Typophile - I hate computers - Comments

speaking of “the old

russellm — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:35:24 -0700

speaking of “the old days”...

I was hand cutting vynil and Rubylith films for a screen printing company in about ’82 or ’83, when I saw the first digital plotter for cutting vynil and Rubylith. It was so slow and could only cut arcs in something like 3.6 degree increments... I thought - “These things will NEVER replace a skilled guy like myself” :-)

I remember all of these old

BlueStreak — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:27:31 -0700

I remember all of these old guys working at the sign shops that could take “One Shot” paint and paint the most fantastic letters. Those vinyl plotters put them out of business.

I also remember the first demonstration I saw of digital photography around 1989. The camera was a huge video camera. It was plugged into a big computer and monitor. The photo took about five minutes as the red, green and blue channels each panned through their individual scans. Then it took another five minutes or so for the CPU to process the image. Needless to say still shots were all that could be taken. I think that camera cost something like $30,000. The little pocket cameras you can buy for a couple of hundred dollars today take a picture ten times better and a thousand times faster.

I won’t forget the reaction when I told the photo labs that they’d better start establishing a digital base. They completely discounted it saying, “there is no way a digital image can ever compete against continuous tone film photography.”

(No subject)

canderson — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:56:32 -0700

Classic!

Christian Barca — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 08:20:26 -0700

Classic!

__________________________________________________
Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische, frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz.

Someone in oslo dislikes a

alexfjelldal — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:10:09 -0700

Someone in oslo dislikes a certain brand of computers. I found this sticker on a lamp post.

.........................................................
Bison Design
Spön

I love computers. I remember

Christopher Slye — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:22:01 -0700

I love computers.

I remember going to a friend’s house in (probably) 1978 and seeing an Apple II for the first time. It was an amazing thing. I remember writing BASIC programs on TRS-80s in the computer lab in junior high. (Ugh, I was a computer geek!)

Then my mom, great mother that she is, bought us our own Apple II and we spent a couple years playing Castle Wolfenstein, and Zork, and The Wizard And The Princess, and Star Maze, and Choplifter...

But I do feel sorry for new computer users these days, because they are complicated — and if you ask me, it was more fun learning with those early ones.

These days everyone expects

James Puckett — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:33:25 -0700

These days everyone expects you to read their email even if it’s after hours.

I still don’t understand why so many people put up with that attitude. I can understand why all my lawyer friends put up with it—they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and everything from individual freedom to massive corporations depends on their work. But for a design salary (and rates) people should be happy that anyone reads their email at all, much less after five PM. Try getting a plumber to do any work after hours for what a designer gets paid and one will likely learn what a wrench tastes like.

Give me back the days prior

fontplayer — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 20:08:17 -0700

Give me back the days prior to speed dial!

As a salesman, I hate voice-mail. Give me the days when you could get the key someone who made the decisions when you were actually trying to fill in your calendar.

How is the forgery business

Endre Berentzen — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:54:21 -0700

How is the forgery business these days Gary (“my computer enables me to MAKE money”)?

My first machine was an Amiga running Deluxe Paint. I remember reproducing pictures like the first Batman poster pixel by pixel (actually individually rendering each). I was around 12-14 and had already built a name for myself internationally as a Deluxe Paint pro-user (my learning curve was steeper and competition was only a few guys Germany and the UK). Aaahhh, the love of running home to your computer after school and staying until your mum told you to go to bed, then sneak up and play some more with pixels and hues.

I’m not to sure I hate computers. They are a great tool. Email on the other hand is what’s killing our industry. It’s so easy for that marketing exec to send out on his way from the office: I need this on my desk tomorrow morning. Leaving you to work through the night. If you only had a phone they would actually have to talk to you and you could decide to pick up or not if the time was 5 min. to 4 and you had plans for the night. These days everyone expects you to read their email even if it’s after hours. Not to mention all the time spent on reading and writing them. Instead of collating information and provide a proper written brief things comes in pieces often several times only slightly adjusted each time just enough so you have to read it again. AAAaaaarrrrggghhh.
Bloody emails and mobile phones. Give me back the days prior to speed dial!

We have more reason to

Paul Cutler — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:59:31 -0700

We have more reason to upgrade because marketing departments have seized control of development - opting for whiz bang features instead of things that could actually help us, like getting the mess called color management straightened out, or font management on OSX for example.

Or instead of slowing down for a few moments and actually making sure software is bug free before it’s released, instead of always playing catch up, and never quite getting there.

pbc

Sometimes I feel like David

fontplayer — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:42:57 -0700

Sometimes I feel like David Copperfield, and sometimes it is like doing hard time in prison. “Love, Hate, Everything In-between”.

I like computers.

Quincunx — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 08:12:26 -0700

I like computers.

Try that today. Today we

James Puckett — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:19:59 -0700

Try that today.

Today we have a lot more reasons to upgrade. There was a time when most upgrades were driven by video games because the machines were so slow that performance increases were barely relevant to running anything else. Now performance increases can be pretty astounding, and having enough cheap RAM to keep all of one’s pertinent applications running in concert makes extra CPU cycles a lot more useful.

My first computer was a

pattyfab — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 07:02:44 -0700

My first computer was a MacII CI which was an awesome machine for its time and state of the art for something like 2 years, unheard of now. It had 8MB of RAM and a hard drive of 100MB. Of course in those days RAM was like $100/MB (after the japanese earthquake). I had that baby for 10 years, altho by the end all it was good for was email.

> Frankly, I sick and tired

Don McCahill — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 06:01:01 -0700

> Frankly, I sick and tired of all this easy access to porn!

They say that too much porn can result in missing verbs.

I hate computers

Paul Cutler — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:25:10 -0700

They suck. They are life sucking soul sucking pieces of garbage.

I am sick of them. They kill humanity.

pbc