who was I talking to about a program that does batch exporting? is it final cut pro? cleaner?
I often have a couple videos I want to do a quicktime pro export on (cut the frame rate in 1/2, etc – takes it from 10MB to about 2MB) but I’d love to do that in batches – it’d save me some serious time when I’ve got about 5 to do.
I use Dreamweaver & Fireworks DAILY… and moving over to the mac has been actually quite easy in a lot of ways, but relearning how to work as fast & efficient in DW and Fireworks is already proving to be kind of a bummer.
I need to write up something a little more detailed on my whole SWITCH, as there’s actually quite a few things I miss and think it’s dumb that the mac doesn’t do, but I digress…
So first, yes it’s true with macs that you need to have your hand on the mouse a LOT more. And what’s more is often the programs are inconsistent when it comes to how you have to use the mouse vs. the keyboard, too. For example (and this is more an issue directed towards the software giants Macromedia than at Apple per say), when I want to add a new layer in Fireworks and I go in & hit “New Layer” and it brings up the layer renaming box and the ok/cancel buttons – Well on a PC your cursor is already in the name box & then you just hit OK. On my new *macalicious* your cursor isn’t even there – AND even if I didn’t want to rename it, it won’t let me just hit Enter to make the box go away and let me keep working!! LAME!
Arg, I have a ton of things I can list here. Like how my Fireworks no longer has the toolbar up top with the quick export button, or flip image button or easy align pulldown box (that thankfully is in the palettes though, and has align to stage which is cool). Granted I’m still on just MX, not MX04… so that’s obviously the next move for me – and I sure hope some of these annoyances are worked out! (and yes, I’ll download the trial soon :)
So what I was actually here to tell you is how psyched I am on Fireworks ability to create symbols, similar to Flash. I feel like I tried this on the last version of FW and it didn’t work like I wanted. But I finally tried it again – and it’s awesome. So for example, I’m making an animated gif – and in each frame the same box is in there… and after creating 15 or so frames, I need to change the color of that box. (somewhat bad example cuz you could also onion skin it & select it that way, but that’s not always that easy either depending on what else is in the frames you’re not wanting to select at the same time) And with symbols, similar to flash, I can just chage the symbol & wala! it’s changed on every frame. Thank god!
Little things like that are what working efficiently is all about.
Ok back to work.
As much as I am a bit unimpressed with Liz Phair’s newest album (just to poppy/top 40 for me), she is still super sexy as ever.
Jane and I saw her do a solo acoustic opening set for Flaming Lips last year (wow, jane – that was all the way last May, can you believe it was that long ago!? time flies…), and we loved it. Mostly because we were there seeing her – and she’s just so damn adorable. And she played some of her older songs, which is also why we really love her.
But this photo… is just downright HOT. Aww yaa, Liz Phair. Anyone got a sex question for her?
Link from Kevin, who has a question for Liz :)
Ok, I know you’re all on the edge of your seat to know how my plant is doing – but I personally have just been blown away at it’s little growth spurt here lately. Especially after being gone a week!
Ok – so I posted awhile back that my two new sprouts had grown – and then all of a sudden I noticed a whole nuther little sprout – and NOW that one has shot out and there’s ANOTHER new little one!!! JEEEEESHK!!!
I’ve even created a little progress page if you’re interested :)
hey all – notice a difference in my fonts? Better, worse? No change? or some of you might be like “Huh?” :) For you guys, I’ll make this quick.
*geek talk begins*
Using Dreamweaver on the mac makes you realize quickly that using pixels instead of points in my CSS is necessary for Dreamweaver to display the fonts properly in the WYSIWYG (otherwise they’re all scrunched and small, who knows why). I learned about this a few months back designing Jeff’s DCResource site (hopefully going live soon so you can see! :) And after delivering the templates to him, we realized his powerbook was seeing something way different. So I called on my friend Matt and he shed some light on it. I’ve also added “lucida grande” after Verdana, in the font face line, too, as per his suggestion… but most people have verdana, so that’s what they’ll see first unless I switch them.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll learn more about this as I go along, but I’d love to hear what you’re seeing out there – mac or otherwise. If any of you work in DWMX and with CSS for your fonts, and have happened to switch between pc & mac & know what I’m talkin about here… lemme know if you have anything to add to this.
