Tim C. Taylor's Blog, page 10
October 26, 2013
October 21, 2013
Windows 8.1 hung my Photoshop CS6, but here’s the solution
The Windows 8.1 update arrived at my work desktop today. I’ve just read that Microsoft have halted the rollout due to problems. Well, I had one straight away. I was doing some book cover typography in Adobe Photoshop CS6. Suddenly I couldn’t pick a color. Trying to pick or swap colors gave me the standard Adobe error message that translates to ‘I’ve completely given up and I don’t even know what went wrong’. (I’ve seen and ahem… written a few of those in my time):
“Could not complete your request because of a program error”
That meant Photoshop was completely broken as far as I was concerned, and having run the Windows 8.1 update an hour earlier was too much of a coincidence.
A little rooting around Adobe support suggested a two-part fix that got me working straight away.
The problem is to do with the Photoshop preferences file, something that seems to be the canary that squawks and topples over whenever life gets too much for Photoshop.
The fix is to scrap your Photoshop preferences file and reset to factory defaults. Unfortunately this didn’t work because the preferences file was read-only (which, I suspect, caused the fault in the first place).
So the fix is to go to the Adobe preferences library in File Manager and set it to be write-enabled (turn off the ‘read only’ setting in the folder properties). The location is explained by Adobe .
Having made the folder write-enabled, close Photoshop and make the secret Adobe sign on your keyboard. It’s a bit like the Masonic handshake, but you hold Ctrl + Alt + Shift simultaneously. Keeping all those buttons pressed (you’ll probably want to use the left shift button for this…) you launch Photoshop. You should be asked if you want to create a new preferences file. You answer ‘yes’.
For me, at least, this solved my problem. If Windows 8.1 has done any more damage, I’ve yet to see it.
I don’t want anyone to experience the same problem as me. But if you do, hopefully this post will get you started again.
October 5, 2013
Format YOUR Print Book with Createspace — second edition is coming
My short guide to laying out books for Createspace was the first book I wrote that sold over a thousand copies (though not the first book I published to reach that mark). I’ve written an awful lot of technical guides over the past twenty years, so it’s gratifying to put it mildly that my little book has proved so popular (unlike most of those guides I used to write about how to wire Excel up to SSAS data cubes, and how to track agile software projects… can’t think why they weren’t as popular 
) One reviewer even called my book their bible!
So I’ve been beavering away in the background for a good few months to put together a second edition. Most of the first edition screenshots were from Word 2007, which looks a little dated now, even though as a user of Word 2010 & 2011, there’s really only one of those screens that changed with Word 2013 (the style sheets have moved to their own part of the Ribbon). So I’ve kept the core of the book largely the same, though updated to refer to Word 2013 (and to some degree Word 2008 & 11). I’ve added new sections for all the questions I’m often asked but didn’t address in the first book: how to set up projects with Createspace, should you buy your own ISBN, and the correct way to type in paragraphs and add page breaks, and many more.
I’ve also completely rewritten the section on images, explaining more about how and where to use images, including a dip into the mysteries of Unicode… a storehouse of images.
There’s a lot more details and — separated out for those who want it — a section on advanced topics such as advanced Opentype features, Wordart, typography primers, dot gain and color spaces, and why Mac users sometimes think their fonts have disappeared when they transfer their Word files to a Windows computer.
The second edition is actually more than twice a big as the first edition, counting words. So I guess it’s not a little book any longer.
We’re a good few weeks away from publication, but I wanted to announce this now because if you were thinking of buying my book, you might want to hold off for a while.
Tim
Proofing in Createspace
August 7, 2013
Time for me to show off
I’ve just tried photoing some eink devices with my iPad. The pics come out really sharply. Over the summer I’ll take some photos to show off what I can do. I’ve seen other freelance book designers do this, so about time I did. Here’s a pic of the title page for the book I’m working on now, using a Nook and a Kobo. Apple changed the rules again recently (iBooks has been a bit of a shambles) so I’m using svg for full screen images these days. I didn’t dare until recently as device support has been so patchy.
