I’ve also been sort of snobbish about other professionals being one or more versions behind. After all; every upgrade brings new features that enhance productivity and thus pays itself back within the 18 months Adobe tends to take for the next upgrade to be released.

But I must admit I haven’t kept everything I work with daily up-to-date. No, I hadn’t upgraded my Office suite since 2003.
I simply told myself I don’t earn my money using Word, PowerPoint or Excel, and it’s true to a certain extent. I don’t use those programs daily and when I need them to open files sent to me, even if they’re in newer versions, Office 2003 could open them.

But now Office 2010 has arrived, and I couldn’t stand the buggy, slow, annoying Office 2003 anymore. And more importantly: I wanted to get rid of Outlook 2003 but no open source alternative fitted my needs.

Last Thursday I placed my order for Office Home and Business 2010 in the UK (I want my software in English, plus it saved me some € 20) and it got delivered yesterday.
It’s a breath of fresh air after Office 2003, but man it’s weird not having the old-fashioned menus at the top of the windows. The ribbons feel fresh, although unfamiliar, and they make other programs, like Mozilla Thunderbird, look old and boring.

Will I now keep my Office up-to-date? Fat chance.
Microsoft is said to already be at work on the next version, which they’re supposed to want to release next year or so. That’s too soon for my liking (not to mention my wallet), and this version should keep me going for a couple years anyway.

Now all I need to do is find a way to stop people from using Publisher. That program’s evil!

An old picture I took seemed like the right one to use: a pile of shredded pictures. Maybe I should explain why I have a picture of a pile of shredded pictures in the first place.

I don’t like pictures being taken of me. I don’t like taking pictures of people. A while ago I came across an “old” photo album filled with pictures of my trips to the US and the people I hung out with.
As we’re no longer in touch due to personal reasons and I had no interest in ever looking at those photos again, I decided to throw the album away.

Then I had an idea: I could shred the photos.
When I was done shredding and was about to empty the shredder’s container it was so full, I decided to try taking a picture of the pile of pieces. At the time it made sense somehow, perhaps as a way to not have to look at the photos themselves anymore, but in a way keep the shreds as a reminder of the events that had taken place.

And that’s where the header came from.
Okay, I did lighten it, add the site’s logo and name on top of it (using Photoshop CS5′s Repoussée for the lame 3D effect) but that’s the history behind the picture.

Unfortunately, a new monitor isn’t something his “work” calls for. So, instead I put mine (a 19″ LCD) on his desk and decided to simply bring one from work in the evenings and bring it back in the morning. While that works for a few days, it’s far from ideal and destined to go wrong.

Friday I had had enough and decided I’d just get myself a new monitor. The quite difficult task at hand was to find the right one, at the right price.
I knew it’d be a wide-screen monitor, but what size and resolution (1920×1080 or 1900×1200)? 19″ would be too small, anything over 22″ looked like it would be too expensive, as would 1900×1200 PPI screens be.
Luckily I know a very good site to find tech deals on, and so I went there looking for just the right monitor. It turned out Iiyama had some very nice ones, including a 22″ multitouch one, and its 24″ ‘regular’ brother. Both were within my price range, but I wanted a large enough screen so I wouldn’t be stuck with a wide but low screen.

My choice was, in the end, a lot easier than it was when I started out: the Iiyama ProLite E2407HDSD sounded perfect, at €200 it’s a 16:9 full 1920×1080 monitor with built-in speakers (not necessary, but nice) in a sleek shell. And of course Iiyama has a very good reputation along with my own experience from back in the day when 21″ monitors were the size of a small car…

Yesterday I picked it up, hooked it up and was more than pleasantly surprised. The screen looks amazingly sharp and vibrant and the shell is just as in the pictures, with the power and OSD buttons, along with an input switch button (to switch between VGA and DVI inputs) at the bottom right of the screen. The power light is an unobtrusive, not too bright blue square right above the power button.

