Not certain this will take you straight to the Streamgarden, but just click on the link. Great idea for increasing natural oxygenation in living and work spaces without using up valuable floor space. I immediately started wondering how I could put this in both my home and office. Wonder what kind of vine plant would work for this? It would have to resist polination and couldn’t require a lot of sun.
Download of the Day: PicLens (Mac) - Lifehacker
This is a great idea. I don’t use Safari often, but this is a great idea for simplifying the viewing of image lists.
Okay, it is 4:50 on my phone display. 10 minutes to the weekend, and a fine weekend it looks to be. But, let’s check in on this crazy get-off-my-butt idea I had.
We’ll start with the aches. I have a few. I would estimate I swapped around 20 hours of sitting for the same number standing. It is to be expected as bones, tendons, ligaments and muscles are suddenly wondering if the brain is short-circuiting. The week started with the feet, back and hips aching and is ending with sore shoulders (especially the right shoulder) and ankles and a few sharp pains on the inside of my knees. But, I also have to think about the four hours of advanced sword drills (for those who don’t know, I seem to enjoy having people punch, kick and swing objects at me in my free time but I hide it under the guise of martial arts and pretend its functional) this week and that will certainly have caused some of this. Next week will include less practice time, so it might be a better indicator of how this works overall.
For my energy, it continues to move up. I really like it. My poor office neighbor has had to listen as I broke into song along with whatever song comes up on my iPod. I’m trying to keep it to a minimum, but I have a big amplifier mouth. But I think it shows how energizing it is. Standing certain returns much more energy than it takes. I’m forming the opinion humans really were meant to stand rather than sit. It makes too much evolutionary sense.
Productivity: Ah, here is the crucial metric. Was I less/equally/more productive during a week of standing? Well, I think more and less. Some long-term focus items suffered. Standing for a long time, focused on one item wasn’t easy. But, I think that will improve in time. Short-term focus items were much easier. Bouncing from one to the next was like a dance. Instead of constantly bending from the waist to reach everything, I moved across the room. It really added something to the day. Made going to work more enjoyable and the day seemed shorter.
Impact on others: Well, including my aforementioned forays into softshoe and humming, I picked up a propensity for both singing and air-guitar. I’m not enirely certain which of those is more embarrasing. I do believe it is a good sign of both freedom of movement and excess energy, which are both positive.
Stay tuned next Friday for week 2.
Just kicking off a little late. People can’t find parking on UR campus. Boy, that is a surprise.
- CS2 has been updated for publishing to mobile devices (not truly new, but one of the mentions)
- Adobe Bridge designed to be a complete image browser/manager but not editor.
- Something called Version Q, which is installed into the system preferences, keeps track of versions of your images. It will, actively, maintain copies of each version of the file as you edit over time. Only located in Adobe Bridge in CS2.
- Batch rename function allows you to rename image files. Start at a specific number and set the number of digits used for each (1 vs 01 vw 001 for example).
Humor: Presenter ran into issues. Explained she did not ask the blessings of the Demo-god. Promised to sacrifice a chicken during the break if things don’t get better. Must remember to ask Kevin if there is room in the budget for chickens as I get closer to the big workshop I am to present.
- Photoshop: Filter > Vanishing point - Allows you to devine planes in your image. From here, she made a selection of a window on one wal. The selection follows the plane. Copy and drag the selection along the plane. this also causes the selection to increase/decrease as it movos toward/from the horizon point. She then shifts the other plane, which is placed on another wall, and the selection reverses and follows the plane to resize appropriately and create a 2nd window.
- Another Vanishing Point demo - Image of stone bench, copies in some text to a different layer. Defines the plane herself rather than use the created plane. Resize the grids if you wish. Grid covers top of bench. She pulls on one side and the grid draws down along the side of the bench (kind of like water pouring over). Adds text layer adn draws onto bench top. Text fits to grid with closer letters slightly larger. Puls text off side and the image draws down along side of bench. Very nice.
- Someone asks about a curved surface. She mentions it is a different filter. Didn’t catch name.
- Another VP demo - Very complex image of a building with many faces. Creates a plane and drags along four different faces. Plane draws along. Copies windows from bottom of image and moves to the top. REsizes adn adds window to plane at top. Shows you can flip/flop (that is what the check boxes say). Doesn’t know difference. Adobe has humor?
- Red eye: Basic demo of red eye reduction tool. Very quick. Zoomed in, clicked on eye, all redeye removed. Tool should identify natural eye color and replace red with appropriate hue.
