Sprinkles Around the Web 7/09-7/22/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Links that I enjoyed and shared around the web. Take a gander.

Economy

Times report: The real mortgage deadbeats are the rich. Why does it not surprise me that even in the Great Recession, the rich keep getting richer by hiring their legal team to take advantage of all the loopholes, including ones that are supposed to be helping the middle and working classes.

Fandom

Feminist Hulk SMASH Exclusive Interview with MS.! Awesome.

Tweeting in all-caps, this size-XXXXXXL superhero fights for social justice and breaks down the gender binary–all the while looking “smashing” in purple shorts with a big smile on his face.

Mythbusting Princess Leia’s Hair. Leia had some bizarre hair, even for the 1970s. And some hair that expert cos-players can’t figure out how to replicate. Certainly hair she couldn’t have done by herself, while on the run and fighting a war. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 7/09-7/22/10”

Sprinkles Around the Web 7/02-7/08/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Standard warning: These are links that I found interesting, exciting, or relevant, and I hope you do too. But I don’t make any promises.

Environment

Scientists find oil blotches on Gulf crab larvae. Great. This is the first major consequence of both the dispersant and the oil. If you don’t count clean-up workers getting sick.

Tar balls wash up on Florida’s eastern coast. That’s right, the Gulf Oil Spill continues to spread.

Fandom

How to Stop Worrying and Love Comics. Sometimes, you just have to remember what made you so passionate about your hobbies to start with. They should never be a chore. Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 7/02-7/08/10”

Sprinkles Around the Web 5/28-6/10/10

Sprinkles from around the web

Two weeks worth of links and other things I found amusing, insightful, or otherwise useful around the web. Your mileage may vary.

Me

• A photo of me on the set of ExOfficio’s Spring ’11 photoshoot. Yes, that’s how far ahead the fashion industry works. (I’m the one with the braid and my back turned.)

• Okay, not really me, but my good friend Steve. His Batman, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Sandman tattoos were featured on Geeky Tattoos.

BP Oil Spill

We Just Tore Up Our Contract with Mother Nature. Chuck does a good job at collecting all the various links about the BP Oil Spill. Warning: He does become ranty at the end, and he’s a horror/fantasy writer so things get graphic.

Leroy Stick – the man behind @BPGlobalPR. Why a fake Twitter account is a thorn in BP’s side and how they seem more concerned about their PR and stocks than the Gulf Coast being destroyed.

Fandom

• Apparently, there are people out there making shows for me, including RuPaul’s Drag U and Men with Brooms: Continue reading “Sprinkles Around the Web 5/28-6/10/10”

Pants Magic: Another Adventure in Photoshopping

One of my biggest work projects is to take the raw clothing photos from the photographer and edit them by removing the background (and mannequin) and color correcting. By color correcting, the photographer only takes one photo of a product and I, via Photoshop, transform it into the many colors it comes in. The helps cut back on expenses, especially when a single shirt or pant can come in three to five different colors.

Photographers have a lot of product to shoot and not every shot comes out picture perfect. Most all of them have editing software, and they do a good job at adjust for major changes, which I deeply appreciate. However, sometimes I’ll still go back and fine-tune it.

On this particular pant, the leg was bunched up over the foot in an angle that would have looked especially strange without a foot present. So I built a new bottom for this pant leg.

Pants before Photoshopping Pants after I photoshopped them

Photoshopping Magic

Thanks to access to Photoshop, anyone can subtract (or add) wrinkles, freckles, frown lines, or those 10 extra pounds off a photo. The Seattle Times recently did an article called Photoshop: Memories – the way we want them about a woman who removed her ex-husband from her travel photos. Of course, not everyone has to photoshop that drastically.

Let’s face it, most photos don’t come out of the camera perfect. Not only do we have human flaws we don’t like, but there are often things like inappropriately placed people in the background. Don’t you know I was the only one at the Space Needle that day! Or the basic need to cropping due to photographer’s angle or they tell me on lesser cameras you still have to fix red eye.

When putting together my mom’s wedding website, I did some Photoshopping with these three photos for her banner. (No, I didn’t take them and they were super low-res.) I give you three befores and afters.

Image #1: Before Image #1: After
Continue reading “Photoshopping Magic”

The Joke’s On You, Webmaster

As a gainfully employed person with a busy social and home life, I often find that my websites are neglected. They can fall into such disrepair that my only notion of ‘updating’ them to current standards and design are to take it all down and start from scratch.

Since relaunching this site, I am making a concerted effort never to let that happen again. Especially when I found myself looking at my homepage and thinking that there was just something about it I didn’t like. Continue reading “The Joke’s On You, Webmaster”

A Little Fun in the Summer

Spring and summer always put me in the mood to clean. I know, cliche. I clean out my closet, my computer files, and whatever else ends up in my warpath.

A few years, some friends of mine and I got together and did a clothing swap. Basically, we cleaned out our closets, brought our clothing together, and swapped. Everything left over ended up at a charity shop.

I figured that we work at a clothing company, which means all of us women probably have four times as much clothing in our closets. So we had a fun late, Friday afternoon clothing swap and donated a lot of clothing. Remember, just say no to velor overalls.

Here’s the e-mail image I made for it:

women's clothing swap e-mail