Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Just a quick post on how cool the new Content Aware Fill feature in Photoshop CS5 is. It saved me a lot of work removing cars from a photo as you can see below. All I had to do was select the area I wanted to effect and chose ‘fill’ with the content aware option selected and, voila!
I know it won’t be this easy every time but this is one amazing tool that I have already gotten my money’s work out of.
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Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Everyone who owns an Apple laptop and uses a MagSafe adapter understands that they can be a bit fragile. After some time the thinner cord at the intersection of the “power pack” can become frayed and the adapter stops working. I have had to replace mine three times in three years, but to be honest part of the problem was the way that I handled the adapter. I pack and unpack my laptop two to three times a day and, in the past, did not always take the time to wind the cord and store the adapter properly. That would have helped with regard to the life of the adapter so some of the blame for the failure rate falls on me.
Apple has recently updated the design of the adapter. Whether or not the changes will help with regard to this particular isssue will be seen in time. I still feel though, that the cord is not very sturdy and having to be sooooooooo careful with it is a bit of a pain.
That said, the last time I needed to buy I new cord I tried to go cheap. I found a vendor on Buy.com advertising new, not refurbished, brand new 85w MagSafe power adapters for around $50.00 plus shipping. This seemed like a great deal so I went ahead and bought one. Below are the pictures of what I received from the vendor.
Needless to say I was more than a little miffed.
The good news is that the vendor quickly refunded the purchase price of the item as well as the shipping costs (after some not so subtle coercing). The bad news is that, as my first Buy.com experience, it has soured me to the entire site. I receive emails with all of these great deals on Buy.com but I am too scared to take advantage of them. I could be missing out on some great stuff but, this one vendor made Buy.com look so bad in my eyes that I am not willing to take another chance by purchasing from another one of their vendors.
Again though, part of the blame falls on me. I tried to go cheap at the price and get a deal that was too good to be true. Even the refurbished adapters I have found online cost $55.00 to $60.00. I should have know that anyone telling me they were selling a brand new one for $50.00 was not telling the truth. I bought a brand new adapter from an authorized Apple reseller near my home. It cost me $79.00 but, you get what you pay for.
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Saturday, June 12th, 2010 at 2:23 am
I have been flirting with 3D animation for years now and have nothing tangible to show for it, but I do have a pretty good understanding of the principles of animation. I have decided to take a little time and see what I can actually implement.
I started with something very simple to build my confidence. A joint chain that mimics an arm swinging back and forth with a single bone representing the hand. I tried to implement the principles of follow through and overlapping motion. Before I started I thought that this would be so easy but just like the bouncing ball animation (which I hope to tackle soon) it is deceptively difficult to capture motion that is both appealing and believable.
My goal is not to become a professional animator here (although if I had the time I would become an Animation Mentor student) but to learn something new that I enjoy. With that in mind, your constructive critiques would be most welcome and appreciated. I don’t mind if you state, “dude, that doesn’t even come close to looking good” as long as you elaborate on why it doesn’t and offer me some suggestions on how to improve. If you are an Animation Mentor student or graduate, you can say anything you like. 
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