Teddy Talk: Creating, Collecting, Connecting

Lop-eared dogs are sometimes more prone to ear injuries in the field.  That's why cropping the ears came into fashion.  It was to prevent them from being hurt.  Nowadays, since most people don't hunt with their dogs, this is just a useless tradition.

I wouldn't recommend it.  Bailey looks good just the way he is.
At three years old, I wouldn't do it anyway.

Most of our dogs had floppy ears.
We had English Pointers, Brittany Spaniels and one English Setter.
The spaniels and the setters rarely got hurt ears.  It was the pointers that got hurt because they had short hair whereas the others had long.  The hair acted as a kind of protection.

The down side to the longer hair comes when the dog gets into the cockleburs!
It was always us kids who had the job of picking them out of the dogs' fur!  ICK!!

We also had a couple of German Shepherds.  They had pointed ears.
We never hunted them.  They aren't hunting dogs.
But we did take them out and let them run with the other dogs on occasion.
They never got hurt like the other dogs did, even though they usually ran in the same pack together.

Anyways...  I'm glad Bailey is better now. 

My father raised hunting dogs when I was a kid.

The dogs got their ears cut up from running through brush on a regular basis.
They'd come back looking like they'd been through a war.

Lay them down, pet them and keep them calm.  Apply direct pressure with a clean cloth.
Don't try to clean the blood off the wound area until after the bleeding has stopped.
It'll take a while but it will stop.

Do Cairn Terrier have naturally floppy ears?  Or, are they naturally pointy at birth?

I know what you mean.  It took me over a year of "cookie jar economics" to get the money to buy the setup I have now.

I have all the software to do graphics and video but I did not get the web page software.  Frankly I just don't have much call for it.
90% of the time when I want a web page I write them by hand.  I rarely have need for one or two pages of "This is who we are and here is what we do..." information.  I will use templates to get me started then finish them off by hand.  Very infrequently do I ever need more than that.

You don't really need to redesign the site.  Just tweak it.
Anybody who has DSL probably won't notice.  It's just the dial-up users  and people with slow computers that will have problems.
You're good for now.  It's better to get everything working now then to make "adjustments" as you go.  Otherwise you could end up "off-line" for longer than you can afford to be.

Everybody misses one now and then.  Right?   

"Coffee Cup" sounds like a great program for beginners but not for people who want to do anything more than a basic website.

Is there any way you can get the educational discount?  Adobe's education program is pretty good.  You can get the entire Adobe CS4 Premium suite for about $600, compared to the usual $1,700.  They just recently ended a promotion this past Christmas where, if you bought a qualifying hardware package, you only paid about $300 for the CS4 Standard package.  I think the CS4 Premium was only $50 or $100 more.

It's still not cheap but, if you can swing it, $400 or $600 is a darn-sight better than paying the full price!

The site looks great!  You have a great eye for design!   :cool:

Everything works pretty much the way one would expect.  If you click on an icon, you are taken to the correct place.
I found no dead links or broken pages.  The site WORKS correctly.  But as you say, it is can be very slow to load.

I have a fast DSL connection (3 MB/sec) and a fast computer.  (2.8 GHz.  Dual quad-core processor.)
For me there will be few problems loading the site.  But for dial-up users or people with older computers, I can see where it would be slow.

First, I don't know this program, "Coffee Cup," that you used to design the site is.  I've never heard of it.
Part of your problem seems to stem from the way this program makes your site.

When you go to the "Entry" page, notice how the rose colored background loads very quickly but the pictures of the Bears takes a long time.
That is because you are loading a tiled background image then load the image of the Bears over top.  That Bear picture is VERY large.
It is 1,024 X 768 pixels and its resolution is 96 pixels per inch.  The file size of that one picture is 492 KB!  That's HUGE!

Just that one picture will take nearly 3 minutes to load if you are using a dial-up connection to access the site.
You should be able to cut that picture down to 150 KB or less if you try and you won't lose any noticeable amount of quality.  Properly done, you should be able to cut that page load time down to 15-30 seconds if even if the user only has a good dial-up connection.

Do you see the picture of "Cirrus" the Bear in my avatar?  That picture is 36 KB!
That's very small for the quality of that image.  Don't let anybody tell you that your pictures have to be super-callifragilistically huge if you want them to look good.  That's a bunch of fluff!  You can make good looking images if you try hard enough.

