WARNING: 2010 Census Cautions from the Better Business Bureau Be Cautious About Giving Info to Census Workers by Susan Johnson With the U.S. Census process beginning, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) advises people to be cooperative, but cautious, so as not to become a victim of fraud or identity theft. The first phase of the 2010 U..S. Census is under way as workers have begun verifying the addresses of households across the country. Eventually, more than 140,000 U.S. Census workers will count every person in the United States and will gather information about every person living at each address including name, age, gender, race, and other relevant data. The big question is – how do you tell the difference between a U..S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice: ** If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag, and a confidentiality notice.. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don’t know into your home.
** Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census. While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, YOU DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT YOUR FINANCIAL SITUATION. The Census Bureau will not ask for Social Security, bank account, or credit card numbers, nor will employees solicit donations. Any one asking for that information is NOT with the Census Bureau..
Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail, or in person at home. However, the Census Bureau will not contact you by Email, so be on the lookout for Email scams impersonating the Census. Never click on a link or open any attachments in an Email that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.
I don’t know if I’m the only one who wants to do this but from time to time I want a custom icon for either a program or a folder I have on my computer.
For instance, I am part of the beta team for Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro but the icon for the beta and the most recent version you can buy are exactly the same and it’s hard to tell them apart on my Dock on the Mac and my Quick launch on the PC, so I set out to create a new one for the program. In my case all I did was find a photo of the original icon and tweak with the Hue/Saturation tool in Photoshop but read on and you will see there are other things you can do such as create your own icons with your computer!
Changing an icon on a Mac is pretty easy…
right click on the icon you want to change and the icon (or picture) you want to use and then select “Get Info” from the pull down menu (Fig-1).
A window will come up giving you options about that particular icon.
Fig-1
Click the top icon (Fig-2)
Select Edit>Copy from the File menu.
Then navigate to the icon you want to change, and redo steps 2 and 3.
Select Edit>Paste from the File menu.
Viola’! Pat yourself on the back because you’ve just changed your icon!
Fig-2
Clever, clever you! :-)
Now for the PC it’s a bit more involved but nothing too complicated.
Right Click on the folder or program icon you would like to change and select “Properties” from the pull down menu (Fig-3).
A window will come up and you should select the “Customize” tab (Fig-4).
From there Select “Change Icon” (Fig-5) and navigate to the new icon you would like to replace the old one with. There are many places on the web to download free replacement icons for the PC. Here’s one site that gives many links to icon sites.
Fig-3
Fig-4
Fig-5
What’s that you say? You want to express yourself and create a brand new icon or turn a picture into an icon? Well if you have Photoshop it’s pretty easy. There is a free plugin you can download from Telegraphics which will allow you to open and save out in Window’s .ico format!If you use it regularly I suggest you give hima a donation through Paypal to thank him.
What’s that? You wan tto create your own icon? Oooh you’re tricky! Okay well you can do that pretty easily as well, especially on a PC.
Falco Icon Studio works well and will let you edit and create icons for your PC.
I read a question on a Flash forum recently asking for help in animating a logo of a person riding a bike. They uploaded the drawing they wanted and since I’m that kind of guy who tries to help I answered him…
Here’s what I wrote in case any of you want to learn this yourself!
Here's an image of the logo... ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Here is what you should do:
Open your image in something like Photoshop and lasso the first wheel and hit CTRL-X to cut it from the image. The wheel will disappear. Then go to File> New and create a new file. Hit CTRL-V to paste the wheel into the new file you just created. Save it as “wheel 1″
do the same for the second wheel and save it as “wheel 2″
save the rest of your image as “bike”.
Open Flash
Hit F8 and a dialog box will come up. Call it “Bike animation”.
Now Hit F11 and your Library will come up. Double click the Bike Animation clip and it will open in the timeline. Nothing will be there yet though.
Now go to File> Import> Import Image
Navigate to the freshly created files on your computer and click OK
You images will appear on the timeline.
Click and drag to select them all or hold down Shift and click each one. then right click on the art on the stage and select “Distribute to layers” the files will now all be on their own layer.
