Podcasts about QuarkXPress

Brett records an episode without Christina and Jeff and chats with Melissa Davis (The Mac Mommy) about her start as a mommy blogger and longtime Mac podcaster, her tech-support work, and the strange lack of closure when online friends disappear. They trade mental-health and chronic-illness updates, Adderall vs. Vyvanse, difficulty finding curious doctors, and being labeled “worried well.” Don’t worry, they nerd out on mechanical keyboards, Karabiner, and remapping keys. GrAPPtitudes include Bartender 6 Pro, Sortio for AI tagging, Sketch Party TV, and Karabiner. Sponsor OneSkin improves your skincare routine with science-backed skin care products. With over 10,000 five-star reviews and validation from clinical studies, OneSkin has made a name for itself in the skincare industry. If you’re interested in trying OneSkin for yourself, you can get 15% off your order with the code OVERTIRED at oneskin.co/OVERTIRED. Chapters 00:00 Meet Melissa Davis 00:56 Early Podcast Days 02:20 Tech Support Seniors 05:52 Digital Legacy Work 06:50 Sponsor: OneSkin 08:14 Mental Health Check In 08:34 Insomnia And Focus 13:19 Doing Time Tracker 16:04 Suspenders And Stenosis 20:18 Mobility And Home Hacks 22:10 Melissa Health Update 23:25 ADHD Meds And Mutations 25:25 Curious Doctors Matter 27:59 Vyvanse Vs Adderall 30:26 Tracking Mood With Data 32:27 Cane And Somatic Therapy 36:09 Somatics For EDS 36:50 Yoga Modifications 38:19 Polycystic Liver Shock 39:20 Fatphobia In Healthcare 40:56 Pole Dancing Reality Check 41:55 Mechanical Keyboard ASMR 45:56 Nail Art And Picking 49:09 Keyboard Layout Rabbit Hole 01:00:59 Shortcuts And Muscle Memory 01:03:12 GrAPPtitude App Picks 01:14:07 Karabiner Power Tips 01:17:30 Wrap Up And Thanks Show Links hEDS Doing Timing Royal Kludge Keyboard Gamakey Silent Linear Switches EPOMAKER Switch Benefit Section EPOMAKER AegisSil Keycaps Set SketchParty TV Karabiner Sortio Bartender Pro Day One Join the Conversation Merch Come chat on Discord! Twitter/ovrtrd Instagram/ovrtrd Youtube Get the Newsletter Thanks! You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network BackBeat Media Podcast Network Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter. Transcript Nails and Keys with Melissa Davis (The Mac Mommy) [00:00:00] Meet Melissa Davis Brett: Hey, this is Brett Terpstra. I am without my usual cohorts, Christina and Jeff. Um, so I, I wanted to, you know, get a, get an episode out for all of you listeners, and I reached out to Melissa Davis, known as The Mac Mommy. Um, I don’t, I, I don’t know if they’re still known as The Mac Mommy, but in m- in my lifetime they have been. Um, Melissa, why don’t you introduce yourself, let people know, like, M-Ma- long time, like Mac personality, podcaster. Tell us where you came from. Melissa: Where did I come from? Outer space. Uh, I came from being a mom. I, I, I will admit, this is hard to admit, But I will admit I started out as a mommy blogger. That’s, like, kind of a bad word nowadays. Brett: back, back, yeah, this is way Back when Melissa: [00:01:00] Yeah. Early Podcast Days Melissa: so we’re talking, like… Well, my oldest is gonna be 20, Brett. My oldest is gonna be 20 this summer. End of, end of June he’ll be 20 years old. So that’s about how long I’ve been doing podcasting. I mean, I started, I started, like, when… Well, you know what? I started listening to Adam Christianson’s The MacCast Brett: But you know what? I started Sure. Like one of the very first podcasts, Yeah. Melissa: still, I still listen to him on the Mac Geek Gab. Like, his voice is just so soothing to me. I used to… Like, that was the f- Back when I had, I had, I remember I had, like, an old G4, uh, Quicksilver Mac, and in the stinky little back room of our old house. And I used to, I used to download the podcasts, burn them on a CD, put them in my Walkman, ’cause I didn’t have an iPod yet at the time. I wasn’t that… I was never really that cutting edge. And I’d burn them on a CD, I’d put the CD in my Walkman, and then I would sit and nurse, I would nurse my baby. I, [00:02:00] and I would have to tuck the, uh, the headphones, you know, I’d have the ear- the, the wired, kinda like I have now, uh, and tuck it behind my back, like, behind my shoulder, because otherwise he’d, like, yank on the cord. And I would just listen to podcasts while I nursed. And I… And then, uh, then I met Victor Cajiao, and I started just kind of being, like, a serial podcaster, showing up here and there, and then it just kinda grew from there. Tech Support Seniors Melissa: Um, and I do… So I do tech support. I’m an IT tech s- tech support person. I… People call me their computer guru. I mostly work with, uh, the senior population, our, our vintage people, which I, I’m slowly becoming one of them. We’re all, we’re all gonna go that way. Brett: I feel like anyone who does Mac tech support deals with probably an, a, a population that skews older. Melissa: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s actually, it’s actually more– I will say it’s actually more difficult to work with somebody younger. Like, especially people my age or people [00:03:00] that are like, say, in their sixties I consider pretty young, 70 even. Uh, yeah, so but it’s, you know, the people are so, so interesting. You can learn so much. I love working with this population because they’re like encyclopedias, and the stories they tell you and the things you learn, it’s pretty amazing. And I could just, I could just spend– I have actually spent all day with some of them. Some of us just have really great chemistry and, you know, it’s… They– I, I’m also– I have ADHD, that’s no secret. And I think when you get older, um, not– it doesn’t affect everybody, but I do see a lot of what could be either they, they have ADHD or it’s like a– Brett: they have Melissa: of creeps in and it’s just a natural process of aging, cognitive decline. So, yep. Brett: have a lot of patience. Sure. S- some of my, some of my most interesting relationships over the last 10 years have been with, uh, Mac users in their late 70s, [00:04:00] 80s. And, uh, like they’ve been– They’re very– Like, they’re definitely… The people that I’ve known have been technically capable and very interested in learning. That’s why they follow me. That’s how I meet them, right? They’re like, they read my blog, which is just all nerd stuff. And, and so they’re, they’re technically competent, and they’re doing things that I can only aspire to be doing in my 70s and 80s. Um, I had a guy who was writing his memoirs at, in between like mountain bike rides. And so here’s the thing, though, is when you, when you know someone online and they’re in their 80s and you stop hearing from them for a Melissa: Yes. Yes. Brett: you have to assume that they have passed on. and that is sad, and you never really get any closure because you don’t know their friends or family. You [00:05:00] never get like a notice, an obituary. You don’t, you don’t know where these people go, um, and you don’t know how to check in on them once your normal channels of communication are severed. Melissa: Yeah, we’re at that age where we probably start reading the obituaries. Like, I haven’t heard from so-and-so in a while. Let me check the obits." Brett: I had, I had– Before NVUltra went on for, what’s it, like five years now, uh, without a release, um, I had a project called BitWriter with David Halter. And Melissa: remember you mentioning that, yeah. Yeah, and you wondered. Mm-hmm. Brett: he stopped responding. Melissa: you find out any at all? Any, Any, concrete… Brett: Nothing. I have put feelers out everywhere I can think of. I have no idea what happened to him. Melissa: went Richard Simmons, huh? Brett: yeah. Yeah. With less Melissa: No contact. No contact. Aw. Digital Legacy Work Melissa: I, I’m lucky that, uh, in my line of [00:06:00] work, I do typically hear from the family if they’ve passed on, because I form kind of a bond with a lot of people. I, I typically don’t lose clients unless they die, so… Brett: and you have some, like, in real life connections to Melissa: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do, I do both. I do… I have some clients where I’ve never met them in person, I’ve only ever done remote. Uh, and then, but most of my clients are, are local, the majority of them. But I, I still s- see them remotely too, so yeah. I’ve, I’ve actually been hired by some people, um, mostly I’ve had two male clients who they got a terminal illness, they knew they were terminal, and they followed me online and they pretty much hired me to take care of their surviving spouse. So that, that was… that’s a difficult thing, but I’m just honored that they chose me to, to help them out with that. So I’ve kind of been a bit of a digital undertaker in that regard. Sponsor: OneSkin Christina: I want to take a moment to share something that has significantly improved my skincare routine, OneSkin. [00:07:00] So we all have those days when our skin doesn’t feel its best, and I’ve certainly been in that boat, especially recovering from surgery. And I was tired of navigating through endless products that promised results, but often fell short. And that’s when I discovered OneSkin. It was founded by scientists dedicated to longevity, and this brand stands out for its commitment to real science over marketing hype. They tackle the fundamental question of how to actually slow down skin aging rather than just masking it. And their groundbreaking ingredient is, uh, ZeroS01, and it’s a proprietary peptide designed to help deactivate the damaged cells that contribute to aging skin. Since incorporating OneSkin into my routine, I’ve actually been noticing some improvements. My skin feels smoother. It looks more vibrant. Um, it’s definitely more moisturized, and so this is benefiting from its focus on supporting collagen and strengthening the skin barrier. With over 10,000 five-star reviews and validation from clinical studies, OneSkin has made a name for itself in the skincare industry. If [00:08:00] you’re interested in trying OneSkin for yourself, you can get 15% off your order with the code OVERTIRED at oneskin.co/overtired. That’s 15% off at oneskin.co/overtired using the code OVERTIRED. Thank you for supporting our show by checking them out Mental Health Check In Brett: Um, so do you wanna do a mental health Melissa: Sure. Brett: I, I know, I know you’ve listened to the show before. I know you know how this works. Melissa: how this works. Brett: Would you like to start? Melissa: I think I would like to hear you start, and then I’ll, I’ll add on Brett: that sounds good. Insomnia And Focus Brett: Um, so sleep continues to be a major issue for me. Um, I actually for four days in a row last week, I got eight hours of sleep a night, which was insane. I felt so good. Um- The first night… So I take [00:09:00] Lamictal for bipolar, and if I miss my evening dose, I crash and I sleep in the next morning, and I sleep soundly. Like, it’s the best sleep I can get. And then I wake up and all of a sudden the withdrawal kicks in, and then I’m shaky and dizzy for half an hour after I take the dose. Um, but that’s after, like, a solid night of sleep, and it never works two nights in a row. And, like, I’ve tried, like, maybe if I take Lamictal in the mornings instead of the evenings, maybe I’ll sleep through the night. It doesn’t work after that first missed dose. Um, but then I just, without making any changes in my lifestyle, started sleeping, and I thought finally after, like, two years of insomnia, I had turned a corner, because I can’t remember the last time I got eight hours of sleep for more than two nights in a [00:10:00] row. And then it ended, and then I was up. I’ve been up since 2:30 today. Melissa: I wondered, yep. Brett: I mean, I went to bed at 8:00, so that’s still nine, 10, 11, 12, 11, Melissa: I actually dozed off on the couch around 8:30. Like, if only I could just be in my bed right now, just be, like, transported. Yeah. Oh. Brett: Oh, I, I wish. If I could go back to bed… Like, sometimes I’ll, I’ll lay back down around 7:00 or 8:00 and get, like, another half hour of sleep, but it’s really that, like, uninterrupted block of deep sleep that I need, not… I take naps during the day, and I can usually fall asleep for half an hour, um, given that I’m usually functioning on five hours of sleep anyway. But anyway, um, I– That, that’s just kind of par for the course for me, so, like, any, any of our listeners know that that’s gonna be the first thing I report. Melissa: are you, [00:11:00] like, kinda competing? Like, are you trying to get eight hours because that’s what’s prescribed? Have you ever thought about Brett: be- actually, what works eight and a half, like I’ve, I’ve… Back when I had the option to sleep more than five hours, like, I did a lot of kind of experimentation and Melissa: know where your sweet spot is. Brett: Well, it… See, the sweet pot- spot changes as you age, though, and you need less sleep as you get older. So, so I can’t say for sure that eight and a half hours is still my sweet spot. Um, and I think honestly, if I can sleep seven hours, I feel pretty good, and I consider seven hours a good night’s sleep. Melissa: Yeah, ’cause mine’s like between four and six. Brett: really? Yeah. See, Melissa: feel Brett: I don’t function well. Oh, I don’t function well on anything less than seven hours. Melissa: I just have a love-hate relationship with sleep. I just don’t– I just hate to sleep. I just would rather be doing other things. Life is [00:12:00] just too interesting. Brett: I get that. I– get that. I– as someone who’s bipolar and has had like manic episodes where I’m up for five days straight, like I, I love not sleeping. Um, w- when, when I have the mania to give me energy and back it up. It’s when I’m just dragging all day and feel like a zombie. The thing– The, the plus side to it is the more tired I am, up to a certain point, the better I can focus. Like my brain slows down and it’s really easy for me to get into hyperfocus. And like most mornings I’m up at, you know, 2:30, 3:00 and I just start coding. And I can not only hyperfocus, but I can switch focus between three or four different projects like simultaneously. I hit compile on one, I move on to the next one, and I can rotate [00:13:00] through them and like keep track of all of it. And then right around 10:00 AM, my ability to do that ends and suddenly I like flip to a project and I cannot for the life of me remember what I was doing, which is why I’ve spent my life building note-taking apps and, and time tracking tools. Melissa: Yep, same thing. Doing Time Tracker Brett: dude, h- d- I don’t… You might not be familiar with my project Doing. Melissa: N-no, but I– you alluded to something. that’s not what you’re working on with Dan though, is it? Brett: No, no, that’s gonna be Melissa: Dan on that too. I, I, don’t know what it is yet, but yeah, I’m, I’m Brett: Oh, it’s… Yeah, it’s gonna be cool. Melissa: that’s so exciting. Brett: no, Doing is a command line tool where you can type things like, “Doing now podcasting with Melissa,” and it starts a timer for like what I’m doing now, and then I can ask it if I leave and come back, I can say, “What was I doing?” And it’ll tell me, [00:14:00] “You’re podcasting with Melissa.” Obviously, that’s a weird example ’cause I’m not gonna leave in the middle of this. But then it can give you like totals, time, tag-based time totals, uh, for your week and everything. It can show you like what you finished yesterday. Um, it’s not so much a task tracking app as it is a tool for keeping track of what you’re doing in the moment. Um, for, for people like me who switch between four projects at once, it’s really handy. And some guy, some fucking guy Melissa: Some fucking guy. Brett: it, rewrote it in Rust, and it is really good. it is really good. Uh, he like, I- Oh yeah, I use Melissa: Okay, ’cause Brett: This is, this is separate. this is this is a little more ‘ intentional than Timing. Um, I use both. They kind of work together, and Doing can actually import Timing’s JSON exports. So you can turn your, you can turn [00:15:00] all your Timing data into command line, uh, readable Doing files. Um, but anyway, this guy rewrote it in Rust with my permission, and he gave me full credit on the page. And I think I’m switching ’cause Doing is written in Ruby, and Ruby is slow, and Rust is fast. And like my Doing file where it stores all of my current projects, like my Doing items, gets so big that it can take Doing like up to five seconds to respond when I ask it, “What was I doing today?” Which is five seconds is a long time on the command line. Um, and his Melissa: pretty instantaneous. Brett: his version is like 100 milliseconds. Boom. But anyway, Melissa: It’s almost like you built your own little AI thing. Like, what was I doing? What Brett: kinda, kinda, yeah. Melissa: you doing, Dave? Brett: This is, this [00:16:00] was built long before AI was a common thing, but the other thing that’s contributing to my mental health Suspenders And Stenosis Brett: is suspenders. Melissa: Ah, yes. Brett: So I have I have gained 100 pounds, um, not, n-not of my own choice, but like I had rapid weight gain and I recently got a stenosis diagnosis, which I hate the Melissa: telling you, I’m telling you, we’re like 23 and me here. I’ve got that too. Brett: apparently during one of my, like when I gained 50 pounds in like six weeks, my body was looking for places to store all the new fat and decided my spine might be a good place for that. Um, so I have fat in my spine and I have degrading discs. This is separate from my love of suspenders, so I’ll get back to [00:17:00] that. I, um, Melissa: Wait till you get it in your eyeballs. Brett: Oh, for real? Melissa: Yeah, you can have… I have, um, what’s it called? Cholesterol. Yeah, if you look at your eyes really close, if you see like a white kind of w- ridge around your irises, that’s cholesterol. Brett: Oh, wow. Yeah, I hope, I hope that hasn’t happened yet, but who knows? Um, Melissa: Brings out Brett: I– So I have all this, I have all this extra weight and I had a lot of trouble with belts. A, belts hurt ’cause they dig into my, my gut, and they don’t really work. I, every, every time I stood up, my butt crack showed and I had to like wiggle my pants up. And then I I tried a pair of suspenders and it was like a l- a switch had been flipped. All of a sudden my pants just stayed up without any constriction around my waist, just like they just stayed with me wherever I went. And now I can, [00:18:00] I can tuck my shirts in and it actually looks kinda cool when you got the suspenders look going on. Which means, so like for a long time I only wore one brand of shirt, um, and because they, it was, it fit my belly and it was long enough and like it wasn’t, wasn’t baggy around the top and didn’t hang off my belly like a muumuu. Melissa: Mm-hmm, Brett: And like, so I, I, I only wore this brand of shirt and I own like 15 of them, and I would just cycle through Melissa: dresses, they’re just your Walmart $10 cotton tank dress. Love it. Brett: Yeah. But now that I can tuck my shirts in and feel okay about it, I can buy those extra large nerd shirts, ones with funny slogans and stuff on them. And normally those would hang straight down off my belly, and I hate the way that looks. But now I can tuck those in, which means I can get back to wearing funny, [00:19:00] ironic T-shirts, and it, it’s like opening up a whole new world of possibilities Melissa: That is a bonus for mental health. Brett: every day now I put on my suspenders and it makes me happy. Um, Melissa: wonderful. It’s almost like a, like a mobility aid. Brett: Kinda, yeah. Melissa: yeah. Brett: of, I– So I, I have a monopod, um, like a tripod that folds up into a walking stick, and it’s nice and light and it is an adjustable height ’cause it’s designed to be used as a camera tripod. Um, and I’ve started walking with it Melissa: yeah. kinda like you’re Brett: I c- yeah. Yeah. Like one of my fat friends has s- literal like ski poles. They’re like half height ski poles and they walk with them and it helps them a ton, and I Melissa: Yeah, hikers use those. Brett: try that out. But a walking stick [00:20:00] really does help with my stenosis, but I can still, even with a stick, I can only walk for about five minutes, which is about .3, Melissa: Yeah. Brett: 3, .3 miles. Um, and then I have to stop and sit, and it’s been a real pain, literally. Mobility And Home Hacks Melissa: And is standing difficult, too? Brett: standing is worse than walking. Melissa: thing, yeah. Standing’s worse. Brett: Yeah. Like if I am in the kitchen and I’m at the stove cooking, before the onions start to brown, I have to sit Melissa: Yeah. Yep. Brett: Uh, so we now have a stool in our kitchen, Melissa: Do you have one in the shower? Brett: yes. Well, our shower, our shower has a nice, like the back of the tub is a seat. Melissa: Oh, okay. Yeah. Brett: I don’t know if this house was designed by old people or not, but, um, but it’s certainly everything is relatively [00:21:00] accessible in that way. Um, but the stool in the kitchen means I can cook dinner. Emptying the dishwasher is the worst for me. That just like bending over, picking stuff up, and then just moving back and forth, like the five feet across our kitchen. My– I, it takes me three stops, three rests to get a dishwasher emptied. Um, and then I’m kind of ruined after that. I hate it. And I hate that I Melissa: stress mat? Brett: What’s that? Oh, you mean Melissa: mat to stand on? Gotta get, gotta Brett: think that would help? Melissa: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have Brett: used to have one Melissa: and one in front of the kitchen, and I don’t even, I don’t even, do the cooking. Brett: Ha. I used to, I used to have one of those in front of the stove when I w- when I didn’t have pain, but just because I was really getting into cooking and I was spending a lot of time, and I was starting to feel it in my knees. Um, yeah, maybe I should do Melissa: I think it’s a fatigue [00:22:00] mat, I think they call it. Brett: Yeah. Melissa: Yeah, Brett: That sounds Melissa: plus they look cool if you get little designs on them and stuff. Yeah. Oh, we could spend the day talking about just mobility aids and ergonomics and all that kind of stuff. Melissa Health Update Brett: Well, it’s your turn. Talk about whatever you like. Melissa: Yeah, you give me some ideas to talk about. Um, yeah, I struggle with a lot of the same things that you do. Um, I’m always like kinda comparing notes every time you post something. I’m like, "Oh No, ‘Cause you talked about Have you … You haven’t started the injections yet, have you? Brett: No, and they just delayed those. I don’t get them until like June 20th or something. Melissa: nervous about those for you, because I’ve had those and I’ve decided to just swear off them, so I’ll just kinda give you just a heads-up. I mean, it does raise your blood sugar, so that’s not great, and, um, it can give you the roid rage, kinda make you angry, so that’s something to watch out for, and more weight gain, so …But it’s like one of those things where you just have to kinda try [00:23:00] it and see if it works, because if it does work, then you could be more mobile and then maybe drop a few pounds and get some of that weight off of your spine. But if it doesn’t work, just know that that can happen, Brett: my doctor did not mention any of those side effects, so good to Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s the chronic life, so that’s, that’s what, that’s what, uh, affects my mental health, so I’m, I’m really good at faking it. I am actually … I will say I’m actually feeling a little bit more even. ADHD Meds And Mutations Melissa: I’m on, uh … I love when you talk about different prescriptions and stuff. Uh, I just mentioned, so I’m taking Adderall. That is, ugh, it’s a mixed bag. Um, I wanted to ask you about Vyvanse, cause that’s the next thing for me, but it’s, like, super expensive, so I’m trying to make Adderall work as best I can, but I’m, I’m in the process of playing with the dosage. But I think she told me, like, the highest was 30. The thing is, uh, I’ve had genetic testing done, and [00:24:00] I have this condit- not a condition, but it’s a I’m a mutant. It’s a genetic mutation called, it’s, it’s just initials. It’s MTHFR, lovingly known as Brett: you process your, your, chemicals twice as … fast. I have Melissa: Yes, faster processing in the liver. So that’s when she told me, ’cause she started, uh, me out on methylphenidate, and I was like, “Well, what about Adderall?” Because it, I see it work for my kids, you know? The kids are chip off the old block, right? And so I’ve had them tested too, and all three of us are positive for that. It’s lovelin- lovingly known as the motherfucker gene mutation. Um, yeah, so, and it is. It’s, it’s quite a bitch, um, ’cause it causes a whole bunch of other problems. And of course, we’ve talked about Ehlers-Danlos, so I have, uh, hypermobile Eh- Ehlers-Danlos. I’m having a hard time … I’m just having a hard time with that in general, mental health wise, because there’s just not enough awareness about it, enough people, and doctors, doctors and nurses. And you know, I’ll, I’ll say I wanna, I would love to be able to get [00:25:00] to a point where I can just say, “I have H-E-D-S,” or heads or what- however they’re gonna pronounce it, and, like, somebody know what that is when I go in for an appointment. But I still have to explain it, you know? And then that, that cuts into my time. ‘Cause they only … When you’re, when you’re our age, they only give you, like, 15 minutes, if that. When you’re much older, ’cause I’ve had to take, I’ve had to take family members to the doctor, they get a whole lot more time. But, uh, you know, it’s like, "Oh, you’re, you’re too young to be this sick. You’re too young to be this old," Brett: Right. Yeah. Curious Doctors Matter Brett: Um, I did– I found that doctor for me that knew exactly what all those acronyms meant, knew exactly, like, not only did they know what POTS was, they knew like seven different kinds of POTS and what tests to use to narrow it down. And then she got called up to National Guard Melissa: Oh, I wondered, I wondered, what happened to that doctor, ’cause it sounded so Brett: I waited. I was on a, I was on– I w- I had an appointment scheduled that was gonna be six months from the time she [00:26:00] left. Um, and I had it scheduled, and it was on July 7th. And then I got a letter in the mail saying that her Guard duty had been extended, and now I can’t see her again until September. And, like, I’ve, I’ve tried seeing other doctors that work with her, but none of them have the knowledge she has, and it was such a relief Melissa: Is this the curious one? Okay. I always think about you whenever I’m either looking for a provider or in the, in the midst of, of getting, you know, shuffled around to a new provider. I’m like, “I hope they’re curious,” ’cause that made– that meant so much to me when you explained about how a doctor needs to be curious. I’m like, “That’s what I need.” I need somebody… Or even just my therapist. I have a new, a new therapist that I see, and she’s really curious, and I really, really like that about her. That’s something that helps with mental health, is when somebody’s curious, ’cause I’m Brett: it goes h- it goes hand in hand with credulousness. Like, [00:27:00] first they have to be willing to believe you, and like, especially when it comes to invisible issues like EDS. Like, you have to be willing to believe a person and then be curious enough to look for answers. Like, the first step is believing, and the second step is curiosity. Melissa: Yes. I’ve already had my patient record marked as… Have you ever heard this one? Worried well. Brett: No. Melissa: I looked it up. It’s basically hypochondriac. Brett: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna guess. That Melissa: Yep. I actually– I was proud of myself because I actually did confront the doctor about it and I said, “What does this mean?” I said, “I, I looked it up and it kinda concerns me ’cause it makes me look like a hypochondriac.” And she said, "Oh, no, no, that’s just a, a code that we use when we don’t have something else to assign to it so that insurance will pay." Bullshit. Brett: Yeah, right? I feel like that’s exactly the kind of [00:28:00] thing insurance doesn’t pay. Melissa: Mm-hmm. so Vyvanse Vs Adderall Brett: what do you wanna know about Vyvanse? Melissa: Um, a- and I know it’s different for everybody, but I just kinda wondered what your take was on it. Um, how– can you compare it to Adderall at all for me, Brett: Yeah. Melissa: no comparison? Brett: it’s basically a non-abusable, I would call it lower lying version of, of Adderall. Like, it’s in the same family of stimulant as Adderall, but it can’t– It isn’t processed or it’s… I don’t remember how the mechanics of it work, but you can’t snort it basically. Like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t do anything Melissa: Which I wouldn’t wanna do anyway ’cause there’s nothing up here. Brett: Sure. Sure. And then, yeah, I’m not suggesting that was gonna be a problem for you. Um, but it’s also, like, it’s way, um, for me anyway, it’s way calmer. [00:29:00] Um, and there are people that say it doesn’t do anything at all. Um, especially a lot of people, a lot of people say the generic version doesn’t do anything, um, and that the name brand version does, but I haven’t found that to be true. Like the generic, which you’re correct, still costs like 200 bucks a month, um, for the generic. Um, but it is– It’s not my favorite. Melissa: I wondered why– what made you stop taking it. Did it just not work for you? Brett: No, I still take Vyvanse. Um, yeah. Um, I used to take, um, Focalin, which I loved. Melissa: That really worked for my kiddo, yep. Brett: but it also triggered my mania, Melissa: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Brett: so I was always walking this line of like, do I wanna be super productive and manic with like weeks of depression in between, [00:30:00] or do I just wanna be somewhat productive and stable? Um, which is why I’ve stuck with Vyvanse, and my doctor loves it enough for me that she