Big Sleep Tonight

I was dreading this day, but it turned out ok. I had some outpatient surgery a few weeks ago under the hands of my urologist to help alleviate a byproduct of my prostate cancer surgery, which I had some 7 years ago. The procedure this time was good, but it apparently stirred up some pain in my groin area. So today I visited my doctor to see what was causing the discomfort. I wanted to rule out infection and a possible hernia. The good news is that he believes I am just having some muscle spasms which can be alleviated using ibuprophen, heat, and Valium. I am not a big prescription drug fan, so I am approaching the valium with some hesitation. However, my wife assures me that I will sleep very soundly tonight. We will see how it goes. I just would like the pain to go away. The Doc assures me that it should be gone in a week or so.

Google's Terms of Service

Sometimes organizations take their terms of service to an extreme, but I have never seen it phrased quite like Google did for their new Picasa Photos on the Web service. I thought you might get a kick out of this. Google's terms of service included the following.

"Upon the termination of your use of Picasa Web Albums, including upon receipt of a certificate or other legal document confirming your death, Google will close your account and you will no longer be able to retrieve content contained in that account."

So there. If you are dead, you will not be allowed to retrieve your photos. Google won't let you, even if you try. My wife also pointed out that apparently you are also expected to notify Google if you die. LOL big time.........

Google Web Photos

Google is in a Beta test phase with their latest creation, Picasa Web Albums. I was fortunate to be selected as a Beta tester, and downloaded their new Picasa program yesterday. I am impressed with what they have put together.

Picasa, as most of you know, is a free download that scans your computer and finds all the image files including all your digital photos. Picasa then shows you thumbnails of all your photos in its organizer mode. The great new addition to this softward lets you select any of the photos, and have them uploaded to a Web Photo Album that you can name yourself. It is your photo album and you can have your friends alerted via email so they can go see your new photos.

The photo sharing works a lot like Flickr, but the huge added benefit here is that it also helps you find your photos on your computer visually. You don't have to "remember" which folders you stored them in, like Flickr. You just see, click, and upload. And presto, you have a new photo album online.

If you are interested, check out Picasa Web Albums.

Photoshopping a Photo

Tonight I worked on a photo I took a few years ago of my son and grandson in San Diego. It was a good shot of the two of them looking at each other. But the background was really cluttered. I had done some work on it a year ago when I was just learning Photoshop, and I got a fair-to-middlin creation where I replaced the people and landscaping in the background with a nice shot of the sky with some floating clouds. But I have learned a lot in the past year, and I realized that my old techniques were pretty crude. So I opened the original on my computer tonight and totally redid the photo. I used masking to remove the background, and some new brush techniques to paint back in the strands of hair over their heads so it really looks like the sky belongs there after I slip the sky in on a lower layer. I did some other things, adjusted the overall contrast, and recropped the picture to a better size. It turned out pretty good, but I am going to leave it alone now and take another look at it tomorrow. I have discovered that sometimes the wonderful things I think I have done at night don't always look so spectacular the next day. We will see. LOL This is my draft. Click on it to view the larger picture.

Quicken Help

I helped one of the ladies from our local computer club with some Quicken problems today. Spent a couple of hours on her computer figuring out how to clean up some checkbook balance problems. It took some time, but in the end we were able to get her accounts reconciled with her bank statements. Also walked her through backing up her data externally. Had a good session, and she was very thankful. She is traveling to Michigan next week and wanted it all wrapped up before she left. Glad I was able to help her out. That makes for a good day.

Computerized Emissions Test

I had a great experience today. I took my car to the Emissions Testing facility, and they ran the car through it's paces. The car passed ok, as I thought it would. The big surprise was when I discovered that the state registration people have the output of the emissions test digitized and sent to their central server automatically. So I was able to get online when I got home, and renew my registration for the car. I did not have to mail in a thing to prove that the car passed emissions testing. My new license and registration should arrive next week. Boy, do I love operating online.

Working myjanee.com

Well, yesterday I spent a lot of time working with students on myjanee.com. Janee offers many courses from her web site, and currently we are running four classes this session. I am one of Janee's three instructors, and support the students by helping them post to the web and evaluating their work.

Yesterday we had an interesting example of how difficult it can be for students to put up pictures and comments on web sites. One of our students had tried to post his homework graphics on Kodak's EasyShare site. He got the graphics posted ok, but he could not figure out a way to share the viewing of his photos with the general public. I even opened a separate account on EasyShare, but I could never find a way to share photos posted there without emailing an invitation to make the sharing work. Sometimes sites will let you share with the public in general, but we could not find a way to do that with EasyShare. What our students need is a web site where they can post the URL of their gallery or album with their photos. That does not seem to work with Kodak's site.

Our student moved to Smugmug and that is working very well. Other students have successfully opened accounts at Flickr , which also works fine. Some of our students have even opened Blogs using Blogger, and that has also worked great. Flickr and Blogger offer free posting, and Smugmug charges a nominal yearly fee. Both Smugmug and Blogger are ad-free.

Today my wife and I are going to our friendly eyeglass place to fix a pair of eyeglasses. That doesn't sound too exciting, does it? However, put that experience on top of a day when the temperature is suppose to hover around 105 deg and it gets a little more interesting. It is suppose to get up to 111 deg by Monday, so we need to go out today while it is still cool. Ha!

PE SIG Demo

This is a demo for the PE SIG. I will post a photo next. It is a shot of Sedona.






Now will post another photo of a rose. This one is very nice, and it is one that I gave my wife for Valentines Day.That's the end of this demo.

Windows Professional Photography

Anyone out there running a Windows XP machine, and would like to be able to view thumbnails of RAW photo files on your computer - just like you can do today with JPEG files? You can do it with Microsoft's new software for RAW Image Viewing . If you go to this page, you can download a free version that will run on your Windows XP operating system. With this software installed, you can view thumbnails of RAW images using your Windows Explorer or MyComputer. I have run it on my machine for a month, and it works well.

Demo for Photoshop Elements

I am working on my write up for the Photoshop Elements session next Wednesday. This is part of the example on how to use the Dashboard for posting information. The picture shown here is a example of the kind of graphics that can be uploaded as images.

Blogging Alterations

Today I tried to change my blog and add some personal information. I still can't figure out how to get in onto my main page, but I will keep trying.

Later today, I plan on doing a write up on signing up for blogger.com, and adding a section on how to use Photoshop Elements to create post cards. We will see how it goes. I am preparing for a class on Wednesday night.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Finding a way to post information on the web is getting easier all the time. Google offers blogspot.com, and I am trying it out to see what it can do for posting pictures and text. This should be fun. Looking forward to doing more of this.

Today I spent some time cleaning a water feature we have in our back yard. We live in the Phoenix, Arizona area and summer temperatures have started to climb well over 100 degrees. So the little waterfall and its pond get a pretty fast buildup of alge. Today I dumped some chemicals into the water, and brushed down the sides of the pond. The water feature runs around 30 feet after the waterfall, under a footbridge and into a recirculating area. It is very pretty, but requires continuing upkeep.

Tonight I spent a couple of hours trying to find some photos that I took last November of the red rocks around Sedona, Arizona. I could not find them on my desktop, but after some extensive searching using the Photo Organizer in Photoshop Elements 4, I found the pictures on my notebook computer. I am including a little postcard I made up using Photoshop CS and the Sedona pictures.

Well, this blogging looks like it can be some fun. See you all around.