Declutter Your Life

A less cluttered life will result in inner peace. This is the mantra of the getting things done (GTD) crowd. According to many studies on hoarding, clutter creates stress, tension and in the extreme, depression. So today's tip comes from the practical blog entitled, "dumb little man."

Read 10 Ways to Declutter Your Life and become an ocean of serenity.

Get an authentic job

This is a site for designers and developers containing opportunities to work from anywhere. Ideal for those just starting out or freelancing through college, authentic jobs may be just the resume builder you need.

Check out the opportunities available here: http://www.authenticjobs.com/

Ciao!

Quicktime Player Quickness

As a media artist (especially animators) you often find yourself scrubbing through sections of movies many, many times to review your work. Quicktime works very well for this purpose and is my current player of choice (I also dig the VLC player, since it can play DVDs and is free to the masses).

The shortcuts/features I find myself using most...

Drag the in and out points to the area of a movie to review and use these shortcuts to quickly replay the footage:
Enter or spacebar : Plays if paused; pauses if playing
Ctrl + Alt + right arrow key : Jumps to end of movie or end of selection
Ctrl + Alt + left arrow key : Jumps to beginning of movie or beginning of selection
Left or right arrow keys : Step back or advance one frame

More shortcuts...

http://images.apple.com/quicktime/pdf/QuickTime7_User_Guide.pdf

Windows OS Shortcuts

When I was interning, I used to get flak all the time because I wasn't as up to speed on Windows as the rest of the crew (all of which had done IT work for years). Part of the reason they wanted me to learn all the little tricks they knew was to be able to work as quickly as possible. You also tend to wow a client when you can blaze through the Windows interface without using the mouse.

For the same reasons 3D artists learn shortcuts, it helped to learn those available for Windows.

Here are a few of my most used...

• TAB: jump to next text field.
  
• SHIFT+TAB: jump to previous text field.
• Windows Logo: Open Start menu
• Windows Logo+D: Minimizes all open windows and displays the desktop
• Windows Logo+E: Windows Explorer
• ALT+TAB: Switch to another running program (hold down the ALT key and then press the TAB key to view the task-switching window)
• CTRL+C: Copy
• CTRL+X: Cut
• CTRL+V: Paste
• CTRL+Z: Undo
• CTRL+B: Bold
• CTRL+U: Underline
• CTRL+I: Italic

A more complete list...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

Learn CSS and Web Design from two great sites

Ever wish you could access a comprehensive resource on web design with many links in one place? Well here are two sites that should keep you busy:

1. The Web Developer's Handbook contains a comprehensive list of sources for everything from coding to design. The nice thing about this site is that all sites are listed topically so that you can focus on the elements of coding/design that you really need.
2. CSS Zen Garden: This site contains everything for CSS bliss and enlightenment. Detailed explanations/illustrations of how your page designs can be streamlined using CSS.
   

Design proficiency is just around the corner...