The Whitehawk

To fill in one of the remaining blanks in Apple’s very popular laptop lineup, Steve Jobs introduced today a laptop that would have brought tears to Sony’s deceased X505 laptop. An incredibly thin, and light, laptop with full-fledged specifications.Although rumors about the arrival of this device had emerged time and time again, through the last quarters of 2007, I think that it’s safe to say that everyone was excited to see it in the “flesh”, or in this case aluminum. So what should and shouldn’t keep you from considering this laptop as a future purchase?First of all, I’ll say what I found negative about the device.

1. One USB port - I didn’t buy the “Macbook Air is your entry to the wireless world”. I find the wireless features included very nice and thoughtful. But one USB is just too little by today’s standards. If you want to make use of the port for anything other than a computer mouse, you’ll be “forced” to purchase the wireless Mighty Mouse, which is a fine mouse really… but I’d rather have choice.
2. External Adapter for Ethernet - In Apple’s attempt to thread the line between being very light and convenient, and cute but useless, they decided to not include an ethernet port, but created instead a USB ethernet port. Despite having the option for an Ethernet cable, the one USB port once again diminishes your options.
3. The Price - I have to be honest. Considering that this is an incredibly thin and light laptop, I find the price acceptable. But considering the device’s specifications, I don’t see that many reasons to pick one of these up, rather than a “normal” Macbook, which will leave you with a bigger harddrive, an Optical Drive, a faster processor, and so on. As small and light as it may be, you will get a much better bang for your buck with a Macbook. 
4. The Keyboard - although it’s boasted as one of the positive features, I find that the color picked for the keys feels wrong. Despite loving the layout and the touch-and-feel of Macbook keyboards, I think this color combination would have worked much better if they had made the aluminum black, or darker.

Not everything is bad though. What Apple managed to fit inside such a small device is amazing:

1. LED LCD, High Quality Webcam, Core 2 Duo processor and X3100 graphics card - You cannot find these specifications in such a small (or similarly small) laptop for less than $2000. They wanted to rival Sony’s incredibly sexy TZ series. They accomplished that, and then some.
2. The very first “Green” laptop. Although not many consumers have deep concerns for environmental issues, it’s nice to see Apple sticking by their words and maintaining their devices as eco-friendly as possible.
3. The laptop comes with Micro DVI to DVI/VGA adapters in the box. Not the most expensive components you’d need, but it’s still a nice touch.

Bottom line: For me the Macbook Air is a slightly smaller and slightly gimped Macbook. For the same price I’d rather purchase a Macbook with an upgrade or two or save a bit more and get it’s aluminum big brother.  

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, then one of the things you should have heard about was my decision to move to the United Kingdom, in order to pursue a career in web design. I thought that I would only have to move once, from home to the airport, but it appears that I’d have to move once more than expected.

Things aren’t going too well between me and my father, perhaps because we spend too much of our time together, perhaps because of the age gap between us. Regardless of the reasons, things between us were deteriorating quickly, so rather than let them get too far, I decided to move out, hoping that the change would do us both good.

Ironically, the blog that made me kick off my “career” as a blogger was recently sold for the second time to Splashpress Media and they decided that rather than keeping the editors, they’d use their own. So I’m out of a blogging job right now, but hopefully not for long.

David Peralty has been great with me, and instantly tried to hook me up with some of his contacts looking for quality editors for their websites. Whereas most would simply turn their back to me and wish me well, he went the extra mile. So when you read this David, I just want you to know that I really appreciate all of your help and care, and I’m sorry if I haven’t sound resoundingly happy these past few days.

In a way, I’ve been down for these last few days because I had to leave the house where I was brought up at, and the blog that nurtured me into a decent writer. On the other hand, I sort of feel relieved because perhaps this move will give me the strength I need for when I move to the UK.

Hopefully, from Tuesday onwards I’ll be able to resume work on the redesign when the cable company installs broadband at my mother’s apartment, and I’ll resume blogging here as usual. So I’ll see you next Tuesday readers, and thank you for your comprehension.

