Over a year or so I’ve been preoccupied with other online projects and have not focused on this blog.  In the meantime, I have developed two of the worlds best acoustic guitar blogs, Acoustic Guitarist and Acoustic Guitar Player.

Curently I am building my own Social Network at Bling @ Ning to bring together people in my local region , to allow them to have a global web presence and to share their skills with local businesses.

DrNerdy is not dead, he has just headed off in other directions at the moment

I never thought I’d hear the day when the Grapelli and Reinhardt tune Minor Swing would be used for silly videos, not sure whose version this is.  But here’s a silly gravity video

For information about Solar Hot Water Systems that are Eco Friendly and help reduce Green House Gases in the Northern Rivers Tweed and Byron Shire, check out James Mc Laughlan at solarhotwater.wordpress.com

I submitted an image for the photo editing contest mentioned in my last post 

photo-projectz.blogspot.com/2008/02/edit-this-photo-contest.html

 THE ORIGINAL

 THE EDIT

PROCESS USED TO EDIT THE IMAGE

Opened Fireworks and saved as new png file

Man

Selected area around man

Used Magic wand + delete to remove unwanted areas

Used Hue saturation tool

Used Color Invert tool

Resized selection

Copied and pasted man twice

Relocated men and flattened to one image
 

Background

Selected tree area

Converted to Grayscale

Used Color Invert tool

Copied and pasted image

Use Flip Horizontal tool

Lined up images so they were symmetrical

Selected both images

Copied and pasted images twice to form background

Flattened background images

Bridge

Selected section of bridge

Removed unwanted pixels with rubber tool and magic wand + delete

Copied and pasted selection to form one long bridge section

Flattened selections to make one element

Use Hue Saturation tool
Changed opacity of image to approx 45%

Copied and pasted bridge

Used different Hue and Saturation levels for each color bridge

Changed opacity of each bridge approx 40 to 60%

Used transform tool to change angles of bridge selections

Exported as jpg

Embed in Web page

Created html file

Inserted image to html file

Uploaded to web server

Tested, tested and tested

http://www.the-acoustic-guitar.com/images/photo3.htm 

Click the link above to see the result

As mentioned in my previous post, there is a photo editing competition at another blog

photo-projectz.blogspot.com/2008/02/edit-this-photo-contest.html

 I’ve decided to approach it from another angle, to see my contribution go to

http://www.the-acoustic-guitar.com/images/photo2.html

A blogger over at http://photo-projectz.blogspot.com/2008/02/edit-this-photo-contest.html has decided to run a contest.The idea is to edit the supplied image.  You might like to check out or even enter the competition.

I have decide to use Adobe (formely Macromedia) Flash. It took about an hour and I worked more organically than anything else. read as: I didn’t plan like designers do.

My entry (if you want to call it that) is a little playful and probably extending the boundaries a little.  If I  get a bit more timre I’ll do a very serious one, but this one is a nice starting point with a little humour.

No competitions aren’t necessarily about winning, it’s always about participating and giveing yourself a short term project to focus on

http://www.the-acoustic-guitar.com/images/photo.html

I have listed an overview of the process, these are not the whole instructions, just a rough guide to the approach.

Brief overview of Editing Process

Open Flash Editor
Create a new file
Import image
Extended timeline
Used trace bitmap tool
Selected various areas
Copied to new layers
Created motion tween
Used colour editing tool
Changed alpha state at various points
Imported other images drawn in Flash
Added text content
Created buttons
Added stop actions and script to buttons
Created html page
Imported swf file
Saved file
Uploaded swf and html file
Tested, tested and retested

This was fun

A national disaster declared in the area I live in

 And even worse, all the beaches on the East coast region closed

The rising river

Corner petrol station

Local showground

Soccer ground

Street shot

School Basketball Court

Road closed

That’s not a river

LOVE, has no boundaries or judgements. It embraces the totally of all things born and still unborn. It waits patiently for us to take her hand and follow her to our greatest potential, it forgives our shortcomings and speaks quietly to us when we need her most. Love creeps through our life often unnoticed but catches us as we fall. Love is our only true friend, our faithful companion that walks with us from age to age, beyond the graves.

Love is what we truly are

Tony Hogan 2007

DrNerdy  Sunday morning Techy moment 

I was just digging around in Hostgator and looking to see what inbuilt autoresponders were there and I noticed that in the Fantastico scripts there is an upgrade available there now for WordPress.   As you may be aware, the WordPress upgrade has been available for a while, but it wasn’t added to Hostgator immediately. 

Anyone that is hosting their blog/s at Hostgator and hasn’t upgraded for a while can easily upgrade:

• Log into cpanel
• Click on the Fantastico De Luxe icon
• If you need to upgrade, you’ll notice in the center of the screen there is a RED ALERT about what needs upgrading
• Click on the upgrade to 2.3.1 next to your blog address

Please note: 
There is also a script to copy and paste just in case the upgrade went skewiff

drNerdy has been out of action for a while getting ready to record a number of musical projects

My friends have built themselves a fishing blog.  So if you’re into fishing and want to see a giant fish go to http://madmullet.wordpress.com Dr Nerdy will be back soon, he’s been concentrating on business for a couple of months.