*end geek talk :) *
Ok! I’ve posted aaall the photos from our time in Austin. Looking back at them just makes me wanna go back! SO FUN!
There’s no way pictures can capture how kick ass a show is, but for me takin a snapshot of the band also served as a mental notebook just to remember all the ones we went to! And I know I probably even missed a few… but I got the good ones… Wow, we saw a lot of excellent bands play!
The one thing I didn’t get was that great sign we saw everywhere that said “No cameras or video recording allowed”… that reminds me, I have some videos to put up too! :p
Alright, so there’s a lot of these, so you may wanna see if you can get the slideshow to work… or whatever. Actually the slideshow kinda sucks (could be better) just wait till it loads a good amount of em. Also the slideshow only shows the titles, but not my descriptions – so if you go that route, just keep in mind that some of the photos have notes in the descriptions, URL’s to people’s sites, etc.
Ok, check em out!
Hey there – I just posted wrapups for wed, thurs, fri & sat… Quite a bit really, but I wanted to have it down now before I get crazy into the week and the details get even more blurry as time passes :)
I’ll be going back through & linking certain bands to sites, or atleast photos to the ones I put up in my online albums.. but I have a ton of work to dive into first thing tomorrow so it might not be till later tomorrow night.
Also I may have forgotten some details here & there… Rick, feel free to lemme know if I missed anything here :)
Today my flight didn’t leave till later in the afternoon – and Lane was sweet enough to show me around Austin a little. I was psyched cuz I only had seen the area between our hotel & 6th Street with a small ride once past the drag (Guadalupe St)… and with Lane having lived in Austin before and having a rental car, I couldn’t have asked for a better tour guide!!
We first hit this great breakfast taco joint that has this wonderful band playing through breakfast. We even ran into Ben & Lane’s brother Reed there which was cool. Everyone orders their tacos (I got one with chorizo, potatoes and cheese – and a 2nd with eggs, black beans & cheese < yumm!!) and then sits outside at tables - and some even get up & dance along to the music! It was totally entertaining and really fun. Then we headed over to South Congress where there’s some cutie shops and Joe’s coffee house where there’s of course a band out back and beer available too – sweet! I got a yummy soy latte (dreamy after all the holiday inn cafe coffee I’d been having all week) and then we went into some cutie stores. At the last one, Factory People (great store) I got a new hat! And we ran into the guys from The Fuse and I chatted it up with the drummer again (they opened for the Pretty Girls Make Graves show we went & saw a couple weeks back). Cool guys for sure… I hope they do well, they’re great live! After that we headed over to The University area and Lane & I stopped in this Tea room for some bubble tea for Lane. They had a bunch of super cutie japanese stuff – and Paul Frank, Emily is Strange, Dr. Suess, Hello Kitty stuff, too. I got this super cute monkey that I just fell in love with!! :) I’ll take a photo of him. He’s awesome. We cruised around the campus and Lane gave me a little history on it all, and he reminisced on some of his old times going to school and working at various places on campus there. It’s a beautiful campus and it was just perfect weather for walking around and enjoying the sunshine. We stopped in a few stores – and I finally bought this jacket I’ve been pining away for since I saw it in San Diego a few months back. yay!!! You always know a purchase is good when you haven’t been able to stop thinking about it – and then after you buy it you can’t stop thinking about how excited you are about having it. Today I got a cutie little stuffed monkey AND a new hat AND a new jacket – all 3 that I’m just THRILLED about :) Lane was awesome enough to show me around all day & then take me to the airport – such a nice guy!! And as soon as I checked my bags I went straight in for the Amy’s ice cream!! hahaa I had been craving ice cream since we’d landed there & saw Kristin, Esin & Jessa with yummy cones. But Lane & I hadn’t had time, but I had an hour so I gladly got myself a yummy vanilla with snickers in it. It’s a lot like Cold Stone where they chop up the goods right there in the ice cream. YUMM!!! I made it home safely and snuggled my kitty something fierce for hours!! :) :) I’ve now unpacked and I think pretty much wrapped up the week’s events. I’ve got a ton of work to get to first thing tomorrow – but at some point later in the day I can probably post photos. So I’m back!!! Happy Monday everyone.
