ninjapeps

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http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=24865

Want to make your social media marketing more visual? The Visual Marketing Revolution: 26 Rules to Help Social Media Marketers Connect the Dots by Stephanie Diamond (Que Publishing, 2013) gives you an overview of rules, tools, content, and tactics to help you plan and improve your marketing.

Click on the image to view or download a larger version.

Feel free to share this visual book review! (Creative Commons Attribution – I’d love it if you link back to this site and tell me about it. =) )  It should print out fine on letter-sized paper, too.

Intrigued by the ideas? You can check your local library to see if they have a copy, or buy your own copy below.

Kindle:

Paper:

Disclosure: I received a Kindle copy of this book for review, and I’ll get a small commission if you buy anything from Amazon using the links above.

Other sources of information: books.google.com, visualmarketingrevolution.com

I’ve been working on making my own sites more visual, so I’m looking forward to applying the ideas from this book. If you do as well, please share your stories!

Check out my other visual book reviews

Read the original or check out the comments on: Visual book review: The Visual Marketing Revolution (Stephanie Diamond) (Sacha Chua's blog)

Hello all! I don't know who recalls at this point, but when the s_d kerfluffle occurred all those many years ago and the mods dropped the page count from 1/2 to 1/3rd I pretty much had to stop writing about comics, because 1/3rd of the pages is not enough for any sort of serious critique.

But then I realized that I don't have to stop, I just have to write them for other blogs and learn to live without the amazing community that we used to have for this sort of thing.

On the other hand, now I can post every single page.

http://www.urbanskep.com/the-metastasization-of-the-superhero-a-short-cultural-history-of-the-terminally-immature-in-the-1970s/

http://www.urbanskep.com/the-metastasization-of-the-superhero-a-short-cultural-history-of-the-terminally-immature-in-the-1970s-part-two-2/

http://www.urbanskep.com/the-metastasization-of-the-superhero-a-short-cultural-history-of-the-terminally-immature-in-the-1970s-part-three/

http://www.urbanskep.com/the-metastasization-of-the-superhero-a-short-cultural-history-of-the-terminally-immature-in-the-1970s-part-four/

http://www.urbanskep.com/the-metastasization-of-the-superhero-a-short-cultural-history-of-the-terminally-immature-in-the-1970s-part-five/

http://www.urbanskep.com/the-metastasization-of-the-superhero-a-short-cultural-history-of-the-terminally-immature-in-the-1970s-part-six-the-last-and-final-part/

Probably around 9,000 words for the whole thing. I just like writing about comics. I'll understand if you don't have time to read the whole thing.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sachac/~3/i2aJW5Tze_U/

http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=24778

I occasionally use Artrage Studio Pro for tracing images or animating sketchnotes. The interface doesn’t lend itself as well to real-time sketchnoting, although the natural media support might be interesting to play with if I want to play around with watercolours.

The latest version (Artrage 4) introduces some interesting features that might help me with drawing. The Workbench and Toolbox combination will let me choose just the tools and colour samples I want to use, hiding the rest behind menus in a streamlined interface. I like the ability to save and load toolbox configurations. That will make it easier for me to save colour sets for recurring events or clients. There doesn’t seem to be a way to save the Transform tool as a preset, though, so selecting and moving things will take more clicks. (More on this later.)

I’ve also been looking for a way to project the drawing as a whole while I’m zoomed in and working on part of it. This will let people see the context without getting dizzy or distracted by the way I zoom in and out. Views allow you to “pin” a view of your canvas while you’re working on a different part. I tested it with an external monitor and confirmed that you can drag the view pin off your main Artrage window and onto the second screen, and that you can resize it to almost fill the screen. If I ever need to do projected sketchnotes (the request has come up once or twice, but in the end people opt to focus on the speaker), this might be a possibility.