I almost wish I’d known about the joys of wide-screen monitors earlier on. Then again, I think this is a very good first step into that world. It’s a great monitor for the money. If I’d had a larger budget, I’d still have gone for an Iiyama from the same line, only then I’d have picked one from the B-line (this is an E-line) so it’d be height adjustable, and possibly the 27″ version to get a bit of a higher screen.

That’s right, I can’t browse to my D:-drive, a.k.a. the drive with all my files on it, because as soon as I do, Bridge will lock up trying to create thumbnails and previews.

I tried deleting all Bridge-related files (.BridgeCache and .BridgeCacheT) from the D:-drive, I even deleted all preferences and deleted the central cache folder several times before finding out it’s related to the drive, not a general program problem. So what could be causing it? And more importantly, how in the world can I fix it?

Right now I’m trying to run an error-check on the drive, but I won’t get my hopes up. I’m not going to give up if this fails too, but I’m running out of ideas…

Edit: I found out what was causing the trouble after, for some reason, not going to my D:-drive but “My Documents” instead. The sample images in there showed up just fine, as did other files I then proceeded to check. Even those on my D:-drive worked, as long as I stayed out of the folder I wanted to go to.

The way I got Bridge to work was by moving all files inside the offending folder somewhere else temporarily. Once that was done, I proceeded to check each of the sub-folders, which worked without a hitch, and then I moved the files back one by one. Several files haven’t been moved back yet, but the ones I “need” have been, and it’s all working flawlessly now. The only file I permanently deleted was the one I believe to have been the culprit: an ASX file. I don’t know what it was or why it was there, so I deleted it and now it all works.

So, if you are experiencing problems with Bridge every time you open a certain folder, first try going to a different folder. If that doesn’t cause Bridge to hang or freeze, move every file out of the offending folder and re-try that folder inside Bridge. If it then does continue working, keep Bridge open and use Explorer (or Finder on Mac) to put your files back.

So far, I’ve backed-up my fonts, favorites, passwords, my Thunderbird profile and my websites’ files. Now I need to figure out what else I need to save. Everything I’ve downloaded is on a separate drive, as my personal files (so no need to back-up my pictures and music) but I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

Oh well, time to de-activate my software so I can get started with the formatting/reinstall process. Wish me luck.

Keyboard shortcuts will be shown for Windows and Mac, separated by a forward slash.
Basic knowledge of Adobe InDesign is necessary as I won’t go in-depth into every setting.
I’ll be using InDesign CS5, but this technique works with InDesign CS4 too. I can’t say for sure if earlier versions have all necessary features.

If you’re pressed for time, or for whatever other reason don’t want to do it yourself, I have an IDML file containing the necessary styles available for download at the bottom of this post.

First thing to do is, of course, creating a new document. Do this to your own specifications.
Then create a text frame and enter some sample data (I just entered some fake text) separated by tabs.

The rows in each fake table are separated by a Forced Line Break (Shift + Enter / Shift + Return), the fake tables themselves are separated with a Paragraph Return (a.k.a. a regular line break — Enter / Return). You can see this in the screenshot as I turned on “Show Hidden Characters” (Ctrl + Alt + i / Cmd + Opt + i)

Now go to the Paragraph Styles panel, create a new Paragraph Style and apply it to your text frame.

Deselect the text frame after applying the style to it.
In the Paragraph Style dialog, first give the style a name. I’ll go for “faux-table”.

To get a nicely spaced fake table, we’ll need to increase the line-height a bit. To do this, go to Basic Character Formats and set the font and its options as you see fit, then increase Leading so it’s a bit larger than the default value.

Then go to “Indents and Spacing” and set a “Space After” (my setting: 5mm) to separate the fake tables.

With that done, go to “Drop Caps and Nested Styles”.
There, find the “New Line Style” button at the bottom of the dialog and click it to add the first Line Style.
Click on the drop-down icon to get a list of options for the Character Style to apply and select “New Character Style…”.