won’t, she won’t prescribe anything else for me at this point. Like, I’ve asked about switching. I’ve asked about moving back to Adderall and things like that, but, Melissa: It seems like you’re, like you’re kinda on an evening out. Brett: Yeah, I haven’t had a manic episode for a couple years now. Tracking Mood With Data Melissa: Do you track it? Do you– Like, have you ever seen those– I keep seeing these ads for it ’cause, you know, the algorithm feeds us the stuff for wearables that are, um, called– I think it’s called Visible, so it makes your symptoms more visible instead of invisible. Like, do you track it? Do you Have you nerded out on your own data? Brett: like my mania and depression? Melissa: Yeah, like do you track it and look at graphs or anything like that to Brett: See, I’ve never had to use an external tool because I can just look at GitHub contribution graphs, and I can look at [00:31:00] my RSS feed, and I can see exactly, like for a period of like eight years, I can pinpoint exactly where my manic episodes were, um, because that data is historically preserved out there on the internet for all to see. Um, it’s, yeah, it’s– Well, and that’s, like I built tools that gathered that, those various sources of data. Um, and then there was a, a tool called, um, I forget. Melissa: cool, though? Hmm. We’ll think Brett: But it could pull, it could pull in all that data. Um, Bell Beth Cooper, Hello Code, I can’t remember the name of the app. Melissa: Yeah, it’ll come to you eventually. Brett: sure. Uh, but it could pull in like your GitHub, uh, commits along with like what the weather was at the time, how many songs you listened to that Melissa: Oh, day one sorta does that, yeah. Brett: Does it now? Melissa: A little bit, yeah, your locations, [00:32:00] um, if you turn on some of those things. Like not– I don’t think it does the music and things like that, but Brett: I haven’t used it for a while. I haven’t used it for a Melissa: I was gonna switch to the journal app. I was actually really… I held off on upgrading to Tahoe for the longest time, but that one kept nagging at me ’cause I thought, oh, you know, maybe. I mean, as much as I love Day One, I, I thought about, I thought about actually switching over, but no. I tried it. I’m, I’m gonna stick with Day One. Brett: Cool. All right. Cane And Somatic Therapy Brett: Um, so did you have, did you have more to add to your Melissa: Oh, I was gonna, I was gonna add on to what you were talking about with the suspenders. I did start… I think you probably… Well, yeah, you commented on it. Um, I started using a cane, and that I have mixed feelings about that. Um, I should have brought it in here so I could show you. I’ll show you later, ’cause, uh, anyway, it’s, it’s purple. I did get a pimp cane. That’s what my husband calls it. I thought, damn it, if I’m gonna use, like, a cane, then it’s gonna be [00:33:00] purple, and I’m gonna like looking at it, as much as I hate to use it, so. So I’ve been trying to use it. I… What you were talking about with, uh, with finding a curious doctor, I do have new physical therapist, um, so I’m really happy about that. Same kind of thing where she’s super booked. I think that’s just how it is. Like, the really good ones, they’re good, and, you know, it shows because it’s, it’s hard to get in to see them. So yeah. So I’m, I’m looking forward to that. We’re gonna be doing… Have you heard of somatic therapy? Brett: Yeah. Melissa: Yeah. So ha- have you tried it? Do, do you like it? Okay. That’s, that’s what I’m embarking on. Brett: I actually have a friend who teaches classes in it. Melissa: Oh, Al probably knows about that. Brett: y- yeah, Melissa: Yeah, I’ll, I’ll Brett: and it is, it is amazing how hard just doing things, doing motions you’re used to, but doing them very slowly and intentionally. It is like you– Just like, Just like, doing y- like a clamshell where you drop your knee, you’re [00:34:00] on your back and you drop your knee down to the side and bring it back up. Like that motion, most of us, even infirmed people can do that okay. You try to take… You try to do that and take like five breaths in each direction, and you’ll start shaking. It’s very Melissa: Ah, uh-huh. Yep. Brett: Yeah, but it’s good. Like it’s g- it really retrains your muscles. It really, it strengthens, retrains, and helps with, uh, finer motor control. Melissa: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah, I, I’m, I’m a little bit on the skeptical end of it, so that’s why I’m, I’m glad that, that you, you vouch for it too. It’s like I know that it works, but I just… I guess I wanna understand the science of it a little bit more. Like, for example, I’ve tried, uh, acupuncture, and I just didn’t feel like it did, did anything for me. I think you have to be, like, a believer, and I just Brett: think so. Melissa: I, I, I even did that on purpose knowing that I kinda felt like it wasn’t gonna work. I was like, well, what if I just go into this? ‘Cause, [00:35:00] ’cause I talk to people and they’re like, "Well, you have to believe in it." I’m like, but what if I don’t? I just don’t, you know? I’m, I see it Brett: it’s not medicine if you have to believe in it. Melissa: Yeah. I mean, I see it work for other people. I know there’s, you know, such a thing as placebos and things like that, and I don’t know, it’s, it’s woo-woo and I, I, I like woo-woo stuff. I, it just, it didn’t do anything for me, so… It’s not to say that it doesn’t work for other people, but it just did not work for me, and I, I kind of, I, maybe I just, uh, did that on purpose when I, I try- probably just tripped myself up going into it thinking, well, I just don’t believe it, so if it works, then there must be science behind it. And then, then, I’ll believe. But it didn’t work out, so. So the, I’m a little bit on the fence about the somatic thing, but the, the, the gal that I’m working with is just so, she has EDS herself, and like, like what you were saying, like, she, she knows all about it and she could even, you know, tell me the, the type that she has, and I was like, I met, I met, actually last week I met two zebras in one week. [00:36:00] You, you’re familiar with the, the zebra mascot? If you, uh, the saying goes, if you hear hooves, think horses. But we’re not horses, are we? Yeah, so Yeah, so that’s, that’s our, our Somatics For EDS Melissa: EDS Brett: somatic– somatics you don’t have to believe in for them to work. Melissa: Okay, that is Brett: it’s an actual physical therapy method that trains the finer muscles, um, that surround your larger muscles and, and strengthens those, and it– Yeah, it’s for real. It’s, yeah, it’s not like a… It’s soma- I think, Melissa: w- totally Brett: ’cause I I had the same reaction when someone said somatics, ’cause I think, “Oh, that’s some holistic idea of the body, um, of soma,” and it’s… No, it’s, it’s got legit physical therapy behind it. Melissa: And, Yoga Modifications Melissa: you used to do a lot of yoga too, so that probably makes Brett: I still do. Melissa: Yeah? That’s [00:37:00] wonderful. Brett: it’s gotten really hard. Um, I can’t, I can’t– So I get dizzy Melissa: Yeah. Brett: going from sitting to standing, um, and my back gives out if I am in, like, horse or warrior two for more than a couple minutes. Um, and I can’t do cobras because I have a belly like a nine-month pregnancy. Um, so I have to do, like, prenatal yoga, um, which is actually a thing. Melissa: that’s a good idea. I’m glad you brought that up. I should look Brett: a- and I do chair yoga, um, where I I take the class that everyone else takes, but I modify it to work with… Like, there, there are defined moves that you do with a chair instead of. Instead of doing down dog, you do, like, a 90-degree down dog holding the back of a chair. Um, and you put, like, a knee on the chair to do warrior two, so you’re actually [00:38:00] resting. And Um, and you can do it fully seated too and get at least the arm exercises out of it. So I’ve been trying to maintain, maintain flexibility and some endurance. I’m not doing yoga the way I used to do it, but I am still Melissa: I’ve seen some of your poses. It’s pretty impressive. Brett: Yeah, back in the day. Melissa: W- when you could be upside down. Polycystic Liver Shock Melissa: I should look into that because I, you know, although I’m done having babies, like far done having babies, I have… You probably know about this too, I have polycystic liver disease, which is a really rare type of liver disease, and it’s not fatty liver. Oh my God, I have to keep telling doctors that. That’s the other thing. It’s like, it is not fatty liver. It is not. It- they’re cysts. It’s a totally different thing. I’m basically full of bubbles. So I… But it feels like that’s why I went in to get it. I didn’t actually get that checked. I found it accidentally when I went in for an heart, for a heart CT. That’s when they found it, and for a, a breast MRI, so [00:39:00] both those, those types of scans caught it. The other parts were fine, so my heart’s fine, so that’s a relief. But yeah, so this was a bit of a shock. And so I don’t know exactly what it means moving forward, um, but my entire liver is, like, engulfed in cysts, so. Right? But my blood work is, is fantastic right now, so I’m just gonna keep Brett: That’s good. Melissa: hoping it stays that way. Brett: That’s something. Fatphobia In Healthcare Brett: Um, I I have heard for a long time about, um, doctors being fatphobic and, and always assuming that, um, always assuming that your health i-issue is because you’re fat and not even looking for underlying issues, which has been an interesting experience for me because that really never happened to me. Melissa: Mm. Brett: Um, at least not once I switched to Gundersen from, like, a local clinic. Then I realized that it’s not just being fat that gets you [00:40:00] stigmatized, it’s being a fat woman. Melissa: Mm, I was gonna say try having a uterus and being Brett: yeah. Yeah. Um, like I talked to one of my best friends, April, who he’s, has been on Melissa: by, women doctors. Brett: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s what April tells me. She tells me all these horror stories. Even after finding care she trusted, she still has to deal with people saying, “Well, if you just lost some weight.” Like, she’s been fat her whole life. She’s in better shape than most skinny people Melissa: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Brett: I mean, she does sit-ups with 50-pound plates and does, like, five, 10 miles at a time on her, like, on her bike and, like, she’s in great shape and still has to walk with the ski poles, and she’s getting her second knee replaced this week. And, like, it, it’s just infuriating to hear the way that doctors dismiss Melissa: You know what the problem is, Brett? Brett: goes through [00:41:00] when Pole Dancing Reality Check Melissa: Not enough doctors have watched fat pole dancers. That is the problem right there. They need more education. Brett: Um, yeah. There’s, there are a couple of, um, queer burlesque shows Melissa: shows, yes. Brett: in my area that almost always include a plus-size pole dance, and it is amazing to Melissa: Oh, it’s mesmerizing. It should be an Olympic sport. Remind me to send you the, the link to, unless you’ve already seen it, have you seen the Deadpool pole dancer? Brett: No, I don’t think Melissa: you are in for a treat. We might just have to put that in the show notes, but I don’t know, I don’t know if your listeners are that, are into that It’s fully clothed, but it’s, there’s even blue Crocs involved. Brett: So this is nobody that you’re seeing on the Melissa: I wondered, yep. I wondered, yeah. Aw, he looks so soft. Mm. Mechanical Keyboard ASMR Brett: So you’ve [00:42:00] gotten really into mechanical keyboards. Melissa: have, I have. In fact, uh, I was gonna, I was gonna see how this might sound, but I, I brought my little box of key caps to show you so that I could say, welcome to my ASMR channel. Brett: That would… is is that a thing? I bet there are ASMR, like, key switch testing. Melissa: yeah, yeah. I’ve run across a couple of videos where, you know, they’ll have a hashtag ASMR in there, and that’s, that’s what it is. Do you experience ASMR yourself? Brett: No. Melissa: No? So when you listen to those videos you don’t get like the s- the tickling of the spine and stuff? Brett: No. Melissa: I do. It actually, it goes, it… I forget. I always forget what the acronym stands for, but it, you know, has something to do with the meridian. So if you can i- imagine your brain like split in half, and I feel it right on this side. It goes, it goes like the, down the back of my head, behind my ear, and down into my shoulder. It [00:43:00] is the funkiest feeling, and I love it. I love it so much. Even when we were talking about animals in the, in the beginning and I even had a cat that would come and just like kind of lick my ear and, oh, I just, I love that. Most people cannot stand that sound. They have the opposite condition where they can’t handle somebody chewing gum. My grandfather had that. Um, some, some kinda, it ends in a tonia. Misatonia or something like that, um, where… I don’t know. Do you have any of those like sound sensory issues? I have a lot of Brett: really don’t. I’m very, I’m very, like, sound Like, I like loud, heavy music. Like, that does something for my psyche. Um, but general sounds, they neither bo-bother me nor stimulate me. Melissa: imagine what that’s like. I just can’t. I’m So bothered, and my kids too, and you know, ugh, God, Brett: So El Melissa: has been problematic. Brett: El is, El is, definitely sensitive to sound, um, in a way that Like, even my [00:44:00] mechanical keyboards can’t be, can’t be on the same floor of the house as Elle. We pretty much live in silence, and that’s fine for me most of the time because, like, it just doesn’t affect me either way. So, like, keeping things quiet is easy, and I focus well in silence. And then when Elle’s gone, I blast my music, and w- when I’m in the car, I blast my music, and then the rest of the time I live in the quiet place. Melissa: Mm-hmm. In The Quiet Place. Brett: Yeah. Melissa: Yeah, we have- something a little similar, but m- my husband and I have, uh… We have our his and hers kind of setup here in, in the, in our den, in our inner study. So he’s got his side and I’ve got my side. So we’re together, and he does a lot of grading papers, and he’s really good about putting his, his earbuds in and just tuning the whole world out. He’s… It’s fascinating to watch that man just [00:45:00] execute. I mean, I just am so envious of people who can just execute. But the, the, the, yeah, the sensory, it’s all about the sensory stuff for me when it comes to keyboards. I actually thought about… I don’t know how popular it would be, but I also thought about making a podcast, a video podcast, that would highlight the intersection of nail art and mechanical keyboards. Because I’ll tell you, that’s actually what… I’ve always loved mechanical keyboards, but yeah, the, the one that I had, someone had given me a, a Matias, and oh, it’s, it’s so loud, but it’s like high-pitched. It’s kinda sharp. And it was even kind of annoying to me after a while. And then it does not, it’s not a mechanical keyboard in that you can’t pull the switches out, so you’re kinda stuck with what you got. Like, you might be able to change the key caps if you could find them, but couldn’t change the switches. And something happened to the S key, and I was like, “All right, it’s over,” so. But I can’t get rid of them either, so one of these days I wanna have like a display of, of keyboards. [00:46:00] Nail Art And Picking Melissa: But what got me, what got me into saying, “Okay, I’m finally, I’m just gonna invest in a keyboard because it’s ergonomically important to me,” is I have… And I can’t pronounce it, so I’m not even gonna try, but there’s a condition, and it’s a self-diagnosed thing. But I, I am a picker. I pick my skin a lot. Um, I think it’s called derma something Anyway, so I wasn’t gonna try to pronounce it. But, uh, I’ve always had that condition since I was a kid. I didn’t even know it was a thing. I just thought everybody get, uh, picks. But then during the pande- during the pandemic, it got super bad. Like, I had, I had, um, some panic attacks and, you know, as a lot of probab- people probably did. But it got so bad to the point where I had picked my fingers and they were bleeding and they were throbbing and they were hurting. And I said to one of my kids, I said to my youngest, I said, “Can you just, like, if I, if I’m picking, can you just let me know?” And then I regretted doing that because then he took it on as this, like, full-time job, you know? And it kinda [00:47:00] gave him anxiety, and I thought, “Oh, okay, that, that was a bad thing to do.” So I s- I let him off the hook. I said, “No, you don’t have to tell me anymore.” Um, because, yeah, ev- even if I went to, like, just kinda, like, clean under my nail or something. So it was actually causing a real problem for the family that I was just picking so much. And it’s not just my fingers, it’s, like, other parts of my body. So I thought to myself, “Well, what can I do about this?” And so I started putting fake nail tips on. And I hate to be all, like… I don’t know, I’m not, I try not to be, like, a very vain person, but I really started kinda falling into the nail art side of things, and I, I just recently learned how to do gel and work with, um, uh, what’s it called? Uh, not resin. So I… Oh, that’s another ASMR thing. Do you like to watch resin pours? Brett: I do, actually, yes. Melissa: that’s… Okay, so if you like resin pours, if you like to watch the viscosity and the way the, the chemicals, like, form together and when they, when they mix colors in and stuff, [00:48:00] that’s what it’s like with nail art but on more of, like, a macro level because it’s, you know, you’re working with small stuff. Like, just, just recently I learned how to do… So I’m showing Brett this on, on camera, but I recently learned how to do the kind of nail polish that you take a magnet and you run the magnet along it, and it makes this, like, a cat’s eye. Brett: Yeah, that’s cool. Melissa: I love it. So, so that, so combining nail art then, and I thought, “Well, now I’ve got these long nails,” but all of my keyboards have been these flat, really low-profile keyboards. And, you know, I just, I started to dread it. So then I was kinda caught between a crossroads. Like, either I leave nails off and I can type really, really fast and have high accuracy with no nails, but then as soon as, as soon as I get, like, a little snag or something, then I start picking and then it’s just, it’s all over then. Or I try to find a way to work with these nails. So that’s what I started thinking, “Well, maybe if I had higher keys.” And so then I just, yeah, rabbit hole. [00:49:00] Went down the rabbit hole, and I’ve, I’ve just kinda been there ever since. And, uh, it really, I think, uh… Let’s see. How long ago did this start? It’s only been about maybe like six months or something like that, so. Keyboard Layout Rabbit Hole Melissa: But in that time so I’ve started, um, building a collection of switches. So I’ve been really interested in both the key caps and the switches. Um, I’ve got my baseboards. I like my Royal Kludge the best. This is… I’m gonna show Brett my Royal Kludge. So, so this is what it’s looking like right now. Brett: Yeah. Melissa: It is very purpley. Um, I did post some pictures. I can… I don’t know if you do pictures in show notes, but I could take some pictures for you It’s got a knob. It’s got, um… Let me see if I can do it real Brett: Do you use the knob. I have a couple keyboards with knobs and even a joystick, and I never actually use them Melissa: Good question. Um, I, I use it, I try to use it for volume at [00:50:00] times, and that’s probably what I use it for the most. But this one does have a… Let’s see if I can get this into focus here, backwards and upside down. It’s gonna be upside down, but you see how you can put, you can put your logo Brett: Oh, yeah. Nice. Melissa: got my The Mac Mommy little logo on there. Otherwise, it gives you the time in military format, so that’s kind of handy to have. Um, but yeah, it’s… To be honest, I, I love the, I love this Royal Kludge because it’s nice and heavy, and I love the form factor. It’s got a number pad, um, because I’m, because I am a grown-ass adult and I need a number pad. Um, but it’s nice and heavy. It doesn’t, it doesn’t move around my desk a lot. I kind of have to type, like, kind of crooked, ’cause that’s just the way my neck goes to the wrong way and stuff like that. So I like being able to fit it on my desk. I have a, I had a larger one made by Red, uh, what is it? Redragon. This is the one that I started [00:51:00] out with. Gonna make lots of noise here. But as you can see, this one is way bigger. And it was, as much as I liked it, I mean, I fell in love with it, but what was happening was my accuracy was, like, really thrown off because I fe- I kept feeling like it just needs to be, like, a couple centimeters to the right or a couple centimeters to the left. It just wasn’t centered very well. So this one, my husband gets all the hand-me-downs, so that one went over onto his desk. Uh, and then I also have a baby keyboard here, and this is another Redragon. This is my little mini one. Brett: that’s, that’s the kind of keyboard I mostly use, like a 70% keyboard. Melissa: Yeah, I think this one’s even 60. Um… Brett: My– The one I’m using right now is, uh, 60. There’s no, there’s no function row, there’s no arrow, there’s no keypad or, like, arrow pad. Um, Melissa: No [00:52:00] arrows? How do you live without arrows? Oh, do you, you mapped your keys to something Brett: so it looks like this, Melissa: nice. I love the Brett: that the, the space bar is split in two. Yeah, my, my, my partner says it looks like, uh, gay ’80s. It’s all pink and blue and purple. Um, but the, the space bar is split, and the right half of mine functions as something called a mod key, and when I hold that down, then my I, J, K, and L keys become arrow keys. Melissa: Oh, wow. Brett: once you get used to it, you never have to take your hand off the home row. Melissa: Oh my God, that must be amazing. Brett: It– Yeah, once you get used to it, it, it’s so… Like, g- moving to a keyboard that doesn’t have that is kind of tortuous. On my MacBook Pro, I have remapped it using Karabiner so that Melissa: [00:53:00] That’s what I’m using. Brett: if I hold, the semicolon down with my pinky, then H-I-J-K-L become, Melissa: Oh, nice. Brett: become arrow keys, so I still don’t have to move my hand all the way down and to the right. Like, that’s such a inefficient movement that then I have to, like… Because I don’t have great feeling in my fingers, so finding, on a low-profile keyboard, finding the, the homing buttons again Melissa: Oh, do you use the humming buttons? See, that’s the thing, I was never taught that. I mean, I took like a ty- I took like a typewriting class back in high school, and I just didn’t like it. I, I just taught myself. I just… I’m an autodidact that way, so I just taught myself. Brett: my dad, back in 1984, we had a typing program on our PCjr, and I Melissa: It wasn’t Mavis Beacon, was it? Brett: remember. I don’t remember. All I know is, like, It taught you touch typing, and it would give you [00:54:00] these lessons, and you would basically just mirror what was on screen. And at the age of seven, I was typing at about 68 words per minute on an, on an old IBM PCjr keyboard. Um, got a lot faster through high school and everything. But yeah, I was, I was, from day one, I was raised to be a touch typist, and, and I took all the classes they had in school. Melissa: But you still touch Brett: labs. Yeah. Melissa: Uh-huh, yeah. So you don’t do the home rows. Brett: No, that is touch Melissa: Oh, touch typing, so you do feel… for the bumps. Brett: Yeah, I feel for the bumps, and then I just, like, my f- my key, my fingers never really leave the Melissa: Oh, yeah. See, I wish I could do Brett: centered home row. Yeah. It’s, it, it’s good. Um, Melissa: And you’re using the split, so my gosh. Brett: What– You get used to that too. Um, like, [00:55:00] I can’t do it with the split far apart. I’ve seen people use, like, splits, like, way out to the sides, and I can’t, my, my brain doesn’t do that. Like, my hands have to be within, like, six inches of each other. Melissa: I always thought, it would be so cool to have something where you could have it, like, raised up like this, right? And use your hands sideways. Brett: Yeah. Well, that’s I mean, that’s essentially, I have, on the bottom of this keyboard, I have these risers. Melissa: Oh, uh-huh. Oh, Brett: So it sits, right now I have it at about a 45-degree tent, tent, tent. Um, but it can go up to more like an 80-degree tent, where you’re actually Melissa: Wow. Brett: uh, almost like you’re clapping, you’re typing. Um, I don’t Melissa: of that. I have a, a, handshake mouse. Brett: Vertical mouse. Melissa: You like… Is that what you have for a mouse too? Brett: no, I, I love Melissa: Trackballs. Oh, trackpads. Oh, okay. Brett: Apple’s Magic Trackpad changed my life. I’ve never used– I’ve never gone back to a [00:56:00] mouse since the first Magic Trackpad came out. Melissa: So you’re all about the gestures then? Brett: yeah, Melissa: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s great. Brett: Bet- bet- better touch tool for the win. Melissa: You know what it is for me, is because of the type of work that I do, and this is very much true for both of us, you do these things because of the type of work that you do. The type of work that I do, I’m in everybody’s homes, so I have to ty- I have to be able to type and use their mouse and, I mean, it’s actually a very dirty job. So I keep hand wipes with me everywhere. Um, that, that was why during the pandemic I was like, “I am not coming to your house and I am not touching the stuff that you just picked your nose and…” Yeah, mm-mm. But, so, so i- it’s been kind of keeping me almost like a purist in a way as far as keyboards have gone all these years. I, I finally just kind of let go and embraced this recently, th- which is why I’m so excited and why I’m just kind of nerding out on it, because when, when I worked [00:57:00] in, like, I’ll call it the industry, um, I got my f- my start in prepress. So I worked in prepress, I was a typesetter, and we had… That’s what I kind of miss. We had the old clunky beige keyboards, and I had my muscle memory such that I think my o- my Option key would have, like, the indentation of my nail on it. You know? ‘Cause I had, just like you have, keys that are programmed. I could… I was a Quark queen. I don’t know if you’re familiar with QuarkXPress? Brett: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was a graphic designer. I I know Quark. Melissa: Yeah, I loved it. I was… And, and I used it back in the OS 9 days, OS 7 really, is when I started out. Uh, I did not like the OS X vers- OS 10 version of Quark. Did not like it at all. Brett: No, but that’s Melissa: it was slow. Brett: Adobe came out with, what was, what was Adobe’s… InDesign. Yeah. By the time I had started, by the time I had started my own ad agency, we were all InDesign. Melissa: Oh, [00:58:00] nice. Okay. I mean, it was a Brett: and none of the, none of the print shops expected Quark files Melissa: Yeah. Oh, it was so expensive. I remember I had to buy it when I was in college, and I remember it cost, like, $800. I’m probably still paying for that, damn it, in interest. Yeah, so that, that’s how I got my start originally, and that’s how I was doing… I, I went to… So I have, I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts. I went to college in order to be a designer. I wanted to be a designer designer, and that’s what I, what I thought I was good at and thought that I liked doing, ’cause, you know, “Oh, you’re a girl. Go to art school. You like to draw.” You know? I’m always bitter about that because I really wish that I would’ve been able to go… I mean, this was, you know… I’m, I’m 51, so this was back in the day where girls, girls don’t do computers and girls don’t do coding. G- girls don’t do computer science. They didn’t even call it computer science. They didn’t even call it graphic design back then. It was commercial art. Um, so I studied that and, you know, I liked it ’cause I thought, “Well, this is what I could, I could take my art and make [00:59:00] a living into it.” And then fast-forward, um, I just started to fall in love with the technical troubleshooting side of things. So as, as good as I was at the technical typesetting and the technical, like, putting prepress things together, you know, um, uh, key sheets and s- you know, things like that. Do you remember, was there, uh, did you ever use a program called Quick Keys? That was one of the ones Brett: familiar. Melissa: you could map your own keys to things. So w- when I was in prepress and doing typesetting, I used that program and I, I mapped all my keys, and I had all these quick keys and stuff so I could go really, really fast, you know? So when they wanted something done fast, they gave it to me, and I could just fly through documents with this. But then as people learned that I was good at this kind of stuff and troubleshooting, they’re like, “Oh, hey, Roger needs, you know, has a problem. Can you go help him?” So I’d go over to his cubicle, I sit down, and he’s got nothing. You know, he’s got [01:00:00] no quick keys, no nothing, and you just kinda get lost because your muscle memory just adapts to it. And I couldn’t help people the way… And, and that was what it was about for me. I really liked more helping people and troubleshooting and the technology side of things than the actual design process. So I kind of went to the other side with it. And so I just kind of, like, vowed that, okay, I’m not gonna do any kind of, like, customization on my own workstation because then I’ll, my, my muscle memory will map to it, and then when I go to sit down to help somebody else, I won’t… You know, I’ll be so much in my own world that I won’t be able to help them. And so I just kind of, like, remained a, a pu

