Panatlantica.org -

960 Grid System

Panatlantica — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:30:18 +0100

I have been trying to use grid based layouts every now and then but I never really warmed up to them, mainly because they were quite somewhat clumsy to use, heavy in code etc.

So I stumbled over this one here to-day: the 960 Grid System. 960 stands for the common web site width of 960 Pixels of course, and the grid system comes in either a 12 or 16 grid which is nice.

I think I will give this grid system a go as they also included some very nice sketch pads and photoshop and omnigraffle files to get you going in the early design stages.

Find out more at http://960.gs

I'll also add some books I can recommend wich might be interesting for the grid-minded developer who might want to catch up on the design principles behind grid based layouts.

No giggles when introducing yourself in Japanese, or: 日本語は本当にすばらしい！

Panatlantica — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:36:25 +0100

I have been studying Japanese for many many years, starting from initial studies of the Japanese language, history and culture in University years back.

But the very funny thing is, only now at age 37 I start to fully fathom this fascinating language. And at the same time I am shocked how many really important features of this language that separates you from being able to say your name (in a very stupid way too: 私の名前はパンアトランチカです，あなたの名前は? ) to being able to truly speak Japanese the way any normal Japanese person would do and not provoke giggles like - ha, how cute, a foreigner trying to speak our language.

Now basically with 私の名前はパンアトランチカです，あなたの名前は? there is nothing wrong. You can say it too: Watashi-no namae-wa Panatlantica des. Anata no namae wa? - My name is Panatlantica, what's your name?! This is good and school book Japanese, but did you note: people always grin at you in a somewhat funny way if you DO say that.

But why?!! Simply, because you can say this, but it is not 100% *natural* Japanese after all. So what's wrong? School books usually won't tell you. Teachers and university professors never tell you (ah, Ishihama-Sensei, yes, he would say something but only if you went Sake-drinking with him...).

The problem really is: for once you would not say MY name is... like in 私の名前は... and you would most definitively NEVER EVER say あなたの名前は? so, YOUR name is?

I never learned this in school or university of from any book. But I learned it from real Japanese, like Ishihama-Sensei, my old Uni prof, or Keiko, my room mate in England... They would omit ANY use of I, you, he, she, it, we, they whenever possible. So just say:

「さて，」always a good way to start speaking, introducing your sentences with "sate,", "now," like the English also love to do - "Now, I think it has started raining, hasn't it?!"... So: 「さて、名前は、パンアトランチカだ。」YES! BE BOLD but avoid the "Watashi" - you are not a whimp: "SATE, Namea wa, Panatlantica da." Hey ho, now you got respect! Also note the plain form of desu -> da. You seem to know who you are and are confident in live. No giggles but interest and sparkle in the eyes of others. NOW you are ready to break the ice and say 「あなたな?」- "Anata wa?" Not more, not less. Anata should be avoided, yeah, it can sound a little too intimate, but hey, you been bold, now smooth the lines: And you?!

Of course, if you are a lady, you would go back to what you learn in your old text book, but then, are women really like this today? Hey no, and gladly no! And not even your Japanese female counterpart, they HATE the always cuteness, always humbleness if they are below the age of 45, 50...

I recently came across a GREAT book. You'll find it below: Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell you. The first book ever to address these matters. And a great reader on the subject of the "invisible subject". I shall write about it one day. Like in Japanese, you can get by through entire passages not mentioning (again) any subject. Like you could say: "he said it to her and Ms. Smith answered back" in simply "said and Ms. Smith answered". And to a Japanese speaker, it would totally be clear what you ment.

This is also in the book but this feature of language occurs in other languages, too. It happens in German even which I found out today. I should call it "the context-sensitive phrase". This will come up in a future blog post, I must first mediate about this a little more deeply before hitting the keyboard :-)

Leopard, Intel Mac, older Adobe CS apps

Panatlantica — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:51:39 +0100

There has been really some rumble going on with Adobe's decision to not support nor to update/port their older Adobe CS applications (CS1 and CS2) to Apples latest Mac OS 10.5, aka Leopard.