In the “New Character Style” dialog you should first enter a name for the style. I’ve named mine “row-header”.

Choose “Underline Options” and turn on the Underline.
Set the weight to the same value as what you set Leading to (in my case 16pt), choose a solid line from the line type, set the color and tint. Finally, set a slight negative value for the Offset and click the Ok button.

Now click the OK button in the Paragraph Style Options dialog to accept the changes you made to it.
We’ll now fine-tune the underline. To do this, open the Character Styles panel and double-click on the newly created style to open the dialog again.

Go back to the Underline Options and adjust the Offset so the bottom edge of the underline is centered between the first two lines, then accept the changes.

Right-click on the name of the Character Style and choose “Duplicate Style…”
Set the “Based on” option to your first Character Style and give this style its own name (mine’s called “row-1″), then go to te Underline options to set a new underline color, then accept the changes.
Repeat this until you’ve created enough styles for the number of rows you want colored differently.
We’ll now make them alternate.

Return to the Paragraph Styles panel and double-click on the table’s style to re-open the dialog.
Go back to the Drop Caps and Nested Styles pane and add a New Line Style for each of the character styles you just made, then set each of the lines accordingly.

Lastly, add one more New Line Style and set that one to “Repeat” and increase the number to the number of colored lines you want to repeat. I want one table header row color and two alternating table body row colors, so I entered 2.

Click OK to accept the changes and behold, you have a basic table look.

But what if you want to also have separator lines between the rows?

Simply open up the dialog for the first Character Style you created and choose Strikethrough Options.
Turn Strikethrough on, set the weight, style color and tint however you like, and set the Offset to the same value as the one you used in the Underline Options.

Accept the change and, if you based the other rows’ style on the first one, your table should now have separator lines.

If you can’t get it working for whatever reason, I have uploaded an IDML file that you can download and open in InDesign CS4 and CS5. Right-click and save as to download faux-tables.IDML compressed in a ZIP-file.

From what I’ve learned so far, several trailers filled with electronics are now missing, with a combined value of … well, let’s say it’s more than I’ve made in my entire life.
My name and company name turned up because some sort of letters were sent to the victimized companies as attached Word documents, which I had made as a template file, and Word auto-includes author-information.

As it turns out, we’ve been used by criminals, and are now in a position that’s anything but enviable. Naturally we’re being as co-operative with the investigators and law enforcement as we can be, but if the criminals get caught, will it become known to them and/or their buddies that we handed over information that (might have) lead to their capture?

If so, should we fear for our well being? Should we expect a midnight phone call from the alarm company to let us know the burglary alarm was triggered, or perhaps the smoke alarm? Should we start looking over our shoulders on darker streets and be extra cautious about being forced off the road?

On the one hand I sincerely hope they’ll get caught and the stolen goods returned, but if it means we’ll become targets, I can’t help but hope they’ll get away with it.

Hopefully I’ll wake up soon to find it’s all just a bad dream.

The first thing I noticed was that every disc needs to load something, for some reason, and often does that more than once. This takes up far more time than I like, as I also am forced to watch all sorts of warnings and (often unskippable) previews.

Then there’s the main menu. While they’re all different in looks, the best thing about them is that they expand and collapse, rather than taking you to new screens when you want to see what’s in them (for example: subtitles and extras).
Unfortunately they also all have tiny text. I’m well aware small text is easier to read on HD-TVs than it is on SD-TVs, but does it really have to be so damned small? I don’t want to think how hard everything is to read on TVs smaller than 32″.

