More short bits
Posted on August 31, 2004
Filed Under Misc.
* Rome wasn’t built in a day, but “this”:http://www.elpforboe.com website was. I’m doing the graphic design for the local Democrats running for the Board of Education. I designed a logo and palm cards for them. We talked about putting together a website, so I registered the domain and put it on the cards. The cards were picked up from the printer today, ready to start handing out at a big community church fair tonight. Around 11 am, I realized that we never put content on the site! Yikes! I considered throwing a “coming soon” graphic up there but then decided to actually build something. Four hours later, and using the content from the palm cards and viola! “a 10 page website.”:http://www.elpforboe.com Simple, but I like it and more important, the client(s) like it.
* I have fallen in love with “Fireworks MX 2004.”:http://www.macromedia.com/fireworks I don’t use it for the HTML or Javascript. I lay out the look & feel of the page and then slice out the images as I need them for the site, using the Fireworks “comp” as my guide for size & spacing. I know I can let Fireworks do the coding, but I prefer to write my XHTML and CSS in Dreamweaver from scratch. I may tweak the design here and there, but my finished pages usually look 95% like they do in Fireworks. Need to change an image? No problem, just go back to the original PNG of the entire page, change the one little part and then Export the images again. The MX 2004 version handles graphics from Illustrator & Photoshop CS very well (compared to MX, which required me to save AI files down to version 8 first). I’ve also noticed that Fireworks makes much smaller JPEGs with better quality settings. I can take a 200×200 photo and get it under 8K with 80-90% quality while in ImageReady, the quality starts degrading in the same photo as soon as it gets under 12K.
* I’m not in love with the new “iMac,”:http://www.apple.com/imac visually. It’s too hard-edged for my tastes. This isn’t the cute little machine that’s going to mimic the Pixar lamp and say “Hi!” Then again, I don’t like looking at my PowerMac G5 that much either. But I sure like what it does and that’s what counts. Hard to believe I’ve had my happy air grille for almost a year now.
* I’ve been using “LaunchBar”:http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/ for what feels like forever now. It was one of the first OS X applications I purchased (that and Watson). But I think I’m switching from LaunchBar to “QuickSilver.”:http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22549 LaunchBar 4 is nice, but I’m just not using all its bells and whistles to warrant paying an upgrade fee. QuickSilver is somewhere between LaunchBar 3 and 4, and it’s free. Purdy, too. At this point in my life, free is very good.
* Wow, 3rd grade is serious. Today was the second day of school and Laini came home with a page of math, 10 vocabulary words to write in sentences, 20 minutes of reading and a paragraph to write. I’m thrilled that she not only got a great teacher, but she’s with most of her classmates from last year. The sweetest group of children. There isn’t a bully or troublemaker in the bunch. Some have been with Laini since Kindergarten and they seem to “get” her (she’s quirky, to say the least). Her desk is kind of close to the door, which I know won’t last long. Last year she started the year in the middle of the pack and each time I visited the class, Laini was sitting closer and closer to the teacher. By the end of the year she was inches away. You’d be hard pressed to find a 8 year-old that distracts easier than my girl. We’ve already written it into her IEP (Special Education document) that she’ll get to take the CMTs next year in a separate, quiet room (The CMTs are *the* standardized test in CT).
* Listened to the Republican Convention last night (Eric had it on in the den while I was working here). Couldn’t tell one speaker from the other. All that kept going through my head was the phrase, “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” 
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