Musings

The tongue is mightier than the pen

2007-03-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

Whomever said that the pen is mightier than the sword obviously had not been privileged enough to be on the receiving end of a verbal assault. Nothing cuts deeper than words said in anger and spite by the ones we love. Such battles should not be fought with or against children.

Time may heal all wounds but the scars never go away. I only hope that the innocent victims heal sooner rather than later and that they regain their innocence. It is the duty of us bystanders to protect the innocent and help them to heal.

Artwork-Systems User Group

2007-02-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

I was watching a thread on a forum where people were talking about creating a Artwork-Systems user group. I asked if people would join if I created one. They said yes. And then there was.

Now the user group that I started is not an officially sanctioned user group. It's one of those grass roots efforts. I'm hoping that it will become a sanctioned user group. I get the impression that the community at large would like to have one.

Being unofficial means that Artwork-Systems may not be too happy with it. I can understand that. I do have a few basic rules for it. No bashing vendors or users. We're all adults here. I don't take it from my two sons so why would I take it from adults? Topics need to stay focused on the topic at hand. If you want to kick back and relax there is a cafe section where you can do just that with your favorite java or a Stella Artois. Anyone is free to sign up but account activation is a manual process. I verify all account applications. So fill out those profiles so I can approve the application in a timely manner.

Check here for a bit information: http://artworksusergroup.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=1

If you want to sign up for the forums visit http://www.artworksusergroup.com / forums/

I hope to see you there!

PDF is for you

2007-02-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

Well I've gone and done it again...

I have started to compile information, useful and practical, information on PDF and what it means to you on my newest website. "You" being those concerned with creating and sending PDFs for various needs such as basic communications, PDF/A for archiving, PDF/E for engineering, PDF/H for health care and PDF/X for graphic arts. I hope to have a wiki going soon with the help of the PDF community. I would love to have your participation. I would also love to see a vendor or two get behind this and help with supplying content. The ultimate goal is to consolidate as much of the PDF, PDF/A,E,H & X information floating around the internet into one focused spot. If you would like to volunteer your time and assistance I would love to hear from you. I promise to keep the site advertising free as long as I can afford to.

New printing forums

2007-01-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

Well I've gone and done it. I went and built my own bulletin board finally. I really hadn't planned on doing it any time soon. But since my sites were deleted from their then host, by accident, I figured now or never. So I invite you all to come by and join. I'm happy to make vendor specific forums, topic specific or group specific (including private) forums.

I'm not looking to steal users from Printplanet, Prepressforums.com or the plethora of vendor run lists/boards. Just an another place to discuss things. Being a family and business friendly site, my two sons have their own private boards here, I ask that the content be kept professional and PG rated. I don't need anyone getting in trouble with corporate content filters or with moms and dads.

But do make sure that you visit printplanet and prepressforums.com and sign up. They're great places to get information.

Traveling about and other ramblings from a sleepy traveler

2006-12-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

So here I am, it's 2:43 in the morning body time and I'm on way way home
from a customer site. I'm not quite sure where I am right now. Probably
somewhere over western Montana. Which just happens to be where I am supposed
to be leaving for in about thirty six hours. I'll be lucky to see my kids
for twenty four of those thirty six hours (ten of which I'll be sleeping)
and my girlfriend for just a couple of hours at best. I almost feel like a
golf ball being blasted from one end of the course, the country in this
case, to the other and then half way across and back again for good measure.
Where's the sleeping pill when you need it? Maybe I need a good belt of some
fine whiskey like Makers Mark to knock me out. Of course all I an ever find
on a plane when I need to sleep is that crummy Jack Daniels. But I digress

Last Sunday I left to come to a customers site in Virginia for a
installation and training. We were putting in a workflow to automate the
receiving of art, customer email notification, automated file processing of
PDF's and other art. It was a tough week. It wasn't that the work was
"hard", it's never "easy", but it was just a long week of sleeping in
hotels. I had been working with this customer for several months and it was
nice to finally meet him. He's a very hospitable host. Tough and demanding
but a good guy with a tough job.

This Sunday I'll be heading off to another trip to Montana, different city
and client though. I'm very excited by the possibilities here. This company
is *very* well run, a high volume operation, and a already efficient
operation. So this should prove to be very interesting. I had a interesting
occurrence on the plane while we sat at the gate for an hour waiting for our
food to arrive. You ever notice how everything at O'Hare is slow when it
comes to the ground crews? Makes one wonder if the tail is wagging the dog
or what. One of the gentlemen that I am sitting next to got to talking about
our difficult day of traveling. Both gentlemen began their trips very early
in the morning back in eastern Europe. One of them is an engineer and we got
to talking about what each of us do. He works on power plants, I work with
PDF's. So we got to talking a bit about that and how publishers like to use
it. Like the airline magazine we were looking at. And then it struck me,
there's an ad for the client I'm visiting next week. I was thinking to
myself "Where in the heck *don't* these people advertise?". I'm hoping to
get some free time so I can go see Yellowstone. I guess I will be quite
close.

A couple of words of advice on travel here real quick. Always make sure you
check in 24 hours ahead of time and print two copies of your ticket. When
ever you can get "Economy-Plus" on United, take it! It was a real life save
on this trip. It is definitely worth the extra money for the leg room. I'm
short guy, only 5'7, but the extra five inches was so nice. The porters and
gate agents can be a real good friend too. I tipped the porter a bit "extra"
in Seattle to get a first class boarding jacket so I could bypass a very
long security line and get to the front of it. The gate agents in Dulles and
Chicago were real good to me with a little bit of patience and gratitude.
Not only did they get me off standby and on the plane but they got me the
Economy Plus seat I had paid for on the initial flight. Long story here...
Suffice it to say I missed my non stop flight and had to take to hops to get
home. I was really worried that I'd get stuck in cattle-car seating back by
the bathroom again. So a little kindness and patience will go far with
people who don't normally get treated well. I found out first hand that
being a smart ass to a gate agent is a sure way to get on the plane last. If
the woman had just bit her tongue and not been a smart ass there might not
have been a "glitch" with her ticket when trying to board. I'm not sure if
it was a computer error or operator error. But the wink I got as I walked
passed her leads me to believe it was the latter rather then the former.

