By Jack on 8/30/2007

This is a nifty tool if you would like to get a read on how Yahoo is indexing your site. It provides you with the pages indexed as well as outside links to your site.

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

By Jack on 8/30/2007

There are not that many utilities available that I would consider to be "must have". Most of them do nothing more than clutter up your desktop and hard disk, but today I came across an image manager from Google called Picasa. After loading it I was amazed at it's ease of use and the powerful feature set it offered.

I highly recommend it to anyone who has a digital camera or lots of images on their computer. The best part is, it's free!

You can get it here

By Jack on 8/30/2007

I thought it would be nice to offer some new blogging tools to the site. This module will continue to grow and develop. I am expecting a new release very shortly. This module is a part of the core projects for DotNetNuke® so I'm very confident it will be around for sometime now.

One of the topics I will be blogging about is my move from Adobe Photoshop over to Paint Shop Pro. I have always been very happy with Photoshop, but as more and more clients come onboard there is an real need to get them acquainted with a powerful imaging application and Photoshop is far to cost prohibitive for me to recommend it to Churches and Schools, even with their academic discounts.

By Jack on 8/30/2007

Moving from a familiar interface to a new one is always difficult. While PSP seems to offer nearly all of the features, and possibly some additional features to Photoshop it's going to take me some time to learn how to use them. Just some of the basics will be hard enough.

In Photoshop one of the features I used often was "Blending Options" for layers. It worked great to set the transparancy, for adding drop shadows and beveling and embossing. While it appears all of those features are available from PSP they are now "Effects" and not available from the layer panel as far as I can tell. You need to utilize the effects menu to access all of the different effects. I'm sure I'm missing some obvious short cuts which I will find over time, but it's hard to take the time to learn them (not to mention frustrating).

The other thing that really bugs me is the resizing of images. In Photoshop when you resize an image the resize dialog boxes are populated ... Read More »

By Jack on 8/30/2007

As an avid user of Photoshop for the past 6 or 7 years I have come to know the program fairly well, so moving to another piece of software was not a quick decision. I am not looking forward to learning new and different ways to do the same things I have become very familiar with. The decision was made largely based on the need to educate others in image editing and I found myself feeling guilty about recommending a Photoshop to users that would never have a need for all of it's power, or the budget to afford it. When I opened up the paper today and saw a Best Buy add with Paint Shop Pro X advertised for $39.99 after rebates the decision was made.

I had used PSP (Paint Shop Pro) for many years before I made the move to Photoshop and had always been very satisfied with it. That was when Jasc owned it, now that i ... Read More »

By sbflyer on 8/30/2007 1:12 PM

As I wear my "techie" hat this week I have an experience working with the folks at HP worth sharing.

Almost two years ago I was planning on building a media savvy machine capable of editing and working with music and video.  After doing the breakdown of cost versus value I opted for the HP m495c Media Center, I could not build a machine with all the bells and whistles for less.  During that time I never experienced any issues with the machine.

Early this week I was planning on doing some live recording and dumping the digital feed directly into the HP m495c.  After a restart windows would not boot and a files was corrupt or missing.  Recovery Disks were ordered and arrived without delay. 

Here's where it gets a little frustating.  The disks don't work and repeatedly report "These recovery CD's do NOT support this Compaq PC"  After numerous calls to tech support and patiently working thr ... Read More »

By Jack on 8/30/2007

After playing around some more with PSP I have found some of the things that eluded me in the 1st go around. (I know, your thinking "why doesn't the guy just read the manual"?) Making the history toolbar visible makes seeing where you are with your image much easier. It also allows for incremental adjustments of the added effects which really helps.

There are still lots of things with text I don't fully understand. I need to get a handle on vector, vs. floating. Vector seems to offer by far the most power and flexibility. It seems odd to me that when you use floating text there is no way to edit it after it's inserted.... I'll get it someday.

By Jack on 8/30/2007

Well it's November 6th and we have yet to turn the heat on in house. That's a major accomplishment for Wisconsin!

Our initial goal was to make it through October, but now we have taken on a new challenge of making it through November. Some mornings it has been a bit cool in the house, the coldest to date has been 60º, nothing a small fire in the fireplace can't overcome.

The kids have had no problem dressing a little warmer, even before going to bed, and a blanket draped over your shoulders while sitting on the couch is actually quite cozy.

Lets see how long we can hold out!

By sbflyer on 8/30/2007 1:12 PM

Great Book from Barna on Kids and the future of the Christian Church Read More »

By Jack on 8/30/2007

Well, we have made it a few more days without the heat. It was 25º outside this morning, but still 63º inside. The amazing thing is the fact that nobody is complaining. The girls get up, get dressed and it they are cold wrap a blanket around themselves.

I doubt we will be able to hold out much longer, especially if the highs during the day will only be in the low 50's.