Although the title of this article will certainly spur some controversy, that’s alright. RahXephon is one of those series that friends would always tell me was “ok”, but imitated Evangelion too much, and if you’re not paying attention to the story, it’s easy to understand why:

• the story revolves around a mysterious religion
• the hero pilots a giant “God” and fights against other God-like creatures
• the plot revolves around a small city with a powerful defensive military structure

In fact, most die-hard Evangelion fans will probably feel somewhat “offended” by all the direct references to their lovable Anime that they’ll probably forsake this one, and miss out on a great story, and one that they would surely enjoy.

One of the things that made Evangelion so bad and great, at the same time, were it’s plot holes. There are so many unanswered questions that one can speculate on any of them and drive the story in an entirely different direction. And that explains why it has such a huge following of fans, who write their own versions of the story and keep it fresh, even after all these years.

In RahXephon, you won’t find many plot holes. Sure, one may speculate about the emergence of the Mulians, which are the “enemies” of this story, or about the possible relationships or love interests between the various characters in the story, but all in all, RahXephon has an ending. A complex one, similar to the one seen in “The End of Evangelion”, but a good ending nonetheless.

If you do not wish to be spoiled of any part of the story, please refrain from reading the following paragraphs and skip to the conclusion.

The story starts off with a young high school student, Ayato Kamina, who discovers that the world as he knows it might not be as he seems. While he lives under the illusion that he is on an island, secluded from the rest of the world, and it’s inhabitants are the only living people on earth, it appears that the truth is far from being so, and after a short while he discovers that he has a destiny to fulfill, although he doesn’t know it yet.

With the aid of a mysterious girl, and a special operative, Ayato discovers a giant egg in which a God-like creature called Rah slumbers, and awakens it. Confused and scared inside the Rah, Ayato escapes from his hometown, and then discovers that he had been living on an alternative dimension secluded from the rest of the world, though that dimension was limited to just his home town: Tokyo.

After returning to the special operative’s base, he is asked to pilot the Rah in order to protect humanity from the attacks of the Mulians, and Ayato goes into an inner struggle where he must fight against the people who raised him. To further increase his indecisive mind, he begins to grow attached to the special operative who had rescued him, and begins to appreciate some simple pleasures, like watching a cargo ship set sail, which is something he couldn’t see where he lived in.

A lot of episodes feel like a normal Shonen: a new enemy arrives, the pilot rushes out to fight him, defeats it and comes back. But like in Evangelion, the main character sometimes has inner struggles, and a lot of events around him make him battle with himself. As the plot thickens, we learn about the past of all relevant characters and all of the relationships between them, and at the end, Ayato is faced with his biggest challenge, and sacrifices his human form in order to protect those he loves.

Fortunately, at the end, rather than being, or feeling, unclear, like in the “End of Evangelion”, we see him living a normal life with his loved one, and then we see a flashback that answers that most revolving question throughout the show, that is: who is the yellow dress girl?

Conclusion: Although some might accuse it of stealing some elements from Evangelion, I don’t think that it’s that similar. The story is much more romantic than Evangelion, and explores human relationships much more, while Evangelion simply focuses on religion and the human psyche.

It succeeds as an action story, for all the battles, and the animation, are great. It succeeds as a love story, for there are a few love triangles, love interests, and special interests between most of the characters, even the secondary ones. It succeeds in it’s soundtrack, which is reminiscent of Evangelion’s excellent orchestrated pieces.

Last but not least, it succeeds as a great Anime in general. Surely you won’t need to watch the show two or three times to grasp most of the story, but if you disliked the way Evangelion left many of the story elements hanging, then you’ll love RahXephon.

It’s been a while since I wrote about Anime, and it’s not because I haven’t felt like writing, it’s just because I haven’t really been watching Anime. I could bore you with “tedious” details of what I’ve learned from a few Web Design books I’ve been reading, but since some of you come here to know what I think of the latest Anime fixes, I will tell you about the new Gundam series called “double-O Gundam” that follows the current trend for God-based animes.

If you’ve followed the 2 most popular God Anime shows, Death Note and Code Geass, Double-O Gundam is the obvious choice for those who enjoyed the genre.