So I'm looking for a server based product (hopefully hot folder driven) to
convert Word, Publisher, Excel and PowerPoint files to PDF. I'm not quite
sure where to turn. It has been an interesting research project. I don't
need anything "fancy". Just a decent PDF with fonts embedded, color (RGB is
just dandy) and one that won't down sample images too low. Windows based is
preferable. But a Mac program would be dandy too!~

A couple of weeks ago I was responding to a email post about how to merge
pre-separated PostScript or PDF. I suggested a program called PStill from
Andrew Stone and Frank Siegert ( http://www.stone.com/pstill/ ). I forwarded
the message to Andrew as a courtesy. I was surprised by his response. It's
not that I am surprised that he responded. More so it is the way that he
responded. He not only explained how to do such a thing with his software,
several different ways, but also gave out a free one week demo key for the
software. Now isn't that cool? I don't know, maybe it's just me. But I think
it was.

Okay, well I'm less than one hundred miles from home and it's almost time to
wake up for my body. God I hate these transnational flights. Especially
being an insomniac...

"Do the wont not..."

PDF/X and publishing

2006-12-03T21:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.foliomag.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=6870

Here's the final article that was just published in Folio Magazine. In the article Bert Langford, David Zwang and myself talk about PDF/X and what it means to publishers and the need to move towards to a PDF/X based workflow.

Stop by and read it and let me know what you think. I'd like to hear!

Lucky number Bevin!

2006-10-23T00:26:00.000-07:00

Lucky number Bevin!

PDF/X-What?

2006-10-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

In the beginning there was PostScript, our venerable favorite page description language. And then in the 1990’s Adobe introduced us to a new page description language called Portable Document Format, or PDF for short. Imagine that, a universally displayable content format. No more device or platform dependence. Everything we needed was self contained within this one format. Everything was self contained in the PDF to display each page or the entire document, regardless of originating platform or software, on any other platform for which there was a viewer.

Think of the possibilities! We in the printing industry certainly did. We found a new way to transmit content to one another. Initially there weren’t all the features in the PDF specification that we in the printing industry needed. With enough banging on Adobe’s walls Adobe listened and began to add features to the PDF specification that fit printers needs. Then things got really interesting. We had the tools to create these PDF’s, we knew what “we” wanted. We each developed our own ultimate PDF settings for our specific environments.

That is not where the problem began, that is where it exploded into a giant mess. Imagine being a creative agency that creates all sorts of different kinds of materials to be printed. Then imagine that you have six different print providers that you work with and they all want PDF’s. That would mean you have six different settings for creating those lovely PDF’s. What a mess! So a group of industry experts got together and decided that there just had to be a better way. That better way was PDF/X, the X meaning “exchange”. Eventually industry experts found what they thought to be the most critical aspects of exchanging PDF’s and that became the ISO specification called PDF/X-1a:2001. PDF/X-1a was intended for the blind exchange of materials for printing. Meaning that someone could create a document for printing and basically throw it over the fence to a bunch of printers and they, the printers, could have a high degree confidence that they could successfully reproduce the contents.

Great! Now we had an ISO accredited standard. But it was not enough. It was not “enough” because the committee had to settle on a few things rather than mandate specifics for such things as image resolution, color spaces, image compression and such. It is not that the committee did not specify color spaces, they did. They decided that color spaces such as device CMYK, Device N and Device gray would be allowed. But Device RGB, LAB and ICC bases spaces were not. They also decided that subsetted fonts would be allowed. For image compression they allowed for no compression, ZIP compression or JPEG compression. Sorry folks, no LZW compression allowed. The use of JPEG2000 wasn’t a consideration because it was not in Adobe Acrobat at the time. They settled on PDF version 1.3 as the base format for the specification since it met all the minimum requirements. Then we have to deal with image resolution. How does one specify in an ISO standard image resolution that will suit all manufacturing needs? You can’t is the answer they came up with.

And here in lies the problem. You are allowed to have a CMYK plus two spot colors with device gray text PDF that has subsetted fonts, JPEG compression and 200 DPI images for a magazine advertisement. Technically this meets the ISO specification for PDF/X-1a:2001. But it does not meet your needs for printing an advertisement. You want all CMYK with ZIP compression and fully embedded fonts. Or maybe you don’t want any image compression at all. It may be the case that you want everything to be device gray. The way Adobe see’s it in their Creative Suite 2 is that to be a valid PDF/X-1a:200x file it must be CMYK, have subsetted fonts and use what they call “automatic compression”. Automatic compression takes a best guess at either using ZIP or JPEG compression. Well that’s all fine and dandy, it is probably the most common use for PDF/X-1a:200x. Unfortunately it is not what everyone wants or uses. So Adobe has created a subset of PDF/X-1a which is already a subset of PDF. Now doesn’t that get confusing? Beyond that many printers have their own house version of PDF/X. They feel they must because they feel that the ISO specification does not meet their “unique” needs. I put unique in quotes because printers in general still feel that they have specific settings that make the “ultimate” PDF for their needs. It is true that the ISO specification is a bit loose.

So then early in the new millennium a few software developers got together and decided that they needed tighten up things a bit. This is how the Ghent PDF Workgroup was formed. The Ghent PDF Workgroup expanded upon the PDF/X-1a specification and created de jure standards for specific needs. They developed specialized requirements for magazine advertising, sheetfed printing, newspapers and others. Within each of these niche markets they were able to decide collectively what the “best practices” were for each market segment.

Prior to and even after the forming of the Ghent Work Group printers were hesitant to adopt the PDF/X-1a standard as their de facto file submission format. And I’m not sure how widely known the Ghent Work Group settings are known or understood. In the last year developers such as Markzware and Kodak have met the GWG criteria and joined developers such as Enfocus, Callas and Global Graphics in adopting the GWG settings. Getting Adobe and Quark on board are the next two hurdles for more wide spread adoption. Once those two developers are on board and integrate the GWG settings it will lower the barriers to adoption for everyone. To further lower the barriers we in the industry need to examine our own internal needs and evaluate how the GWG settings can be integrated. When I sit down with clients and examine their needs for a PDF based workflow part of what we discuss is what the real needs of the workflow are. Not what is wanted, but what is needed. Once you get down to that level and compare the wants versus the GWG profiles you find that there are really only personal esoteric differences between the two. The challenge in adopting a standard is that it is counter intuitive for many of us. The standard “doesn’t fit what I need” is what I hear from people. Much of the time that can be dispelled very quickly. Europeans have been using these profiles and methods with great success. Adoption of ISO Coated, Uncoated and Web color profiles, CertifiedPDF from Enfocus and the Ghent Work Group profiles for PDFs have all gone a long way to easing communications between content creators as John Dunn calls them and print providers. This enhanced level of communication has lowered the barriers that we here in the States still face. It does not take someone like Time, Inc., RR Donnelley & Sons, Quad Graphics or other such industry giants to cram this down our collective throat. It takes all of us to realize the benefits of such standardizations. If we can wrap our heads around that we will be able to communicate in a much clearer manner and be more efficient. Through that efficiency we will begin to reap the rewards of efficiency.

