Crimson Blog

I wonder if the title for this blog post is redundant. I’m running my old Powermac G5 with dual 2 GHz processors and 2 gigs of ram. So far my thoughts on OS 10.5 are limited as I just got done spending most of the day installing it. I managed to dodge the APE BSOD by uninstalling the thing… years ago… for being buggy, and by waiting till I heard the reports that the system was stable. There are a few complaints I have to add to its somewhat short list of new features.

AlchemyTV is, for the moment, bricked. Until its creators come up with a software update, the TV card is just causing drag in my aerodynamic case. Well.. at least I hear they are working on it and the problem is fairly well reported.

What isn’t well reported is that Geekbind does not work in OS X 10.5. One of my favorite little freeware interface tweaks is crashing consistently. This fun little program allows you greater control over various window properties, such as, my favorite, transparency. With a keystroke I can adjust transparency, which has it’s uses as far as impressing friends with my cool desktop layout, but also has a few nifty uses while editing images… it will be sorely missed since the project appears to be completely dead.

On my plate right now I am designing two websites for family and redesigning Crimson Haven. One project is And I’m happy for them all. Doug Watson Digital is the one for my uncle by the name of, you guessed it, Doug Watson. If you happen to be interested in employing an extremely talented artist for teaching, composting, video game art, or whatever you should definitely check out his site and give him an email.

For an entirely different crowd there is Splitpin Engineering Services which is the website for my dad, Dave Watson. At this very second it’s just a fancy online business card, but come the weekend there will be a new feature added, a digital parts manual. We came up with this idea while my dad was complaining that one of the most time consuming parts of his job was when somebody called his antique aircraft spare parts business saying something to the effect of "I need the whatchyamacallit that fits between the fiddly thing and that other gidget. My original plan was to  just make one simple database and have a page where you could pick a manual, pick an item of interest from the manual and be given a diagram. Then you type in a number from the diagram and you get a part number complete with name and description. It all seemed so simple, till my friend Roo decided to have a day long conversation with me about the benefits of having a nice relational database. Which, to this day, I am not using any of the benefits he listed to me. But hey, how could I turn down an opportunity to try something needlessly complicated in the hopes that I’ll be glad for the practice in the future.

In return for doing these two sites I’ve managed to lay my hands on some very nice software and a touch of hardware which I most certainly could not afford if I were not a student. (more…)

Since Flash is still nothing but a dream for the iPhone/iPod Touch brothers it leaves advanced web development somewhat up a creek. Luckily, the Mobile Safari performs admirably in all other interactive fields, including JavaScript, allowing you to make use of some of the fun features revolving around AJAX and JSON to make a really sweet webApp. The adventure of building an application that would work with the memory and quiz features of the Bradley University Renaissance Gala taught me a great deal about using the web features of the iPhone/iPod touch.
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