I went to the Nine Inch Nails concert the other night at the Pacific Coliseum, with opening acts of Autolux and Queens of the Stone Age. It was a really amazing show and experience, to say the least. We arrived just after the doors opened at 6:00PM, found our seats, bought some t-shirts, etc. Autolux started at around 7PM, and they were very cool and unique. Queens of the Stone Age were equally impressive, but everyone was really there to see Nine Inch Nails.

NIN took the stage at around 9:20, and rocked out until just after 11. The entire arena was on their feet the entire time, singing along and cheering. The music was really awesome and loud, but the visuals were absolutely brilliant and took the cake. I don't think it was fair to call this a concert, it was more of a musical/visual masterpiece. The main lights and screens were really incredible, but as soon as they started playing songs like Eraser and Beside You In Time, they lowered a huge curtain and projected video clips of the ecosystem, Iraq, and other anti-Bush material. It was amazing.

If you get a chance, do check out Nine Inch Nails on the Live: With Teeth tour. The energy throughout the whole show is just awesome. No more descriptions are needed.



Special thanks to Flickr user isdfx, for his photos from the actual show. Used without permission.

Thank you, Nintendo. Finally the gaming industry has been saved. Now, some idiots will jump to conclusions about the new Nintendo Revolution controller. But if you actually do some research, (watch the video at IGN), you'll be amazed at what Nintendo has done.

Finally, we are moving away from buttons. More buttons and more sticks can only go so far before it becomes something like a keyboard. Infact, the 360 controller even has a keyboard extension. Why not just use a computer?

The fact is, this is the way personal computers were before the mouse. You used a bunch of keys and buttons to control the computer. This is very similar to the way game consoles are today. Now Nintendo has gone and done the same thing Apple did 20 years ago. Games will be completely different - innovative, amazing to look at, and fun. First person shooter? Use the controller as a virtual gun. Baseball? Use it as a virtual bat! Fishing? Cast out and reel in with the controller. I'm sure there will be many other possibilities as well, and Nintendo demonstrates a few of them in their video.

It will be very fun and different to play games on the Revolution. Honestly, I can't wait. While Microsoft and Sony have absolutely no innovation, Nintendo decides to take a huge risk and put a completely new and amazing product out. After watching the video, I'm certain that this will be the future of gaming.

I expressed my hate towards localization in a previous post, and now I'm going further on the subject. I am now being forced to almost remove localization entirely, as it's simply not worth the effort. Two things this time:
Xcode corrupted my English strings file!!. I had to dig up an older version, and re-encode it using proper encoding.

I changed a LOT of NIBs recently. I am supposed to remake all of these new elements, and reconnect each outlet. What does this have to do with localization?

Here's what Apple needs to do. No multiple NIBs for multiple languages. They need to offer a tab in interface Builder, similar to the bindings tab, that allows you to change certain properties of an element to fit localization.

French?
- Change the title of this button to "Merci" and make it 10 pixels wider.
- Yes, please move the other buttons in proportion when resizing.

Obviously, this idea isn't perfect, and would need some tweaking for every situation. Apple simply needs to keep localization away from the actual outlet connections and bindings. It's really a mess right now, and I'm not sure if I'll be supporting multiple languages in the future until Apple does something about it.

In the mean time, Arizona Software has a very nice piece of software called iLocalize. This app allows you to change NIB strings without tinkering with the control positions or anything like that. Apple should've included something like this in the developer tools, but we can only hope that they'll do so in a future Mac OS X release...

A special thanks goes out to Readiris, a piece of OCR software, that saved this blog post (quickly) because I was dumb enough to try and open a 7MB file with SubEthaEdit. :)

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and I've been forced to go back to school. As my first semester is packed, I'll have less time for projects like Waterfall Software, but I will try and post to this blog a bit more.

My school seems to be the first one to make electronic portfolios mandatory for graduation. Normally, this would be great, but word on the street says you'll have to use FirstClass. If you've used FirstClass before, you'll know it's extremely buggy, and appears to be have been coded by a horde of monkeys on crack. They tried to reinvent the internet in their own little client and server, much like AOL tried to do. And don't even get me started on the GUI.

Fortunately, I hear you'll be able to make a website instead of using FirstClass. I really hope this is true, otherwise I'll have to add another reason as to why I hate my school.

I bought a black 4GB iPod nano earlier this week. The nanos are quite amazing, and extremely thin. I'll be surprised if it doesn't have at least twice the success as the iPod mini. Apple made some very good moves, such as making it ultra thin, adding a color screen, and putting the headphone jack on the bottom. And of course, offering a black version - which is way too cool for it's own good.

Anyways, school is unfortunately important, and I'll be forced to concentrate this year. High school and my age are holding me back - for example, homework is on average two to four hours per night. Being 16, I can't attend developer events such as WWDC, and am forced to go to school full time. Not that I'd drop out, and I still plan to head to a post-secondary institution, but it's really annoying when you can't do what you love. Believe me when I say I have some ideas for really cool Mac software, but alas I have no time to do such things. Either way, I'll try and post more updates on here, so stay tuned!