Originally I planned on calling this "Song Of The Day". However, seeing as it took me 2 weeks to even publish this song, I decided to go with something a bit more achievable. Came across this artist the other day on Grooveshark. Thought I'd share it with the Kontainians.

nJoy,

joHn

So I gave myself a late Christmas present this year, Adobe CS4 Master Collection. Although the install took me all morning, which included removing my current copy of CS3, it seems well worth it. While there are somethings I will have to get use to, for the most part it seems like a worthwhile upgrade.

After spending a few hours exploring, the most annoying feature update has to be the screen modes. In Photoshop CS3, Adobe finally added the single window standard screen mode, which essentially provided the uniformity of fullscreen mode while not taking up the entire screen. This feature, for some reason beyond me, was removed in CS4. After browsing the internet for about 30 minutes, I found a solution that has appeased me. It is referred to as Application Frame (Window > Application Frame). Application Frame packs the photoshop application into one singular compressed window. This essentially provides the same functionality as the CS3 feature, but not without it's annoyances. For example, when in Application Frame and with the window fully maximized, there is an annoying 2px gap all the way around the window (see above image).

For sure, one of the neatest additions to Photoshop CS4 has to be Content-Aware Scaling. This addition allows users to take a large image and resize it without losing the most interesting areas. Users can select an area of an image that they do not want to lose when resizing and Photoshop will protect it, making sure to remove other areas first. While it does not work on all images, especially images with pre-dominantly foreground heavy focus, it does a pretty exceptional job. Check out my test run above.

I officially decided to revamp my online portfolio (johnwithanh.com). After tossing around several layout concepts this weekend, I have still not convinced myself whether I want to do this in flash or not. A huge part of my early web design & development was focused on flash based websites. While, I've nowhere near perfected the art, I was getting pretty good at it. Finding ways to avoid many of the common pitfalls and cliches seen by 99% of flash websites.

Since moving to my position at Grooveshark.com, I've had push the progress made aside. Forced to focus my efforts on the design and not the development. And we use Flex, not Flash, so right there we've cut out a huge array of options for interactive design. No regrets though. The opportunities and experience have more than made up for it. So, I want to update my web presence to better showcase the projects I've been involved in the past couple years.

So anyways. First step, the logo. I will be throwing some ideas up here as I go along, if for nothing more than my own sanity. Here is my first concept, thoughts?

nJoy,

John Ashenden (johnwithanh.com)

I'm now on my second day of using Kontain, and have to say that I'm loving it. Things still appear to be glitchy (song uploads), but the smooth/seam-less interface has kept my tension at bay. Nice job Kontain team!