Monthly Archives: April 2011

The three books I ordered from kelbytraining.com came today with 5 bonus gifts! I am so excited. I ordered the Layers book by Matt Kloskowski, the Photoshop CS5 Book by Scott Kelby and the Lightroom3 book by Scott Kelby. They also sent a DVD for Matt’s lightroom 3 killer presets, Scott’s 7-point system for camera raw DVD, and two seminar workbooks for cs4 down & dirty tricks tour and cs4 for photographers tour. And a book for Vista which I won’t need. But just the other 4 is worth more than I paid for the 3 books. Wow! They are generous! And I am happy.

Already went through the 7-point system DVD and imported Matt’s presets for the lightroom. It’s time to attack the books and get my hands dirty. Can’t believe there is so much to learn in photoshop alone. I’ve got all the other software in the CS5 suite too. It’s gonna take a long time! And it’s going to give me lots of fun trying new things.

Still reading Shirley’s Sageing book. Lots there to take in. This is the 3rd book I’m ready by her. And my brain is screaming for a rest. It just can’t absorb that quickly. So I’m taking it easy right now, not cramming so much information and reading so much a day. Maybe it’s time to knit and listen to the audible for a while. Whatever I do though, it’s fun and exciting and I’m learning new things as well. Can’t believe at 54 I’m doing more learning than I ever did on the job or at school. It’s a wonderful experience. Our brain begs to be active like this.

Went to Iron Horse for my lesson with Doug last night. We started our routine. Still I forgot to ask him what song it is that he’s choreographing to for us. ha. The group lessons were interesting but not new for me. He was doing hustle yesterday. Met a few old friends from the dance world and we chatted a bit. Finally got my courage up to ask Bruce for a couple of dances. He gracefully accepted the invitation but never asked me to dance other than that. You know when you are not clicking with someone. And he is that some one last night. I saw him asking other ladies for dances who are not as good as I am, not that I am looking down at them. It just told me that he was not interested in dancing with someone that is better skillwise. Of course he loved to dance with Lori who is clearly better than any of us in the room, but the other ladies were not very good. Anyways, it’s a disappointment and it’s one of the reasons I don’t like to go out to dance as much. There is a very obvious competition out there like the actors’ screening process. It’s all so subjective and when you are not being asked to dance, you are experiencing rejection and disappointments. It’ a negative thing that I can do without in my life.

Ya, two totally unrelated topics but they happen at the same time at this point of my life. Life has settled into a few areas that I am drawn to lately. Reading and learning. iPad is a must for now. Spent most of the day with E yesterday getting her new used car worked on for a small dent.

We spent a while in Barnes and Noble and I got a photoshop users magazine. Lots of practical useful tips. So today I checked out one of the site they mentioned www.istockphoto.com. There are a lot of good ones and I’m forming an idea to make a banner or logo for my dancingchimes site finally.

I’m reading my third book by Shirley Mclaine now. “Saging while Aging”. The first one “Going Within”, the second “The Camino”. If you want an explanation of how the earth, extraterrestrial beings and human race or the world have to do with each other, she has an elaborated explanation in this one. I am not sure if it all makes sense to me yet, but it does have a good logical story that explains how everything came together. It’s far out there though, I can understand why some said she really lost it in the comments. But I am keeping an open mind until it’s proven wrong.

I also got an ebook that explains how to use Nikon D7000. “From snapshot to great shot” by John Batdoriff. Just got started and it is going to be very helpful to me. Ordered books by the Photoshop guys, Scot Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. Can’t wait to get going with the photoshop.

So between reading and learning, my days passed by extremely fast. I also took up a night owl schedule. Usually stayed up pass 3am and not able to get out of bed till after 11am. Not that I was sleeping through the whole time either. I’m such a light sleeper, any little thing wakes me up or keeps me awake, for example, Tido’s breathing can bug me and keep me awake.