What's up with workflow automation?

2006-09-15T17:29:00.000-07:00

So I've been talking up workflow automation and preflight lately with a group of people on a website. I started thinking to myself, what the heck is going on here? Does automation mean reduction of employees? Sure, it can. It can also mean not needing to add an employee. Or how about making the employees you have more efficient by reducing the mundane things that they do? Or what about taking the operation from eight hours a day, five days a week to 24/7? Not for all phases, but again for the mundane tasks? What about automating the delivery of files to various locations?

Preflight: The Who's, What's, When's, Where's and Why's.

2006-08-23T23:41:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, preflight is not a new concept in the industry. It's been around a long time in one form or another. Way back when Gutenberg was printing bibles someone had to examine the plate to make sure it was right. After all, how expensive and laborious was printing? Very... It was no different when Benjamin Franklin was printing. When there were mechanicals to shoot, someone always looked at them before they got to the camera. Before sending a galley of lead off someone always checked it. When someone photo typeset a page or a galley again someone looked at it before it was imaged. Up to this point, we've pretty much stayed in house when it comes to creating and imaging (in one form or another). With the advent of desktop publishing in the 80's courtesy of Aldus, Adobe and Linotype it was taken out of the hands of professionals and into the hands of the mass market. It may have started as a slow process but it has increased with every iteration of innovation in the industry at large. And with every iteration the level of skill required to create is diminished. And with that diminished level of skill comes art that has more "problems" of one sort or another. That was about the time when the industry started telling the creatives "Just give us the art and we'll take care of it." Wow... Did that ever set us up for untold problems. And now anyone with a computer, Windows, Mac OS or Linux can be a desktop publisher or graphic designer. Microsoft is the favorite punching bag for this having put layout features in to Microsoft Word which then morphed into Publisher. And since people used PowerPoint to make slides some people figured they could even have them printed offset to boot. Now, I'm no fan of Microsoft in all that they do. But I will say this; Don't blame Microsoft. It's not their fault. They just made desktop publishing available to more people. That's probably the last time you'll hear me say that. So I wanted to give a run down of what I think about this mess having done preflight for so many years. I may have excluded a few vendors, but that is purely accidental. I'm sitting here eating my soppa de pollo as I write this. It's very addicting, you should try it some time you're near an Azteca restaurant. But I digress...

The Who's

Who's out there in preflight land? Well let's start with my two favorites in no particular order. There's Enfocus and Markzware and then there is Callas. I don't mean to imply that the Callas tools are lackluster or ineffective. They are far from that. But here in the US lets face it, the market is owned by Markzware and Enfocus. These are the guys (and ladies) that really have the market world wide. Then you have the integrators or OEMs like Kodak, Art-Works, Heidelberg, Xitron, Global Graphics and others who use one or more of these products in their own products.

The What's

What were talking about is the Enfocus Library from Enfocus (who's owned by Art-Works) which is in PitStop Professional, PitStop Server, Instant PDF and PitStop Automate, Callas' pdfInspektor and Markzware's MarkzOne Engine. You can find the Enfocus Library in such products as Brisque (versions 2, 3 and 4), Prinergy (version 2), Harlequin RIPs, Xitron and others. If anyone has ever purchased a copy of Adobe Acrobat 6 or 7 Professional you've got yourself a copy of pdfInspektor whether you know it or not. And Markzware has taken their preflighting to the desktop with FlightCheck Professional and Designer. Then they took it one step further and actually put it into Quark and InDesign with FlightCheck Studio.

The When's

In the 80's with desktop laser printers we were able to print out color separations from PageMaker, Quark, Freehand and Adobe Separator to check and see if everything was breaking correctly. Then we'd hope it came out the same way on the imagesetter when we sent it off to the service bureau or color house. At the service bureau I worked at we preflighted with LaserCheck by downloading this little bit of PostScript code to our laser printer which fooled the printer into behaving like an imagesetter as defined by the PPD we used. So we could print our job down to the spooler (PSserve from CopsTalk) and send it to the laser printer. If the lasers came out correctly we'd resubmit the job to the appropriate RIP for output. Now these weren't very often full size so we had to hope that when we looked at the film that all was right in the world before we proofed it. And that's where most of the errors were caught, at proofing. So you can see here how late in the process this was happening. We didn't really know what we were working with any degree of certainty. So when is the preflight supposed to happen you ask. It is supposed to happen everywhere. Which brings us to the where's.

The Where's

Where does preflight happen? That really depends on the workflow in general. With some workflows it happens before the art leaves the designer. Sometimes it happens at the printer when the art is received (not very I've learned), more often than not it happens at the RIP. And shockingly frequently it just doesn't happen at all. So there are a few savvy designers and other content creators that have taken the responsibility of preflight upon themselves to eliminate errors. They should be applauded because they are one of the most minute of minorities. Few printers (in the scheme of things) preflight art when it comes in with a job. And they should be applauded as well! They are consciously making an effort to eliminate the variables and the errors in the art before they start really spending money by putting ink on paper or otherwise using consumables and labor. And then there are those who just "take it and print it". I've found that those are often the digital printers where every they can get away with it by printing composite to the composite printers. Now that's not always the case, but it is a reality.

The Why's

Why does preflight happen, why doesn't it happen.

Hats off to Fedora!