In this week's episode, we take a look at eight common ebook formatting errors and how to correct them. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Ghost Exile: Omnibus One at my Payhip store: EXILE25 The coupon code is valid through April 6, 2026. So if you need a new ebook this winter, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 296 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 27th, 2026 and today we are looking at eight ebook formatting problems that readers hate and how to fix them. Before we get into our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. So let's start off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook of Ghost Exile: Omnibus One at my Payhip store. That coupon code is EXILE25. And as always, you can get the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store in the show notes. This coupon code will be valid through April 6th, 2026. So if you need a new ebook as we leave winter and head into spring, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. As of this recording, I am currently 97,000 words into Blade of Wraiths, and I'm hoping to get to the 100,000 word mark by the end of today. You will note that if you read the first three books in the series, this will make it longer than the first three by good bit, which is part of the reason why it's taking so long. I was hoping to have it published by now, to be honest, but between the length and the variety of things I've had to do in real life before I can get to writing have slowed me down a bit. I have made progress and I am hoping to finish the rough draft before the 31st, if all goes well. Then it will be time to write a tie-in short story that newsletter subscribers will get for free when Blade of Wraiths is published, and then on to editing. So I'm hoping to have the book out in the second half of April, if all goes well and the creek doesn't rise, so to speak. I'm also 12,000 words into Dragon Mage, which will be the sixth book in the Rivah Half-Elven Thief series. I'm hoping that will be out in May because that will become the main project once Blade of Wraiths is finished. In audiobook news, as I mentioned before, recording of Blade of Storms (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is complete. I think as of right now, you can get it at my Payhip store, Google Play, and Kobo. Audible, Amazon, Apple, and a few of the other major stores should hopefully be coming along before too much longer. Recording is done on Wizard Assassin, which you may recall is the fifth book in the Rivah series, and that is narrated by Leanne Woodward. We just have to proof that, and then it'll be time to submit it for processing at the stores. So hopefully you'll be able to get your hands on that before too much longer. I believe next week, Hollis McCarthy will start recording on Cloak of Illusion, the 12th book in the Cloak Mage series. Since a few people have asked about this, I thought I'd mentioned here there will be a Cloak Mage: Omnibus Four in audio that will combine Cloak of Embers, Cloak of Titans, and Cloak of Illusion. I will probably start working on that one month after Cloak of Illusion comes out in audio. So that will probably be along sometime this summer, if all goes well. So that's where I'm at on my current writing, publishing, and audiobook projects. We've got good things coming up for you soon. 00:03:18 Main Topic: ebook Formatting That Readers Hate Now let's move on to our main topic this week, and it's something I have quite a bit of experience with, I have to say, is ebook formatting that readers hate. Today, we're going to talk about issues with ebook formatting, a topic that people have very strong opinions about. I am going to talk about eight issues in particular and then discuss how we can fix or prevent or best of all, avoid them. First of all, what do we mean by ebook formatting? Formatting is the term to describe the layout, text, and images of the book. Back in the print book days, this was a complicated but fairly fixed thing. In the very old days, you would have to lay it out the books manually. A few decades ago, they had programs like QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign where you could use these software applications to prepare finished files for sending to the printer to be printed as books. But nowadays, in an age where books are electronic files read on dozens of possible devices and apps, it's much more difficult to predict every possible thing that can go wrong with formatting. For example, with a print book in the old days, you would set the layout, and that is the way the layout would look. Every single book (ideally) printed would look the same. But in the modern age, if you have an ebook, it could be read on a Kindle, a Kindle Color, the Kindle app on the phone, a Barnes and Noble Nook, a Google tablet, on Apple iBooks on an iPod, on Apple iBooks on an iPhone, on the Kindle app on an iPhone. There are literally dozens of different potential combinations where an ebook file could be read and therefore dozens of different potential complications that can arise for ebook formatting. If there are formatting problems, readers will not be able to understand or even physically be able to read the text at worst, and more likely will be deeply annoyed by the issues that feel like road bumps such as extra line breaks and will express their displeasure in reviews. There are also an abundance of ebooks out there that are hastily converted from PDF or Word docs that make for an extremely difficult reading experience. Many of the problems we're going to talk about today arise from when that happens, including the first several. So with that in mind, here are eight ebook formatting errors to avoid and how to deal with them. #1: Illustrations, charts, and maps. Some of the most common issues are that these aren't legible in grayscale (like an e-ink reader, like the Kindle or the various Kobo devices) or have too small fonts or a poor quality or low resolution. This is a very common problem, and it's kind of a problem across all ebooks. Like for example, think of the map of Middle Earth from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's a very complicated map with a lot of different names on it. Now imagine trying to read that map on a six inch black and white Kindle screen. You probably aren't going to be able to do it very well. People using dark mode are most likely going to have problems with seeing images in the same way. So if you have an image heavy book, it's a good idea to test that. So how to fix this? What I've done myself, because I write a lot of fantasy novels and fantasy novels traditionally need maps, is I will put the full color maps on my website and then in the author's note at the beginning, say a map of Owyllain or a map of Andomhaim is available at the author's website on this link. I had a few people ask if I could put the maps in the books and the nearest thing I've done is including the maps with some of the direct sales of my Payhip store. I think the system works very well because those map pages are consistently some of the most visited pages on my website. And to be honest, it would be a lot easier to look at the map on, for example, your tablet or your computer instead of on your phone when you're trying to use the e-reader application. And even if you are looking at the map on my website on your phone, you can pinch zoom in the browser in the way you probably can't in the ebook reader. So that is the quick and easy solution for it. For more image intensive books like textbooks, for example, you just have to take great care and make sure they use large, high resolution images that aren't going to get pixelated. It may be a good idea to set up a website that has these images that the readers can refer to. This would be a bit of extra expense and work, obviously, but it would go a long way to making your readers happy, like I have done with the maps on my website. #2: Paragraphs that aren't indented or unneeded spaces between indented paragraphs. This is one of the biggest pet peeves that people have when reading ebooks. Indented paragraphs are important and if they're properly indented, then space isn't needed between the paragraphs and this will look odd to readers. This was in fact a problem I did have the first couple of years of my ebook publishing career because I used Sigil for my primary ebook formatting and that is the default way Sigil renders ebooks. In time, I started to switch to using Vellum for ebook formatting and that solved the problem. So what I did at that point was I just went through all my entire library, reformatted the ebooks in Vellum, and then re-uploaded them to the various ebook store platforms and that took care of the problem. And that's what I've been doing ever since. I've been using Vellum for ebook formatting since at least 2018 at this point, I think. So how to fix? The easiest way to fix this is to spend a little money on a tool like a Vellum or Atticus or a similar program that does ebook formatting for you because that will make sure your paragraphs are indented properly and then you can spot check as well to make sure that the table of contents is working and the chapters are working and that the paragraphs are being indented properly. #3: Our third issue is hard to read fonts. Some people enjoy fonts that are very stylized, but let's be honest, most readers don't. It's also an accessibility issue if the serifs or the flourishes are too elaborate. How to fix? Honestly, the easiest way is to not use custom fonts for your book unless you have a really, really, really and I emphasize really good reason to do so because part of the appeal of ebooks and ereaders is that you can adjust the font size to whatever you want, which is also particularly important as people get older and it becomes harder to read small print. So if you have a font that is inherently difficult to read in your book, that is going to be a serious, serious speed bump to readers enjoying the book. So my advice for custom fonts is avoid if possible, and even if not possible, still try to avoid. #4: Our fourth issue is basically the same as the third issue, except worse. Font sizes that can't be changed/hard coded text size. A bad font choice is made much worse if the ebook is hard coded to a certain font. This can happen if you use certain exporting tools to export your print book layout into an ebook layout, and sometimes the font size carries over with that. People have strong feelings about fonts and some are more accessible than others, so it's very important not to do this. So how to fix this problem? Don't do it to begin with. It's bad and people will be mad at you. Do not hard set the font size in your ebook, and if you do it by accident, fix it if at all possible. That is my advice in this situation. #5: A fifth potential ebook formatting issue is random hyphens in the middle of words that shouldn't be there. Random hyphens in the middle of words can happen if you convert a book from a PDF file to an EPUB file, and this means it's a very preventable formatting issue. The best way to avoid this is not to upload a PDF file or a Word file to Kindle Direct Publishing and the other ebook platforms, because while they do have automated tools for converting a PDF and a Word document to an EPUB, there's often weird formatting glitches that pop up like the random hyphenations. The best way to avoid this is to use a proper tool to format your ebook like Vellum, Atticus, maybe Scrivener, maybe Kindle Create. So that is the best way to do that by preparing your own EPUB file and uploading that directly. #6: A sixth issue is footnotes or bibliography or endnotes that don't link back to the original page. This also really annoys people. Footnotes and other links within books either need to be popups or linked back to the original page otherwise, readers will be deeply annoyed trying to return to their place each time and even fewer people will read them. And the best way to fix this is to make sure you have set up the footnotes, bibliography, or endnotes properly in a formatting program so that the links work. If you try to do this using a PDF or Word document you upload to the ebook platforms, it's probably not going to work. So it's best to, again, to create your own EPUB and upload it directly. #7: A seventh thing that annoys readers is books without chapters or books without numbered chapters. Books without chapters or unnumbered chapters is a very annoying thing for readers, but most formatting software will help to create and number chapters. Now, how to fix? The technical explanation of this is an EPUB file is essentially a zipped version of several XHTML files and each XHTML file in the sort of zipped package should be its own chapter. The way an EPUB generates table of content files is that every chapter heading should have a H1 HTML key, and that it lets the EPUB know which heading should be chapters. Now you can hand code all this in a program like Sigil, but again, it's much easier to use a program like a Vellum, Atticus, or Kindle Create that will automatically create a proper table of contents for you rather than you having to go through with a XHML or EPUB editor like Sigil and then hand code the H1 tag. It's much easier to automate this and there are applications that will do this for you. #8: The eighth formatting problem that annoy readers is quotation marks the wrong way. What do we mean by that? Quotation marks come in two styles, straight and curly. Curly ones look like flipped commas, while straight quotation marks look more like two lines. Most word processing programs like Word will default the curly quotation marks and convert straight ones. Although curly quotations can sometimes create garbled formatting, they're considered to be the standard. How to fix? Honestly, the easiest way to fix this is to, if it's a problem for you, is to do a find and replace or a find and search. Just if you find that usually what happens is that if you hold down the shift key for too long while you're thinking and then you hit the quotation marks. Sometimes in certain operating systems, it'll convert it to straight quotation marks instead of curly ones. So if you are worried about a few of the wrong type of quotation marks showing up in your document, the easiest way to fix it is just a quick search through the document for straight quotation marks and then remove any ones that you see. We've talked a lot about formatting ebooks and tools for formatting ebooks. So I thought I would suggest the three most popular applications for formatting ebooks, and those would be Vellum, Atticus, and Kindle Create. Vellum is most expensive, but I think it has most features, whereas Kindle Create is pretty simple, but it's free. Vellum is Mac only. As I've mentioned before on the show, I started using it for print layout and then liked it enough that I switched over to using it for all my ebook formatting and that's been true for like the last eight years now. It's very easy to learn. It has excellent features and excellent support. I've never had any technical problems with it whatsoever. I'd say the biggest liabilities for it are that it's the most expensive of the options and it's Mac only. So if you don't have access to a Mac, you would need to choose another option. The next option would be Atticus, which the advantage for Atticus is that it's cross platform. It will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux because it is foundationally a web application. It's also very collaborative in that you can invite other users to use it. The creator of the program, the guy who runs Kindlepreneur named Dave Chesson, has said he wants to create an all- in-one ebook creation, writing, and formatting tool with Atticus, and I think he's taken a pretty good stab at it. I'd say the biggest weakness for Atticus is that it does have a bit of a learning curve because there are so many different functions packed into it. The free option would be Kindle Create, which is a program put out by Amazon. Kindle Create is pretty basic, but it does have everything you need and you can use it to create both files optimized for the Kindle platform and generic EPUBs that you can use on other platforms. I'd say its biggest weakness is that it's fairly simple and that it's produced by Amazon, which some people have strong feelings about, but it is free, which is hard to beat. In Episode 251 (about a year ago), I talked about ebook formatting software and offered pros and cons for each. There isn't one perfect option, so it's good to look over the details for each one of them and watch one of the many available reviews or overviews available online to get a feel for how each one works differently. And now the three strategies for finding formatting issues before your readers do. #1: Test your ebook in each file format (PDF/EPUB) and on multiple devices. It's impossible and prohibitively expensive to test on every possible device, but try some of the most common devices and apps. It's important to test on a Kindle, an actual Kindle and not just on the app, for example. #2: Check the page and chapter breaks in particular. These are the spots where odd formatting tends to cluster. Check all of them to make sure there's nothing weird that you need to fix. #3: Check for legacy things from the print version like page numbers, the table of contents, and so forth. And I find that the easiest way to do all three of these at once is in my final phase of editing a book, I will have my computer read it aloud to me with text to speech and I find that's a good way to find any remaining typos. It's also a very good way of spotting formatting issues since you'll be looking over the entire book one more time and if there's like a weird gap or a line break or something of that nature, you're probably going to have a good chance of spotting it. So in conclusion, ebooks can be a bit difficult to format, but there is dedicated software and a slew of tutorials and guides to help you do it. Learning a little bit of HTML and CSS can help, but it's not a requirement at this point. If you're self-publishing, having a well formatted book is important because readers either won't enjoy or won't even start a poorly formatted ebook. I hope these tips help you with knowing where to start with improving your ebook formatting. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to the Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your view on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and we'll see you all next week.  