The story kicks off with a young boy, who we guess is the main character of the show in the middle of a battlefield, carrying a machine gun and running away and shooting at giant mechs killing everyone in the ruined city. A scenery very similar to the one found in Metal Gear Solid 4.

Rather than describing the rest of the two episodes, I’d rather just tell you what I thought of them. I think this Gundam got off to a good start. It has a nice, and rather calm, song for it’s intro and an ending that is well, a bit weird, for the theme of the Anime.

The character design is great, although one of the characters from the main team looks like a girl, in fact, if he was mute I’d say he was a girl, although I still have my doubts. The other characters seem a bit generic, though well suited to the type of Gundams they pilot. Oh! There’s a character called Hallelujah Baptism… I kid you not. And the name of the organization that our heroes belong to is called Celestial Being, and their aim is to bring “holy judgment” upon those who wage war. That’s where the “God theme” comes from.

The team consists mostly of teenagers, and the leader is a red-head woman (though she looks like a teenager) with very voluptuous curves. Personally I think that the show got off on a good start and has managed to bring something new to the franchise without losing some of the characteristics of it’s predecessors. You can expect me to follow this show on the blog as often as I watch it.

For those of you following the Live Design, you might be interested to hear that I think that I managed to create a cross-browser header which works on all browsers I tested which were: Firefox 2, Opera 9.23, Safari 3 Beta and Internet Explorer 7.

Although it’s practically impossible to get it to render exactly the same due to some small differences, it’s rendering well enough for me to consider it done. From here on, till the end of the conversion it should be a breeze.

You can check out the header here.

Around seven months ago, Digg was any tech-blogger’s “dream”. It was much faster than Slashdot, and most of the top articles in that day were influential enough to write about. I could pretty much go to Digg, press “Top 24 Articles” and just pick 4 articles out of the list and have half of my work cut-out for me.

But it pains me to see that not only do we have to have the support of friends, to join the front page, but also the approval of the “Bury Brigade”, which is the name that Digg users, and bloggers alike, have given to the tight circle of Diggers who seem to enjoy burying the topics that don’t suit their tastes, rather than promoting new types of articles, which don’t appear very often, but instantly gain their disapproval because they don’t feature half-naked women using Apple products.

I don’t frequent Digg as I used to, but back when I used it frequently, rather than just “leeching” off information from the website, I also participated and looked for upcoming articles. This became more frequent as the quality of the front page articles deteriorated, and right now it’s simply reached a state where all of the front page articles are predictable and repetitive.

It’s very simple to get your article on the front page, just get a few dozen friends to Digg your article in a short period of time and you’re there (yes, I am aware that they changed their algorithm not too long ago so it would take more Diggs to reach the front page).

Back when I used Digg, reaching the front page was the hard part, and from there onwards, people would only Digg it more, and you’d gain your few minutes/hours of “fame” (or more appropriately, traffic). Today, your article has to gain the support of your friends or Digg-buddies, and the approval of the Bury Brigade, who instead of promoting quality content “bury” any content that doesn’t fit the “trend” of articles that we see today.

After going to Digg’s front page right now and having a quick look at what their Top Technology Articles are, here are some of the things you must have in your article to gain the Bury Brigade’s approval:

• The words “Apple”, “Mac” or “iPod/iPhone” - that’s all there is to it, write an article about whether you love or hate any Apple-related thing and that’s halfway-done to Digg stardom
• A gorgeous woman using/licking/covered with a random sexy gadget (preferably an Apple product) - do I need to explain this one?
• [Insert Random Number Here] ways to do [Insert Random Tech Related Thing here] - if I named this article “10 things I hate about Digg’s Bury Brigade”, you would have come across this article from Digg’s front page
• Photoshop/Design Tutorial/How To/”No No” or “Yes Yes” lists - a lot of people who use Digg think that web usability or good design can be learned by following a checklist or an iPhone Button Photoshop tutorial
• Linux is Good / Microsoft is bad - even though most Digg users probably use Windows, anything that can convince them of how good Ubuntu is, or how you can change your wallpaper on it, AND how much better you can change your wallpaper on Ubuntu than on Windows, is definitely an instant front-page article. (ok, maybe I emphasized the sarcasm a little too much there, but you get the picture)
• Funny chain-letter-esque images - I’m all for humor. In fact, I consider myself a humorous person. But when funny 404 pages are incredibly more relevant as tech news that an article that questions Mint.com’s security, you should realize that front page on Digg doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s more relevant or a more accurate response to what are the latest tech news or articles.

