I found this link when doing a bit of research on creating 3D planets: Cybia has a whole series of freeware filters designed to be used in Photoshop. I downloaded the Pseudo Infra Red filter and installed it into my plugins folder. On rebooting FW, I can access the filter via the Filters menu. And it works quite nicely!

Definitely a place to check out if you're looking for something new.

Alas! What else can you do when someone tosses a baton at you?

Here's my "schwag" list. Still in my possession are:

1. a white, long sleeved dress shirt with the Macromedia logo embroidered on the pocket
2. a white T-shirt with a blue Macromedia logo printed on it
3. a Macromedia space-age pen, able to write in free fall, in a walk-in cooler, or under a Steinway concert grand (don't ask)
4. 3 Macromedia TMM badges
5. a box of designer chocolates. Well, not really still in my possession unless you count the inch they added to my waistline.

In the possession of nieces and nephews who thought they were cool, and liberated them:

1. a deep blue T-shirt with </hassle> printed on it
2. a nice fleece vest
3. two auto visor CD holder thingies (is THAT what they were!)
4. a Macromedia water bottle

Things gained through my seven year relationship with Macromedia:

1. the skills necessary to leave a dead end job for work I love. How many of you can wear their bunny slippers to the office, eh?
2. through my interaction with wonderful Macromedia employees, the skill, confidence, and opportunity to teach others what I've learned
3. new friends from every corner of the world.

There has never been another company like Macromedia. On my wish list is for the name, MACROMEDIA, to somehow stay alive.

Hey Murray Summers, Al Sparber, Kevin French, and Nadia Perre--catch the baton!. :-)

How many fellow mac heads have been frustrated at the difficulty sending HTML email using your mail program? That has been one of the most frustrating issues for me. When I send my invoices, which are created in DW (using a template), I have to open them in a browser and save them as a PDF, then attach to the email. There are other times I would like to send a nice pretty HTML email, but I only have cursory formatting available in Entourage.

Michael Jones, a friend from my rather chatty WebWeavers list, just pointed me to a MacWorld article that contains the answer. You can get the details there, but Rob Buckley created a free Send Complex HTML with Inline Files 2004 that was about as easy to install and use as anything I've done yet. It's a matter of putting the Applescript into your Entourage Script Menu Items folder and then showing the email the path to your HTML file. Voila! Lovely formatted HTML email from OS X! What more could you want? Thanks Rob!

Another baton -- good thing it's the weekend and my one day off.

I have to say though, reading Kim's list and a couple of his comments, there's some cool stuff floating around out there. And I don't have it. I don't have hats or lap blankets and I've never seen a kite. Wow! Maybe there's still time before the proposed merger. ;~) I have to agree with JD though, I'm liable to go obsessive-compulsive on this since it's so hard to remember, but here goes anyway...

Total Macromedia Shwag in your possession:

7 t-shirts (I love my "goto and play" and </hassle> shirts)
1 long sleeved dress shirt
1 Dreamweaver backpack
1 Macromedia backpack
1 MM zippered shoulder bag
2 CD car visors
1 CD case
1 Flash drive (64MB)
3 Notebooks (one of my favorite items)
3 Pens
1 heavy folder/notebook pen holder
MM branded Power bars
MM branded Energy water
MM branded coffee candy
1 Macromedia Hot Sauce
1 large plastic water container
1 tall thermal coffee mug
1 glow/flash MAX mardi gras beads
1 brightly-colored button for each product (nabbed at MAX -- they SO remind me of the 80's)
(And yes, I keep popping in and adding... told you I'd get all obsessive compulsive about it. ;~))

Oldest Macromedia shwag in your possession:

Not sure. Might be my </hassle> t-shirt (a fun one).

Last Macromedia shwag you received:

It was a group of things. A Macromedia backpack filled with the coffee mug, water container, flash drive, CD holder and travel-sized notebook/pen set.

Most Unusual Shwag:

Not sure I have anything too unusual. I suppose the Energy water, Power bars and coffee candy was rather unusual. Of course, they're no longer "in my possession" since I consumed them immediately.

Shwag you wear/use most often:

I love my Dreamweaver backpack and when I leave the house/office, I carry it. But in the office, it would have to be my Flash drive (so easy to transfer files between computers) and notebooks.

5 Favorite Macromedia shwag items:

Undoubtedly, the winner is my Dreamweaver backpack. It's rather like a messenger bag and has lots of compartments. It's more stout than my regular MM branded one (so I let my husband borrow that one after his got stolen at a conference).