Is Canva's AI a game-changer? Can it compete with the major players in the creative space like Adobe and Dall-E? We're exploring Canva's AI tools to see its capabilities and how viable Canva is to help you create quick but effective creatives. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan questions about Canva and AIUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: info@youreverydayai.comConnect with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:[00:01:25] Daily AI news[00:03:30] Canva's position in the creative space[00:07:45] Creating designs with Magic Design [00:12:45] Using Magic Write[00:15:55] AI image generator[00:18:50] AI image editing tools[00:23:00] Magic Grab featureTopics Covered in This Episode: 1. Canva AI and its Effectiveness2. Canva's Dominance in the Design Scene3. Canva's AI Image Generator4. Canva's Magic Grab FeatureKeywords:Canva, swap out photos, edit headings, text creation feature, presentation, history of artificial intelligence, edit text, small font size, Volion Group, AI-driven stock picking, beating the market, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Bing's AI chat, Copilot, blank presentation, LinkedIn live stream, AI photo generator, game changer, Adobe Photoshop, design makers, podcast, magic design button, Google BARD, AI chatbot, memory feature, custom instructions, OpenAI's ChatGPT platform, small businesses, Adobe Photoshop, design programs, QuarkXPress, Freeport, Illinois, Adobe Suites, dominant, Photoshop, generative fill, online version, Adobe InDesign, design elements, erased images, beta, magic grab, designers, creatives, marketing, advertising, foreground, background, rule of thirds, product images, social media, time-saving feature, entire presentation, AI inside a photo, extensive design experience, slow programs Get more out of ChatGPT by learning our PPP method in this live, interactive and free training! Sign up now: https://youreverydayai.com/ppp-registration/

Chris Butler is a seasoned technology leader with a proven ability to lead teams, drive innovation, and deliver results in a fast-paced and dynamic industry. He is a highly accomplished executive with over 20 years of experience in the industry. Prior to his current role at Google, Chris held several leadership positions at companies like Microsoft, Facebook Reality Labs, Kayak, and Waze, where he gained extensive experience in the areas of product management, engineering, and business development. In this episode of Unlearn Podcast, Chris joins Barry O'Reilly to discuss his career journey. He emphasizes the importance of challenging mental models and learning from user research and data analysis to shift perspectives toward new technologies. Where Novelty Leads Chris talks about his passion for novelty and his interest in exploring new things since his youth. He mentions his early interest in technology, having created "red boxes" to make payphone calls. Chris credits his father, who was an art director, for introducing him to the transition from traditional typesetting to digital typesetting using programs like QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, and hand-coded HTML. User Research and Industry Shifts You need to be adaptable and open to change in the technology industry, Chris and Barry agree. With new innovations emerging all the time, you need to be willing to question assumptions and try new approaches. By doing so, you can stay ahead of the curve and continue to make a positive impact in your organization. Chris and Barry discuss the challenges of transitioning from desktop web experiences to mobile ones. Chris recounts how difficult it was to convince executives to invest in mobile, even though it was clear that more people were using their mobile devices to browse for travel options. He had to help them understand that mobile was not just another channel, but rather a new type of omnichannel experience that required a different approach. Barry shares his own experiences with this kind of shift, recalling how customers' behaviors were starting to change, but the technology was not yet there to support it. He asks Chris how he was able to identify these changes in behavior and help executives understand the need to invest in new technologies. “I had a bit of natural distrust in my leaders,” he replies. Chris often questioned the dominant logic theory that most leaders operated on, which involved using past successes as a mental model for future circumstances. He emphasizes the importance of personal user research and asking the right questions of customers. Chris cites his experience with Complete Seating, a restaurant tech startup, where they were able to “steal” high-value accounts from Open Table by focusing on usage segmentation rather than channel segmentation. Looking Ahead Chris mentions how he uses speculative futures to situate the future in a way that is tangible and more interesting than traditional company missions and visions. “Everything we do when building software is a speculative future because it aims to impact the future and make the world a better place,” he explains. He emphasizes the importance of looking forward when making decisions in product management and aligning the spine of product between strategy, roadmap and tasks. Chris believes that this approach to product management can be powerful and inspiring. For full show notes, please visit BarryO'Reilly.com Resources Chris Butler on the Web | LinkedIn | Twitter

