Rhymin and Schemin #1

By: Todd

Who is this man of mystery...this enigma wrapped in a puzzle lightly drizzled with a riddle? This guy with enough free time to write a regularly appearing column about changing the interface of your Macintosh?

Dummy! It's me!

My name's Todd, and I've been deep into desktop/icon/color scheme customization since I got my first Mac, a Performa 550, about 7 years ago.
Those were the heady days of ClickChange and Kaboom!, the days when you could get people to ooh and aah by changing your system font and making your menu bar purple. These days, thanks in large part to the great shareware control panel Kaleidoscope, the level of changes you can make to your Mac's GUI is finally getting to where I always hoped it could. With a few exceptions, you can make your windows, dialogs, menus, scroll bars, checks and buttons look exactly the way you want them to. You can even change the noises that your Mac makes. Don't like that beep? How about a CD-quality, 17-second-long sample of Slim Pickens' nuclear-bomb-riding 'Yee-Haw!' from Dr. Strangelove every time you empty your trash? Tell me that's not something you couldn't possibly get sick of.

Which, of course, begs the question: How much tweaking is too much? Where exactly is the line that separates "Wow, cool desktop" from "How the hell do I close this damn window?!"? That's one of the questions I hope to tackle in detail in these columns.

I'll also cover topics like originality versus emulation, currently a hot-button issue with the recent unveiling of Mac OS X's Aqua interface and
the subsequent mad rush by both Mac and PC users to get it onto their screens at any cost. What exactly are the merits of making your OS look like a carbon copy of another? Does it really make the transition smoother when the time to upgrade rolls around, or does it simply throw the tiny (or not-so-tiny) differences between hacked interface and real thing into even sharper relief? And does it lead to the use of insanely long sentences like the previous one?

In addition, I'll touch on issues of pure aesthetics. What Kaleidoscope schemes are currently giving my fancy a tickle, and why? These thoughts won't exactly be full-fledged reviews, like my work at the now-defunct GUI Junky site, just ramblings about what catches my eye. Something along the lines of 'The gradient in the title bar of this scheme is really smooth' or 'I was surprised by the detail in that scheme's widgets'. These thoughts may also extend to icon sets, soundsets, themes and desktop pictures, as well as interface-altering software products. In addition, I'm considering doing short interviews with interface artists who don't mind the attention.

In every column, I'll try to point you, faithful reader (I can call you that without fear since this is the first one of these things), toward some other
place on the web where you can find fun stuff for your Mac. Come to think of it, I'll start with this very column!

Ever visited Waferbaby ? You oughtta. It's chock-full of weird, freaked-out stuff. Online comics, e-cards, desktop pictures and random ramblings. It's also the home of Pixhell, easily the funniest Quicktime-based pixelated online comic strip featuring psychotic animals I've seen in...well, weeks.

I'll probably also rant a bit in each column about something completely unrelated to the topic at hand. For instance, why do cable channels only seem
to air cooking shows in the wee small hours of the morning, between 1 and 3 AM when no one in his right mind is going to trudge into the kitchen to try out that great-looking recipe for Bananas Foster?

Bananas Foster...I think I dated her in high school. It ended badly. Much like this column is right now. So folks, stay tuned! I'm gonna do my best to have a new column written every week. Feedback is always, always welcome. My goals for this column are to entertain a lot and enlighten a little. Or vice versa, I'm not picky. Anyway, I'll never know if I'm meeting my goals if you don't let me know.