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Fred Perry 20% Off on Amazon!

Just found out today that Fred Perry clothing is going for 20% less (for purchases over $100) on Amazon! This is a limited time offer that ends December 22.

Bong, this is for you!

iPhoto: Reject Faces and Rename Them

I've been spending a lot of time sorting out my iPhoto life. I figure it will pay off in time-savings and efficiency pulling out the pics for my blogs.

In iPhoto, it is easy to select large numbers of photos to confirm that they contain the face iPhoto is naming. Just click on the area next to the photo and drag across the other photos.

If you want to reject large numbers, it's an additional step. Do the click-and-drag thing as above, but continue holding down while you also click on the option (alt) key.

To rename a photo, right click and select name, then type in the correct name of that face.

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

How to Add Space around an Amazon Iframe with HTML

I learnt today how to add space around my Amazon iframes so that the text wouldn't stick right on my iframe. It's easy. I actually found the solution in the comments section of AdvancedHTML.

How to
Insert float:right; padding: 0 0 0 15px  to the end of the HTML that defines the iframe style.
Within the iframe code, it would look like: style= height: 240px; width: 120px.

Before and After

That's it!

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

iPhoto: A Good Kinda Different

I like having a photo on each blog post. My recent migration from Windows to Mac, and thus iPhoto, has been rough. But I think I am getting the hang of it. And the concept of iPhoto, i.e., having events sorted by date into albums may be a very good thing after all.

The problem
I am a rabid and compulsive photo taker. I have hundreds of thousands of photos. I had in the past, sorted my photos by year, and further by categories: family, trips, races, home, garden, food, animals, etc. I had way too many albums. To find a photo, I had to look through the albums for each year. I spent HOURS doing that.

iPhoto: learning the ropes
I didn't grasp iPhoto immediately, having tunnel vision from all my years doing it the old way. I started to see the light when viewing the tutorial video. It's a great video that in a nutshell, explains the possibilities and functions of iPhoto. You can find the video in iPhoto, in the Help section.

So I have been sorting my albums as events, by date. It has taken quite some time so far, but I can already see how it would make finding and pulling out specific photos much easier when I'm done.

I can't wait till I'm done!

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

Iphoto Identifying Large Numbers of Faces Faster

To select a bunch of faces for identifying and name confirmation in iPhoto is easy. But the tutorial that comes with iPhoto doesn't explain how to do it. I found the answer on Macworld.

Whenever I tag a face, I'm given the option to Confirm Additional Faces. Clicking on that brings to a screen where iPhoto will put up its best guess about which images contain that face you tagged earlier. You can click each image to confirm or reject iPhoto's guess.

I was dumbly and mechanically clicking to confirm some 630 images containing Spencer, when it occurred to me that there MUST be an easier way. And there is: If most of the images contain the correct tagged face, you can simply click (on the empty space next to the image) and drag across all the images. Then go back and click the incorrectly named faces - this helps iPhoto's identification.

That's it!

xo Gracie

p.s. It would be GREAT if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

Bicycling Magazine $3.76 for 1 Year 20% Coupon!

Attention fellow cycling enthusiasts! Here's a time-limited offer that will allow you to lay your grubby paws on the BICYCLING MAGAZINE at an incredulous low price:

$3.76 for 1 Year with coupon (Use coupon code WKLYSPEC during checkout)

"Since 1962 Bicycling has been the world’s leading cycling magazine, in an elegant design illustrated with vivid photography, covering the world of cycling, from road cycling and mountain biking, to recreational cycling for health and fitness. Bicycling will fuel your passion, take you to world premier cycling destinations, and keep you up-to-date on the latest cycling technology. Each issue is filled with well-written, inspiring, action-packed content bringing the sport to life, providing fitness and training tips, reviews of bikes and gear, inspiring advice and award-winning feature stories celebrating cycling’s character and passion. Feature articles include the best bike trails and trips, Spring riding basics, new bike reviews, got-to-have-it gear reviews matched to fit your lifestyle and budget, and riding apparel. Bicycling gives you proven secrets guaranteed to help you go faster, stronger, longer, increase your stamina and improve performance as you enjoy the ride. Order your subscription today for just $3.76 for 1 year!"