Manipulate the two wheels to where you want them on the stage. If they are beneath the bike then reorder the layers how you want them to bem by dragging them above or below the others. Right Click on each wheel and select Transform. The blue box around your wheel should change to black and have little handles at each corner. There will also be a little white dot roughtly in the center of the image. This is your pivot point. If it is not already, move it to the center of your wheel. Do the same for the 2nd wheel.
Now go to the 8th frame on the timeline.
Hit F6 on your keyboard.
This will make the total length of the scene 8 frames long. You should have two dots one on the first frame one on the last frame. Do the same for each layer so they are all the same amount of frames.
Now select the two wheels and right click on the selected area and select “Motion Tween”.
Now your two wheel layers will be blue with an arror going form the first frame to the last frame.
Go to frame 4 on the first wheel and right click and select create keyframe from the pulldown menu that comes up. When you do you will see a new black dot.
Rotate the wheel by right clicking the wheel and selecting transform. When you move the mouse to one of the corners the mouse will change to a rotate icon. Rotate the wheel sideways.
Do the same for your other wheel.
Under the timeline to the left under the layers area you should see “Scene 1>Bike Animation” Click Scene 1 and the bike will disappear.
Now hit F11 again and the Library will come up again. Drag the bike animation clip from the Library onto the Stage.
Place it where you want it. You can also resize it.
Now hit Ctrl Enter and your little film should play. Tweak until it looks good to you.
If you want the bike to move up and down as it animates, then go to frame 8 on the main stage and hit F5 . This will give you a frame range of 8 frames again like we did earlier BUT it will not put a keyfraem at the end of the sequence. We’ll do that in a second.
Go to frame 8 and right click on it and select Create Motion Tween. Again your frames will change to blue etc.
NOTE: When a Tween is invoked in Flash, you can ONLY select a keyframe and not any fraem. it HAS to have a black dot on it for you to be able to select it.
Right click on the bike on frame 1 and select Transform and move the pivit point (white circle) to the bottom of the black box. Now go to frame 4 and right click and select create keyframe. Now select the top middle controller on the transform box and squish your drawing slightly to make it seem like it’s lowering a bit. Only the top will squish and the bottom of the drawing will stay as is because of the pivot point’s position.
Hit CTRL enter and your little bike guy should animate and slightly go up and down as well!
Here’s what it essentially will look like.
The drawing itself is not the best to animate with mostly because of the odd shaped wheels but you can clearly get the idea. He should also be able to animate his legs up and down but that’s a lesson for another time.
UPDATE: Flash is weird sometimes and tweening images especially a circle can be troublesome because if it rotates around too far between two keyframes Flash takes the shorter way and rotates the opposite direction so in order to get the wheels to turn correctly you have to do it in small increments by rotating a bit on the 2nd frame, then going to the 4th frame and rotating a little more and so on. Also when animating a wheel it’s hard to see the rotation correctly because it all pretty much looks the same so a trick you can do is to double click inside the wheel clip, place a small square at the top of the wheel and then go back tot he stage and animate the wheeel. this way you can see how far it turns each keyframe! When you’re done simply remove the square and you’re good to go!
Boy this iPhone thing just gets bigger and bigger! Now there’s even an app to let me blog from my phone. I use a sevice called Wordpress which allows me to host the blogs contents on my own server (well, technically its my brother’s server) which is easier in the long run.
Now if they could just allow the damn thing to rotate sideways so my sausage fingers can type decently I’d be in business! It’s supposed to work but I can’t as of yet get it to rotate. It’s pretty neat though and as you can see, you can even add photos.
Recently, someone unearthed some fantastic photos taken 68 years ago with a Brownie camera by a sailor who was on the USS QUAPAW ATF-11O during the attack on Pearl Harbor! Isn’t is amazing how a film could last so long in a camera without disintegrating?
Some of you will have to go to a museum to see what a Brownie camera looked like… there’s a pic below.
