Alex Harries's diary

(This is a fully-geeky entry, I'm afraid...) 

A couple of months back, I spotted that the previews of the website graphics I was working on in Photoshop were very washed out. I wasted the best part of a day trying to figure out why, and eventually sorted it after an afternoon of exercising unusually high levels of self-control to resist the urge to throw my mouse/laptop/desk lamp/chair across the room.

Wonderful thing that upgrades are, today I realised that Photoshop was back to its old tricks again and was saving graphics which looked like they'd been sun-bleached. For my own future reference, here's what I had to do to fix this problem:

1. Go to 'edit' > 'color settings' and set it up like this:
   
   
   Note the RGB working space is set to "Color LCD Calibrated" - it should be set to whatever your monitor is calibrated to, it seems.
2. Whenever you create a new document in Photoshop, make sure the "Color profile" option (under 'advanced', in the 'new document' dialogue) is set to the same monitor profile you set in step 1.
3. Also make sure your documents are set with the right proofing options, by checking 'view' > 'proof setup' is set to 'monitor RGB', and 'view' > 'proof colors' is ticked.
   
4. Finally, in 'save to web', make sure 'convert to sRGB' is un-ticked (click the right-arrow to the right of 'preset' options).

 Hopefully, next time this happens - 'cos it's bound to happen - this should work better than throwing the laptop out of the window....... ;o)

/al - geek geek geek geek geek geek, etc 

You know those days where you get comfy on the sofa and just, well, vegetate? I tend to do something similar at work - I just park up at the desk and start working through my Never Ending To Do List (TM). Ok, so it's not as relaxing, but I guess it helps to get things done.

Anyway, today started out with my first SAGA meeting. Not the over-50's holiday and insurance company, but the University's Students' Academic and General Affairs committee, which (according to the Uni website - I'm not claiming to know anything about anything here, naturally...) is the Board of Governors' main way of getting feedback on the matters that are affecting the students of Portsmouth, through the Union's Sabbatical officers.

SAGA also makes sure that the information fed back to them via. the Sabbs is properly listened to and actioned. To save me rambling even more than usual, you can find out more from this page on the interweb.

So why have I been annoying people then? Well, after coming back from SAGA with a long list of Really Important Things That I Must Do Right Now If Not Sooner, I had to go round trying to track down the various bits of information to complete these odd jobs.

Of course, pretty much everyone I asked was also up to their collective eyeballs in their own workloads, so I ended up feeling like I was going in circles and annoying people on the way, so my mantra for the next couple of days is going to have to be "stop being so bloody annoying", otherwise I think I may lose my kneecaps...

Today I have mainly...

• ... been to SAGA and learnt lots of new things (which I then promptly forgot),
• ... played about with exporting the AU Dinner video so we can put it on t'interweb,
• ... PDF'd 160 Union Council motions, amendments, agendas and meeting minutes from 2002 to 2007, ready to build a shiny new archive of Union Council goodness,
• ... bugged people to get the AGM agenda ready to go (it's on its way, and my annoyance tactics aren't helping it go any faster, so I'll try to stop pestering now!),
• ... bugged Jodie Austin for details of the AU Dinner awards (sorry!). They're online now, so panic over,
• ... finally put Elle's tenancy deposit news article online (only a month after I was asked to do it - sorry!),
• ... turned on the new Get Involved template (and I'll be polishing the Get Involved pages over the next few weeks),
• ... done some more bug fixing on the site to repair the RSS feeds after the upgrade to the database broke a few things (again, sorry, and a thankyou to hosting bod Clive Garder for helping fix it!
• ... tidied up the AGM pages and found out where the AGM agendas and minutes are kept so we can build an archive of that, too...
• ... and a load of other really boring, boring things no-one cares about, too.....

...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz /al ;o)