Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Don't sell yourself short.  You can do it.
I have seen many people who didn't think they could use computers who are now whizzing right along like they've done it all their lives.  It's all a matter of getting over the idea of doing something "wrong."

If I can teach a 12 year old kid to use a 35mm camera, develop the film and make photographic prints in a darkroom, we can teach you how to use a stupid computer.  To be hones, with all kidding a side, I don't care what computer you use.  If you can learn one, you can learn any.  They are virtually all the same, nowadays.

The "Preview" application program is your best bet for quickly and easily resizing and cropping pictures.  It works virtually the same as the "Picture Viewer" or "Editor" program in Windows.  You double-click to open the file, do your business, save the file and you're done.  It should take 90 seconds on either platform.

I still don't understand the problem you are having with resizing.  Sometimes the picture is zoomed in or zoomed out on the screen even through it has actually been resized.  (This can happen on both platforms.)  Remember, the size of the picture as it appears on the screen might be different from it's actual size.  Computers often zoom in or zoom out automatically.

If you want to tell the actual size of the picture, choose TOOLS > Show Inspector from your menu.  A little dialog box will appear that shows all the specs of your picture.

To zoom the picture on the screen, choose VIEW > Zoom in  -or-  Zoom out.
In the same menu, there are several commands to change the size of the picture as displayed on the screen.

Also note that, in the same menu, VIEW, there is an option that says "Automatically Resize."
Toggle that option by clicking on it so that the check mark appears or disappears as you want it to be.
This will change the computer's behavior with respect to how it displays pictures.
If the computer isn't behaving the way you expect, it's probably a setting that needs to be changed.

Regardless...  When you get time and when you get the mind to straighten this problem out, send me a message or an e-mail.

Like I said, if I can teach 12 year old kids how to make real photographs in a darkroom, we can figure out what the problem is with your computer together.

I'm not sure I understand what you are having trouble doing.

Are you trying to resize a photo, for example, from 1024 pixels X 768 pixels to a smaller size like 512 X 384?
You shouldn't have had any trouble resizing a whole picture using Preview.  That program does a good job of resizing and it does so simply and quickly.  It is standard equipment on all new Macs.  Double clicking any JPEG picture should open it in Preview automatically.

Or...  Are you trying to crop a photo so that your picture shows only the Bear and less of the background?
Again, Preview should be able to do that for you, as well.

Just open the picture in Preview and drag your mouse across the picture to highlight the area of the picture you want to keep.  Then, from the menu, choose  TOOLS > Crop Image...  That should be it.

Further, after cropping, you can also resize the image just like we talked about above.

The thing is that the similar application in Windoze works similar to the way the Mac application.  The commands are different but the process is almost the same.  If you can do it in Windoze you should also be able to do it on a good computer.

This should be a simple thing to do on any computer...  Unless I don't understand what you are trying to do.

What are you trying to do?  Resize a picture to a given dimension so that the website software will allow it to be uploaded?

That's a snap!  :)

Double-click the picture to open it with your "Preview" application.
Choose the menu:  Tools > Adjust Size...
Use the drop-down menu to choose the size you want to the picture to fit into
- OR -
Type the size you want in the boxes.
-THEN -
Click "OK."
Choose the menu:  File > Save As...
Type in a file name and click "OK."

You're done!   

No, he's being abducted by an alien space ship! 

I just reread the website.

The artist says the clock will knit a 2 meter long tube in 365 days.  That's equivalent to 5.4 millimeters per day.

Looking closely at the pictures, it appears like there are 48 teeth on the knitting wheel.
Judging by the thickness of the yarn and the size of the stitches, it looks like 1 revolution of the wheel would be about 5 mm.
One revolution per day; 48 clicks per day; that comes out to one click every 30 minutes.

It doesn't seem like you can really tell time by this clock.  It only shows the passage of time, not discrete measures of time.

If you speed the clock up so it knits one stitch per minute, it would make 162 mm of tube in a day.
(1440 min./day ÷ 48 stitches/rev. = 30 rev./day * 5.4 mm./rev. = 162 mm./day)

That's 1.134 meters per week;  4.5 meters per month and 59.1 meters per year.

If it went any faster, say 1 stitch per second, it would knit a whole lot of socks.  Almost 10 meters per day.  (9.7 meters.)
That's equal to 3.5 kilometers per year.  (2.2 miles.)

