1. Yes, I too thought that guest posters would only be posting on the weekends (unless otherwise engaged by yours truly). Turns out we were both wrong.
2. Site cryptography: when a certain Dasypus novemcinctus reappears for his regular Friday dither, the knowing protein wisdom reader will be free to conclude from that reprise that a certain legal matter that has kept the randy armored rat otherwise engaged (he has been in Ninja training for the past month or so in the unlikely case that the justice of man fails us) has reached the preliminary stages of its conclusion.
Either that, or the knowing protein wisdom reader will be free to conclude that the stupid bastard got kicked out of Ninja camp for trying to hump the hole in the middle of a throwing star.
3. I am going to have to switch site software at some point, given that Expression Engine is just not working up to even minimal standards of networking effectiveness. This means, I believe, I’ll have to port my archives into Movable Type, then move them again to Word Press.
Also, when I lost my previous laptop computer—and the first hard drive on my desktop Mac—I lost not only all the email notifications from PayPal during my last fundraiser (sorry I haven’t written a thank you note to those of you who contributed, but I don’t know who you are, unless you sent me a separate email to me regular email address), but also the ability to use Photoshop. Anyone with Photoshop for Mac, therefore, is a lucky, lucky person.
Lucky, and software rich.
Whereas me? Not so much.
Oh, to be lucky again—particularly in advance of election season!
4. Because my traffic has dropped considerably since this time last year (something I attribute not only to extended absences and an overall decline in the quality of my posts, but also to an inability to trackback to other sites, and a reluctance on the part of other site owners to link me, given that links to my posts reveal only the comments, from time to time), I am going to make a concerted effort, in the upcoming months after my legal wranglings subside, to improve things around here.
This will be my final big push, though. If it doesn’t take, it doesn’t take.
But we’ll always have Paris.
5. Did I mention that those of you with Photoshop for Mac are just plain lucky? Man, what I wouldn’t give to be so lucky.
6. Well, except $600 that I don’t have, I mean. I was speaking colloquially.
7. Since others are already posting here this morning, I guess that means I can take some time off to play ‘hit the Cheerio’ with my kid. He’s in for a whoopin’, though, as I’m a crack shot.
8. This message won’t self destruct. So, sorry, but you’re going to have to eat the thing.
Potty training … good times.
Yep, we will, along with half of Los Angeles, most of New York, some of Paris France, and now, the guards of the Orange County Correctional Facility for Wayward Girls.
Few things have proven easier to have, than Paris. Her BFF Nicole, perhaps…
OK, so a BFH is a Big Fuckin’ Hammer. Sort of an auto mechanics term of art. But a BFF is? Big Fuckin’ F______?
Yeah, that’s true. I’m incontinent. At least I got on Iowahawk’s quotation roll, so I’ve got that going for me.
I will endeavor to keep the compulsivity down.
Nah, knock yourself out. I like to feel totally out of control—like Jimmy Carter at the helm of a superpower.
I like to feel that way, too, but mostly on Friday night.
Anyone can afford The Gimp, Jeff.
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/
No idea what that is, Robert.
I had a friend recommend gimp to me. Definitely worth checking out. Personally I prefer the arrangement where he just does the image stuff for me.
Um…none of this is going to affect the serving of pie, will it?
There are so few things in my life that create that sense of anticipation and to think there might to be …
OOOOOOOOOO! Cheesecake! Er, what was I saying…
The Screen Savers guys liked it a lot back in the day if I remember right.
I like Photoshop Essentials for Mac, about 80 bucks.
Don’t think the essentials could have given us the Martha Chronicles…
Here’s the Wikipedia article on The Gimp, Jeff. I’m not a tech-oriented guy myself, just a schmuck with a high school education, and I was able to download it and do a few basic things with the software. Presumably you’ll be better able to work with it than I am.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_gimp
As long as we’re talking about the site, the first three entries on my RSS live bookmarks for PW are frozen on BRD’s posts from his Thanksgiving/Christmas trip and your instructions to guest-posters during your September home-buying break. Any chance of getting those taken off the RSS feed?
The Graphics and Image Manipulation Program (“gimp”, all lowercase as required by nerd chic) is free. It is also gigantic, requiring noticeable amounts of time to download even on a high-speed connection.
The gimp can do anything Photoshop can do, but it most assuredly falls into the group Jerry Pournelle categorized as “infuriatingly excellent”. Most of your Photoshop reflexes are wrong, and may result in anything from a botched image to a freshly formatted hard disk. You will have to learn the joys and pleasures of configuration files, which make Amazon URLs look like “see spot run” and induce longing nostalgia for the logical layout and simplicity of maintenance of the Registry. In Windows, hangups requiring a reboot and BSODs are just part of the experience; this, of course, is because the developers are UNIX snobs, and Windows contains a massive number of mousetraps designed (with malice aforethought) to make UNIX-conforming programs into disasters. Macs are of course UNIX under the skin nowadays, so that objection may not apply.