There are several places in the site where I noticed similar things.  The user has to load several pictures that are layered one over top of the other in order to see a given page.  The result LOOKs very nice!  In fact it's one of the nicest looking Teddy Bear sites I've seen.  But I'm sorry to say that it isn't written very well from an efficiency standpoint.

One thing that you might also notice is that the SECOND time you visit the site it appears to run much faster.
That is because your web browser has cached most of the pictures so that the second and subsequent time(s) thereafter, they are retrieved from the hard drive instead of the internet.  That's good for people with fast computers and large hard drives but it's bad for people with old, slow computers with small hard drives.  They won't have the space to store the data and their computer might have trouble sorting it all out when it comes time to display it again.

Try to cut your images down in size.  Reduce the pixel count from 96 to 72 ppi if you can.  Anything higher than 72 ppi does nothing but slow the site down.  Try to store your images as GIF's or PNG's if you can.  Use transparent backgrounds when you can.  Cut the number of colors in the GIF/PNG color space down to 128 instead of 256.  Shut off dithering wherever practical and crop your pictures as close to the main subject area as you dare.

Reducing the size of those images will go a long way to speeding up the site.   :thumbsup:

Oh!  BTW...
I love to eat broccoli!  I'll eat all your broccoli if you eat all my green beans!   

Can't agree with you more!     

Oh, good!  The China Study!
Glad you brought it up first.

Look here to read about it:  http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/com … t-8e.shtml

And, by the way, you should read the third paragraph of the first section:

Here's a more direct link to the information in the study:
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/com … t-1a.shtml

And if you want to cut right to the chase, use this link:
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/com … ing%20meat

The bottom line is:  "Eat meat...  Don't eat meat.  It doesn't matter very much unless it makes you feel better."
But do not claim that a vegetarian diet is superior when there are no facts to back up the claim.

Rodents have sharp incisors that they use to gnaw wood, break into food, and bite predators. Most eat seeds or plants, though some have more varied diets.

Humans also have incisors as well as canines and grinding molars.
We have teeth fit for eating MANY kinds of food.

Oral masochism refers to a behavior where one deprives him or herself of various kinds of food, substituting unpalatable foods in place of the usual foods in order to reduce a perception of guilt or anxiety due to over consumption.  These people believe that they can compensate for past abuses by depriving themselves of food.  It's a form of self-flagellation through food.

It is known, medically as "Orthorexia Nervosa".  "The neurosis of correct eating."
Orthorexics become convinced that they must eat unpalatable food because it is somehow, "better" for them.
The truth is that comparatively few of them actually do eat a healthy diet.  They merely eat foods that they think are better, not because of any medical or scientific study on their part but often derived from fallacious beliefs passed from one person to another.

It should be pointed out that this type of behavior is almost entirely limited to people from developed countries where food is over abundant.  It almost never occurs in developing countries where food is in average supply.  It is logical to rule out undeveloped countries because, when people are starving, they have to eat what they can get.

Secondarily, orthorexia is rare in places where commercial mass media is not prevalant.
Images of young, skinny men and women, presented ad infinitum, tend to skew a person's self image, creating a feeling of inadequacy, creating a need to compensate for lack of youth, and sexual desirability.  The truth is that most people are not inadequate or undesirable.  They just THINK they are because they have been bombarded with imagery all their lives that tends to make them seem so.

If you think I am telling you that everybody should go out and hunt down an animal and eat its raw flesh, you are mistaken.
While I agree that the average American and Western European diets are too dependent of processed foods and red meat, I do not agree that depriving one's self of food is the answer.

If we want to lose weight we should reduce our caloric intake...  Eat less!
If we have too much fat and cholesterol in our diet we should eat more veggies...  Maybe even a predominantly vegetarian diet!
I could stand to do both of those things!  And I am trying to do it, although with varying degrees of success.  I'll just keep on trying.  That's the best anybody can do.

On the other hand, I am certainly not going to cut one food or another completely out of my diet because of some strange sense of over consumption guilt.

Look a horse or a cow in the mouth.  What kind of teeth do they have?
Wide, flat teeth for griding their food...  plants, grains and grasses, mostly.

Next, look a dog or a wolf in the mouth.  (Carefully!)  What kind of teeth to they have?
Sharp, pointed teeth for tearing their food to little bits...  Mostly meat.

