Lotus Notes User Icon/Letterhead

I started a new job in June 2014. Ever since I've pined over the cool user icons I see my colleagues using.

Whenever someone sends an email message, an icon appears on the left-hand side of the email message header.

I did some searching today and found out this is actually a preference setting for letterhead.

Here is how you update your letterhead "icon:"

Updating Lotus Notes Mail Letterhead

• Open Lotus Notes
• Under the File menu, select Preferences
• Under the left-hand side menu select Mail
• Look for the Letterhead tab, and select it
• Scroll to find your preferred letterhead "icon" and select it
• Click ok and close out.

You can send yourself an email to test it.

I'm really happy I took about 5 minutes to search for the how to on Google. It took a while to finagle what the exact nomenclature should be.

It's important to me to express my individuality as much as possible ;o) Good stuff. :)

Screen Backgrounds

I have new background images/wallpaper for my smartphone and my workstation at work.

I usually like to change up the theme in both my phone and my workstation (but not to match) so that I keep things interesting.

I found a particularly lovely image in my standard computer backgrounds collection that reminds me of hot, spicy food and autumn so it keeps me "warm" just looking at it. Go figure, what unusual reactions things have in me, yeah?

work computer background (toasty)

For my phone I used a photo I captured on Instagram of an absolutely lovely sunset. I love sunsets because it's usually the time of day in wintertime that I get to leave work, so my day sorta actually begins.

It's nice having time to do whatever I want to after being cooped up in an office all day (lunch hour not withstanding).

I recently reset my Galaxy S3 phone and lost all my ringtones and photos--a small loss I was willing to take in hopes that the OS would run a little smoother. Also, I'll be traveling overseas at the end of the year, so I wanted to have a clean slate to make sure everything worked well with my new global service plan for this next, upcoming cycle.

phone background

This has been a great phone, overall, but I noticed an unusual lag between when I clicked on a text field and when the keyboard popped up, or, sometimes, when I clicked on some applications and when the applications actually opened up.

I found out through trial and error that any delay is usually a symptom of an update that needs to be made in the background. Just going into the Google Play store and downloading whatever updates I wanted to get and then rebooting the phone typically resolved the issue.

I guess a screen background can be a great type of accessory or expression of personality and individuality. It's something that I categorize as a tiny pleasure during the day. It's nice to have some control over these small details that bring a smile to my face.

Learning: Find and Subscribe to a Reddit Discussion Group

This guide will help any English-speaking user locate a Reddit discussion group on a particular topic and subscribe to it.

Step 1. Accessing Reddit
If you already have a Reddit account, skip this step and proceed directly to Step 2. Searching for a Discussion Group

If you don’t already have a Reddit account, you will need to create one. Begin by typing www.reddit.com in your browser’s address bar and clicking enter.

Once you are on the Reddit website, look at the top, right-hand corner where there is a search bar (Search Reddit) and the option to log in or register (Want to join? Login or register in seconds). Select register and proceed through the registration process. (See Figure 1a and 1b. The Reddit Login or Register Options)

Figure 1a and 1b. The Reddit Login or Register Options


 









Step 2. Searching for a Discussion Group 

Make sure you’re logged into your Reddit account. Your name/nickname will appear in the top, right-hand corner. If you’re not already logged in, then enter your nickname and password at the top, right-hand corner using the fields provided, then click the Login button. (See Figure 2. Logging into Reddit)

Figure 2. Logging into Reddit 

Once you have logged in, use the Search Reddit field on the top, right-hand corner (see Figure 2) to enter the type of discussion group you’re lookinog for and click enter.

For this example, we are looking for Minecraft game discussion groups using the advanced search option to narrow down by author, using GenerikB. We type in the search field: minecraft author:GenerikB. (See Figure 4a and 4b. Reddit Search Example—Minecraft Discussion Groups, by a Particular Author)

Figure 4a and 4b. Reddit Search Example—Minecraft Discussion Groups, by a Particular Author  

 

Notice the section that says “too many results? Narrow it down to a subreddit!” This is another option to allow you to narrow down even further by popular category (a.k.a, subreddit) under the topic you’ve just searched for.

Try clicking on one of the options there to see if the results are a good match for what you’re looking for.

