(no subject)

[ehowton]

There's gay (http://spaces.msn.com/ehowton), and there's most gay (only being able to post to http://spaces.msn.com with Internet Explorer). Any shade or even hint of gayness pisses me off. You can imagine my mood after running into this. Grrrrr.

I'm ran into a rut with my new Delta Flyer gif. Once I resize the preview images I presented to the correct size, the one my public picked, #5 becomes lost in the color. Hmmmm. Back to the drawing board. I took one of the plain-jane ships, separated it from it's deep-space background, rendered clouds with a trekkish blue/green tint to it, pasted the ship into that and ran a 25% smudge across the stern of the ship and it's port winglet, touching up the entire outline of the ship with a 50% blur before adding a spotlight effect from the rear. And again, I'd like to apologize for the entire polling disaster.



Poor little CPU fan on my laptop is running 90% of the time now. 20+ browser tabs, ST with 8 sessions, gAIM with 10 sessions, Lotus Notes with 15 tabs & calendar, Outlook with six messages open, two IE windows, Windows explorer, two ms-dos consoles, three putty sessions, calculator, notepad (my all-time favorite MS app), Access, four Excel spreadsheets, iTunes, Thunderbird, Photoshop Elements 4.0, and our ticketing system...Stupid laptop.

Ah, that wasn't fair. My little mac mini at home can't keep up with me any more either. I've begun working more and more on my uber-XP box. NOW I see why Tony wanted his dual-proc G5 tower. Speaking of OSX, my USB-attached CF card reader has stopped working on every box I own, except my linux box. Discuss.

Since I changed themes on my lj to one with a black background, the transparent gif I use for my page edits is no longer an effective visual (as it it black) so I went about updating it. First of all, I moved from a Star Trek font, to the Diablo II font (Exocet). Easy - just make it white instead of black, and go. Unless...I'm on someone's friend's page with a white background. Right. I tried a variety of primary colors, but they all looked like ass. Fine. I put a nice drop shadow on it, so it could be black, and still visible on both backgrounds. Not quite. Between the cross in the 'O' as one example, retained white, not being large enough to be considered selectable for transparency. I then bounced back and forth with some success between outer glow (which outlined the black letters perfectly) and emboss & inner glow. However, without a proper matte selection for primary background color (we're talking black & white here - literally) the rough edges surrounding the soft glow made it look my 3-year-old's work. After much thought, I decided on an image, which could be turned into a transparent gif easily, and retain the soft glow of the outlined text atop that - which would translate easily to any color background. What image, though? Because I was using the Exocet font, a sword sounded like a good idea, and one which would translate easily to my mind's eye - a slim, lengthy image! I browsed a sword site under the 'fantasy' collection, as I wanted as ornate a hilt as possible, and found a beautiful specimen. CMD-CTRL-SHIT 4 overrode the php image holder disallowing 'Save As' and crop/rotate/resize in Photoshop gave me the perfect orientation. But the blade was wrong. Found a broadsword blade: nip/tuck/ta-da! I must've saved this image 15 times using different gif options, as it looked absolutely beautiful on every browser/OS combination except *ahem* my primary system: Firefox/OSX. Oh well. Posted anyway:



I updated Firefox for OSX from 1.0.5 to 1.5.0.3 and it fixed the .gif issue.

Comments

[drax0r.livejournal.com]

only being able to post to http://spaces.msn.com with Internet Explorer

That's the most awful thing I've heard yet today. I can't, however, say that I find it particularly surprising.



Once I resize the preview images I presented to the correct size, the one my public picked, #5 becomes lost in the color.

I had a similar problem when I was icon-whoring the other day. So many things looked cool at 400+ pixels that were just indistinguishable in 100x100. That's why I'm so fond of my USS Defiant avatar. It contrasts well and you can tell wtf it is. I cut, chopped, cropped, resized, adjusted levels and such on a number of images before I found this one.



Poor little CPU fan on my laptop is running 90% of the time now.