Right now, the Digg front page only lists those articles that are more popular between a small group of people and approved by the large majority of them which bury any article that doesn’t suit their tastes.

But if you follow the list above you can guarantee that your articles will suit the Digg-groupies tastes. Just don’t expect on it suiting the tastes of the “rest of us” who abandoned Digg for the “selection” of articles above.

Personal Note: Although I listed it as one of the negative items, I have to admit that I happen to visit Macenstein once a month to see their Mac girl of the month. I know that most of them are just models pretending to be Mac fans, but the illusion that somewhere in the world a girl like that exists pleases my inner-geek.

Before I start this article: yes, there weren’t any updates to the Live design today. I decided to take the day off for blogging.

I caught up with the articles I owed ForeverGeek and with the industry news in general. For the first time in days I took time to read some of my favorite comic strips like Dilbert and Pearls Before Swine, which I religiously follow.

So no, I’m not slacking off, and you can expect a lot of updates tomorrow. Now back to your regularly-scheduled program…

When I was talking with my good friend David today a thought hit me: if it weren’t for a handful of people I wouldn’t be writing this article today.

There were a lot of people who inspired or motivated me to start a blog (no, I didn’t just make it to randomly rant or talk about personal things “no one cares about”), and I thought it was about time to give them the recognition they deserve for that.

A couple of people have gone as far as to call me a “successful” blogger. Although that idea always makes me chuckle, when I consider that I am both payed for some of my articles and that I somehow managed to become a member of 9rules (a fact that amazes me until this day), I can’t say that I’m an unfortunate blogger, but that’s as far as I’ll go.

A series of curious coincidences led me to start blogging, thanks to the offer by a man, and later on that man was once again influential in what would or not become my blogging career. And had it not been for his acceptance, I might have not given this blog half of the love that it’s received (although it deserves much more, specially as a part of such a prestigious network).

That man was none other than Paul Scrivens, best known as Scrivs who is the brainchild behind the popular 9rules network and a few other popular blogs like the Whitespace, Wisdump (which was sold to splashpress media), and the very popular podcast: Scrivs Tyme.

It all started when one of the blogs I used to read was looking for new editors. As I sat in my office chair thinking about the offer and how cool it would be to write the articles that other tech-enthusiasts such as myself would read, my two co-workers, Xavier and André, both motivated me to give them an e-mail, and so I did.

At the time, ForeverGeek was owned by Scrivs. When I first started I was incredibly “clumsy” as an editor. I wrote some of the most commented, but also the most controversial, articles where I bashed or favored some company’s product. Some of the other editors, who were closer to Scrivs suggested that he’d kick me out. Until this day I don’t know why he didn’t.

A few months later, ForeverGeek was sold, and under the new ownership I started being payed a fixed amount of money. That was the first time I felt like a professional, and thus I started taking blogging much more seriously, until the point I opened my own blog, which you are reading right now.

During this blog’s early days, as you may confirm with the archive, it had little or no direction. I wrote about whatever I felt like, or whatever was having an impact or influence in my lifestyle.

At first I thought it could serve for me to comment on the newest gadgets I found appealing. Then I found out, through various comments on ForeverGeek, that the readers liked to be informed about new things as much as they enjoyed reading the editor’s opinions about them. This lead to a natural enrichment of my ForeverGeek articles, and a slight disregard towards this blog which started serving as nothing more than an outdated journal and a repository for my CV and Portfolio.

Then I met David Peralty, who I mentioned at the start. At the time he was just another editor like myself at ForeverGeek, but he had higher ambitions than I: he was attempting to make a living from blogging. Until this day, he still does, and I must commend him for that because it takes a lot of courage for a person to consider such a thing.

