Rest easy, Ernie
January 31, 2012
Ernie Monstrocat has gone, and my heart is breaking more than a little bit.
For those of you who read about Ernie, here or on Brenda Griffith’s blog, you know he was a special, special cat. He came to me almost by accident, as a foster kitty, and turned out to be a social maven of monumental proportions. (As well as a digital jinx.)
During Ernie’s stay with me he attracted more worshippers than the PTL Club, who’d show up with forbidden treats like bacon. Hamburgers. Shrimp cocktail. Canned tuna clutched in grubby little kidpaws.
You’d never have guessed Ernie’s real history. It would have taken a very special cat to survive all that, much less thrive, but that’s what Ernie was.
When it came time for Ernie to find a permanent home, I almost didn’t let it happen–if I hadn’t known that Brenda, Jessie and Dave were waiting at the other end, Ernie would have never gotten out of the house. Waiting in the airport for his flight to be called was one of the harder things I’ve done.
But they were there, they gave Ernie his own little girl, rabbit, dogs and bacon, and from the sounds of it he lived the life of, well, Ernie, until the very end. It came on suddenly, turned out to be metastatic cancer…and Ernie was gone. Just like that.
Thank you, Brenda, for taking such good care of my friend.
Glass resources update
January 7, 2012
Hey, folks;
I’m in the process of updating my enormous casting resources page and I need your help.
I’m adding new categories such as adhesives & sealants, coldworking and casting instruction (and I mean REAL, intensive glass casting classes). I’m also checking old listings and making sure they work.
My dozen best iPad business apps
December 30, 2011
Izzy the ‘Pad is the first computing device I’ve ever slept with.
Literally. I hate to say it, but she’s pretty much changed the way I do stuff. That red leather thing growing out of my left arm? That’s Izzy, in her snazzy red case, and embarrassingly enough, she’s rarely more than a couple of feet away, even at night.
It’s been almost 8 months since Izzy and I got together, and in that time she’s taken over a lot of functions I normally do on a desktop, laptop, TV screen (or on paper). Apple’s made an excellent chameleon out of the iPad 2; find the right app(s), download them for a nominal fee, and Izzy changes roles in a heartbeat.
So when someone asks me about my favorite iPad apps, I respond with “favorite for WHAT?” Business? Entertainment? Art? with business, i.e., USEFUL iPad apps. These are my favorites right now (since the last time I did this), not necessarily in order of importance, and they’re all available in the iPad App Store.
Please note that I’m not including apps that come with your iPad–iPad’s own mail, browser and other utilities are certainly critical businessware. This is just the icing on the business cake.
Evernote (free/$45/yr): Meeting notes and documents
More and more, I’m working in the cloud (i.e., storing my files in one or five places online and accessing them there, from multiple physical locations). Evernote is a prime example; you establish an Evernote account online, download the app onto your iPad and whatever other devices and computers you have. It then synchronizes notes, documents and images across multiple computers.
Evernote provides a text editor, image, audio and video managers, OCR of images, and a reasonably good file management system. At work, I take notes on Izzy in Evernote, snap pics of whiteboards or presentation screens, and save it to my Evernote account. I can access my notes, email them to meeting colleagues, edit and reorganize or combine them. It’s a great audit trail for complex projects, and since my boss is extremely fond of brainstorming on whiteboards, a good way to record them exactly; I snap a pic or two with Izzy, annotate it, and then send it around.
The free version of Evernote suits me for now, but if you pay $5/month you can upgrade to the Premium version, which allows bigger files, does a better job with the sometimes problematic image recognition, and offers several collaboration tools.
—————-
DocScan (free/$3.99): Image capture
I use this primarily as a companion to Evernote. DocScan allows you to use the iPad cameras to take pictures of whiteboards, paper documents and other things. That’s not exactly miraculous–many of the apps here do that–but DocScan is designed to increase contrast and eliminate image distortion, making a quick snapshot of a white board easier to read, by humans or devices.
That’s especially important in Evernote, since Evernote Premium can search your images and PDFs for text. The premium (HD) version of DocScan allows you save files directly to Evernote, Google Docs, Dropbox, etc., and also to print them.
