Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.
by kathi
I’m not really a big fan of Jimmy Fallon, or the current incarnation of Late Night, except for Slow Jam the News. But I totally love these “6-bee” Glee parodies…
Good stuff!
Speaking of Glee, I didn’t expect to like this week’s Madonna-themed episode, but there was more to like than not. Didn’t really need to see that “Vogue” number two weeks in a row, though.
(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 20 of 30)
by kathi
The second half of April kind of sneaked up on me. Freya and I were not entered in any rally obedience trials this month, but we did not get in as much good training time as I had hoped to. We didn’t totally waste the first half of the month, but we still have a lot to work on.
Yesterday’s rally class had its ups and downs. I’m still not able to get a full 6 feet to the right of the jump if I want to be sure that Freya will go over it, and not around it. The strategy remained the same as last week: lower jump height and handler closer to the jump on the run-by. I have ruled out injury or discomfort as Freya’s reason for sometimes refusing the jump. It’s more likely that she is being lazy or smart or both, and is taking the path of least resistance. Unfortunately, not acceptable for this particular sport!
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by kathi
I never did get around to writing about Adobe Photoshop’s 20th anniversary back in February. We, as in my company, were not on board from the very start. But the first version we used was 2.0, and we have been using it continuously ever since. Along the way, it evolved from an infrequently used semi-novelty to a critical piece of software that is absolutely essential to the continued existence, let alone the success, of our business. It’s also been an increasingly essential part of my personal computer toolbox (and by that, I mean a legally obtained, paid-in-full personal copy) for about five years now. My particular prepress production area of expertise is typography and page layout, so my Photoshop skills are clumsy at best, but I still love me some Photoshop even for the very basic work I do with it.
Even as a longtime mostly happy user of Adobe products, I still have mixed feelings about the upcoming release of a new version, CS5. This version will no longer work on PowerPC (non-Intel) Macs. Since our small shop still uses quite a few final generation PowerPCs, the upgrade will have a significant financial impact upon us. In this still-shaky economic climate, I am not looking forward to that part at all. Our upgrade timing will be closely tied to that of our clients. Some are small design shops whose financial concerns will be similar to ours. Others are corporations: now that could go either way. Some will not want to do an upgrade over hundreds of machines, and others will have a budget to burn. Guess what I’m hoping for, at least to buy us some time.
I do have to say, though… my feelings for this one new Photoshop feature are not mixed at all. Even though I upgraded from CS2 to CS4 only a year ago, and spent more money than I cared to at the time to do so, I’d consider upgrading to CS5 for content-aware fill alone:
That just blew me away.
(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 25 of 31)
by kathi
Although there was some progress made toward fixing crooked sits and sloppy turns, this was not one of our better pre-trial review sessions. This was the last run-through of the day, and you can see that Freya is beginning to shut down a bit.
Strangely enough, this less-than-stellar practice session was followed the next day by one of our best trial performances: a score of 208 and 1st place in the Level 1 “A” division. The next trial run later on Sunday resulted in a NQ, though, so I’m not quite sure what the moral of the story might be.
Maybe it’s just that I need to figure out the best way to do the last-minute practices and to handle the downtime between trials. Are the day-before last minute practices more helpful or stressful? So far, they seem to be more helpful, but maybe I should lessen the number of run-throughs. Should I do more or less warm-up between trials, and how soon before showtime for the second trial? That one isn’t quite so obvious.
As always, you can see more videos of Freya, her classmates, and other dogs-in-training on Allan’s YouTube channel.
(NaBloPoMo | February ’10: 14 of 28)
by kathi
Since most of our classmates were at the first day of For Your Canine’s APDT trials on January 23, Freya and I basically got a private lesson that day to help us prepare for the following day’s trials. Allan set up a practice course for us designed by one of the judges that I’d be trialing under on Sunday. I was able to view this video to identify areas to work on before doing another run-through. Allan posted a video of that run-through to his blog.
No course map today since it was a course used in an actual trial for which I did not get permission to publicly post.
Start: I still want to get better attention from Freya at the start. She does now seem to know that we ain’t goin’ nowhere until she makes eye contact with me. Our next run started off with better attention.
25. Spiral Right – Dog Outside. She’s lagging, partly because she’s not paying full attention to me, and partly because I’m not being interesting enough nor am I giving her enough cues to stay with me. Our teamwork is much better in the next run.
8. Left Turn, 13. 360-Degree Right Turn. I’m surprised we don’t lose more points on turns in trials. We did a little better in the next run.
2. Halt-Sit-Stand. Freya has never had a pretty stand. I would like to be able to stand her with a verbal command alone and will work toward that. She does not move around much which is an improvement.
20. Fast Pace, 21. Normal Pace. Still need to work on making pace changes more noticeable. Varying the length, even more so than the speed, of my own steps seems to be the key.
17. Call Front, Finish Right. Slow and crooked sit. Sits seem to be the current problem area. On the next run, I gave her both verbal and signal cues to help her sit quickly and in the correct place.
11. 270-Degree Right Turn, 10. About “U” Turn. See above; we really have to work on polishing our turns.
23. Halt – 90 Degree Pivot Right – Halt + 5. Halt – Sit – Walk Around. This is something that I believe exists only in APDT Rally. Signs can be “married” as in this example. The ending Halt with Sit of sign 23 is used as the beginning Halt-Sit of sign 5; it is not performed again. So the sequence is Halt with Sit – 90 Degree Pivot Right where dog moves with handler – Halt with Sit – handler Walk Around dog. We did ok.
13. 360-Degree Right Turn. See previous comments on turns.
28. Halt – Turn Right – 1 Step – Halt + 3. Halt – Sit – Down. Another set of “married” signs. I want to phase out the excessive body English for the Down signal, but Freya’s Down has not been too consistent, so I will stick with a firm tone and exaggerated signal for now.
9. About Turn Right, 14. 360-Degree Left Turn, 8. Left Turn, 10. About “U” Turn. See previous comments on turns.
Bonus: Exercise 1. Halt – Leave Dog – Call To Heel. This is one of our better bonus exercises, but could use some polishing. I’d like her to come in closer and straighter.
This is the first session where I switched to a 4-foot leash. I found it helped me greatly in keeping a loose leash. Even when I tied knots in my 6-foot leash, I found myself folding it too short or grabbing it too short and below the knots. It may not have been the greatest idea in general to switch leashes the day before a trial, but in terms of avoiding point losses for tight leash, it was very successful.
As always, you can see more videos of our rally obedience classmates, as well as Allan’s other training clients, on his YouTube channel.
(NaBloPoMo | February ’10: 3 of 28)