It will take a lot more practice before I feel comfortable using this for real-time sketchnoting. There seems to be a little bit of lag at the beginning of strokes drawn in quick succession, even if I’ve turned smoothing off. Here’s a sample in Artrage 4:

and the same thing in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro:

Selecting and moving regions doesn’t feel as natural as it does in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, and that’s something I find myself doing often when I’m drawing a sketchnote. Artrage 4 seems more responsive than Artrage Studio Pro when it comes to moving things around, but the process of selecting, moving, and deselecting takes too much work. As far as I understand it, the steps in Artrage 4 Workbench mode are:

1. Click on the hard freehand lasso preset I’ve saved to my toolbox.
2. Select the section to move.
3. Click on the large tool icon and choose Transform.
4. Drag the image. Be sure to start dragging within the bounding box of the part of the image that has data, because it won’t detect it if you’re dragging from empty space that you’ve already highlighted.
   
   (outside the rectangle = won’t actually move things)
5. Click on Menu > Edit > Deselect all, or you won’t be able to draw outside the selected region.

In Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, I would:

1. Click on the lasso tool.
2. Select the area I want to move.
3. Move it or resize it using the puck that appears when I hover inside the selection.
4. Switch back to a drawing tool to start drawing anywhere in the screen.

There are keyboard shortcuts for Transform and Deselect all, but I usually don’t have keyboard access while I’m in tablet mode.

So Artrage 4 is probably good for me to use if:

• I’m drawing/painting for fun, because then I can slow down and I’m not worried about losing anything,
• I have a keyboard handy so that I can use the keyboard shortcuts to change tools,
• I need to project a separate view of my drawing, or
• I want to record a zoomed-out animation of my drawing over a guide drawing. (I suppose I could learn how to green-screen videos… =) )

I might revisit this for sketchnoting if I can stitch together some keyboard macros (maybe using a foot pedal or the Twiddler), but in the meantime, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro will be my workhorse. I’ll play around with Artrage’s drawing and painting support to see if I can build other non-sketchnoting artistic skills/techniques using that. Anyway, it’s good to see progress in applications!

Thanks to Luc Taesch for the nudge to check out Artrage 4!

Read the original or check out the comments on: First impressions of Artrage 4 (Sacha Chua's blog)

As was promised by Microsoft, the details on the new gaming console are out.
The new console, previously referred to by most as Xbox 720 (or by others under the codename, Durango), will be called Xbox One, and will release this holiday season. To cut right to what we were all worried about (or was it just me?), Xbox One will not require "always-on" internet connection to play games. (Phew!) Xbox One is also reported to not be backwards compatible with Xbox 360 games. Xbox One includes 8GB of RAM, an 8-Core CPU, a 500GB HDD, a Blu-ray drive, HDMI in and out ports, USB 3.0, and 802.11n wireless with Wi-Fi Direct. Microsoft states that Xbox One has "variable power states" and "practically silent operation." Microsoft also claims that the system is so powerful that users will be able to "switch instantly" between games and internet browsing, or other functions, via the Xbox One Architecture: a combination of the Xbox OS and Microsoft Kernel OS. And by "instantly" and "no waiting" Microsoft boasted that switching to a game will be like switching TV channels.

Xbox One will also ship with the new Kinect (some call it the Kinect 2.0), which IGN reports to have a 1080p camera and a 60% better field of view. It can recognize facial expressions, recognize up to six individuals (eliminating the need to log in), and even detect biometrics and detect "the slightest rotation of a wrist or shoulder," according to Microsoft. IGN also reports that Xbox One requires the Kninect to function, but Microsoft assures that performance will not suffer in smaller rooms. If the information on the new Kinect is true, then Microsoft should not have a problem delivering on that promise.

While Xbox One will not require always-on internet, sources at Kotaku state that publishers may release online-only games, utilizing cloud processing via Microsoft Azure, which would require a constant connection to play those games.

Lastly, Xbox One will have 15 exclusive titles in its first year, including Quantum Break and Forza Motorsport 5. Eight of those game are promised to be from all-new franchises, Quantum Break being one of them.

That's all I have time for now, LJ gamers.
Keep Calm and Game On

In the comments to this post, you can get as off topic as you like. This is your chance to talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and chat amongst yourselves. In terms of topic, anything goes, but remember that the other community rules do still apply.

The series finale for Doctor Who this past Saturday was enjoyable, but I also felt that it fell a bit short on the actual build-up that led to the revelation of Clara Oswald's mystery.

