Does Anybody Have Illustrator CS and a Meaty Computer?

Man, I cannot wait until I get my laptop back. Working on this old cludgy piece of junk is killing me when working with processor-intensive applications.

I’m developing some new exterior signage, and need to have a photo converted from bitmap to vector format while losing as little detail as possible. I’ve used Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace functionality with good success in the past. The laptop I had to send back for repairs (which I’ve since upgraded to 2gigs of RAM), could easily have processed the image, but the laptop I’m currently working on — a P4 1.6ghz with 512 MB of shared RAM and a 4200 RPM hard drive — just cannot cut it. I let the thing run for an hour and it didn’t finish.

I tried using other available raster to vector software, but most of it was either expensive or the freeware stuff was built more for line drawings than photos. The one I managed to get to work was able to convert it to an SVG format (it wouldn’t do an EPS, it said, because my graphic card wouldn’t support it), but Illustrator puked trying to import and render it.

Does anybody have access to Illustrator or another good conversion program along with a meaty computer and can convert this to vector?

Update: Thanks Kevin for helping me out here and sending me some great files! Thanks a bunch!

June 5, 2007

No, I’m Not Dead

Just really busy with work, personal life and concerts. I haven’t been sleeping all that great, either, because of the heat and just insomnia in general so finding motivation to do much of anything is a bit difficult. That, and I’m still working on my old cludgy laptop that doesn’t work as fast as I do.

Just the same, there is one more Cascade Winds concert tonight at 7:30 at the Tower Theatre. Remember, these are free concerts, tickets given away at the door just for our own inventory purposes, and this is also the last band concert that Michael Gesme will be conducting, so I encourage you to come out and watch the show! And come find me during intermission or afterwards and say “Hi.”

June 4, 2007

Note To Self

Make sure the next car you get (after the one you’re driving dies, even though it already has 200,000 miles on it) has air conditioning so that when you’re driving home from work behind two NWIHAYGTPM truck drivers that are pulling a load of steers and a crapload of … well … crap, you don’t have to smell it all the way home because it’s 90 frickin’ degrees outside and you have your windows down.

May 31, 2007

Portland Murder Case That Ended Up In Central Oregon Just Got Weirder

While the nasty hit and run (and follow-up) was probably the weirdest (and most grusome) crime this area’s seen in a while, I have to think this is right up there.

A Portland woman who shot her ex-boyfriend and fled to Central Oregon, where she shot herself in the head died early Thursday at a Bend hospital, as police uncovered a bizarre twist to the tragedy: She had faked her own death earlier this month, convincing everyone – including the victim – she had died.

Oh, and it gets better…

An autopsy has concluded Michael Kellerman (Editor Note: The person this woman allegedly killed), 36, died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, Portland police spokesman Sgt. Brian Schmautz said Thursday […].

This lady sounded really, really, messed up.

Full release that was sent today from the Portland Police is after the jump (thanks Barn for sending it my way).

(more…)

May 31, 2007

There’s A Blog For Everything

Like this one, dedicated to oddball screws. Thanks BB.

May 30, 2007

Mother Of The Year Nominee

Yet another reason why becoming a parent should require a license…

A Farmingville mother was arrested for snorting heroin at a Wal-Mart with her three-year-old son in a shopping cart, police said.

Stacy Roe, 35, allegedly snorted the drug through a straw as she pushed her child in the cart at the Wal-Mart in Centereach on Saturday, police said.

May 30, 2007

Who Says Size Doesn’t Matter?

Doing what I do, I always am looking for good spare parts. When I get an old computer, I generally tear the thing open, salvage, sort, and store what I can use or need to have spares of, and then recycle the rest. Last week, I co-worker gave me an old Pentium II 333mhz box. It was a small HP mATX case, just big enough for the tiny motherboard, power supply, hard drive, CD, and floppy. Before giving it to me, he said that he thought that the CD drive might be dead, but his “geek friend” had repaired the floppy drive recently. He didn’t say what he did to “repair” it, but since the floppy drive itself looked really old, I was guessing that the cable itself was the issue.

So I ripped open the small little box, and all I saw was ribbon cable. It litteraly was popping out of the case when I opened it. But it was too narrow to be a hard drive cable. Upon digging through it to find connectors on the thing and unplugging it, I pulled out this monstrosity:

floppycable.jpg

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the longest floppy cable I’ve ever seen (that’s a 15-inch ruler in the screen, for reference). It supports three 3.5″ or 5.25″ floppy drives (yes, the big 5.25-inch actually floppy floppies). All told, the thing stretched out to 45-inches. It probably exceeded the recommended length for those cables, but I don’t know for sure.

Now I know HP would’ve never have put a cable that long in their system (I would hope), so my only guess is the “geek friend” replaced the original cable, which was bad, with whatever he could find. And then crammed it in there. I’m honestly amazed the system had any airflow at all, as this thing took up most of the free space in side the system. But the RAM and CPU I parted out of it are now powering a Smoothwall box, so it was worth the digging. The floppy drive cable is getting kept just for fun.

May 30, 2007

Back On My Own Computer

Mentioned that I was working off a variety of computers until I got an AC adapter for my laptop. It’s here, my mail is all downloading into Outlook, and I should be back to regular blogging at some point very soon. After I get all my work done, of course. Which I probably won’t, anyway, as there’s a Woot-off.

May 30, 2007

Are You A Monty Python Fan?

And a fan of good symphonic band music? Then read on and hopefully will see you this weekend!

May 28, 2007

Technology Hates Me

You know, I’m thinking I need to start finding something else to do with my life other than be a geek — or at least make it so that I can survive and get everything done on any computer quickly and easily.

As I mentioned before, I’m working on my old laptop until my newer one is repaired. I had finally gotten the thing up and running and working fine, but then working last night, the AC adapter started fritzing out, and finally died. I noticed it was just a frayed wire, but attempts to repair it didn’t help, as I think it shorted itself out before I could even work on it. And naturally, since it’s a holiday weekend, getting a hold of anybody to overnight me a new one is going to be impossible until Tuesday.

Since I split my time between offices, I basically have to work on a laptop to have all my applications and data with me all the time. It’d be one thing if I were just doing geek stuff, as I could probably fit a good chunk of those apps on a USB key and work wherever I wanted. The problem is that I do a ton of design and marketing stuff as well for each of the companies I work for. The Adobe design programs aren’t really portable, and the size of some of the files I work on would fill up the USB keys I have pretty quickly. A laptop just makes life far easier for me to get my work done quickly from anywhere. But when laptops die, I basically have to set myself up somewhere else.

I can fix everybody else’s computers and Web sites, but all my stuff seems to all break at once and at the worst time.

In the meanwhile, I’ve done a bunch of cleaning of my computer closet here at the office, so I am at least getting something done, but I’m just not in the mood to resetup another desktop with all my apps and such. I think I just need to talk a week-long vacation out to the woods somewhere and leave my computer at home.

May 28, 2007