messing with website

Boy I am so relaxed between classes. I really do love doing college online, but the time crunch is so hard! I just can't keep everything up. Something has to be let go. I had forgotten what having a couple hours to myself feels like.

I've been fiddling around with my website to show off my class results (Media 111 and Media 204) and then somebody gave me the idea of Google Adsense... just for fun I submitted my site. They turned it down because they only accept finished websites. What was keeping it from being finished was mostly a state of mind and the "under construction" text on the front page. I removed the offending text, resubmitted it and they accepted it within an hour.

Then I messed with page layouts, changed all the graphics, etc... eventually just added a white content box, cleaned up the dust again and put ads beneath.


Mainly I just wanted to show you the banners I was working on. They're very pretty, so was the layout. But I went back to the Russian Flowers theme again because it's familiar and feels like home.







The biggest problem I was having with that was trying to think of what text to use!

If I get into web design my ideal client will be the type of person who knows pretty much what she wants her website to look like and I just have to accomplish it. I'm not all that creative / original designer type. I'm a problem solver! Tell me what you want, I make it happen.

To Have and To Hold

I was so impressed with this story!  Easily THE most romantic novel I've ever read, that appealed to me the most. It was the bestseller of 1900. You already knew I was out of date, right?

Just happened across this cover. I don't necessarily like it, it's not what I had imagined at all. The first time the two characters meet each other, she's an aristocrat disguised as a puritan maiden, and the hero, though also a nobleman, is wearing buckskins: after he meets her, he is impressed enough to stop and scrape the mud off his boots with his knife.

It's all dramatic gestures and reading between the lines, and pirates and Indians and thrilling escapes.  Did you know about the Indian uprising against Jamestown, in which a quarter of all the whites in America were slaughtered? 

Read about it here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_massacre_of_1622

And read the book for free here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2807

Photoshop Class!

My next class is a Photoshop class. The only project to be posted on the board this week is "anything", that's right, just photoshop something and share it with the group. So I sat down yesterday and had way more fun than I usually do. Usually if I started just playing with Photoshop guilt would get to me and I'd have to go do laundry or do something with the kids. But wait, this IS what I'm supposed to be doing!

The palette made me crazy. This isn't exactly what I wanted to do; I wanted to blend the other colored images (all from the Adobe Samples folder of safe, non-offensive images-- after all, I'm sure the teacher didn't really mean anything...) with the original paint blobs to make it look like glossy blobs of these images, but I'm not good enough with Photoshop yet to make it happen, so I settled for this.

 

The boat and lake image is the one provided for an example in the assignment, so I couldn't resist doing something else with that.

A collage for spring!
 

Book Cover Using Layer Masks

Assignment:  combine images into a cover for a book or CD.  I picked Way of An Eagle by Ethel Dell, which I had just read, and been very impressed with.  Things were so different back then!  It's fun to read a story written when things we consider unusual now, like having servants, were common, and things we take for granted, like a car ride, were worth featuring in the story. 

About the novel: 

The Way of an Eagle was published in 1912 and by 1915 it had gone through thirty printings. The Way of an Eagle is very characteristic of Ethel M. Dell's novels. There is a very feminine woman, an alpha male, a setting in India, passion galore liberally mixed with some surprisingly shocking violence and religious sentiments sprinkled throughout. A modern day critic, Nicola Beauman, says: "Most modern readers will greatly enjoy The Way of an Eagle, for it remains the best kind of read for anyone wishing to curl up in an armchair...and wallow unashamedly in a book that is entirely timeless...I love to imagine my mother and grandmother sobbing over books like this."

It's an old-fashioned love story with some wonderful messages.  If you'd like to wallow too, you can read Way of an Eagle free here, at Gutenberg.

 The lady is Gladys Cooper, an actress in the 1910s. I bet she'd make a great Muriel.

 

Using Clone Brush to Remove an Object

I'm especially pleased with the slide picture. I used the pen tool to make a new shape of shadow to match the railing, and airbrushed some of the surface. 

This one was an assignment. Non-optional. Take this guy's beautiful skin and ruin it with a tattoo. Okay: let's at least make it a good one! 

 

Assignment: Create a print ad with layers, selections, and masks.  

Example of what we were supposed to produce. 

I picked pianos for my project because "it's easy to sell a product if it's something you really like".
I used the pen tool for all the outlines. Pen tool makes superior outlines!  It's a huge improvement over the way I was doing things before.
Please note there's no reflection of legs in the original, but I added them.  I had to do each leg separately.   

And another product, with another great reflection  :-) 

 

There are the elements, here's my finished result:

 

I'm in!

Flipping through the Chadwicks catalog that arrived this week I see a lot of dresses I'd actually wear. What do you know, "me" must be the style this year!
These are so cool I might order them, if I had money and if they were made in America.

No, Colemak!

Dvorak is yesterday's news. The future is here:

http://colemak.com/FAQ

This is great! It's a layout specially designed for computers. The most frequently used keys are on the home row and the shortcut keys are preserved! It is so, so, so much more comfortable than Qwerty.

My post in the forum (long and ongoing):

http://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?pid=2406

Dvorak...

Not a Czech composer (apparently not pronounced the same either), something far more useful :-)

http://www.dvorak-keyboards.com/

I'm switching again.

I switched a couple years ago, absolutely loved the feeling of typing on Dvorak-- you can't believe how smooth, easy and non-strenuous it is compared to QWERTY until you try it-- but I gave it up because of the shortcut keys.

The only ONLY benefit of QWERTY is how many programs use Ctrl+Z undo, and X, C and V for cut, copy and paste, which are all on one hand and very convenient.

