Mr. John Wright – are you surfing the web?  Do you know how to spell?  What grade did you complete?  Please take more time…it reflects badly on you when given an opportunity like this to shrug off even the most basic of spot-checking…

Given the stage of Mr. K.s blog, one would think that people would take the time to proof-read their work.  No?  Okay, how about enabling a spell-checker.  Nothing too fancy, but it would catch all of these:

Principal – leader of a high school

Principle – an idea

existance?  No…”existence”!

becauseIi?  No…”because I”

Seriously – what are you using to cobble together your work?  Even a browser has a built-in spell-check that catches these?  I call foul and laziness.  Poor presentation, and it reflects on my impression of the person as a whole.

Also, while your photography is good – the website you use to present your work is entirely FLASH-based!  Fire your web designer, because this is just horrible design and your SEO is suffering big time:  watch if you must, but be forewarned, if on an iPad, iPhone, iTouch, Droid, or any device that does not support Flash – you won’t see much of anything.  (It takes forever to load too….)  Anyway, here it is:  http://johnwrightphoto.com/

It’s all about getting stuff out there anymore and the quality of content doesn’t matter as much as it used to.  This attitude has even reached the musings of SK himself.  Formerly a pretty decent author, you can tell he doesn’t even write the work that goes live on his site anymore.  Further, the quality of editing is just getting sloppy.  This is an alleged teacher, instructor, and guru of Photoshop, but the grammar and spelling errors in his most recent entries are just too ridiculous for words.

With all due respect – I’d rather see less content and more quality than the other way around.  The Kool-Ade is sour, and if you aren’t careful SK – many more will start seeing things this way too:

Evidence #1

“It sersiously”?  Come on – even WordPress tells me that’s an error…

Evidence #2

“Of course I included all the important …features [emphasis added] …but I also added some other important things…”

Either A)  “Important stuff” was excluded from the previous one that has now been realized and thus included, or B) there’s other “important stuff” that no one knows about…

Then again, there’s secret option C) where this is just a big attempt at hype and the masses sipping the Kool-Aid are just too busy with their sugar high to notice.

It’s sloppy writing and getting tired…

Yeah, now that the iPad is available for purchase pretty much anywhere in the US, it’s no surprise that SK has already had his for a while.  Don’t be hating on it though because now that the 3G ones are available, it’s only a matter of time until the first edition drops in price.  In addition, Verizon and Google have also announced that their version of the iPad is forthcoming too – (expected release date of June 1st) and allegedly wit the Android OS 2.2 certain to be native, it will have the ability to run the hated Flash that Apple so despises.  What’s interesting in this debate that Adobe and Apple are having, SK is pretty well keeping mum on the subject.

Of course when you are traveling for a week and letting minions keep the readers coming in droves for a daily dose of Kool-Aid, it makes it easier to stay away from the fracas – and if anyone does get involved, you can easily dodge involvement by recusing yourself.  Ah, the life of a Photoshop Guru – it can be tough at times (although in all fairness the “minions” did for the most part stay out of the fracas, and kept the content interesting and worth returning to read daily during the leader’s absence…apparently when the cat’s away, the kittens are still clawing to get some more scraps! )

The iPads are coming!  Run for the hills!  They’re not going to show your flash-based photo sites!  Save the children, and woe to the masses, but not SK!  WWSK do?  Easy, find a staff member of his company to devote his time to revamping your own site.  To his credit, he does allow for the fact that most photographers don’t have these kinds of resources, and that there will be some required adjustments to be made in order to display Flash-based websites on iPads (or iPhones).

I’d rather see him launch an intelligent discussion about what is really going on – HTML and  Javascript with CSS as the layout engine.  True, he’s not a web designer, but rather than telling the masses to check out the new training videos they are producing, wouldn’t it be a better idea to hold off on the “news” until Wed.?  Make the guest post come from his own staff and they can go into all the details about what people really need to do.

But then it wouldn’t be about SK, so…

So, the great one admits he’s not #1, but #2 – of course the admission is a small one given that #1 is AA.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite the achievement,  but self-congratulatory announcements like this seem self-defeating.  Do you think for one minute that AA would get up and shout out “I’m #1!” in a public manner?  My guess is no – that perhaps he would have had a little more humility.

Nonetheless, the accomplishment has been made, to kudos to SK – you deserve a rose for that one, so as the old saying goes, “Well, pin a rose on you!”  But after all, when all is said and done, a rose is nothing more than a rose…

Wow, the economy must be hurting even SK as he is seriously pushing his agenda today on the blog.  here’s the overall message, but he’s not really acknowledging the first 3 points, so I added them in here for you:

The show is $600

The airfare and hotel another $1000-$1200

Food and misc another $200

Total spent thus far = $2000, but that’s not enough…you gotta spend another $100 to $200 on these “pre-conferences”.

Come on, hurry before there’s little time left.  Don’t have the money?  Charge it!  Write it off as an expense!  It won’t matter, you need this, and you deserve this!

Amazing, three posts in one day and they all are really about him:

#1: He announced a new update for the Topaz software today…but even when you think it’s about the software, check out the photo being edited – it’s HIM! And look – HE PLAYS GUITAR! He must be like the coolest guy EVER!

#2: His band is playing at Photoshop World…wow, so that means he plays guitar too!  And he’s a Photoshop wizz – holy cow, two skills for one person!  How amazing is that?  I don’t know if he’s promoting his Photoshop World event or the fact that his band is playing at his event.  Nevertheless, because he’s doing both, surely he is one cool cat!

#3: And of course, he’s a teacher too – and a writer.  So in case you haven’t seen a book of his or a class of his live, you can pay for the privilege of watching it online too…

THat’s all that’s new in SK land – what’s new in your world?

He only says it like a crapload in his next book that he’s pimping (which they of course produced in-house, so it’s really producing dinero for him at the same time as he promotes the author).  I am sure it’s a great book, and it’s got that telltale “SK design style” to the cover, so the masses are sure to eat up the latest incarnation:

Captured by the Light – by David Ziser

From what I’ve heard,…it’s off the hook!

Did you get a chance to watch the birthday bash streamed from the folks at NAPP last night?  Were you at the event?  Sound off in the comments.  For those of you that either missed it, or where having problems viewing due to audio echos and lack of video to accompany the audio (I don’t think they were prepared for the bandwidth that they got hit with…), here is a summary of what went down.

You-know-who (SK) emcees and announces that they’ll be looking back on the history of Photoshop, what it was, where it’s been and where we are going.  Various members of Adobe and NAPP were brought out to demonstrate how things were done….

Instead of using the actual version they were referencing though – all the steps were captured in the current version (CS4), which kind of mitigated the historical perspective.  It seems the event would have had more impact if they had shown the actual setups for each.  But, that could have been too technically challenging to get Operating Systems that old up and running reliably… the whole shindig wrapped up rather anti-climactically, with Adobe thanking SK and NAPP for being their “partner”…SK must have been beside himself!

For those that want the shorter version of teh two-hour long bash, here’s a summary:

• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 1!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 2!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 3!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 4!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 5!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 6!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop 7!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop CS!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop CS2!
• Here’s how we did things in Photoshop CS3!
• Here’s how we do things in Photoshop CS4!

Two hours of various PS talent (and don’t get me wrong, they were all talented) that work for and with the NAPP community showing off their skillz and getting some “air time” in front of the crowd of roughly 1000 fanatics.