Yeserday's (successful) struggle

[laura_seabrook]

I got what I needed done yesterday, but at a cost.

Mainly I needed to finalise the image for the artwork I'm submitting today and I needed to print it as well. Tht sounds easy but I spent the morning building the tiles for the mosaic. Each one was is a 64 x64 px image with a symbol in the middle and different fore and background colours (like the one at the right). Each symbol has eight variations in fore and background colours. All together I created 185 unique tiles to use. I had exactly the target image I wanted, and I spend the next few hours testing applications that would generate that image from the tiles.

That took a lot longer than I wanted. The program I wanted to use kept bombing out at a critical point, just before generating the image. In the end I had four different versions, and decided to take them all with me to the university to be printed. However, I missed the 3:07pm bus and caught the next one out. Had to transfer to a Toronto bus that got me to the university, but it was already about 5pm by the time I got there. Normally my last 267 bus from the university (which gets me home in one trip) leaves at 6:05pm. I had hoped to be on that, but it wasn't to be. Mysteriously the printing options in Photoshop were all greyed out so I couldn't print them directly. Acrobat, which could have made these into PDF files (which could be printed works for the staff but not for students!

It was late and there was no technical staff in the Huxley library so I went to the Auchmuty Info Commons. There were technical staff there which was just as well since I had the same problems over there as well. However the techs had a work-around: save the Photoshop files as JPGs; open those with Illustrator and adjust the arboard; save as a PDF from Illustrator and print from that. Long process, but it worked! I had all of the mosaics printed by about 7:25pm. However, how was I going to get home? I used the Transport Infoline trip planner and unbelievably there was a connection home.

I walked very quickly to a bus stop in Birmingham Gardens and waited for a 230 which would take me to Wallsend. It was due in at 8:07pm and my last 267 (which only departed from Wallsend, not the uni that time of night) was scheduled to leave at 8:09pm. I waited and the bus came and it was 2 minutes late. I told the bus driver what I was trying to do and we got to Wallsend at 8:10pm. As I was the last passenger and that was the final stop before a trip to the depot, the driver dropped me at the next stop after Wallsend for the 267, just in case. Sure enough, the 230 just left my view when the 267 came along! I was so relived. It was an uneventful trip home the rest of the way (though I chatted like mad with the driver) and I got there without needing a taxi.

Mind you, afterwards (and this morning) my right leg's been hurting something awful. I was beat last night and had an early night. Woke up at 3:45am this morning and after watching som TV went back to sleep. Leg's still hurting. I've planned to take Bobby to teh Aged Care Unit today, because it's in the same complex where I'm dropping off the artwork. I need to cut and paste the bits of that together, and fill in a contract, but I'm going to do it!