—————-
Dropbox (free: File management)
Dropbox is another cloud tool, this time to manage any kind of file across multiple devices. It looks like another hard drive to your devices (it supports Android, IOS, Mac, Windows and Linux), so you can store a file on one device and retrieve it on another nearly instantly. I tend to move between Mac, Windows and mobile nearly constantly, so it’s a lifesaver for me. Nearly all my workfiles wind up on Dropbox.
It’s not without limitations–if you delete a file on one device, you delete it on others. The free version allows you to store a measly 2GB of files, but you can increase that by getting your friends to sign up. Most people I know, though, buy a storage plan; Dropbox allows you to store up to 100GB for $199/year. The downside of that is that 100GB is the ceiling, which means it’s not great as a rich media storage tool.
————-
PrintCentral for iPad ($8.99): Paper printing
I know, I know, we’re a paperless society, but with all this other business app stuff you gotta figure SOMEONE will need a printed copy of SOMETHING, right?
At $8.99, PrintCentral is the most expensive app in this group, but it’s probably also the best-supported app, and it fills a lot of the gaps between iPad-as-gadget and iPad-as-business-tool. It lets you print to any WiFi printer, or any local printer (i.e., one connected to your Mac or Windows machine). More important, though, it also lets you print over your company network.
Setting up the network printing is a bit complicated–you’ll first need to make sure your computer can talk wirelessly to your iPad, or install WePrint printer sharing software on your company computer–which might take permission from the IT security department. Then you establish a new Google Mail (gMail) account, exclusively for print documents, and connect it in your WePrint settings.
—————–
Square: Merchant transactions
I don’t use this in my dayjob, but I sure as heck do for teaching and art sales (and also as a quick way to accept money when someone pays me back for something). I’ve been using the Android version on Derrick-the-Droid phone for some time; the iPad version is far easier to use.
Square is free–you sign up, give them bank account information they can verify, and they send you a free magstripe reader in the mail. You can then set up your “cash register” when you download the iPad app. It allows you to create an inventory of products, upload photos, descriptions, pricing and other considerations for each product, and arrange your merchandise by “shelves,” i.e., categories.
I’ve talked about Square before so I won’t belabor the point..but for what it does this is one of the most useful tools I’ve EVER seen on a computer, and that’s saying a lot.
——————–
Jot: Whiteboarding
By day I’m a content manager/information architect, which basically means I look at websites with an eye to making them more useful for visitors. I do a lot of what’s called wireframing, i.e., building a map of the information we want to present on a new website. Many times, though, the pages already exist, and it’s easier for clients to sketch changes they’d like to make.
Jot allows me to quickly snap a screenshot of a web page, hand Izzy to a client, and let them literally fingerpaint their requirements onscreen. I can share it with employees in other locations using Jot’s “Live Server” (although I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know how well that works). When we’re finished, I can save the file as an image and email it to all meeting attendees.
It’s not ideal–not everyone likes to fingerpaint, and big fingers have trouble with the details–but it’s free, which is a heckuva lot cheaper than the electronic whiteboards we could be using.
——————-
iMovie: Quick video creation
This is quite simply the easiest way I’ve ever seen to make movies: You hold up your iPad, turn on the video camera, and add a title. iMovie is how I capture a lot of my kittens’ antics (you can see them on YouTube), and I’ve also used it for quick sessions at work.
This is one of the few paid apps on this list. It isn’t high-powered; titling is limited, the included themes are limited and kinda hokey, and you’ve got to figure out how to get your video into the iPad to use it–it doesn’t directly import video files but expects you to shoot with the iPad’s somewhat limited video camera. (And trust me, an iPad makes an awkward steadicam).
OTOH, it’s five bucks. For that price, it’s astounding.
—————–
Lynda.com: Technology and marketing training
If you do much with web development, photography or marketing technology, you’ve probably explored Lynda.com, probably the best training course websites around. Subscriptions start at $25/month, and it’s a great way to stay up on a lot of diverse tech skills.
————————
PhotoSync (image and video file transfers)
iTunes is great at a lot of things, but I don’t really care for the way it synchronizes image files with an iPad–it tends to be an all-or-nothing affair. And straight file imports from iPad to Mac from Mac Preview are even worse. PhotoSync is an extremely powerful tool that can transfer files WiFi, Bluetooth or turn your iPad into a web-based photobank, letting you pick and choose what you want to upload to your computer.
