users and take the time to walk through dialog windows, menu bars, and the other nooks and crannys of the UI.

The Projects
Whenever I read books devoted to an application I immediately flip to the projects section because that’s how I size them up. The projects in Foundation Fireworks CS4 are split out across parts 2 & 3. The chapters in Part 2 deal with more segmented uses such as skinning Flex components and creating Adobe Air prototypes while the chapters of Part 3 are case studies that walk through projects from start to finish using a wide range of Fireworks features.

I found the projects to be handy and helpful in seeing how Fireworks works and I particularly enjoyed the chapters on extensions, building out a blog, and comping out an e-commerce site. I was able to see just how well positioned Fireworks is as a web design and development program and where the lines divert between it and Photoshop, showing that they are truly two distinct applications with their own strengths and weaknesses.

I was a disappointed with some aspects of the projects and let me explain why. First off let me say that the point of books like these are to show off the feature-sets of an application and make it easy for someone to understand how they might be used in real-world examples. But I rarely come across a book like this where the examples are of extremely high caliber. Some of the techniques presented feel dated, fadish, or as if in some cases the authors didn’t spend a ton of time coming up with really solid project ideas. One example is the chapter discussing Visual Effects that discusses how to create a glass button and add diagonal lines as a texture, which are worn-out techniques to say the least.

Also disappointing are a couple of instances where the authors talk about creating a logo with Fireworks and spend maybe a page showing how to do that. To me that turned logo design into a trivial exercise which nothing could be farther from the truth. I understand what they were trying to convey, i.e. how you can use the vector tools of Fireworks to develop a logo, but I would have preferred that they mention that and then simply provide an example logo for their projects.

My Verdict
Despite the few complaints I had surrounding the projects I definitely enjoyed Foundation Fireworks CS4 and recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about the application. You will walk away with a greater understanding of why the application exists, what it’s strengths are, what role it could play in your web design/development work-flow, and how to get started with it’s features. I’m not one of the authors and I don’t know their specific goals for the book, but I would say that’s “Mission Accomplished”.

Personally, I’m still a Photoshop fan and user. A big reason for that is I’m so entrenched in my work-flow that I couldn’t fathom changing it up. While Fireworks offers some unification of tools that would save me time of jumping back and forth between Illustrator and Photoshop, I feel the trade-off of having much larger feature-sets in both of those apps is worth it. While Fireworks is capable of producing nice looking graphics, you still have to jump over to Photoshop if you want to do the heavy lifting. This is why Fireworks is not a replacement for Photoshop and vice versa. The time I spend prepping and slicing out images from Photoshop for development would probably go a lot faster in Fireworks, but I just can’t bring myself to work on a comp in Photoshop and then launch Fireworks to finish the job. For some people that will be a life-saver.

Beautiful site showcasing book cover designs and designers. Definitely worth bookmarking or subscribing to their RSS feed for a steady flow of inspiration.

Back in May of 2006 Cynthia and I went to England and Scotland for a business/pleasure trip. Before we left we stopped into Half-Price Books to get a couple of new books to read while we were away. I didn’t really know what I wanted to get, but I had heard of the book “Long Way Round” by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman and so when I found a copy I figured I’d check it out.

I devoured the book.

The book tells the journey of McGregor and Boorman as they circumvented the globe (heading east from London and ending in London) on their motorcycles in 2004. Both actors are motorcycle enthusiasts and become very good friends after meeting on a movie set several years ago. The idea for the trip started when Ewan visited a map store and discovered that it was possible to make a roundtrip around the globe on a motorcycle with only having to take a handful of trips across the water. He pitched the idea to Charley and they put the trip in motion. I love to travel and have often had the desire to take off for a few months and travel the world, so reading a book like this definitely resounded with me. Plus the fact that these are both celebrities who are out of their professional element and pursuing personal passions also made for an interesting read. You were able to get an idea of who these people really are instead of viewing them through the distorted lens of the media.

Another element of the book that greatly appealed to me is how they did it. I don’t own or ride motorcycles, but the idea of packing up your supplies and hitting the open road on a motorcycle sounds invigorating. Often the pair (along with a small support crew) would simply stop off on the side of the road and make camp. Even though both of these guys are well off, they didn’t use their monetary means to live it up on their trip. To them the purpose was to experience the countries and cultures they passed through and to soak up their surroundings as much as possible. There are stories of them pulling into a town and having to find a place to stay at the last minute. There are countless run-ins with immigration officers and locals that make for some tense moments. Plus the times that people recognize Ewan are pretty entertaining and actually happened less often than I thought.

In addition to the book a TV documentary was produced and aired on BBC television. The documentary was then distributed on DVD, so after I finished the book I Netflixed the set. Cynthia watched the episodes with me and we had a blast viewing them. The episodes were a great compliment to the books and those paired together offered the most complete picture of their entire journey.

So it was with great excitement that I found out a few months back that in 2007 Ewan and Charley did “Long Way Down“. On this trip they went south from the northern tip of Scotland to Cape Town. I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of the book and just a couple of days ago Amazon delivered it fresh to my doorstop. I have no doubt that I’ll devour this one just like I did the first and as soon as the DVD set is ready for the US it’ll be in my Netflix queue. If any of you have the Fox Reality Channel, the series will be shown starting August 2nd.

The “Fox Reality Channel”….really?

If you’re looking for a good casual read or something to fill your Netflix queue, check out Long Way Round. If any of you have already read the book or seen the documentary, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Cynthia, take notes, this is a great birthday or Christmas gift.

My friend Carlos at Springbox just showed me his copy of “Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer” from Print Liberation and I’m sold. I’ve been interested in screen printing but have yet to actually try it out and this book looks like the perfect instructional companion. Granted, I need more room to actually take on a project like this and with Ethan arriving any day now, the close-quarters combination of a baby and emulsion does evoke sights of CPS knocking on my door, so I’ll shelve this one for now.

But I’m also filled with the sights from the Crowe classic “Singles” where Cliff screen prints his band’s name onto a shirt and just how rock and roll that looked to me in 1992. That piece of inspiration has been stewing for 16 years.