I’m going on vacation for a week, so I may not post anything for a while. OTOH, I’m going to Wood’s Hole, where my wife is doing research at the Marine Biological Institute and there are all kinds of fascinating people to talk to, so there may be interesting stuff to blog about when I get back.

I’m running into some pointless frustration trying to put together simple illustrations for a talk I’m going to be giving. The software I have access to is simply too powerful for the task. I’m using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to knock out simple technical illustrations. The crapware paint program that comes with powerpoint is too crapware for the task, but the learning curve required for Illustrator and Photoshop isn’t worth climbing for tasks I’ll be doing maybe once every couple of months.

Back in the early nineties there was a program for the Mac called SuperPaint. It hit the spot exactly. It had a drawing layer (vector based), a painting layer (pixel based), and the ability to copy stuff from drawing to painting layers. There was a modest selection of tools, an intuitive interface, and a trivial learning curve. I can’t believe that such a program doesn’t still exist somewhere, but I can’t seem to find it. It’s such a basic and useful thing that someone has to be making it. There’s no reason there should be a large gap between kiddie-style drawing programs and the full fledged professional graphical design software. I can’t be the only person who occasionally needs to put together a simple illustration that looks halfway decent.

If anyone in out there knows of a suitable program, please let me know about it, either in email or comments.

[update a few minutes later] Of coursee, as soon as I post this I discover how to do something in Illustrator that I’d been assured was impossible, by people who use the program almost daily. It occurs to me that a lot of high powered software would be made vastly more usable by have a Beginners Mode, or Simple Mode, in which much of the more sophisticated functionality was pushed into the background. My Illustrator learning curve is made considerably worse just due to the sheer number of menus and options I have to dig through to find what I’m looking for. We have this problem at the lab with ProE (CAD software) – the guy who really knew how to use it left, and now we have a detailed set of drawings of the machine that we can’t really work with because nobody has the time to learn the ins and outs. If ProE had a Beginners Mode we could just dive in and and at least get some basic use out of the drawings.

The title is a disclaimer to this post.

I’ve written before on why I think the sport is evil, but I seem to be caught in a perfect storm. I’m watching the last half of the fifth game of the NBA finals (the first game I’ve watched in years), because for me, it’s a twofer. I’m living in LA, which is Lakers crazy (and since I hate basketball, that just makes me hate it all the more). And I was born and bred in southeastern Michigan, so my tribal instincts out, and I get to watch the Pistons dismantle them.

The fact that they were supposed to have already lost the championship by now makes it all the sweeter. Detroit was supposed to get creamed, and instead, the Lakers would have already lost their shot at their legacy if the accused rapist hadn’t had a lucky shot in the second game. I’m going to savor the fourth quarter.

Then, I’ll hope once more that the sport implodes once and for all, with the collapse of the supposed superstars.

There’s a lot of good discussion going on in this post from this past weekend on leftist revisionism on Reagan, and the Cold War in general.

Carey Gage has a link to the Red Cross ambulance video (which was taken by, of all people, the people who won’t call terrorists terrorists).

I found the last ceremony at the grave site the most emotionally wrenching.

The eulogies of the children were not about his impact on the world, but about his impact on them, as a father. It seemed much more personal and heartbreaking to me, because while I admired Reagan, I knew him only as a politician, and I didn’t love him.

Holding the folded flag, Nancy goes up to the now-bare casket, and lays her head on it one last time, saying goodbye to her husband of over half a century. Her children come in to comfort her. I hear a lot of chattering noise in the background, and I suspect that it was a multitude of camera shutters.

Somehow this last seemed, to me, a huge invasion of privacy of the family. But as Patti said in her written eulogy last weekend, she knew she had to share him with an entire nation. Apparently, right up to the end.

Via Reason Hit and Run: Cops in Portugal will permit open smoking of marijuana by British fans before the upcoming Soccer match with France. They figure stoned fans won’t get into fights. The Dutch tried this in 2000, and it worked. Gotta love pragmatism.

I’ve never noticed it before, but looking at the audience as the president speaks in the National Cathedral, and seeing them side by side, Patti Davis shares many of her mother’s facial features.

I just got a call on my business line from a guy who was peddling the dead-tree LA Times.

Me: No, thank you. I’ve no use at all for that paper. My parakeet died, by puppy’s been trained, and I don’t fish any more, so I don’t need the wrap.

Him: But it’s only $2.75 a week! What can we do to get you to subscribe?

Me: How much will you pay me to read it?

Him: I love this job. Have a good day, sir.

Donald Duck is seventy years old today. He’s still looking good, but at his age, he should watch that temper–he could give himself a stroke.

Donald Duck is seventy years old today. He’s still looking good, but at his age, he should watch that temper–he could give himself a stroke.