Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

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Has it been a whole year already?

November 14, 2013 by kathi

Yes, it has. Did you miss me? Don’t worry—you don’t have to answer that.

I considered reviving the blog for NaBloPoMo but decided to participate in something on LiveJournal instead (and I’m woefully behind on that). Doing NaNoWriMo is completely insane, but I’m still giving it a shot. The story behind that spark of insanity is on Tumblr, if you’re curious.

What finally brought me back here was Adobe Generation Professional’s Digital Creativity in the Classroom (I’ll give you more specifics about the blogging project in another post). This is a course for educators, so you might be wondering why I’m taking it since I am not currently an educator, nor do I have any past teaching experience.

What I do have is a long and mostly positive history with Adobe software, thanks to the many years I spent in the graphic arts, specifically prepress production. Since my particular area was typography and page layout, my expertise is with InDesign. I’m also familiar with Dreamweaver, and I’ve been criminally underutilizing Photoshop and Illustrator for many years. Despite this, I’d only just discovered the depth of the educational resources that Adobe provides in the way of paid and free content. I was searching through some of the free content on the Adobe Education Exchange in an effort to help a friend who wanted to learn InDesign, and stumbled across the Digital Creativity course.

Encouraged by the fact that apparently no one was going to force me to prove that I was an educator before I could sign up, and also by the fact there was no class fee, I signed up. My rationale was that we are all called upon to educate others at some time, no matter our job description, and that is how I introduced myself:

But these days, aren’t we all educators in some way or another? Working for a very small business, there is often a need to present information clearly to co-workers or clients, and I’m hoping this class will help me to get better at it.

cat
Big and Small: Photoshop project

I am so glad I took this course. It helped to bring out a creative spark that had been obscured by years of executing other people’s designs, rather than creating something of my own. The course was set up perfectly for my own personal situation. It started with a Photoshop project. Being able to work in a program I  was already pretty familiar with allowed me to concentrate on ideas, rather than worry about execution. I would need the feeling of success from the Photoshop project to carry me through the next two projects.

walk01c
Walk Cycle:
Flash project
Sequence 01.Still001
Book Trailer:
Premiere Pro project

My past experience with Flash was very minimal and not particularly positive, and I had no experience at all with Premiere Pro. I kept telling myself that the ideas were more important than the execution and I think I convinced myself by the time I completed these projects. I’m afraid I’m failing miserably at being “economical and efficient” with my time on this blogging projects, but those are the breaks!

So a few more observations on the course.

For the most part, the course structure was great. I was not able to attend all of the live classes, but the ones I attended were informative, made excellent use of guest speakers, and (very important) began and ended on time without shortchanging any of the topics that needed to be covered. One thing that would have been nice is a little more pre-course information and tutorials for the programs used. Photoshop, Flash, and Premiere all have pretty substantial learning curves, and I am sure it was not easy for first-time users of the programs. The Education Exchange, and other parts of Adobe’s site, have a ton of available resources, but a little nudge towards them would have been helpful.

Speaking of first-time users, I am so, so impressed with the participants who did not have any previous experience with the programs. Their first efforts were amazing, not only in creativity but in execution. That cannot have been easy.

As for me, I still hope to use what I’ve learned in this class to make any educational or informational presentations to co-workers and clients more interesting and more entertaining. I’m proficient at breaking down instructions into logical steps, but I haven’t utilized visuals often enough and I plan to change that.

Filed Under: Blogging and Social Media, Computers and Technology Tagged With: AdobeGenPro, Digital Creativity in the Classroom

Won’t be making the best-dressed list again this year

November 10, 2012 by kathi

I’ve mentioned before how most of our dogs have not had the clothes-wearing gene. The dogs that win photo contests and costume contests obviously have this gene. Not all of them are purse dogs either.

Axel can be convinced to wear a t-shirt, and someday I may be thankful for this fact if he ever needs minor surgery and thus a barrier to keep him away from the stitches for a few days.

I don’t think there is anything that can convince him to look good in a t-shirt, though. By the time I can get a camera focused, it’s always riding up or pulled down too tightly. It’s still sort of cute in an embarrassing-your-large-dog kind of way. But he won’t be winning any contests in the foreseeable future either!

(NaBloPoMo | November ’12: 10 of 30)

Filed Under: Rottweilers Tagged With: Axel

It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place

November 9, 2012 by kathi

The title is from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” of course. Okay, okay. I admit I had to look it up–I was going to say it was from “Alice in Wonderland.”

What happened to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr just being fun? Twitter changed the look of its profile pages back in September. I still haven’t fixed mine to add a header image. In fact, I never got around to adjusting the width of my left-side graphic either. Same with the other social media sites. By the time I get around to making them look slick, the rules have changed again.

I used to really enjoy doing that kind of stuff. I don’t know when it started feeling like work.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’12: 9 of 30)

Filed Under: Blogging and Social Media Tagged With: Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter

Farewell to a fallen hero

November 8, 2012 by kathi

The love for fallen CFD Captain Herbert “Herbie” Johnson is evident in every photo from today’s funeral. The support and strength from the Chicago Fire Department, Chicago Police Department, the community, and from brother and sister firefighters from all across North America is truly amazing to see.

http://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2012/11/cfd-captain-herbie-johnson-funeral/
http://chicagoareafire.com/blog/2012/11/cfd-captain-herbie-johnson-funeral-part-2/

It occurred to me that the only times I have seen Dan in his Class As (dress uniform) is for CFD LODD funerals. I wish there were some happy occasions to associate, but so far that has not been so.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’12: 8 of 30)

Filed Under: Chicago Tagged With: CFD, Herbert Johnson, LODD

Back for another fall

November 7, 2012 by kathi

The chrysanthemums came back a little later than last year and I think they will be leaving a little later as well.

20121108-132938.jpg

What we thought was “just a few” green onions added to the pot ended up choking out quite a lot of the chrysanthemums. We weren’t sure they would even be back. And in fact, none of the white ones returned. But the purple ones powered through and prevailed.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’12: 7 of 30)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: chrysanthemums

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