But I am learning to accept who I am. One message came up in different things I read, “Be yourself, accept yourself. Don’t follow what others try to tell you what is right, follow your instinct and your inner guide.” So if I am a night person, I will accept the rhythm my body wants me to follow. Life has enough worries to spend my energy on fighting a rhythm that’s difficult to change. When my body is ready to go the other way, I will be able to change naturally.

I got it! I got it! I finally got my hands on the suite today and installed it on my MBP when I got home. It took a while, you have to switch CDs 1 and 2 a few times for the installation to finish. And now they are living on my laptop with the legit key. I am legal now with the best tools at my finger tips. Yea!! I know, the learning curve is deep and it will take a long time. But as long as I stick to it, I think I’ll get more and more familiar with them. I’m working on the photoshop right now. Watching episodes of the Photoshop User TV series. These pros are amazing. They whip around the software clicking here, sliding there and cool effects just jump out of nowhere. I hope one day I will have a set of these skills under my belt while I work with photos. It would be really cool.

Had lunch with K and C at evergreen, our usual meeting place. Although we only get together once every long months, we are very comfortable with each other and we share events in our lives almost without any holding back. K is really unhappy with her marriage. Her husband lives 3 hours away, working Monday thru Friday. Come to see her and the kids on the weekends and drives back again. She has no help raising her kids ever since her husband has been working as a post doc in various out of town places. Her kids are now 15 and 11. She wants to move to be with her husband but he wants her to stay at her job and continue to bring in the income. He’s quite happy about the arrangement, not having to worry about the kids and just work during the week and come home and visit the wife and the kids on the weekend and have fun. Big conflict. When someone is oblivious or refuse to own up to his responsibilities, what can the spouse do? Forcing the issue won’t help if he is not willing to change. I feel for her frustrations. Our conclusion is to have a girl’s night out one Saturday night a month so she can get away and have some fun in her life. She said she doesn’t even know what is fun for her. All she does is to take care of the kids and her husband. She doesn’t have any time for herself, she doesn’t even know where to begin. Sad life. Although she is a strong woman and learned to deal with what she has to do on her own, she is a lot like me back when I didn’t see a way out of my misery and got more and more depressed.

I kept asking myself what is the lesson God wanted me to learn and tried to learn it so I didn’t have to go through the same pain again. Look at it now, I think it could be trying to shift my view of the situation. Rather than thinking I’m helpless and giving the control to people or circumstances, think instead what is it I am doing that allow this to happen. Have the control back in my court again and know that I can change and I am the ultimate designer of my life and not the helpless victim. It is hard though. When the negative forces are all around you, it is hard to take yourself out and be objective and reasonable.

Don’t know why it took me so long struggling to find the info whenever my boss came in to talk about a project to finally try to find a way to organize all the info in one place. Isn’t this the perfect case for those GTD type of software that I have been looking at and playing with? Duh! And double duh!!!

Anyway, it suddenly dawned on me that I need to put all the web links, pdf files, email for his project all at my finger tip. So when he walks in and ask me any detailed questions, I can call up the info and give it to him. I never can remember details like prices, dimensions, model numbers. And I feel dumb fumbling around trying to find them while he sits there waiting.

Ok, so I am using Evernote right now before I find another one that would serve the purpose better. I can access evernote from the browser any time. So if I don’t have the acer with me, I can still check those info from a browser on ipad or macbook pro. This is comforting as I try to move towards using the mbp as the primary laptop. It will take me some time to get comfortable with a mac and learn to use the shortcut keys for various programs. I realized that mac is more for the unix type person who loves to use shortcut keys or command mode. Even though mac is the first to invent a gui or windows, it still allows its users to navigate with the keys a lot. Not so much with Windows.

Anyway, I am glad that evernote can fulfill this role right now while I search for the ideal software that would keep me on top of my game.