June 23, 2013
Lego for grown-ups at the National Space Centre
Apparently adults can enjoy Lego too. Phew, that’s a relief! Evidence is in from my son’s birthday trip to the National Space Centre at Leicester, which featured a weekend special of demonstrations and exhibits from The Brickish Association.
Thunderbird 3
That’s me shrunk to mini-figure size and going into Thunderbird 3.
The space centre is well worth a day out, especially as you can convert your tickets to annual passes for free. We especially enjoyed our excursion in a Mercury capsule and selecting the right level of thrust to get Yuri Gagarin into space in the water rockets.
This was a mosaic built up in sections by visitors filling in one Lego baseplate at a time.
You had to look twice sometimes to work out what was Lego and what was ‘real’. Highlight for me was this plastic model kit. Of course, it was all Lego. Even the modelling knife and the paint brushes were all Lego.
A fake modelling kit
Even the paint brushes are Lego.
Our thanks to the member of the Brickish Association for sharing their many wonder with us, and being honest about how difficult the dusting can be for exhibits that spend most of their lives on display around the house.
March 7, 2013
World Book Day
Today is World Book Day. I think it’s fair to say that I got involved.
But first, what the ?&$# is World Book Day? I do get cynical about all these ‘world XXXX days’. When I was growing up in England, we had Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Mother’s Day and my birthday (I’ll leave you to wonder which was the most important). That was about it. In theory there were other things such as St George’s Day but that was not (and still isn’t) a public holiday and no one ever did anything special for St. George’s Day and so it didn’t really count. As for Father’s Day, I’d never heard of such a thing.
I just looked at this Wikipedia entry listing commemorative days. The calendar is full and yet misses many of the special days I’ve heard of. World Book Day doesn’t even make it to this list. Of the ones that did, I’m going to watch out for March 15th as the next big day: World Consumer Rights Day. What???
Most of the days on the list look like worthy causes and I guess they can benefit from focusing campaigning efforts on a special day, but most of the time I suffer from commemorative day fatigue. But when my son’s school in Bromham asked for volunteer dads to read to the class for World Book Day, well… books are kind of my thing.
So this morning I read Fox in Socks by Dr Seuss to my son’s class. The children enjoyed it, especially when I stumbled over the tongue-twisting words. I may have given some nightmares when I assured them that your tongue can get twisted into a permanent knot if you don’t read the words properly. Oh, well. Children like being scared.
I loved doing it too. I’ve trained adults many times on topics such as software testing techniques and how to access data cubes to track software development projects. But I’ve never talked to a school class. It felt very easy (which is, of course, really a tribute to the quality of the class teacher ).
When I got home I looked up World Book Day. If you’ve been scratching your head wondering why you haven’t heard of this international celebration, it turns out that the World Book Day has been set up by the British (and now Irish) book publishing industry in order to sell books to British and Irish readers.
Some Brits like to tease Americans when the latter talk about ‘World Series’ baseball. Well, now the World Book Day is the perfect riposte.
In any case, I’ve taken a big view of World Book Day by opening up the publishing arm of The Repository of Imagination, a interstellar story factory that has opened up a branch on our planet in recent months. If this sounds familiar to followers of The Mighty Tharg, alien editor of 2000AD, then that is certainly one inspiration.
The senior branch repositorian is named Crustias Scattermush. He might turn out to be the front for a number of human writers. At the moment, there are some stories from him due soon and (ahem!) the words for those stories might have something to do with me.
That’s his Twitter header above. Come chat with @Crustias for some off-world commentary.
Enjoy World Book Day!
November 27, 2012
The natural world comes to Bromham
We’ve seen some weather extremes in our little village of Bromham over the past week.
