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

How My New Computer Went Together

Building the new computer:  The Big Day

Since everybody asked how it went, here's the story.

Monday, September 24, 2007

9:00  Gate open.  Kitchen table cleaned off.  Battery backup's been charging since yesterday.  Packages tracked. They are all on the magical brown truck, "out for delivery", but WHEN??? 

While I wait, I'm reading the instructions in Repairing and Upgrading, but apparently all the important instructions will be in the manuals that come with the parts. 

11:00  I went downstairs to do some laundry, and Dave did something Andrea didn't like, so Andrea took his baby away.  Andrea, Dave and Mike are all the parents of fine, healthy baby dolls, you see.  That's so cute, until it goes horribly wrong.  Dave didn't appreciate his child being kidnapped and took appropriate measures for its retrieval.  Mike came downstairs yelling for help, and I came up to find Dave and Andrea on opposite sides of a half-open bedroom door, each pulling on one end of a broom handle and screaming blue murder.  I broke it up, hauled Dave to the couch and gave him a lecture on the differences between humans and wild animals, and then a spanking.  I was just headed for Andrea, who didn't feel that ANY of this was her fault and was going to resist her share of the punishment, when the UPS truck drove up.  Oh, hello! 

My textbook arrived on the truck, too.  So that's good, I'm all set up.  Er... no, the setting up part's next!

12:00.  Parts spread all over table.  The case is absolutely beautiful!  The box the video card came in has gorgeous fantasy graphics with a sword and red lightning.  Mobo is out of box and I'm studying the book that came with it.  I am seriously intimidated.  I read where somebody said their first computer build took two days.  It would be nice to do it that way, with appropriate pauses for reflection, but I don't have two days. I gotta get all this stuff into the box right away to minimize possibility of damage by darlings. 

I've never seen the back of a motherboard up close before.  Wow.  That's all I can say, is wow.  That's something. Human beings did this?  And then we shipped the manufacturing techniques for it overseas? 

CPU is the first order of business.  I can't believe I have to touch these expensive, delicate parts with my clumsy human fingers. Better spit out my gum.  What a delight it is to do this all by myself!  Nobody here but me!  Oh, I say that now, before everything's gone all wrong and I have no clue what I'm supposed to do.  

2:00  Neither the HD nor DVD-R came with a SATA cable, and the motherboard only came with one.  Quick trip to town for another one!  No point standing there moaning about it, just hop in the truck and drive.  Computer shop charged me a dollar for a loose cable from a big box of them and I was back home in less than 40 minutes. 

4:00  Computer's together, except for the video card, which the computer guys advised me to put in after installing Win XP.  That's a good idea.  It's all ready, but I haven't turned it on yet!  I put the side of the case back on to protect the innards from the children, and I'm gonna make the enchiladas for dinner now and work on the computer more tonight or tomorrow. 

What a simply fabulous day!  I have to say that with all kinds of reservations as I have no clue if it's gonna work as planned when I give it power and push the button.  Today was extremely enjoyable, either way.  All the parts were so cool. The motherboard's booklet had all the instructions I needed for everything, and all in good English. This isn't the olden days of computers when things were cryptic and only geeks could do this. They've made it easy for the rest of us now.  

I was making progress on enchiladas until the boys came running in screaming.  Mike said Dave pushed him into a beehive. He still had a live bee in his clothing. I killed it, and discovered another.  He had five or six stings. Dave had a couple too, one just below his eye and one on his back. More live bees - flying around in the house!  We had to kill four of them and it felt like a scary movie for a moment there. Once the bees were dead, the poor little boys were panicking and wanting me to do something to help them NOW.  But there's not a lot you can do to make a bee sting go away.  It's just going to hurt for a while.  Ed said to put oregano on it, and I put only a tiny bit near Dave's eye and told him not to rub, but I guess the fumes got in his eyes and in just a few minutes he was screaming at the top of his lungs. That's not better! I threw the boys in the shower and then changed my clothes too, just because I was still freaked out about bees coming after me right there inside the house. 

Poor little darlings!  Ed came home and grabbed the can of hornet stuff and charged out there to spray the nest, even before he came in the house. Apparently he had known there was a hornet's nest by the chicken house and "had meant to spray them one evening".  So he felt guilty. 

I plopped Ed down on the couch with enchiladas and X-Files.  I said, "Is it okay if I sit down on the couch and watch the X-Files with you?" 
He said, "Yes." 
I said, "Well, then, is it okay if I spend an equivalent amount of time working on my--"
And he said "No." 

7:00  Okay, the BIOS seems to see everything, and Windows XP is formatting the drive. 

The boys aren't suffering very much from the bee stings.  That's a relief!  They haven't complained of pain.  I don't want to ask them and remind them of it, but Dave's got his shirt off and I can barely see the mark of the sting was on his back. 

9:00  The status bar on the format is stuck at 95%.  It's been sitting there at 95% for half an hour so far. What to do??  Should I assume it's a Microsoft product and just reboot?  How dismaying.  It's my beautiful new computer, I want it all to be perfect!  I guess I'll just go to bed and see if it's still on 95% tomorrow morning, and panic then. 