Went to Bestbuy and got a cable that would connect the Macbook Pro to the 27″ monitor for my HP desktop via HDMI today. Came home and connected the cables (It needs an HDMI cable also) and voila, it shows up on the big monitor and it is so cool. I first set it to mirror the MBP, but later I was clued in to take it off the mirror mode and move some application to the big one, for example, the photoshop. So now, I can have my gmail open on the MBP to monitor my email and also work on the photoshop at the same time on the big monitor with more real estate and also now with a wacom Bamboo tablet, I can do some serious editing with a pen and the touchpad. So cool!!

I’ve seen the designer in the “Newmedia department” of my old job that uses multiple monitor to do their thing on. And every designer has that setup of at least two monitors and a tablet with pen. I never could justify it for myself as a developer to need the fancy setup, now I am free from the ugly job and I have finally got myself all setup to do video and photo work. Stayed up till almost 1am last night watching Adobe TV tutorials on premiere, encore and after effect. Still haven’t quite figured out the main purpose of encore and after effect yet, but I think I have got the premiere part down pretty well. It is very similar to Sony’s Video Studio in operation and workflow. So it’s easy to translate from my existing knowledge.

Met Kim at bestbuy with her husband. The news is the same, it’s still a political place in IS and everyone is looking after themselves. Suggestions for innovative work to help the faculty and students are overridden for projects that would be beneficial to the manager that makes him look better in his boss’s eyes. New manager came in while others were ushered out the door for the reason of having too many managers. It all depends on who you know and how you can butter up the upper management. I often wondered how some people are so good at selling themselves. oh well. I am just happy that I got out of there. It was so stressful and unfair and political, it was suffocating me. Now, I get to learn and play with all the software that interests me, and projects I want to work on. And no one to point fingers at me for things I didn’t do or not responsible for. Such a relief.

Went to see Ban Ban today also. We did the usual routine, he ate his hamburgers, we went for a walk, I sat and knitted while he sat around me for an hour and I gave him a chew toy and I left. He still whines when I leave. Poor baby. It’s a good thing his dad and mom will be back in a couple of days. But I forgot to lock the front door when I left. Ann called and asked if I was there and told me about the unlocked door. I am very relieved that she was there today and caught that. whew!

Been having depressing dreams lately. Woke up to a down mood and it affects me all day. Not sure why. Hopefully I’ll get out of this soon. Sleep hasn’t been easy. I went to bed late, E came home and I woke up, she walked around and I woke up, L got up and I woke up, he moved around and I woke up. By 11am, I am exhausted but L thought it’s odd for me to stay in bed till 11am. Different rhythm in the same house makes it hard to get satisfying sleep. Maybe that’s why I have been having the stressful dreams in my semi-awake state. But other than that, life is still much better at this stage of my life.

I stumbled on Trey Ratcliff from an episode of “This week in photography”, one of Leo Lapore’s twit empire video podcasts. And it was an eye opener for me. His site stuckincustoms has a wealth of information on HDR photography and his pictures are stunningly beautiful. He also writes and sounds friendly and down to earth. So I have been reading and absorbing his materials for the last few weeks. He was the influence on my decision to get the Nikon D7000 too. I didn’t go all out or even to the mid-range camera that he recommended. But I figured it is good enough for me, at least at this stage of my photo taking ability.

I’m yet to produce an HDR photo with his method. There are software I need to get still. But I have already started thinking about organizing my photos and videos. His ebook “Digital Workflow for Photographers” is an excellent guide to get you on the right track. He stresses that his method isn’t the bible for digital workflow and organization, it’s just a guide. But I would probably adopt 90% of what he does.

Ordered the photoshop CS5 for the mac. It is supposed to arrive in a few days. So at last, I will learn how to use photoshop. I have been half heartedly playing with it for years. But the sparse usage never allowed me to retain any knowledge. This time, I think I will stick to it as a new found hobby. The online Photoshop User TV has video tutorials, now on episode 261. Great resource to learn the darn thing, again thanks to Trey’s reference.

