Excuse me?

What?

You can’t just skip over it all?

It’s my blog – I can do whatever I want with it.

Sure you can. But you won’t.

Fine. You’re right – here’s the recap of what’s been going on in my life during the time that I’ve been absent from this blog.

You really think you’re going to be able to update us on over 14 months in a single post?

No, but I’ve got to start somewhere so let’s go back to my last job, way back in 2006…

I had always needed to do design as part of my job, little stuff from designing advertisement for the Yellow Page classifieds or product logos, brochures, flyers, booklets, web sites, web pages and stuff like that.  I really enjoyed those aspects of the job. It was only a part of what I did, but design was what I liked most.  A time came when BCG Systems decided that they wanted to outsource all aspects of their marketing so that put me in the position of having to find a new job.

Brockman, Coats, Gedelian & Co. and BCG Systems was one of the best places I’ve worked. It is a company that values their employees – for real. It was a phenomenal place to work, from good benefits to little perks like a fridge stocked with pop and lunches for the entire company to welcome new hires.  BCG&Co. knew how to treat employees – even when they were letting them go. I was told that Systems was going to outsource and they gave me 8 weeks to find something new.  I could stay, keep working, earning a paycheck while I searched for something new. 6 weeks later I had found something new.

I started at Coltene Whaledent in March of 2006 and getting this job provided evidence that I actually could design. See, my degree is in Marketing & Sales Management and all my positions at least to that point had been marketing related.  So stepping into a position with the title of Graphic Designer was a big thing for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I knew I had the skill set to design.  I had a portfolio of well executed, well designed pieces. But seeing the words Graphic Designer after my name meant something to me. I spent the next two years honing my skills, learning how to function in a design team.  I learned a lot from my colleagues. Our skill sets complimented each other and we produced some great stuff.  I had the opportunity to learn video production skills, further develop my ability to design pieces that communicated well and challenged myself to keep getting better at what I did.

Having come from BCG Systems, a place where we had to stay on top of the latest innovations, to Coltene Whaledent , where I saw that the company was quite a bit behind the times in terms how we used technology. Being in graphics I was a bit sheltered from having to deal with some of the older technology. We were on Mac’s – they weren’t the newest machines but they worked. About a year into being there our team decided it was time to try and push for new machines.  We made a good argument and got our upgrades. But that was just in the Graphics Department. Around 2 1/2 years ago our CEO retired. He had asked me at one point to put together a brief set of technology recommendations about things we should consider doing to become a bit more agile. Unfortunately I was never able to present it to him in person before he left.

After his retirement I met with the new president & general manager of our location and shared some of my thoughts on the state of our company.  I told him about my brief report and he asked to see it.  I spent a couple days updating some things and gave it to him.  A few days later he asked me if I’d like to be a part of helping make my recommendations a reality. I considered it and knew that it would be quite a task for me, a departure from my duties in graphic design.

I was told that I’d have the opportunity to learn a new skill set, that I would be given time to develop. It sounded like a risk worth taking.  I had enjoyed design and still very much do, but within the context of Coltene Whaledent I had grown bored.  Sure every once in a while we had some exciting projects but this – helping the company do some catch up – sounded like a great idea.  And at first it was.  We covered a lot of ground and in the process, spent a lot of money. Money, that – in my opinion, should have been spent years before.  My first task was to figure out how many old machines we’d need to replace and figure out the costs for doing that.  At the same time I was to begin exploring what it would look like to put in place a full time I.T. team and manage the much needed project of bringing Microsoft Exchange Server into our environment.  This required reviewing a lot of proposals, considering different licensing models and making decisions that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  No problem.

I called the people I knew and trusted at BCG Systems.  They helped immensely and in a short amount of time we had made some significant progress.  We had a fully staffed I.T. team – I fit into it somehow.  But then February 19th happened.

I was let go. Downsized.