Interestingly enough, the one thing that DOESN’T work (for me, anyway) is tethering the iPad to your computer the way you sync with iTunes, but that’s minor. I generally use the browser on my Mac or PC (it supports both) and navigate to the iPad’s Photosync IP address. From there I can thumb through every image and video on the iPad, select the ones I need, and quickly package them into a zip file and upload.
Better still, PhotoSync is free.
———————–
Perfect Browser: Web browsing
This one isn’t strictly necessary; the included iPad browser (Safari) does a pretty good job. However, it has a goofy carousel-like way of storing a maximum of nine windows–instead of using tabs–that drives me nuts. PerfectBrowser offers a more familiar tabbed interface, and is just a bit slicker overall. I seem to use them interchangeably; some websites look better in one or the other.
———————-
Tap to Chat: Instant messaging
Google doesn’t offer a GoogleTalk app yet (that I’m aware of, anyway), and my colleagues and I text through GoogleTalk. This is (so far) the best app I’ve found for that on iPad, and it allows you to aggregate feeds from Facebook as well.
Keynote ($9.99) and Slideshark (free): Presentations
I honestly don’t use this much; I thought I’d be doing a lot more presentations with Izzy than I actually do. It’s not impossible to hook Izzy up to a projection device, but it’s too much hassle to move from Windows PowerPoint–the standard in my company–to Keynote on Mac, then Keynote on iPad. OTOH, Keynote is a slick way to build very professional-looking presentations, especially if you’re looking to make a flipbook or something similar out of them. I don’t have the iCloud version yet–there’s a computer swap in my future before I sync up Izzy to install IOS 5–so I can’t speak to that.
Slideshark’s a bit different–you upload any PowerPoint presentation from your computer to your free Slideshark account, then download and present it on the iPad. It generally gets PowerPoint formatting right–a pain with Google Docs, Keynote and many other non-Microsoft apps I’ve tried–and it mostly does animations and transitions as ordered. If it allowed you to insert hyperlinks and turn your PPT into a linkboard, it would be ideal.
—————–
*I feel kinda icky being this much of an Apple fanboy(ette), but really, this thing is THAT good.
Stolen hours, bullies and gloryholes
December 10, 2011
12/10/11. The words of “Save the Country” struck me with almost cosmic force this morning, about the time I was supposed to be judging a kids’ robotics contest.
I’ve got fury, in my soul
Fury’s going to take me to the glory goal
In my mind, I can’t study war
No more
I actually never got to be a judge; the ice making crystalline necklaces out of my back deck spiderwebs caused a three-car fender-bender in my path. By the time I’d stopped and given my name as a witness, officials had rung in an alternate judge and I was out of a job for the day.
Towels on the floor
December 9, 2011
OK, I’m beginning to look like a doting mamma with home videos, but…I kept finding towels on the floor in the guest bath. Wasn’t difficult to figure out who was doing it–not with The Princess Lola and Nikki the Tikkimaus around–but all the other towel racks in the house seemed safe from their depredations.
So I hung the towel back on the rack, grabbed Izzy the ‘Pad (that iMovie feature is really killer), and settled into the bathtub to wait. It didn’t take long:
And I discovered what was going on. There’s an air vent right under that rack (you’ll see the towel moving slightly in the video). Lola was probably first attracted to the movement, jumped up and pulled the towel off the rack, mostly covering the vent.
But watch the video: Lola circles the fallen towel, head down, back and forth, then she settles on a spot and flops over. She does this consistently; I replaced that bloody towel ten times and ten times she circled and settled in front of wherever the hot air was emerging.
Intrigued, I slipped downstairs and turned on the air conditioning, to make cold air come out of that vent. Lola dropped the towel as usual, circled…and jumped back, yowling. She wouldn’t go near the towel rack until I turned the furnace back on.
So…I think Lola is redirecting the flow of warm air from that vent for a cozy nap. Why she doesn’t just sit on the vent and get ALL the heat is beyond me, but I’m noticing that whenever there’s a heater vent to contend with, she usually puts something on the vent first, before she sits.
