Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Nanamation!

I noticed a great tip from the "New Mac Tip Every Day" widget I installed. Creating an Animated Avatar with Photo Booth from Julian. There are lots of tips4mac but this one piqued my interest. Okay, I LOVE to play with Photo Booth. The only catch is that this only works with the version in the Leopard OS, darn it.

Julian's tip? Open PB, click the button to "Take four quick pictures", get ready, click the camera button to start the process. Four quick flashes later you have funny looking picture in your PB tray. Move up to the menu and choose File > Export and give it a name.

Open the photo using your web browser (e.g., Safari, Firefox, etc.) and you'll see your avatar You can also load it on a photo storage site such as PhotoBucket or Flickr and then place in your own website ~ just like I did!

Photobucket

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Ravelry.com - for knitters and crocheters!


My life does not completely center around technology - it doesn't? Well, not entirely. I love to read, knit, crochet and spend time with family. My sister's recent email about her engagement on Valentine's Day (yes, he got down on his knee and proposed!) also noted that she was "invited" to join ravelry.com. Not knowing the site, I clicked to visit, watched the video, and was immediately hooked. I joined and am now waiting for my invitation. The amazing thing is that there are 6416 people ahead of me and within 15 minutes I had 22 people behind me in line. There's even a link to a "waiting list checker" that gives tells you the info.

The site banner reads, "Ravelry is a knit and crochet community" and was founded by a young couple as a joint venture. They also happen to be married. She (Jess) is a knitter/crocheter who looked for yarn, patterns, and other needs and was frustrated by how difficult it was to find these things online. He (Casey) is a programmer by day. Read more about them and their site at http://www.ravelry.com/about

Ravelry.com is still a BETA site which means they're still working on it. They invite 800 to 1000 people each day to join the site because of the coding requirements for the site - all handled by Casey. They're not exclusive, the community is open to everyone, but they want to make sure the site works all the time - no down time! (I discovered Casey's other blog at http://www.nerdle.com/blog just love the name 'nerdle'.)

Oh, by the time I finished this post there were 35 people behind me in line.