I'm begining to run into these sorts of issues everywhere. I think its a matter of just adding and adding to the load until at some point all the resources are used, leaving me to think 'what a piece of shit'

It doesn't help that Safari, while being a sexy, fast-rendering browser, seems to want to be reset once every few days so it can deallocate RAM.



Speaking of OSX, my USB-attached CF card reader has stopped working on every box I own, except my linux box. Discuss.

You have more hardware failures than anyone I know. Discuss.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

I cut, chopped, cropped, resized, adjusted levels and such on a number of images before I found this one.

Yeah, I got my 'motion-blur' idea for my shuttlecraft from your most awesome centurian!


...leaving me to think 'what a piece of shit'

I hate rebooting the mini though, and usually the 'active' memory doesn't immediately reallocate when I close a number of high-mem apps.


It doesn't help that Safari...

I use Safari like I use IE. Open it when I need to do something specific, then close it.


You have more hardware failures than anyone I know. Discuss.

You bought me that busted-assed card reader. Discuss.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

You did not satisfy your public! Go back and fix the color issue or be removed from office!


Like the sword. But you know I'm not a Trekie.

This entry reads like one of mine would. Maybe you need to take a break from reading my site.


I must've saved this image 15 times using different gif options, as it looked absolutely beautiful on every browser/OS combination except *ahem* my primary system: Firefox/OSX.
And you bitch at me for using Opera. Discuss.


Remember boys, if it don't render in Opera, it ain't up to snuff according to the W3C.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Like the sword. But you know I'm not a Trekie.

Did you not even READ the post? The two do not have anything to do with each other. Thanks for playing.


This entry reads like one of mine would. Maybe you need to take a break from reading my site.

I write these for me. Not for you. I'm sorry you're having difficulty understanding these.


And you bitch at me for using Opera. Discuss.

Of course. How many different operating systems do you run Opera on? That's what I thought XP boy. You know which unpleasant orifice you can stuff your Microsoft product into, right? I run firefox on no fewer than four operating systems. I'm sorry if a port of one doesn't display an outdated file format as well as I would like.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

So you make excuses for you "busted-ass browser" but I can't claim the moral high ground of using a browser that only renders what is adherent to the W3C specs? Ass.

I know it your blog for you, by you, of you. Just giving you my thoughts and trying to be funny. Thanks for playing.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

I can't claim the moral high ground of using a browser that only renders what is adherent to the W3C specs?

Correct.

[schpydurx.livejournal.com]

So now you're admitting to having a double standard, much like the Democrats?

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Your example is flawed. Let's use your example appropriately. Firefox represents the House of Representatives. Opera represents the Senate. Your issue is a corrupt, autonomous system purposely trying to mislead the public while increasing its own power base by straying from the reason it exists, ultimately bringing down the United States of America and throwing the entire world into chaos. My issue is a single Democrat in the House no one likes.

[apostolic4god.livejournal.com]

That was good!

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

*bows*

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

I updated Firefox on my OSX box from 1.0.5 to 1.5.0.3 and it fixed the .gif viewing issue. This is officially a dead subject.

[celtmanx.livejournal.com]

Hey, that looks like the Delta Flyer I gave you for Christmas!!!!!!!

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

I did everything except take the initial pick. The Hallmark edition Delta Flyer ornament is packed, however, I've turned in a request to my wife that she set aside any Star Trek/Star Wars ornaments she may discover during her unpacking activities.

[professortom.livejournal.com]

I don't get it.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

I know. You don't worry your pretty little head about it.

[jesskd26.livejournal.com]

I feel like I walked onto a battlefield here.

I think the sword is very nice, E.

[ehowton.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much.

The entire exchange you read above; both living through it, then experiencing it again later, as I wrote it - authoring the prose itself was, as you describe.

I'm a huge fan of creating my own avatars and since I did post a poll for people to vote on their favorite, then used another instead, I wanted everyone to understand the how and why. Furthermore, posting as 400x400 highly detailed photograph alongside the eventual outcome helps drive home the point.

Most of the comments (both in r/l and o/l) I rec'd were similar in nature. People were downright exhausted upon conclusion.