This has kept me, too, from early switching to Leopard, though I quite liked the features of the new Mac OS. But not being able to use my Adobe CS applications any longer other then being forced to spend a outrageous amount of money upgrading to CS3 - which I personally believe is quite an impertinence by Adobe (and maybe even Apple?).

And then there are those rumors that CS3 tends not to work as expected on Leopard either... Adobe, what's going on? Can you once for all start communicating properly to your customers? To the back base of Mac users who helped YOU get where you are now?

So when I got my new MacBook last week, which I use to work from home or from on the road, I did not care to much that it would be Leopard and I had not Adobe's applications with me as this won't be my main computer anyway and I had, in the past, been quite all right using alternatives to Adobe Photoshop on the old iBook.

I must say however, that on the iBook, I did somehow get to have Adobe apps - actually just by coincidence, as I realized we still had an unlicensed package of Adobe CS lying around that even was sealed and cellophane wrapped. It was part of an OEM bundle for a scanner we bought once but at that time we had already been working on CS2, so it got stuck on the shelf and people forgot about it. So, in the last days of my iBook, I did have a properly installed and licensed version of Adobe CS.

When my new MacBook came and I sat down to set everything up, I wanted to have all of my files and stuff over from the old iBook on to the new MacBook. I was then going to kill everything from the iBook to set this one up for one of my employees for on the road, she would just need a running system and iWorks, nothing else.

So when the migration assistant asked me to boot my old computer in Target Disk mode so it could migrate everything onto my new MacBook, I did not really think of my Adobe CS on the iBook. I just found out later, that in the migration process, even after killing everything eles on the old iBook, my old Adobe CS found its way over to the MacBook running Leopard.

Now I knew of those: it won't work kind of things. I also knew that trying to install CS or CS2 would not work because I tried this once, too, on another newer Apple computer just before downgrading that one to Tiger...

But there they were, my Adobe CS application icons, and out of curiosity, expecting those apps to crash, I double clicked them and was VERY surprised:

Adobe InDesign CS, Photoshop CS and Illustrator CS work perfectly fine on my Leopard Intel-based MacBook!

A look into Activity Monitor just reveals that they are PowerPC applications, but Rosetta seems to do a good job translating the PowerPC code over to the Intel processor.

I have been using Adobe CS to some extend now on the MacBook and yes it might not perform as it might running natively, but to be honest, this is within a scope of those nerds saying "yeah, I can *hear* how much better my stereo sounds using those half inch gold covered purest copper cables, har har har!"

So far: no crashes, no problems, no nothing. I might be an isolated case, who knows. But then, I can only say: if you are upgrading from Tiger to Leopard and want to give it a try, use Carbon Copy Cloner and a spare hard disc to replicate your current system (and most of all, be able to return back where you left in case things do fail non-the-less). Then upgrade to Leopard (people said an Archive and Install seems the best option - or do a disk format and clean install and use the migration assistant to have your stuff migrated from the backup disk drive you created in the step before.

This will result in your software and files being in place as before again - no installer needed for Adobe apps (it really seems to me that it is *just* the installer that breaks and yes, this would be difficult for Adobe to update as they would need to provide new CDs to people - so it might just be a simple cost and logistics problem here for Adobe).

With all of that on my mind - I wonder when the first US citizen will sue Adobe and force them to fix their installer?!! I mean, being in Europe I could only dream of so much consumer power but then, with my knowledge of now, would I spend the money and time in lawyers for *that*? And who knows, maybe Adobe comes up with some REAL newness to their apps that justify for that whopping amount of money for an upgrade to: CS4?! :-)

New MacBook

Panatlantica — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 04:25:31 +0100

This week I got my new MacBook. It is absolutely great fun - the Intel Duo Core processor is fast as hell and the new screen ratio (more 16:9 then 3:4 like my old iBook) is very pleasing to the eye. Though I really have to get used to the keyboard. Or the keyboard needs to get used to me... I got the feeling like it is not as smooth as the old iBook's or the current regular Apple keyboard.