As I said, Saturday my favorite concert buddy had to get up & leave for the airport… which I have to admit left me sad and it took me a little bit longer to get out of bed knowing I wouldn’t have him to enjoy my last night there with. But hey, distance makes the heart grow fonder, right? We’ll be very excited to see eachother when he returns from his Germany/Ireland/Paris trip :)
And I was happy that Lane and them were still there so I still had people to go to shows with! :) So around 4 I met Lane over at Emo’s Annex for a ROCKIN Ted Leo & The Pharmacists show!!! This made me wish Rick was there too – cuz I know he wanted to see him the other night… and this set was particularly rockin. I was dancing up a storm and sweatin my ass off in the heat to boot. His set was really long and just fantastic. At one point he spotted someone singing all the words to his song & brought a few of them up on stage to finish it up – it was really fun!!
After that Lane and I walked around and popped in quickly to the American Music Club show and watched a few songs there… and then decided it might just be a good time to catch a bite to eat before the evening really began. I was seriously craving salad (after the night before’s gyro slump!) so we went & had oriental salads at PFChangs. Really yummy! It was cool to get to know Lane better too and hear about the companies he’s been a part of & just how he got where he is today.
By 8pm it was time to go see if the rumor Lane had heard was true or not: The Pixies at Stubbs?! Could it be?!?!?! Unfortunately, after showing up and waiting we found out it wasn’t true. poop!! That woulda been cool! So we took off & headed over to the end of John Vanderslice’s set at Friends. He was great!! I was psyched to finally see him play live – and would definitely go see him again. He’s local so I’m sure I’ll see him play sometime again soon. His CD’s are great & he’s even better live. Very cooL!
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I left out that breifly in between these two things, we were killing time trying to figure out what to do, and we stopped in at The Hard Rock to see if the band that was going on before On The Speakers was any good. It was some Australian band, who are apparently huge over there. We ordered drinks and played with the dumb glow in the dark Miller Light thingys they were passing out. I went upstairs & while I was checking out the view from overhead, I ran into Ian from On The Speakers. Unfortunately he said he’d come down with a cold… but we chatted for a bit & he was impressed at how many times I’d seen them (lets not use the word groupie just yet, alright? :) and I told him how Jen’s going to send me their EP cuz they had a few laying around their office (his management company) which I’m waay psyched on, I’ll be getting it before it’s released!! And yadda yadda. Anyway – there’s a few photos from the Hard Rock, so it reminded me. Thank god for my digital memorY!
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After that we cabbed over to see Mike Doughty (lead singer of Soul Coughing) play a solo set over at Mother Egan’s. He was AMAZING!!!! I absolutely love his voice & his lyrics. Totally excellent performer – I can’t wait to get some of his solo stuff – he’s awesome!!
By this time it was about 10:40 and we had to head over to get into the club Har Mar Superstar & The Hives were to play. We got in with no problem (although only 15 minutes later there were lines around the block – even for badges! Lines form because they’ll let people in 1 by 1 as people come out, to avoid max club limits). Har Mar is a total joke. I might have had a different view of him had the circumstances be different – but bottom line is that I had no idea he was going to be THAT ridiculous. We’re talking “You’ve got to be KIDDING” ridiculous. How is this guy getting booked? His songs are idiotic and he’s just disgusting, rubbing himself and then flinging sweat and pubic hair on people. He’s a total joke and I am a bit bummed the hipster/indie music community has even let him in. blech.
