politics, coffee, country music, singer-songwriters, digital rights management, toilet humor, Will Ferrell, pop divas, profanity, Star Wars, pickles, reality TV, rudeness, mind-altering substances, the internal revenue service, delusions of grandeur, drawing horses, Windows, Windows Media, banks, dogs, diet cola, Real Audio, the RIAA, spam, and spammers
Friendly frequenters of this place probably noticed my recent call for outdated application assistance. That plea for help from persons with programing prowess was my last ditch effort to bring my pixel pushing capabilities in line with the current Mac operating system. Before I'd even posted my plea I was advised that the specifics for which I was asking were likely impossible. But even though my hopes for success were rather low I figured I had nothing to lose. And it was probably that frame of mind which caused me to scour the web just once more for some sign of pre-existing software salvation. Baby, am I ever glad that I did! I don't know how I'd managed to miss it so many times before, but a few days ago I stumbled upon Rezilla. As far as I can determine - in my current state of jubilation - only the lack of tear-off color palettes separates Rezilla from ResEdit n the area of bitmap editing. Hot dog! To use a phrase I picked up from Jon: Rezilla is full of win!
Of course I realize that this bit of information, while being bitmappy slap happy news to yours truly, is probably as dull as dishwater to the majority of those kind folks who visit this humble locale. But I state with complete sincerity that had I not found Rezilla (seeing as how the chances of a programmer mutating an old app for me were either slim or none) it would not have been long before pixels would have no longer been a medium in which I work. I for one am greatly relieved.
They say that two is company, but three's a crowd. They also say that the third time's a charm. I say that three mixtapes in less than a week is plenty enough for a long while.
It's been ten years (give or take) that I've been pushing pixels, and during that decade my app of choice has been ResEdit. Not limiting my usage of it simply for the creation of desktop icons, I've employed Apple's little Jack-in-the-box for generating all sorts of pixel-based art. Obviously any finished work larger than 32 by 32 pixels has had to be assembled in Photoshop, but the detail-intensive, bitmaps-under-the-fingernails work took place within this humble little Mac OS resource editor. Good times, my friend, good times. But the good times had to end. I knew that eventually Apple's Mac OS updates (AKA The Perpetually, Magically Transforming Large Cat Codenames) would sever all ties with the Classic environment. I type this post today on a Mac that recognizes OS 9 software (or prior) no better than I'd recognize your Uncle Howard (whom I've never met).
Grumbling, complaining, ranting, raving, and/or remembering "When" would be a waste of time. I am instead taking action. I'm hoping that somebody out there with mad programming skillz will hear this posted plea and create a carbonized version of ResEdit's pixel editor. Maybe "carbonized" isn't the proper way to describe it. Maybe the app has to be completely re-created. I don't know. I have no idea! But here's what I'm after:
• All pixel editing tools to function exactly as they do in ResEdit
• Selected area moveable by arrow keys, as it is in ResEdit
• "Flip" and "rotate" commands for selected areas - again (say it with me, kids) exactly as it is in ResEdit
• 256 color palette
• Capability to set foreground and background color
• The same alternative fills (patterns) that are present in ResEdit
• Easy copy/paste to and from Photoshop
Here's what I don't want:
• The ability to create old school icon files isn't necessary
• There's no reason for the app to do anything other than create pixel art
• The ability to save files isn't really necessary as long as there's no snag in copying and pasting into Photoshop
• The ic14 color palette isn't needed
• Colors beyond the 256 palette can be had in Photoshop and need not muck things up here
I'm certain that my complete ignorance of programming for the Mac (or, for that matter, any computer at all) is shining brightly in this post. But because I am so totally ignorant I dare not assume that ResEdit cannot be resurrected. If you can do it, if you want to do it, please email me with an estimate of what this task would cost. Thank you so much!
A postscript: Yes, I realize that some people create their pixellated masterpieces entirely within Photoshop. I'm also aware that there are apps out there which are designed specifically for creating pixel art and which play nice with Apple's latest big kitty. But neither of those options are good for me. Neither can do the voodoo that ResEdit can do.
I was in a mixing mood, so here's another compilation hot on the heels of the last:
Let's imagine that my collection of audio CDs is a small kingdom. That would make me the king. And today the crown wears heavy. At one time I could not imagine that I'd ever consider purchasing digital song files in lieu of buying the physical album on which they appear. But time has passed and feelings have changed (once long ago I couldn't imagine laying aside my vinyl and cassettes and replacing them with compact disc) and now I've begun considering new possibilities that once I'd have classified as being nothing sort of shocking.
It's become very difficult to justify parting with the cash required to bring home a CD, especially when two-thirds of its content is likely to be material I'd not listen to twice. Though it can tricky to digitally snag the sorts of sounds that please me most, it's not completely impossible and is growing much more possible every day. If iTunes were the only game in town I'd probably not be engaging in this rumination - what with it's less-than-ubiquitios codec and rather unfriendly DRM - but, hello there, Amazon MP3.
Meanwhile, it doesn't take very many jewel cases to create a mass of plastic that's difficult to stow away. Because of that I'm seriously considering disinvesting myself of a majority of the shiny platters in my CD cache. I would, of course, create digital files of everything first (and that action, of course, would probably stick in the craw of the RIAA - but that's another story for another day).
Yet in spite of these bold new audio notions, I remain torn. Holding a newly purchsed CD in my hands feels nice. Holding its liner notes in my hands feels even nicer. Losing music because I failed to enage in a timely data backup doesn't feel nice at all. Sigh.
(Yes, I realize that there are no CDs in the image above, only LPs. That art serves as a symbol of the commercially available musical journey of my life, from its earliest vinyl beginnings to a 21st century audiowisely overloaded hard drive. It's kinda like that scene in the Kubrick flick where the scene shifts (to the tune of Thus Spake Zarathustra) from the flying bone to a space station. And, no, that's not Cher on the album on the right.)