The other day, Shirley Maclaine was on Oprah. She is now in her 70s and her talk on new age stuff grabbed my interest. I am reading one of her books now. I am always interested in the spiritual books and talks, buddhist, catholic, new age, I don’t discriminate. There are wisdoms in all as long as you keep an open mind and an attitude to learn.

To that aspect, I am thankful that I am a human being that has the mental capacity to learn about all these things that interest me. And there are so many things that can keep the mind working and learning for a long, long time. Life is never boring with a world of interesting skills and knowledge to obtain.

Hobbies are expensive! Especially if you are into the electronic gadgets. So the April showcase spun my frenzy of getting new gadgets for the task. I’ve been reading www.stuckincustoms.com and learning about HDR. But the Nikon D40 is really beat up and not up to par for this ever progressing field of photography. The showcase gave me the final nudge and I went to Bestbuy and got the Nikon D7000. It’s the first new toy for me. I’m thrilled to no end and will use it to improve my photo taking skills for the foreseeable future. Next, I ordered the Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite Master collection from Amazon. The two day delivery wait was excruciating. When they finally arrived, the next hurdle really put me in a depression. Just before the software arrived, I found out that my university offers an educational discount that is way more than what Amazon offers. Leo stopped me from opening the package so we can return them and get them from the university rep. ohhhhh, that was cruel. It is so close and yet I can’t touch it. I emailed the rep and still in the process of going through the purchase. He said a week but he is also not answering my email today. uuuuuuugh. But good things come from hickups. I got a second chance to rethink my media editing situation. Leo is also in the process of scanning his old photos and putting them online. It would be great if he can use the photoshop to touch up some of those real old and fading photos. He has an iMac. I got the windows version of the Photoshop Suite. But if I go the Mac route, then we can share the software.

I had to go to the Apple store yesterday to get the iPad VGA dongle for a work project — it is something else and a long story. I had in my mind to look at the MacBook Pro. It just came out with the quadcore processor. The first salesman was so very helpful. He even talked to the manager about the new iPad2 we are looking at for our project. And he has done some video editing himself so we were on the same plane. We settled on the MacBookPro i7 quad with 8 Gigs of RAM and a faster 500 gig hard drive. Leo made me stop and sit and strategize the computing setup for home before we went back in to purchase the shiny toy. Unfortunately, he got into an argument with the salesman about apple care and educational discount verification for no apparent point. It got us all worked up a bit. Then the salesman told me not to get it and wait and do the online purchase with customization. Geeeze. Why does a salesman would stop a customer from buying is beyond me. I walked out deflated and disappointed and was on the verge of tears. Two big disappointments a day was too much for me. Leo quickly saw my predicament and stopped and parked the car and took me back to the store. We went for the default hard drive but opted for the 8 Gigs of RAM still. 20 minutes later, we walked out with the brand new MacBook Pro.

So, now I have a brand new notebook and some crazy software to try. I downloaded the OS update and the Adobe collection (trial version) last night. Can’t wait to get in there and do the nitty gritty things and get my hands dirty with them. I am finally entering the Mac world for real. I’ve always known that the creative people like to use the Mac to do their editing. I am going to follow their lead and start my photo and video editing on the mac. Can’t totally leave my Windows root though for the side jobs I do for the studio that has a Microsoft Access app on their PC. But for media work, I will use the mac. Doing a lot of googling on how to organize media files right now. I’ve had enough bad experiences from the previous showcases, I know it is the most important step. You don’t want to be hunting for the video files 6 months later when the client comes back and ask for a copy of a clip in last year’s showcase after you have moved the video files off the computer to make room on the hard drive. Oh, what a nightmare. The video files were on the home server but the project files on the computer and they lost the connection with each other and there is no way to quickly extract the clip. I had to start from scratch, importing the video to a windows PC and repeat the whole process. That was ugly.

Can’t wait to produce the showcase videos on the MBP. Oh joy, joy.