Before I start, let me preface this by saying I am not an expert in AI-Generated Art. These platforms are still in their infancy, and nobody knows what the future holds for them or their effect on the graphic design industry, but I doubt they'll ever replace graphic designers. I've experimented with various platforms, read articles, and watched videos. I've seen both sites of the debate argued. Some people don't see AI-Art as a threat to our industry, while others are all doom and gloom, saying designers should start applying to work at McDonald's as flipping burgers will soon become more lucrative than designing things. I don't see AI-Generated art as a threat to the graphic design industry. And I'll get to why in a bit. However, I'm not so sure about artists and illustrators. If that's your profession, I suggest you pay close attention to how AI-generated art matures, as it will affect those creative people much more than it will designers. As I said, I'm no expert here. And these AI Art Generators are evolving fast. So what I say today may change soon. Who knows? I also haven't tried all the various platforms nor used the ones I have tried to their fullest potential. So some of what I say today may be wrong. If that's the case, if you know something I don't, please reach out to me at feedback@resourcefuldesigner.com. I would love to be educated more on the subject. First, a story. Before I begin my discussion on AI-Generated Artwork, I want to tell you a story that will help put my beliefs into perspective. I entered the three-year Graphic Design program at my local college in 1989. The first two years were spent learning and applying design principles to our projects. We learnt things like design history, colour theory, using grids, layout hierarchy, typography and more. And we were taught the different tools of the trade, most of which are no longer in use and are considered archaic by today's standards. It wasn't until our third year, once we were familiar and comfortable with what being a graphic designer was, that we were granted access to the computer lab. Computers were still new to the industry back then, and very few design agencies used them. When I started working at the print shop after graduation, the first two years of my employment were spent designing everything by hand before I convinced the owner to invest in Macintosh computers. I don't remember what year it was, but during school, a few of my classmates and I made a trip to Toronto for a graphic design trade show. It was the largest show of its kind in Canada and the third largest in North America. All the big names were there, including Adobe, Quark, and Microsoft, to name a few. I remember overhearing a conversation between two design agency owners at a demonstration put on by Adobe. They were talking about the introduction of computers to the design industry. Both were concerned that computers would harm the design industry by minimizing what they considered a particular skill set, that of a graphic designer. To them, computers took the “Art” out of being a “Graphic Artist.” With today's mindset, It's kind of crazy to think that back then, design agency owners thought computers would harm our industry. You can easily argue that computers have made the industry better. Having lived through that period, I can tell you that even though computers didn't harm our industry, they did change it. Drastically, in fact. QuarkXpress, Photoshop and Illustrator replaced the standard tools of the trade, such as wax machines, no-repro blu pencils and Letraset rub-on type. And I know a few designers who left the profession because they couldn't grasp the use of computers. So computers were introduced, the industry evolved, and the graphic design industry persevered. Microsoft Publisher Fast forward a few years, and personal computers are becoming more popular, with Windows-based machines outselling Apple. And Microsoft released a program called Microsoft Publisher that introduced an affordable means for anyone with a computer to “design” their material. Quark and Adobe software costs thousands of dollars which weren't feasible for most people. But Microsoft made Publisher affordable. And what do you think happened? The graphic design industry started to panic. With “design” software now available to the masses, designers would lose their jobs. But you know what? Microsoft Publisher was introduced, and some people changed their thinking about design, yet the graphic design industry persevered. WordPress. Around that same time, an innovation emerged called the World Wide Web. Businesses started embracing the idea of having a website—a way for people to find them over the internet. Computer programmers created the first websites. They were functional but lacked design aesthetics. And graphic designers worldwide took notice and realized an opportunity to apply their skills to something other than paper. Some learned to code, while others embraced WYSIWYG software, allowing them to build websites without coding. A whole new side of the design industry was created. And then WordPress arrived. This new platform allowed people to build websites using pre-built templates called Themes. The arrival of WordPress sent web designers into a panic. If people could build websites using a pre-built template, our design skills would no longer be needed. WordPress was going to kill the web design industry. But you know what? WordPress stuck around, designers evolved and changed their view of the platform, and the graphic design industry persevered. I'd say most web designers these days design using WordPress. 99 Designs. Fast forwards another few years, and 99designs is introduced to the world. For a small fee, clients could submit a design brief to the platform, and multiple designers would compete by submitting their designs and hoping the client chose theirs. The selected designer would win the contest and be paid for their work. The others received nothing. 99Designs was all the talk back then. It was an industry killer. Why would anyone pay hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to a single graphic designer when they could pay a much smaller fee and have multiple designers compete for them? Many designers worldwide tried to offset this intruder by lowering their rates, hoping to lure clients back from the dark side. But you know what? Designers quickly learned that to attract clients, they needed to sell the value and the relationship of working with them, not just the design deliverables. Because the designers on 99Designs didn't care about the client, they only cared about the subsequent contest they could enter. In fact, 99Designs helped weed out the most undesirable clients making it easier for the rest of us to grow. The graphic design industry persevered. Fiverr. Not long after that, Fiverr was launched, putting our industry into another tailspin. Whereas a design from 99Designs might cost $100 or more. Fiverr's claim to fame was that all tasks were only $5. It didn't matter if you need a logo, a poster, a web banner, or a booklet. Everything was $5. How was a graphic designer supposed to compete with that? The design industry was doomed. And yet, 12 years after its launch, Fiverr is still around. However, nowadays, people on the platform are charging much higher than $5, and graphic designers worldwide are still thriving despite the “competition” of Fiverr. The graphic design industry persevered. Adobe Creative Cloud In 2013 Adobe launched Creative Cloud, replacing their Creative Suite platforms. Whether you like the subscription model or not, there's no arguing that Adobe changed the creative landscape when it introduced Creative Cloud. Software that had previously cost thousands of dollars to own was now available at an affordable monthly rate, making programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign, the bread and butter of most people in the design industry, accessible to the masses. Designers were no longer a unique breed with our special tools. Adobe opened the floodgates. Now anyone who wanted to tinker with their programs could do so. This created a whole new breed of graphic designers who lacked formal education. Even kids as early as kindergarten started learning Photoshop. For all our education and skills, being a designer didn't seem as prestigious as it once was. Clients would no longer need our expertise since anyone with a computer could be a “designer.” And the industry started to panic. But you know what? Giving people access to tools doesn't make them an expert. Clients appreciate the years of dedication and knowledge we have when it comes to design. It shows in the work we produce. So even though these tools were available to everyone, the graphic design industry persevered. Canva. A couple of years later, Canva emerged. It was touted as yet another graphic design killer. Canva not only makes it easy to create beautifully designed materials, but you can use it for free if you don't want to pay for their premium offerings. And there's a lot you can do on the free plan. Whenever you see a social media or forum post where someone inquires about hiring a graphic designer, you will find at least one comment suggesting they do it themselves on Canva. Did Canva steal potential clients from designers? Yes, it did. But did it kill our industry? Far from it. I'll argue that Canva made clients appreciate us more. I've had numerous people hire me after dabbling in Canva and realizing their creations lack that professional touch. So even Canva, the closest thing to a design industry killer, hasn't made that much of a dent in our industry. We still persevere. BTW, Canva recently announced their own incorporated AI Art generator. There will always be new design industry killers. It seems like something new comes out every few years, making designers panic. Do these things affect some designers? I'm sure they do. Just like everything else, there will be some people affected. But none of these things have made an impact on our industry. Or at least not in the way the nay-sayers believed they would. You can almost argue that these things have made our industry better. Can you imagine what it would be like if computers were never introduced? Or WordPress? And I'm sure many freelancers couldn't afford thousands of dollars for Adobe's software if they hadn't switched to a subscription model. This mentality dates back to Guttenburg's invention of the printing press. I'm sure caligraphers of the time panicked that this new invention would ruin their industry. But graphic design perseveres. The only people it ruins are those unwilling to evolve with the times. Now back to AI-Generated Art. By this point, you probably know my stance on AI-Generated Art. This innovation may seem like an industry killer. But only if you allow it to affect you. I see Artificial Intelligence as another opportunity for our industry to evolve. It's up to us to embrace these tools as just that, tools. I already see designers putting AI-Generators to good use. Katie, a Resourceful Designer community member, recently shared how she needed an abstract pattern for a background of a design she was creating. Instead of searching for a stock image or making one herself, she turned to AI. She told it what she wanted, and it produced something she could use. Katie also used it as inspiration for an annual report project. She asked it to produce a report cover design using blue and yellow triangles. It gave her a few options that she used as inspiration to create something herself. And these are just a couple of examples. As for creating full designs using AI, I think the technology is still a long way off. And no matter how good it gets, it will never be able to replicate the emotions we designers bring to a project or the empathy we feel towards our clients. I like to meet every client I work with. If I can't meet them face to face, I at least want to get on a video call. I do this because I want to get to know them. I want to see their personality and understand how they act and think. Because these things will help influence my design decisions. No artificial intelligence can do that. At least, as far as I know. And that's why AI will never replace a live graphic designer. And don't forget relationships. How often have I stressed the importance of building relationships with your clients over the years? Not only does it help you understand your clients better, which allows you to design better things for them. But relationships build loyalty. It keeps clients coming back to you, regardless of your price. AI-Generated Art has limitations. At this point. I see too many limitations with AI-generated design to affect us as an industry. Since every piece of generated art is uniquely created, it's tough to replicate should you need to. Say you're working on a marketing campaign and need several images. You ask an AI-Generator to create an illustration of a rocket ship flying through space, and it produces something you like. But now you need a different image of the same rocket ship landing on the moon. And maybe another of it returning to Earth. Every time you enter a prompt in an AI Generator, it creates a unique image, so there's no way to ask it to use the same rocket ship in future creations. The rocket ship will look different in each image. Even the style of art might look different. Plus, these prompts, the instructions you type into the generator telling it what to create, are very subjective. These two prompts “An elderly man is sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons.” “An old man is feeding pigeons in a part while sitting on a bench.” To you and me, they both mean the same thing. But to the AI, they could be vastly different. How does artificial intelligence interpret “elderly man” vs. “old man”? The smallest detail can drastically affect the output. Also, from what I can tell, It's tough, if not impossible, to adjust an image. Say you like the AI-generated photo of a woman sitting on a chair with a cat on her lap. But you decide you want it to be a dog instead. None of the systems I tried would let you make that sort of change. The best I could do was change the word “cat” to “dog” and rerun my prompt, producing a new batch of images with different women and chairs. There was no way I was getting the same woman in the second set of images. Again, maybe this is possible, but I couldn't see it. Conclusion All of this to say. Don't panic. There are people out there leaning on both sides of the fence. Some say our industry is doomed, while others say we have nothing to fear. I'm just one voice. But I don't think we have anything to worry about. And I have the history I just shared with you backing me up. Fiverr, Canva, WordPress, Creative Cloud. These “design industry killers” are now part of my design toolbox. Instead of taking work away from me, they allow me to do better work and do it more efficiently. I see AI-Generated Art as no different. I plan on embracing it and using it in any way I can. And don't forget—no matter what new “things” come out. Clients will always appreciate what a good designer can do for them. You can be that designer.

Dropbox has grown from a small indie file sync utility to a giant of cloud storage. During that time many users fell in love with its simplicity and reliability. But with rising prices and difficult software dependencies, it's hard to keep the flame alive. What happened to Dropbox? Blog Post: https://www.userlandia.com/home/2022/1/dropbox-drops-the-ball Published January 18, 2022 -=- Chapters -=- 00:00:11 - Intro 00:00:31 - Love at First Sync 00:03:45 - Steve Jobs Introduces the new iDisk 00:05:20 - Dropbox Giveth, and Dropbox Taketh Away 00:10:20 - The Decline of the Dropbox Client 00:16:22 - The Cautionary Tale of Quark 00:20:29 - Comparing the Competition 00:24:00 - My Future with Dropbox 00:26:29 - Outtro -=- Links -=- Dropbox - https://www.dropbox.com/ Apple Unveils Internet Strategy - Apple Press - https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2000/01/05Apple-Unveils-Internet-Strategy/ WWDC 2003 Keynote -https://tidbits.com/2003/06/23/mac-os-x-10-3-panther-springs-at-wwdc/ Dropbox Demo - Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE Dropbox Launches to the Public - https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/dropbox-launches-to-the-public Dropbox Limits Free Accounts to Three Devices - The Verge - https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265574/dropbox-3-device-limit-free-accounts-plus-professional Dropbox Increases Plus Plan Prices to $12 per month - Venture Beat - https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/29/dropbox-increases-plus-plan-to-2tb-for-12-per-month-adds-rewind-smart-sync/ Important Changes to the Dropbox Public Folder - https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/share/public-folder Dropbox Drops Photo Galleries - Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14747526 Revealing Dropbox's Dirty Little Security Hack - applehelpwriter - https://applehelpwriter.com/2016/07/28/revealing-dropboxs-dirty-little-security-hack/ Dropbox Security Bug Made Passwords Optional for Four Hours - TechCrunch - https://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/dropbox-security-bug-made-passwords-optional-for-four-hours/ Dropbox Touts New Collaborative Cloud Storage Management App - MacRumors - https://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/12/dropbox-touts-new-cloud-management-app/ Chromium Embedded Framework - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_Embedded_Framework Dropbox Silently Installs New File Management App - Ars Technica - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/07/dropbox-silently-installs-new-file-manager-app-on-users-systems/ Apple Silicon Desktop Sync Compatibility - Dropbox Forums - https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Dropbox-installs-integrations/Apple-Silicon-M1-Desktop-Sync-Compatibility/td-p/527743 Drew Houston on Twitter - https://twitter.com/drewhouston/status/1453762478479843332 QuarkXPress - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuarkXPress Quark offers details on QuarkXPress 5.0 for Mac OS X - https://www.macworld.com/article/152401/quarkosx.html Pride Goeth Before the Fall - Forbes - https://www.forbes.com/global/1999/0531/0211032a.html?sh=5153e13d5ce1 Dropbox Mac App with Apple Silicon Support now available to all beta users - MacRumors - https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/13/dropbox-apple-silicon-support-beta-users/ Maestral - https://maestral.app -=- Subscribe -=- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/userlandia/id1588648631 Overcast: https://overcast.fm/itunes1588648631/userlandia Pocket Casts:   https://pca.st/m4tegn1u Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/show/79LO3vO9avAt3yCLpNWark Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly91c2VybGFuZGlhLmxpYnN5bi5jb20vcnNz -=- Contact -=- Follow Userlandia: @userlandia - http://twitter.com/userlandiashow Follow Dan: @kefkafloyd -  http://twitter.com/kefkafloyd Visit The Website: https://www.userlandia.com Email us: feedback@userlandia.com   Join The Userlandia Discord: https://discord.com/invite/z2jmF93 Theme Song by Space Vixen: https://spacevixen.bandcamp.com Follow them on Twitter @SpaceVixenMusic: https://twitter.com/spacevixenmusic

In this slow news week, we riff about how QuarkXpress still exists, Microsoft Flight Simulator on Xbox and sleep crying. And that's just some of the random stream of consciousness we discuss this week. This is a funny one, folks! Don't miss it!

Hoy se ha acercado a hablar con nosotros Miquel Bada, ex-director de marketing de Adobe España, empresa que abandonó en 2016. Con Miquel hemos hablado de todo, sin filtros. Desde los primeros tiempos de Adobe en España, el Postscript y la aparición de Photoshop, la compra y asesinato de Freehand y la oportunidad que Adobe vio con la política de QuarkXpress para ocupar su lugar. También hablamos de Aperture y Lightroom, la globalización y el cambio de los tiempos, aparte de echar un vistazo a lo que puede ser el futuro de Adobe. Si quieres conocer la intrahistoria de Adobe, contada por uno de sus protagonistas, aquí vas a tener un acceso privilegiado. Si tienes preguntas que te gustaría que le planteáramos a Miquel para que las conteste en un próximo podcast, déjanos un comentario o envía un mensaje a través de las redes sociales.

Oxide and Friends Twitter Space: July 5, 2021NeXT, Objective-C, and contrasting historiesWe've been holding a Twitter Space weekly on Mondays at 5p for about an hour. Even though it's not (yet?) a feature of Twitter Spaces, we have been recording them all; here is the recording for our Twitter Space for July 5, 2021.In addition to Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal, speakers on July 5th included Tom Lyon, Ian, bch, Theo Schlossnagle, Rick Altherr, and Nate. (Did we miss your name and/or get it wrong? Drop a PR!)Some of the topics we hit on, in the order that we hit them: First Twitter Space, May 3rd the lost recording (~31mins) (possible?) genesis of the idea to record spaces Adam's process for recording spaces Someone (Sid?) mentioned NeXT's transparent compensation model Oxide: Compensation as a Reflection of Values [@2:28](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=148) Randall Stross book: Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing (1993) [@4:42](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=282) The SPARCstation 1 and the Sun-4c (campus) architecture > The hardware was not competitive, but dammit they sure looked good! NeXTcube [@9:15](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=555) It's nuts how much time and energy they spent on the look of it. > They were building a huge factory, just about the time people were > starting to outsource everything. Sun was doing incremental things, and Steve was going for the 100 yard pass.Apple Lisa computer > NeXT refused to interoperate with anything. > They had this idea that a NeXT customer is going to buy all NeXT machines. [@13:20](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=800) NeXT was a really proprietary company, contrasted with Sun, a really open company. > Bill Gates volunteers that he would gladly urinate on a NeXT machine. They are attempting to reinvent absolutely everything, so they need all software to be written from scratch, effectively. Jobs does this over and over again at NeXT. He does things to make NeXT look bigger than it is. [@16:23](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=983) Jobs blows off important meeting with IBM [@18:56](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1136) Mathematica went whole hog on NeXT [@20:55](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1255) “Steve Jobs yells at your dad a lot?” Quark Software Inc, QuarkXPress [@22:22](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1342) Story of Jobs trying to sell NeXT machines to Brown's CS dept > “Your product looks great, I'm just not sure your company is > going to be around for as long as we need it to be.” > Then Steve Jobs calls him an a**hole and storms out. [@23:35](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1415) NeXT spent very freely. Lavish offices, catering, etc > He did not take VC money. He had weird money from beginning to end. > Ross Perot thought Jobs was a total genius. Then realized that whether > he was a genius or not, he wasn't selling any computers. The 80's were all about fear of Japan. Ultimately they had to pivot away from hardware. [@26:38](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1598) In contrast to Sun Metaphor Computer Systems Bryan's tweet from July 3 > Measured by most any yardstick one could choose, Sun was one of > the most successful stories of the 1980's for all of industrial America. John Gage [@32:43](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=1963) the NeXTSTEP operating system, based on the Mach microkernel Objective-C HOPL paper Walter Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs Be Inc, computer company. Jean-Louis Gassée Stepstone (originally PPI) > Not that I've read a ton of HOPL papers, but I don't think HOPL papers > spill the tea quite this much.. [@39:53](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=2393) Named parameters in programming languagesThe software crisis, Object Orientation, “Software ICs” [@44:40](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=2680) NeXT was building real things with Objective-C, PPI wasn't. [@45:54](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=2754) Rick's experience with Objective-C at Apple Objective-C, Objective-C++, and Swift [@54:08](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3248) Objective-C and Swift are mandated. If it were an open ecosystem, would they be significant? > There was a feeling that the hardware didn't matter. > You shouldn't trouble yourself with any details. [@57:46](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3466) Secrecy at NeXT and AppleNDAs signed per project > Secrecy is a lot of work. It was all about being able to walk on stage, and dramatically drop something that was going to be life changing. It seems like the secrecy was being used to manipulate people. [@1:03:13](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3793) x86 port at Apple [@1:05:34](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=3934) Jobs tells them to make it great, because it's currently sh*t. [@1:08:04](https://youtu.be/2H9XQBdLB0Y?t=4084) Is Objective-C being used anywhere today outside the Apple ecosystem? GNUstep, Agent-based modeling If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next Twitter space will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time; stay tuned to our Twitter feeds for details. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!

