If you head over to Blizzard’s website this morning, you will be greeted with a splash page.

Well…perhaps it should be called a frozen splash page…seeing as how the subject of speculation is the sheet of ice that will is receding daily to reveal something.

It was different the other day, and now it appears that a symbol has appeared in the upper right of the ice formation.

If you’ve played Diablo 2 for awhile, this little symbol may appear familiar.

I’ll give you a moment to think about it.

Ready?

Pixel for pixel it is the Hel rune from the Diablo 2 Universe.

What does this mean?

Well, the biggest and most joy-inducing idea is that Blizzard is going to announce Diablo 3 while they are at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational (currently underway), and that is the hope of yours truly.

Another interesting bit of note is the name of these images that are appearing each day. So far the images have been named 04.jpg and 15.jpg. While these seem innocuous enough, one must wonder why they would happen upon such an odd numbering scheme.

Well, do a little bit of transference, and 04 becomes D, the fourth letter in the alphabet, and 15 becomes O, the fifteenth letter. It’s possible that they’re either slowly filling in the word DIABLO, or perhaps spelling something else.

Or maybe they just like to yank everyone’s chain.

Nothing new.

[i/o]

Adobe sure is cranking out the CS4 news as-of-late, and they sure do seem to cause a stir whenever they do.

When CS3 came out and introduced the new icon scheme for the Creative Suite, the entire design community was up-in-arms about how it looked. Thoughts ranged from “looked like some receptionist for the marketing department designed it”, to “Periodic Table of Abortions”. Imagine looking down in your dock and seeing a wave of squares with similar lettering and (sometimes) similar hues. This lends itself to Mystery Meat Navigation.

And now, Adobe has released a screenshot of what is (for all intents and purposes) going to be the interface for CS4. Click the image accompanying this post to get a larger size.

Oh, Adobe. How do you mess up? Let me list the ways.

• You simply CANNOT create a new look for your windows and title bars. Deviating AT ALL from what the core OS looks like will not only confuse users, but infuriate them at having to use Photoshop like it’s some special child that you have to treat differently than all your other applications, when it should fit perfectly into your regular workflow of apps. I move all day through Mail, iChat, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Safari, and a few others, and I don’t want to have to stop and think about a new interface every time I switch to Photoshop.

• Putting all of the palettes and toolbars together in one window with the open document in a kind of “application frame” was probably the dumbest thing Adobe could have done. Not only does it look like Photoshop Elements, and not only does it refuse you the option to move any of your palettes, but it also takes up THE ENTIRE FUCKING SCREEN. Ask any Photoshop user who’s screen is either over 17 inches, or has multiple monitors, and they’ll tell you that screen real estate is a big deal. You can have multiple windows open at once, you can switch very fluidly from one open document to the next, and you can even place your palettes wherever you are comfortable having them…even if that’s on a separate screen. This new way of doing things is essentially being told that you don’t get to have a preference over your workspace, that you are going to do what Big Daddy Adobe says, and you’re going to shut up about it. Absolutely terrible.

As John Nack of Adobe said recently,

It blocks out the contents of the desktop, minimizing visual clutter. (A number of Mac users have requested this option for many years. I’ve known quite a few people who open a small blank document, hit F to put it into full-screen mode, and then put it into the background to hide the desktop. Willingness to live with that kind of hack demonstrates some genuine desire for a real fix.)

First of all, who the hell does this? If I’m working on a small document, I only want it to take up the space of the image, I don’t want all my images to suddenly get The Blob That Ate Everything Disease and start taking up my entire screen. Believe it or not, Adobe, that can cause acute claustrophobia or discomfort. It’s actually one of the reasons people prefer OS X over Windows: Because the operating system stays out of the way. Being able to see my desktop behind my other open documents isn’t a problem. For one thing it helps solidify the hierarchical structure of open files that modern OS’s go to great lengths to push on us. Why else would Apple and Microsoft have windows cast shadows when selected and go dim when not in the foreground?

Furthermore, having an image only take up what’s needed lets me feel like I can breathe. As I said, making every document take up your whole screen can be very disconcerting (especially to OS X users) because we’re used to clean, open designs - not these behemoths molesting every pixel they can with their monstrous girth. There’s a reason the phrase “less is more” exists.

I’m happy that this new interface is only an option that you can toggle on and off, but seriously Adobe, this shouldn’t have even come up past the initial pitch phase.

Whoever is running the helm of the branding department needs to go to the office of whoever is running the interface department. I want them to take each other’s hands and climb to the roof of their building, take each other in their arms, and jump.

[i/o]

In my previous post, I talked about how oddly sweaty my underarms get.

This kind of stuff doesn’t help.

Besides, this is New Hampshire, isn’t it supposed to even GET like this.

I won’t concede to you yet, Al Gore.

But it’s been quite a year. Boston just broke it’s all-time high of snowfall in a single winter a few months ago, and now we’re trudging our way through this thick wall of moisture.

[i/o]

So, the odd thing is, I get some epic pit stains even when I’m cool and comfortable.

I won’t even be doing anything strenuous. Say I’m playing some Halo or reading a book, my entire body is dry and cool, except for my pits. They are sweating up a storm.

I’ve come to the conclusion that one of two things is happening:

1) I have extra / overactive sweat glands in my underarms.
2) My underarms are telepathically linked to the underarms of a man crossing the Mohave.

Discuss.

[i/o]

As I’m sure I’ve told all of you, once we gave up Pumpkin and Charlie to the Humane Society, we bookmarked their page because they are nice enough to put all of the cats they have available viewable online. This is nice so you can see which ones are there, look at their information, support them through the website, and even print off an ID card for the cat if you know you want to look at that one specifically when you come in.

Well, as I may have also said, I check that site at least once a day to see if the dynamic duo have moved on to another loving home.

Today I made my daily website rounds, and found that our former two furry family members have been removed from the page. I’m happy that they’ve been adopted, but I’ve also got a sad and lonely emptiness in my heart. I hope whoever adopted them got the papers Alaina wrote, telling them about what games they like to play, and how they like to be petted, and what they like to eat.

I’m sure even if they didn’t get those papers, they’d find out in time, but I wonder if anyone would ever figure out on their own what a good fetcher Punky is.

I sincerely hope they’ve found a great provider.

I think the greatest gift Punky and Charlie could give us now is forgetting they were ever with us. Knowing that they miss us still, or would miss us forever is just too terrible to imagine.

Goodbye you two, I loved you both without question.

[i/o]