About
I have been using the Mac for about five years now. I am on my second iMac now, I passed the 17in model on to my son and he is getting great use out of it. I still have my first Mac which is a Mac Mini. I use it as the work horse behind my podcasting studio. So with that I am runing Garageband and Amadeus Pro. I put a lot of my notes into EverNote because of the synchronisation. I will perhaps type in the script for a podcast into Evernote and then later when I am ready I already have the script waiting for me in the Mac Mini with EverNote.
Depending on what I am recording I record podcasts into either Garageband or Amadeus Pro. I like Amadeus because I can do some real close editing on the wave form. There are some little tricks it has like a keystroke which extends the selection you just did with the mouse so that it starts and stops at a zero crossover, with this it eliminates harsh clicks on edits.
The 24in iMac I use most of the time is always working hard at the blogging and all the web work. I often have a number of applications open. I could be using Photoshop to edit some images to put in a post and maybe creating other images in Illustrator. I have Aperture to organise my photos and Final Cut Express to work on video when it need more work than I can do in ScreenFlow or VideoCue.
I have started to use dropbox which keeps my files safe by making a copy in the cloud, also good because I can get the files when I need them on other computers.
For browsing the web I like to use Flock and Firefox. I started using Flock because of the extra tools it has for blogging. Lately though I have forgotten about using the tools and I go directly to the WordPress or Blogger sites to do the posting to blogs. I have lately been trying Blogo and it does a good job of posting to blogs and it also posts to my account at Ping.fm, which is useful for keeping all of the social networks up to date. Talking of social networks, twitter is important so I use Tweetdeck to keep an eye on what is happening there. I use it for making relies and direct messages to Tiwitter users and I use Ping when I want to to an update to all.
For Text editing I have TextMate and Text Wrangler and I mostly use the Wrangler becaue I have had it longer. I use it to strip out html formatting if I am doing some copying and pasting and getting strange results. Gives me a clean load of text. I don’t do much word processing but I have Pages available, at the moment I am using it to make a newsletter. It really is quite useful as a desktop publishing application. Putting in images and making text flow around them is easy and a good bit of fun.
Jumpcut and Textexpander are two apps that I use all of the time. I mostly remember the codes I use to work the Textexpander and Jumpcut is great for giving me the last 10 things I put on the clipboard. That saves me a lot of to and fro-ing.
1Password is invaluable with all of the sites I go to online and keeps all my passwords good, as in strong and also safe on my computer.
ArtRage, PainterX and my wacom
Writers20Q
I started using my imagination to write as far back as 1975 when I was still in school. mainly when I was in trouble for not doing homework and was spending time in detention. Well I have to do something to get through the time in jail as it were. the teachers gave us such terrible titles which we had to write something from. I actually enjoyed it and wrote loads. The teachers must have thought I was weird. Now I am a blogger and podcaster. I write daily for my blogs which are mostly with a technical bias due to my love of that sort of thing. But there is no reason why that sort of writing can’t be creative too. I have Mac 20 Questions and Photo20 Questions which are in the same series as this blog and podcast. I also have Spondicious Photography and Illustration blog in which I write about selling my photos and images online through microstock. On Thursdays lately I have been attending a writers group in Girona, my nearest city and we give ourselves homework each week to write 300 words on a topic. I have found it very useful to be with other writers and to get feedback on my own work. I don’t think my writing is spectacular but I have ideas and like getting them out there. I have an idea for a book and I have so far just written some basic notions about the idea. Probably be more in the realm of a short story than a book. Have to start somewhere though. Often I think that what it takes to be a writer is just to actually do it and write. Whether it is good or not is another matter but when you are a writer there is the need to do the creative thing and then decide after if it should be published or not. The idea of this site is to give writers an outlet in the form of an interview within a podcast, to talk about your work and give you another platform to promote yourself and your work. Also so that other writers can learn about the craft and people behind the craft.
Photo20Q
This is the Podcast site in which I get talking to photographers about things photographic. 20 questions to elicit a conversation about being a photographer. It is not just about the professional. It is about the amateur and the prosumer categories of photographer.
I want to find out what it it that drives people to take pictures or to make pictures, to get inside the creative process. Lets even find out what the amateur does with the camera, and deals with the images on the computer or gets printed up.
Artist20Q
I am an ex art teacher, ex sign writer, ex loads of other things and I went to Leeds to do Fine Art in the early eighties. My teenage son can draw better than me and is certainly more creative.
I am good at podcasting and interviewing. This podcast and blog is about getting you the artist in front of an audience on the internet. I want this to be a place for creative people to gather and chat.
Once the site has been running a while I think we can hold some online seminars so we can talk arty farty stuff. I knowthat’s a bit blunt but I like to keep my feet on the ground.
This is not just about the famous and well known but about the artist struggling to make the art and also find time to promote it too.
Comments or questions are welcome.
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