Connect Learning

Wired: Nikon Small World

admin — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 01:59:10 +0000

Bird of Paradise Seed 10x

This beautiful microscope photo placed fifth in the 2010 Nikon Small World Competition. Viktor Sykora, Institute of Pathophysiology, First Medical Faculty, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, took the photo of this Strelitzia reginae (Bird of Paradise) seed, magnified ten times. One of the judges, Betsy Mason, identifies the twenty top shots in an article on the Wired magazine website. See all 20 photos plus the one Wired web visitors voted best, an aphid with babies on board.

Adobe Fireworks Tip: Size an Image

Sally Smith — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:45:53 +0000

Choose the Modify menu.

Select Canvas

From the pop-up menu, choose Image Size.

Open the Image Size dialog box with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + J

Make precise changes to your image size

Change your image without distorting it.

Change the width in either pixels or inches.

The height will be adjusted automatically.

Leave Constrain proportions checked.

Leave Resample image checked.

Use the down arrow on the bar to the right to see the resampling choices.

Choose bicubic resampling. It’s slower but more accurate.

Learn just what you need to know about Fireworks from a
Connect Learning tutor.

Adobe Fireworks Tip: Transparent Background

Sally Smith — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:27:49 +0000

Dante Alighieri, author of The Inferno

This image of Dante was a GIF, but when I placed it in Illlustrator, the background was white, not transparent. It looked just as wrong as it does here.

To make the background of a GIF image transparent

Choose indexed transparency

Open the image in Fireworks.

Choose Optimize at the top right.

Select GIF as the image type.

Choose indexed transparency.

Use File> Save as.

Change the name to preserve the original.

Cloud of Witnesses

Sally Smith — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:16:32 +0000

All Soul's Day Wreath

I’ve started adding images to my All Soul’s Day Wreath. So far I have

Gregory the Great

The Venerable Bede

Dante

St. Teresa of Avila

Louisa May Alcott

Edith Hamilton (Mythology)

Send images of your “cloud of witnesses” to me at info@ connectlearning.com if you’d like them added to a shared wreath. Tell me who they are and when they died.

Forbes List of the Best States for Business And Careers

admin — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 09:31:53 +0000

Fall Color in Massachusetts

Mary Gillen is living in the state that ranks number 1 this year in Quality of Life, Massachusetts. I’m living in the state that ranks number 2 in economic climate and number 1 in growth prospects, Texas. Our 38th place in quality of life must be a result of comparing mosquito counts. Houston alone undoubtedly has a bigger mosquito population than Massachusetts.

Interesting table. Take a look for yourself. How can Utah be Number 1 all around?

Look at the footnotes to see that I lied about the mosquitoes.

Fall Foliage from CheapOAir Buzz via TripCart

Good News 2: Hispanics have highest life expectancy

Sally Smith — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:04:55 +0000

A new study published in the October issue of Vital and Health Statistics shows that Hispanics in the U.S. tend to live longer than non-Hispanics. Life expectancy for Hispanics is 80.6. Life expectancy is 78.1 for non-Hispanic whites and 72.9 for non-Hispanic blacks. Overall, the life expectancy at birth for all Americans is 77.7.

What’s so good about that? After all, I’m not Hispanic. To me it means that the group as a whole, perhaps especially newer immigrants, is hardy. The tough and hard-working survive, as we so joyfully saw when the 33 trapped Chilean miners emerged one by one.

If we play our cards right, Hispanic immigration will help keep our economy from stagnating as occurs in say, Japan, which has had low birth rates, very little immigration, and very slow growth– for years.

The cause has yet to be discovered. Could it be cariño?

Click here to read the whole WebMD article.

WebMD listed these sources:

SOURCES:

Hal Strelnick, MD, chief, division of Community Health; director, Hispanic Center of Excellence, Montefiore Medical Center, New York.

CDC: “United States Life Tables by Hispanic Origin.”

Vital and Health Statistics, October 2010.

Good News 1: Child Mortality Declining

Sally Smith — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:00:06 +0000

I love Hans Rosling. Click on his name to see a great and encouraging Ted talk. The ebullient champion of world health does the best job ever of making statistics dramatically clear, using animated graphics. See how well many, many countries are doing at meeting the U. N.’s Millenium goals for reducing child mortality. He’s not ignoring Africa. There’s an interesting portrait of Kenya’s progress, and Rosling uses 2 centuries of Swedish data to show that they are doing the right things and getting results.

Don’t miss his final display of statistics on the relationship between education of girls and women, smaller families, and the drop in deaths of children under 5.

Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 Supports CMS

Sally Smith — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:12:52 +0000

My WP Blog Image Library

One of the new features in Adobe Dreamweaver is integrated Content Mamagement System (CMS)support.

You can now use Dreamweaver to author and test blogs and web sites that use content management system frameworks like WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal.

It’s significant that Adobe, which sells professional quality software for Web and print, has added support for a free CMS like WordPress. I assume that this means that professional designers are creating not only templates, but client Web site and blogs.

Designers and their clients want the clients to write and upload fresh copy, to upload photos and video, and to upload original illustrations. The free WordPress CMS enables clients to divide and track the work on both blogs and web pages, and have a record of when a page was created and updated. There is a media library where images can be stored and reused.

Learn just what you need with a Connect Learning tutor
Mary Gillen is the CL tutor for WordPress

Rebellion Photonics Wins Goradia Grand Innovation Prize

Sally Smith — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 03:46:29 +0000

Vijay Goradia and Dr. Marie Goradia flank prize-winners
Richard Kester and Allison Lami

Rebellion Photonics, a Houston Technology Center client company, has won the $50,000 Goradia Grand Innovation Prize in its premiere year. The prize targets early stage companies that commercialize innovative technologies within the Gulf Coast region. Richard Kester and Allison Lami accepted the Goradia Innovation Prize for Rebellion Photonics.

A group of scientists at Rice University invented the portable chemical detection camera to replace large, slow stationary scanners that sometimes damage the materials, such as live cells, that they scan.

The Rebellion Photronics device, called The Arrow, takes high quality, large format, real time Hyper-Spectral video images instantly. Learn more

Learn just what you need, with a Connect Learning tutor
Adobe Software . Web Tech . English and Spanish Conversation

The Appeal of Flash Catalyst

Sally Smith — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 05:06:14 +0000

Previews of Flash Catalyst have been wildly popular at Adobe Max in years past. This year it shipped. The appeal of Flash Catalyst is that a designer can create a design in Illustrator or Photoshop and bring the design into Flash Catalyst with all layers intact and usable.Then use Flash Catalyst to hook things up so that the button you designed works– even though you haven’t written any code.

Download the trial version and use the free tutorial that Tanya Heins of Numen Communications, Inc. has developed, Getting Started with Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5. The tutorial includes a ZIP file with assets for the course.

Her topics include

Designing user interfaces in Photoshop / Illustrator
Importing a Photoshop design
Working with pages and states
Creating a popup window in a project
Designing transitions between states
Publishing a project for distribution

If you decide to use Flash Catalyst, a Connect Learning tutor can work with you step by step to

Define your strategy for going from a static file to interactive interface or content
Refine the images and structure of your design, if needed
Map out layers for the Photoshop or Illustrator foundation file
Create the behaviors you need
Organize your poject
Know when you need to call in a developer
Use Flash Catalyst to facilitate your work with the developer and maintain the integrity of your design