So, just puzzling it out like that, it's easy to see that if it ran any faster than it already does, it would produce a huge amount of knitted product.  At 2 meters per year, it's manageable.  At 162 mm per day it gets a little inconvenient.  At that rate, you'd probably have to cut it off and rethread it every week.  If it ran at the faster rate, you'd have to cut it off and rethread it twice per day or else you could end up with a seriously unmanageable and expensive to maintain mess on your hands.

At its present rate, it's probably more like a calendar than a clock.

If the clock motor runs at a certain, set speed, you could tell time by the length of the sock that is knitted.

For instance, if the clock knits one inch of sock per hour, in one day, it will knit two feet.
Put a graduated scale on the wall behind the clock and you can tell the time, plus or minus one half hour by comparing the length of the sock to the scale.

If you used variegated yarn that changed color at precise intervals, you could tell time by how many stripes are on the sock.
For instance, if the yarn was colored brown, black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, gray and white and those colors were dyed into the yarn at precisely the interval that the clock can knit in one hour, you would end up with a rainbow colored sock that would have one colored stripe for every hour.

I suppose you could make the yarn change color every fifteen minutes but that would be too hard to read from a distance.

This happens a lot with photography galleries I have worked with.

Galleries don't want to display artwork that's hanging all over town.  They don't want to waste their wall space with pictures that people can buy anywhere.  The gallery owner works hard to develop a theme, a look and a clientele for the art she sells.

Gallery owners will ask artists not to display copies of a particular work in any other gallery, usually for 30 days after the piece leaves the gallery.
(i.e. It is sold or taken down.)

Just to prevent artists from recomposing a new print from the same negative, they often have a "look-alike" clause, too.
They don't want me taking a picture of a tall ship that I display in a gallery and flipping it around and otherwise tinkering with the same image to make a "different" copy which really isn't much different at all.

I am guessing the Bear shop owner is asking you for the same thing.
She doesn't want to waste her shelf space displaying Bears that anybody can buy anywhere else.  She's asking you not to take the same pattern and tinker with it so that you're displaying the same Bear with only small differences in several different shops.

If the shop owner says that she can get your Bears adopted for a good fee and she doesn't take a high commission, don't worry about things like this.
But, if she promises you the moon and doesn't deliver on her promises, you won't be able to display the same or similar Bear in other shops until after your Bear leaves.  (Either adopted or taken home.)

I've got a gallery owner who is giving me the shaft on a deal like this.  She wants exclusivity and she promised she could sell my picture quickly.
It's been more than six months since the picture first went on display, now she's complaining that my price is too high.  The problem is that she takes a 30% commission.  Offering an 11x14 inch framed photographic print (traditional photo, not digital) for $200.00 at 30% commission only leaves me with $140.00.  If you consider the cost of the frame and the cost of the film and chemistry, that print costs me a little bit less than $100 to make.  So I'm only getting $40 on the deal.  If you count up all the time I spent making that picture, that means I'm earning less than minimum wage!

I'm going to give this woman another month or so and if she doesn't produce results or at least some nibbles, I'm going to display copies of that print in other places.  I've got two different photos on display in another gallery in town.  They've only been there for a week and they've already got two nibbles.  When I told the gallery owner my asking price was $200.00 she said, "Do you think that's high enough?"
Plus, this gallery does not ask for exclusivity.  (It's a cooperative.)

If one of those two prints sells off the wall in that other gallery, where do you think my loyalty will be?

Exclusivity?      

March 14 is "Pi Day."

http://www.piday.org/

Happy Pi Day! 

Now that's more like the way I think it should be.  If you don't like something, don't spend money on things that promote it.

For instance, if you don't like alcohol, don't buy any and don't patronize places that sell it.
If you don't like the way circuses treat animals, don't go to them and don't spend money at places like that.  I support this 100%

What bugs me is that governments think that they should legislate morality and regulate people's behavior.

Do you know that the city of Los Angeles passed an ordinance making it illegal for street vendors to put bacon on a hot dog?
Okay, frankly, it sounds gross to me.  I would never order a hot dog with bacon but, what the heck?  Some people obviously like it.

It really crumbles my cookies to think that the city of Los Angeles , the state of California and the federal government can't pay their bills, they can't get their own affairs in order, much less get out of their own way yet they still see fit to tell people that they can't eat bacon.  The population doesn't even bat an eyelash!

