I think Guy Fieri is about to do what Corel did to Paint Shop Pro

I think Food Channels Guy Fieri is about to ruin one of my favorit taco shops.  I walked into Los Taquitos Mexican Grill in Ahwatukee today for some lunch time tacos today.  I decided on their marinated pork tacos (I had not had them before, as I usually can’t turn down the perfect Carne Asada ones).   While waiting for my number to be called I noticed, on the side of a garbage can, a paper announcement taped on.  To my amazement the notice was that Diners, Drive-ins and Dives host, Guy Fieri, would be visiting the restaurant October 17th to film for the show. I am a fan of the show, and I often watch it hoping someday to visit some of the places he spotlights. This announcement however hit me differently though. Los Taquitos is not a destination restaurant to me, it is a place I found close to my work that serves up wonderful authentic Mexican food pretty unassumingly.  Now here was a was Guy coming to to this place to put it on the map, and probably give it that marketing gleam he seems to give all the places he goes too.

What I fear the most is what I see on his show, full homey restaurants over filled with loving fans.  You see, Los Taquitos in its current state is rarely packed (I’ve never waited in a line more than one and never feel bad taking up a four-top table to read the paper while munching tacos), and certainly has zero to no marketing gleam.  I worry not just about the over publicity and crowds the show will bring, but that afterwords the owners will rethink things like the sloppy condiment tray, haphazardly placed salsa squirt bottles, the odd streaky paint job in the bathroom, and the “everything in tinfoil” presentation of the food.  These are the things that give the place interesting character and flavor and hopefully will not go away with the new found celebrity status Guy Fieri will undoubtedly bring.  I’m tempted to go through my taco review with all Guy Fieri catch-phrases so maybe he would decline to visit after I used up all of them in my taco review. They are not very original catch-phrases however, so I doubt that strategy would work.

For now I’ll say the marinated pork tacos I had today were wonderful (Not “Money” as Guy would say).  Pork can go wrong in so many different ways, especially when it is grilled.  Much of the time pork offerings leaning towards chewy and tough or mushy and tasteless. These were none of that, perfectly cooked and the dehydrated remnants of a red chili marinade coated every inch of the meat.  Throw in perfect proportions of chopped red onion and shredded cilantro leaves on top, and you’ve spelled T-A-S-T-Y.  These tacos are on the small side, but I wouldn’t consider them mini-tacos. The soft steamed corn tortillas are around CD sized and properly dual-layered for strength. Placed flat with a mound of meat and toppings in the middle, you are in command of how you pick them up and fold them. You are always free to grab any fixings or squirt red or green sauce on them, but I only chose to put the green on one of the three I ordered as the marinade looked like it was going to pack more than enough flavor.  It certainly did, and the pork was tender but had that grilled bite.   Tacos here have no cheese, lettuce or cabbage.  The meat does the speaking, and the toppings are more of a fine tuning then a condiment.

Back in 2004 Corel did a similar thing to my favorite graphics editor, Paint Shop Pro, as I fear will happen to Los Taquitos.  I had stumbled upon and fallen in love with paint shop pro years before (around version 7). I had been looking for a editor that could  do things I noticed people were doing in Photoshop at the time, but without the heavy price tag.  What I found was made at the time by a company called Jasc. Paint Shop Pro 7 was a wonderfully powerful graphic editor that while mostly Raster, had Vector capabilities.  It used a layer based approach very similar to Photoshop and had very similar tools and layout as well. One was also able to use Photoshop compatible plug-ins, so access to the powerful third party plug ins like Alien Skins line, was right there. I soon discovered that the that at least for me, PSP was probably a better fit than Photoshop anyway. PSP was more intuitive and its vector tools really shined at ground up creation of digital graphics, and wasn’t to shabby at photo editing and graphic design applications. PSP also had a interesting and diverse user community that really leaned toward the crafty and creative side, rather than then the slick and professional that Adobe products seamed to call to.  I got every new version as soon as it was available, and combed the Internet for new tutorials, plug-ins, tubes and other things the PSP community would come up with. Then right around when I was waiting to get version 9 it happened, Corel bought Jasc. Corel was a much bigger player in graphic software, but continually seemed to be loosing ground to Adobe.  Corels software blanketed over PSP though. It was like a big tool box, compared to the Swiss army knife PSP was.  I really didn’t see where PSP fit, in their lineup, and It came to be that I don’t think Corel did either.  They went about right away cutting away PSP crafty background and creative community, and have been since trying to squeak the image out of PSP as a slick bargain photo editing app.  I really wish they had maintained PSP as the sharp all around editor that continually poked at Photoshop in its utter usefulness.   So sad too, version 9, the last to be labeled by Jasc, was a masterpiece of usability, expandability and potential. It had a Python scripting engine, new photo tools, for the first time had at least some form of CMYK export.  I have tried Corels newer versions, but see that they have tucked many of PSPs great tools behind the scenes (some can only be activated in configuration) and maybe even removed some, in favor of some digital camera user market share, that in my mind don’t really want or need something like PSP anyway.   Ironically the market they seem to be after, looks to be ready to move to online apps or go to free software like picasa. As Adobe looks to be moving in this direction, I suspect they will get there first again.  The PSP tutorial, tube and frame sites and portals are full of dead links and remnants of a grand time and great program.   They went for the masses with it and really missed it’s true calling.  Corel tried to build it up but really brought it down.  Corel really ruined that taco shop.