- Spot Healing Brush: Shows how easy it is to remove someone or something from an image. Does a great job of replacing the problem with an appropriate background. She removes a person from a grassy field, removes birds from a cloudy sky, removes a man from the steps in front of a cathedral and removes power lines from behind a sculpture. Very clean. Only the bird had any signs of removal with some lightly round white spots, but a little work would remove those as well.
- Illustrator/Photoshop - Copied a vector layer from Illustrator and pasted into PShop. Given options: smart object, pixels, path or shape layer. Brought in as pixels, but image doesn’t paste correctly. Gives option to scale before “applying” the paste. Scales back up, is pixelated. Repastes as a smart object and is able to scale freely with no pixelation. Smart object holds onto vector capability and doesn’t permanently resize layer to fit image resolution.
- Con’t: Smart object created in a new smart object layer. Click on the edit button in the layer icon. This reopens the image in AI, but as a new image, leaving the original AI file alone.
- Illustrator: Starts talking about Streamline. Explains Streamline’s function and it has been rolled into Illustrator. Open Bridge, locates file. Right clicks on image and tells to open in Illustrator. She has opened a raster drawing of a woman DJ. Zooms in, selects the line art. A button at the top, Light Trace, opens up. Clicks button and Illustrator turns the drawing into vector image.
- Con’t: The image comes up as B&W. She switches to more colors (16). Live Paint button comes alive. Click on that and each section of the image (seperated by the lines in the drawing) becomes a fillable region. Select the fill tool and color. Click to fill each.
- Con’t: Figure’s lips don’t completely close. So skin color overrides lips as well. Select Gap Options and check Gap Detection. Gap Options is located in a menu dropdown in the top bar in Illustrator (she can’t explain what it is called). Select Gap Option, run the setting and it will fill in the gap. Now lips are seperate area and can hold a different color.
Con’t: New document using shapes. Shapes are overlapping. She wants to colorize the intersection of the objects. Add circle, add square. Go back and color in circle. Tihs causes the overlap to become a seperate section. This is interactive Live Paint. Select both shapes and then click the Live Shape button in the tool bar, just to the right of the paint bucket. I’ll have to revisit this, not as easy for me.
- Bridge Center: Allows you to view the work you have been doing. Keeps track of the latest images/documents you have been working with. I don’t have the option on my computer, so I am uncertain how to proceed.
- Presentation note- She is zooming in and out on screen: Mac only option under system preferences under Universal Access.
- Back to Bridge Center: You can create settings constant across the programs by using the Suite Color Settings to synchronize. After you do this, go to program (she is using InDesign) and select Color Settings. The settings you seleted will now be used in the individual programs. If you change in program and go back to Bridge Center, at bottom of page, the center will say color settings are NOT synchronized.
- RSS feeds in Bridge Center: she isn’t speaking about it, but I just noticed there is a place for RSS feeds.
- Adobe Stock Photos in Adobe Bridge: Asked where people get images. Audience member said Istockphotos is the first stop. Adobe has created a way to pull from all of the top image server locations. Does a search for Richmond, Va. Pulls list of images related to Richmond. Sortable in many ways. Can also get Image Details through site before purchase.
- Photoshop: Layer Comps. Allows you to take snapshots of layers as you progress. What does Comp stand for? Not explained. Looks to be different views of the image with a variety of layers active/hidden. So, you can create multiple images in the same PSD file. This way, you can quickly scroll through the various comps to show possible designs without activating/deactivating individual layers or exporting various files.
- Con’t: Oh, this is a way of pulling previews from PShop docs into InDesign. you can mock up a design and pull various layers into InDesign on the fly. Very interesting.
- InDesign: Stroke type. You can create text which remains editable even though the font has a stroke and fill color (Not entirely certain I caught all of that).
Just kicking off a little late. People can’t find parking on UR campus. Boy, that is a surprise.
- CS2 has been updated for publishing to mobile devices (not truly new, but one of the mentions)
- Adobe Bridge designed to be a complete image browser/manager but not editor.
- Something called Version Q, which is installed into the system preferences, keeps track of versions of your images. It will, actively, maintain copies of each version of the file as you edit over time. Only located in Adobe Bridge in CS2.
- Batch rename function allows you to rename image files. Start at a specific number and set the number of digits used for each (1 vs 01 vw 001 for example).
Humor: Presenter ran into issues. Explained she did not ask the blessings of the Demo-god. Promised to sacrifice a chicken during the break if things don’t get better. Must remember to ask Kevin if there is room in the budget for chickens as I get closer to the big workshop I am to present.
