Archive for August, 2005
31st August 2005
I am not sure what it is about the end of the month for me, but I never seem to type in the blog.
Today was eventful. In the morning I made a computer keyboard tray where a drawer was in my old wooden desk. Let me digress a little. I now have a G3 with Mac OS X on it and a decent amount of memory, connected to the internet and Safari ready. I had an email through my site in the past week asking if I was able to test sites in a Mac environment. Even though I had the resources to do that, I figured it was time to check into having those resources here at home. Thanks to Chris and Thomas in particular for their help with setup, and John Durkin for helping make sure I didn’t cut the wood to look like the leaning tower of piza.
Here is a photo of my office now with the Mac.
Today I went to the dentist, and got the ol oil changed in la coche. Then tonight lady got dropped back off at the house. Christine and David are going to Atlanta for Dragon Con, I am not. I decided not to go, not the best decision for me and my goals right now.
I didn’t get to see all of Rockstar on Tuesday, and the performances continue to be great, but the show is getting reality crappy with all their time filler and hype. Ty got axed this week, which bummed me, he is a great singer, and I believe the only reason he got voted into the bottom three for the third time by the nation was his race, and even he noted that in his goodbye speech. Makes ya mad.
Tuesday I had to work late, met with a designer that works in the broadcast departments of one of the major news channels here in Indianapolis. I got home too late to go to the movies, so Sarah and I just did movie night in from the library and watched Ocean’s 12, the first time she had seen it.
Tuesday was also our second teaching experience at the Walker School here in Indy on the east side. We are starting to get a real feel for what the students are going to be like for the rest of the year, and we have also started to really nail down our game plan in what and how we are going to teach them.
But that has been our week so far, and tomorrow is September. I look forward to this weekend being really productive and helping me
Guinevere (1999)
Hoo boy. This one was a little weird, and probably extremely weird if you are not an artist, nor have watched many movies about artists. Starring people you’ve never heard of, nor will again, this movie is about a young 21 year old girl who is enticed by a 38 year old photographer. She sons becomes his “Guinevere”, or his muse in a sense. The become aromatically involved, and she is an apprentice of art, learning some sort of artful skill.
Twisted not only because of the age difference between the two, you soon find out this girl is the fourth of fifth in a line of women who “Connie” has taken on. He takes in these scared and confused women and tries to open their eyes through emotional turmoil and some mind games. The whole movie is real, and that works to it’s benefit sometimes, because it doesn’t seem like acting. But at other times, like when a whole section of Connie’s bridge breaks off when he is eating, because he has poor dental health makes it a less than entertaining movie that you wouldn’t want to watch again.
Not as mad as Sarah that I watched this, I think that maybe I would recommend it to some of my friends from college, with a beer factor of one to two glasses. Otherwise, if you are my parents, or someone of similar tastes, you would despise this movie on so many levels.
25th August 2005
Sigh!
Finally got the artwork gallery launched tonight. There was a lot going on.
I mowed the front lawn, and Sarah did a ton of punch outs for school. We both talked with Andrea and Thomas over Google Talk, and I also took a trip down to the Greenwood mall.
Through Freecycle.org here in Indy, I was able to get a whole mess of Mac related stuff, Two G3’s, one newer one older and all sorts of cords and accessory type stuff. Now the trick is to get a copy of Mac OS X with Safari and get them running. There is a kind of funny story, small world type, on who gave the stuff to me. But you would have to know the situation to find it funny. While I was down in Greenwood I got Sarah a printer cartridge.
24th August 2005
I promise tomorrow that the artwork gallery, new an improved with the old flavor, will be re-launched on Rothecreations.com. I made a ton of headway tonight.
Sarah did some more planting of planty things, crawling, dirt, yummy worms, outside tonight.
Today was pretty exciting, with Google’s new IM Chat service properly titled Talk. Simple and not flashy at first, until you realize that Talk has VOIP or “Voice over IP” built in. So anyone with a microphone or headset can have free, talking, static free chat time. It is awesome. I got Sarah a Gmail account right away and got her up and rolling.
Tonight I played around inside, I did some networking stuff between the computers in the house and worked on one of my desks, outfitting it for the possibility of getting a free Mac G3 for website testing. I hope to get it tomorrow, I really am digging this Freecycle.org group. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure.
Deanna got kicked off rockstar. Sad but the best choice.
23rd August 2005
Busy night. Had some freelance updates to make and some other planning to take care of for another project. Really tired. I am getting closer to re-launching the artwork gallery on Rothecreations.com.
Taught over at AOIT today, that was a ton of fun. I led the class this time around, but it hardly followed the lesson plan I wrote out. Chris was really helpful is answering questions while I was teaching.