::EDIT:: As it turns out these are NOT from a brownie camera found a long time ago as many have pointed out to me. pparently they are official naval photos. Still pretty cool pictures though.
PEARL HARBOR
December 7th, 1941
A little bit about Pearl Harbor in case you don’t know…
On Sunday, December 7th, 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack against the U.S. Forces stationed at Pearl Harbor , Hawaii By planning this attack on a Sunday, the Japanese commander Admiral Nagumo, hoped to catch the entire fleet in port. As luck would have it, the Aircraft Carriers and one of the Battleships were not in port. (The USS Enterprise was returning from Wake Island , where it had just delivered some aircraft. The USS Lexington was ferrying aircraft to Midway, and the USS Saratoga and USS Colorado were undergoing repairs in the United States .)
In spite of the latest intelligence reports about the missing aircraft carriers (his most important targets), Admiral Nagumo decided to continue the attack with his force of six carriers and 423 aircraft. At a range of 230 miles north of Oahu , he launched the first wave of a two-wave attack. Beginning at 0600 hours his first wave consisted of 183 fighters and torpedo bombers which struck at the fleet in Pearl Harbor and the airfields in Hickam, Kaneohe and Ewa. The second strike, launched at 0715 hours, consisted of 167 aircraft, which again struck at the same targets.
At 0753 hours the first wave consisting of 40 Nakajima B5N2 ‘Kate’ torpedo bombers, 51 Aichi D3A1 ‘Val’ dive bombers, 50 high altitude bombers and 43 Zeros struck airfields and Pearl Harbor Within the next hour, the second wave arrived and continued the attack.
When it was over, the U.S. Losses were:
Casualties
US Army: 218 KIA, 364 WIA.
US Navy: 2,008 KIA, 710 WIA.
US MarineCorp: 109 KIA, 69 WIA.
Civilians: 68 KIA, 35 WIA.
TOTAL: 2,403 KIA, 1,178 WIA.
————————————————-
Battleships
USS Arizona (BB-39) – total loss when a bomb hit her magazine.
USS Oklahoma (BB-37) – Total loss when she capsized and sunk in the harbor.
USS California (BB-4 4) – Sunk at her berth. Later raised and repaired.
USS West Virginia (BB-48) – Sunk at her berth. Later raised and repaired.
USS Nevada – (BB-36) Beached to prevent sinking. Later repaired.
USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) – Light damage.
USS Maryland (BB-46) – Light damage.
USS Tennessee (BB-43) Light damage.
USS Utah (AG-16) – (former battleship used as a target) – Sunk.
————————————————————————————————————————–
Cruisers
USS New Orleans (CA-32) – Light Damage..
USS San Francisco (CA-38) – Light Damage.
USS Detroit (CL-8) – Light Damage.
USS Raleigh (CL-7) – Heavily damaged but repaired.
USS Helena (CL-50) – Light Damage.
USS Honolulu (CL-48) – Light Damage..
————————– — —————————- —————————————————————
Destroyers
USS Downes (DD-375) – Destroyed. Parts salvaged.
USS Cassin – (DD -3 7 2) Destroyed. Parts salvaged.
USS Shaw (DD-373) – Very heavy damage.
USS Helm (DD-388) – Light Damage.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Minelayer
USS Ogala (CM-4) – Sunk but later raised and repaired.
———————————————————————————-
Seaplane Tender
USS Curtiss (AV-4) – Severely damaged but later repaired.
————————————————————————————
Repair Ship
USS Vestal (AR-4) – Severely damaged but later repaired.
————————————————————————————
Harbor Tug
USS Sotoyomo (YT-9) – Sunk but later raised and repaired.
——————————————————————————————–
Aircraft
188 Aircraft destroyed (92 USN and 92 U.S. Army Air Corps.)
Share this with your Loved ones of ALL ages…Elderly will remember, Young will be Awed.
The Worlds Shortest Books ________________________________________ THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY COUNTRY by Jane Fonda & Cindy Sheehan.