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

General Transcription: Am I cut out to do it?

So folks, I've gone ahead and taken the plunge into transcription. The only other experience I had was over 10 years ago when I transcribed a few audios of focus group dialogues for a test product. I quite enjoyed the challenge, and am a stickler for detail, so when I saw the ad seeking transcriptionists on Craiglist, I applied.

Transcription is most definitely not for everyone. At this point, after ploughing through over an hour of audio (which has taken me at least 7 hours since I'm so slow, being a perfectionist and all), I'm not sure if I'm cut out to be a transcriptionist either!

I love using my new Infinity Foot Pedal, that's for sure. And I also invested in the Express Scribe Pro, which doesn't work 100% correct on my Mac OS Mountain Lion. (It crashes when I try to type it in, but does fine if I type in another word processing program i.e. Textedit in Mac).

This first job paid 32-1/2 cents per audio minute (my boss keeps half of the 75 cents), so I've made a grand total of $40 for about 8 hours of work. That's a pitiful $5 an hour. Probably less. So once I realized that, I let go of my perfectionsitic tendencies a little bit, and just tried to get the transcriptions done.

Let's see how this goes the next couple weeks. It's nice to have some money coming in, even if it's below minimum wage, but I am pretty sure I could make more by blogging!  At least I've almost recovered the cost of that foot pedal :p

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

Getting free Itunes music for use in Mac Videos

I'm putting together a video using IMovie (a steep learning curve, but it's pretty awesome), and needed some music to add to it before uploading to Youtube.

Fearing copyright issues (dang those copyright trolls!) I did some googling and found out:

• Yes there is free music available for download on iTunes (iTunes Store > Quick Links > Free on iTunes, read PCworld's article for more info) 
• BUT if you're going to upload on Youtube, it's best to avoid using any of these. Reason being, some copyright troll is going to file a (wrongful) copyright infringement on your royalty-free audio, and you will have the awful hassle of countering that claim. (see Raoul's review)
• Free, royalty-free and downloadable music is available on Jamendo (all music genres) and Musopen (classical music). You can use this music on your Youtube videos, giving proper credit to the artist and for non-commercial purposes - this is a way for new artists to get their music out there.

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!

Capture a Screen Shot with Mac

Capturing a screen shot (an image of my desktop or active window) is easy on the Mac. (On my PC it was Ctrl-Prntscrn). Got these tips from Sue Chastain's article on About.com. On the Mac:

1. To capture the whole desktop, it's Command-Shift-3. Then check the Desktop for the automatically saved PNG file.
2. To copy the whole desktop, it's Command-Control-Shift-3. Then you can paste the automatically saved screen shot from your clipboard to another program. (Note: to copy instead of capture, you'll add Control to the keyboard shortcuts for capture.)
3. To capture only a part of the desktop, it's Command-Shift-4. A magic cursor will appear that you can click, drag and select the area to capture. Releasing the mouse button will automatically save the screen shot on the desktop as a PNG file.
4. To capture a specific application window, it's Command-Shift-4-Spacebar. The cursor becomes a camera and you can move to to the application window (which will become highlighted), then click the mouse button to save the screen shot on your desktop as a PNG file. 
5. Use the Apple bundled utility 'Grab' (in the utilities folder) to include a cursor or menu in your screen shot. First go to the 'Grab' preferences and pick the cursor icon you want appearing in the screen shot. Choose Window mode in Grab, select the window you want to capture, then click 'Choose Window'. The window will be capture together with the mouse cursor at the position you clicked. 

Below, I tried the 'Grab' utility to capture a screenshot of the facebook window showing my nephew Z trying repeatedly to share his new toys with Hammer. The cursor I picked was the pointy finger. Can you find it? :)

xo Gracie 

p.s. It would be AWESOME if you could click on any ad here - my sponsors give me a few cents per click. Thanks for supporting my blog!