I'm generally with you guys.  I find the way some circuses treat animals to be distasteful at best and truly upsetting at worst.  However, it's just as upsetting to hear that our governments are wasting their time making silly laws about circuses when they have more important work to do.

Shouldn't we be holding our legislators' feet to the fire a little bit more?

So you got a new clubhouse for your Bears?  COOL!   

If we allow the government to make more laws, maybe they'll be able to solve all the world's problems some day!

Head slap!   :doh:

B & H...  Being a photography store...  I should have guessed!

Sometimes you get so blind you can't see the forest for the trees. 

I need a #000 round sable artist's brush but I can't find any locally.

I use these brushes to retouch photographs with water soluble dye.
The brush needs to be able to absorb the dye to work properly and synthetic brushes just don't work.

When you make a photograph (a real photograph, not digital) you sometimes get tiny, white, pinpoint spots or squiggles in the final print because of dust on the film.  The first line of defense is to keep your negatives scrupulously clean but there's no way to get every negative 100% clean.  So the best line of defense is to cover the spots with dye.

You dilute your spotting dye with clear water until it is the right shade of gray (or color) to match the surrounding area then you dip just the tip of the brush into the dye mixture.  Next you lightly dab the brush on a white paper towel to get almost all of the dye off the brush.  The only dye that's left is what has soaked in to the bristles.

You touch the picture, very, very lightly with just the tips of the bristles until you make a bunch of teeny, tiny dots and you keep dabbing until the spot is gone.

Done carefully, your work should be virtually invisible unless you get right up close to the picture.

I've been trying to spot some photos but my old sable brush is over 25 years old and it's just about worn out.  I bought a new one but it's made of "Taklon" synthetic bristles.  The salesperson bamboozled me into buying it.  "Oh, this is just as good as sable, she said."  Well, that's a bunch of baloney!  This brush stinks for photo retouching!  The dye does not absorb into the brush.  It just goes up between the bristles by capillary action.  When you touch the photo, a little drop of water comes out instead of a smooth dab of color.

If I could only find a genuine Russian Kolinsky sable paint brush in #000 or #3/0 size (really tiny) but I'd settle for Canadian sable if I can't get the Kolinsky.

A brush like that is probably going to cost $15 or $20 dollars but it's the only kind of brush that works right.

I've seen Kolinsky brushes on line but they always come as sets.  Usually 5 brushes in a kit and they usually cost $100 for the set.
Other places have the #0 and the #00 brushes but not the small, #000 brush that I need.

Anybody know of a place on line where I can get one or do they have one they are willing to part with for a fair price?

Thanks!

Randy

I found a diagram for you:

'

The red line in the diagram runs from the place where the man's feet touch the ground up through his center of gravity.
Notice how half of his body (mass) is in front of the red line and half is behind.

Look at the third man on the right.  See how, when he bends over, his head goes forward but his bum goes back?
No matter how the man moves, half of his mass must be in front and half must be in back.

If his body is not in balance, he will have to use his muscles to steady himself but, if he goes too far out of balance, he still fall over.

Bears don't have muscles.  They have fluff.  That means that they can't right themselves.  You have to design the Bear to be self-righting.

I'm not an expert in how to do that but Thelma's advice sounds right.  Putting shot in his tummy then adjusting him as you build him seems like the best way to make a self-supporting Bear.

I think a Bear needs to be designed so his feet are directly under his center of gravity if he wants to stand on his own.  Putting weights in his feet is okay but his body weight also needs to be centered over his feet, too.

No matter what position a Bear (or a person) stands in, the same amount of his body mass must be in front of his center of gravity as behind.  For example, if you bend over at the waist, your head goes forward but your bum goes backward.  As long as you stay in balance, you can stand upright.

Now, let's imagine that, as you bend over, your backside bumps into an invisible wall and your rear end can't move backward any farther.  You will fall over, forward.

The next time you think of it, look at a person standing still from the side view.  You should notice that his legs and spine curve so as to keep the body in balance over the center of gravity.  If you design a Bear with legs and back that are as straight as a board, he will not have his mass properly centered and will fall over.

When you design your Bear, make it so his legs have just a little bit of bend in them and make his back have a slight curve.  His bum will be a little bit behind his feet and his belly will be a little bit in front.  His arms, instead of being "board straight" will be a little bit curved, set with the shoulders slightly back and the hands slightly forward.

