By choice, I'm pretty much always connected. How I don't need glasses is beyond me! But this is where I talk about the discoveries I find while I'm here.

Hey kidz!

Yup, that’s right…I’m crazy. Why you ask? Because I signed up for the Chicago Marathon on Sunday October 7th! That’s 26.2 miles and I’m NOT a runner…well I wasn’t anyways

I decided to sign up for a few reasons:

#4. I’ve been wanting to get back into shape for a while now and figured this was the kick in the ass I needed.

#3. I want to quit smoking cuz it’s just gross and stupid. (Drinking red wine again will never quite be the same though)

#2. I’m running a 10 mile race May 26th which is pretty close to half a marathon. If I can do that why not go for broke?! (Even if you’re not a runner you probably know that 10 miles and 26.2 miles is a completely different animal all together but this is just how my logic works. Go big or go home!)

#1. I want to help raise money to find a cure for Alzheimers. It seems that it runs in my family and I’d really like to not forget all of you by the time I’m 70 (unless of course it’s b/c I drank too much that day )

Seriously though, my grandfather passed from Alzheimers a few years back and it kills me knowing that one day my father might not know who I am if he develops this awful disease as well.

The link below will take you to my fund raising page. It says my goal is around $260 but I’d really like to try and raise $1000 or more. If you can donate anything at all I’d be extremely grateful!!!

http://AlzheimersTeamCARE.kintera.org/2007/cmortensen

I start training on May 8th!!!! Wish me luck; I’ll post updates on my page about my progress every so often.

Loves and hugs!!!!
Christine

p.s.-Special thanks to Jay for giving me that final bit of motivation to sign up! You rock!

So I started researching my family tree and stumbled across this face recognition demo that tells you what celebrities you look like. No wonder why I’ve always felt a kinship with Drew Barrymore. Haha, never thought I looked like her though…

As part of the aforementioned updates coming to this site I’m going to start posting random close-ups of logos for you to guess. I’m going to do my best to do this weekly so check back every Monday

Please use the comments for your guesses. The answers to the previous week’s logos will be provided along with the new set of logos. If I can keep this up I’ll try to come up with some sort of giveaway for the first person to guess all the logos correctly.

Since this is the first week let’s start off with some easy ones. Well, if your into Graphic Design these should be easy anyways;) Give it a shot, Good Luck!

I’ve been really getting back into music the past couple of weeks and I stumbled across Last.fm! What a great discovery. If you have not checked it out already I highly recomend you do so. There are two parts to Last.fm; the website and the standalone application.

The standalone application is a “radio” player that allows you to play music from artists that you might enjoy simply by typing in an artist name. For schizos like me, you can create multiple radio stations to cover your many personalities

The Last.fm application can “scrobble” any music you listen to through iTunes, Windows Media Player and various other players while the Last.fm site provides you with your own charts of your listening habits.

What’s more…”As you listen to music and use Last.fm, you build up a unique musical profile to share with your friends.” How cool is that?! More social networking, I love it!

Below is a quick sample of the music I greatly enjoyed listening to after requesting music similar to “Imogen Heap”…

Stars – Elevator Love Letter
Mae – Summertime
Radiohead – Myxomatosis (Crisian Vogel mix)
Stars – Ageless Beauty
Stars – International Rock Star
Regina Spektor – The Flowers
Hot Hot Heat – no not now
Rilo Kiley – Three Hopeful Thoughts
Sia – Sweet Potato
Sia – Drink To Get Drunk (Different Gear remix)
Radiohead – A Wolf at the Door
Zero 7 – The Pageant of the Bizarre

Photoshop automations are defined in terms of actions. Actions contain a list of recorded steps that can be applied to images on demand. The basic process requires that you complete a specific task or series of tasks on a target image. Your computer records all of your mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes so that they can be “played back” and applied to any image you work with in the future. You can run the action on a file (or group of files) at any time.

1. Open the Actions palette (Fig 1)


2. Create a new action (Fig 2)

3. Give your Action a unique name (Fig 3)

4. When you are ready press record. Photoshop will now keep track of every movement your mouse makes, as well as record your keystrokes.

5. In this action we want to resize various images to roughly the same size. Open one of the files you need resized and go to Image> Image Size. In the dialouge box type in the size you’d like your image to become. The image I’m using was originally 300 pixles wide and I’ve reduced it to 200 pixels. If “Constrain Proportions” and “Resample Image” are checked, the appropriate and proportional width is automatically calculated.

6. Now that your image is the size you want it you’ll need to set the save settings. Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S (Cmd+Opt+Shift+S on Mac) to open the “Save for Web” dialouge box.

7. Press “Stop” in the Actions Palette. You’ve just created your very own action! Now let’s use it!

8. Now you need to apply this action to all of your photographs. There are a few ways to do this but I prefer going to “File>Automate>Batch.” This will open up a new dialouge box. Choose the layer set your action was created in (within the actions palette) and the action name.

You have a couple of different options to choose from but to keep things simple all of the photos you want to resize should live in the same folder together. For “Source” choose the “Folder” option and press “choose”. Then navigate to the folder on you hardrive with your original pics.

Outside of Photoshop, create a seperate folder where your new resized images will live so that you do not overwrite your original files. In Photoshop this will be your “Destination” folder in the dialouge box below. Press “choose” and navigate to this new empty folder. Press “OK” and watch PSCS2 work it’s magic! Enjoy your new photos!