Archive for August, 2004

Four Feathers (2002)

Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley of American Beauty and Kate Hudson. A respectable cast but not enough to make this Shakur movie the same success Elizabeth was. A long drawling war intertwined with a thickly veiled plot, this movie is as bleak as any other movie in the past that revolves around the iron ruling hand the English had in the 19th century and their obviously hideous style of fighting.

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Inserting a fireworks HTML file

In the past, when I inserted a fireworks HTML, I drew a table, and then drew a cell size that fit the Fireworks graphics table I had just sliced and exported. I then placed it inside the cell, and went on my merry way.

Well, there is no need for that nested of tables. You can just create a new page in Dreamweaver, and place the Fireworks HTML in directly.

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I am creating an image map, but it isn’t showing up visually in layout mode.

I learned this lesson the hard way. The image that contains the image map should have a “usemap” attribute.

e.g. <img src=”something.jpb” usemap=”#Map”>

Make sure that you have this attribute, and that you have a pound sign in front of the name of the image map you want to use, otherwise it won’t show up.

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Tutorial for how to use the “attachSound” method in Flash

I learned as soon as I started to use sound in Flash, that placing a sound in the timeline can be problematic and hard to control. I soon started to experiment with the attachSound method, and was thrilled at the control I had

Here is the example code for a sample attachSound script on a timeline;

Sound = new Sound(_root.thisClip);
Sound.attachSound(”test”);
Sound.start(0,5);

This code will attach a New Sound to an object called sound. It will attach that sound to the path you supply in the parenthesis. This can be blank if you plan to use it on the current timeline.

Sound.attachSound is the name of the sound you want to attach. In order to make a sound ready to attach;

Open the Library
Find the sound, and right click it.
Find an option called “Linkage”
Click the option that says “export for actionscript” which will make it possible for you to control this sound, although not actually on the timeline, using actionscript(just like it says).

Then give the sound a name, and that is the value you substitute for “test”;

Also, for Sound.start(), you can specify the starting place of the sound and how many times you want to loop in the two respective values.

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How do I change the color of a section of text?

(InDesign 2.0 not CS 3.0) The swatches palette is not the most intuitive when coming from a vector program for changing vector graphics and text colors, fills, and strokes.

In order to change the color of text, make sure that in the swatches palette, you push the T button up to the left of the tint. This activates all of the colors to be used for fills and strokes of the text, which you can change the precedence of each by click the stacked icons for the open fill “T” and the closed fill “T”.

If you want to change the values of a vector object, just click the square next to the “T” to get back to the original options. They will default to vector editing, not text.

If you want to add new colors to your swatches, just like in other adobe palettes;

Go to the bottom of the palette and click the new swatch button.

You can then double click that swatch when listed and change the CMYK values, and give it a name.

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The Task Manager (Shortcut = Ctrl+Shift+Esc)

The task manager can be your best friend. It contains information about programs that are currently running, the amount of RAM and Processor they are using, and lets you check for spikes in your processor usage and as well as how much of your paging file is used up.

Not to mention to can right click a process and “End Process” which should end the process. “End Process Tree” will kill a browser, and any new windows that are still trying to open up for those annoying chain popups that used to be so common.

If windows is acting up, you can right click and kill the explorer. The desktop will disappear, don’t panic. The explorer is not to be confused with the “windows explorer” but instead the GUI Shell that you interact with including your desktop.

All you have to do to get it back up is go to the file menu, choose “New Task(Run…)” and type in explorer and your desktop will start back up.

Under “Options” , you can check “Hide when Minimized”.and it will hide itself in your toolbar. But it will show a little grid that will rise and turn green when you are using a lot of your processor.

The same is true for Windows Media Player, (version 10 of which came out in the last month and is really slick looking). If you right click the toolbar and check windows media player, you can minimize the player into a little window and play movies right off your task bar on top of any other program you are working in.

Windows Shortcuts

I learned today, that like (Windows Key +E) will launch a windows explorer, you can get a run line prompt by pressing (Windows + R)

Then for a DOS prompt, type “cmd” and hit enter.

To get the IP address for your computer from the command line type “ipconfig” and hit enter.

How do I remote desktop between to Windows XP machines?

Click the start icon

Accessories > Communications > Remote Desktop Connection

Make sure of course that your computers are networked, and get the IP address of the computer you want to Connect to, and enter it here.

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Paycheck (2004)

A fun, unexpected romp with an interesting premise, Paycheck is a welcome return to good movie stature for director John Woo. Ben Affleck is a corporate tool who looks donates his body in exchange for the big payoff. With the promise of one final self sustaining job he is caught in a swirling conspiracy without any memory of two years prior. A thriller that ends up being more fun in the end, a highly entertaining movie.

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August 24, 2004

I am finding that I write a lot more about Dreamweaver, either telling the fact that I use it that much more than any other program, or that it is that much more buggy than anything else.

I am not able to Ctrl Click a layout cell.

Make sure that the cells add up to the same width total that they are each displaying in the properties inspector, as they are listed in the code. If the absolute width or height values aren’t entered, instead rowspan or colspan, make sure to add those values as well and you should be able to click to readjust a cell size as a result.

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