Jeff's career in streetwear and youth culture spans over more than two decades. As he describes it: "If I can outwork people, I stay ahead." And he outworked a lot of people in this "niche field." Jeff is a designer by trade; he started different businesses. He is taking us on a journey along with his career, from the mid-nineties till today. Jeff rarely took the front entrance. Most of the time, he needed to get through the back door to achieve what he wanted to do, "I am not that book smart. I don't love rules." Looking back on his career, it feels it was well planned. But nothing could be further from the truth. Jeff took opportunities when they were there. Jeff has been working since he was 13. When he wanted to spend money, he needed to earn it. One of his many side jobs led him into a design agency where he needed to add data into their systems – by using graphic design software like Illustrator, Photoshop, and QuarkXpress. "This was the first time where I wondered if there was a career in this." That led him to drop out of NY University, where he studied journalism and join Parsons, one of the best design schools in the world. His application was almost rejected: "When I applied at Parsons, I used my sketches from when I was 8 - 13 years old". But Jeff found a way to get accepted. "This is a precursor to my whole career. Someone said you can't come in here. Stop, you can't come in. But I figured out another way in." His love for design led him to start printing his own T-Shirts. At night, at Parsons, as he was not allowed to silkscreen on anything else than paper. "I wanted to start printing silkscreen on T-Shirts. But I was not allowed to do that. So another friend and I broke into the silkscreen lab." "Instead of putting art on a piece of paper, I thought to put it on a T-Shirt. Probably 10.000 people look at your T-Shirt, and that is a better billboard than a piece of artwork that is hanging on a wall." March 7th, 1997 influenced his way forward. It is not just Jeff's birthday. The day that his wife got a new haircut and he strolled around Soho while waiting for her. At the Triple Five Soul store, the manager asked Jeff where he got his T-Shirt from: "This is my design" was his answer. "I had no entrepreneurial spirit, no dreams of owning a company. I was silkscreening T-Shirts and wanted to give them to my friends." The store manager ordered 12 right away. Jeff printed in secrecy and at night. The next order was already double the size, and Union started to sell his T-Shirts as well. Sometime later, someone from Japan called Jeff. He got his hands on one of his T-Shirts when he was in NYC and wanted to order some for his store in Japan. "How many," Jeff asked. "1000" was the answer. At this moment, Jeff realized: "OK, Jeff, there is a business here if you want it. If you don't, you can hang up the phone and say thank you and go back and be a full-time student." "And I decided to pursue this brand thing." He decided to call his brand "Staple." "I wanted to call it Staple. The raw thing that you can't live without." "My name is not Staple. It was actually the store manager who called me Staple, Jeff Staple." A name that stuck from that day. In the aftermath of 9/11, Jeff needed to find a new location for his office. He stumbled over the site of what became an epicenter of streetwear in the 2000s: Reed Space. Of course, a lot happened after 2005, which Jeff talks about in this podcast and how he thinks Covid will change the industry. Jump right into this episode and learn more about how Jeff stayed relevant in an industry that has seen many people and bran

Rick Roll in 4K per Machine Learning; Elixir goes AI (Nx); Grafikkarten sind zu teuer und nicht lieferbar; Rechner-Kauf; Refurbed; Docker und WSL; Ulrich hat ein MacBook Air mit M1; Rosetta und Rosetta 2; QuarkXPress; Arm; Chromebook; Fileserver Raspberry Pi; openmediavault; geerlingguy; Raspberry Pi 400; Svelte; Livewire; Phoenix.LiveView; Alpine.js; Tailwind CSS; PETAL Stack; Web Components; Matthias' Svelte Projekt .mabeLOOP; Back to the Web-Roots; Symfony; Laravel; Blade Templates; Twig; Razor; Googol; LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER; Googol Counter; Lego Gear Reduction; Lego Technic Liebherr LTM 11200; Key-Value-Store LevelDB; SQLite; Web-Browser localStorage; Safari-Bashing; chrome://chrome-urls/; chrome://dino/; Teaser: Storybook Gäste: Stefan und Ulrich

Windows = operační systém, programy - 1) předinstalované - např. Malování, kalkulačka, Notepad, Wordpad, Cortana 2) samostatně instalované - většina 3) programové balíky - např. Ms Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Jetbrains ... Textové editory - základní - poznámkový blok, kancelářské - Word, Writer, OpenWrite, publikační - InDesign, Scribus, QuarkXPress, Canva (online), Publisher, programátorské - PSPad, SublimeText základní funkce - nastavení stránky - pravítka, formát, okraje - standardně 2,5 cm, záhlaví/zápatí 1,25 cm, orientace, zápis a editace - mazání, přepisování, přesuny textu, kopírování, zalamovače řádků, vkládání netextových objektů - obrázky, grafy, tabulky, rovnice, formátování textu - tučný text, kurzíva, víceúrovňové nadpisy, odstavce, písmo PROGRAMOVÝ BALÍK (tzv. SUITE) - kancelářské balíky zdarma - Open Office, LibreOffice - častější aktualizace (verze still a fresh) - Writer - textový editor, Calc - tabulkový editor, Impress - prezentační manažer, Draw - nástroj pro kreslení, Base - bázový program Math - editor rovnic WORD - ovládací prvky - posuvník (scrollbar), pravítka, stavový řádek, přípony: dokument - ODF, DOC, DOCX, šablony - DOT, DOTX, export - RTF, PDF

Corona - andra vågen. Christians jobb håller gemensam middag och event på distans. Folk har fått bättre mötesdisciplin och teknik. Och det lär fortsätta ett bra tag till USA-valet - vi spelade in på valdagen, och ett val på en annan kontinent kan på något sätt leta sig in överallt Apple-eventet nästa vecka - nu kommer arm! Vi minns övergången till Intel och hoppas på spännande maskiner Christians datorbakgrund i allmänhet och Applebakgrund i synnerhet. Mycket bildbehandling och sidlayout. Och ordbehandling på C-128! Christians första friläggning - kanske den första riktigt bra friläggning som gjordes på Jönköpingsposten? Verktyg i molnet man lever sitt arbetsliv i. Teams kontra Slack, när man måste finnas i många system samtidigt, Confluence, och annat roligt. Tack vare person X har vi just nu betal-Slack E-post är påfrestande En knapp alla borde ha Länkar Christian Consid - där Christian jobbar Episerver Vägen till Vita huset - SVT-dokumentärserie Bannon Rudy Giuliani Talk show-avsnittet med Gruber och Merlin direkt efter valet 2016 G4-Imacen C-64 C-128 286 386 Pentium Ti-booken Quarkxpress TT Windows NT Berghs Mac OS 9 Mac OS X System 7 Första generationens Macbook air Introduktionen av första Macbook air Pixelmator Windows 8 Openvpn Fagerhult Dave - bättre montering av Windowsenheter på nätverket TIFF Netapp Slack Teams Jira Confluence Hey Utveckla - Consids utvecklarpodd Avsnittet om Jira Trello snowracer.se Två nördar - en podcast. Fredrik Björeman och Christian Åhs diskuterar allt som gör livet värt att leva. Fullständig avsnittsinformation finns här: https://www.bjoremanmelin.se/podcast/avsnitt-232-en-valdigt-stark-aw-kultur.html.

都内の事業会社で UX デザイナーをしていた ksm さん@ksmxxxxxxがゲスト。肩書きが同じ「UIデザイナー」「UXデザイナー」だったとしても、組織体制や関わるサービスによって仕事範囲は様々。Web デザイン、UI デザイン、そしてユーザーリサーチへと興味の幅を広げる ksm さんの仕事のモチベーションは何か伺いました。 QuarkXPress 肩書きデザイナーでもコードを書く理由 Web と UI のデザインの違いがあるとしたら Material Design Human Interface Guidelines - Design - Apple Developer 自分たちにとっての正しさを意思表示 デザインシステムにある『違和感』 時代に合うデザインとどう向き合うか 想像性と UI デザイン 人のことが知れることの面白さ インタビューの集め方 やってみたいと思うだけでは始まらない タイミングを逃さない 喫煙所コネクション 業務ではない仕事の話ができる場所作り 好奇心が次やるべきことを教えてくれる 価値提供のための手段は選ばない

Mike Elgan writes a popular weekly column for Computerworld, contributes news analysis pieces for Fast Company and SecurityIntelligence and also writes special features, columns, and think pieces for a variety of publications. Mike tells a career story that started in newspaper publishing with QuarkXPress. Soon, he realized that what he loved was not covering local politics but rather the technology of the Mac, networking and printing. That launched his career writing about computer tech. In the 2nd segment we chatted about some of our favorite topics: dealing with information overload, Apple’s amazing U1 chip, Augmented Reality glasses replacing iPhones, and cars that sense driver emotions. Mike has an amazing vision of our tech future. Join us.

听众朋友早上好，今天是 7 月 23 日又一个星期二，欢迎收听全球字体新闻联播。 本期节目，照例将为大家介绍近期海内外值得回顾的新闻新事、新书新字。特别地，我们集中关注了一些与基里尔字母字体设计相关的竞赛、作品及书籍，希望为大家提供更广泛的视野。 下面是本期内容的详细报道。 参考链接 Ribaasu Typeface，廖恬敏设计的多文种「逆反差」（reverse-contrast）字体；字体名称「Ribaasu」为日语「リバース」（reverse）的罗马字转写 峰月楷书，由ヨコカク设计，创作蓝本源自蒼溟社书法老师矢島峰月先生 Unicode Consortium 于 7 月 17 日上线新版网站以庆祝「世界 Emoji 日」 Apple 展示了今秋即将面世的新 emoji 字符 Modern Cyrillic 2019 (K19) 字体设计竞赛公布获奖作品；Modern Cyrillic 是 Paratype 主办的基里尔字母字体设计竞赛 GRANSHAN 2019 字体设计竞赛征稿时间延迟至 7 月 24 日；GRANSHAN 是亚美尼亚文化部主办的非拉丁字母字体设计竞赛 ATypI 2019 Tokyo 门票在官方网站商店开售 QuarkXPress 2019 发布；Quark 推出了多种软件购买方式，包括 QuarkXPress Advantage 模式 Cyrillic Type Travel Book，介绍基里尔字母字体设计的俄英双语专著， 由 Schrift Publishers 编著出版 Toshi Omagari (大曲都市). Arcade Game Typography: The Art of Pixel Type. Thames & Hudson, 2019.（另有日语版，计划于明年 1 月上市） 森泽 2019 年度新字体一览 《书法报》在微信公众号发文批评「汉仪尚巍手书」字体 主播 Eric：字体排印研究者，译者，Type is Beautiful 编辑 蒸鱼：设计师，Type is Beautiful 编辑 欢迎与我们交流或反馈，来信请致 podcast@thetype.com​。如果你喜爱本期节目，也欢迎用支付宝向我们捐赠：hello@thetype.com​。 Type is Beautiful 会员计划已上线，成为我们的会员，即可享受月刊通讯、礼品赠送、活动优惠以及购物折扣等权益。

Ep 95 ​ Fini review raznih Amplifi mesh modela ​ QuarkXPress 2018 se pojavio na App Storeu. Ne treba dongle više. ​ Rekosmo mi da Appleu ne smeta pad cena akcija... ​ Apple ozbiljno gura prodaju novih iPhone modela, reklamirajući trade-in cene ​ ==> Slaba prodaja? Khm... ​ Apple’s largest supplier reported 24 percent surge in revenues from OLED display, components sales ​ TSMC and Foxconn revenues up, contrary to dour iPhone supply chain forecasts ​ Zanimljiv pogled na tržište polovnih iPhone modela ​ Apple Watch EKG ​ ECG app and irregular heart rhythm notification available today on Apple Watch - Apple ​ Apple Releases watchOS 5.1.2 With ECG, New Infograph Complications and Walkie-Talkie Control Center Toggle ​ Gde kupiti ​ Ehm...nije baš kako smo se nadali — sat mora da se kupi u USA, watchOS proverava serijske brojeve ​ Neće skoro u Kanadu niti ostale države... ​ Značaj ​ Viticci: videti ovaj tweet thread ​ Your heart rate. What it means, and where on Apple Watch you’ll find it. - Apple Support ​ Priča 1 Priča 2 - sunce ti.. Priča 3 ​ Apple Watch ‘heartfelt’ promo videos ​ Microsoft 2018 Holiday Ad: Reindeer Games | Featuring Owen and The Xbox Adaptive Controller ​ Ostalo ​ 38 godina od Apple IPO-a ​ Kako se hvataju doušnici u Appleu :) ​ A kako u Microsoftu :) ​ Acronym za konkurenciju u negdašnjem Microsoftu ;) ​ (koji li akronim Apple ima za Samsung, Qualcomm i ekipu..?) ​ Samsung used my DSLR photo to fake their phone’s “portrait mode” ​ ​ Apple Music Connect će biti ugašen. Zahvalnice Snimljeno 15.12.2018. Uvodna muzika by Vladimir Tošić, stari sajt je ovde. Logotip by Aleksandra Ilić Artwork epizode: Black barn Owl 2018. by Saša Montiljo, njegov kutak na Devianartu.

十月，我们迎来又一个字体之秋。本季，除了海内外新闻，我们将主要为大家报道在京举办的「字体与时代」主题论坛与工作坊，分享主播 Eric 参与其中的所见及所感。 参考链接 「Type Space｜字体空间相对论」主题沙龙将于 2018 年 11 月 10 日在上海进行，由文鼎字库主办，现可报名 字体设计师许瀚文荣获 2018 年 DFA 香港青年设计才俊奖之「创意智优青年设计才俊奖」 《经济学人》（The Economist）时隔十七年改版设计 QuarkXPress 2018 Pro 进入 Mac App Store，该版本与 QuarkXPress 2018 有所不同 Typekit 于今年 10 月改名为 Adobe Fonts 字加，方正字库出品的字体管理工具 字由，汉仪字库出品的字体管理工具 TrueType 简史；谭沛然所撰〈参数化设计与字体战争：从 OpenType 1.8 说起〉一文中，亦有字体格式发展历史的相关介绍 「字体与时代」主题论坛与工作坊，北京服装学院艺术设计学院字体工作室于 10 月 21 至 23 日举办 「字体与时代」现场演讲实录 鸟海修，日本字体设计师，字游工房主理人 小矶裕司，日本平面设计师，「字体与时代」演讲者之一 江户文字 《习近平谈治国理政》，有多种外语译本，外文出版社出版 Glyphs 提供的字体曲线绘制技巧 はるか（Haruka），JR 西日本的特急列车 主播 Eric：字体排印研究者，译者，Type is Beautiful 编辑 蒸鱼：设计师，Type is Beautiful 编辑 欢迎与我们交流或反馈，来信请致 podcast@thetype.com​。如果你喜爱本期节目，也欢迎用支付宝向我们捐赠：hello@thetype.com​。 Type is Beautiful 会员计划已上线，成为我们的会员，即可享受月刊通讯、礼品赠送、活动优惠以及购物折扣等权益。

In this episode of the Maker's Co Podcast you'll meet Jon Johnson, the darling of Kitchener-Waterloo. Jon is a respected local graphic designer and screen printer, who goes under the name BRFC Designs. He has a stellar product line of screen printed goods and enamel pins which are sold online via Etsy and at all your favourite maker markets in the region. In this episode we ask him about how he got here, the benefit of learning on the job, finding balance in a work & life routine and what to consider when selling at markets.  PS - There's A LOT of Sydney our Podcasting Pup in this episode, so get ready for that.   Topics covered: Meet Jon - Graphic Artist & Screen Printer How Screen Printing Works (cut me talking about printing - 9:30-ish mark) Stop Stopping - When “Problems” Are Just Excuses CTRPLLR Merch, Drawing Shoes, and Not Getting Into Teachers College - The Story of How He Got Into Screen Printing/Graphic Design Creativity Learning on the Job Phasing Himself Out of a Day Job to Being His Own Boss Mental Health and Being An Entrepreneur - Where to Work, Having a Routine, Finding Balance, and Working Less Selling at Markets Advice - Make It Easy for People To Buy How He Sells - Be Yourself and Mirror People's Energy Why People Buy Using Social Media to Build Brand & Community What You Do Is Who You Are Favourite Failure(s) Rewiring Your Brain New Projects for 2018 To Goal Set or Not to Goal Set?   Resources from the episode: Adventures in Design Podcast - http://www.adventuresindesignmarket.com/ Etsy - https://www.etsy.com/ca/ Globe Studios - http://globestudios.org/ Jane Bond - http://janebond.ca/ Princess Cinemas - http://www.princesscinemas.com/ Starlight Social Club - https://www.starlightsocialclub.ca/ Quarry - https://www.quarry.com/ Aaron Draplin - http://www.draplin.com/ Quarkxpress - http://www.quark.com/en/Products/QuarkXPress/ Casey Neistat - https://www.youtube.com/user/caseyneistat Stitch ‘n' Kitsch - https://stitchnkitsch.com/ Etsy Waterloo Region - http://www.etsywaterlooregion.com/shows/ Etsy Guelph - https://www.facebook.com/etsyguelph/ Montreal Pin and Patch Show - http://pinpatchmtl.com/ Stay Home Club - https://www.stayhomeclub.ca/ KPL - http://www.kpl.org/ Centre In The Square - https://centreinthesquare.com/ Bob Egan - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/bob-egan-leaving-blue-rodeo-for-kitchener-public-library-1.3729317   Quote:   More from Jon Johnson Bearface Design - http://www.bearface.ca/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/brfc/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/bearfacejohnson Dribble - https://dribbble.com/bearface More from Maker's Co: The Maker's Collective - http://makerscollective.club/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/MakersCoClub/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/makerscollectiveclub/ Get In Touch & Join The Club - http://makerscollective.club/contact/ More from Lacey: LJH Creative Consulting- http://www.laceyjheels.com/ Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/laceyjheels More from Laura: LH Style Coaching - https://lhstylecoach.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lhstylecoaching The Style Report - https://lhstylecoach.com/the-style-report

Anne-Marie Concepción of Seneca Design & Training presents the case for using InDesign as a p-book and e-book creation tool. Topics covered include: can Microsoft Word be used for book publishing? (the short answer: please don’t.) the importance of styles in InDesign learning InDesign using InDesign to create e-books creating Kindle books and using the Kindle Previewer designing for print vs designing for ebooks finding a designer Also, your questions on paying royalties to foreign publishers, learning more about printing and production. Sites and resources mentioned in the podcast include: Seneca Design & Training: https://senecadesign.com/ Lynda.com (search for “eBook fundamentals”) iBooks Author from Apple: https://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/ Kindle Previewer from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261 Upwork (was Elance): https://www.upwork.com/ check out #eprdctn on Twitter InDesign Magazine issue on book design: https://indesignsecrets.com/issues/issue-105-designing-books Industry Standards Checklist from IBPA: http://www.ibpa-online.org/page/standardschecklist “Levels of Quality in Printing” by Steven Waxman: http://printindustry.com/Newsletters/Newsletter-189.aspx Participants Anne-Marie Concepción is the founder and president of Seneca Design & Training, which provides cross-media consulting, training, design, and publishing services for a variety of organizations across the United States. She is widely known as one of a very few digital publishing gurus, having worked and taught in this field for twenty-five years, since the early days of PageMaker and QuarkXPress. Anne-Marie is now one of the nation’s premiere independent Adobe Certified Instructors, teaching hands-on classes at client sites around the world and helping publishers make smooth transitions to the latest software and workflows. As an industry expert, Anne-Marie enjoys sharing her real-world expertise via books, articles, and seminars. She’s the co-host of the InDesignSecrets.com blog and podcast with David Blatner, with whom she also co-authored Adobe InDesign CS/CS2 Breakthroughs (Peachpit Press, 2005). Visit Seneca Design & Training at https://senecadesign.com/. Peter Goodman (host) is publisher of Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley, California. He began his publishing career in Tokyo, Japan, in 1976. A longtime member of IBPA, he has served on the IBPA board and as IBPA board chair.