WYSIWYG Webbuilder 5 and Taco Trio

This is how it would go on any computer forum, some beginner would post, “What is the best tool to make a web-page?” Some macho self proclaimed HTML master user would always post, “Notepad, I only will use notepad.”  I surely respect one who can code HTML well in notepad, but with so many editors and tools to assist with web-page and site creation, I say, “Why?”   The macho notepadder would of course answer, “Because it gives me total control over all my code.”  When I hear something like that, I just know their pages are probably about as creative and visual as server errors.   There are so many great web-page editors out there these days, especially WYSIWYG (What You See IS What You Get) editors, that do such fantastic jobs, I view a notepad page writer as a masochist.

Dreamweaver has always been my weapon of choice when throwing up a site, but Dreamweaver is still, to me, not for those new to web design and page making.  You still need the Code View part of Dreamweaver to get your pages the way you want them.  SiteSpinner has been my choice for no code, little effort, web-page making, in the past.  But it has not been truly updated in sometime, and something about its CSS has me convinced I can tell if the page is made in SS just by watching it load.

I had tried WYSIWYG Web Builder in the past (when it was free) and liked it a lot, but it was definitely missing a few things.  I see that version 5 has come a long way. Most of the features I felt it lacked are now right there, and there are plenty of innovative and even unexpected features that make this a great web page builder.  The shape shadow and form builder alone would make great software, but put all these things together and you can whip up very professional pages up quickly and with ease. Seriously, there is no better tool out there for quickly laying out pixel precise images and text on a web-page.  One can have a page made an loaded on a server, before a Notepad coder got the header written.

There are a few things that I find lacking with WYSIWYG Web Builder. It’s import functions are fairly poor. Unlike Dreamweaver which can pull any page in, no matter what it was made with, and retain it’s CSS and layout, WYSIWYG Web Builder massacres the style and from what I’ve seen really messes up layers and divs.  Pretty much unusable for complicated already made sites and templates.  If they could get importing working well, this would really be the WYSIWYG editor to beat.  Note: Site Spinner and most other WYSIWYG editors can’t import pages not made in it at all.  Another feature it needs, is a very easy way to move all objects below a certain point down. Especially important with long copy pages. You can select everything below manually, but this can be a little tricky with lots of objects on the page. NO worries though,  It is really actively developed piece of software, so I just know they’ll eventually have all the features I can think of, and more.

WYSIWYG Web Builder is highly recommended for those that want to put up pages and sites quickly and easily.  http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/

My taco for this post is actually three tacos.  The Baja Fresh chain (I know, a chain, but trust me these are tasty) has a special called Taco Trio.  You get a steak, chicken, and shrimp taco.  These are soft corn tortia tacos (doubled up of course), and they are not just ordinary.  All three have a good size slice of avocado in them, and they live up to their themes: Diablo Steak (good steak with a nice spice). Tropical Chicken (the slice of pineapple makes it great), and Blackened Shrimp (could have been more blackened though).   I was quite impressed, these really shine above Baja Fresh’s other offerings. They should leave the white sauce out of the chicken and shrimp ones though.