Migration assistant fail

When I bought my supped up computer I knew I'd have to transfer music, photos, the odd actual work files to it. What I didn't expect is for it to be a huge pain in the ass!

A friend at work was kind enough to lend me his firewire cable, easy-peasy. Everyone with a firewire connection raise your hand...not so fast iMac. What's that you say reader? "Surly the new and improved computer would have easy file transferability via cable!" Alas I regret to tell you no.

What it does seem to have is an excellent Time Machine transferability. A whole lot good that does from OS 10.4.11. (See the old bullshit I was dealing with?) Anyhoot after updating Migration Assistant on the old computer she still couldn't find Herbert wirelessly. I'll have to Google the shit outta this later for now I write this entry while sitting on a friend's stoop in Kensington via my phone anxiously awaiting his arrival. I'm helping him move today and of course it's a huge pain in the ass.

Some people get all the luck!

It's here! It's here!

Once every few years I get to watch this video. I thought I'd share it's latest installment with ya'll. It's a bit shaky from my excitement.

"Yuuuup!" Is right!

Anyway, arriving a few days early, this little bundle of joy is the latest and greatest addiction (pun!) to the Kaufman Klan. I've already admitted to a few friends to singing the opening theme of The Little Mermaid while pulling the beautiful white packaging from the ugly brown box it was shipped in. But let's back up a sec and reflect how this little man came to be.

I bought it form a friend—an excellent friend—who shipped it from her store in LA to my office in Manhattan. Since I wasn't expecting it until Wednesday, most likely Thursday, I wore a very pretty blue dress and ballet flats to work. Interestingly enough this huge box was wedged into my cubicle before I walked into work this morning. Oh the pure joy I felt! Oh the excitement and disbelief of the United Parcel Service's speed! As I bend over to pick up my new baby I realized, this shit's heavy! 

Home Depot has an excellent array of trolleys and pushcarts for your purchasing pleasure. 

$30 later I had my trolley, all bungeed up and ready to wheel Herbert Hoover out the spinny doors of my building and down to the underground. Onward to Brooklyn! Did you know the service entrance to the R train at 57th St has been dismantled due to MTA budget cuts? Neither did I! Ramming poor Mr. Hoover through and over the turn style hurt a bit, but I'd be damned if I was walking back up the stairs and dragging his ass across 7th Ave to the other entrance. Plus I was already getting pit stains on my dress...which is of course a cheap form of polyester. Stupid synthetic fabrics.

But! The two of us had a lovely ride home. I read my book, The Inverted Forest, while he sat fat an happy in a bushel of apples. Roughly an hour later we'd reached 25th St BK, no one the wiser that I was lugging around a very expensive brown banged-up box. 

Three flights of stairs later and a small snag in my dress, BAM! We're here, alone at last. And I sit, stare at it's awesomeness, type away on it's wireless keyboard and click it's smart mouse. Yuuuup!

iMac of my Dreams (prt 1)

Finally OS X Lion! Took you long enough, geesh. Ok to be fair I know you were hammering out issues with the new Final Cut--also I've been on vacation for quite some time so we haven't really had a chance to meet. That all changes this Thursday(ish). I finally bought my new iMac! Let the peasants rejoice! Here's to our bright future together, 21.5", 2.7 GHz, 1TB hard-driving friend. Cheers.

So come this weekend I'm starting on my digital portfolio project, how about we watch it grow together? Awesome! Of course I still have to finish up that whole "how to do it" part of the project, but that can't stop me from fiddling with it, right? Totally. I've already started some old fashioned sketches:

I realize these are the most boring sketches of all time. Hell blue prints of colonial homes are more dynamic. And really this doesn't tell us anything of how the piece will function or even look. But I feel like it's excellent rough draft of ideas. Clean, simple, and not too flashy. Ok maybe that's too much justice. But it did help me organize the piles and piles and piles of PDFs I would love to showcase. The market for picture books and throbbing teen supernatural and/or dystopian novels won't know what hit 'em.

Now on to HEX color guides! Color gurgle.

Digital Portfolios and Me.

A freelancer we use at work has her entire portfolio loaded on her iPad. Lord was I jealous when I first heard of it. First I was jealous of her iPad. Then I was jealous of her cunning use of it for actual professional development. I like the idea of always having a dynamic portfolio with me. If I were to meet with a client and needed show (the limited) multi-media design work I've accomplished so far, surely having it saved on a tablet device is much more interesting then just reviewing my own (current lack of a) website. But how do I accomplish this? Besides the obvious problem of not being able to afford an iPad, how do I make something more interesting then just a quick flip through a PDF?

Enter the awesomeness of InDesign's interactive PDF and SWF capibilities. I've starting taking Interactive Documents on Lynda.com and have found it daunting and addictive. I love it all! Buttons, actions, lite Flash, and borrowed Action Script files can potentially take my teaching guide examples into new heights of interesting showmanship. I think the most helpful way of organizing all my pieces will be to utilizing multi-state objects. Pages within a documents with a built in slide show? Yes please! Now to actually build the thing...and get it to live somewhere.

As to what I'm going to put all this on for one on one interviews remains semi-unclear. I think I'd be best to have it as a micro-site, then also as a downloadable PDF for anyone who wants it. Hell I don't care if you have examples of my work, download it all! Reference me to your friends, spread the word on my interactive document awesomeness. Now does it live on its own, here...Tumblr? Well, it's not a perfectly thought out plan, but it's a nice start of a cool idea. Hopefully I can use this to watch it grow.

Oh, and if I have to purchase a Nook Color ($270 y'all!) because it has Flash capabilities and might just be handy to whip out for a quick demonstration, well so be it. Worst comes to worst I can get library books on my poor man's iPad (aka digital portfolio) now.

How awesome is all that?