The next would be my new Flash drive. I had never broken down and bought one -- it's quite handy.

Then, though one of the less expensive items, I love my Macromedia MX notebook. Not just for the cool cover. :~) The paper inside is so stout and smooth. I hate that it's almost empty (more notebooks MM?)

I also find my CD car visor to be a handy dandy item. As long as I can keep a couple of my CD's in there and it doesn't get filled with my teenagers music.

Of course, I can't leave out my thermal coffee mug -- I almost ALWAYS need coffee when I leave the house. (And Jim, I have to say I use it as often as my CMX partner one -- only because the MM one holds more.) And the water container makes a perfect addition to my beach bag which got quite a workout the past couple weeks with my friend Ginger here. Of course we didn't always fill it with water. ;~)

What I wish I had? Shirts that were baby doll Tee's or tank tops. A Macromedia-branded iPod -- now that would rock!

5 people I'm passing the baton to:

It would be good to take this outside the realm of the CMX partners I think. Hmmm... Who's got cool shwag (besides Macromedia employees) -- How about:

Robert Hoekman

Adam Bell

Chris Georgenes

Linda Rathgeber

Jesse Rodgers

C'mon people -- show us whatcha got!

I'm a fairly new character as far as MM is concerned, so my collection of cool things is pretty limited:

Total Macromedia shwag in your possession:

 1 T-shirt

 1  128MB USB key

 1 semi-thermal coffee mug

Oldest Macromedia shwag in your possession:

It's all the same age - just got it this summer

Last Macromedia shwag you received:

As above

Most Unusual Shwag:

While not unusual, I think the USB key is nifty and useful

Shwag you wear/use most often:

USB key (I use my CMX Partner mug much more often then the Macromedia one. Sorry MM)

5 Favorite Macromedia schwag items:

My favorite would be the laptop case or backpack that I DON'T have. I drool over those at conferences. 

I prefer my Tilley hat over a baseball cap; the thing is indestructable and acts as a better sunshade. 

With all the news of mergers and acquisitions going around, one constant seems to be how much all our Macromedia gear may be worth on eBay some day. I thought it might be fun to take an inventory on what everyone else has out there. Admittedly I have a fair amount from attending conferences, my time as a member of Team Macromedia, working with the Macromedia Education Leaders group, and other stuff that I'm not allowed to talk about, but I'm sure there are plenty of other folks who proudly wear the "M" log, and will miss it when (and if) it goes away.

To that end let's pass the baton.

Total Macromedia Shwag in your possession:

10 t-shirts (My brother once asked me if I owned any shirts that didn't have the Macromedia logo on them.)
2 ball caps
1 backpack
1 lap blanket
1 CD car visor holder
1 CD case
2 Flash drives
1 fleece jacket
4 polo style shirts
1 long sleeve Team Macromedia shirt
Various and sundry pens, notebooks, and doodads

Oldest Macromedia shwag in your possession:

A white t-shirt with the two-color MM logo circa version 4 of Dreamweaver/Fireworks/Flash. It's been relegated to the lawn mowing t-shirt pile, but I haven't brought myself to part with it yet.

Last Macromedia shwag you received:

Macromedia ball cap

Most Unusual Shwag:

The lap blanket is pretty unique. I think it goes to big shots who visit the MM mothership for sales meetings. At least that's how I got mine. :-)

Shwag you wear/use most often:

The Macromedia backpack. I use it everyday carrying stuff back and forth to work and for whatever laptop I'm using at the moment.

5 Favorite Macromedia schwag items: 

Fleece jacket. I don't get to wear it that often, but it sure is comfy when things cool down.

The original "</hassle>" Contribute shirt. I have four of those, and they're in constant rotation.

The backpack of course. It's just the right size to hold the common things I carry around--iPod, magazines, Tums, Advil, notebook and other odds and ends I don't want to be without.

Team Macromedia long-sleeve cotton shirt. Great fishing shirt. Really. Nice and cool.

Ball caps. Keeps that patch of bareness on the back of my head covered in the sun and looks cool to boot.

 5 people I'm passing the baton to:

Oh let's see. Might as well stick to the Community MX gang to start with. How about:

Stephanie Sullivan

Tom Green

Jim Babbage

Tom Muck

and one ringer:

John Dowdell 

There you go folks. I doubt that this will get the traction that the musical baton got a little while ago, but it might be fun.