A week ago I took some photos of a tree in full autumnal bloom that stands just outside my house, and then took the family to the RSPB lodge at Sandy, Bedfordshire, where we enjoyed the burnished leaves in the afternoon sunlight.
Autumn leaves outside my house in Bromham
It’s rained since then. Not very heavily but — following an official drought declared in April — we’ve had the wettest summer for a century or so, and the ground is so sodden it has nowhere to go around here except the rivers (via whatever the water decides is the easiest path).
So the river just down the road from my house is subject to an official flood warning. The river has burst its banks as it often does here. I took some photos around 11:30 am today, Tuesday, which should be about at the river’s peak. The scene looks dramatic if you’re used to the modest little flow of the River Great Ouse, but the area floods frequently and so the use of the flooded fields reflects that; livestock was evacuated in plenty of time.
Floodwater at Bromham Bridge 27 Nov 2012
The flood plain under Bromham Bridge glories in the name Snake Island — apparently grass snakes live there, though I’ve never spotted one. I hope they slithered away to dry land. In drier times, the snakes are supposed to be to the left of the picture above. Incidentally, if you click on the pictures, you can see larger images.
Bromham Bridge Flooding
It looks as if this time we’ve gotten away with it. It’s the next time the rains come that we’re a little worried about, as the ground is going to stay saturated until the spring.
Both autumn leaves and river floods are a timely reminder of the beauty and power of nature. We’re lucky that we can enjoy and learn from them without having to cope with crisis and tragedy. When I used to live in the city, it was easy to feel isolated from nature, living in a high-rise box and with a landscape painted in grey, with barely a blade of green. Don’t get me wrong, I still miss the human-hive vibrancy of a big city, but I took a half hour off work this morning to breathe in the cold and relentless force of the floodwaters, and feel grateful it wasn’t expected to rise further.
As a writer, I think it’s important to get out there and breathe in a little of the world. Hopefully some of the vibrancy of nature comes across in my writing.
As for the tree outside our house that looked so spectacular last week, my son’s been reporting a leaf count each day of the remaining leaves.
Today three leaves remain.
My family at Sandy, Bedfordshire a week ago. A location I used for The Reality War Book2
October 31, 2012
An illustrated guide to zombies... in LEGO
Reblogged from Greyhart Press:
What perfect timing! Today is Halloween, and I just happened to stumble across a blog called Bricks of the Dead. It’s main thrust is an ongoing epic zombie webcomic filmed in Lego-vision. I had a quick look at the first few episodes. My son was very impressed. I would ask him for a comment but he’s out trick-or-treating right now.
October 17, 2012
The British-isms are coming…
In response to an earlier BBC article on British idiom invading America, I was intrigued by this follow-up of Britishisms reported by American readers. Gobsmacked amused me. I remember that phrase appearing from out of nowhere and sweeping England at the end of the 1980s. Or my bits of it, anyway. I was living in Birmingham at the time.
From my point of view the key learning point is to avoid any of these phrases if, like me, you’re a Brit who often writes in American English. I would like to think I recognize all these examples as Britishisms, but my editor, James, did spot a naughty use of ‘holiday’ in my last novel.
One Brick to Rule Them All
Not that we’re Lego nerds in my house (heaven forbid!) but a welcome delivery through my letterbox this morning was the latest Lego catalog. It’s filled with Christmas-themed Lego (*groan* — think we’ve got enough Lego advent calenders now) but it is also packed with Lord of the Rings and Hobbit Lego. When I read The Hobbit, back in 1980, I simply could not have imagined that not only are there Lego Hobbit kits on their way but there’s already a Lego game of The Hobbit.
A quick trawl brought up this YouTube video. It’s only a few images, but the person who put it together has a sense of humor I approve of. Anyone who signs their video ‘One Brick to Rule then All’ is pretty impressive in my book.
There’s more on the Lego site, including online Lego Lord of the Rings games, and a Danish-sounding Lego designer. That’s pretty cool.