2006-07-12T23:27:00.000-07:00

Well I've been a bit of a geek lately, like I'm not already... I decided to put Fedora Core 5 on my PowerBook G4. It actually went quite smoothly once I figured out that I had incorrectly formatted my Mac OS X partition as MS-DOS. I downloaded the DVD .iso from my nearest university (high bandwidth because I'm impatient) and burned it.

Once I had the drive partitioned into two volumes it was a snap. I think it was about an hour of installation of all the goodies that I wanted by the time it finally finished. I hit the restart button, held down the option key and was presented with a boot loader to pick which partition to boot from. So I chose the HD icon with Tux on it and went through the Fedora configuration setup. Pretty damn easy all in all. I was surprised by the options available for my video card. I skimped on the PowerBook and went with the 64MB video card. Over here in Mac OS X land I'm limited to 1280x854. But in FC5 I could choose a display size of over 2500 pixels wide. Sounds like I need a 30" Cinema display!

The first thing I noticed was a distinct lack of SOUND. Then I noticed that my Airport Extreme card is not recognized by FC5. Oh here's a kicker for you laptop users that like to put your PowerBooks to sleep. You can't... There's not "sleep" or "hibernate" mode. It's either on with the lid closed or it's off. Well so much for doing "enough" research... At any rate, I'm not real familiar with the Gnome environment. I'm a bit more familiar with KDE, but I like both of them. Working in Gnome is definitely a departure from Mac OS X. You are definitely not in Kansas any more. Yes, it is a GUI. Yes, it is friendly. No, it's not as easy as Mac OS X where you're spoon fed everything. It's a bit more Windows like. But that's not such a bad thing considering the cost of FC 5 was that of a DVD or 6 CD's plus my time.

I've really come to love the idea of virtual desktops. Man, it is so cool and so handy. I know there are virtual desktop software for Mac OS X, but I haven't really spent much time with them. Here in FC it sure is handy. I've got everything organized by keeping functions grouped together. Meaning that when I'm downloading an RPMS and installing it I've got one virtual desktop setup to hold those windows. In another I've got my email and calendaring. Yet another is running all my web surfing. And the last one is running a terminal services client into a Terminal server session. That's just slicker than snot!

Working in FC5 is sure nice. All the open source developers really have done a great job with the interface. There are some "iffy" things that they have done with drop down menus, some are more like OS 9 or early Windows in their blocky style. But all in all, Open Office, K Office, Mozilla Suite and the built in email client (Evolution) are great. I'm really impressed with Evolution. But I so love Microsoft Office 2004 for two reasons. One, total integration with calendar, email, tasks, projects, contacts, etc. The second is Projects. I can't get enough of Projects in Office 2004. I store all the files together. The emails, tasks, calendar events, contacts, note (even MSN Messenger chat logs) and files are all kept organized together. Plus, from within Word, Excel and PowerPoint you can add things to existing projects or start new ones. The only thing that I really HATE about Gnome is that damn "feature" that when you hoover over something you select it. Got that just drives me frickin' insane! And there's no way to turn it off...

Setting up the services in FC5 is pretty darn easy too. It took 2 minutes to setup users for SMB sharing and a couple of shares. Web services were a snap. FTP was a bit more difficult because I had to choose WHICH ftp server I wanted to use. I finally settled on PureFTPd (which I also use on my Mac) which uses local user accounts for access rather than a separate list of users and parameters. Okay, it's not a big deal, it's just a pain in the arse for "me" because I'm used to virtual users rather than real users. I installed NFS, BIND, DHCP and several other services that I have not yet played with. But it's all pretty straight forward really.

On a similar note of the same vein I installed Red Hat 9 on a couple of old Dell PowerEdge 1300 and 1400SC servers. The PowerEdge 1300 has 256MB of RAM, 10GB Ultra2 SCSI disk, and a 450 MHz PII. Pretty damn modest hardware when you look at it. But damn is it fast serving web pages, FTP transfers and SMB traffic. I was really surprised at just how fast it served up pages. A heck of a lot faster than my P2 450 with 384MB of RAM and Apache 2.x. I did some load testing and the old Dell PowerEdge smoked the Compaq PII/450. I then tried it on a Dell PowerEdge 1400SC PIII/933 with 128MB of RAM with Red Hat 9 (same as the PE1300) and it was was almost as fast as the PE1300. I heard a lot of thrashing going on. The poor old SCSI drive in the 1400SC was getting the snot kicked out of it. I almost felt bad tossing such a load onto it. One of the spare drives I was testing on literally smoked and sparked while doing this. Yes folks, I did smell smoke, burning silicon to be specific and yes I did see fire. I swapped it out with another one and went about the testing again. This next drive is starting to give the aroma of burning silicon too. So time to swap it out in lieu of my last spare SCSi drive.

At any rate, beyond all of this testing and such I have really come to appreciate how effective Linux is as a desktop operating system as well as a server operating system. I'm going to convert my sons Dell Optiplex to Red Hat 9. It's not enough of a machine to run any of his games, but it has everything on it that he needs. And quite frankly, Windows 2000 Professional is a resource hog. Red Hat has everything on it that he needs. And it's FREE.

I also now better understand why some of my peers have switched their front office workers to Linux. Almost ZERO maintenance, very little training because it is a very familiar environment to Windows, and it's FREE!

Now to try Unbutu ans Suse on the PowerBook. But next time I'm going to create a third partition that's about a gigabyte in size for file transfers between OS'es since I can't have them both live. I'm not doing this to run a emulator...

Fortuitous

2005-11-23T00:28:00.000-08:00

for·tu·i·tous P Pronunciation Key (fôr-t-ts, -ty-)
adj.
1. Happening by accident or chance. See Synonyms at accidental.
2. Usage Problem.
a. Happening by a fortunate accident or chance.
b. Lucky or fortunate.

My how things seem to be in a state of flux, which is typical, but seems extraordinary now. Work seems to be settling down a bit. Still not quite sure what's going on sometimes. Sometimes I don't know that I want to know though. Projects there seem to be working as planned. Maybe not on the schedule that was planned, but working none-the-less.

I've run into a couple of quite fortuitous situations in the last month or so. Maybe my "luck" is changing? I have run into another opportunity with who I'll call Developer "O". It seems that I can help "evangelize" in a way a product or two that I am totally excited about. I can't wait to see what more comes of this. It really would be a dream opportunity. It would involve talking about products that I'm excited about, that I think I'm and expert with (they must think so too...) and talking to people. And I'd get paid to do this! What could be better?