Step 3. Subscribe to a Reddit Subreddit/Discussion 
Once you have identified a discussion group, or subreddit, to subscribe to, click on the green Subscribe button on the far right hand-side.

Figure 5. Subscribing to a Reddit Subreddit/Dicussion

Any questions or concerns, please leave a comment! Thank you for reading!

Vine vs. Instagram Video

Instagram just implemented video, I haven't tried it yet, but am reading up on the differences between it and Vine.

Check out this great article from CNet titled Instagram vs. Vine: Battle of the Short-Form Video-Sharing Apps (try saying that three times fast!). CNet feels that Vine is buggy, and Instagram walks away the champion, in this comparison.

Another great article is at Forbes, Illustrated Guide to Using Instagram Video.

Learn: Making an Animated Gif

There's a work project that I would like to develop where a banner featuring company logos transitions in order to show a number of company logos for a few seconds.

It's basically an animated gif banner using company logos for finalist companies in an award competition. The banner will feature all the participating company logos, and since there's a few of them, they can rotate through so all of them appear in a few seconds.

The bad news is, I haven't made an animated gif since approximately 1999-2000.
So I have completely forgotten how I used to make them.

To remedy this issue, I went and looked up animated gif tutorials on trusty YouTube and Google search. There's a lot of programs that can make these nowadays!

Here's some of the highlights from the tutorials that I found. Hopefully they can help out someone who is also wondering...

Wired: How-To Make an Animated GIF


To make an animated gif using Adobe ImageReady:



To make an animated gif using Microsoft Paint and UnFreeze:

Learning: Storify

Today I was perusing my Twitter feed and I discovered a neat little social media tool, called Storify. This tool allows you to compile mentions, images, videos, and more on a particular topic from a variety of social media resources (such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Flickr, and Instagram) to tell a story.

It's an uber easy way to microblog with easy access to linkable news and info sources. It's a great way to tell a story or showcase some research you recently did on a hot topic that may be interesting for others.

I was looking through Google search for a tutorial, and found a great video by CalmYourBeans on YouTube. Check it out if you want to learn the basics of how Storify works.

 

And here is my first Storify project, a little report on the repairs the Washington Monument in D.C. is curently undergoing titled Washington Monument Repairs in 2013.

Sharing Google Documents

I've been wondering whether Google Documents in Drive can be shared for editing with folk who don't have a Google account. According to a Lynda.com blog post I just located, there is a way!

1. In your list of files on your Drive, select the check box next to the file you want to share. 
2. Click on the "More" menu and select Share / Share. 
3. In the menu window for sharing settings that opens up, look for the section that says "who has access" and click "change" located next to the option "Private - Only the people listed below can access." 
4. In the menu window that pops open, select the radio button next to "Anyone with the link" and on the bottom select "Can Edit" next to where it says "Access:Anyone (no sign-in required)" and click the save button.

Now, just copy the URL where it says "Link to share (allows editing)" and use it to share your file with your collaborators. And presto! How you like em apples?

Forced Offline Have USB

There have been a number of data storage and upgrade initiatives at work over the past 12 months which have led to a number of outage-related lulls at work. Either the system, Internet access, or access to our directories and files have been restricted or removed entirely during these outages. Many outages are planned, while many others are just the unhappy result of a hard drive dying a miserable, flamey death after a long life of service. So how can someone counteract these horrible, horrible outage lulls while there's so much to get done?

If you throw an outage my way, my first instinct is to lean back in my chair, run my hands through my hair, and go AARGHHH Then get the urge to just go have a walk, talk to a buddy, or go eat something in the deli. I've been quite disciplined. What I actually end up doing is going to refill my hot water for tea and then pull out my saved files from my trusty USB stick.

this turtle is my favorite USB

I typically save items to a USB memory stick that I keep on my keychain. When I know an outage is coming, I save quickly a bunch of files I'm working on and then have those available during the outage.

By storing needed projects on my USB I can access them pretty much at any computer location (Work or home) and begin working just where I left off, as if nothing had interrupted me. Now how about *that* convenience?

This is incredibly useful for mind-flow type projects where I need to format documents, edit intense logistics/transportation/supply chain books and publications, am writing out a guide/walkthrough for a particular process or application, or when I need to complete tabulations of review results for committees.

