This blog sucks, and it has sucked for a long time. No, I’m not about to stop blogging, y’all aren’t gonna get off that easy. I’ve suffered for my art, and now it’s your turn.

No, the blog has sucked, and since I’m responsible for it’s content, that means I’ve been sucking lately, and that’s the plain truth. Betweeen having the Exploder explode, the hunting not going too well, and the rest of the crap personally and professionally in my life, I have been pisshole deep in candiru, and no rubbers in sight. Normal blogging to resume when normal life resumes. Which, pretty much means never, it’s gonna be the same shit as always.

next: This Windoze shit is really yanking my chain. Colanderboy made some comment in the thread below about WIn2k.

Let me tell you something about Win2k. No, wait, let me tell you something about computers, first.

Computers have gone a long way toward making our lives easier in a great number of ways. Most of which have to do with things we could already do easily by hand, like print layout. Having been a semiprofessional wrist in an art studio, some years back, I’m intimately familiar with the process of marking up type for a typesetter manually, and have even composed hand set type- one of the few people I know who can claim the nearly-lost distinction.

I’ve also done some accounting- only at the general level- and I understand double-entry General Ledger, and how it works- and the advent of tools like Excel make this process infinitely more adaptable and accurate.

What computers have also done, is make it possible to do things never done before- never heard of before, in fact. With this computer, running Win2k, as it has been for years- I can construct a true virtual solid model, accurate to within tolerances beyond the ability of humans to construct or measure. I can manipulate that solid model in ways nobody could ever expect, even creating shapes completely impossible to manufacture by any other method. I can do real-time finite element analysis of those shapes, and I can assemble those shapes into assemblies on which I can do real-time dynamic finite element analysis. And wehen I’m done, I can connect my computer to a rapid prototyping machine, and with a single mouse click, turn the virtual concept into a real entity, of adequate quality to be used as a replacement part in a machine, if so desired. This is something that Boeing, for instance, would have given human lives to be able to do, as recently as 1960- in fact, the technology available for this type of engineering is ten times as advanced today as it was just five years ago. This is the tech that computers have given us, that would never have arrived on our doorstep any other way. Tomorrow, if all computers were gone, we’d still be able to make a brochure. TO edit a film. The process would be more difficult, surely, but it is possible. Yes, some things that can now be done with computers can’t be done by hand editing film, but the obverse is also true.

However: Without computers, engineering would be dragged back into the stone age. And that engineering takes place on PCs. Not macs. If you’re doing print work, or editing film, you can use a mac, or a pc, who cares, whichever tool suits you. If you’re doing hard engineering, you’re doing it on a PC or a Sun System. And you’re using Windows or Unix or Linux. No serious engineering software is made for the Mac, and I doubt any will ever be. Industry uses PC, and does so for the very reasons illustrated in the Mac comercials. PC’s are for businesspeople. Macs are for commie hippie slackers. If you want to make pretty pictures or movies, and you like belonging to the religion of Mac, (and no, nobody has proved to me yet that Mac is not a religion, and a cultish one at that) by all means, do so, and be happy. I happen to like Win2k, because it’s clean, has a very small overhead,a nd it doesn’t fill up my computer with shit I don’t want or need. In fact, the SOLE trouble I have had with this computer has originated in two pieces of software: Quicktime (Apple product) and Itunes (apple product). These products- like AOL- are viruses. The moment i can permanently free this computer of those viruses I will be happy. Lest anyone begin to belive I am some gates-worshipping nimrod, let me assure you- the day I no longer have to touch a computer for any reason, and can spend the balance of my life afield, hunting and fishing, will be the happiest day of my life. I have developed a hatred of ALL computers that completely overhwelms my interest in ANY platform. The fact remains: If you want to do something that can never be done in any other way, you’re doing it on a PC.

Incidentally- Elisson- I am not a coder, but I have written code. Not on bare metal, but some prety sophisticated code nonetheless. And I know all to damnably well what a kludge is, and Win2k has none. The only kludges are to fix security holes that hackers found in IE, and not in the core software itself. The REASON hasckers found security holes in IE is that people are LOOKING for them. They’re there in Mac OS too, but who would bother? the market is to small for hackers to bother with. It would be like counterfieting the already worthless bank notes of a third world country with a failing economy.

Use what you like. I could give a shit. Don’t give ME grief about MY choices, becuase MY choices allow me to do things no mac ever dreampt of, or ever could. QED.