March 10, 2013

When not gallivanting around the Capital District with friends, I’ve spent the last several days practically glued to my new iMac, so it seems kind of odd that I haven’t bothered to post. (I did start a few reviews that I’ll likely end up backdating once I actually finish writing them.)

Even though I wouldn’t say the transition from Mac to PC is difficult, it is different and just enough so that it’s sometimes quite a process to do what is in actuality quite a simple task. And, of course, since all the Apple products in the house are constantly talking to one another, I’m forever being distracted by notifications for email and text messages and various social media accounts.

And through all that, I’ve been working on school stuff. Well, trying to at least. I’m finding something of a chore to be on the PC at this point, which is partly because I want to play with my new computer and partly because it feels oddly foreign after trying to get used to using the Mac.

Hopefully once I get the new computer moved into my office I’ll be a bit more reliably around once again.

“Oz the Great and Powerful”

I’m really out of the loop with what’s coming out in theaters, I suppose, because this was one I didn’t know anything about until recently. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Movie poster

Oz the Great and Powerful isn’t a terrible movie. It’s a fun enough distraction, if that’s what you’re looking for. And I think kids will enjoy it, though, I can’t quite endorse it given the central character of the film is a womanizing con man. A fact which is stated roughly every fifteen minutes throughout the course of the film.

It’s also quite a visual spectacle. Unfortunately, since we don’t have the luxury of introducing some newfangled technology like color this is mostly for show.

I would say it was breathtaking, but it’s this spectacle for spectacle sake that really lost me. It’s just so, well, fake looking that while it’s a very pretty and all it’s almost distracting. It’s such an obvious thing that it’s even the subject of some not-quite-fourth-wall-breaking jokes, which seem to me to be mocking the 1939 film. (“Bubbles are just for show.”) And when it wasn’t riding the coattails of The Wizard of Oz, it was almost too campy to be entertaining.

Mostly what bugs me is that there really is no plot. And I don’t just mean there was no story, I mean, that nothing really happens AT ALL. I’m still kind of baffled by the whole thing. So, of course, there’s already talk of a sequel. But even without any story, things didn’t quite make sense. Chiefly, I really don’t understand why Weisz and Kunis speak with different accents when they’re sisters — and Weisz can fake an American accent quite well, I think.

Personally, I was glad I had a free pass. If I’d paid full admission, I’d probably have a more heated rant.

iMac

I spent the better part of today setting up my new iMac.

iMac“Setting up” here more closely resembling playing, but in my defense it took two hours to transfer my iTunes library and while it dawned on me I could be doing something more productive, I opted to try and learn how to use the magic trackpad and tweak various preference settings.

If I had any fear that there would be a learning curve to cope with, it was immediately confirmed when I couldn’t figure out why my new keyboard wouldn’t work. Seems I neglected to turn it on, which given how not obvious that was you would think that’d be listed in a step somewhere in the teeny instruction book that I didn’t bother to read. Also, I apparently managed to turn on the trackpad without realizing I had done so and didn’t really clue into the how of it.

In any case, it’s a very pretty computer and it’s temporarily taking up one end of my dining room table. I need to take apart the PC and rearrange1 my office before it moves to its permanent home. Which means I walk by it no matter where I’m going in the house and inevitably end up sitting down and poking at for long stretches of time. I find myself simultaneously awed by all the shiny features and totally baffled by how strangely foreign some of it is to me.

I’m sure to report more as I actually move over to using the iMac as my main computer. Suffice it to say, I think I’m already officially a convert.

  1. As I am replacing both of my broken printers with a new (hopefully not broken) printer and this computer takes up about the same space as my PC’s monitor, I have a lot more space to work with. Or I will once I clear out the broken printers and disassemble the PC.

It’s (Finally) Here!

And it’s HUGE!

Uschi sniffing the gigantic box with my new iMac

As expected, Uschi had to make sure all that cardboard wasn’t hiding something fun for her. Or maybe she’s moonlighting as a bomb-sniffer. Who knows.

WP Accessibility Round-Up

For those of you interested in the future of WordPress’s accessibility, I urge you to please contribute to the effort. We could use some feedback on the Twenty Thirteen theme, custom menus, and the add media feature. And for theme developers, there’s now a rough draft of the accessibility section for the handbook

Also, tomorrow is the weekly IRC meetup for the Make WordPress Accessible group. Please feel free to join us in #wordpress-ui on freenode at 3 p.m. Eastern.