Let call another one Developer "D". Wow, this one kinda came out of the blue. This is also a really exciting opportunity, but it is not yet at the scale of "O". Of course, things are just starting to "congeal" and "cascade". I've been working on developing a very strong relationship with this particular developer for years. And now it's "accelerating" quite rapidly.

See how these blog entries kind of flow together?

Then there's the dark horse of the group. Where the hell did this one come from? I struck a deal with an acquaintance and in the midst of my investigations I happened to run head first into heck of an opportunity. It seems that my very long relationship with Developer "K" is stronger than I thought. I can't really talk about the details. But suffice it to say that I'm still absolutely dumbfounded by the latest events. Those recent events will open up to me a lot more opportunities for training and consulting. But also with implementations at customer sites. And that is quite interesting. It opens up a market more to me than I had previously had access to. While I understand one of the products previous versions, I haven't exactly kept up with it. Now I have an opportunity to help sell AND train/consult in a product as well as develope new business in another product.

A cohort and I are getting ready to self publish our first title. Very exciting stuff. I just hope that the target market recognizes the need and "impetus" behind it. I guess that's what marketing people are for...

Again, things are starting to congeal, cascade and accelerate. Of course, personal events are starting to do the same thing too. But that's an entirely different story. But I'd say that those events also would include the previously mentions words and "fortuitous" in the list of adjectives used to describe events. Not that it's all a bed of roses, but better than they have been for a while.

I've arrived at the conclusion that some things are meant to be just out of reach. And that there are some things that you can or should reach for. And I'm reaching for this one. I just hope I don't push it beyond my reach.

Things are a changin'

2005-11-20T23:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I've gone through and updated some information on my site, added some other. I guess you should just poke around and see what's different.

What you won't necessarily see are the blogs. If you go click on my blog icon, it now takes you to my blog on my site. That's cool, but not as cool
as the other blogs. I've added several blogs to my site for tips and tricks.

http://www.mattbeals.com/blog/acrobat.htm
http://www.mattbeals.com/blog/indesign.htm
http://www.mattbeals.com/blog/photoshop.htm
http://www.mattbeals.com/blog/quark.htm

I hope to a bit more frequently, than I post to my own, post tips and tricks I run across for different programs. If you have something you think would be interesting to put up there please send me an email with it. I promise to give credit where credit is due. I'm not looking to steal your thunder.

To T.O.E. or Tie, that is the question!

2005-08-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

T.O.E. also known as TCP Offload Engine. TIE (no, not Tie fighter), to bind.

What is a TOE card? Well, it is more often than not found in iSCSI SANs, but it's function is simple. A TOE card is a network interface card with a ASIC that handles the network overhead in place of the CPU. That is to say, it handles the processing of getting data on and off the computer rather then relying on the main CPU to. The advantage is that network speeds increase while overall CPU utilization drops (slightly) because it no longer has to handle the I/O needs of the NIC (Network Interface Card). So what does all this mean? Well, spend a few hundred bucks on a 10/100/1000 TOE card and see at least a 15% in network speeds. And that's without any other network or server upgrades. Now, it doesn't seem like it would make a whole hill of beans worth of difference, but it does. As CPU speeds increase, servers are better able to handle the network I/O without affecting overall server and network performance. Ever notice how the server bogs down with high utilization? A TOE card can help with this.

So what about "tie". Well, that's kind of a misnomer. What I should have said was "bind", or "link aggregation", or maybe even "concactenating NICs". What's it all mean? What I mean is to link multiple NICs into one virtual NIC to increase throughput.

What's the difference? A lot.

Altruism

2005-08-08T19:38:00.000-07:00

al·tru·ism (ltr-zm)
n.

Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness.
Zoology. Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental to the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.

I received a very unexpected email from what I consider to be a rather unique individual. I had to read the email twice to be sure of what I read. Even then I was taken aback. So, what do I do when I want to think? I sleep... So here I am, rested and dumbfounded. Now, I'm not so young, or not so old, I'm 32 (just recently). I have some rather conservative and liberal views on people. And one of those views is that foster parents are special, very special. All children are inherently good and should be loved. The person I ran across is a foster parent. A single foster parent of a 13 month old baby, and they are 27 no less! Does that fit the model of a foster parent? What would possibly posses such a young person to show so much altruism? Usually altruism such as this manifests itself in older generations. This is quite unique, infact, singularly unique in my life. And it still blows me away after spending so much time thinking, ney, contemplating the message.

I just had to write about it and I hope that the sender reads this entry. People such as the sender are precisely the kind of person that I want to surround myself with.

I am a very binary personality when it comes to friends and associates. I either like you because you bring something "meaningful" to my life. Something positive. It doesn't have to be big, grand, expensive, anything like that. Just a person who adds quality to my life. Or, I don't really have anything to do with you. If you do not bring anything positive, rather you bring negativity to my life then I have no use for you. I would rather focus that energy on someone who does bring something to my life.

And this 27 year old is precisely the model of character and integrity that I seek to be in my life, no matter how small or large. This is someone who I can learn from.

SNAFU, TARFU, FUBAR

2005-08-06T23:52:00.000-07:00

Boy, don't those sound familiar? Ever wonder where SNAFU came from? Read about it here. My situation is somewhere between SNAFU and TARFU, I hope things never make it to FUBAR.

SNAFU

Work has kept me amply busy. Almost to the point of excessively busy. Life as essentially a single father isn't exactly "easy". And that's where SNAFU comes in.

TARFU

Work wise, TARFU may be a very apt description. I'm not really in a position to elaborate on that.

FUBAR

Well, many things are FUBAR. And fortunately, none of them are in my life.

Success and failure

2005-08-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

suc·cess (sk-ss)
n.

The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted: attributed their success in business to hard work.
1. The gaining of fame or prosperity: an artist spoiled by success.
2. The extent of such gain.
One that is successful: The plan was a success.
Obsolete. A result or an outcome.

fail·ure (flyr)
n.

The condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends: the failure of an experiment.
One that fails: a failure at one's career.
The condition or fact of being insufficient or falling short: a crop failure.
A cessation of proper functioning or performance: a power failure.
Nonperformance of what is requested or expected; omission: failure to report a change of address.
The act or fact of failing to pass a course, test, or assignment.
A decline in strength or effectiveness.
The act or fact of becoming bankrupt or insolvent.

Success. Failure. How does one measure success or failure? Is success or failure quantifiable or are they nebulous? Are such concepts binary in their nature?

If a project is deamed a success, can it be that there is no part that is a failure? Conversely, can a failure contain a segment that is a success? I don't think that because something is either a failure or a success that they are mutually exclusive. I don't believe that they are. Just because something "fails" doesn't mean that something has not been learned. I also believe the converse, that just becuase something has succeeded doesn't mean that there has not been a failure. I think that true "failure" is when a lesson is just not learned, but more significantly, not recognized. You have to recognize failure to be able to begin to learn something from it.

If you can recongnize where a "failure" has occurred I think that you have in effect "succeeded". In all things failed, there is a lesson to be gleaned. In all things successful, there too is a lesson to be gleaned. Finding the point of failure or success may be a laborious task. But it is necessary in the evolutionary process. As is the case in all things human.

No plan, regardless of how well conceived, survives reality. Planning is a crucial step, it is in fact the crucial step. Any success or failure is predicated on the amount of planning involved. For those who may know me, they know my two favorite adages: "Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance", and "I can do it right, or I can do it twice". Both involve planning to mitigate the chance of failure. But as I said before, no plan, regardless of how well conceived, survives reality.

Having stated the above, I do not believe that success or failure are binary or mutually exclusive. They are nebulous and intertwined with each other. In some things, in many things, success and failure can be quantified depending on ones perspective. Some things may be classified in a binary manner depending on your perspective.

As in one of my projects. Some would say that the project has NOT succeeded as well as we had envisioned. I think it has in a certain respect. True, things have not gone smoothly. True, things could and should have been planned better. True, we have not always seen things the same way. But here is where my perspective says that success has been achieved. In examining where things have failed, I think we have in fact succeeded. My plan, our plan, has not survived reality. And I think that this is a good thing! Our inherent success has come from recognizing our points of failure. And in that process, we have and will identify the points of failure. From that examination a lesson, or lessons, will be learned and applied and we will therefore "succeed". "Failure" to learn and apply those lessons will in fact be the real "failure".

Impetus

2005-06-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

im·pe·tus (mp-ts)
n. pl. im·pe·tus·es

An impelling force; an impulse.
The force or energy associated with a moving body.
1. Something that incites; a stimulus.
2. Increased activity in response to a stimulus: The approaching deadline gave impetus to the investigation.

Hmm, definition 2... "The force or energy associated with a moving body", intersting. There seems to be much "force" behind some of my projects. Project "A" seems to have picked up a lot of momentum. Workflow tools I've rediscovered have added much momentum. Plans that had been pushed out two months are now more immediate with a revised structure. Flow charts are such a wonderful thing for mapping out structures. Associating time frames with segments is a more difficult though. At any rate, the segments go back to the "cascade effect", or analagous to "stepping stones". Laying the core foundation for future expansion to allow for each module, or stepping stone, to be added as time progresses. It's quite fascinating really to see it layed out in front of you. Thankfully I have a lot of paper to map it all out on.

Project "B" has gone from "something that could happen" to "something that will be happening". This is really quite an amazing opportunity. There has been much background discussion and debate internally with the group as well as a significant amount of "sales" time. I'm really not a salesperson, but I seemed to have sold a client on my concept. This will be exciting, very exciting. This is where the "digital hub" concept comes into play. It does with Project "A" too, but in a different manner and methodology.

Normally I would not double dip blogs, but I'm not "normal".

"Digital Hub"

hub (hb)
n.

The center part of a wheel, fan, or propeller.
A center of activity or interest; a focal point. See Synonyms at center.

The latter is more applicable as a concept for this, but the former is precisely the topology.

So what "we" (me, myself and I) am looking to do is to create a workflow (in a smaller sense) where you essentially have a hub and spoke environment. Meaning that there is a central hub that controls or otherwise feeds the spokes. Such as a prepress workflow system, for example, that everything flows through and then is distributed to other systems or devices (the spokes). For this to succeed, you need to identify a commom file format; the lowest common denominator. For most people this is PDF although it could be another format depending on the genius of the devices being used. This hub must feed an amalgam of disperate systems. That's not to say that this hub will RIP a job and directly drive all the devices, even though it's possible. But it will standardize everything coming into the workflow and then pass it along so that each end point (RIP) will not have much to do but convert for that imaging device. All the heavy lifting occurs in the hub and then redirects the work coming out. From there the spokes perform their dedicated functions. Part of this is color transformations.

It's really quite simple and elegant when you lay it out and conceptualize it. It's a little different in implementation. But not too much.

Say you have five different devices that you image to. A press, proofer, black & white printers (DocuTech maybe) and two different color laser devices. How do you make sure that everything "fits"? First, you have to have a solid file (PDF in this case) which is your baseline document. From there, what do you do with it? Say someone wants 500 copies of a full color brochure. That quantity fits a digital press (or color laser in this case) for run length and C.P.U. Great, so you run it and the customer is happy. Now they want 5,000. That's not in the digital sweet spot. That's in the sweet spot for your small format press. So you run it and now it looks different, substantially different. What's up with that? The proof didn't match the press, which definately doesn't match the color laser device. How can that be? Did you employ any sort of color mangement? No? Well there you go. What can you use to manage the color? Throw a color server in the mix? What's that do with your workflow?

What if your digital hub could do all this? Normalize to a common file format, PDF, then repurpose that PDF for N number of different output "intents". That would be pretty powerful. Now imagine that you use ICC profiles for your devices. Are you going to re-color manage the native files? Well that's not very effective or efficient. Why not employ some sort of color management in your hub and let it repurpose the job and its color? So now you have a digital master file that can be moved from device to device and you can maintain color fidelity. Relatively speaking that is. There are limitations of color management and the color of the devices you image on. I mean really, solid plastic toner will be different than the ink in your press. But as a practical matter, the color will be close. Much closer than if you ran without profiles or compensation. It's like the difference with a inkjet and a press. Different, but can be made to match quite well. And that's the idea, or at least part of it. Get a common file format that can be easily ported to N number of different devices. And, with that system you can make color matches more easily attainable.