- Photoshop: Filter > Vanishing point - Allows you to devine planes in your image. From here, she made a selection of a window on one wal. The selection follows the plane. Copy and drag the selection along the plane. this also causes the selection to increase/decrease as it movos toward/from the horizon point. She then shifts the other plane, which is placed on another wall, and the selection reverses and follows the plane to resize appropriately and create a 2nd window.
- Another Vanishing Point demo - Image of stone bench, copies in some text to a different layer. Defines the plane herself rather than use the created plane. Resize the grids if you wish. Grid covers top of bench. She pulls on one side and the grid draws down along the side of the bench (kind of like water pouring over). Adds text layer adn draws onto bench top. Text fits to grid with closer letters slightly larger. Puls text off side and the image draws down along side of bench. Very nice.
Back in C’ville this weekend, if only for a short visit. We stopped in at Foods of All Nations (which I highly recommend you visit if you are in the area and like international cuisine: http://www.foodsofallnations.com/) and, glancing at the free periodicals in the foyer, noticed The Hook had an article on how Charlottesville is represented in Wikipedia while the C’ville Weekly had an article on how the Facebook is dis/engaging UVA freshmen. Finally read both this morning and found them interesting as they focus on a local group and not just on the world-wide phenomenon each represents.
Wikiville: How the world sees Charlottesville
Facebook Nation: How Facebook, the online networking site, is changing campus life
Well, over 12 hours standing at work now. Not bad. Interesting ways it changes your routine. Here are are a few:
- Different energy level: I can’t give into the mid-afternoon “droop.” We all know this one. Lunch finally settles, as does your energy level. When standing, you barely notice it.
- Focus: I just realized that when I make a phone call or read something, I pull over my chair and sit down. My computer suddenly vanishes along with any distractions which it contains. For example, I just called and left a message. Normally, during the “Blah, blah, out of office, blah, blah, at the beep…..BEEEEEEP!” I will start clicking through my email and multitasking. In this case, I didn’t and may have left the most coherent voice mail message of the year.
- Body adaptation: In addition to “more energy” comes the fact that I’m moving a bit more. My body seems to like the idea. So far, only my feet and a few postural muscles are sore. I felt better moving around the house yesterday, getting things done. In fact, my body felt better standing and I was less likely to go “Uhhhh” when I stood up.
- Got my groove back: Well, maybe not in Stella’s sense, but in the Saturday Night Fever sense. When sitting, with my iPod playing, I had a tendency to bounce a bit, the way you do when driving and a good tune comes on. But, while standing, I’ve got the head bob, the foot tapping, probably a little boogie and a serious case of white-boy two step on occasion. Just to clarify, since I know someone will ask the same question my wife did, I will NOT be putting in a webcam to humor the free world.
I’ll check in again at week’s end…
Well, I stand (pun intended) today, on the cusp of great change. A body experiment? If so, at least my own. Our office space has never been ideal. There are too many issues to list about the failings of my office layout and design, and all of the liaison group suffers from this on some level. Over time, my desk arrangement has led to a few physical issues. Mostly my right shoulder, but there are some other hot spots I suspect are the result of poor posture at work.
As a result, I started looking at options. There is a lot of information about how humans hip structures were not designed to sit on with the thigh bone at a 90 degree angle from the spine. Options? One I had read about is the ability to stand at work, in place of sitting. So, on Friday at 4, I realized I had a bit of time and, since a new typing table (a very used 2nd, but in better shape than the one I was using at the time) was sent over, I needed to make the swap and get the old one out of the way. On a whim, I made the switch and, using some cobbled together bits and pieces, have managed to set up a standing work station which feels very good for my shoulder. So far.
I’ve only been at the station for about 20 minutes now, between rearranging some other areas, and it really does have a different feel. One of my concerns was how well I could focus. In fact, as I write this entry, I find no difference in my ability to focus. In the background is both my iPod playing and a conversation down the hall. No problems so far. But, I’ll try to post at the end of this week a bit of reflection on how it is working so far. I’ll try to follow that up each Friday with a brief entry on the good/bad/ugly of this decision. Time will tell.
I’ve ben using the Capture widget for some time to handle screen captures on the Mac. Desktopple is a great idea for being able to create a pristine background. This handles the only limitation I run into when working on tutorials.
Media Convert - free and on line - convert and split sound, ringtones, images, docs
Now this is wicked. The ability to convert a wide range of files online. This will see some use.