We moved our way up to the front for the Hives and found ourselves about 3rd row, where initially I was a little scared for my knee and my feet getting crushed because I knew the crowd was going to just go absolutely nuts once they got started. And they did!! But it turned out to be totally manageable after the first couple major rushes and I was psyched to be way up there enjoying the show. It was HOT!!! They rocked out and the whole crowd, including me, was dancing and rockin out to them hard. I got some great photos and enjoyed their set immensely. We were DRIPPING SWEAT by the time it was done. Good fuN!!!
At this point it was Lane, Ben, Neil & I – and since we were all pumped up from that show we decided to go hit another rockin show. However, a song into the Young Heart Attacks, I decided they were a little too metal hair band or something for me – so we left and called it a night for shows as we’d definitely had an awesome day & night of shows!!!
Because we loved the Wrens show so much the night before, we decided to go see them perform again the next day at The Caucus. We arrived and caught the end of the DeathRay Davies show (who were good)… and then got up close to enjoy the Wrens set. (great to be closer cuz it was so packed at Friends the night before we couldn’t even see the drummer – which you know I wasn’t happy with :)
The Wrens ROCKED it once again!!! They are so awesome live it just blows me away. The lead singer is so passionate – and they’re just total professionals. At one point between songs they heard the music coming from the club next door (American Analog Set were playing at Club DeVille) and they all stopped and listened for what cords AAS was playing, and started playing them and then made up a song of their own. It was awesome! They just totally blew me away.
After that Rick & I headed over to this bar called Speakeasy to meet his friend Shannon for happy hour. Speakeasy was cool cuz it’s a bar with a roof, lined with palm trees. We enjoyed some top shelf margaritas while the warm air breeze blew by.. I felt like we were in Florida or something! (in a good way) :p
We decided we better grab something quick since the night before our late eating hosed us on the StellaStarr show – so we grabbed some Gyros. While we were in there and Rick was standing up to order, this guy came in & sat down in his chair across the table from me (very cramped quarters) and I told the guy he couldn’t sit there – and as he was getting up I added “even though you’re The Thrills”. Yup, it was the lead singer from the Thrills. After he moved over one seat, I chatted him up a little more asking him how their shows were going, etc. He said they’re working on an album, blah blah blah. We saw them in SF a few months back and if you recall, I thought they kinda acted too rockstar, but even moreso I think it’s just funny how much they sound like Grandaddy. Anyway, I obviously wasn’t about to tell the guy all that to his face… but it was fun chattin it up with him for a bit anyway.
OK! So we headed out and thought we’d go check out this japanese band play at Caribbean Nights… but as soon as we got there we new it wasn’t what we were looking for, so we took off. We wandered in & out of some places and then decided to settle down on the roof of some bar and give our feet a rest. At this point we’d been partyin and on our feet since Tuesday night – so we were starting to feel just a little tired and sore… but most of all the gyros made us kinda sleepy. Actually really sleepy. But we were determined to have a good time!! We thought we’d hit the Silkworm and TV on the Radio show – so we headed over there… but honestly Silkworm wasn’t that great at all. arg. Then TV on the Radio took forever to get set up (zzz) and then when they went on their vocals weren’t that good (which is what I love about them!) so that was kinda a bummer, too. Oh well…
So we slipped over to Rockstars and sat upstairs listening to The Fiery Furnaces finish up their set while we shared a few shots and people watched. And then – Broken Social Scene!!! This show was off the hook fun. They were great live – super great energy and it sounded really great. Lane joined us there & we were all standing about third row having a great time!! At the end they said they were finishing up, but kept playing and getting crazier and crazier. So long to the point that the manager was on the stairs (in their view) screaming and yelling with his fists in the air!! They were swinging from the pipes on the ceiling and giving eachother piggy back rides through the crowd and a bunch of crazy stuff!! It was this mad chaos of awesome fun energy – totally an amazing show!!!!