In human anatomy the parts of the body are shifted forward and backward only by a few centimeters to maintain balance.  If a body part moves only a centimeter, other parts of the body must also move in opposition to keep the person balanced.  If body parts can not shift the way they need to, the person will have to struggle to stand.  If they get too far out of balance, he will fall over.

See if you can find an anatomical diagram of the human body to study and see how a person's body is arranged in order to stand upright.  Then, see if you can use what you learned to create a Bear who can stand on his own.

If you already have a Bear who you want to make stand on his own, maybe putting some weight in his bum and/or in his tummy might make him balance.  Otherwise, you might need to wait until you can design a new Bear who can stand on his own without help.

Go ahead!  Toot away!

It isn't bragging when you really are that good! 

I think Charlie misses his humans.

Young dogs often do that when they are left alone out of a sense of separation anxiety.  They usually grow out of it but you can help speed up the process.

Take him out for a walk or let him run around in the yard for a while before you leave.  (Burn off a little of that energy.)
Play with him and have some fun time, too.  Make sure there is an appropriate amount of time between the walk/play and the time you leave the house.  You want him to know that you are there to take care of him and play with him but you don't want him to think, "Every time I get walked and played with my humans go away."  When you get home, let him out to go pee and play with him some more.

The ideas that you are trying to teach him are, "My humans don't go away forever," and "My humans always take care of me and pay attention to me when they get home again."

Our dog, Tyrone, the schnauzer we had when I was a kid used to get anxious when we left the house.  When we got home, he would bark and cry and fuss for a half hour when he got home.  But we always let him out to pee when we got home.  (Dogs ALWAYS have to go pee.  Especially males.)  Us kids would always play with him when we got home.

After a while he mostly got over it.  He would still bark and fuss when we came in the door but it would only last a minute or two.
Barking and fussing is often part of a schnazuer's personality.  They like to fuss about their humans.  Instead of fussing for a half hour, it would only be for a minute or two.  Then we play with him and give him lots of attention and he's all right.

Think of a dog that's one year old like a ten year old kid.  He's old enough to be alone in the house for a short time, like when Mom goes to the store then comes right back, but he needs to know that Mom won't be gone for too long or else he starts to get antsy.

Just give him lots of attention and teach him that his humans aren't abandoning him and, hopefully, he'll grow out of it in another year.

By that time, you'll have a rebellious teenager on your hands!     

I learned the trick with a second bank account when I was a field service technician for movie theaters.  I did a lot of traveling for my job.  I stayed in hotels, bought gas and paid for job-associated bills with that account.  When I turned in my receipts at the end of a service call, the money was reimbursed to my bank account by direct deposit.

My employer never had to worry about issuing advance money to pay my bills.  Any time they needed a list of my expenditures, all I had to do was print out a bank statement and send it in.  I never had to worry about cashing reimbursement checks because the money was put back via direct deposit.  It allowed me to keep my business expenses separate from my personal expenses and, best of all, I never had to worry about losing money.

When I started using the internet to buy things on-line, I just used that same trick. 

I went to my bank and got a second account which is separate from my regular bank account.  With it, I got a second ATM/debit card with a completely different account number than the one I regularly use.

This account and card are used ONLY for internet transactions.  I only keep about $50 in the account at any time, just enough to keep the account from going broke.  When I need to buy something from the internet, I transfer the correct amount of money into the account and use my special debit card.

This way, if there is some kind of on-line fraud, my regular bank account is insulated.  The most anybody can get is the money I intended to spend plus, maybe the extra $50 I kept in the account for safety.

This is the card I have associated with my PayPal account, too.  If PayPal screws up, my regular bank account is still in the clear.

I suggest that everybody who does business on-line with a debit/ATM/credit card have a second account to protect them, too.   

Measure twice.  Cut once.

If your computer fails, there's nothing you can do regardless of your backup plan.  A backup plan is not for keeping your computer running.  It is for recovering AFTER your computer fails.  Keeping your data on a backup drive allows you to restore your data onto another computer or onto the same computer after you repair it.

It's like having a spare key to your car.  Your spare key doesn't prevent you from losing your car key.  A spare key is there to help you WHEN you lose your car key.