Yes, admittedly, I hate pop-ups. I surf with my pop-up blockers enabled in both Firefox and Safari. If they somehow get around my blocking them, I immediately close them. I never click on advertisements. So I'm not really any different than you.

Today however, I was going to a site my husband gets a newsletter from to check a business article. Interestingly, they had this cute little yellow sticky note-looking thing that welcomes you to the site and offers a trial to their daily newsletter. What's so cool about a sticky note, right? Well, this sticky note is different. It sits at the mid-top of the page and overlaps their navigation. It has a nice little drop shadow that you can see through. It has an X in the top right corner so that you can close it, or you can click the sticky note and go straight to the offer. Pretty unobtrusive and well-done in my opinion. I found, by digging through the Early to Rise code that the service is provided by a company called Instant Attention (I am not in any way affiliated with them ;)). The little note can be put anywhere on the page, has different handwriting fonts you can choose and grows and shrinks based on the amount of content it contains. It gets around all pop-up blockers, however, since it's based on JavaScript, it obviously won't work with JS disabled.

So why does this one not bother me? I think it's because usually, a pop-up is advertising something for another company. Something I'm not interested in at all. This is instead an offer from the web site I'm visiting. Now that's something I might be interested in. And if I'm not, it's just a handwritten note that I can close right up. It has me thinking about how some of my clients could possibly benefit from such a widget. Hmmmm...

One of my more popular extensions has been the free extension Sniplets, which is handier in some ways than Dreamweaver's built-in Snippets panel. Sniplets are stored on your context menu from Code View, and in a short menu. I use them for short code snips that I need all the time. At the request of a customer, I added the ability to import export Sniplets from the extension dialog box. Now, you can move Sniplets from machine to machine, and more importantly, keep groups of Sniplets stored in folders. Sniplets export as regular Snippet files -- yes, compatible with regular Dreamweaver Snippets. What I am now doing is keeping my often-used code snips as Snippets in the Snippets panel, then depending on what I am working on (a ColdFusion site, PHP site, Dreamweaver extension, etc) I will clean out my Sniplet list and import a new set for the project. You can download it free from http://www.tom-muck.com/extensions/help/Sniplets/

The PHP version of Cartweaver was released yesterday, and if I do say so myself it's a great implementation of Cartweaver ;-). I joined the Cartweaver team a while ago to build the PHP version, and worked closely with the team to make it consistent with the ASP and ColdFusion versions. Anybody who has used Cartweaver for ASP or ColdFusion knows that it is a flexible shopping cart solution, easily customizable from within Dreamweaver, or from a code editor of your choice. The e-store is implemented as both a Dreamweaver extension and as a set of PHP files that can be copied directly into a site. The database setup is easy and the store can be used right away. Check out http://www.cartweaver.com/go/php/ for more details.

Since "Batman Begins" has been doing so well at the box office of late, it seems sad to mention the recent passing of one of Batman's more popular artist as Jim Aparo - a popular artist during the comic book highs of the 1980's - has recently put down his pencil for the final time.

Although Jim continued to work in comics all the way up until a few short years ago, he probably became best known for his work on "Batman and the Outsiders" - a book which teamed Batman up with five little used DC comic heroes at the time. Although the book never reached the popularity scales as John Byrne and Chris Claremont's X-men or George Perez and Marv Wolfman's Teen Titans did during that same period, it did reach a high point where Batman and the Outsiders took on the Teen Titans in a two issue series. It was during that two issue story that Robin (Dick Grayson) began to break away from the identity of being Batman's kid sidekick and helped propel Robin into more of an individual character like the one created on film by Chris O'Donnell.

Here is a duplication of the promotional piece for the Batman and the Outsider's comic book and a sample of Jim Aparo's style:

http://www.tonyznet.com/nostalgia/nzine3/20-21.jpg

This is what DC Comics had to say in its release:

OUTHINGTON, Conn. - James N. Aparo, an illustrator for DC Comics
for more than 30 years who drew Batman, the Green Arrow and other
action heroes, has died.

Aparo died Tuesday at home after a short illness, said his daughter,
Donna Aparo. He was 72.

Aparo, who grew up in New Britain, brought characters to life in his
home studio in Southington, corresponding with DC Comics through the
mail. He retired about four years ago, his daughter said.

Besides Batman and the Green Arrow, Aparo also did illustrations for
Aquaman, the Brave and the Bold, Phantom Stranger and Spectre.
His big break came in the late 1960s when he was working for
Charlton Press and his editor got a job at DC. The editor, Dick
Giordano, brought Aparo with him to the comic book maker.
In a 2000 interview with Jim Amash for Comic Book Artist, Aparo said
he went to Hartford Art School for a semester, but was mostly self-
taught.

