Just a quick shot from my Nikon D60 super close-up of some ice crystals forming on our living room window. I had to switch over to manual focus to get such a tight shot, but I’m pretty happy with the results. 
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So I am guessing right about now there is a marketing executive at Apple working on his or her resume. It doesn’t really take a genius to connect the dotted lines between their (soon to be re-branded) iPad and a certain feminine hygiene product, especially when Mad TV did all the thinking for them back in 2007. Do you deal a lot with PDF files at your job? If so you’ve probably run across files that are gigantic in size. This can be a real pain, especially if your exchange server account has a small storage limit. 1 or 2 high resolution PDF’s can max out your inbox in short order. Most people don’t know that there is a very easy way to reduce the file size of a PDF, if you have Acrobat Professional. Just go to the advanced menu, and click on PDF Optimizer. This will bring up a dialog box, listing image settings. Here you can reduce the resolution of images in PDF’s (which more often than not, are the culprit behind why the file size is gigantic). If you don’t intend to print the pdf, but just have someone look at it on screen, you can reduce the resolution of all images down to 72 dpi. (in some cases I stick with 120 dpi if the PDF dimensions are small, as Acrobat has a habit of zooming in on small documents). Go ahead and leave all the other settings on their default, then hit OK. Acrobat will prompt you to save the new file you’re about to create, I usually just tack on “-optimized” to the end of the name, just in case I need the hi-res file later on. I’ve shared this technique with my team, and it’s been given the loving nickname of the “PDF Diet”. It’s not uncommon for 10 mb files to be reduced to a few 100k, it works wonders and you won’t have to worry about getting the stink eye from your co-workers next time for maxing out their in-box. : ) Casey and I celebrated our 20th monthiversary on Saturday by going out to the IMAX theater in Columbus, to see Avatar in 3D. We saw the DLP version (instead of the film “Read 3D” flavor). This was the first 3D movie I had seen in a theater since I was 10 years old and watched Captain EO at Disneyworld. So I don’t have much of a baseline to compare this with, but the one thing that seemed to jump out at me (excuse the pun) was that there was a definite trade-off in terms of picture quality. Things were blurrier than I am used to seeing in either a theater, or my DLP TV at home. Having said that, it was a great experience; even though the film was 3 hours long, it didn’t feel like it. The story line moved along at a decent speed, and most of what was in the film was relevant to the plot. Overall, I’d say it was worth the $14 to see it, although I probably won’t be making another trip that long just to see a 3D movie again for a while. On a side note, we had a pretty crappy experience, which had nothing to do with the film itself, but how AMC Easton handled a situation. At the climax of the movie (during the Na’vi / Human battle), the fire alarm in the theater went off. We had no idea what to do, because nobody came in and told us if it was a false alarm or not. Some people got up, and left while others stayed to finish the movie. After a few minutes, I and Casey got up to leave when people who had already left were coming back in to say it was a false alarm. That really ruined things for us. As we were walking out, disappointed by the experience, everyone was given free return passes, but in my opinion this was a poor attempt to make up for what could’ve been a dangerous situation. After the fact, we called AMC and found out that their official policy is to turn the projectors off, and ask everyone to leave. This did not happen. The film just kept running, and the sound was so loud that you couldn’t hear what the emergency PA system was saying – in other words, complete chaos. I’ll probably go see other 3D IMAX films in the future, but I doubt it will be at the AMC Easton. I’m still in the process of re-engineering the site, but I was able to get my wallpapers back online tonight. They are still in the old site’s format (frankly, because I haven’t decided on a new design for the site yet). I’m parked on the Atahualpa theme for the time being, but that will most likely change, as I’d like to develop my own theme. If there is anything you would like to see in the new site, please let me know. Hi All, by now I’m sure you’re wondering what has happened to my website. After long deliberations I have decided to migrate stevetruett.com to a new host and new architecture. Expect many updates over the coming weeks, I intend to make all of my old wallpapers and icons available again, but for the time being I ask that you be a little patient with me while I get things rolling. Thanks! |
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Copyright © 2010 The Digital Soapbox of Steve Truett - All Rights Reserved |
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