Monday, February 12, 2007

I swear, I'm not an idiot, but...

My latest layout - I took this picture for C's valentines for school, and liked it enough to make a whole page. Everything is from Nina's Symbiosis kit.

Sometimes, I get too impressed with myself because I can do some things in Photoshop. Yeah, lots of my friends can, too. But its hard. Photoshop 7.0 is what I am running, and it can be a beast. When someone I know is interested in learning to digital scrapbook, I say DO NOT USE Photoshop 7.0, its rotten and mean and I don't want you to give up! Find something more user-friendly so you can enjoy this from the start! Sometimes I can't believe I kept at it through all the frustration and eventually figured it out with a little help from my friends along the way.

But, if I start to get too self-congratulatory, I would like to thank blogger, itunes, etc. for knocking me down a few pegs, or off the whole ladder. Last night I tried to put up this nifty slideshow like everyone else has on their blog - how hard could it be? It was pretty easy to upload the photos, almost *too* easy in fact. The trouble came when I tried to move the thing to the SIDE of my blog, because I don't want it to be a post. I want it to be OVER THERE ------->

Well, as you can see, its not over there. Its below. And it will eventually disappear off of this page. No amount of clicking around could find a way to get it where I want it - but somehow EVERYONE ELSE's blog has their photo slideshow over on the side. This is when I start to think the whole world knows something I don't.

Don't even get me started on the difficulty of getting songs from my computer to DH's Ipod. I was ready to throw that thing across the room. How come everyone else in the free world can figure that out, and its a mystery to me. The instructions for it are written (I kid you not) much like the posters on the wall in kindergarten. They politely imply "we're slowing this down for you, using small words, colors and pictures as not to confuse you!" Green dot means this, orange dot means this. Orange flashing dot means, Don't touch! etc.

And I'm thinking - I learned to use Photoshop without using the Help files (much) surely to GOODNESS I can operate this thing that plugs into my computer and has one button with a play symbol on it. The songs are supposed to move so easily from one to the other, that's why these things are all the rage, no? How hard can it be?

Hard like programming a VCR, that's how hard. We managed to get some songs on it, but I hope he doesn't mind listening to Barbie Girl and the Wiggles, because I couldn't figure out how to get *particular* songs on it, and so its got just about everything we had on the computer, even the really really annoying stuff the girls listen to. And considering the trouble I had getting songs onto it, there is NO WAY I am going to attempt removing songs from it. Not a chance.

6 comments:

Jenna said...

HA! We do have a love/hate relationship with our electronics don't we.

justkc said...

hehe, I think Serge will be all the rage with the guys when he cranks up his Barbie tunes!

Find me on Hello later - I will try to help you through the slide show on the right issue.

Eleanor said...

I know how to put the slide show on the right (how to make the whole thing visible is another issue! Copy the code it gives you, and edit your page elements- add an HTML/Javascript element, and past the code in there...you should be good to go! :)

cheribear said...

HA! You lost me at HTML..... but I'll give it a try, anyway!

Nightwolf said...

Gorgeous layout.

cheribear said...

Yes!!! See, Geri!! I did it! It just had to be a smaller size, so I resized it and it worked!

YAYYYY, thanks Geri!