"I just drew as a kid and went with it," he said. "I studied and
copied comic strips and comic books. I grew up with Superman,
Batman, and Captain Marvel. I really liked Captain Marvel Jr. by Mac
Raboy. That was beautiful stuff. I liked Alex Raymond, Milton
Caniff ... all of those guys."

Aparo is survived by his wife, Julieann, and three children.

On another sad note...

It looks as though James Doohan's fight against Alzheimer's disease has ended as well. Scotty, at the age of 85, has finally beamed up for the last time as well.

http://www.imdb.com/news/flash/

For Star Trek fans every where, I am sure this must be a sad, sad day. Just as it must have been when DeForest Kelley passed away.

I was never a huge "dress-myself-up-in-Federation-outfit-and-go-to-Trek-convention" type fan, but I do enjoy the Star Trek universe very much and used to enjoy watching the "classic" Trek episodes every night at midnight in my dorm room in college. And later, along with my wife, we became big Next Generation fans (but I think that had more to do with my wife's affection for bald headed men more so then her fascination with the show). :-)

You think these characters are going to live forever and then suddenly, the human being who portrayed them dies and you are left remembering that they were just characters on film that were portrayed by mortal actors. Of course, Scotty and Bones WILL always live forever on screen... Deforest Kelley and James Doohan may have passed on but they have given us Bones and Scotty to enjoy until the film they live on disintegrates into dust.

Still though, for my money, Scotty will always be defined by three different episodes:

1. His part in the original "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode
2. His part in saving the human race in "The Voyage Home" - I mean seriously... can any Mac enthusiast NOT crack up in laughter as Scotty sits down at an old classic Mac and says "Computer...on..."???!!! :-)
3. And his later appearance in the Next generation episode where he was able to set up a continual transporter beam in order to keep himself alive (although you would think you wouldn't gain any weight or age in a transporter beam loop but that's neither here nor there, right?).

It looks as though it's a sad day indeed.

-Chris

After reading my blog piece called Saving Schoenberg, my daughter asked me what composer I was going to try to save next. So, I thought, it's a series now, is it? Why then, let's spin a series within a series! With the recent release of yet another Star Wars movie, what better composer to save than the English composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934)?

If you're wondering what Holst has to do with Star Wars, you may not know that he wrote a piece called The Planets that saw a lot of heavy lifting from the Star War movie's sound track composer, John Williams. You can read all about it at A Young Person's Guide to Holst's Planets - Mars <http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/holst_mars_000309.html> Here's a paragraph from that page:

"Gustav Holst's "Mars: Bringer of War" will sound familiar to science fiction buffs, as much of the score of Star Wars consists of John William’s variations. In particular, compare the climax of this movement to the music accompanying the destruction of the Death Star."

Sneaky, huh? Someone's been tricking you into listening to classical music.

This brings me to an important point for anyone who would like to like classical music, but is at a loss while listening to hardcore composers. It really makes sense, especially for young people: start from what you know. Movie scores are a good bridge between classical music and what you know. Indeed, much movie music borrows heavily from classical music.

If you like the Star Wars music, first listen to Mars, the Bringer of War from The Planets. It is full of percussion, brass, and dare I say it? It gets going like heavy metal. From parents who want to give their children a little music education to anyone who wants something exciting to crank up on the car stereo while speeding down the Interstate, The Planets is a great segue into classical music. (I have an "audiophile sound system" in my car, and I am always sure to turn up the bass while listening to this piece, and to never let my ear stray too far from the fantastic orchestration for the percussion instruments.)

After you listen to Mars, you can move on to the other movements:

• Venus, the Bringer of Peace
• Mercury, the Winged Messenger
• Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
• Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age
• Uranus, the Magician
• Neptune, the Mystic

Yes, Earth and Pluto are missing. The piece was written before Pluto was discovered in 1930, and you might want to speculate why Holst did not translate the planet Earth into sound. If you want to know about Holst's interest in astrology during the time he was composing this piece, or how Stravinsky influenced this work, you can read all about it at http://www.gustavholst.info/compositions/listing.php?piece_id=18

In spite of what you may have heard, however, you don't have to know what dissonance is, or what period in music history this piece is from, or what key signature it's in, or anything else in order to "get it" and fall in love with the music. Just enjoy. And who knows? You may very well save Holst...

