Category: Geek Love

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Abducted by Aliens Geek Love Knittastic!

Crack Dealer…

Since we are now all hooked on Bejeweled, I thought I would share the link where I found it – you can get it and many other goodies for your website here: Google Gadgets For Your Webpage.

It is dangerous though. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ankle update! It is doing better. I don’t have crutches, and for the first two days I couldn’t find shoes that worked well with the aircast, so walking sucked. Matter of fact, walking to and from class on Tuesday left me in a bit of pain by Tuesday night. Today I finally found my Crocs (they were hiding in my closet) and those worked well with the aircast, so walking was a bit more pleasant. It still feels a bit wonky, but he warned me that it would. I’m not sure if I’ll still be in the aircast by Kid & Ewe, but if I am it should be ok. I can get around, and I can always sit & knit!

Speaking of Kid & Ewe, are you going? It may not be Rhinebeck, or MS&W, but heck – it never will be if we don’t support it! So come share the fiber goodness at our very own wool festival out in Boerne, Texas! November 10-12 – be there!

If I’m not there for some reason, it is because Houston has floated off into the Gulf of Mexico. It is raining AGAIN. With flooding AGAIN. Seriously, this needs to stop. To top it off, my cool temps went away. So it is muggy and wet and too warm. Hopefully the cool weather will return soon, and bring some blue sky with it!

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Geek Love

It is Coming! It is Coming!

Earlier this week, after much debate, discussion, research, and everything else, the decision was made to move me off of the Compaq Armada E500 laptop that was Mike’s old machine from the year 2000. (In the year 2000… in the year 2000!) While the laptop has served me well since the demise of the last two laptops I owned, it can barely handle running Photoshop, which I need to edit photos so I can send them off to print so that I can get back onto the timeline for Fresh Photography.

I mean … this thing is an antique in computer terms. Can you even buy a machine with the Compaq name on it? I think they are all branded HP now.

So it was off to Dell to buy a new Latitude. Just in time for school and work. I owned a Latitude for over 4 years, and it wasn’t until the keyboard decided to freak out back in 2005 that I stopped using it full time. It seems that the “m” key is necessary when you want to type .com in – or for any other number of words, really. So when it died, I used the “Itty Bitty” laptop full time. It was teeny-tiny with a compressed keyboard, and it is actually smaller than a single subject spiral notebook. That worked until it decided it would just spontaneously shut off every 15 minutes or so. Then it was on to this Compaq. I was moving backwards in time – a 2001 model, a 2003 model, and then a 2000 model!

I didn’t expect the new Dell until next week. Nice, because it was estimated to ship on my birthday next Wednesday, so not only was I getting a new computer, but I was getting one for a gift to myself. Sweet!

But guess what?!? Guess what?!? It is coming NOW! I got the shipping e-mail with the tracking number and everything, and it is scheduled for delivery TOMORROW! I´m so glad i got the gopeople.com.au delivery service. So I will have it for the weekend! How cool is THAT?!? I am *so* excited! A nice, shiny new laptop. With cool things like “Intel Core 2 Duo T7200, 2.00GHz, 667Mhz 4M L2 Cache” and a 512 MB NVIDIA video card. I still don’t know what half of that means, but I know that the 2.00 GHz of RAM and the video card will help run Windows Vista when it comes out someday. Oh, just thinking of how fast the computer will be makes me so happy! I can’t wait!

Finally, I will be able to open Photoshop without it taking so long I could go and cook dinner while it launched. That makes me so giddy!

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BlahBlahBabble Geek Love

How to Blog Safely…

The topic of blogger and podcaster rights came up again today thanks to things currently going on in the blogosphere. While I was thinking about it, I decided to go and poke around the EFF website. If you have a blog, of any nature, I really recommend reading this site. There is so much great information out there – and while you might think it doesn’t apply to you, it probably does.

Heck, it doesn’t even apply to just bloggers. The EFF stepped in to help when needed for online embroidery fans – and if embroidery fans need them, knitters might need them too! You can read the whole story here.