Now, take a look in the mirror and tell me what your pearly whites look like.
Some are sharp.  Some are flat.  Not nearly as sharp as a wolf's but not flat like a cow's, either.
It's very obvious that our mouths are designed to eat a little of both, meat and plants.

What's the ratio of plants to meat?
Most scientists will tell you that they don't know the exact ratio.  But you can take a cue from Nature.

If a cow's teeth are a "1" and a wolf's teeth are a "10", where do your teeth lie on that scale?
"5?"...  "4?"...  Maybe a "3?"
Logically speaking, that would tell us the ratio of meats and plants that people should probably eat.

I will say that MOST people should cut a lot of the meat out of their diet and eat more veggies.  It would do us all a lot of good.
But, on the other hand, to cut out ALL meat and animal products is not good either.  Yes, animal protein is vital to the diet.  It is broken down and used for amino acids that make up the building blocks of all the cells of the body.

Am I disagreeing with you guys?  No.  I'm just saying that you are only PARTLY right.

First and foremost, there is NO evidence that eating a strict vegetarian diet makes anybody more healthy than one who eats a sensible omnivorous diet.
None!  Zip!  Zilch!  Zero!
There have been studies and meta-studies.  (Meta-studies take several other studies and "average out" the results of them all.)

ALL of the supposed health benefits that vegetarians clam to come from eating a meatless diet can be explained.
Many vegetarians have lower fat and cholesterol levels in their blood.  This is a big reason they seem to fare better.  But a person who eats an omnivorous diet and who watches his cholesterol can get the exact same benefits.

So, when it comes out in the wash, vegetarians are really just oral masochists.

There is an unseemly side to virtually all mass produced food; meat, dairy, produce and otherwise.

Peanut butter companies are allowed to sell peanut butter with rat hairs in it, up to a certain amount.  If memory serves, they can have 1 rat hair per 100 grams of peanut butter.  I also know that there is an allowable amount of rat feces for processed grain but I forget what the number is but I forget the statistic on that.

Eat meat or don't eat meat.  No skin off my nose.  It's a free country.
But, for health's sake, please be sure to get enough protein in your diet.  (Milk, cheese, eggs or fish.)
Experts are not unanimous on the amount of protein we need but they are all certain we need a fair amount of it.  The general rule seems to be that you should eat an egg or a small piece of fish every week or so.  I'm glad you eat yogurt.  That will go a long way to keeping your diet healthy.

Enough ranting...  Back on topic...

If people knew what really happened to their food before it got to the grocery store and onto their tables, they'd probably never eat again! 

If you put it that way it does sound rather grody!

<humor>
But, then, most people would think nothing of lopping off the head of a large, semi-flightless bird and eating the partially singed flesh off its eviscerated carcass.  Would they?  In fact, most people would call it "Turkey Dinner!"
</humor>

Maple syrup is really boiled tree sap.  Right?
Oh!  And I don't even want to think about where hot dogs come from!  :0

Seriously, it's all in the way you look at it.  Isn't it?

If we took a close look at where our food really comes from we'd all be too ill to eat anything.  Woudln't we?

They've probably standardized on Microsoft and their people probably aren't trained how to deal with problems very well.
They just tell people things like that because they don't want to deal with questions from users asking "How do I...  ??"

My last computer was 10 years old before I got a new one this past Christmas.
I had ZERO problems accessing any given website.

If the website puts up a message that says, "You can't access this site because your computer isn't new enough." they are trapping the "User Agent" information in your browser.  If you use Firefox you can tell your browser to lie to the server.  In which case you'll bypass that message.

If you need more information send me a message.  I'll do what I can to help.

-- Randy

That's the biggest batch of fluff I have heard in a long time!

Set your browser's user agent to something else and you'll probably sail right through.

The Bear in my avatar is made from Alpaca.

He is very soft.  It feels almost like touching a cloud.
That's why his name is Cirrus.  :D

Are you a knitter?
It looks like those alpaca have been shorn for their wool.
They should have given you some wool to take home and spin for yarn.

Homespun alpaca can be very nice!   

It is probably better to resize an image using the Image>Image Size box rather than trying to transform it.

1)  You can get pixel-accurate results.  If you want an image that is exactly 100 X 100 pixels, type that into the Image Size dialog and that's what you'll get.  No guesswork.  If you transform the image you don't know exactly what you'll get.