Many Small Business owners would agree, it's not "if" but "when". Will you have someone file a frivolous lawsuit against your company, or perhaps have a disagreement with a supplier that winds up in court. Or maybe a disgruntled employee feels like they were mistreated and they want to be compensated. No matter how it comes about, lawsuits can be a tricky minefield that can cause you to take your eye off your business. Join us on episode 145 of the Small Business Show to hear how to avoid getting sued in the first place, how to respond if you are sued and where to turn for help. Dave and Shannon discuss both sides of the courtroom - suing or getting sued and offer some sage advice about leaving your ego at home and not bringing your sense of justice when trying to settle a case. But first, learn about the mechanics and timing of a lawsuit - the more you know the more you can avoid pitfalls that can sink your chances of winning a case. Once you know how things will unfold, we jump into the Demand Letter and what to do if you receive one. Along with how to work with your attorney, insurance company and banker to be sure you and your business are protected during the entire process. Listen in and then visit the Small Business Support Group to offer YOUR advice and comment on our stories! Sponsor: StoryBlocks. Get a "Triple Bundle" – images, video, and audio – for the price of one with our special deal. Visit StoryBlocks.com/sbs to get all of this for just $149 for a full year of unlimited access where all content is royalty-free! Chapters/Timestamps: 00:00:00 Small Business Show #145 for Wednesday, November 15, 2017 00:01:43 What to do when you've been sued 00:04:38 Lawsuits are like spiders 00:07:12 Opportunity Cost of lawsuits 00:08:43 Learn judgment 00:10:47 Demand Letter 00:11:14 SPONSOR: Storyblocks.com/sbs gets you their Triple Bundle for just $149 00:12:51 Shannon's story about being sued because he didn't license his images 00:15:19 End sponsor slot 00:15:25 Avoid ego with lawsuits, leave your sense of Justice at home 00:17:00 Watch your cashflow during a lawsuit 00:18:23 The process 00:22:24 Meet your attorney before the lawsuit arrives 00:24:40 Check your insurance 00:26:03 Talk to your employees, your banker... QuarkXpress 00:29:53 ...and your spouse! Nolo Press 00:31:38 SBS Outtro

Note added 9-May-2017: I've revisited GetURL and made a more modern version. More info here:http://coppieters.nz/?p=133----In 2008, I created a sample InDesign ExtendScript called GetURLs.jsx. GetURLs.jsx is a limited http client; it allows you to fetch http URLs straight from an InDesign ExtendScript. I used the script as sample material to demonstrate a programming technique (state machines).It turned out the script was quite popular in its own right; I've been adding little tweaks to it over time.The latest version has been enhanced to handle redirections (when the server returns a status code HTTP 1.0/301 Moved Permanently). Hope it works for you!The original blog post is here:http://rorohiko.blogspot.co.nz/2008_07_01_archive.htmland the download link is here:http://www.rorohiko.com/podcast/geturl.zipCheers,Kris

Fredrik talks to Aaron Gustafson about web standards. His origin story, how he got into web standards. How the standards work and who should get involved. The problems with prefixes and how we use them. This episode was recorded during the developer conference Øredev 2015, where Aaron gave two talks. Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS! Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund och @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed on info@kodsnack.se if you want to write something longer. We read everything you send. If you like Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! Links Frameset Quark Dreamweaver Fetch Eric Meyer DOM level 0 A list apart Jeffrey Zeldman XHTML COMDEX Molly Holzschlag South by southwest Filemaker Jeff Veen Jen Robbins - Web design in a nutshell Jeremy Keith Andy Budd Richard Rutter Clearleft The web standards project Glenda Simms Derek Featherstone W3C TPAC Indesign Pagemaker CSS shapes Web platform incubator community group SVG Network information API - seems to have been shut down Vendor prefixes Edge - Microsoft’s successor to Internet explorer Alex Russell on vendor prefixes and their problems WHATWG - Web hypertext application technology working group Web SQL Firefox phones did not last Zork Basecamp Harvest Adaptive web design, second edition Aaron’s two talks Titles You’re the web standards guy Who falls into web standards and how does it happen? Between midnight and 5 a.m. Things were starting to stabilize a bit on the web The only way to build a solid foundation The web standards bug Before coming to the web In the trenches every day making web pages Help make other specs better Vendor prefixes have bitten us in the ass We don’t experience the web the way everyone else does I can’t believe I want them to make their ads more accessible

The Amazing Task of File Management! A little to enthusiastic? Oh well, can't blame a guy for trying. The fact is file management is probably one of the most boring tasks we do as graphic designers. Boring, but necessary if we want to run an efficient and streamlined business. After all, the less time we have to spend searching for some file we haven't touched in several years the better. A good file management system will make your life as a designer so much easier. So although file management isn't the most glamorous topic to cover in a graphic design podcast, it is what I choose to cover In this week's Resourceful Designer. Different areas of file management In order to try and make this week's podcast episode a little more interesting I decided to break it into seven different sections of file management Resources Client Files Logos Fonts Training/Education Material Bookkeeping Backups Resources Resources cover everything you may use that helps you be the wonderful graphic designer that you are. I'm talking, image libraries, application plugins, Photoshop actions and styles, website themes, Wordpress plugins etc. Anything that you can use in the design process. If you're like me you've probably purchased a few design bundles at some point (or many, don't judge). Design bundles are a great way of acquiring resources for your work. The thing with design bundles is they often come with way more than what you're actually interested in at the time. However, some of those pieces are worth saving for that "someday" you may need them. Having a Resources folder makes it easy to find all those often used or seldom used pieces to help you in your designing. My Resources folder contains many different folders for all of the above. For example; we all know that sometimes a good background can complete a design project. In my Resources folder I have a Backgrounds folder that contains every image file I own that can be used as a background. The folder is divided into sub-categories to make it easier to find what I want. Metal, stone, leather, paper, wood are a few of those sub-categories. If I'm ever working on a project and I think a nice wood background is needed I know exactly where to look for one. That's good file management. Also in my Resources folder is a Stock Images folder. In it I have the original copy of ever single stock photo and image I've ever purchased. I have this folder subdivided as well into Photos, Vectors, and Illustrations and each of these is also subdivided. For example, my Photos folder is divided into People, Landscapes, Vehicles, Interiors, etc. and each of those is subdivided further. People is divided into Women, Men, Couples, Seniors, Families etc. Every time I purchase a new stock image I make sure to put it in the right category. If it could go into multiple categories I make aliases of the file (Shortcuts in Windows) and put them in each category they fit into. This makes it extremely easy for me to search through specific categories and quickly find what I'm looking for. There are other ideas for the Resources folder I talk about on the podcast. Client Files File management of client files is a must. Otherwise you could spend hours searching for things when an old client contacts you down the road. On my computer I have my client files organized like this. I have one main folder that I call "Jobs In Progress". The title is a bit misleading since not everything in the folder is "in progress" but that's the name I gave the folder over 10 years ago and I just never bothered changing it. Inside my Jobs in Progress folder I have a separate folder for each client I have. There are two special folders in there as well called "Old Clients" and "Inactive Clients". Old Clients is for any client I know will never come back. Businesses that have closed or have been bought out. That sort of thing. From time to time when I need to clear up HD space I will move these clients to an external device but for the most part I leave them there. Why? I've learnt over the past 25 years that just because a client doesn’t exist anymore doesn't mean you wont need their files anymore. It's happened more than once that someone came looking for something and I was glad I has saved them. My Inactive Clients folder is for any client that I haven't heard from in over 2 years. They're still around but either they've found someone else to design for them or they haven't had need of me. That leaves the rest of my Jobs In Progress folder that contains a folder for every client I've worked with over the past two years. Opening any one of the client folders shows folders for each project I've done for them. Stationary, Flyers, Billboards, Website etc. Now what's found in each of these changes depending on the client. Clients that I do a lot of work for I may divide their folders by year, month and date if need be, others just by year. Regardless of that hierarchy, once I get down to it, every single client project folder I have is built the same way. Inside the project folder is the actual layout file (QuarkXpress or InDesign), or the website files. There are also four folders in every project folder. Working; for all the .psd and .ai files pertaining to the project. Images; for all the completed images that are actually used on the project. Supplied; for all file that the client has supplied me. Final; The final approved file to be sent to the client, printer, etc. If there are common elements such as graphics or photos that are used across all marketing material I store these in a special "Images" folder at the root level of the client folder. Logos Now you may be wondering why logos don't fall under the images folder for the individual clients? I discovered many years ago that it's much easier to save each and every logo I have on my computer in one centralized location. In my case I have a Logos folder in my Resources folder. In it I have all my clients logos as well as every single logos I've accumulated over the years. The reason i do this is for those time when you need to include "sponsor" logos on some poster or website for a client. Trying to remember if, or on what project you may have used some obscure logo a few years ago isn't fun. Since I started keeping all my logos in one place I've never had this issue. Listen to the podcast for a fun story about my logo storing method. Two Tricks For Acquiring Logos Sometimes it's a real pain to get good, usable logos from a client. Especially if they don't understand what it is you need. I have two tried and true methods of acquiring good quality logos quickly and easily. But you'll have to listen to the podcast to hear them (hint, it's at the 27 minute mark) Font Management Fonts are another thing we graphic designer tend to amass over time and it can be a real pain to sort through them to find just the right one. That's why I think everyone should have some kind of font management software to help organize the chaos. I can't speak for all the various options but I can tell you about Suitcase Fusion by Extensis. I've been using Suitcase Fusion since before they added the Fusion to it. This font management software integrates with all the design software we use to turn fonts on and off as we need them. This way you don't bog down your system with unnecessary fonts. Suitcase Fusion is a great way to organize your fonts and make it easier to find that perfect one for the project you're working on. In the application you can create sets to organize your fonts. I have mine set up alphabetically as A, B, C, D etc with each font in it's appropriate folder. I also have special folders for Celtic Fonts, Script Fonts, Hand Drawn Fonts etc. The best thing about Suitcase Fusion is the ability to assign styles and/or keywords to fonts. This makes it so easy to narrow down your choices. Looking for a slab serif font? Eliminate all fonts that don't fit that category and your search just became that much easier. Training/Education Perhaps not file management in the technical sense, but I've found that keeping all your training material in one place is a big help. Any eBook, video, guide, manual, web clip etc. should be in easy access for when you do need it. I have my Training folder divided into Web, Photoshop, Illustrator, (plus other applications) etc. Any time I download a guide or manual I store it in the appropriate place. Any time I stumble upon a good tutorial page or video I I grab the URL, label it as what it is, and put it in my Training folder for later access. Having this resource has saved me many hours searching online for something that I remember seeing some time in the past. Bookkeping This is a simple one that I use. The numbers on every invoice I send out begin with the current year. This January I opened my invoicing program, I use Billings Pro by Marketcircle, and I changed the numbering to start with 16-xxxxx. This makes it easer down the road to know exactly when a certain job was done. Backups Now backing up really has nothing to do with file management. But, what's the point of implementing a great file management strategy if you end up loosing all your files due to some unforeseen circumstance? There are things in this world beyond our control. Fire, flood, tornadoes, theft are just a few. On-site backup via Apple Time Machine or some other external device is a must for all graphic designers. But off-site backup is something we should all be using as well. For this I use a company called Backblaze. Backblaze is a set it and forget it solution. It works in the background backing up your files so you never have to worry should a natural disaster ever happen. There are other solutions available but Backblaze is the one I'm familiar with. Another form of backup you should look into is website backup. Most hosting providers offer site backup but they don't say how often. Some are every 30 days, 60 days, even 90 days. That's fine for a static website. But for any site that is updated on a regular basis it wont do. My preference for website backup is BackupBuddy by iThemes. BackupBuddy offers real time backups of your site. As soon as something is changed on the site it gets backed up. I have all my and my clients' sites backed up this way. So there you have it. File Management in a nutshell. I hope that wasn’t too hard to get through. I would love to hear your comments. Share your strategies by leaving me a comment. In next week's episode of Resourceful Designer I'm going to talk about the dangers of working from home. Questions of the Week I have another Question Of The Week to answer. If you would like me to answer your question in a future episode please visit my feedback page. This week’s question comes from Teri, Hi Mark, I have just started listening to your podcast in the past month and am really enjoying it! Thanks for all the fantastic advice! I have been working in the industry for about 7 years now here in Atlanta, Georgia. After the birth of my daughter a year and half ago I have started working from home part-time (which I love) and it has been keeping my quite busy! I was wondering if you had any advice on passing off work to other designers? Is there a good network you use or how do you build that network? I also feel that part of my value as a designer is that I know the clients and what they are looking for, thus it is difficult to explain that to another designer, especially with a super fast turn around. To find out what I told Teri you’ll have to listen to the podcast. Resource of the week is BackBlaze One of the scariest things you can think of as a designer is what would happen if disaster strikes and you loose all your computer files. What would it mean for your business? Backblaze offers a simple unlimited online backup solution for your design business for less than $5/month. And it’s so easy. You just set it up and forget about it. Backblaze works in the background automatically backing up your files. And if you ever loose your data for whatever reason, you wont have to worry because you’ll know everything can be restored from Backblaze. If you’re interested in finding out more about Backblaze’s online backup solution and trying a 15 day free trial, visit resourcefuldesigner.com/backup Subscribe to the podcast Subscribe on iTunesSubscribe on Stitcher Subscribe on Android Contact me Send me feedback Follow me on Twitter and Facebook I want to help you. Running a graphic design or web design business all by yourself isn't easy. If there are any struggles you face running your design business please reach out to me. I'll do my best to help you by addressing your issues in a future blog post or podcast episode here at Resourceful Designer. You can reach me at feedback@resourcefuldesigner.com  

Matt Haughey founded MetaFilter, a well-moderated forum for discussions about interesting things that expanded to also answer questions. At just a few months over 15 years old, it's a veterans of many Internet lifecycles. In the last couple of years, however, MetaFilter began to face an existential challenge, which we'll talk about in this episode, along with its history, nature, and future. Sponsors & patrons This podcast is made possible through the support of sponsors and patrons. Thanks to our sponsor, Harry's: A great shaving experience for a fraction of the price of its competitors. $15 gets you a set that includes a handle, three blades, and shaving cream shipped to your door. Use coupon code DISRUPT for $5 off your first order. We've started a new kind of ad: "indie ads"! If you're a solo creator or small firm, we're offering discounted short ads with the kind underwriting of Cards Against Humanity. (CAH just launched a site where you can buy directly from them, including their Bigger Blacker Box and their 2012 and 2013 holiday packs, the profits from which are donated to charity.) Thanks also to patrons Bryan Clark, Rönne Ogland, and Mike Mansor for supporting us directly through Patreon! You can back this podcast for as little as $1 per month. At higher levels, we'll thank you on the air and send you mugs and T-shirts! Show notes Atex was the first digital composition system, used widely in the newspaper and magazine world into the 1990s, when PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and other software superceded it. Matt worked at Pyra Labs on Blogger for a short stint in its early days with Ev Williams, Meg Hourihan. We mention Tim O'Reilly, a publisher and thinker who invested in Blogger and a number of other interesting early-stage ventures. He founded Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993, which was sold to AOL in 1995. He is part of O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures. David Carr, the New York Times' media critic, used the terrible, terrible term platisher to refer to Medium, which is a combination of a platform and a publisher in a recent article. An OC-12 line is up to 622 Mbps of throughput. MAE-West was once the major interconnection point for ISPs on the west coast. The MAE stands for Metropolitan Area Exchange. In 1995, I wrote "The Experiment Is Over," about the how the National Science Foundation was shutting down its contracts for NSFNet, because commercial organizations could now directly operate the Internet backbone. A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtualized instance of an operating system running on a host alongside potentially many others, each of which is allotted guaranteed amounts of CPU usage, storage, and the like. VPSes are just like running a virtual machine on one's own computer, but designed for efficiency and reliability. Glenn uses Linode, which recently switched all its drives to SSDs and doubled many system parameters. Digital Ocean is slightly cheaper (it used to be much more so). Amazon EC2 is another alternative for rapid scaling. After years of pictures of cats in scanners, MetaFilter set up cat-scan.com to house those and its memories. BREAKING! Cat-scan is dead and its file lost forever! BREAKING! File were found and it's fixed. As you were. The community at Ask MetaFilter produces some remarkable answers. A poster asked for help deciphering coded messages her grandmother on index cards before she died in 1996. Within 15 minutes, there was an answer. Andy Baio asked about an image he used a decade ago for the soon-to-be-revived Upcoming, and Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza had an answer four minutes later. Einstein probably didn't tell a story about "no cat," but it's an interesting history of where the apocryphal quote came from; and my original Google Answers query, for which I was willing to pay $15 if someone had an accurate reply. Jessamyn West is part of the lifeblood of the interesting part of the Internet. Matt blames his PVRblog for the rise of content farms. On Medium, Matt explained MetaFilter's Google search and AdSense predicament. But the good news is that even after we recorded this episode, donations continued to pour in. They've now received about $40,000 in one-time donations and a commitment of $10,000 per month in recurring ones. That monthly figure is about one-third of the site's Google ad revenue, and thus a good cushion against future drops. (Photo by Chris Ryan.)

This episode was recorded 26 May 2014 live and in person at Brent's office in sunny, lovely Ballard. You can download the m4a file or subscribe in iTunes. (Or subscribe to the podcast feed.) Brent has worked at UserLand Software and NewsGator and as an indie at his company Ranchero Software. These days he's one-third of Q Branch, where he writes Vesper. He is also the co-host of this podcast. This episode is sponsored by Tagcaster. Tagcaster is not just another podcast client — it solves the age-old problem of linking to specific parts of a podcast. You can make clips — short audio excerpts — and share them and link to them. After all these years, that problem is finally solved. This episode is also sponsored by Igloo. Igloo is an intranet you'll actually like, with shared calendars, microblogs, file-sharing, social networking, and more. It's free for up 10 users — give it a try for your company or your team today. This episode is also sponsored by Hover. Hover makes domain name management easy. And it's a snap to transfer domains from other registrars using their valet service. Get 10% off your first purchase with the promotional code MANILA. (Manila was the name of the blogging system worked on at UserLand.) Take a look. Things we mention, more or less in order of appearance: NetNewsWire MarsEdit Glassboard Vesper Manila The University of Chicago DuPont Punched cards University of Delaware Newark, Delaware Fortran 1980 Apple II Plus PLATO Brent's Mom 6502 Assembly 80 column card ALF II Music Construction Set Beatles Rolling Stones Pil Ochs Judy Collins Boby Dylan West Side Story Hair Broadway Soundtrack Delicious Library Epson MX-80 Columbia House Records Cindy Lauper Born in the USA The Clash London Calling Pascal Evergreen State College 1992 1989 Seattle Central Community College City Collegian QuarkXpress LaserWriter Mac IIcx Radius monitor Silo Goodwill Symantec C Grenoble, France Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Seattle Boeing Photovoltaics University of Washington Institut de Biologie Structurale CEA CNRS Alps (the mountains) Gopher Pine International Herald Tribune Kronenbourg Killian's Red Isère River Chinook's Eskimo dial-up account Zterm Lynx AltaVista Seanet MacTCP MacPPP AppleTalk Yahoo Info-Mac Archive Kagi Maelstrom Performa 604 After Dark Bungie Andrew Welch Usenet fuckingblocksyntax.com Dave Winer UserLand Frontier Aretha release UserLand Software AppleScript HyperCard WebSTAR MacPerl MySQL Spotlight Filemaker Pro Indianapolis Star News Woodside, CA Jake Savin San Francisco Robert Scoble Millbrae Palo Alto Windows Visual Studio CodeWarrior PowerPlant MacApp Toolbox Xcode Project Builder Carbon QuickDraw Open Transport Manila EditThisPage.com Daily Kos joel.editthispage.com Aaron Hillegass's Book on Cocoa Radio UserLand Python MacNewsWire RSS WebKit Safari MSIE for Mac Camino NetNewsWire 1.0 screen shot RealBasic BBEdit Lite TextWrangler Carmen's Headline Viewer Syndirella AmphetaDesk My.Netscape.Com Safari/RSS Ecto Movable Type Mac OS X Server NewsGator Palm Treo FeedDemon Nick Bradbury Greg Reinacker Outlook TapLynx Push IO Sepia Labs Cultured Code and Things Black Pixel Red Sweater Oracle Justin Wiliams NetNewsWire Lite 4.0 for Macintosh Vesper Sync Diary WWDC Parc 55

On this week's all-star episode, author and publisher Adam Engst, of TidBITS and Take Control Books, updates his "Apple in the hot seat" discussion. First he recaps Apple's recent loss in a Federal eBook price-fixing trial, and then comments about the U.S. Department of Justice's draconian demands for remedies. He also discusses Apple's last-minute victory before the ITC, where President Obama vetoed a ruling that would have banned the iPhone 4 and some older iPads from being sold. From The Mac Observer, you'll hear from co-founder and co-publisher Bryan Chaffin. He'll also talk about the Apple eBook price-fixing trial, and the DOJ's demands, along with the veto of the ITC's import ban. He'll also cover the ongoing changes and what's improved as development of iOS 7 continues. And don't look now, but there may also be a surprise visit from "The Fake Steve Ballmer." You'll learn about the next version of QuarkXPress, version 10, from Gavin Drake, VP of Marketing for Quark, Inc.

