I’ve been getting out and about with my camera a little more these days, both on my own and with a local photography meetup group. Check out my Flickr page for some recent photos, and keep an eye out for more work in the days to come.

It’s been in the works a long time, but DomainBrain 2.0 is finally released. It’s a complete overhaul with a new interface and lots of new features, such as:

• Customizable categories – duplicate categories or create entirely new ones
• Customizable fields – add your own fields to your data categories
• Individual categories may now be displayed or hidden on each domain
• Added new “Table” category type – great for lists such as email addresses
• iCal reminders for domain expiry dates

DomainBrain 2 is free for use with three or fewer domains, or you can purchase a license for $29.95 if you have more than three domains. Registered users of DomainBrain 1.x can upgrade for $18.95. Take a look at the official DomainBrain website, and give it a try.

It’s a fast little game that challenges your reflexes, and the pace at which we developed the game was similarly speedy – from start to finish it took us about three months to design and code the app. Here’s a quick roundup of Pickin’ Time odds and ends, direct from the Iconfactory and elsewhere:

• The Pickin’ Time website
• A short gameplay video we made
• David Lanham’s veggie drawing skills at 8x speed
• Macworld’s Pickin’ Time review

DomainBrain 1.2 is a free upgrade for registered users. If you’re not a registered user, you can use DomainBrain for free with up to four domains, or purchase a license for $14 to keep track of info for unlimited domains. Head on over to the DomainBrain website for more info or to download DomainBrain 1.2.

The Gallery has a couple of new illustrations. Balhaduin, pictured above, is a Photoshop painting over top of a sketch from one of my notebooks. I’ve used this technique before, but only on a few small scale illustrations. The original weighs in at about 2800 pixels square, and is by far the largest I’ve done in this manner.

The other illustration is a fun little character I drew for a slide in a friend’s ConvergeSouth presentation a few years ago. He was created in a totally different style, drawn entirely as vectors in Illustrator.

Balhaduin awaits.

A character drawn for a friend’s ConvergeSouth presentation.

But imagine if auto makers took this to an extreme, and put those controls at the ten o’clock and two o’clock position, where you hold the wheel, and actually mounted the buttons exactly under your fingers and hands — right on the surface of the steering wheel grip. Anytime you tried to turn the wheel you had to be extra careful that you didn’t change the radio station, or turn on the heater.

That’s what Apple has done with the tabs in Safari 4.

The title bar used to be a nice, clean expanse of chrome that served as an indicator as to which document or application was associated with a window, and served as a safe area to grab and move the window around your screen. Not so in the Safari 4 beta. Tabs have migrated northwards in the browser window, and made their home in the formerly pristine title bar.

Sure, you can still use the title bar to move the window, but it’s no longer a sure thing. The very fact that the tabs are there creates ambiguity. You’re clicking on the title bar and a tab — which part of the interface is going to respond to your click? Will my click select a tab? Move the window? Move a tab?

There’s also the matter of visual clutter. The title bar usually serves as a margin of sorts, to offset the contents of the window from any surrounding items. The tabs intrude on this, and lead to tragedies such as the mess seen in this screenshot from Adam Betts.

If you still think this is a good idea, imagine if other apps started doing this. Maybe Mail could migrate some items from the sidebar into the titlebar…

Or if preference panels started taking a cue from Safari …

Click images to enlarge

I’m sure that part of the reason Apple did this was to conserve space, and allow more room for web page content. But displays are getting larger all the time — my main display at the Iconfactory is roughly the size of an aircraft carrier. I don’t think it’s necessary to squeeze each pixel until it screams for mercy.

John Gruber suggests we give the new tab and title bar layout a chance: “I’m willing to give the new-style tabs at least a week — don’t be a chicken and switch back already.” That’s fine. But you can get used to just about anything. Even if you find you can live with the new tabs, it doesn’t make them a good idea.

Jellyfish

I wrote this song after college and recorded it for a demo tape with the band I was in at the time, Faded Painters. Liz Eynon performs the vocals on it – she was the choir director at a church on the West Chester campus where my wife attended grad school. I play guitars and bass on the track, and Lee Morris is on drums.

Nothing Like the Sun

Recorded at a Faded Painters practice session, this song features Liz on vocals again, with me on acoustic guitar. However the song was actually written back in college – the lyrics are based on Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare. I performed it several times back then, mostly at open mic nights with my friend Todd Dengler.

One of my fondest memories from college is of playing this song with Todd at an open mic night on campus. We must have been playing especially well, because when we finished the room erupted into loud applause. It was by far one of the best audience responses I’ve ever seen at an open mic night – people are often paying more attention to their drink than to the performers.

This is also one of the rare times you’ll hear me sing – I’m doing backup vocals on the chorus.

As of Yet

From another practice session, again with Liz on vocals and me on acoustic guitar. Of all the lyrics I’ve written, these are probably my favorite.

:::

I hope to pick up my guitar again someday – it was definitely my longest-lived hobby, aside from icon making and web design (which is now more of a career than a hobby anyway). After all, I’ve been looking for an excuse to play around with Garage Band some more.

I’ve posted a new desktop: Instrumental, a photo taken of one of the many instrument panels below-deck on the Battleship North Carolina.

The battleship sits on the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, NC where it’s been turned into a WWII memorial. I highly recommend touring it if you’re in the area – the tour is self-guided at your own pace and covers a large portion of the ship. A few additional photos may be found on my Flickr page.