It didn’t take long for us to become friends, and before I knew it we were both reading each other’s blogs, and once again I felt motivated to write here again. So if you enjoy reading this blog, the kudos should go to him, and not me.

Then came 9rules…

Back in the day I joined 9rules, most people considered the network the epitome of blogging, the best of the best, the “little black book”. Although it evolved into more accessible social website, I am certain that regardless of which member site I visit on 9rules, the content there will be great.

But the best thing about 9rules’ evolution is that people no longer have to look upon 9rules members as distant “Gods of Blogging “who would look down on you from their Olympia. Now anyone can and should interact with us through 9rules’ notes, messages, or with any of the other new things that they’re bringing out with their upcoming Ali2 version the site (which will be launched on Monday).

Now that I’ve done the blatant network promotion on with the story… David (he pops up a lot in this story) convinced me that my blog was good enough to join 9rules, and that I should try to get in. I’m not sure what name I called him at the time, but I’m certain that it was something in the line of “insane”. Insanely enough, I got in. I don’t know if Scrivs favored me a little, or if Tyme thought I looked cute enough…

…all I know was that I was in. And that was the happiest day I ever had since I started blogging. Yes, my ego went up 300% for the first couple of weeks, but after that it went back to normal, and I started focusing again on bringing quality content.

(Oh my, it’s 3am already so I should think about ending this article)

Anyway, if you were paying a lot of attention to this article (although you shouldn’t really), you’d know that I mentioned that a handful of people influenced me enough to start blogging. Who would the mysterious 5th person be?

Well, unfortunately he doesn’t have a blog (he’s not that tech-savvy yet), but I can guarantee that he is a great professional in published media. He’s none other than my father, who was the Editor in Chief of my island’s most sold newspaper for many years. Thanks to him I’ve always felt attracted to publishing and writing my own articles, and this is something he has influenced me to do all of my life.

So it gives me great pride to follow his legacy on the blogging sphere, and who knows, maybe someday I’ll be half as good as he is.

It has been a very busy day for me today, but the progress in the live design has been going by so fast that I’ve decided to maintain it separate from this blog until it is finished.

You can visit the live design blog by going to http://thewhitehawk.com/live and comment or test it out.

One of the things I didn’t miss from working with CSS was the numerous hacks one had to apply in order to create a relatively complex layout. In my opinion, anything with more than 2 columns can be considered complex.

Sure, there are hundreds of 3 column CSS layouts on the web, but to find one where I could easily adapt to my site’s dimensions (Stu Nicholl’s was too hard to do that). Thankfully, after many attempts, including some of my own. I found a layout I could adapt to my design and change easily by using Layout-o-matic.

My time to work on converting the theme was very short, because I had to attend on my best friend’s birthday party. But! I had enough time find a good layout, and adapt it’s dimensions to the ones I needed.  As I type this right now, it’s 4am, and I am slowly converting it to a wordpress theme.

You can see the “raw” layout by clicking here.

Starting from tomorrow, I will do something that very few bloggers have attempted: to redesign my blog from scratch in front of a live audience, or in other words, in front of you visitors.

So during the next few days (hopefully they won’t be many) when you visit this site you will see it flourishing into what will eventually become my best achievement in web design yet.

Such a task is not an easy thing to accomplish, and in the midst of the rush to make it look as nice as possible, in the shortest amount of time, it is very likely for me to forget some basic rules or to make some dire mistakes which I normally wouldn’t make.

That is why I will have the help and the commentaries of a few friends, colleagues and acquaintances. All of them will be lending me their eyes and words, and help me keep the progress in line (and pull my ears if I take too long to do something).

So far the three people who will be helping me out are my dear friend, and co-worker at BloggyNetwork: David Peralty; the incredibly talented and nice Elena from DesignDisease (who designed all of the sites in the BloggyNetwork); and my very intelligent friend and former-colleague from college, David Gouveia.

If I’m lucky enough, I might even trick a few of the 9rules members into giving me their opinions also, but only time will tell. So by this time tomorrow, or a bit later (you never know in this business…), you will start seeing new things in the site, or at least it’s main structure.