( Doctor Who Series 7 SpoilersCollapse )

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http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=24832

I’ve been thinking about how to make it easier for people who want to keep in touch but who don’t want to be overwhelmed by my daily posting schedule. Instead of trying to come up with the Best Way on my own, I asked what people wanted. Out of 26 votes (as of the time I wrote this), ten people wanted weekly newsletters and three people wanted monthly newsletters. That probably means that even more people would like those less frequent update options, so I decided to spend some time figuring out a good way to offer that.

Since I already do weekly and monthly reviews, the easiest way would be to make those reviews available in a separate feed that people can subscribe to over RSS or e-mail. I’ve been using Feedburner as a way of making my feeds more browser-friendly and as a way to handle e-mail subscriptions. Although I’d been concerned about the long-term longevity of my feeds in case Feedburner shuts down, it turns out that you can set up your own domain name by following the instructions under My Account > MyBrand.

I set up my feeds to use feeds.sachachua.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com. That means that if Feedburner goes away, I just need to change my DNS record to point to my own server and write my own redirect rules. I wish I’d done this earlier! Anyway, if you subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/sachac , please switch to using http://feeds.sachachua.com/sachac instead.

With the new feed URLs in place, I created Feedburner feeds for my weekly and monthly reviews. Category feeds are built-in, so all I needed to do was tell Feedburner to handle http://sachachua.com/blog/category/weekly and http://sachachua.com/blog/category/monthly . I customized each feed to include a short message pointing to the other feeds (Optimize > BrowserFriendly), change the URL, and enable e-mail subscriptions (Publicize > Email Subscriptions).

Then I modified my WordPress theme to include links to the new feeds. To make the feeds available from the feed icon in many browsers’ address bars, I added the following code to my <head>…</head>:

<link rel="alternate" 
  type="application/rss+xml" 
  title="Feed (~daily)" 
  href="http://feeds.sachachua.com/sachac" />
<link rel="alternate" 
  type="application/rss+xml" 
  title="Weekly reviews" 
  href="http://feeds.sachachua.com/sachac-weekly" />
<link rel="alternate" 
  type="application/rss+xml" 
  title="Monthly reviews" 
  href="http://feeds.sachachua.com/sachac-monthly" />

Result:

I also added links to the feeds in my sidebar using the Appearance > Widgets > Text widget.

Now, people should be able to easily subscribe to whichever frequency they want. =)

On another note: I was surprised and delighted to find that many people wanted daily updates. Thank you! I’ll try to make my headlines useful so that you can guess right away if you would be interested in something, and we’ll see if I can write weekly review headlines with keywords as well.

If you blog a lot, I hope you find this tip handy!

Read the original or check out the comments on: How I use Feedburner to give people the option of different blog update frequencies (Sacha Chua's blog)

Apparently the first live action appearances of Wanda and Pietro Maximoff on the big screen will be in the Avengers sequel rather than an X-Men movie. They will also be appearing as villains, not as a heroes. Details from the Examiner:

A few days ago, it was confirmed that the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver will be among the cast in The Avengers 2. However, what some may not have expected is that the two characters will be villains for the film. Apparently, director Joss Whedon said as much in the announcement of the two characters.

“You know, they had a rough beginning,” Whedon said of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. “They’re interesting to me because they sort of represent the part of the world that wouldn’t necessarily agree with The Avengers. So they’re not there to make things easier. I’m not putting any characters in the movie that will make things easier.”

Not sure how this is going to turn out, but I honestly can't complain about having Wanda and Natasha together in the same movie. I especially can't wait to see how these two characters will look on screen.

Now the question is, who's going to play Wanda and Pietro?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sachac/~3/G--FZ1vMXcU/

http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=24857

In this chat, Bastien tells stories about getting started in Emacs, reading his mail/news/blogs in Gnus, and hacking his life with Org. =) Enjoy!

Want just the audio? You can get MP3s or OGG from archive.org.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Emacs Chat: Bastien Guerry (Sacha Chua's blog)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sachac/~3/d9voU-X2Gio/

http://sachachua.com/blog/?p=24855

It’s a little intimidating doing something that’s very different from what I usually do, but if I focus on small ways to help, it’s easier. =) And then I can build strength and endurance and knowledge gradually, interleaving challenges with things I can do.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Slice of life: Home improvements (Sacha Chua's blog)