Life Tip #1
Don’t let yourself get so busy that you don’t have time to write Tips of the Week for your blog. And don’t let people talk you into projects that you really don’t have the time to work on, no matter how much they beg. And when two of your business partners are both unavailable for a significant period of time, don’t try to plan on doing anything besides answering customers’ questions and fixing problems. And don’t even think about sleep when your landlord wants to remove the wallpaper and paint your living room with less than twelve hours’ notice while all of the above is going on. And certainly don’t waste time on silly online physics games, no matter how fun they are.
Computer Tip: Making Multiple Selections; Copy & Paste Files
If you have a list of files or objects on your computer and want to select more than one, you probably already know that you can hold down the Control (or Cmd on Mac) key while clicking on each one of them to add them to your selection.
You might even know that you can click on one file, then hold Shift while clicking on another to select all of the files between the two.
What you might not know, however is that you can use a combination of both Shift and Control (Cmd) to add a group of files to a selection without deselecting your previous selection (I can’t think of a better way to say that). For example: If you have files File A through File Z in a folder, and want to select the “vowel” files as well as G through K, first click on File A without any keyboard modifiers, then hold Control (Cmd) while clicking on File E, I, O, and U. Then to add the range G through K, continue to hold Control (Cmd) and click on File G. Then add the Shift key (so you are holding both the Control and Shift keys) and click on File K. Make sense? Click A, hold Control, click E, I, O, U, G, add Shift, click K. Got it? Good.
Now for the fun part. Say you want to make a copy of these files into another folder, but don’t have the destination folder open (so you can’t just drag them). Press Control+C (Cmd+C) to copy the list of files to the clipboard. Then navigate to the destination and press Control+V (Cmd+V). Or to move the files instead of copying, use Control+X (Cmd+X) to Cut instead of Copy.
Bonus tip: In Microsoft Word, if you want to select a rectangle-shaped area of text/pictures, hold down the Alt key while dragging over that rectangle.
Multimedia Tip: Free and Cheap alternatives to Photoshop
Not everyone needs the full power of Photoshop. Or can afford the hefty price tag. There are some nice cheap and free alternatives. And all of the choices below offer the basic tools necessary to perform the most common repairs and effects.
Cheap Alternative #1: Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Photoshop Elements is a stripped-down cousin of Photoshop. It has most of the more important elements of the full product, for around $80.
Cheap Alternative #2: Corel Paint Shop Pro
Paint Shop Pro started out as a simple image retouching program over a decade ago. Since that time it is trying to become more and more like Adobe’s flagship product. It does more than Photoshop Elements, but it isn’t quite as easy to use. And it isn’t as well known, so getting help if you have a question might be a bit of a challenge. Price is about $90.
Free Alternative #1: The GIMP
The GIMP is a free photo editing program. But because it’s free it doesn’t have the polish of its commercial competitors. The user interface is a bit weird, and it is very slow to make changes in photos, but it is otherwise a fairly capable piece of software.
Free Alternative #2: Photoshop Express
Adobe has created a really stripped-down version of Photoshop and put it up on a web site for all of the world to use. No software to install, just go to www.photoshop.com/express and begin making basic image corrections for free. They even give you 2GB of online storage and your own web site to show off your photos.
