I am happy to announce that I have recently joined the faculty at the University of Hawaii Leeward Community College Office of Continuing Education & Workforce Development (OCEWD). Coming up this February, I will be teaching a series of courses (78 in-class hours) which focus on the Adobe Creative Suite 2 and principles of graphic design / layout for both the Web as well as print media. I will be covering Acrobat 7 Professional, Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2, and InDesign CS2. The course(s) can be registered for individually or as a complete series. There are 12 seats in the classroom, each of which has a new dual processing Windows based PC with a dual flat panel monitor set up - nice. In my experience, having such a limited number of seats in the classroom is terrific because it allows me to spend critical one on one time with each student addressing specific questions and solutions. That is definitely the aspect of teaching I enjoy the most. Classes begin February 6, 2006 and are expected to fill up quickly, so if you are interested in the course(s) (or know someone who might be) make sure to register early. It will be a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing you there!

Knowing full well that I am a hopeless audiophile, my totally awesome brother has a knack for styling me out with great sound gear. He has done it again, this time with an early holiday gift thinking it might come in handy during my upcoming travels (I have a hunch he is right). He recently styled my life as follows:

#lifestyle .older-brother {
device-style-type:iPod;
device-model:Nano;
generation:2;
size:8GB;
color:#000;
display:color;
engraving:none;
}

In case the silly mock CSS style rule above didn’t mean anything to you… what I’m talking about is a black 2nd Generation (2G) 8GB iPod Nano (mine is pictured above on the right)! Just like the previous version of the Nano, the design is flawless - cute, compact, just plain cool. The control surface has a very nice feel to it and works quite well. The screen is bright, crisp and the colors are pleasantly saturated. Sound quality is outstanding just as it has been with previous iPods I have had the pleasure of owning. The USB 2 data transfers between my G5 and the Nano happen quicky enough that I don’t hesitate to make adjustments to the content on the Nano frequently. Battery life is impressive. I have been using the unit often over the course of this last week and still have nearly one third of a charge remaining. At this rate, I could get by with a charge about every 10 days or so - nice. (more…)

Last month I made a post titled Getting CSS Backgrounds To Behave In IE6/Win and wanted to follow up with a simple method for achieving the same results in IE7/Win. The following is a very similar example except this time we will correct the rendering issue in IE7/Win specifically. The goal here is to apply a background image (16×16_pink_circle.gif) to each of the three list items in an unordered list, demonstrate how the unordered list is intended to render, demonstrate how it renders incorrectly in IE7/Win, and finally show a quick and easy patch to correct the rendering in IE7/Win. (more…)

The Hawaii leg of the Photoshop CS2 Power Tour, fearlessly led by master pixel tamer Scott Kelby (pictured far right), went off without a hitch yesterday at the Hawaii Convention Center. It was such a fun, informative and worthwhile way to spend the day. It was awesome to see Scott in action and working his digital image manipulation magic. Needless to say, his enthusiasm and expertise rubbed off on everybody who attended. The old cliche, “time flies when you’re having fun” was, in my mind, proven true once again today. The seminar just flew by and it was fantastic to see many of my friends and colleagues there. One of the highlights for me was being able to meet Scott and ask him directly about some of the Photoshop questions I have had for years and finally get authoritative answers. If you are interested in digital imaging, I highly recommend attending one of his seminars. With any luck, this event was successful enough for his organization that he will be back again next year to share more of his knowledge and passion.

I’m writing to get the word out about a really great learning opportunity for beginning and intermediate web designers here in the Honolulu, Hawaii area that want to expand their web design knowledge horizons. I teach a 2 quarter long (approximately 6 month) program at Heald College, Honolulu campus, which is a series of short courses focused on web design, technology, and administration. (more…)

For my birthday this year, my totally awesome brother gave me a gift that has kept on giving and that I don’t know how I got along without heretofore. Said gift was a pair of Shure E4c Sound Isolating Earphones (pictured right). In a nutshell, they are by far the most comfortable, enjoyable, and impressive earphones I have ever had the opportunity to wear (being an audiophile, I’ve tried out quite a number of headphones & earphones). The Shure E4c’s are just plain goodness. I honestly have to say that these things enabled me to rediscover my music collection - very cool. (more…)