If you're looking for a change of scene on your desktop, I might have just the thing. Every once in a while I put together some new wallpaper images for my desktop, and I share them with those who visit my web site. So if you're in the mood for a sunset, or want to stare off into the "big sky" of Muskoka, or see the ancient spindly pines of an Alaskan lake, feel free to drop by my site and download a new view.

I've just updated the page with a few new ones, many shot with my pride and joy: a Nikon D70. 

Look for a tutorial coming soon on the process I go through to create these promo wallpapers, using Fireworks - mostly. :-) 

Well it's been quite a week here with the launch of our latest JumpStart, Vienna. And as you can tell if you've been following along, the production of a JumpStart does not happen over night.

A couple of the neat little treats we have this week in relation to Vienna are a series of PNG redesigns; one from Kim C, one from me and one from Linda R. I think these examples go along way to demonstrating how much flexibility there is in a JumpStart.

And for all of you out there who may be a little timid due to the CSS-P layouts, let me set your mind at ease. *I* did a redesign and I am no CSS guru. I even took the design all the way to page production, so I know it will work.

Doing this also gave me a chance to dive into the CSS more. I did have to tweak my colors and fonts and such. It's amazing how much more sense things make when you're doing something hands-on. So give Vienna - or one of the other JS's - a spin and see what you come up with. We'd love to see what you can do!

Community MX is proud to announce another in its series of Dreamweaver CSS templates, CMX JumpStart Vienna. CMX partner John Gallant (also of positioniseverything.net) added a revolutionary new technique called Jello Mold to the layout.

Designed and coded by Sheri German, Vienna uses unordered lists for navigation, a search field, and a footer and header. It includes both a two-column and and a three-column layout, each in a fluid-fixed combination. With its use of Jello Mold technique, however, Vienna resolves the arguments in the fixed versus fluid debate. By devising a way to allow margins to adjust depending on the width of the window, and by including implied minimum and maximum widths, even in Internet Explorer, and even without Javascript, Jello Mold creates a win-win situation for users and web designers alike. Originally created by Michael J. Purvis, Jello Mold was expanded upon by our very own John Gallant and Holly Bergevin, whose hands we see behind-the-scenes as they apply the technique to Vienna.

Like all of the CMX JumpStarts, the pages are constructed using valid XHTML 1.0 markup and formatted using valid CSS 2.1 styling. Vienna also follows the WAI and Section 508 accessibility guidelines to provide you with a solid foundation for your work.

Recently, one of my clients with a Bobby AAA accessible site was informed that his PHP style switcher didn't work with a Linux/Mozilla 1.4 combination. This was troublesome since it's very important to him to be accessible not only to screen readers, but also to low vision users.

I attempted to get to the bottom of it and, with the help of Tom Pletcher here at Community MX, I found the page at Mozilla where you can download all the previous versions of the browser. I'm sharing it here just in case I ever lose my bookmarks ;) ... and so you don't have to dig for it if you need similar. Mozilla 1.x Releases will give you access to all Mozilla 1.x releases for all platforms. Handy!

Using these, we were able to download Mozilla 1.4 (2 years old) onto OS X and a PC -- these showed no issues with the switcher. I found a friend with a Linux box that had Mozilla 1.7.8 installed -- which also worked perfectly. I was able to convince him to install Mozilla 1.4 on that box to test for me (thanks Steve!) -- It was also flawless. Thus, we determined the issue was on the person's computer that reported it which releived my client's mind. But without that great little link to the older versions of Mozilla, I would have been searching through Google for similar problems, likely taking more time than I could afford to give it with my workload of late.

As I write, Nasa is moments away from giving Temple 1 a really good poke in the eye. It is being delivered in the form of 2/5ths of a ton of copper arriving at 10 kilometers per second.

Normally Astronomy is a staid, sopoforic endeavour, but this one time they will get a chance to actually make something happen "out there". Tonite every amateur and professional Astronomer will be united in the primal desire to WHACK THAT PUPPY! Yeah.

Talk about a defining moment. Only problem is, once these geeks get a taste of direct action there will be no holding them back! Before we know it, there will be pockmarks on every solid object within reach. We have to head this off while our beautiful solar system remains intact!

I urge all to join with me in the "Hands Off Our Celestial Bodies!" campaign. We must bring home to those soon-to-be-wild-eyed telescope jockeys the understanding that the cosmos is NOT their personal shooting gallery! Geeze, why don't they just go play paintball or something?