Or she drops a towel on it.
Sometimes this cat is a little bit scary.
Locasnob
December 5, 2011
Strolling the Pearl (a favorite occupation I hardly ever get to do these days), I spied a big cast glass sculpture in the window and stopped in to see who made it.
“He’s from Israel, really talented artist,” said the clerk.
“Ahh…and that one?” I pointed to a big blown dinosaur-like piece, reminiscent of Tagliapietra.
“Celotto, from Italy.”
Hmmm. “How about that one?” and I indicated a series of flat, fused (ooops, sorry, Lani) kilnformed panels on the usual powder-coated steel stands.
Swedish.
Making a cat gym (AKA “less ugly cat tree”)
November 28, 2011
Savannah kittens make wonderful housemates…if you stay two steps ahead of their inventive little minds. Give them enough “legal” stuff to do, I’m told, and they won’t edit your art collection (i.e., break stuff).
Museum gel only goes so far. I tried giving them a “highly difficult” puzzle, guaranteed to keep dogs occupied for weeks, with treat-containing cups that move along a track. The animal is supposed to slide the cups until they can upend them and grab the treat.
The kittens liberated all the treats in about 15 minutes and then, bored, headed for the bathroom to play toilet bowl jacuzzi (they LIKE water).
So much for games. I made them a cat gym.
[Read more]
Favorable (glass) reactions
November 22, 2011
If you mix frit colors–as all pate de verre and frit painting artists do with abandon–you quickly learn about reactivity between colored glasses. Try warming up chill BE Salmon Pink with a little BE Medium Amber, and the resulting sludgy grey-brown will stick in your mind forever.
Or so I thought. At a beginning casting workshop recently, one of my students complained that it was tough to simply remember what reacted with which. Or worse, when they combined glasses from two manufacturers, they couldn’t find any reactivity info at all, which apparently resulted in some unpleasant surprises.
I gave them some rules of thumb I go by when I don’t have access to a reactivity chart and/or have no time to check. [Read more]
Cynthia, cat trainer
November 15, 2011
OK, just had to brag a bit, although I’m not sure if I’m bragging about what a great cat trainer I am (frankly, if I were, I wouldn’t be sweeping up broken sculptures), or the unusually large brains of my cats.
Sit is going well. Stay? Not so much. And we’re working on “shake paws.”
The q-tip that saved a life…maybe
November 10, 2011
Technically, it’s not a q-tip, it’s a buccal swab, and it just played Mr. Toothbrush against the inside of my cheek for a very good reason.
I just joined the National Marrow Registry. You might want to think about doing that yourself.
I registered years ago, before they took this show online. I was never called upon–guess I’m a rare beast who never matched anyone else’s DNA–but I’m re-upping now, for a very good reason.
A good friend has leukemia, and swabbing the inside of my cheek might just save his life. I’m not going to tell you who he is (although if you know me pretty well, you already know), but he’s an incredible artist, won a bunch of awards in a very short time, and I love his work.
I also count him (and his wife) as good friends. The leukemia diagnosis came hard and fast, not too long ago. He’s been going through a rough time with chemotherapy and he’s awaiting a match for a stem cell transplant, and so far all the usual suspects–family members–don’t match. So now they’re looking nationally.
It’s really brought home how little it takes to put your hat in the ring for a fellow human being…and how vital it can be.
Signing up is easy–you simply go to the website, review the terms and conditions for being a donor, and fill out a form. They’ll send you a buccal swab kit in the mail within a couple of weeks.
Once the kit arrives, you simply follow the instructions. Open the package, take out a q-tip, swallow, and scrub it like a toothbrush on the inside of your cheek. Repeat with the other three q-tips, carefully label them with the provided barcodes, then stuff them in the package and drop them in the mail.
That’s it. If you’re a match with someone, you’ll be asked to take more tests to make sure. If you do match someone who needs you, they’ll work with you to take a donation. There are multiple ways to do that, some more onerous than others. I’m not gonna sugar-coat things and say it’s perfectly painless and you’ll never notice them doing it (which would be a lie)…but is that really a huge price to pay?
Please. Think about signing up. The life you save could be my friend’s.
Thanks.