Illustrated by Michael Moore ________________________________________ MY CHRISTIAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS &
HOW I HELPED AFTER KATRINA by Rev Jesse Jackson & Rev Al Sharpton _______________________________________
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT BILL by Hillary Clinton ________________________________ Sequel: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HILLARY By Bill Clinton ___________________________________ MY LITTLE BOOK OF PERSONAL HYGIENE by Osama Bin Laden ___________________________________ THINGS I CANNOT AFFORD by Bill Gates
____________________________________ THINGS I WOULD NOT DO FOR MONEY by Dennis Rodman _________________________________ THINGS WE KNOW TO BE TRUE by Al Gore & John Kerry _____________________________________
AMELIA EARHART’S GUIDE TO THE PACIFIC
___________________________________ A COLLECTION of MOTIVATIONAL SPEECHES by Dr. J.. Kevorkian __________________________________
ALL THE MEN WE HAVE LOVED, BEFORE …. by Ellen de Generes & Rosie O’Donnel ____________________________________
GUIDE TO DATING ETIQUETTE by Mike Tyson __________________________________
THE AMISH PHONE DIRECTORY _______________________________________
MY PLAN TO FIND THE REAL KILLERS by O. J. Simpson _________________________________________ HOW TO DRINK & DRIVE OVER BRIDGES by Ted Kennedy ___________________________________ MY BOOK OF MORALS by Bill Clinton with introduction
by the Rev. Jesse Jackson *******************************************************
AND, JUST ADDED: Complete Knowledge of Military Strategy! By Nancy Pelosi
After being interviewed by the school administration, the prospective teacher said:
‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.
‘You want me to go into that room with all those kids, correct their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages, and instill in them a love for learning.
‘You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and personal pride.
‘You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a checkbook, and apply for a job.
‘You want me to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of antisocial behavior, and make sure that they all pass the final exams.
‘You also want me to provide them with an equal education regardless of their handicaps, and communicate regularly with their parents in English, Spanish or any other language, by letter, telephone, newsletter, and report card.
‘You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a bulletin board, a few books, a big smile, and a starting salary that qualifies me for food stamps.
‘You want me to do all this and then you tell me. . . I CAN’T PRAY!!!”
Yeah it’s been a while since I added a real post of any substance other than jokes and mostly it’s because I’ve been really busy trying to stay afloat with full time freelance instead of the typical 9-5 animation job since I finished at Cartoon Network back in May. I’ve had a number of small jobs but the coolest was for a sweet shop in Greece. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to show the art for it until I get approval. Also I have done a fair amount of design work for Fox21 which is a subdivision of Fox catering to the college set.
Over the years I have had many instances where I have created vector art in Adobe Flash simply because I hate Illustrator’s interface. Unfortunately if the art is for print media, eventually I will have to export the art out as either an .ai or an .eps file.
Herein typically lies the trouble.
The internet is littered with posts from people (even on the Adobe site itself) complaining of this well known problem.
The workflow is as follows:
You draw something in Flash.
You want to export that thing out to Illustrator as a vector file
You go to Export>Image>Export as Ai> export as AI v6
You scream and cry because when you open your exported file it’s been converted to CMYK colors instead of RGB!
Nothing will convert it to RGB despite many attempts to change the Document Color mode or changing the Color Management. There are no color export settings for Flash.
You hang your head and cry.
Ah, but there is a solution! It takes a few steps to do but it’s worth it!
The workflow is as follows:
Draw the Mona Lisa in Flash
export as an EPS
What’s that you say? There is a pixel shift in your exported file creating horizontal white lines across your character or art?
No worries, there’s a fix for that too!
Select all of you art and then select the Live Paint bucket.
Click on your art and Illustrator will convert the file to a Live Paint object.
Now you will notice that your white lines have disappeared!
rejoice that you have foundeth this here blog!
Shame on you Adobe… you can easily fix this and yet each version that comes out you ignore it. What happened to your great company? you’ve become as fat and bloated as Microsoft witht eh right hand not knowing (or caring) what the left hand is doing!
2010 Census Information 