2)  The Image Size dialog actually RESAMPLES the image rather than just scaling it.  This is important.
If you simply scale an image, the computer just multiplies or divides the image by some factor to get the new size.  It doesn't care whether it makes the picture blocky or blurry.  The scale tool just does your bidding and calls it a day.  But, if you use the Image Size box, the computer actually recalculates the image, pixel by pixel to get the result.  It will usually look a lot better.

3)  Like Thea-MillyMe said.  If you use the Image Size box you can constrain proportions to keep the height/width aspect ratio of the image the same.
If you use the resize transform tool you can very easily drag the image out of shape.  You can hold down the shift key to constrain the image as you drag but, if you forget, you could spend a lot of time fussing around to get it back the way it is supposed to be.

For intenet use, all images should have 72 DPI resolution.  (Dots per inch.)
I don't care what anybody tells you, it is useless to make images any larger than 72 DPI.  If you make an image at a higher resolution, all you will accomplish is to make the picture take longer to download.  You will not improve the apparent picture quality very much, if at all.

If you need banner ads, send me a message.
Just a little while back I made some banners for Pipkins Bears.
See the topic here:  http://teddy-talk.com/viewtopic.php?id=27688

At that time I was making web graphics in my spare time at work but now I have a good computer at home with all the software necessary to do the job.  I am now free to work without worrying about who is looking over my shoulder and asking what I am doing.

If you need web graphics send me a message.  I'm sure we can work something out.

Your image is a JPEG.
As they say, a rose is a rose and a JPEG is a JPEG.  You can't really turn a JPEG into HTML.

But...

You can use HTML to display a JPEG.

I think you want this:

<img src="http://www.myserver.com/mypicture.jpeg">

This will cause your picture to be displayed within a web page at 100% of its original size without any scaling.
If you want the picture to be a different size than original there are parameters in the "src" tag that will cause that.  But I don't use scaling unless I have to.  I think it's better to make your image the size you want it to be.

Will this do? 

Keep up with the therapy on that hand!  Okay?   

My wife had an injury to her hand and wrist when a large, heavy painting fell on her.  It was quite painful and she didn't have use of her hand for quite a wile.  The doctor sent her to an occupational therapist who gave her exercises to do.  She was told to do them every day, two or more times per day.
She did and you'd hardly know she was ever injured.

On the other hand my wife has a friend who suffered a similar injury.  She ignored the doctor and therapist's instructions and didn't do her exercises.
It's been several years and she still has pain and stiffness in her joints.

Keep up with your therapy and you'll be back in business in no time! 

That's the way I do it too.  :)
I have one computer that acts as the "master" for getting e-mail.  This is the one that is set to delete upon downloading.  All the others are set to leave messages on the server unless deleted manually.  (e.g.  To delete spam, etc.)

I set the main computer at my office to be the "master" and all the others to leave mail on the server.
That way, I can work at home and know that mail won't be deleted until I get back to the office.

The best way to cut an object out of its background is to use a "layer mask".

A layer mask is like a stencil that selectively blocks out part of the image.  It leaves the original image untouched.  It only hides the masked parts of the image.

When you use a layer mask there is a second, hidden, layer attached to your image.  It can be black, white or gray.  Where the mask is black, your picture will be transparent.  Where the mask is white, the image will be opaque.  Where the mask is grey, it will be partially transparent, in proportion to how dark it is.

Two things that make layer masks so great:

1)  You can change them.  If you erase parts of your image, you won't ever be able to get it back if you change your mind or make a mistake.  The only thing you can do is reload the original picture and start over.  With a layer mask, you can tweak and fiddle with the image until you get it just the way you want.

2)  Layer masks can show more detail, pixel by pixel if necessary.  And because they have the ability to make a pixel partially transparent, you can fade your object into its new background and avoid that "cut out with scissors" effect that you see in many Phtoshopped images.

Here is an example of a layer masked cutout:

(I placed the monkey onto a plain cyan blue background so that you can see the detail better.)
Notice how you can see the monkey's hair fade off into the background?  If you put him into a "real" background you would have a harder time telling where the cutout lines are because of this fade.

I only did this picture quickly.  It probably needs a little more work to make it look REALLY good.  But the nice thing is that, with layer masks, I can fix it easily.

