More Adobe Nightmares
Ok. So I’ve upgraded my main photo computer to Snow Leopard. Everything seemed pretty much a-ok until I went to run InDesign CS3. InDesign complained “Some files required for color management are missing. Please re-install the application to ensure proper functioning. Ok, not a problem, I thought. I broke out the InDesign CS3 DVD, and I popped it in the computer, and started the install. It went along for a while, slowly reinstalling InDesign. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk, and asked me to pop in the Photoshop CS4 DVD.
Which I did. It proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. I did that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and asked me to put in the Photoshop CS4 disk. I did that, and it proceeded to slowly install, and then it ejected the Photoshop CS4 disk and asked for the InDesign CS3 disk. I gave it that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and asked for the Photoshop CS4 disk. So I took out the InDesign disk, and put in the Photoshop disk. And it proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. I did that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and asked for the Photoshop CS4 disk. I put in the Photoshop disk. It proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. I did that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and me to put in the Photoshop CS4 disk. I obliged. It proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. I did that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and asked for the Photoshop CS4 disk. Again, I made the swap. It proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. I did that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and asked for the Photoshop CS4 disk. In a superhuman display of patience, I swapped disks. It proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. I did that, and it proceeded, slowly, to install. And then it ejected the InDesign CS3 disk and asked for the Photoshop CS4 disk. And then I swapped the disks. It proceeded with the install for a while, then it ejected the Photoshop DVD and asked me to put in the Indesign CS3 disk. And then it finally finished the installation.
I had to insert one or the other DVD a total of 17 times. Mind you, there were only TWO disks.
This is not just stupid. It’s irritatingly stupid, but that’s not all. It’s appallingly stupid. It’s staggeringly stupid. It’s stunningly stupid, and after a career in software development, I have to say that it takes quite a lot to stun me anymore. It is, perhaps, the most stupid software install behavior I’ve seen in the past ten years. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
As you can imagine, during this process, I was increasingly motivated to say rude things about Adobe, Adobe employees, Adobe Software, the genealogy of Adobe employees, and what, in a just world, would happen to the folks responsible. I described how long it would take to mop up the undifferentiated amino acide goo that resulted. I invented new bad words, and then used the new words along with my quite sufficient store of old bad words to say things that would, if words could affect material things, have scorched the paint off the walls and set off the smoke alarm. I invented 12 entirely new languages completely devoted to ways to say nasty, brutish, and vulgar things about Adobe, and then I used each of those new languages until I got tired of them.
The dog howled, then cowered in fear, then hid in the bathroom and repeatedly flushed the toilet to blot out the sound of my swearing. Outside, trees shattered, the ground opened in yawning chasms, and violent earthquakes threatened to provoke Mount Rainier into violent eruptions, all because of the rude vulgarity of my language. The skies overhead turned from robin’s egg blue, to a dark and somber grey, and then to a greasy dark green, and repeated long flashes of lightning shattered the unearthly dismal darkness. Over the shrieking maelstrom of wind, the poor innocent residents of Carnation could hear the churning of the world’s oceans. And all this because of the extremity of the language I used.
And then. And then I put the InDesign CS3 disk in its case, and the PhotoShop CS4 disk in its case, and I made sure that Photoshop still started up. It did. So I made sure Bridge started up, and it did.
And then I started InDesign CS3, and it told me that “Some files required for color management are missing. Please re-install the application to ensure proper functioning.”
It might take me a day or two to cool off enough to call that pathetic excuse for customer support offered by Adobe. Until then, I spend time searching for alternatives to every piece of Adobe software I use. I am sick to death of this. Their software, for all that is the market dominating stuff and is the ‘gold standard’, has pissed me off, and this time it may have pissed me off so much I am actually motivated to hunt down some alternative.
I hope the folks working at Adobe and owning Adobe stock get exactly what they deserve. And I hope they get it good and hard, and I hope they get it for the next fifty years, nonstop.
Hard Times
This morning’s offering from my unfathomable brain, Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More
Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh! Hard times, come again no moreChorus:
‘Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door
Oh! Hard times, come again no more
The full, original lyrics here. I imagine a psychologist would have a field day with these, but I’ve no idea why this stuff pops into my head.
Discuss
From Terry Teachout’s About Last Night:
“It is the immemorial dream of the talentless that a sufficient devotion to doctrine will produce art.”
