Probably not a new thing to the seasoned Photoshop professional, but I just discovered a great way to make text look better in a jpeg (Adobe support page). Turns out you can weight compression in areas of a graphic by assigning alpha channel masks (slices in PS7), thereby compressing the bejeezus out of the picture, but not the text. This is useful to me.
One thing I’ve noticed about other bmw riders is that they typically don’t keep their bikes super clean. Most have a patina of road grime on them, even. I think this has something to do with the image of bmw people being “real” riders, versus the image of harley riders being people who put their bikes on trailers and go to shows. Sort of a classic yin-yang thing going on here, I suppose. The whole psychology is a complicated thing, with a hierarchy of brands and odd pack mentalities. You can see all this downtown, where bikes park in clusters of these types, none daring to mix for fear of upsetting the hierarchy. Basically, you’ve got your New Harley Guys, Old Harley Guys, Japanese Cruiser Guys, Japanese Sport Bike Guys, Goldwing Guys, and Italian Sport Bike Guys. I can see whay the Harley guys stick together; they need to share parts and tools. Don’t know what motivates the others. Here is an interesting study (Subcultures of Consumption) discussing sme of the reasons people buy motorcycle brands.
The more I ride my bicycle, the more I see how poorly designed our town is for getting anywhere without a motor. Sidewalks run for a a hundred feet and just end. Major intra-city roads have no shoulders at all. Subdivisions are built with no walking access to markets. Of course, not very many people care about this, but as traffic becomes worse and worse and fuel prices climb, they eventually might. It’s also odd how there seems to be less and less residential-commercial zoning. Just more strip malls. Sprawl-Busters (website) is a good sour-grapes anti suburban sprawl site. Why isn’t good city planning more important to voters?
It’s about time I learned the finer points of Photoshop (adobe.com). I’ve used this ubiquitous app since version 3, but I have never tried to get a handle on all the tools it has beyond those necessary to make a normal photo look more like a normal photo. So, I’m on the hunt for some good tutorials. I was impressed with the demos provided with the PS7 upgrade, so I might pursue that angle.
Does everybody else dream more in the fall, too? Maybe it’s the decrease in sunlight or lower melatonin levels or something, but I always have more “dream sleep” during early fall than at any other time. Or maybe it’s just seasonal fatigue:
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
(World Civ. Reader)
Where’s that woodchuck?
It’s no wonder to me that ancient civilizations placed so much value on climate and seasons. For all of their predictability, seasons always seem to sneak up on me. The days seem to get shorter unexpectedly. It is hard for me to comprehend a snowstorm in summer, just as it is a heat wave in January. The change always seems arbitrary, no matter what the calendar says. And an eclipse? Well. . .