These are typically flow kind of projects because once I get started, the hours just tick by as if seconds. Very engrossing work.

All around, I appreciate our company's efforts to keep our meager technology assets up and functioning, and especially, when there's upgrades being performed to assure compatibility. There are just so many that it's intensely irritating. But our IT folks are good people and I don't want to make their life impossible, so I thank them for letting me know of planned outages and plan accordingly.

We can all squint and drum our fists on the table, but in the face of technical outages and hang ups, little tricks like my USB stick can do wonders for our peace of mind and productivity.

Publish a Google Drive Presentation to Blogger

Step 1. Publish to Web

I developed a Google Presentations slideshow to showcase my professional background with the goal to upload it to a new "Professional Inquiries" Page on my personal Blogger blog.

I managed to learn how to use Google Presentations AND how to upload a presentation to Blogger with this project! That's what I call shooting two birds with one mouse. xD

The process I followed in Google Drive is as follows:

Step 2. Options for Publish to Web

I created my presentation in Google Drive and made sure it saved. While the file was open, I looked under the File menu and selected Publish to the Web.

There was a pop-up reminding me that publishing to the web had no impact on the visibility of the presentation within My Drive.

I clicked OK and proceeded to the Publish to the Web pop-up window, where I now had a variety of options to select from. For my particular needs I opted for a small size and to restart the slide show after the last slide. I left all the other options as they were.

Now that all my options were selected, I clicked inside the embedding code box and copied it.

Step 3. Add New Blank Page to Blog

The process for the Blogger portion:

In a separate tab in my browser, I opened up my Blogger Dashboard and clicked on the correct blog from my list of personal blogs.

Step 3. Paste the HTML code into the Page

The blog's dedicated dashboard opened up. On the left-hand side menu options, I selected the Pages tab. I started up a new, blank page.

Once on the blank page, I entered the page title "Professional Inquiries" and clicked on the HTML button to edit the html of this new page.

Once on the HTML editing section, I pasted the code from Google Drive, then clicked back on the Compose button to see how it looked. I centered the embedded presentation, then saved the page.

New Page with Embedded Presentation

Fail of the Day: FeedBurner, No More

After reading in a couple of places that FeedBurner was on its way out (here, here, and here), I got severely ticked off. I don't often check my FeedBurner stats often, but that's because it's a set it and forget it type of thing. That was the whole point of using it.

If Google is going to shut off the FeedBurner service, a large majority of blogs will be left without a way to syndicate their blogs to those who subscribed to them via email or an aggregation tool such as Google Reader, and more importantly, those who monetize their blogs won't have that important tracking tool anymore.

I went into all my Blogger blogs and deleted the RSS and email links (and the redirect under the dashboard) I had been using with FeedBurner, which were on my blog's layout on the right-hand side. Then regretted it. I went back into my accounts, and found out there's an email subscription widget you can add to your Blogger layout. Guess what? It's FeedBurner. What are they going to replace this with when they take it offline?

My Experience With Domains and Websites

I've been paying a hefty sum to GoDaddy over the past 4 years for the domain, space, and Website Tonight management solution for my freelance company's website and for the domain on my personal website. After some thought, I decided to cancel my GoDaddy account this past week.

In the years that I've used the GoDaddy domain and Website Tonight services, I've been frustrated to no end by the user interface. It seems unnecessarily convoluted and incredibly bloated--a la Geocities back when Yahoo! purchased them in late 1998. It offers solid value, but in order to find what you're looking for, you almost need a treasure hunt map and tips on how to survive the deadly booby traps.

Items such as changing DNS and other drill-down management is severely dig click-intensive. However, as a plus, customer service is usually helpful, pleasant, and straight-forward if you're willing put up with moderate wait times on the phone. Also, if you purchase a multi-year renewal, your fee is much lower.

I'm all about simplifying my online presence and not adding complexity--or yet another thing to keep track of for my expenses. So now I'm two domains down, with one business left to promote. I was left to decide what my next step would be.