One drawback:  Photoshop Elements does not have the layer mask controls that the professional version (Photoshop CS4) has.  You don't have the ability to create layer masks in Photoshop Elements.  However, if somebody else makes a Photoshop file with the professional version of the program, you CAN load it in and work on it.  PS-Elements can use layer masks.  You just can't CREATE them.

That leads us to a trick...  :whistle:
If you have a file made with a layer mask already built in, you can erase all the information in the file and put in your own picture then layer mask it the way you want.

If you click here  >> CLICK HERE << you will be able to download the Photoshop CS4 version of the picture I made.  If you load it into PS-Elements, you will be able to erase the monkey and insert your own picture.  Then you can clear the layer mask and make it over again to suit your picture.

The best way to learn Photoshop is to just play with it.      Get some pictures and mess around with them until you start getting the hang of it.
Go ahead and take the monkey picture and fiddle with it.  Don't worry if you produce a polished image.  Just play.  Be creative.  See what you can come up with.

And have fun!
That's the best way to learn Photoshop!   

I would recommend that you use an e-mail client program called "Thunderbird."
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

It is made by the same people who make the Firefox web browser.
It has a similar design to other e-mail programs you may be familiar with such as MS Outlook.  It is also cross platform.  You can get versions of Thunderbird for Windoze, Mac OS, Linux and several others.

This is important for me.  I use computers on several different operating systems, virtually, on a daily basis.  It makes using the computer a lot easier because I don't have to remember every little "trick" for getting my e-mail or browsing the internet or doing other things.  I can use one program and learn it well.  Then when I go from work to home I can do all the tasks I need to get done with a minimum of fussing around.

The reason you have difficulty saving your mail with "Apple Mail" is because your "dot-Mac" account works on a system called "IMAP."  (Internet Message Access Protocol)  (Usually pronounced "eye-map".)
With IMAP, all your messages are stored on the central server.  When you connect to the server with your computer, you are only viewing the contents of your mailbox from afar.  You do not actually have your mail stored on the local comptuer.
This is a GOOD thing for most people.  That means that they don't have to worry about getting their e-mail when they move from place to place.  They can access their mail from home, from work or from a hotel (on a business trip) and they don't have to fuss around to get it.  Your e-mail is always available anywhere you go.

IMAP contrasts with the other system of handling e-mail, known as "POP."  (Post Office Protocol)  (Sometimes pronounced "pop".  Sometimes spelled out "P-O-P.")
In POP your computer connects to the remote e-mail server and downloads all your messages then saves them on your hard drive.  This can be convenient for people who don't move around very much but, if you need to access your e-mail from two or more places (home, office, etc.) there can be difficulty unless you know how to set up your e-mail client program the right way.

This is not a Mac-specific problem.  It has to do with the way e-mail is handled by the two protocols.

There IS a way to download your mail from an IMAP server but it depends on the client program you use to download your e-mail.
In Apple Mail there is a command to "Archive" your e-mail from the server but I don't know much about it because I don't use that program very often.  (See my above comments about uniformity across different computer systems.)
In Thunderbird, saving your e-mail can be as simple as "drag and drop."

I think you would benefit by using Thunderbird for your e-mail client.
I switched my mother over to it about two years ago.  She had some difficulty at first but, once she got used to it, she likes it better than her old program.

Even if you don't end up using Thunderbird you should at least read about it.  Knowledge is a good thing. 

If you want to make donations to needy children do it through a known organization such as a church or even the United Way, etc. etc. etc.
One of my cousins was a missionary in Ghana.  She spent a couple of years there until violence on the Ivory Coast of Africa forced her to leave.  (The rebels have a tendency to kidnap foreigners.)

From my experience with her, one of the things they need most of all is mosquito netting.  There is lots and lots of malaria going around.  The netting keeps mosquitoes from biting people when they sleep.  (Malaria is spread through mosquito bites.)

The long and the short of it...  Give the scammers the cold shoulder.

What version of Photoshop do you use?

Photoshop Elements?  Photoshop CS?
There are several.

What, exactly do you want to do?  Just cut a Bear out of his background?  That's not too difficult to do.
Send me the picture.  I'll work it up for you then I'll send back the result in the form of a Photoshop file.  This way you can see how its done rather than just having somebody blindly explaining it to you.