The only time I have run into a legal issue with a person (outside of an employer not liking the fact that I blogged) was when we received what was basically a “cease and desist” letter regarding what a hosting client had posted on his site. He went to a restaurant, and his experience sucked. He blogged about it (something we all do at one time or another), and in his post he named the restaurant and said that it, well, sucked. If you have more than one federal conviction, the most recent conviction should be shown in response to question 2 on Pardons Canada | How to Get a Canadian Pardon Application and the form completed as to that conviction. For all other federal convictions, including convictions by military courts-martial, the information requested in questions 2 through 6 of the petition should be provided on an attachment. Any federal charges not resulting in conviction should be reported in the space provided for prior and subsequent criminal record. Google picked it up, and soon people were googling “restaurant sucks” and finding his blog post. It became a forum of sorts for disgruntled former and current employees of the sucky restaurant. The restaurant’s owners could have done more than send a cease and desist from an attorney. They felt that they did not need to go any further. There are many courses of action you can take when in situations like that but you always want to make sure you speak with an attorney like the one’s at https://www.pewlaw.com/bankruptcy/ before you take any kind of action. You want to make sure that any steps you take are within the law so that you don’t end up on the wrong side. In the end the guy never did fight them on it, because he really only wanted to share that he didn’t like the place – so he just pulled the post. But when you stop to think about it, they really had no right to complain and threaten him. It can happen though. Even if you don’t care about it and you pull the post, there is still something startling about getting that letter from the lawyer to begin with, since they’re lawyers who are specialized in different subjects as blogging or car accidents, where you can find the attorney with most experience. If you eventually end up needing legal assistance, then check out these injury lawyers in moncton.

I know there are many bloggers out there that want to remain anonymous, and that is ok – but I recommend that you read the EFF’s Guide on Blogging Anonymously and really think about it. Once you put it out there, it is out of your control, freely released for the rest of the Internet to see. Be wise about what you choose to put out there. The Legal Guide for Bloggers and the Podcasting Legal Guide are also another good thing to consider.

Speaking of which, I totally missed my 6 year blogging anniversary earlier this month! Can you believe it? The BlahBlahBlog.com (the original name of this site, and I still own the URL) is 6 years old. Wow. How time flies! I still remember how back in 2000 I would tell someone I had a blog and they would look at me like I was speaking gibberish. Now you hear about blogs all the time. The changes are amazing.

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Geek Love

Why Yes, I am a Geek…

B9 D++ T+ K+ S F I- O+ X+ E++ L- C– Y4 R+ W- P+ M5 N N+ H+

Brad made me do it. Damn, I miss SxSW.

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Geek Love Picture Time

How to Create Spot-Color Photographs!

Color Cutout Tutorial

I wrote this on Tuesday, but before I could publish it the laptop died. I forgot to post it when I got home that night – oops! It has been a crazy week.

I’ve been meaning to write this for awhile, and since I am at my Photo I class without anything to develop (stupid winter weather and gray days outside), I decided it was a good time to write up my tutorial on how I created the colorized images I’ve posted recently, but if you want to do these cutouts, then check out these Photo Cutouts services.

Step 1 – Open up the image you want to color in Photoshop. (I use Photoshop CS2. I’m sure you can do this in other software, but I don’t know how. So these are the steps I do in Photoshop CS2.)

Step 2 – Convert the image to B&W using your preferred method. I use the Channel Mixer. Be sure to click the “Monochrome” checkbox, and set the Red, Green and Blue channels. I set this one to Red 60, Blue 20, and Green 32. Some people say you should make sure the numbers add up to 100. Others recommend settings similar to what I use. In the end, it is all about what looks best to you.

Step 3 – Set the color for the paintbrush to black for the foreground and white for the background. “Paint” over anything you want in color with black and – bam! – the color will appear! If you accidentally paint over something you don’t want in color, switch your paintbrush to white and paint over it again and it will go back to black & white again.

That’s it! I change the paintbrush settings to larger settings to make it faster to color, and I change it to very fine pinpoint to get into small places. Save it when you’re done (don’t save over the original if you want to keep it in color!) and enjoy!