I decided that I wanted to continue promoting my freelance business online. I have a Facebook page, but I feel this is an ancillary tool, and wasn't really solid enough to stand on its own. I needed to identify some sort of service that could help me provide a home for my business, and the option to add dynamic content on a periodical basis, if I felt like it.

I decided to try Blogger. I've used it since 2005 and have stuck with it through a variety of UI changes, functionality upgrades, and even ownership changes. I felt it was as good a place as any to create a useful space for my freelance business and without racking my brain to figure out how to use the tool.

Blogger's Pages feature has made it an excellent avenue, along with the many customizable options for layouts, color schemes, and background themes. The navigation on the dashboard is very transparent and makes it easy to find things.

I'm not the only one who's noticed that there are benefits to using Blogger as a website creation tool (see here, here, and here as a start).

So we'll see how well the move over to Blogger, rather than a website, works out. If you're interested in seeing what I've done so far, check out http://fourtongues.blogspot.com

Thoughts on Project Management and Scrum

Heads up. This is not exactly Internet or Computer related, but it has to do with it in a relevant way. Or...at least, I seem to think so.

Back in 2005 I became interested in project management. I must have discovered it was an actual science or career by reading something online, somewhere.

The fact is, after purchasing a membership in the Project Management Institute, and a copy of the Body of Knowledge to begin studying it, I found it intensely terse and process focused.

When you overemphasize tools and processes, you focus 90% of your time and attention to the tools and processes and only 10% on deliverables and end goals/objectives. That's a no-win in my view.

Half-hartedly I stepped up to take the CAPM exam, and failed with flying colors. It was a big setback, both economically and emotionally, because I had seen a glimmer of hope in my skill-set and career prospects. Yet, obviously, hoping against hope that a new, trendy career path would work out for me was the wrong mindset to have, to begin with.

When you're looking at expanding your skillset, the financial aspect is usually what makes or breaks the decision. It's also important to path out the decision and the work required after the decision takes place to make it where you're heading.

When I went to take the CAPM exam in a specially-designated testing center, I realized immediately upon the third or fourth question that the test was rigged to fail people rather than to test knowledge from the study materials.

Many associations with certification programs make it seem like their certification is the only thing between you and your next paycheck/promotion/crown of laurels. They throw your way a membership requirement ($), then the prep material ($$), then the user study group ($$$), then the prep test ($$$$), and finally, the actual test ($$$$). Don't forget the annual coursework to keep up the certifiacation ($ⁿ).

They urge a candidate to participate in online communities and in-person networking events. I can't imagine having that much time in my life, to be honest, to be spending supporting an organization with my time, money, and presence--just to sort of validate their sales objectives.

The PMI certification is pretty much irrelevant and unknown EVEN in IT circles. It's a "heard of it before" "nice to have" kind of thing, but no one really has it as a job requirement. To be honest, I've yet to see a job description where that's even mentioned anywhere.

It's so document focused, you basically have a total encyclopedic bible by the time you're halfway through your project, imagine what it looks like when the project's completed! People on these sorts of teams will actually spend valuable meeting time arguing about which tool, software package, or document template is better. Instead of focusing on the deliverable, which is probably two years down the line.

So now, seven years after, we have agile workplaces and workspaces--a.k.a. insane project timelines, team members thrown together at the whim of superiors, and no concrete project plans because everything is done on the fly.

Agile working environments go along with Scrum: what have you done since yesterday, what are you doing today, what are your challenges in getting it accomplished? Scrum is the latest flavor in collaboration and efficiency for the management of products and projects. It's almost the exact opposite counterpart of Project Management.

Scrum is all about daily face-to-face meetings (the bane of most office workers existence), ownership and hard work, and story-boarding things to death--then jumping right in to the project work to provide periodic deliverables which are as complete as they can be--until they come up with new cool features you should have added and that they forgot they wanted. Changes are welcome in a continuous stream and must be available in the very next reiteration.

The Scrum philosophy, to work in a practical application, relies on on capable product owners and independent, stimulated, enthusiastic workers. I know I'm being sarcastic (no! you? really?), but very few team members have all three qualifications (independent, stimulated, enthusiastic).