I have two customers who are doing just this. Everything goes through one system. Once in the system, they can be moved as manufacturing requirements dictate. They can direct it once to a Digimaster or DocuTech and then move it to a sheetfed press or web. Or in the case of color work, from a color Doc12 to a 3535 or 40" press. And then, they can take the job and make it a low res RGB PDF for a soft proof.

It's like a ROOM workflow. But it's not. In a ROOM workflow, you have a standard file fortmat, but it's not necessarily easily "portable", like screened one-bit TIFFs. Great for the press and proofer, but lousy for a color copier or black and white copier. So now you have two workflows. One for press and one for digital printing. Sure, maybe you "descreen" and or combine the separations but is that the best way? That's what makes PDF so attractive for that digital master. It is understood by many different devices and is functional in other applications outside of the printing world. You can't say that for CT/LW or screened one-bit TIFFs. Can you imagine trying to read a CT/LW PDF that is reasonably downloadable? That's going to look like hell and be bulky. Or you could have a screened one-bit TIFF made into a PDF. Possible, entirely possible. Now think of that screened one-bit TIFF being one color of a three color document. Not so easy now. Possible, but not so easy.

Pretty powerful eh? Kind of brings you back to my epiphany entry. I hope this makes sense, I hope it came out of my head well in words.

Accelerate

2005-05-07T23:15:00.000-07:00

ac·cel·er·ate (k-sl-rt)
v. ac·cel·er·at·ed, ac·cel·er·at·ing, ac·cel·er·ates
v. tr.

To increase the speed of.
To cause to occur sooner than expected.
To cause to develop or progress more quickly: a substance used to accelerate a fire.
1. To reduce the time required for (an academic course, for example); compress into a shorter period.
2. To make it possible for (a student) to finish an academic course faster than usual.
Physics. To change the velocity of.

"Round the world and home again, That's the sailor's way
Faster faster, faster faster

There's no earthly way of knowing, Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing, Or which way the river's flowing"

Things definitely seem to be accelerating with my projects, especially with projects one and two. Project two is getting to the point where we can start to put down a structure and divide roles and responsibilities amongs the group. We've scheduled a meeting for this coming week to start to nail things down. Maybe by July 1 we'll have an announcement ready for a press release. Maybe not though, you can never be too confident. Although I do have to say that parties I've bounced the idea off of have had a very positive response. I've got 4 companies waiting to come on board as soon as the project is ready to launch. I've been lucky that the medium/high level conversations with these 4 companies have so positive. It really shows that the basic concept is sound and broadly appealing. Plus, the names of the people involved in the group lend much credibility to the project. I'm hoping to have a couple of "big fish" support the project publicly and through a back channel or two.

Cascade

2005-05-03T17:33:00.000-07:00

cas·cade (k-skd)
n.

A waterfall or a series of small waterfalls over steep rocks.
Something, such as lace, thought to resemble a waterfall or series of small waterfalls, especially an arrangement or fall of material.
A succession of stages, processes, operations, or units.
Electronics. A series of components or networks, the output of each of which serves as the input for the next.
A chemical or physiological process that occurs in successive stages, each of which is dependent on the preceding one, and often producing a cumulative effect: an enzymatic cascade.

No, not the Cascade Mountains. But they do look particularly gorgeous today. Look at definitions three through five, the "cascade effect". Projects are really starting to cascade. Projects I've been trying to get rolling fo rthe past 8 months or so are now starting to fall inline with other projects I've just started. One feeds into another that opens the door into another somewhere else. It is really amazing to see all of these things starting to accelerate. I almost feel like I'm on a roller coaster. My only problem with that is I tend to get motion sickness on a roller coaster...

I hope to keep all of the projects up in the air and work on all of them. But it may get to the point in the next couple of months where I will have to start picking and choosing what I do mare carefully rather than working on all of them. Having two children, how do you pick your favorite and the one to focus all your attention on? If you neglect the other, what happens when you come back? It's too late at that point.

Regardless, one of these will have to start generating an income. So far they are generating a lot of interest with all the people I've been contacting.

Congeal

2005-04-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

v. con·gealed, con·geal·ing, con·geals
v. intr.

To solidify by or as if by freezing: “My aim... was to take the Hill by storm before... opposition to spending cuts congealed” (David A. Stockman).
To coagulate; jell.

v. tr.

To cause to solidify or coagulate or to undergo a process likened to solidification or coagulation. See Synonyms at coagulate.

It seems that things are starting congeal with several projects. It's about time too! I've had two key personal/professional projects that are really coming together.

The first project isn't a big project or a little one. It is almost a personal quest with my partner to facilitate better communication in printing and to improve the quality of print. Again, it's not a "revolution" in printing but more of an epiphany. Just a little project that should have a great impact if we can get it distributed widely enough. How hard could it be to market a e-book after all?

The second project is revolutionary in a sense. My partner and I have batted about an idea for almost 6 months that brings together all three pieces, color, workflow, press. We've had pieces two and three from the get go. Last week I got a call while doing some Enfocus PitStop and Markzware FlightCheck Pro training from a super talented lady. It started out innocuous enough. We started talking about our backgrounds and what we currently do, some of the projects we work on.

And then there were three...

There it was, the missing piece. I immediately put down my Kung Pao chicken (from a Thai restaurant in Billings, MT of all places) and called my partner. "Hold on tight, 'cause here we go!" He was dumbfounded, this innocuous 6 minute conversation had caused our 6 months of planning to congeal. Late this week we all sat down together, Anne, Greg, Steve and myself. It was almost like the knights of the round table, but without a king. I think a couple of us could have jumped out of our skin at the meeting. We presented our idea, our intent, our plan. We listened for feed back and what if this, what if thats? At the end of the meeting came the real catalyst for action: "Okay, we're on board." We looked at each other, smiled, and said "Hold on tight, 'cause here we go!". Now we have the three key pieces and the four key players. We each have the knowledge, the skills, the reputation, and a huge combined potential client list. From here, it's all marketing.

I can hear mission control now, "T minus three minutes and counting."

Epiphany

2005-04-27T00:57:00.000-07:00

e·piph·a·ny

Epiphany

A Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi.
January 6, on which this feast is traditionally observed.
A revelatory manifestation of a divine being.
A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.