In Episode No. 80 of The Big Web Show ("Everything Web That Matters") host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Daring Fireball author John Gruber about his background in computer programming and journalism; the joy of designing print layouts with QuarkXPress and the transition from print to web; why investors who are angry at Apple have it wrong; why some web standards geeks who once passionately disliked Apple have grown warmer toward the company; and the secret story behind the name, "Daring Fireball." Links for this episode:Daring Fireball

In Episode No. 80 of The Big Web Show ("Everything Web That Matters") host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Daring Fireball author John Gruber about his background in computer programming and journalism; the joy of designing print layouts with QuarkXPress and the transition from print to web; why investors who are angry at Apple have it wrong; why some web standards geeks who once passionately disliked Apple have grown warmer toward the company; and the secret story behind the name, "Daring Fireball."

Clip Case#82　神田敏晶(ビデオジャーナリスト)、竹内一正(ビジネスコンサルティング事務所 オフィス・ケイ CEO)、「MakersCLIP」クォークジャパン株式会社　QuarkXPress 9.1

This week, Bill and Dan talk file workflow, image properties, resolution, and metadata. It's nerdy stuff, but someone has to do it. SHOW NOTES: Image Properties Essay Quark Photoshop DisallowFlate Plugin Mother Walking the Property

News; Book Cover Layout; Obscurity of the Week: Change Bars; Quizzler Winner Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-149.mp3 (21.2 MB, 37:06 minutes) See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. InDesignSecrets News Print & ePublishing Conference update Google in, Bing out, for our blog's search engine Laying out book covers (spine, covers, flaps): tips and scripts Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Change Bars Quizzler winner and answer! -- News and special offers from our sponsors: >> MathMagic, the ultimate equation editor from Info Logic, Inc., is a WYSIWYG equation editor/plug-in that lets you create inline, editable EPS equations from within InDesign (if you use the MathMagic Pro edition). It even converts equations set by Word’s Equation Editor, LaTex, MathML and MathType, to MathMagic-style equations. Special offer for InDesignSecrets: get 25% off MathMagic Pro ($199 or more), enter the INDS discount code (details). >> Rorohiko (“Slash the time it takes!”) keeps improving their so-useful Soxy utility—the latest beta version supports InDesign CS5.5. With Soxy installed, users with multiple versions of InDesign installed can simply double-click INDD files to open them, because Soxy makes sure they open in the correct version of the program. Soxy also supports file/version matching with multiple versions of Illustrator, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, among others. >> In-Tools is owned by the famous “Harbs” who helps out so many users here on the blog and in our forum. He and his company develop many scripts and plug-ins that are so useful for InDesign users, especially for those who are doing multi-lingual publishing (such as World Tools Pro) and long documents (such as the Power Headers plug-in we mentioned). And in his spare time, Harbs writes an engaging blog on his company site at In-Tools.com/about/blog, check it out! -- Links mentioned in this podcast: > Print & ePublishing Conference in Washington DC, May 23–25, 2011 > Read the Twitterstream about the conference (hashtag: #pepcon) > David loves the number pi so much he wrote a book about it > What do you think of the new blog search form? Tell us in the forum > PageControl plug-in for mixing page sizes pre-CS5 > Dan Rodney's Proper Fraction and Make Book Jacket scripts > Interesting forum discussion about book jacket design and layout > What does ISO stand for?

I admit it: I don't know the InDesign Scripting DOM by heart, so I spend a lot of time browsing around in the ExtendScript Toolkit Object Model Viewer.I frequently work on very diverse projects - sometimes it's GWT/Java, sometimes it's ActionScript, sometimes it's PHP/WordPress, sometimes it's C++ or REALbasic, and so on... - and invariably, when I come back to a particular project, I need to spend some time refreshing basic knowledge.It's like my brain 'switches' programming environment, and when I am deeply immersed in Java, I almost forget how to spell 'EkstentScript'.The ExtendScript Toolkit Object Model Viewer (you find it under the 'Help' menu) is great for browsing the object model - but when it's been a while, it still feels like I am wading through molasses. One of the reasons for that is that I am a visually-oriented person. A picture is worth a few thousand mouse-clicks to me!Lately, I've been revisiting BarredText - one of our latest scripted plug-ins, and to do that, I need to get back up to speed on TextFrames, Columns, Characters, Stories, and so on.I decided I'd put in a little bit more effort, and put everything into a diagram - I've made a 2-page PDF file as a refresher I'll use next time I need to figure out how those buggers relate.Because this might be useful to other people, I decided to release the PDF file under the 'Attribution-Share Alike' Creative Commons license:http://www.rorohiko.com/downloads/rorohiko.blogspot.com-extendscript-textframe.pdfI am not claiming this is error-free - if you find any errors, or can see ways to improve this, please let me know.And if you like this - let me know too! Soon, I need to revisit tables and cells in ExtendScript - who knows, if I get enough positive feedback I might do another visual representation.

Best and Worst little CS5 features; Blog posts of the week; Obscurity of the Week: Folder 0-------Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/indesignsecrets-podcast-126.php for show notes, links, and to leave a comment!--------Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-126.mp3 (19 MB, 36:14 minutes)See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode. The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon.Favorite little features in InDesign CS5New control panel widgets, Patient user mode always on (AM), Minion Pro default, moreLeast-favorite, little annoyances in InDesign CS5Change in panel tabs, New Window menu organization, Patient user mode always on (DB), moreHot Blog Posts of the WeekConfigurator for InDesign, TweetChats, InDesign to iPadObscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Folder 0InDesignSecretsLive Seminars: San Francisco & Chicago in June; LA, DC, Denver, and more in the fall!News and special offers from our sponsors:>> Rorohiko (“Slash the time it takes!”) keeps improving their so-useful Soxy utility—the latest beta now supports InDesign CS5. With Soxy installed, users with multiple versions InDesign installed can go back to simply double-clicking INDD files to open them, because Soxy makes sure they open in the correct version of the program. Soxy also supports file/version matching with multiple versions of Illustrator, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress, among others. Special for InDesignSecrets listeners: Use the coupon code INDESIGNSECRETS126 in the Rorohiko.com store to get 25% off the $19 Soxy utility. >> CtrlPublishing makes CtrlCrossTalk, a magical plug-in that lets InCopy users edit any story in an InDesign layout file, without the designer needing to export the stories to InCopy format first. They have another plugin, CtrlCrossTalkID that lets the InDesign user "lock" the frames that the InCopy user should not be able to edit. Listeners of the podcast get a 15% discount on CtrlPublishing's web store if you use the coupon code CTRLOFFER5.>> PrePress Studio sells eDocker, a wonderful utility program for any InDesign CS4 or CS5 user who exports files to SWF. eDocker makes the SWFs more user-friendly in the browser because it lets you add page navigation and zoom controls, among other goodies. Try the free 3-day trial or purchase eDocker at this special URL and enter the coupon code IDS1 for 10% off.--Links mentioned in this podcast:> Lie back and think of England

3 great deals; Table tips; Quizzler; Obscurity of the Week: Clear Attributes Not Defined By Style ----- Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/category/podcasts for Show Notes, links mentioned in the podcast, and to leave a comment! ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-089.mp3 (13.5 MB, 29:29 minutes) The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. Three great deals for InDesignSecrets readers and listeners Tons 'o table tips: Selecting, adding/deleting rows, copy/pasting, figuring out widths and heights, little-known keyboard shortcuts, more ... Quizzler! (or, "The Brazzler!") Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Clear Attributes Not Defined By Style Sweet Deals for you: Markzware: Makers of the Q2ID plug-in (convert QuarkXPress v3-v7 files to InDesign) and many other fine products have a TIME-LIMITED offer for InDesign Secrets fans: 25% off their plug-ins. To get the discount, purchase online at http://markzware.com and enter SECRET in the coupon code field. MogoMedia: InDesign Conference Master Class, Nov. 10–14, 2008 in Seattle, WA (at InDesign HQ, Adobe's Seattle campus!). Get $100 off for any 3 or 4-day pass, or $25 off for any full-day tutorial, by entering IDSECRET08 in the coupon field on the registration page. InDesignSecrets eSeminar: What's New in InDesign CS4, presented live by David and Anne-Marie on Oct. 29, 2008, 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.  (PST), plus follow-up Q&A and access to the recording for one week afterwards. Get $10 off registration by entering IDS11 in the coupon field on the registration page. -- Links mentioned in this podcast: Posts about tables: Merging tables, Moving rows, Rounding table corners, Adding tab stops in cells, Editing overset cell text, More Branislav Milic's web site

News; New contributor; Master Class discount; Quizzler for quizzlers; Frame types; Obscurity of the week: Flattener Preview ----- Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/category/podcasts for Show Notes, links, and to leave a comment! ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-088.mp3 (14.5 MB, 31:42 minutes) The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. News: CS4 documentation, pricing, InDesignSecrets "2.1" site tweaks Welcome to new contributor, Mike Rankin InDesign Master Class Conference (see discount code below) Quizzler for Quizzlers Text vs. Graphic vs. Undefined Frames Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Flattener Preview Sweet Deals from our Sponsors: Recosoft: Clever developers of the PDF2ID plug-in (convert PDFs to InDesign), has a TIME-LIMITED offer for InDesign Secrets fans: $20 discount only via this URL: http://www.recosoft.com/pdf2idspecial.htm Markzware: Makers of the Q2ID plug-in (convert QuarkXPress v3-v7 files to InDesign) and many other fine products have a TIME-LIMITED offer for InDesign Secrets fans: 25% off their plug-ins. To get the discount, purchase online at http://markzware.com and enter SECRET in the coupon code field. Other Deals: InDesign Conference Master Class, Nov. 10–14, 2008 in Seattle, WA (at InDesign HQ, Adobe's Seattle campus!). Get $100 off for any 3 or 4-day pass, or $25 off for any full-day tutorial, by entering IDSECRET08 in the coupon field on the registration page. Links mentioned in this podcast: InDesign CS4 online documentation Mike Rankin's blog, Publicious.net Claudia's post about frames

InDesign CS4 New Features Overview; Obscurity of the Week: User ----- Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/category/podcasts for Show Notes, links, and to leave a comment! ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-087.mp3 (15.2 MB, 33:06 minutes) The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. InDesign CS4 New Feature Overview! Our favorite new features... the small, geeky ones of course The "big guns" new features Ones we think are a little weird A few early bird tips and techniques for the new features--we couldn't help ourselves (replay this podcast after you get your upgrade) Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: User Sweet Deal from our Sponsors: Markzware: Makers of the Q2ID plug-in (convert QuarkXPress v3-v7 files to InDesign) and many other fine products have a TIME-LIMITED offer for InDesign Secrets fans: 25% off their plug-ins. To get the discount, purchase online at http://markzware.com and enter SECRET in the coupon code field. Links mentioned in this podcast: Adobe's web site, of course, for official CS4 info Upcoming Lynda.com InDesign CS4 titles: InDesign CS4 New Features (Anne-Marie), InDesign CS4 Essentials (David), InDesign CS4 Beyond the Basics (David), and InDesign CS4/InCopy CS4 Workflow Essentials (Anne-Marie) InDesign Magazine ... issue 26 is all about InDesign CS4

InDesign CS4; New blogs; Great posts; Obscurity of the week: Merge Swatches ----- Details below, or go to http://indesignsecrets.com/category/podcasts for Show Notes, links, and to leave a comment! ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-086.mp3 (11.8 MB, 25:46 minutes) The transcript of this podcast will be posted soon. News: InDesign CS4 Announcement Announced ;-) New blogs on the block: Publicious.net, InDesign1200.com, DearAdobe.com Great posts you might have missed: Make a Frame Grid, Print Style Specs, Find Text/Change to Graphic, PDF Place Fix Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Merge Swatches Sweet Deal from our Sponsors: Markzware: Makers of the Q2ID plug-in (convert QuarkXPress v3-v7 files to InDesign) and many other fine products have a TIME-LIMITED offer for InDesign Secrets fans: 25% off their plug-ins. To get the discount, purchase online at http://markzware.com and enter SECRET in the coupon code field. Recosoft: Makers of the PDF2ID plug-in (convert PDFs to InDesign), has a limited-time offer for InDesign Secrets fans: $20 discount only via this URL: http://www.recosoft.com/pdf2idspecial.htm Links mentioned in this podcast: John Nack's blog post about DearAdobe.com Slendro's StyleReporter plug-in Back-to-School 50% discount for ID Keyboard Shortcuts posters! InDesign Magazine free trial issue

Apples Bargeldreserven übersteigen bald die von Microsoft; Zahlreiche Apple-Updates; QuarkXPress 8; VMware Fusion beta 2

Weitere Details zum Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update, Zahlreiche Updates direkt von Apple, iTunes Video Store in Frankreich, Quark kündigt QuarkXPress 8 an, RapidWeaver 4.0

Leigh-Anne Tompkins was born with cerebral palsy due to a lack of oxygen at birth. Inspired by a documentary of a young woman who painted with her feet, Leigh-Anne started drawing when she was 9 years old. Supported by her parents, teachers, college professors and other students she graduated magna cum laude in Fine Arts. She now has her own company: Graphics Afoot Studio Design. She draws with her right foot using a trackball on the floor. A head stylus, Sticky Keys and AssistiveWare's KeyStrokes provide her full keyboard access and word prediction. Using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, QuarkXpress and other print and web design software running on an Apple PowerMac G5 Quad she does design work for local, national and international companies. To communicate she uses AssistiveWare's Proloquo software. Talent and technology have allowed her to make her dreams come true. Read more about Leigh-Anne's story in AssistiveWare Newsletter #2. Leigh-Anne lives in Jacksonville, Florida, United States of America.

Leigh-Anne Tompkins est née avec une paralysie cérébrale causée par un manque d'oxygène à la naissance. Inspirée par un documentaire sur une jeune femme qui peignait avec ses pieds, Leigh-Anne a commencé à dessiner lorsqu'elle avait neuf ans. Aidée par ses parents, ses instituteurs, ses professeurs et ses amis étudiants, elle a été diplômée "magna cum laude" en arts graphiques. Elle a maintenant créé sa propre société : Graphics Afoot Studio Design. Elle dessine avec son pied droit en utilisant une trackball posée au sol. Un stylet frontal, Sticky Keys et KeyStrokes d'AssistiveWare lui donnent accès au clavier complet et à la prédiction de mot. Avec Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, QuarkXpress et d'autres logiciels de design pour l'impression et le web tournant sur un PowerMac Quad-G5 d'Apple, elle réalise des travaux de design graphique pour des sociétés locales, nationales et internationales. Pour communiquer elle utilise le logiciel Proloquo d'AssistiveWare. Le talent et la technologie lui ont permis de réaliser ses rêves. Leigh-Anne vit à Jacksonville, en Floride, États-Unis d'Amérique.

One issue that former QuarkXPress users run into all the time is taking the extra step to group their objects together first before resizing them. In InDesign CS2 not only is this not necessary, but it may also cause frustration with the way text sizes are represented after the objects are scaled. In this episode I'll show you the best practices for resizing and I will also show you how to correct the text issues caused by grouping first.

InDesign Conference: Master Class; Q2ID plug-in; Making proper Fractions; Quizzler #3; Obscurity of the Week: Update Library Item ----- Details follow, or see show notes at http://www.indesignsecrets.com/category/podcasts ----- Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-029.mp3 (16.4 MB, 30:34 minutes) (a transcript of this podcast will be posted in a few days) -- Preview of the upcoming InDesign Conference: Master Class -- Critical update to Markzware's Q2ID plug-in (opens QuarkXPress v3-6 files in InDesign) -- Fraction Fixes: How to make good-looking fractions with and without an OpenType Pro font -- Quizzler Number 3! Instructions appear below -- Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Update Library Item Quizzler #3 instructions: As we mentioned in the podcast, DON'T post your Quizzler answer (or any discussion about it) here as a comment. Instead, e-mail your answer to us at info@indesignsecrets.com with "Quizzler" in the subject line. All correct answers we receive by midnight PST on Thursday, August 30 2006 will be included in our random dart throw that will choose a single winner. Duplicate entries from the same person will result in your being made fun of in the next podcast as well as disqualifying you. Links mentioned in the podcast: InDesign Conference: Master Class in Seattle, Washington; November 6-8, 2006 Markzware's Q2ID Plug-in — click the Get Updater! button if you're not up to v1.59 Dave Saunders' TextStylesReporter script — CS2 only, Mac/Windows Dan Rodney's ProperFractions script — CS1/CS2, Mac/Windows Listener Comment Line: +1-206-888-INDY (-4639) Talk to us, baby: Leave a message!

There's nothing wrong with your monitor. This is NOT a video episode. This week, there's more to talk about than to see as I discuss re-creating old layouts -- specifically QuarkXPress layouts -- in InDesign, and I talk you through my method for creating and using a "tracing" of your old file to help speed up the process.

At long last, the video podcast that was "a week away" (according to my optimistic first episode) is finally here. This first-ever video episode is the start of a two-part (maybe even three-part) tutorial covering what, to me, is the hands-down, deal-breaking, no-brainer, single most compelling reason to make the switch from QuarkXPress to InDesign -- Nested Style Sheets.

Listener E-Mail: Insert Special Character (Tab), Make Non-Printing, Find/Change Quotes; Best options for exporting InDesign pages for inclusion in a QuarkXPress layout; Obscure Feature of the Week: Allow Pages to Shuffle

This audio-only podcast outlines what the goal of this whole endeavor is; a little bit about my background, mostly related to working with InDesign; a few (justifiable) jabs at QuarkXPress; and a quick tip about how taking advantage of Presets in InDesign can save you lots of time.