Self-centered moochers company jumpers abound. Most teams I have had the pleasure of being a member of, seem to just want to do the bare minimum to get by, prefer to dump work on whomever in the team they respect the least (for whatever reason), and make a big deal out of team bar hopping building at the beginning of each project and at the end of each project--and at birthdays, anniversaries, departures, new staff member welcomes, and any other similar money-out-the-window-let's-get-drunk celebration. Apparently, there are some drawbacks to working in an office full of 20-something-year-olds. Go figure.

This is when motivation theory may kick in and discuss the financial rewards of a job versus the intellectual rewards of a job, especially in IT, where you're likely to have both and no spare time to sleep and brush your teeth. Family? What's a family? Vacation time? Mwahahahaha!

I think I like the working environment of Scrum and agile better. People are actively involved in verbal communication and have a sense of community and team-manship (yes I just made up a word). People are stimulated intellectually and have a healthy list of assignments aligned with their skill sets--unless they lied on their resume and now the project and the team are screwed.

Ideally, people may be in "the zone" most days, working away and building usable iterations for their customer or product owner. Never mind the drumbeat and whip background noises...keep rowing kids!

There's also very little hierarchy, and more focus on staff with the skill-sets to get results in products as fast as possible. Even the lead and product owner are in the same cubicle layout as the team members. These elements seem to set up a fair and equitable foundation for lots of work that creates efficiency and gives employees a sense of belonging and of achievement. Then again, middle and upper management may get bitter that they have to share their working space with common serfs on a daily basis.

I want to learn more about Scrum. I think it suits the Millennial attitude a lot better than the stodgy Project Management philosophy. There's more face-to-face time, there's more communication all around, and there's a sense of achievement and progress with each iteration.

Having said all this, I can't shake the feeling that this is just another "latest flavor" of the same old thing: the industrial cubicle farm. Just rosier for now. What will tomorrow bring? Well...besides the 10 am Scrum meeting.

You can learn more about project management from the Project Management Institute, and you can learn more about Scrum from the Scrum Alliance.

Learning: Drupal

The company I work for is going to switch to Drupal for our database and systems over the next several months into next year.

We even had a staff contest to name the system, everyone voted for...wait for it...Drupal ^^

When I first heard of Drupal I had no idea what it was, except that it might sound Indian--it's actually Dutch. I did know it was open source. That's pretty much all I knew.

A quick look at my trusty Wiki revealed that it's a content management framework in PHP. It can be used for user-generated content websites and features a variety of user inteface functions like blog management and such.

Drupal 8 was in development as of Q4 2011. So I guess that's the version we'll be getting. The mere fact that this is no longer a Microsoft product will apparently save our company a bundle. Which is fascinating to think how many bundles are out there waiting to be saved. And why people still put up with Microsoft at all if it's such a headache.

The system seems personalizable, like with themes and color schemes, which is cool.

Looks like our system will again have the "fun" in functional once it's up and running. I can't wait. :o)

VAIO Laptop Repair

I decided in December that I wanted to invest in repairing my 2007 Sony VAIO laptop. It hadn't booted up in almost a year, probably victim to a surge or some major hard drive damage.

VAIO repair was as helpful as they were the last time I sent them a laptop. Although a bit pricey at $600 and change, but they changed the hard drive, battery, and A/C charger and cord.

The investment is less than I would spend on a new computer, and, best of all, I now have a dedicated laptop for my World of Warcraft foray. I'm a newbie but hope to get the hang of it soon enough.

I've kept my MacBook Pro for my interwebbing, and my all around trusty sidekick.

Free MIT Classes, Certification for Peanuts

I was reading an article on Inc.com today (How to Get an MIT Education for Peanuts) that kinda blew me away. Apparently, MIT is going to start offering free classes that lead to a low-cost certification.

Free classes from major educational institutions are not news, because for years now you can get some pretty awesome free classes on Apple iTunes U. However, getting a certification at a low cost from a major institution is a groundbreaker.

According to a little research I did (What is MITx?), MIT plans to launch the program in spring of 2012. It's worth checking out if you think this might be a good course of study for you.

Definitely worth checking out.

Blogger Themes vs. Google Analytics

Silly me. I thought that because Blogger now includes some really poor limited Google Analytics statistics from within the Blogger dashboard, that it was therefore easier to integrate Blogger and Analytics. Tisk. Tisk.