I've been suffering on QWERTY lately, and now I'm grown up enough to adapt to the loss of the shortcut keys. Some of them now use the left hand, is all-- the key shortcuts are the same, just not in the same locations any more. That can be gotten used to as well.

It's difficult for someone who typed 105 wpm to become a 20 wpm beginner again... but I've a feeling it won't take long :-)

LOL kittehz!!

http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Can't believe I spent that much time looking at the "kitteh" pictures and laughing... oh they're cute though!

...even the bad grammar's cute.

Ron Paul at the University of Washington

Feb 6, 2008

A Ron Paul event on a weekday for once. I can actually go! I packed up the kids and some snacks and zoomed on up to North Seattle, to the UW. 

That was my first good look at the UW, which is an atmosphere that appeals to me. Old buildings and books. Yep. We looked around the food court and I noticed the students were all staring hard at me. It was enough attention that I began to find it disconcerting. Why? The students were young adults with a few middle aged, some obvious professors, mostly very classy, and a few power professionals walking around in wool and confidence. I was only a little older than their average. I began to wonder why I seemed so much different that I should be stared at, then realized this was probably the first bunch of little kids this population has seen for weeks.

We were too early, but eventually Ron Paul types began to appear and assemble outside. A nice couple who had brought extra signs insisted that we'd be doing them a favor by taking some.

Very early picture when only a few people had shown up!

Lots of guys were wearing suits who weren't used to wearing suits (it shows!) and I found out that Ron Paul had given a talk on economics this morning, with the instructions to dress business. That added to the classiness level of the crowd.

The kids and I got assigned to hold signage around the front of the building. I was a little worried because everybody kept saying Ron Paul was going to show up at any moment, and I wanted to see him. But hey, we came here to be useful, not to be entertained! We have much inactivity to make up for. 

One small detail, I was freezing. There was a chilly wind and my light jacket wasn't enough, and I wished I had a beanie. But so what if I get the sniffles? I can have a cold for Ron Paul, can't I? So I breathed in the cold air happily and wrote off tomorrow as a sick day. (But then didn't get sick!) 

The kids were all for it. We had one 4x8 sign and two 2x3 signs. I insisted the boys stand up on the raised area where there was a big tree, and the girls closer to the street. Several people stopped to ask where it was happening, and we were getting smiles from everybody, even the cop who was out there watching. 

When Ron Paul arrived, we went back to the square, which by then had filled up completely, with hundreds of people packed together waiting and shouting. Sorry but I can't concentrate on Ron Paul, he's not as important as keeping track of my boys! The twins had their signs and Mike especially had instantly developed an eye for where a sign was needed, and would go place himself to fill the space. I had to do some pushing and shoving through people to stay at the front with the boys. Of course together they get that twinpact, and every news reporter took their picture. There was another smaller kid there, holding a sign as big as himself, who also got a lot of attention.

A reporter stepped up to the guy next to me and said, "Okay, it's you!" and started interviewing him. Yikes, that's a danger of being in the front row, so I took some steps back and turned invisible. There was a lady with a sign, "Ron Paul stole my [big red heart shape]" who seemed to enjoy being interviewed, so I let her do that. 

When Ron Paul climbed up on the wall to speak, everybody started screaming, and I just held my boys. It was a simply fabulous short speech, basic facts about liberty and small government, and the happy sound of everybody around agreeing with him. Tremendous good vibes in the air were very good for the soul. The boys couldn't see anything and got impatient of being surrounded by people's rear ends, so I took turns lifting them up so they could see Ron Paul. Still, how cool to be this close to him! Close enough to hear his voice with my ears, and he wasn't talking loudly either, the people were all being very quiet. 

When he went away the crowd started to move into the building right after him. I didn't really know where we were going or why, might as well go that way and see what's in there! I concentrated on keeping kids together in the flow of that firmly-packed herd, which was a bit scary actually, even though the crowd was friendly. When one of my signs fell everybody just walked on it and I got pushed back, but a couple of big guys paid attention and helped me pick it up again. 

Ron Paul went right by me while I was paying attention to the boys. One of my girls got backed into by the door, and someone commented to her, "You almost got squished!" and another guy said, "But it would be an honor to be squished by Ron Paul!"

I was impressed that Ron Paul went away in a little blue minivan. What an economical way for a candidate to get around! I took a picture of a lady in a shirt that said, "Dr. Ron Paul Cured My Apathy" and then we headed home.

As we left we encountered just one heckler. I had warned the kids there might be antis there, but there had not been any and I had forgotten all about it. But come to think, Ron Paul is one of the most politically correct causes I've ever supported! Anyway, this seedy looking character crossing the walkway above us saw the Ron Paul signs and yelled down, "Talk is cheap! In the last fifty years they haven't changed anything and they're not going to now!" That's about as mild as you could ask for and he wasn't even near us. 

I came home so happy! What a great day! I did my little bit and the kids had behaved, at least they behaved until they got back to the van... They all said they'd had a blast. The boys were still chanting "Ron Paul! Ron Paul!" and didn't want to stop. Supporters had been friendly to them and talked to them about things. One lady had taken time to explain to Mike what a supporter was.

Then from the MP3 player came that song, Innocence: "I found a place so safe, not a single tear, the first time in my life and now it's so clear, feel calm, I belong, I'm so happy here, it's so strong and now I let myself be sincere." That really made my day! That's what it was. In that crowd, I fit in. Instead of a fish out of water, for once, I was a fish among a school of fish, and so natural I didn't even notice it until later. 

So I'd call that a wonderful day!

http://thedaily.washington.edu/2008/2/1/ron-paul-makes-surprise-visit-to-uw/  

There's a picture of that little tiny kid! 

This link says it's 700 people, well, it was definitely a lot more than 300. 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QIPWZ09S0XQ Good 7-minute video of Ron Paul's speech