I worked hard for the last 18 months helping to establish a technology infrastructure, processes and procedures, a team and now I was told that I was no longer a part of it.  It hurt. It still does to some degree. But I’ve learned a lot.

I know that I can manage big projects. I know that I can learn to do things that I’ve never done before when I’m given the opportunity and I’ve learned that sometimes the risks that you take don’t always turn out the way you’d like them to.  I’ve learned that I had friends there that I miss seeing, but won’t stop caring about.  I’ve learned that even though I may not have a job there any more that I did good work and can be proud of what I was able to accomplish.

So now I’m looking for another opportunity.  I’m ready to be a designer again. I’m ready to use the skill set that I already have to do whatever is next. If that’s in marketing – great. If that’s being a designer – great. Whatever it’s supposed to be I’m ready to do it.  I’m waiting for God to show me the next entrance because it’s clear that even if I hadn’t planned it – it was time for an exit. So He’s providing me the opportunity to do something new, somewhere new.

That said, if you hear of any opportunities where I may fit a need, let me know.

In the year 2009…

• Newly inaugurated president Barack Obama will request that I actually appear in photos with him instead of using Photoshop to insert myself.
• I will continue to mutter “should have bought a mac” under my breath whenever I am informed that someone’s PC is “acting funny.”
• Former president George W. Bush will finally run out of trees for “chain-sawin’” on his Crawford, TX ranch.
• Miley Cyrus will increase dramatically in her ability to be annoying, but will be unsuccessful in reaching the same heights as  her father’s creepy hairdo
• The continent of Africa will unite under a common goal.  Will it be clean water? A solution to the AIDS epidemic? No – Ending adoptions by annoying celebrities like Brad, Angelina & Madonna.
• Speaking of Madonna, she will release a new album entitled “Pause” Critics will celebrate the album as a new-era in her creativity. She will receive her AARP membership card.
• Knute Larson, now Co-Senior Pastor of The Chapel will use the exclamation “Yo!” ninety times. Each time teenagers will wonder to themselves if he really thinks that’s “the cool thing” to say.
• Facebook will become the worlds most popular website, followed closely by Zombo.com
• Starbucks will be available anywhere thanks to a new technology they call BarInsta!® – drinks are sent by demolecularization from the nearest location and received via a microchip enabled coffee collar. There will be three sizes – Groot, Malaki & Duża.  (All mean large in Dutch, Filipino & Polish)

Special Bonus Predictions!

• Scientist will create a vegetable that looks like cauliflower and tastes like watermelon. No one will want to eat it because it will be called brain fruit. It later will be found to cause bleeding from the ears. And death. Sweet, tasty death.
• Lawyers will figure out a way to sue the governtment for continuing to issue pennies when they are obviously not worth anything. The goverment will lose and oddly enough, will owe each American 4¢.
• After discovering a frozen wooly mammoth embryo and implanting it in an elephant, biologists will celebrate its arrival naming it Snuffleupagus. They will then set out to grow a really big bird to provide it with a “best friend.”

Take two pictures
1. The first should be empty to create a static background to work from

This is your starter image - you could make yours scarier looking than mine if you want it to be really “ghostly”

2. The second should contain you or the person you’re going to make a “ghost”.

See that creepy looking guy with the menacing gesture - yeah, that's our ghost. Casper's got nothing on this guy.

Use a tripod – it will make the shots line up better. For the second shot set the camera to self-timer mode to give yourself time to get into the frame

Photoshop work
1. Open the two photos in Adobe Photoshop and arrange them so you can see at least part of each photo
2. With the Move Tool (V) click into the photo with your ghost subject
3. While holding shift, click & drag the photo with your ghost subject into the empty photo – this should, if you’ve taken the photos from a tripod or otherwise made the camera sit still, perfectly align the two photos so that everything in the background lines up perfectly.  To check this, change the top layer’s blending mode to difference.  If everything is lined up the only part of the image that won’t be black is the part where your ghost subject is.  Be sure to change the blending mode back to normal before you continue
4. Change the opacity of the top layer (with your ghost subject) to 50%

Top layer's opacity set to 50% - It's already kind of ghostly at this point, but we can do more.

