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Frustration
Though I’ve said this before, never again will I try to fix someone else’s work, or deal with client’s at the end of a project if I haven’t dealt with them in the beginning.
An enraging day was had by me.
Update at 6:15 – it’s sad when a different server error is the high point of a (so far) 12 hour day.
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The start of the Friday In Appreciation Series
I’ve decided to start a more or less weekly series about the people and forces of that don’t get enough credit in our society. I call it the Friday In Appreciation Series.
We live in age when sanctimonious piety rivals hydrogen as the most common thing in the universe. Be it suburbanites railing against city-dwellers not having children, Ultra-Calvinist urbanites railing against Bushies standing in the way of progress, or Muslims from loser countries blaming Danish cartoons for their crappy lives, it’s hard to walk five feet without getting smacked in the face by righteous outrage, backed up by the usual litany of reasons people have for telling other people to run their lives.
But there’s one group that not only walks the walk and talks the talk; they also handle the snakes. Yep, I’m talking about Snake Handlers. It’s refreshing to see someone use the fine print and not bother other people. They actually follow the fine print just because it’s there. They even keep going when their leaders die of snake-bite. Now that’s faith!
Thus I begin the series.
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Free Photoshop Actions for my loyal readers
As my Nikon D80 makes it quite easy to take several hundred photos per session, and converting from the RAW format to psd takes forever (per photo) I recently created a couple of new photoshop actions to speed conversion and color correction.
They are both part of an action set I call “Mass Photo Actions”; you can download it here.
There are two actions in there that serve different purposes. The first action “RawToPSDNoTweaks” just takes a RAW file from a particular directory, converts it using the default settings, saves it as a psd file, and then closes it. It does no color correction, use this one if you intend to make a lot of manual color corrections later.
The second one “RawToPSDWithTweaks” opens and converts the file like the one above, and then does a safe amount of color correction and image sharpening to the image, saves it as a psd and then closes the file. Use this one if you took a bunch of well-exposed photos and just want to do some small automated tweaks.
None of these functions are that notable in and of themselves, but when run in a batch on hundreds of files they save hours of time.
To use it, first download the action, put it somewhere on your hard drive, bring it into PhotoShop using the “Load Actions” option on your Actions toolbar. Now it’s ready to be used on an individual file.
To run it in a batch, just go to File > Automate > Batch – and then choose the proper photoshop action and the source and destination directories.
No warranty is expressed or implied, you do this at your own risk. I’ve only tested this on PhotoShop CS Two on Windows Vista. Use at your own risk.
I just felt like sharing. These two actions save me hours of time after every photo adventure.
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Best metaphor ever
From the War Nerd
If we couldn’t get people on our side after deposing a monster like Saddam, what chance do you think we have of winning hearts and minds in Iran? The kids in Iran are pissed off at the way the old Mullahs won’t let ’em rock and roll, but the idea that they’ll support an American invasion because they’re bored is totally insane. It’s like imagining that the kids in Footloose would’ve backed a Soviet invasion of Nebraska because John Lithgow wouldn’t let them hold school dances.
Classic.
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Quick Thursday links
- The linguistic capabilities of the candidates
- A story about the old Pullman yards I explored a few months ago. Photo gallery here.
- ASP.net and Validation Groups – I can’t believe I didn’t know about this earlier.
- The NYT breathlessly points to a supposed new trend in econ departments. Intelligent Design is a new trend in biology in the same way I suppose.
- E-Prime is the way to go
- Austin Bay has seven possibilities for Iraq. Number one is the most likely I think.
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An odd correlation
For whatever reason, the hits to this site, and my other major public site, JargonDatabase.com move in inverse correlation to each other. Odd.
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New Jersey outlaws sale of many bikes
Read this post on Asymmetrical Information. It would seem to outlaw both of quite a few bikes no matter how you read the law.
You would think that not having the wheel fly off is incentive enough to secure it properly, but if someone says “it’s for the children” then it must be a good idea.
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3 random link
- Meaningful advances in battery technology
- A 24 inch monitor for $229. My, how the prices have fallen
- China executes ex-drug chief for graft
China executed a former drug and food safety chief on Tuesday for corruption in an unusually swift sentence which will serve as a warning amid a series of health scandals that have stained the “made in China” brand.
Can you imagine that happening in the US? I can’t.
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A thousand curses upon Comcast Broadband
I’ve been getting 90% packet loss on all upstream traffic all day, which pretty much kills any and all productivity on my part. The tech support couldn;t do anything and had to schedule a service appointment for Thursday.
Does anyone know if you can get DSL without a phone number?
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A good time was had by all
My first ever gig at Limerick Junction was a success. Everyone seemed to have a good time. The songs “I Miss Ronald Reagan” (written by Tommy Womack) and my song “Heroin and Cheetos” seemed to go over particularly well. My would-be guitar showcase of Bonaparte’s retreat fell a bit flat. The room sounds noticeably different when full than when half full and that threw me off a bit as the set progressed.On the whole a good night. The A-Sides rocked as usual. The photo was taken by my brother, who also recorded the show.