Puppies, Flowers, Rainbows and Kittens

I didn’t make this poster, but I love it.

Coming to Adobe was a dream come true for me. Someone first showed me Photoshop on a Mac SE after hours at the Center for Art and Technology at Carnegie Mellon back in 1989 or 1990. It was captivating to a computer science student with a deep interest in imaging and graphics. I knew that someday I would work there. It wasn’t a direct path, but I did get there eventually.

In my nine years at the company, I have been able to work on some intensely cool projects: Adobe Image Foundation, Pixel Bender, and Revel. Each have been technically challenging, but each have also had an impact for Adobe customers. Solving cool technical problems is fun, but doing it in a way that millions of users can benefit from is massively rewarding. I am grateful that being at Adobe has allowed me to work on such personally and professionally gratifying projects. I am also grateful that I have been able to work with some absolutely stellar teams.

Adobe is the best company that I have ever worked for, but it is time for me to make a change. This will be my last week there.

To all of Adobe’s customers: I hope that my work has helped make the tools you use a little bit better, faster, and more stable. It has been a joy to build stuff for you. Thank you.

Now, I’m looking forward to my next adventure. I will be joining Spotify in Stockholm as Director of Engineering in a few weeks.

This is my new dream, and I am incredibly excited about it. The people that I have met at Spotify are intelligent, creative and passionate. They are working to change the world; making available all the music in the world to anyone, while making sure that the people who create the music that we love can do it as a profession. This has been my mission multiple times in the past, in the days before I came to Adobe. I’m excited to pick up that banner once again and do my best to help it become a reality.

Things are gonna get interesting, stay tuned.

I think this is the first recorded performance of Filet of Feedback. Another one from the archives…

Filet of Feedback at the Birmingham Lofts, August 1991 from Kevin Goldsmith on Vimeo.

Something more recent from the archives for a change. The audio is a mix between the board and the video camera mic, gets better over time.

Filet of Feedback at the Beehive, March 13, 1992 from Kevin Goldsmith on Vimeo.

Filet of Feedback performing at the Beehive in Pittsburgh, PA on March 13th of 1992. FoF was opening for Illusion of Safety with Grae Com. For this performance, FoF was joined by the Guitar Army.

This sums up a lot of how I felt when I first starting using Win8 on a non-touchscreen laptop. It was even more painful when using it through a virtual machine. I’ve found it a bit better when using it on a surface, but there are still so many weird UI choices and odd edges that are continually ruining the experience. I can actually use it to do things, I just don’t like to now. Microsoft really needs to fix this.