BD-Live seems to work nicely, although the Sony Pictures ‘hub’ was excruciatingly slow in every way, while it did offer the most options out of the ones I tried. It’s also a damn shame you have to register per distributor/production company. That’s quite a big hurdle for people to take just to get extras that don’t appear very special (extra trailers and trailers for other movies).
It seems BD-Live is also used for other, even less entertaining purposes: grabbing new ads straight off the interwebs. It only happened on one disc, and I was optimistic about it at first — I hate getting told something “in theatres now” when everything they show is several years old — but then I got a stupid ad for a (stick with me here) Blu-ray remote control app on your iPhone. Yes, they think people use their Blu-ray players without remotes and need an app for it on their phone. Because we all know everyone owns an iPhone since they own a Blu-ray disc!</ sarcasm>

There was one other thing that somewhat ticked me off: if Blu-ray discs can contain so much data, why in the world do all “special editions” come with the extras on a second disc? Is a single-layer Blu-ray disc (up to 25GB of data) not large enough for a movie and the extras, while two regular DVDs (up to 9.4GB of data per dual-layer disc) managed just fine? Or do they think we like having to swap discs just to see some extras that quickly prove to be boring?

So far, Blu-ray has not impressed. I will, however, soon be taking some movies and the PS3 to my brother’s where we will watch Hairspray (his girlfriend and I both thought it’d be a fun movie) together. I will then be able to tell if watching Blu-ray movies on an HD-TV really does make as much of a difference as people want you to think.
Even if it does, I highly doubt it’ll persuade me into buying an HD-TV and scrapping my currently functioning perfectly SD-TV. Why throw away something that works perfectly? Also, I believe my Xbox 360 is close to death (again) and will need the money to replace it when it goes.

Of course I had to figure out if I’d like the touch-screen interface. It took little getting used to and is surprisingly nice once you figure out how everything works. The basic functions are a given, but the browser is something I hadn’t encountered on any of my previous phones yet. That too works nicely, even though the screen is so small (compared to a regular computer monitor) it’s truly something I’ll use in emergencies only.

There are a few things I’m not happy about: you have to press, not just touch, to slide items on screen or you’ll select them instead. The screen has some scratches which get annoying when you’re scrolling through items. And there are no games on the phone. Well, there were, but they were trials that sucked, so I deleted them and then found out the games that can be bought don’t have demos, yet cost around €4 a pop.

As I said, I wasn’t sure if I’d like the interface, so I copied the important contacts from my old phone to the sim and used that for the time being. Now that I’m used the new phone I decided to get the phone books synced. But how to best do that?

It turns out there are several options available, from software to hardware, some free (not the hardware obviously) others for purchase. But guess what’s the cheapest option if either of your phones can function without a sim?
Bluetooth transfers.

That’s right. I simply transferred the contacts from one phone to the next using the bluetooth connection between the two, which I had set up before to transfer the MP3s I used as ringtones (one of the benefits of buying new, never-sim-locked phones).
The only thing I could nag about would be the inability to transfer more than one contact at a time, but … well, let’s say I didn’t have to transfer too many contacts and leave it at that.

So, the moral: don’t go looking for 3rd party options if you can use a phone’s built-in abilities.

It’s been a while since I’ve bought any “new” movies, so I figured I might as well shop around. If I’d find something to my liking, I could always decide whether to buy or not.
Before long I’d found several movies I kinda wanted to get, but not at the prices I was presented with. Time to visit more sites and compare prices. So that’s what I did, and low and behold, I ended up saving a lot of money by buying not from my semi-regular Dutch e-store (bol.com) but from HMV instead.

While bol.com has a better pricing for shipping, the savings on the movies themselves was so big, I couldn’t justify not buying from HMV. Amazon.co.uk was in most cases similar in price as HMV, but didn’t have the “2 for ₤18″ offer which I took advantage of.

Now the question remains if Blu-Ray discs have any advantage over regular, old-fashioned DVDs.
I doubt most will, as the extra’s are usually shit anyway, and I don’t think there’ll be more subtitle options on Blu-Ray discs than they put on DVDs. In fact, with only one of my family members and none of my friends having a Blu-Ray player, only two of the movies I’ve ordered can be shared with the rest, and that’s because they also contain the regular DVD.

In about a week I’ll be able to give a definitive answer as to whether I’ll buy any more Blu-Ray discs or if I’ll go back to DVDs instead.