David Mamet, Theatre
I like Mamet’s work a lot, both stage and screen. But I disagree with this statement for a couple of reasons. Or maybe I agree with it but think it means something different from what a lot of folks think it means.
I’m a big believer in Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, which he explains in his book Outliers. Simply put, the rule is that in order to get really good at something, you have to put in about 10,000 hours working at it. It doesn’t much matter what the something is: playing guitar, or making photos, or writing novels, I suppose. Ten thousand hours. Sounds like a lot, but if you spent 10 hours a day on something, you’d tick over the 10,000 hour mark in under three years. That’s a nontrivial effort, surely, but it’s by no means impossible.
I suspect that what people call ‘talent’ is actually one of two things:
- ‘Undeveloped talent’ – what people show when they’re quite young – is an interest in a subject that might be sufficiently strong to carry them over the 10,000 hour mark in their pursuit of that subject.
- ‘developed talent’ – what people are usually talking about when they say ‘Oh, she’s so talented’ – is more a recognition that they’ve climbed over the 10,000 hour mark.
So I read that Mamet quote, and I’m thinking a lot of people read it as “If you haven’t got talent, forget about it”. But what Mamet is actually saying is that if you haven’t got talent, no amount of blindly following the rules will produce art. And, yes, I agree that this is probably true, if by ‘Art’ you mean ‘Art that will be viewed with widespread acclaim’.
I guess my point would be that if you’re putting in your 10,000 hours to get good at something artistic (photography, or playwriting, or playing violin, or chainsaw sculpture), you’re engaging in artmaking. It may be that what you crank out won’t win widespread acclaim, at least not until you’ve paid your dues and put in the 10k hours. But your experience – what really matters in the personal sense – is still that you’re making art.
And that doesn’t magically change when you hit 10,000 hours. You struggle with things after 2 hours. You still struggle with things at 1000 hours, although they’re probably different things. And you struggle with things at 20,000 hours, too, because the struggle is part of the process. You don’t wake up one morning and think “Oh, now I’ve paid my dues, and I’m on the gravy train! From here on, making art is as easy as breathing.” Oh, no, life isn’t like that.
Are there inherent differences in ability? Sure. Lance Armstrong is a genetic freak; he can perform at an aerobic level higher than the highest I can achieve, and his heart rate will be lower than mine is when I’m strolling down my driveway. No amount of training is going to make me able to compete with Lance Armstrong. The same is true in any field of endeavor – music, or mathematics, or weightlifting. Some folks just have more inherent ability than others.
It’s easy to look at Mozart and Da Vinci and Carravagio, Newton and Einstein and Liebniz, and say “Oh, well, their achievements all happened because of their inherent ability.” But this doesn’t really help much, because it’s utterly unhelpful in deciding how to arrange your own actions and your own life.
Maybe you’ll never write plays like Mamet, or make sculptures like Michelangelo. But you probably won’t know that for sure until you’ve put in a substantial fraction of Gladwell’s 10,000 hours.
Brain
Lest anyone suffer from the delusion that when my brain does the thing where something pops into my head for reasons I can’t identify, it always offers up something that’s deep and significant, this morning the thing that’s floated to the surface is a Cab Calloway tune:
Folks, now here’s the story ’bout Minnie the Moocher
She was a red-hot hootchie-cootcher
She was the roughest, toughest frail,
But Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.
I have no earthly idea why. (full lyrics here)
Poetry/Photography
I’m constantly amazed at how much connection I see between seemingly unrelated fields of artistic enterprise, in this case poetry and photography…
‘Why do you want to write poetry?’ If the young man answers ‘I have important things to say’, then he is not a poet. If he answers ‘I like hanging around words, listening to what they have to say’, then maybe he is going to be a poet.
-W. H. Auden
Or, if I might translate this across into the world of photography, there’s a certain kind of photography you get when you pick up the camera with an agenda, and a different sort of photography you get when you pick up the camera because you’re curious.
I’ve often said that when I’m making photographs, I’m trying to figure things out, not convey some idea. I’m not coming to the camera with answers, I’m coming to the camera with questions. From my point of view, this is really good news, because in the final analysis I have a towering mountain of questions and an almost non-existent little ant-heap of answers. If I had to rely on answers to make photographs, I’d make one or two, and then I’d be done.
22 comments