5. At the bottom of the layers palette click the new layer icon to create a new layer.
6. Select the brush tool and be sure that you have a nice round brush and that your brush hardness is set to 0% and change the flow setting to 50%.

Brush Settings - You can see I picked a pretty big brush and set the hardness to 0%. This creates a very feathered soft brush.

7. On the new layer you just created,  paint over the ghost subject with the brush tool in a blue – in this example I picked the following:

Color Settings - you can pick whatever color you want to make your Ghost glow.

The results of brushing over the Ghost subject

H: Now change the blending mode on the blue layer to Screen and watch your ghost appear.

Layer Blending Mode Settings - choose “Scream” – I mean “Screen” from the dropdown list at the top of the layers Palette

Final Results - Not too scary but definitely ghostly.

Play with the blending modes and colors to manipulate the image in any way you like.  Try adding shadows and highlights with lighter and darker colors.

Added some filters (glowing edges, various noise, etc.) The point is have fun - experiment, its the best way to learn how things work.

Quicksilver – absolutely essential. Once you learn to use Quicksilver to launch your apps and you’ll never dig through the Applications folder in the finder again. And that’s just the beginning.  Find out more about how to use Quicksilver by watching Episode12 or Episode 17 of Macbreak.

Flip4mac – Nobody that owns a Mac really wants anything that has anything to do with Microsoft on their machine.  Thankfully this app isn’t made by the boys in Redmond so it works really well.  This app makes QuickTime work with Windows Media files – a video format which is used by many, many Web sites.

Perian – the Swiss Army Knife for QuickTime – meaning it’ll make QuickTime play files that it normally wouldn’t, like FLV.  What this means is that you can download flash videos from Google Video & YouTube and actually be able to use them almost anywhere you can use QuickTime.

Firefox – Safari is a great, fast browser, but Firefox needs to be on your Mac.  I use it as my everyday browser and with plugins for web development, del.icio.us bookmarks and ad blockers it makes browsing productive.

Cyberduck – I know a lot of Mac users love Panic’s Transmit application for FTP but I’m a big fan of Cyberduck.  It works consistently and plays really nice with many of the other apps I use day-to-day.

Growl – Growl is a system notification app. It alerts you to various events that are happening on your machine.  I use it to alert me to new mail and inform me of ftp upload completion (it plays really nice with Cyberduck, Mail.app, Adium, iPhoto (w/FlickrExport) and NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire – NetNewsWire is an awesome RSS reader. I use it to keep up on the news sites and blogs I read. It uses NewsGator to sync what I have and have not read between the various machines I use.

SuperDuper! – SuperDuper! is a painless backup & recovery software.  During the mess that was the upgrade to OS X 10.5 I used SuperDuper to backup and restore my system more times than I wish to remember.  It creates a disk image that  is bootable from any firewire drive.  It’s basic functions are free but it’s well worth the money for the extended functionality.

Handbrake – A DVD, ahem, backup tool. You know, for all those DVD’s you have that you’d like to have digital copies of so you can, um, watch them on your computer, without actually having to use the discs.  It’s really great if you have an AppleTV, like me.

Adium – Adium is a multi-protocol chat client- meaning it works with AIM, Google Talk & Yahoo! and many more. It can be buggy, but it’s great for having one place to chat with everyone.

Widgets

Technically these aren’t really applications, maybe web apps, but most are just graphics with javascript, HTML and CSS.  I don’t use them a ton but these two have found a special place on my Macs.

• Delivery Status Widget – works with all kinds of shippers and notifies you of updates via Growl
• Jared: The Butcher of Song – every once in a while you need to be serenaded – this is not for those times.

What about you?

Do you have any apps that are must haves on all your Macs? Have a widget you can’t live without? Drop me a comment and let me know.