Can you bend it?

Years ago I mailed small things like thread in a letter. New standards came in restricting   letters not only by weight but by dimensions. Thickness was limited to 20 mm which put an end to mailing a spool of thread. I could still mail books up to 500 gm. That ends next month when the new rates and standards come into play. Now oversize letters must also be able to bend in a 140 mm diameter - the curve of a cupped hand. Items that fail the latest test must be mailed at the parcel rate which starts at double the maximum letter rate and shoots up from there depending on distance.  

Letters are being replaced by email. Bills are being delivered by the web and paid on the web. And now small packages are too costly to send. This leaves the flyers and junk mail for delivery to your mail box. Perhaps in the near future my mail box can be replaced with a blue box to move the “mail” straight to recycling... 

note: image is ©CorelDraw 9 and used under license.

UPDATE: Jan 12 2009 CPC changes came into play. The "can you bend it" guideline for letter mail apparently did NOT make the cut... In fact the rules call for a stiffening card to be added if the envelope "sags" too much. As Joan Collins sang "maybe next year".

 

Time Machine to the rescue

I continue to find reasons to support my decision over a year ago to switch to the Mac. The other night I removed an Adobe CS3 suite and Adobe Fireworks CS3 after using the CS4 upgrade for a few weeks. When I opened Photoshop CS4 today, I saw an error message telling me a file was missing from the Adobe Application Support folder and to run the Photoshop installer to re-install Photoshop. Problem. My CS4 upgrade was a multi gigabyte download with no separate Photoshop installer. Before I started up the huge upgrade file, I looked at Adobe's knowledge base. It told me my lost file was called "Adobe Unit Types.osax", residing in the Macintosh HD> Library> ScriptingAdditions folder. Using my trusty Time Machine, I rolled back a couple of days to an earlier version of that folder and bingo! there was my file. I told Time Machine to restore the folder and Photoshop was back to normal.   

Speedier by Adobe

I have been a fan of Adobe products for many years now. This month the Creative Suite 4 series was released. I had the pleasure of using the beta version of Dreamweaver CS4 this past summer. The new release makes use of the GPU and video memory on those computers like the iMac which have an independent video card. The speed improvement is especially noticeable working with images in Photoshop or Bridge.  With the strong focus on improving the user interface - especially in the old Macromedia products - making things speedier, improving cross-application integration, and adding some great new features make this release worth the money for all designers. 

Adobe is a strong example of a company that is right in tune with the modern era - great user oriented design, tremendous support (check Adobe TV on the web), and truly effective retailing via the web. I was able to buy the upgrade late on a Saturday evening and download the huge 4.8 Gb file. Once downloaded a couple of hours later, the file did a self check for transmission errors before allowing me to proceed with the installation.   

A Touch of Class

Some years ago, I bought my first PDA. It was a Palm M500. I bought it on sale at the end of its market life and used it until very recently when the cover finally wore out and the battery became unreliable. Our cell phone is also old and cannot be used past this November when Bell Mobility upgrades its network. 

I had thoughts of using the iPhone 3G to replace both my PDA and my cell. Unfortunately, Rogers wanted far too much for the little use I make of a cell, so I turned to the iPod Touch. When the newest version arrived this fall, I took the plunge and bought the 16 Gb version. It is such an elegant little gadget. It doesn't take long to learn the gestures and procedures to use its many features. When I am in range of a wifi, the very well thought out Safari browser works as does my email. 

In spite of the small screen, it is easy to read, and most screens can be magnified. The little touch keyboard takes some practice, but then so did Palm's Graffiti. Screen resolution and colours are outstanding. A sturdy replacement for my little M500, the iPod Touch is a classy affirmation of Apple's design and construction quality - and like my iMac, the user interface makes it a delight to use.  I snapped the image at the left with my Sony F828 to give you an idea - the colours aren't quite accurate and the highlights washed out a bit.  

Ready in a Flash

Last spring, a client asked for a few Flash files for his new site. I said, "no problem, I have Flash CS3 on my Mac". However; Flash is no Photoshop. Its variety of "objects" that do "this", but not "that" combined with a strange GUI left me struggling. I managed to make a few Flash "movies" but I didn't promote them to his web site. Instead, this fall I did two things. Bought a training book (Flash CS3 Professional, by Todd Todd Perkins) and registered for a class at Humber. 

My instructor, Paul Minstrell, is a gem. He was trained in traditional hand drawn animation and has used Flash since it first arrived on the market as "FutureSplash Animator". Paul is a dynamo filled with information on Flash and the animation creative process. In our first class, he mentioned "Bitey Castle", a site whose creator shows what can be done with Flash. Click here to go to the "Bitey Castle"home page. Or click here to go to "Frank", a 45 second example of  Adam Phillips's wry humour and drawing skill. Have a peek!     

The Way Back Machine

Did you know the web has an archive too? Visit archive.org to see what is saved in the Internet Archive. A note on their home page explains that "The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form." Included are movies, music, audio, text and web pages.  Enter a URL in the address box for the Way Back Machine and you will get an index of pages by date saved. For example, I can go back to 1998 on our site by entering "web.onramp.ca/phsc", our original URL, or "www.phsc.ca", our current URL. Some images are missing, but the the few links I tried within a page seemed to work.   

A 15 cent Lesson

I swear Bell is working hard at losing customers. In June I received yet another annoying taped telemarketing message. Noticing the phone number was local, I hung up and called back. Instead of a person answering, I heard a recording asking me to leave a message. I did just that, politely asking them to remove my phone number from their list, then forgot about the incident...

...until my July Bell bill arrived. It had a mysterious 15 cent charge for “Universal Messaging” with no hint as to its purpose other than a now forgotten local phone number. Carol asked me what it was for and I was stumped. I went to the Bell web site where I found a page that “explained” my bill in great detail - but not the 15 cent charge. I resorted to a Google search and there buried in a CRTC report from a few years back was the very charge - turns out it is a charge to leave a message on a phone number which has no voicemail. Worse, if the number is international, the charge can exceed $2.00. No hint of this when I dialed the number. No identification that made sense on the bill. Nothing on the Bell web site. Great customer relations!