I recently updated my blog template and a couple of days later (no surprise there!) find that my hits as recorded on Google Analytics (not the analytics within Blogger) have gone down to zero.

Checking the status for the blog(s) on Google Analytics was pointless, because GA was saying it was receiving data. Which it wasn't.

This is a typical occurrence whenever you modify the blogger HTML via the design and layout options: the Google Analytics code needs to be re-inserted into the <head> </head> tags to keep working.

Because Blogger in Draft now has an updated interface, things have moved around. More fun. In order to access the HTML edit mode in the new navigation in Blogger in Draft, do the following:


1. Log into Blogger, and navigate to your dashboard.
2. Select "Template" on the left-hand side menu.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the template page, and select: "Edit Template HTML."
4. find the </head> tag, and just above it paste your Google Analytics tracking code.

Voilá.

Blogger Themes

I happened to look into Blogger's themes section a few weeks ago and realized they've tweaked the layout settings to even more personalization options.

So, tonight, I finally set some time aside to play around a little with the settings. Now, as a result, all my five Blogger blogs got a little TLC and look a little bit more updated.

If you go under the Template section in your dashboard, you get to pick the navigation look and customization options: colors, fonts, etc. You can truly knock yourself out and go wild here.

The pages option is another great tool, which has come in handy to clean up the right-hand side column. I've added a third tab to all my blogs, which contains links to all my pages and profiles online.

I'm really liking the accessibility and personalization options that Blogger is making available. It's possible that more than one Blogger blog out there may use the same background, but because of the number of personalization options, each shines with its very own personality.

Learning: File Management

I've decided I need to revisit my file management philosophy. At work, I deal with a rather large amount of file revisions and complex tasks under each phase for each project. It can get confusing, fast.

What happens in the case I'm out of the office and my boss or a co-worker need to get into my project files to access important information? My file system needs to be intuitive.

Right now I have sub-folder under our department's folder on the shared drive. Inside my "area" folder, I have hundreds of other folders for each of the projects that I either started or that needed saving for archival purposes.

This is when it gets tricky. Each project folder obviously needs sub-folders to help sort some of the contents. For example, a periodical will have a "pre-production" folder, with the edits folder, the layout folder, and a series of loose files about the printing house quote/invoices/etc. Obviously, that makes for A LOT of subfolders.

Folder Structure
Saving the file location in the file itself has never been a favorite technique for me. This resource location address needs to be updated in the case the file is moved to a different folder, else it becomes obsolete.

Date Documents
The auto-date field can overwrite a previous version's date, by accidentally opening and resaving to the same file name, thereby losing important information.

Consistent File Names
For files I share with others in a collaboration, I prefer adding a v1 or v2 to the file name, along with the date. However, by using the day's date in the file name, it's redundant, as the details view in any folder can automatically show you the date a document was created and/or saved--the trick is, when you cut and paste a file from a folder to another one, it's possible the information becomes lost.

WYSIWYG Reminders
I remember in my project management coursework, a few years ago, there was a table inserted into our group collaboration document with the date, initials, and version to help delineate what was done, by whom, and when. If too many revisions were made to the document, we'd end up with a two page table just for the version tracking. Not fun.

Some individuals feel that all invoice documents or all graphics documents are best saved in folders with like files, so you have essentially a repository of all the same file extensions. I definitely would never be able to find anything that way. I work better looking up a project's folder and seeing the files laid out before me. At least to me, it makes sense.

So, there obviously isn't just one or two "right" ways of managing files. It's very subjective to what you need to access, how quickly, and what you need to know about each file. Or even to whether your company has a policy for how things should be saved and accessed--such as is the case with intranets usually.

A majority of the search results for "file management" tips from Google is just a series of advertisements for downloadable file management systems or apps. I, however, am interested in restructuring the way I process information and save it, so that it's easily retrievable.

I was looking up various file management tips online. I found a good, basic run-through on an About.com portal (Small Business Canada: 10 File Management Tips), but it left me wanting more.

There was a good guide on the Microsoft Windows website (Working with Libraries), discussing libraries and how they can help you find a better solution than just folders and sub-folders.

