I had intended on posting about all of the features I am excited for in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0 software update (of which there are many), but Apple did a nice job of spoiling that with ...

• More reminders of their continued belief that the HTML5 markup language is a direct equivalent to and a capable replacement for Flash, Flex and AIR ... where it definitely is not.
• A re-written development agreement that not only restricts Flash Platform developers from creating for the iPhone and iPad platforms, but also C# and [possibly] JavaScript developers.
• Confirmation of their laughable approach to informing the User of non-support for browser plugins (e.g. hiding it from them).

Sure, a lot of these things present an immediate problem just for what Adobe is moving towards with Flash, but they are also restricting the progress of Internet technologies in general (SilverLight and Unity 3D come to mind). I know Apple still considers the iPhone a "breakthrough Internet device" and really, in comparison to the rest of the current phone market, it is. But with so many competitors so hot on on their heels AND providing an open environment for development, their leading position is going to start slipping.

Plus, with the advent of new devices like the iPad which border on desktop-computing replacements, a restricted Internet is not in anyone's best interest. If I am going to "see the web like never before", I'd rather see ALL of it.

Since my beloved Mighty Mouse has not been functioning as preferred (specifically, the top and side buttons were not being recognized) I have been eagerly anticipating Apple's Fall product update so that I could look into getting whatever the new iteration of the mouse might be. Today Apple announced the new Magic Mouse and while I am very excited to try one out in person, I was less excited about the fact that it is limited to only two buttons and the simplified Preference Pane doesn't look like it would allow for re-mapping of any multi-touch gestures to count as other buttons.

With the sad fact before me that in the near future I might have to settle for a no-more-than-2-button Apple mouse, I decided to give repairing my current mouse's functionality another go. Turns out, simply setting up the buttons in the great USB Overdrive peripheral controller fixes the issue. Nice, huh?

A sneak peek of the monster I drew for this month and the upcoming revamping of the Dra Studio website. I was getting really frustrated with both all of my physical inking solutions ... my brush-tip markers were dull and I still can't get a steady flow running from the quills.

So after trying three times, I just gave up and finished this guy off in Illustrator with the nifty new blob brush.

Here is a quick desktop grab of some logotype ideas I am working on for Vanessa and Tambra. That is all.

Pretty much anytime Mel and I start talking about anything Yeti, I have to draw it. It's like I have this Himalayan fever and the only cure is letting it out with pencil, pen or Wacom stylus.

For this piece I did my typical pencil drawing, covered over with felt-tip marker and then digitized with the normal "Brush" tool in Illustrator ... but once I got to that point, I wasn't entirely happy with it. So I decided to give the solid colors and limited lines look a try (a difficult or at least different style for me) ... it was only going alright until I dropped in CS4's new "Blob Brush" then things really took off. The simple filing and inside selecting goodness it brings has me happy enough to switch my shortcut for the "b" key to Blob for the time being. Hopefully that will mean more goodness like this for you guys in the coming days.

Two side notes. One, you should probably know about the I Love the Yeti blog and two, Norm and I were completely enthralled by the awesome augmented reality fun that is the Living Sasquatch project.

I also went through a few minor revisions of this piece in making it nice for the iPhone, including moving a few elements out of the way of the lock and date overlays. That was made much easier with the iPhone Photoshop template that Adam Jones put out. I realized there wasn't an Adobe Illustrator version of an iPhone template, so I whipped up a quick one, which you can download below:

iPhone Desktop/Wallpaper Template for Illustrator CS4 (.ai)

With the recent move and our now smaller place, I decided to take a bunch of my graphic novels, comic books and art/design-related books to the office.

My boss suggested I put a label on them. :)

So I am still working on this characters couch piece for the Drä Studio site, but this is how it is coming so far ...
I still haven't decided on the line style for it ... clearly ;)

A sneak peek at the icon I made in DFP class the other night. It should be available for purchase on GraphicRiver later on this week.

** Update - It is now available!

In the process of finding a solid and successful way of keeping tabs on all my old Twitter postings, I had to sort through a lot of semi-useful and several broken solutions, including Tweetake, TweetDumpr and a few others ... before I finally found the wonderful TweetBackup. It not only keeps a backup of all your tweets, but it also allows you to export them into several portable formats. I saved mine out as an XML file, then imported them nice and easy like into this WordPress install. Since I didn't want to continually go through that process, I also installed Alex Kings's handy Twitter Tools WordPress plugin that directly links your WP blog to Twitter. Very handy indeed.

Now all of my chirping bird tweets are backed up (in multiple locations) and in the event (and likelihood) that Twitter dies the painful "out-of-Venture-Capalist-money" death, all of those status postings can be searched through and viewed here.