Blurb All About It, Part I

"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ‘user-friendly’… Their best approach so far has been to take all the old brochures and stamp the words ‘user-friendly’ on the cover.” ~ Bill Gates

So you might have wondered where I have been all week. I have wondered that myself.

 

The short answer is that I am tired. And I haven't stepped foot in my studio except to sit at my computer for hours on end.

 

It's no wonder that I am tired.

 

After recovering from the intense heat exhaustion of last weekend's ball games (In case you were wondering, we ended up losing the championship game to a team that without the extreme weather conditions would likely not have been a match for us, but being down one of our best pitchers/hitters and then having our top pitcher and one catcher have to get pulled for extreme heat exhaustion did not help our case. The good news is that we have broken the streak and still have a winning record, 21-1, and hopefully can focus on winning again for our last, home tournament.), I have wanted to do nothing but sleep. Sometimes you have to pay attention to that.

 

And this week we had what would be classified as the closest thing to a tornado without really being classified as a tornado whip through the center of Stevens Point. I never lost power or even knew that more than a wicked thunderstorm rolled through. But hundreds of the tallest, fattest trees throughout the city have been toppled over as if they were dominoes one on top of the other. In a cemetary I pass every day no less than 12 of these massive trees are felled. Power was out (re: no internet Tuesday or Wednesday) and two underpasses were so flooded that there were two cars floating in one from the flash flood. We are all fine, but that has delayed things as well.

 

When I did get into the studio on Thursday I only sat at the computer (my Muse, she seems to have left the building). I took something like eleventy-bazillion pictures over the course of the tournaments played so far, and I needed to get them off the card and stored someplace. (I wonder if I am running out of storage space yet...must get another external hard drive, stat.)

 

And then there was the great idea I have to put together a Blurb book for the team (have you figured out that I am the sort of person who bites off more than she can chew, underestimates the time needed to complete something and apparently has delusions of grandeur? So yeah, whipping up a book to cap off the entire season in less than a week would be right up my alley).



There are three different options for making a Blurb: Bookify online (no downloading, simple layouts, for photobooks only, re: too limited for me); BookSmart download (*Free* software, customizable layouts, large or small projects, use your own fonts (did you know that I love fonts?)); PDF to book (for 'creative professionals', integrated with InDesign, completely out of my league). I figured I would be in the mid-range and *Free* sounded good. So I set about downloading the *Free* software.

 



{Screenshot of BookSmart. When I can access my computer again, I will try to get a screenshot of the pages I am working on!}



Maybe I should be skeptical of things that come with the pricetag of *Free* and especially of the moniker *User-friendly*.

Now that I have started in the *Free* and *User-friendly* software, I am wondering if I should have stuck with the online, limited version, with just a bunch of big pictures on each page. But I sort of think of myself as a creative amateur professional and have no concept of time, so of course I went for it.

 

It looks simple enough. You upload your photos (although why I am uploading them when they are on my computer is beyond me), choose the layout you want for each page (you can even edit the layout to suit the individual page or create some custom layouts that you save for future use), and then drag and drop the photos (resizing them as needed) adding text wherever you like. It even saves automatically (saves to where, I am not sure, but when you read on you will know why this is the best feature).

 

Easy-peasy.

 

{Time-sucking good time since 07-18-2011}

I spent a lot of time the past few nights just deciding what that layout will be (which is actually a smart way to go about it since there are like dozens of possible configurations). I decided on giving each kid 6 full pages in the book, starting with a page with their name and number and a great tight shot of them hitting. There will be candids and tons of action shots, and since each kid excels at a different type of action (one is a pitcher, the other is great at sliding, etc), their collage pages will reflect that. I plan to take more pictures next weekend, including a family shot of each kid and have left spaces to drop that in there. And the last page in their 6 will be one great parting shot of them with a funny, inspirational or encouraging quote from baseball's greatest stars. I even found a post that I wrote two years ago about things that I hoped the boys learned through baseball and tweaked that to fill the first two introductory pages.

 

After late (late, LATE) last night I have all the templates set up, have started on at least half the kids and finished about 4 of them. I am up to 80 pages currently, with the potential for more when I add in some group shots, a page for the little sisters and brothers (and older ones, too), and the coaches. 

 

Sounds like I have a great plan, right? 

 

I should have known something was up when I went to download the *Free* and *User-friendly* software and was told there was not enough room on my hard drive to accommodate it. Uh-oh. So I removed somethings that were just taking up space, and had the computer do something that compressed things.

 

Everything worked fine...until I went to upload the photos. Seems I crashed the first book that I set up. Looks like you can't upload all eleventy-bazillion pictures at once. Okay, good to know. That was when I shifted gears and went with the layouts first, pictures second approach.

 

That seemed to work okay. But then it would get hung up on one picture or one upload and I would walk away for 20 minutes. And if I tried to use the internet and Word at the same time, the whole system would shut down. (And I was ordering shoes like these  and two dresses like those for my upcoming 25th class reunion...important stuff people!)

(Yes, I bought two pairs of shoes and two dresses for one night. But the red one - that I really want - is backordered so it might be saved for another day. :-(

And don't get me started on the nightmare that is Norton with their automatic updates that kick in at midnight on my computer and ask me to install some Dell Resource CD every time (not supposed to happen but can't process unless I click cancel 16 times and then Norton's interface pops up as if I want to watch it tick through the process and as if I understand all the gobbledy-gook that it says I need to have 'repaired', and for the record I have gone through their customer "service", which by the way is completely outsourced and their solution was to give me even more days to this hell - needless to say I will NOT be renewing, but that won't come up until sometime in 2013).

 

So I sat with my eyes blurring over at about 12:30. And ultimately I had to force quit becuase the Norton running interfered with the BookSmart running and locked up the internet.

 

How I managed to get as far as I did is a mystery. And I can't wait to get back to *Free* and *User-friendly* project tonight!

 

But hey, I do like the results that I am getting. I am not ready to give up (I don't give up that easilty) and I am determined to beat this thing into submission (I am also tenacious if not stubborn). And hopefully next time I will have a link to a Blurb BookShow to share the entire book with you online!

 

So now it is your turn...

 

What has frustrated you the most lately?

How do you deal with frustration? Does it make you give up? Or does it make you dig your heels in deeper and spur you to beat it?