So if I come up with or run across a more useful process, I'll be sure to post it here. Right now, the process I use seems to help me answer those "Johnny on the spot" left-field type questions that I usually get at work. Thankfully, I've a document trail for almost anything ;o) Learned the hard way!

Learning Adobe Illustrator

I signed up for an online Illustrator class on ed2go.com via a local community college in my area.

I've wanted to learn Illustrator since 2000, which is also when I first heard about it and dabbled with it a wee bit. I really hated it and couldn't imagine why anyone would want to use it instead of trusty old Photoshop.

Back then, Illustrator was a very rudimentary and manual. Kind of an unpleasant tool for a newbie like me. These days, however, it's a spectacular tool with a ton of automated tricks that make design a joy rather than a chore.

I now know how our graphic designer is able to duplicate so quickly maps and figures from the innumerable publications I work with her on!

I actually ended up purchasing a student version of Illustrator CS5, the only version currently available for purchase from reputable sources. This necessitated my dropping out of the CS3 class I had originally signed up for and instead registering for the CS5 class I needed. I'm in the process of checking what assignments are due and getting those down ASAP before it's too late and I miss points.

The first few assignments have been fun and almost a breeze to go through. I'm learning a lot and appreciating designers' work even more with each bit I learn.

I really like the instructor's (Sherry London) approach to the course, especially since she discusses both Windows and Mac techniques/shortcuts which makes all the difference. I hope to take additional courses she may be teaching. Perhaps even a PhotoShop course, since that software is continuously changing. It must look nothing like the last version I used about 2 years ago, in my now defunct VAIO.

As a side note, I began using ed2go courses back in 1999 when I was very into learning Java, JavaScript, and Perl. I somehow managed to pass those courses, but I can't remember a thing about what I learned. Which is probably a good thing anyway. You wouldn't want me coding or getting into other's people code, trust me.

Ed2go is a great resource for time and finance strapped students who need to gain useful skills in a variety of topic areas. There's even classes for entrepreneurs! It's really worth a look. Most community colleges are affiliated and have their own portal on the ed2go system to help manage their students (and probably get a % of the revenue).

Cheers to good learning opportunities!

iOS 5

Today Steve Jobs and the Apple team released info about the upcoming iOS 5 update.

The best source for concise info about what the new OS will do is from Mobile Crunch (Everything You Need To Know About iOS 5).

The biggest deal for many seems to be the addition of notifications, and missed notifications on the lock screen that allow you to swipe directly to the pertinent app. Apparently many folks felt this was a major issue on the Apple vs. Android battlefield.

I'm personally more interested in the newsstand portion of iBooks, where your subscriptions to magazines will now appear.

Many folks were also stoked to hear about the reading list option. From Safari, you can now add items to a reading list which will showcase your articles in a "prettied up" version. Sort of like your very own magazine or newspaper.

Reminders, the way I understand it, is the least useful change for me personally. I already have reminders popping up from my calendar, which I've synced to Google Calendar for years now.

One thing that is interesting is the photo shortcut from the lock screen. This makes capturing spontaneous shots easier, faster, and better. They say the camera's improved as well with this latest software update. This is probably aimed at higher-pixel camera phones coming out daily nowadays.

The thumb keyboard cracks me up. It's the keyboard separated into two areas, one on the left margin and one on the right margin.

The "PC Free" concept is pretty much, yes very, a huge deal, since we've all been tethered to laptops and desktops indefinitely for iPhone and iPad updates and syncing...and let's not even bring up iTunes syncing *shiver* The Wireless synch to iTunes and the iPad mirroring are nice add-ons that make a difference without much effort from the user.

Twitter is now better integrated, and iMessages promises stealth and speed when sharing between users--not something earthshaking since I don't really use my IM app of choice (eBuddy) all that much anymore, nor IM in general. And I doubt this is that relevant for most, since they're anyway used to texting.

I am very excited that this latest iOS update brings with it so much functionality, that I can barely contain myself to run home and plug in the little buggers to see how it all applies to the particular models of devices I own (iPad 2 and iPhone 3GS).

If anything interesting happens once I update, I'll be sure to follow up with a post.

Cheers and happy iOS-ing. Of course, we have to wait until the fall, but what's a couple of months!