Yes, sometimes external hard drives will fail.  They are machines.  Machines occasionally fail.
Just replace the malfunctioning drive and back up your data again.  That's all there is to it.  With Apple and Time Machine, it's easy.  Just click a few buttons and you're back in business in a little while.

This is like the spare tire on your car.  Yes, spare tires sometimes go flat before they can be used.  If they do, that doesn't mean you can't drive your car.  That means that you have to go to the mechanic and get a new spare tire in case you get a flat while you are on the highway.

On-line, "cloud" backup is worthless, as far as I am concerned.  If your computer fails, you will STILL have to repair it or get a new one.  You will STILL have to restore your files to the new or repaired computer.  The thing is that you no longer have control of your data.

I don't care what you think about data security.  I am talking about CONTROL of your data.
Your computer data is YOUR PROPERTY.  Nobody has the right to tell you what you can or can not do with it.  Turning your computer data over to a third party allows THEM to control it.  THEY can tell you when, where and how you will be able to access it.  A third party now has control of your data and they can deny you access whenever they want.

On-line backup is like putting the key to your house in a safe-deposit box at the bank.  Yes, your key is safe but the bank now has the power to lock you out of your own house.  IF the bank is closed.  If you don't pay your safe deposit fee.  If the bank goes out of business.  If the bank is robbed.  You will be LOCKED OUT OF YOUR OWN HOUSE!

One thing that Time Machine does that on-line backups don't do is to back up your SYSTEM FILES.

If your computer fails or if your operating system gets corrupted, Time Machine can restore your computer back to the way it was on a given date.  If you get a virus.  If your computer crashes.  If your computer gets destroyed.  You can restore your entire system onto a new or repaired computer using Time Machine.  On-line backups don't necessarily do that for you.  If they do, they might charge extra.  Even if they don't you are still at THEIR mercy to get your computer back.

Time Machine is easy to set up.  First, get an external hard drive large enough to hold your data with space to spare.  A 1TB disk is usually sufficient but you could get a 2 TB.  Next, go to APPLE > System Preferences... and look for the Time Machine icon.  Open that icon and your Time Machine control panel will be there.

Mac Help can also tell you more.  Go to the HELP menu and type "Time Machine."

You can set Software Update to check automatically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis or you can set it to not check at all so that you have to manually go looking for updates.

Further, you can set Software Update to download updates automatically in the background.  Your computer runs pretty much normally and, when an update arrives, you get a message to install them.  Background installation is fairly painless.

Many updates require you to restart your computer but will allow you to delay the restart for an undetermined amount of time.  They are often applied automatically when you shut down the computer, anyway.  Basically, you just wait until you go to bed at night and, when you shut the computer down for the night, the updates can be applied then.

No fuss!  No muss! 

You don't need "Lion."  "Snow Leopard" is good enough.
I have "Snow Leopard" on my Mac Pro.  It runs fine.  No problems.

Yes!  A hard drive is a good thing to upgrade!  A Terabyte will be fine!
I've got 3 1T drives on mine plus a 500G as the master drive.  You can never have enough hard drive space.  ;)

It is also a good thing to get a 1T external, USB drive if you can afford it.
Mac OS has a feature called "Time Machine."  It automatically backs up your hard drive every hour computer is turned on.  All your files will be stored on the backup drive.  If you ever lose a file, even if you delete it, you can recover it from the backup.  All my files are backed up since the last year.  "Time Machine" has probably saved my bacon a half dozen times.  A backup drive is a good investment.

One other thing...  If you can afford to upgrade your RAM, it would be a good thing.
RAM is selling for approximately US $10 per gigabyte.  Upgrading your computer to 10G or more should cost you around $100.

For the speed and convenience, you get from having more RAM, it's a worthwhile expenditure.

People think it's funny because Apple is beginning to run out of cat names for their new upgrades.

They can't use "cougar."  There's a negative connotation with that word.
"Lynx" might be difficult because there are other companies that use that name.  Apple got sued for using "Tiger." (TigerDirect.com)

We still haven't used "Ocelot," "Caracal," "Bobcat" or "Jaguarundi" but I don't think any of those are good names.

The first version of Mac OS X was code named "Kodiak."  Why don't they start using bear names again?
We have a thousand little paws in the air voting for that, right now! 

They are just the code names that Apple gives to the different versions of Mac OS X:
Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion...  In that order.

Lions and Tigers and Bears!  Oh, MY!