Look at definitions 4 and 5 for a minute.

Can it be? Is it really that simple? I was on the phone for nearly three hours tonight with a friend of mine discussing a few "miscellaneous" projects we were batting around. One of them being some rather simple but powerful information that everyone in printing should have a basic understanding of. That is, one of those often misunderstood tools that speaks volumes if you understand the language. But the more we thought about it, the more we wondered "is that really it"? Is it really that simple? Quite frankly, yes! "It" is that simple. Have you ever run across one of those? Maybe it is some "inherent knowledge" that should be, but is not, fully realized. Or maybe it is something you've thought about and distilled into a few basic concepts or precepts.

Epiphanies are quite invigorating, they almost compel one into immediate action. Hence this entry into my journal of musings. Now if I could only forget about "it" for a few hours to get some sleep so I can sleep on "it".

Well now isn't that special?

2005-04-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

Oh how I miss Church Lady...

I guess there are a lot of things that I miss these days, specifically a partner. In this case, my soon-to-be-ex. It's not so much that I miss her, but the companionship. Our relationship has been over for a long time now, it was Nov 2003 when she moved out. But I think for a couple of years before that things really started to slide. It's really too bad. I guess there were a lot of things either of us could have done, but didn't for a litany of reasons. She was my second "real girlfriend", I knew I was going to marry her. But marrying so young was probably our biggest mistake. Neither of us really grew up and developed identities of our own. We were kids playing adults really. Sure, we were old enough, but in hindsight we were still kids playing house. Trying to live as adults while growing up; it's not an easy thing to do. I think that had we waited to get married or live together, accomplished things for ourselves, discovered ourselves that we would have been more able to handle life as a adult couple. As it was, we had to grow up fast, and we didn't necessarily grow up "right". We did what we had to, not always for the right reasons, not always the right way. Having kids at the same time didn't make things any easier on us. I was at work a lot. Sometimes two, two and a half jobs. She was at home with the kids, sometimes watching other kids, sometimes working. I think it ended up that we were two people living different lives in the same house. We grew apart. I was off traveling the country speaking and visiting, working not only at the shop but also at home. I was getting phone calls or emails from South Africa, Singapore, Australia or from around the US and Canada. I was getting phone calls at home from work at all hours, working on weekends, going back to work after 10 hours to fix a server. She was dealing with doctors, bills, school(s), setting schedules, cleaning and cooking, sick kids and the rest of it. Not to mention taking care of herself. We just ended up not having enough time for each other. I guess she ended up really resenting me; I'm only speculating. Eventually we were as I said living separate lives. And eventually that led her to a relationship with someone else and her filing for divorce. And almost 18 months later here we are and now I'm dealing with all those things myself, along with work. It can be truely overwhelming. Especially dealing with the emotional toll it has taken on my kids, I haven't really had to much time to work on the toll it's taken on me. I'm not worried about the toll it's taken on her, she made her choices. See below about my thoughts on regrets and choices.

There are probably things I should regret, but I find myself not regretting any of it. I would not be the person I am, I would not have the kids that I do. I can't imagine things any different than they are. I don't think that wishing "I should have done this or that" is all that helpful. I think that reflecting and thinking "I should have done this or that" is better. What's the difference? One is wishing, the other is cognitive thought about choices, reflection and accepting choices as they are. I've made mistakes, plenty of them, and I accept them and their consequences. Anything else is a fools errand I think. You make your choice, you deal with the consequences good, bad or indifferent. Remember two things, "Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance" (the 7 P's of life) and: "I can do it right, or I can do it twice". In the case of my marriage, I didn't follow either. If there's a second time around I hope to follow my own advice...

Now on to bigger and better things. These near 14 years are part of me, they define "me". As this volume, not chapter, of my life closes, I begin a new one. Things are looking "bright" to use a euphemism. Career wise, things are not going as well as I had hoped. I had hoped to have a "real job" by now. But this independence of being a consultant is quite enjoyable. It is much tougher, no steady pay check, but ultimately rewarding. I get to be home with my kids much more often. The "brand equity" I have established over the past 8 years is really beginning to pay off. I'm getting phone calls and emails from all over still, but now people are willing to pay for my knowledge and experience. The income potential is huge. I think the best part of this is the relationships I've developed with people and companies, mostly people though. When I'm off training or consulting it's really gratifying to see that light bulb go on when someone really "gets" something. That kind of intimate experience is really what it's all about, the travel is bonus, the pay is bonus. I've been very lucky that I've worked with people who are hungry for knowledge. Not that I have all the answers, but maybe I have a few of them. And they listen, they give me feedback, I give them feedback. There's nothing like that kind of interaction. Over the months I've run into three "tough nuts" that I've had to crack. The first one, I never thought I'd get their nod of approval. Then I got a "atta-boy" and I broke through. The other ones, I hadn't had any foreknowledge about at all (I at least had a warning about the first). After a day of interaction I was the talk of the office because I seemed to have broken through. And that's great, I love that!

I've got several exciting opportunities in front of me. One of them is what I would call a "long term" IT deal, and I've got two ongoing training/consulting projects. Besides those, which are time consuming enough and exciting in their own right, I'm working with some very highly respected people on a very exciting project. What I would call a "cutting edge" project. A project that will have a real impact on the industry at large, even if the projects impact isn't fully realized. It's not really a "paradigm shift", but more of an epiphany of sorts. What you could call "a realization of the obvious that is often overlooked and misunderstood".

I seem to have strengthend several relationships with some key developers. This is really exciting. Some of the technologies these developers have are very exciting. I really think that all of the developers I work with have best of breed technologies or very cutting edge technologies. I'm not satisfied to work with tools, read technologies and processes, that are "cool". I want to work with tools that rock you back on your heels and make you say "I didn't know that could be done" or a simple but powerful "wow".

Other things haven't gone so well with some professional relationships. It seems that recently I might have burned a bridge with a most valuable partner. They know who they are. Unfortunately the last two projects haven't gone as planned. I've had a very positive, mutually beneficial relationship with them for years. I sincerely hope that the relationship can be salvaged along with my credibility with them. I thoroughly enjoy working with them and would be greatly saddened to see it dimminished in any way.