It says in the book that people tend to assume a piece of hardware is bad, when most of the time the problem is caused by conflicts. 

Midnight.  I got up and looked, and it's on 97% now.  Well, at least it's moving. 

3:00 in the morning.  GOOD news-- the hard drive is BAD.  That's okay, that's better than it being something else!  I'll have to run to Wal-mart in the morning to buy one.  It might cost a little more.  Or I could scrounge one?  The motherboard came with an IDE cable.  There's a 40 gb in the drawer here, but I think it probably has an old version of Windows on it.  Maybe I could start the Win XP installation from CD and format.  There's also an 8 gb in the kids' computer nobody's using, that's already blank. 

Walmart.com has a WD 160 gig hd for $65.  I'll have to call in the morning and see if they have it at the store.   That way it'll be all new and shiny for the new shiny computer. 

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

4:00  Why bother to go back to bed?  I went looking for motherboard specifications online, and noticed this is NOT a full-size ATX motherboard.  I thought it was a bit on the small side when I was handling it earlier!  How'd I manage that one?  What a ditz!  I guess I shopped so bloody much the numbers started blurring, and in pursuit of the details, I forgot the basics!  I definitely should have gotten a full size board with more room to work.  Oh well, all the full size boards had some bad reviews, and this one had all good reviews. It's here and installed, and seems to be working fine.  

6:00  I put that 40 gig from the drawer into this computer and formatted it, and put it into the new computer and it didn't recognize it.  Well, I tried! 

Phoned Wal-mart.  The 160 gig is $75 at the store, and they're not going to match the online price.  Ouch. 

Wait a second, the hard drive Wal-mart has is an IDE, same as the one I had here.  If the motherboard isn't recognizing this IDE drive, who says it's going to recognize that one?  Uh-oh.  There might not be any point running to Wal-mart.  The nearest and cheapest SATA drive is back at Circuit City for $80. 

I'm getting sleeeeeepyyyy...

7:00  Well, it wasn't recognizing the scrounged hard drive because I hadn't plugged the POWER into the hard drive.  What a dunce!  Duh! It's amazing how much better things work when they're plugged in.  I'm starting Win XP installation again and go to bed. 

7:30  Some gal just called, asked for Janel and then hung up.  Hm.  I really just wanted to come out here again and see how the status bar goes this time.  It's on 75% formatted right now. 

9:00  Took a shower while Windows installed.  Then blah blah screwing around with stupid computer multiple times, ending with, "Drive C is corrupted and cannot be repaired."  Not having good luck with hard disks, are we.  Well, Sis is coming today, I can ask her to stop by Circuit City on the way here and get me a hard drive. 

11:00  How are we improved from the last status report?  Not much, only reassured.  I phoned local computer guys to see if they had a hard drive, and they didn't, but he wanted to know why I thought the hard drive was bad, and said to bring the computer down and he'd check it for no charge. I might as well.  Maybe it's something simple that I've done wrong.  So I hauled the shiny black box in the truck and down to the shop.  They took the new WD away into the back and couldn't duplicate the error, but agreed it should be returned to Newegg.  They went paging through the BIOS which drove me crazy.  I kept wanting to know what they were doing and making sure they weren't changing anything without explaining it to me first.  They were going to send me home with the hard drive I'd taken out of the drawer, but I asked if we could get as far as I'd gotten before and see if it went any further.  XP started installing, and when it was done copying files, there was that message again about bad hard drive!  He said, "Hey, she's actually got TWO bad hard drives!" and they all stood around admiring my luck.  He went on Newegg and started shopping for a replacement.  This guy says he likes Seagate better than WD.  You gotta love these brand loyalties, right? 

The tech guy admired my power supply.  He said he liked the wires all wrapped up like that.  When I was going away he asked if I had the side, and I got it from the shelf where I'd put it and started to put it back on.  You know it's all black and glossy with this big blue plexiglass window.   He said, "Oooooh!" and I said, "Yeah oooooh!  Isn't it pretty?  And it was cheap!  Only forty bucks."  He said, "With that power supply?"  I said, "No, that was separate, but it was only thirty bucks.  I was worried it would be cheap, but..."  He said, "No. That's a nice, NICE power supply."  So I went away feeling all warm and geekly-approved-of. 

He didn't charge me anything this time, either.  He brought two office chairs out for the boys to sit on and watch the game show that was on their TV, and the boys not being used to TV, were hypnotized by the ladies winning things on the show.  It's The Price is Right, that same dumb show they used to play when I was young.  I'm surprised to find it's still playing after all these years.  One of the gals screamed, and the boss said, "With the same energy, too." 
I said, "Free money is worth screeching about." 
Later I saw one of the ladies reacting over the numbers 1000, the results being rather immodest in front of a lot of people, and I said, "But I wouldn't jump up and down for only a thousand dollars." 
One of the guys said, "It's cash." 
I said, "I don't know, I still wouldn't." 
He said, "But it's cash.  What would you do if somebody handed you a thousand dollars cash?" and he playacted handing me money.
I said, "There's no jumping." 