But once you get over the learning curve for both the program and its maintenance, it is blazingly fast, tender and considerate of limited memory and disk space, and almost frighteningly capable—a gimp user can run rings around a Photoshopper in almost any area other than animation, and the program sneers at watermarks and other DRM nonsense, including them as graphic elements to be edited like any other. Recommended, on balance, although only if you’re willing to put in the necessary up-front effort, which is increased by the fact that the help files are almost useless; the program must be learned by the Nintendo method—punch buttons, see what happens, then try to figure out how to correct it to what you want.
Regards,
Ric
tw: single69. Not very practical unless you’re very limber, IMO.
Hey Jeff, I second the GIMP recommendation. Very powerful, scriptable, lots of plugins. Inkscape’s great, too, for illustrations and design work where you’re incorporating text.
Come join us penguins! It’s a party53!
You’ll spend most of your time cursing Gimp for not being Photoshop. “Why can’t I do this the way I already know how?” is a common question. “Filthy free-software iconoclasts–is it so hard to not make your software actively difficult?” is another.
$600 is a small price to pay to not be annoyed, IMO. There is a legend that Gimp is much more capable, but you can file that in the “true, but irrelevant” folder. Every professional graphic designer who uses the Gimp instead of Photoshop could fit in a Peugeot at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, and what a great idea.
BFF = Best Friend Forever
LOL, rho. There are more professional and semi-professional users of the gimp than you might realize, and the regular users swear by it—although they themselves will admit that that is made easier by the practice they get swearing at it.
Graphic designers are an in-group with its own jargon based on obscure metaphors; software developers, especially those with UNIX chops, are another such. The combination can be remarkably dense and obscure when approached from outside, and that’s the primary difficulty with the gimp.
Regards,
Ric
http://www.monfortsmustsell.com
Just saying…
This page is SO going to be in the top ten whenever someone googles “Mariana Trench” Gimp Peugeot. That’s so cool.
Bender —
You might have to update the feed URLs. They probably changed when we switched servers or something.
Jeff:
Please don’t be disheartened. Instead of going down with the ship, why don’t you just take a well-deserved break? Even something you love can turn into a pain in the ass under the right circumstances. Apparently, this has.
Spend the summer playing in the sun with Satch and finding out about wordpress and podcasting technologies. (C’mon somebody. Isn’t there a wordpress guru out there who can help Jeff?) Don’t return until you’re certain blogging will be fun again. Nuke this blog from orbit and start a fresh one. Don’t leave a forwarding address. Change your fingerprints. Start fresh.
Believe me, I don’t want you to disappear–you’re one of the few voices of sanity and one of the very few writers with genuine writing talent out there–but I suspect you need a chance to recharge. From what little I know of you, you need two things from this blog: 1) An opportunity to write for sheer enjoyment and 2) a project in which to be proud. PW is doing neither for you right now.
Oh, and a good, single-malt scotch. Three things.
I’m all or empathy and stuff but not that much.
*for*
Actually, for graphic designers, the primary problem with the Gimp is an utter lack of a CMYK color space. I put the Gimp in the same category as Blender. I’ve used both, and were I in a pickle I supposed I could use either, but I’d much rather not.
Jeff:
I again offer my services for helping with the EE->MT format->WordPress transition.
I only charge kudos.
Plus, gimp + Inkscape = teh hawtness.
If you used a real operating system, I could help you. But oh yeah, you’re one a them academics, arncha?
Only five hits total! This one’s not there yet.
(kicks EE box)
We’re gonna need a bigger hammer!
Only five hits total! This one’s not there yet. </blockquote>
Now I’m gonna have to check this every few minutes to see how often Jeff’s site gets Google indexed.
The gimp can get you access to a cool plugin called UFRaw. If you shoot digital and RAW format, it rocks.
Wait, what doesn’t Photoshop Essentials have? I couldn’t find anything missing. Nothing I needed, anyway.
I tried, Jeff… I tried.
My conclusion?
The screen tastes like snozzberries.
GIMPshop may help with the interface. I don’t know, never used it.
Wordpress is really nice.
Hey, if dorkafork recommends it, LISTEN!!!
He really brings teh funny with his work.
I’m going to have to check out gimpShop – though I imagine it won’t stop the crashes.
I’ve used gimp, and “infuriatingly excellent” is a great fit. I like the CONCEPT behind the Linux movement, it’s the attitude that kills me. That and the terminal lack of organization.
Anyway, best of luck with the conversion, Jeff.
“You will have to learn the joys and pleasures of configuration files, which make Amazon URLs look like “see spot run†and induce longing nostalgia for the logical layout and simplicity of maintenance of the Registry.”
Nope, you don’t have to do any of that with the Mac version. I recommend the Gimp.app release, personally.
$600? That I don’t have handy.
How about $14? OK, done! See Amazon… heh.