What's the old proverb?  "Give a man a fish...  ??" 

Yes, you can have Windoze on your Mac but, if you do, you will not be immune from viruses any more.
If you get a virus in the Windoze partition of your computer it can also take out the Mac partition as well.

A lot of people say that Macs are easier to use but that's not exactly true.
It would be better to say that Mac OS has a more natural user interface design.  But a person who doesn't read and follow directions will have trouble using ANY computer system, regardless of how well the user interface is designed.

If you have a Mac, take a look at your screen...
The menus are laid out across the top, from left to right, the natural way most Western users tend to read and organize things.  The hard drive icons are on the right.  The trash can is at the bottom.  It's all laid out the way most people tend to organize their real-life desktops.  (Assuming they are right handed.)

Apple spent a lot of money to buy the rights to the graphical user interface from the Xerox corporation and they spent millions more to research and refine things to the state you see them in today.  Even now, Apple maintains very strict rules as to the manner in which programmers are to set up their programs and make them operate.

When Microsoft created Windows, they had to make a lot of changes to the way things worked in order to get around Apple's copyrights.  They rearranged things on the screen and altered the inner workings of things.  Where Apple's main thrust in designing their systems was to create a natural user interface, Microsoft's main thrust was to make things different enough that they wouldn't get sued.

Consequently, you'll find a lot of brain dead concepts in Windows...
Menu items that don't make sense.
Trash can (Recycle Bin) that floats around on the desktop.
You have to click on the "START" button to shut down your computer...  How brain dead is that?  Which are you doing?  Starting?  Or shutting down?

People can learn arbitrary ways of doing things.  They can learn the "Windows Way" or they can learn the "Apple Way."  They can learn any way they put their mind to understanding.  People who learn Windows first will either always be "Windows people" or they will be able to make the switch after some work.

The overwhelming number of people I taught to use Macs of Linux after coming from Windows have the same reaction.... "That was EASY!"

The most difficult thing I have to teach Windows people to use another system is to UNLEARN all the bad habits they have been taught.

I get a lot of people who don't understand how to "Map" a remote hard drive volume to their Windows computer via network sharing.  When I teach people to use Mac OS, all they have to do is select the remote volume from a menu list.  Most of the time, I get a reaction like "Now what?"  When I tell them, "That's it.  You're done!" they usually stare at me in disbelief.

If I had to characterize the experience of migrating from Windows to Macintosh or Linux I would say that it is like walking around for your whole life with a stone in your shoe when somebody comes along and takes it out for you.

Case in point:  My mother has been a Windows user for more than 10 years.  I recently converted her computer to Linux.
She called me a few days ago complaining that her display wasn't behaving as she expected.  I told her that it was a simple setting that needed to be changed.  I said that I wouldn't be able to come to her house to do the job until next week.  She sighed and complained.  I said, "Sorry... I can't make it!  I have to work all week."
Just two days ago, I e-mailed her the solution.  I gave her the instructions, click-by-click to change the setting and make her display work the way she wanted.

I spoke to Mom on the phone, this morning.  She fixed the problem herself!  "Wow!  That was EASY!" she said!   

As I said before.  If my Mom can do it, anybody who puts their mind to it can learn how to use another system besides Windows.

All you have to do is try!     

People with A.D.D. are natural autodidacts.

When people ask me what "autodidactic" means I tell them it means I found a dictionary and looked up the word "autodidactic."   :dance:  :doh:
(It means "self-educated.  )

Seriously, now...
People with A.D.D. are better at learning things if they are allowed to teach themselves.  If somebody tries to teach you something they won't get anywhere if they try to force you to do it their way.  The best way to teach a person with A.D.D. is to give them a short, 15-30 minute tutorial on the information they want to present then allow the person to ask questions.

People with A.D.D. are usually the type "latch onto" new ideas very quickly but have trouble following through with the necessary practice and rehearsal that it takes to make the new information "sink in" and become part of your brain.

The way to get around that is to allow the student do it their own way.  The teacher's job should be simply to keep the student "on track" but not to try to force her to learn things in a particular order.

If you can find a teacher that can do that, you might discover that you will be able to learn new things in about 1/2 the time it takes other people.  But if you get a teacher who goes by the old "rote learning" concepts you might end up feeling like you're never going to learn.

Long story short...  Buying those books is probably the best thing you could have done!