Performancing Metrics

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Building Up Our Resources

We here at Digital Fruit have a goal to become an entertainment and information company, providing you, our customers, with fascinating and enriching media experiences that will last a lifetime.  This is no easy task, though, and the demands that modern entertainment projects demand can be overwhelming.  Knowing we can't compete without innovation, Digital Fruit is trying something new.

We have purchased two new AMD Llano APUs, a combination central processor and graphics chip. In conjunction with several new software upgrades, we will soon be bringing you high caliber CG animations and visual effects enhanced video.

Our first project will be a short film simply and descriptively titled Wizards' Duel.  I'm not going to say anything more about this one right now, and I don't think I need to say anything more for you to know what to expect.  Check back here on the blog often for test renders and new information, as the eam involved will be updating regularly.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Still Yahoo?

I was just looking at Alexa.com site ranks, as Digital Fruit now gets enough web traffic to be noticed by Alexa.  For the fun of it, I clicked on the list of top 500 websites, and I was kind of disturbed by what I found there.  Yahoo.com is still in the top 5!  A company that long forgotten, that has been trying to sell itself for years now, is still in the top 5.  That is a mind blowing thought.

And it stands as a testament to the human need for something familiar.  My generation grew on the constant change the internet fed us, constant craving something new, so I think we often forget that the majority of people have grown up in a world where things stayed more constant.  And I'm not just talking about generations before us either, the generations after will probably never see the kind of change we saw.  And that makes me realize, people return to what is familiar.  A site as forgotten to pulse and beat of popular media as yahoo, and people still go back there, more than twitter, more than Wikipedia, and more than amazon.

So, as closing, what is your comfort site?  Where do you default back to when you're trying to remember?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Friday, April 13, 2012

Digital Fruit Small Business Conference

So, with a tenative date set in the middle part of June (I still have to discuss the exact date with the business that has been gracious enough to host this event), the Digital Fruit Small Business Conference will begin.  Seating starts at $20 a business, and attendance is limited to the space available, about 45 seats.  If you are a small business in the Grays Harbor area and are interested in attending, contact me via email at andrew@digitalfruit.biz and let me know how many will be attending from your business.  Thanks for your interest and support.

A Complaint About Docs

If you are a fan of Android and have spent any time online in the last few years, chances are you've heard about Google Docs, the always-in-the-cloud office documents system.  I've been using this innovative new system to write a couple of new projects, and to collaborate with some of my co-conspirators.  And overall, I'm pleased with how it works. Especially the autosave feature.

But I have been using Docs mostly on my Android tablet, and I hit a snag today.  I was stuck out in an area where wifi was not freely available, and in some spots not available at all.  So I figured I would give Google Docs offline feature a try. So, in the Docs app, I loaded up a new document, gave it a silly title like I usually do, and hit the create button.  Error code.  Tried again, error code.  I tried as many different settings as possible, and still error code.

It seems you cannot create a new document in offline mode, which seriously diminishes the usefulness of Google Docs.  Just being able to edit already written documents in offline mode isn't very useful, as many times if you are going to use the offline function at all it will be to start a new document.  And I find it sad that even the Blogger mobile app will let you create a new blog post with out a connection to the internet, but an office suite won't.  Google needs to fix this, and fix this fast if they are serious about moving the modern office to the cloud.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Testing Out Windows 8

So I was finally able to get my copy of the Windows 8 consumer preview up and running in a virtual machine, so now I can give it the the thorough exam it needs. So far, this is a hotly contended update to the flagship Windows product, and there are a lot of changes to examine. After only a cursory overview of about half an hour, I can already say that, my opinion on Windows 8 has already changed.

First off, a more positive note; I am not as apaled with the new Metro interface as I thought I would be. Though very simple in design, it is clean, customizable, and quick, though not very intuitive. My first complaint, though, comes from an annoyance that just should be happening in Windows. The new start bar for Windows 8 functions almost as badly as the Unity sidebar in Ubuntu, but is nowhere near as useful. It contains only five buttons, and of them, the majority of people might use two or three. Also, getting this elusive start bar to appear isn't so easy to figure out, whiccvh is a problem considering that the only way to launch new applications is to get back to the start menu. You actually have to put your mouse up in the right-top corner, or the botttom-right corner, and I mean all the way down in the corner. Also, I've heard complaints from writers on the techrepublic.com and zdnet.com websites that people using larger displays causes problems, stating that Windows 8 is designed with tablets in mind. But I actually had an opposite response. Windows 8 wouldn't even let me open photos for viewing because my monitor settings in Virtualbox won't go any higher than 700 pixels in height. And this last complaint, I will admit, is a weak one, but I still have to write it down. The lack of a software based shutdown button makes using Windows 8 really annoying in a virtual machine, because they expect you to have a way of shutting down the system in the OS. Its only a little thing, but it still bugs me.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Lol, An Actual Easter Egg In Google Search

Had a friend post this in a Facebook post, and I'm not sure its really a easter egg in the internet sense, just so serious geekery, but it definitely is an Easter egg in the traditional sense.  Just enter this exact phrase in google (google shortens it on the displayed page, but re-entering the shortened part only brings up web page results):

1.2+(sqrt(1-(sqrt(x^2+y^2))^2) + 1 - x^2-y^2) * (sin (10000 * (x*3+y/5+7))+1/4) from -1.6 to 1.6
 
 So, did you enjoy?  Its even colored for that really Easter egg flare.  Keep having fun and happy Easter everyone.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

New Technology, New Possibilities

So, I'm typing this from the tablet that Digital Fruit picked up just recently, finding out what things are moving into in the future.  I'm hoping this step into mobile computing will make it easier for me to complete the projects Digital Fruit has waiting in the wings.

I'm also seeking out talent that would like to work on projects that they could put on there resume, doing something akin to an internship. Any artists interested, contact me through my email, andrew@digitalfruit.biz. Also, for the year of 2012, we're working on some other big events. There is the Digital Fruit Small Business Conference, which we are planning to have some time in June, and I am taking another wack at holding DFCon sometime later in the year. All of this, and so much more are happening this year for Digital Fruit, so be prepared and come attend.