Countdown was announced yesterday for the geek inside me that wants to know all about apple products and services. its funny that i found myself in a corporate ATT store very soon after this years WWDC announcement trying to pay my old school slow as snail dry loop bill in sunny Chino hills. I have thought of upgrading to the new handset and am really sold on the features that it would provide over a first generation iPhone but not so hot on the upgrade to the pricing. Current math in my head would up the $80 bill somewhere into the $110 dollar range. Granted this seems pretty solid for the type of plan i have its considered a luxury isnt it?

Current plan:
$59 = $30 mom and $30 Me
$10 = Add. Line: Grace
$20 = iPhone 1st Gen Data Plan
Total: $90 before tax and discount
Realistic: $86 and change

we have been doing this for the past year and a half. Apparently my plan is in upgrade territory however as long as i continue to pay the rate my phone stays active and i retain the sweet $20 data plan that includes 200 text messages.

Enter 3GS. It appears the data plans are no different than the 3G meaning a $10 increase in data plan.

$59 = $30 mom and $30 Me
$10 = Add. Line: Grace
$30 = iPhone 3G Data Plan
$5 = 200 text messages
Total: $105 before tax and discount
Realistic: $100 and change

difference of $14 dollars

so maybe my math is wrong and im thinking of too many reasons not to upgrade. the cost of the device is no problem its just the commitment to having a more expensive plan is something i know is avoidable but stuck in my brain.

But thats not what i mean to say.

I have an offer on the table that is not paid and is in the industry. its a huge offer in my eyes and something that i feel is not exactly an easy thing for me to do but lately the one thing if i could pin point anything is that i need to try and do things that make me uncomfortable in order to become stronger in my current skill set. i do want to do this and my hint is: VBP.

I was contacted by email and responded this morning

Waking up was definietly the hardest part so far. 5-6hrs of sleep is hard to run off of when there are projects to finish up. Status on each class is as follows: 241-layouts print ready 205-in pieces (this one is scaring me the most) but GPS,Wipers,Lights are active. 1 scanner darkly render done. Posted to YouTube as a sample.

Sidebar: workflow= MOV Render out of AE>Adobe Media Encoder>H.264>YouTube upload=artifacting in the beginning only on uploaded version. Local playback pristine. What’s the deal!? Especially when I just drooled over a RED 4k demo posted on YouTube. End sidebar.

I have plenty of work to do and waking up had me ride over to the bookarts room to pick up materials for Mitsymoto clamshell box construction. That is probably going to happen sometime in the near future maybe Friday or Saturday after work. Due date for Mitsymoto is May 11th. Completly possible. I have enough PVA to last me through both projects.

Illustrator is great but I could have really used either a guide or the existence of a batch convert for my 15 .ai files that needed to be passed through a 72 downsizing and output to a PDF format. One at a time on my sleep deprived iMac is understandably slow and tedious. Automator isn’t the easiest thing to set up either.

Once I converted I realized the top banner panoramic had suddenly disappeared from my project files in PDF form. The .ai file was just fine and I think it has something to do with my downsampling of images in my PDF preset. More work. Just the batch convert alone took 20 min and then trying to figure out what happened to the panorama banner took another 15 min total time batch converting: 35-40min

HDR images are fun to play with my I don’t have the eye for color correction at this point. I need to be more scientific about my levels to make it mach up. I couldn’t figure out how to output the hdr file at 32 bit depth to something other than PS dependant. Result: screen shot of a tiff in preview.
The gameplan for those images will be to place them in a 7×5 layout in pages. Pages? Yes. Because it’s fast and easy. Next semester I’ll get into InDesign. Rub on transfers are items that I’m looking for to transfer text onto other object that will fill the pockets between pages. Maybe I won’t pursue that idea but it’s still a possibility.

I need to get prints done today. Maybe before I meet for dinner tonight at 6:30pm. I could use the school printers (epson 1280) or just have kinkos run quick prints. Re colors were pretty nice from kinkos. The employees are jet a little tough to work with. The workstations charge by the minute to print out your stuff. And they can do the same thing for your only charging the cost of the prints. And especially when they are not doing anything else when you walk up to the counter.

Photoshop status is on hold. I’m a little stumped by what to do with it but I still need he type element placed on and some more adjustment layers for color balancing and more blending.

So much to do. And I almost lock myself out of the house. By the way walking fast in the heat makes it really hard to shop and work when I get to the place I’m headed. My glasses keep sliding down my nose.