Got my 18-1 combo drive tonight also, with firewire, usb, and multiple different card reader types built into one 5.25″ bay.
Sarah did some weeding outside, and attacked the driveway weeds with vinegar. Yee haw.
Rock Star. Oy. The good stars were down, and the bad ones were up. Tomorrow’s voting is a mystery.
22nd August 2005
I want to post something useful, but tonight, I think my just be about getting my new web cam up and rolling. It isn’t new actually, probably about five years old. It was Jessica’s at one time, and it so happened that Czinder’s have one. They are kind of fun with the right type of person. So after finding the drivers and getting it setup, Sarah and I talked with Thomas online for about an hour.
We had a good weekend, but really busy and some long nights especially Saturday. Both of us are feeling tired yet, and we had to switch back and forth driving on the way home to not fall asleep. Jessica had a good shower, got some special china as I understand it, and all other sorts of girl - wifey junk.
I got to do some computer work which I always enjoy, hardware specifically. I also got an edger out of the trip, so when we got home last night I took that to the driveway. Although hacked apart, I got the hang of it and it looked that much better after my first round in 45 min.
19th August 2005
Today was a pretty good day. Nearing the end of a project, and when you finish something, accomplish something, that always feels good.
David was here today for Gen Con in Indianapolis. He met me at lunch and I did some real quick touchup photo favors for him so he could get one of his pictures signed with one of the stars from Serenity. He invited me to go to Atlanta for Dragon Con in two weeks. Always wanted to go to Atlanta…
Jessica’s shower is this weekend, so that will keep us occupied.
How do I quickly change all of the names of my digital photos? How do I easily rename my digital photography?
Everyone can use this tip. Or least, it is good to know about, and then when you purchase Adobe Photoshop and stop screwing around with all that crappy free software, you will know how to use this.
Digital Cameras are about as cheap as a car payment these days, and everyone has got one. There is a whole new business cropping up for organizing, printing, and sharing these photos in online services and software. Never before have we had instant photos like this, and now that we have it, we want more, and want to know the best way to organize them.
The place to start is to change the crappy names that the camera gives them, something like DSC0000317 or whatever combo of letter and numbers your camera abitrarily decides to name your photos.
In steps Adobe Photoshop CS. Until now, I didn’t get the point of the Adobe File Browser, which is now a whole seperate program in Adobe CS2 called Bridge. In the File Browser in Photoshop, you can batch process rename all of your images to whatever you want. If you don’t know what a batch process is, it’s basically an automated little mini program you make to do a repetitive task for you, and making your life easier in the process.
Let’s get started.
In the photo below, you will notice that I took a screenshot of the file browser in Photoshop, in one of the thumbnail modes for a series of photos I took with my cheap digital camera. As you can see, they are named terribly, and I would like to name them better to help me search for the more easily later on.
These are some photos I took at the IU vs. Purdue football game blowout last year. Let’s start to rename them now that you have seen a little snapshot of the file browser.
Step 1: Go up to your menus in the upper left, and choose Automate > Batch Rename
Step 2: You will see the below screen. The default option that you first see is to Rename in same folder. You also have the option to choose Move to new folder, with a browse button to find that destination. I am going to keep them in the same folder, and so should you for this example.
Step 3: Here is the scariest screen. This is very pragmatic if you have a technical kind of brain. Fortunately, Adobe steps you through this process fairly easily. As you change options here, you will see what your file will rename to.
In this case, I want my files to be named 05_IU_Purdue and I want them to increment with a two digit serial number. You will see each box has a dropdown of scary options. But don’t worry, over time you will adjust to these.
I happen to like underscores for my files, for Unix server type reasons, so in the second box I add an underscore to seperate my serial number incrementation, and then I end my file in a lowercase extension. The extension used will be the same as the type of file you have currently.
Take a look at my screenshot now with all of my information filled in.
Step 4: After you have all of your own appropriate information filled in, hit “OK’ in the upper right and watch Photoshop work.
Now, I am aware that this option in some form was already available in Photoshop under File > Automate. But what I like about this, is that it cuts out one step. You will go to the folder you want to edit your images in, instead of selecting it from a file finder in the old way. This makes it much more visible and that is easier for me.
It would take me a lot longer to explain every option in the drop down menus, but most of them are pretty tell tale. Serial number is for just a regular number, and when you see one of the options in uppercase, that means that your output will also be in uppercase. Just watch your naming strategy at the top of the drop downs if you aren’t sure.
So now get busy, and take this power to rename all those old photos that are laying around, cluttering up your desktop.
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