Wyatt Gallagher

There's a lot for me to say, but first, let me take this post to say hello and welcome back to my blog.

The casino presents you with games of chance, and tries to convince you that you can win with some degree of skill. Some people do in fact have skill—or enough luck that looks like skill—and the casino tells you about their successes to make your own success feel more possible.

I have to imagine most men take their nails for granted. They get dirty, they get trimmed, they're there, that's it.

Spoiler warning: If you haven't watched the film or read the book and care about either, stop reading here.

First, read the original post if you haven't already, then read the news. tl;dr: Earlier this week as I write this, Apple finally laid iTunes to rest with the next macOS release. Mostly. It's now split into its individual parts, with sync becoming a Finder function—that makes so much sense and I hate that I didn't think of it—and, while it remains mystic right now, it seems as though the libraries are also being split up.

I love Coda. Coda got me to switch to Mac a decade ago. But I don't think it works for me anymore.

When mobile devices began proliferating a couple decades ago, the arrangement made sense: Everything lives on your desktop, and your PDA, phone, or MP3 player syncs with it. The desktop was just more computer, and most importantly it had more storage.

This might be dangerous to my prospects, but it's important.

If I haven't already told you the story of how I almost performed "Times Like These" (with lead guitarist Barry Belmont and violinist Brandon Summers) at my high school commencement, here's the TL;DR: We auditioned; we got the gig; we rehearsed; we performed again a couple of times for staff; the principal already wasn't feeling it; I got sick and another classmate was subbed in on vocals; we didn't gel and the principal pulled the plug with a week left.

When I first started blogging, it was the spring of 2003. MySpace was several months out from launching. Classmates of mine were on LiveJournal, maybe Xanga, maybe DeviantArt. Friendster wasn’t on my peer group’s radar.

Rose-tinted shades time: Back when I was growing up…

Okay, so, that’s happening.

I’m a massive Foo Fighters fan. I dipped my foot in the water about 15 years ago via Napster, and then truly dove in just before One by One was released. This period happened to be the darkest in the band’s history: it was quite possible that I’d become a fan just as they were breaking up.

The student loan debt issue can be summed up like this:

OS X needs a Devices app to handle syncing. Full stop. Until that happens iTunes and Apple Music will be a mess.

This isn’t a post about design, but it’s quite relevant anyway.

So I left IBM. You’ve probably heard by now.

The other day, I watched a young woman give a short presentation of her work. She demonstrated a great breadth and depth of design research ability, particularly in one project, a business-facing customer service iPad app. Par for the course, she researched the hell out of the job and the needs of both the employees and the customers, but still she didn’t really have enough information to support a product she was happy with. So, she revealed, she decided to act on the cardinal sin of design research: she designed for herself! She leaned on her own experience as a customer service representative to actually understand what the hell was going on. It’s a shame her work was under NDA, but from what she was able to tell us it’s probably really, really good.

Took me a while, but I’ve cleaned this up and it’s usable now. (Funny, I actually designed this layout like two years ago, and not only am I finally using it for something but I still quite like it.)

More than anything else, I’m really happy that this is finally over. Most people don’t start college thinking it will take seven and a half years to finish a bachelor’s, but here I am and that’s what I did.

As I anticipate my working life, I find myself realizing that I exist in a space between having the undying obsessive passion that characterizes many of the great designers, and realizing that I can’t let my career and ambitions stop me from enjoying the journey that is life.