4:45.  I got too hungry this morning, got my blood sugar messed up and had to take a little nap, and while I was asleep, UPS dropped off Adobe CS3 at the door.

Sis left just a little bit ago.  They went by Circuit City and brought me the hard drive I asked for.  It's 250 gigs.  That's enormous!  And it's a nice Western Digital in a fancy box with an instruction booklet and everything: "plug in hard drive" 

So I've set Windows installing again while I scramble around to clean this place up, and we'll see how it goes THIS time.

6:00 dinner is leftovers of various types heated up in the oven.  Call it smorgasbord.  Win XP installed nicely.  That was an easy Win installation less customizable than 98, and is beautiful.  It's running light and fast.  Feel the power!  There's some serious horses under the hood.  THIS is where we would have been on Monday night but for the bad hard drive.  It feels like it's been three days!  I'm going to mess with the new Windows for a bit then open up again and install the modem and video, then start installing Adobe suite. 

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Got up at like 3:30 in the morning and started messing with new computer.  I was mostly looking around Win XP and seeing what's different.  It's very idiot-proof at first and I don't like that.  I want all the options present for me to easily screw up.  I want the system files out where I can accidentally delete them. 

Installed video card, and the driver doesn't work.  Windows boots into safe mode and I uninstall it, and things become visible again.  Hm.  Installed driver again, black screen.  Tried downloading new driver from the website, but they've only got images of the install disk as zip files-- 500 megs later, I'd be here downloading until this time tomorrow!  Blah.  Down to the shop again? 

Gotta go to horse lessons today, for Dave and Karen both a lesson.  I don't know what boots Dave's going to wear.  Should we go try to buy boots??  Gotta go to post office, call Mom back with some information she wanted desperately last night, and other letters and phone calls... hm, what's for dinner?? 

Down to computer shop, where they're not too surprised to see me.  I got the hippie guy today but he was really nice too.  That video card has two outputs on the back which both look the same.  I didn't know if there was a difference, and the book didn't say, but I saw one picture that had a monitor only plugged into one of them, so that's the one I used.  Well, it's the wrong one!  Thanks a lot, book, for pointing these things out.  Then he downloaded a driver from the ATI website, which is who makes the basic chip inside.  HOW could I know these things??  

The shop owner said, "Is Windows happy now?"  What a great way of putting it.  Windows was happy with the video card, and he tested the modem for me quickly, so now all the hardware is in.  Now I just gotta go home and install CS3.  They think it will go just fine.  I can only hope, but I've sure read some nightmare stories about CS3 installations.  

Next, horse lessons.  Dave's horse lesson was the cutest thing ever.  That little guy perched up on that big animal--!  Dave got shy and quiet at the last moment and wanted to hang back, while Mike, who had said he didn't want a horse lesson, started crying because it couldn't be him. 

We went to Wal-mart, where my baby boys spotted some large F14s with sound effects that were only $20 each.  Dave had $20 at home and promised himself breathless that he'd pay it back.  But what about Mike?  Now Dave's getting a jet but Mike isn't?  We can't allow that.  So I'm buying Mike a jet and it wouldn't be fair to make Dave pay for his. WHY WHY WHY???  Why do I even let them get near the toy section?  How do I get into these things?  At least I got the defective hard drive mailed back.  Newegg sent a printable postage label. 

Ed turned on X-Files again.  This episode was about evil rituals and sacrifices, and witches are suspected, but Mulder makes a defense of modern witchcraft which has a deep love of nature and respect for all life, and "They would never do something like this!"  I have to say that episode goes over the line of caring what Ed thinks and into the place where I just turn it off and take the heat, luckily Ed was disgusted too and said he wasn't going to watch the X-Files any more. 

Thursday, September 27, 2007

The class started on Monday.  Today, I signed in from the new computer.  The new computer runs the internet really fast!  How nice to have a modem designed for the OS and have the proper driver for it.  This modem was only six bucks. 

I just started Adobe CS3 installing.  It's going to take 4 gigs to put everything on there.  We'll be installing for a while.  That's okay, I have a lot else to do. 

7:00  Hey, it's installed!  CS3 went in just like a breeze.  I came back to check on the status bar, and it was all done.  That was FAST!  It prompted me to activate, which went smoothly.  Photoshop's running, InDesign's running, and I'm DONE. 

Hey, I'm here!  I'm where I needed to get!  I can do my class now! 

One class at a time is going to be enough for now, really.  I've just got to sell things on Ebay like crazy to recover some money. 

I'm not going to TOUCH that computer, I mean, I'm not going to mess with it in the happy-go-lucky way I usually mess with computers.  No customizing.  No turning processes off.  No "cleaning up".  Not even any Firefox, IE is okay for now.  No games!  No installing anything!  I promise!