Fixpert

He he, I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve tried to use forsaken in a sentence, I even looked it up on Dictionary.com first just to make sure I was using it correctly.

Well, I’ve reached that post where I talk about how much time writing posts takes, and explaining why I’ve been slacking on Fixpert lately. I’ve seen this post on many, many blogs and maybe I’m cutting myself too much slack but I suppose it was only a matter of time before I got here.

What does that mean for you, dear reader? It means that I need to just get some quick and dirty posts out there, you know — old school. Typos here and there, maybe a little less in-depth, and a little more off the top of my dome-piece, but the trade-off is more posts! I hope that it will mean no more 3 week hiatuses between entries. Keep your eye out as things may get a bit rough around the edges, but at least there will be edges, and not just crickets.

I’m learning how much time “circling back” wastes. This is a big lesson for me, and I hope thinking about it helps you too. At work, as we scope a project we begin to discuss different possible approaches. It seems that we often settle on getting something out there ASAP with the promise of “circling back” later to complete the work. I am in full support of rapid iterative development, but the circling back has to actually happen to make this work. And circling back…it rarely happens.

This phenomenon is so common at work that saying “circle back” has become a bit of a joke, often said sarcastically and accompanied by the in-the-air double finger quotes. The first step is acceptance and such, so just the fact that we’ve become aware of it is progress.

Joking about “circle back” at work made me realize how much I do it in my life outside of work. I noticed that it’s common for me to quickly check my email, read through any new messages in my inbox and make a mental note that I’ll circle back later and reply to them. That just means I have to read a message twice (or more).

Same thing with RSS feeds, I don’t have time to read every interesting article out there. I’ll use the Firefox extension SessionSaver and just have the same 3 or 4 articles opening in tabs every time I launch my browser for up to a week, but they never get read and they just add to my stress level sitting there taunting me in the background.

Time is so limited and therefore very precious to me right now, and I’m always juggling a ton of projects in and outside of work, and of course things always get more hectic around the holidays. I am going to try and make a point of not checking my email unless I have time to respond, then file away or delete the new messages. Same with RSS feeds, I won’t check them unless I have time to read them, and I won’t end up with a stack of Firefox tabs to wade through when there’s really no time for it.

(I also wanted to name this post “Do it! Do it now!!” which I think is originally from Predator, but correct me if I’m wrong.)

Jeffrey Veen recently published a post called What’s In Your Folder of Shame?, inviting his readers to share the titles of blog entries that have not been published and are instead accumulating dust. Apparently, I am really good at writing one or two sentences for a concept of an entry, but it seems rare that I flesh out something that I feel is publish-worthy. That’s why this week I’ve been trying my dig-dang-diddly-darndest to publish at least a little nugget for you every day. Yes, all four of you.

In the spirit of the folder of shame, I would like to share my shameful list of hobbies that I continuously collect, with the goal of one day dedicating enough time to them. In the meantime I bounce from one to the other, giving each only enough attention to get its hopes up, then I toss it aside like a crummy velveteen rabbit:

• Become fluent in Spanish and Italian
• Drums, guitar, and piano
• Watercolors and oil painting
• Learn electronics
• Build a robot
• Everything computer-related
• Knitting
• Drawing
• Video editing
• Animation
• All types of biking
• Video games

I’m sure I will continue to add to this list as more things pop into my mind and as I accumulate more hobbies. What’s on your list o’ hobbies?

Ok, you’re working in Photoshop. You’ve got two documents open, sitting there on the screen next to each other. You think “my goodness, this purty gradient sure would look mighty nice over here on this other document.” So, you — being the smart cookie that you are — locate your Layers palette and click and drag the layer in question from the active document to the inactive document seated beside it. Make sense?

You’ve even gotten the visual confirmation from Photoshop that the inactive document has received this new layer because you see the little plus sign icon next to your mouse arrow, and the outline around the entire document becomes temporarily thicker as you’re dragging and dropping. These comforting little visual indicators pat you on the head and say “good job dragging that layer over here, nice work!” Ok, then where the heck is the layer? Where did it go? It’s somewhere in your document, it’s just outside of the active canvas and you have no idea if it’s above, below, to the right or left, so you don’t know if trying to drag it downward will make it go even further off screen. What do you do?

My simple little trick is to hit Ctrl-T (on a PC) or Command-F (on a Mac) which is the shortcut for Free Transform. This will throw a little box around the entire contents of your layer, indicating where it is even when it’s off your canvas. You can then use your mouse (or arrow keys) to move that puppy back onto your canvas and your work resumes!

Extra hint: if you are dragging a layer that has a layer mask associated with it, be sure that you link the mask to the layer before dragging, or else the mask will not follow the layer to the new document.

I often use Illustrator to create technical illustrations that look sort of like schematics — the types of illustrations that you might find in the Owner’s Manual for your new digital camera. It’s a handy technique for taking some source photography and translating that imagery into something more iconic and general. The line-weight tends to be uniform, which helps keep the illustration clean, but this can often flatten the image too much. That’s where the “gel” comes in.

A “gel” is an illustrative technique that I often use to help pop something off the page. It’s something that I originally noticed as a technique in graffiti, but it’s common in traditional illustration, comic books, and other mediums. A gel is simply a thicker outline around the entire image, the interior line weight remains thinner and uniform.

There’s a simple way to do this in Illustrator using the Pathfinder palette. When you’ve completed your drawing, select the entire thing, and Group it (command-g), then copy and paste. Now you’ve got two versions of your drawing.

The one that’s floating on top will become your gel. Select this one and go to your Pathfinder palette and click on the “add to shape area” icon. Hopefully you see a big blob that has the general shape of your drawing. If so, you’re in business. (I’m simplifying this step a bit, and making the assumption that you are somewhat familiar with Illustrator, but if you need more instruction please let me know in the comments for this post.)

Now select “None” for that object’s fill, and make the outline black, dark grey, or another color that will create sufficient contrast between your object and the background that it’s resting on. Make the outline thick, thicker than you think it should actually be — try 5 pixels.

Then send that sucker to the back, Shift + command + [. Now select your original drawing and the new outline you just created. Use your Align palette to align these two objects vertically and horizontally. You should now have a beautiful gel, and a sweet illustration that jumps off the page.

You can also use this technique in limited ways inside your drawing, like this illustration of a camera. The lens is really protruding out from the body of the camera, so a little mini-gel in there helps to create that sense of dimension. Enjoy, and send me examples of stuff if you play around with this technique!