back to the Stone Age

You never really appreciate high-speed internet until you don't have it any more. Since Black Friday, my DSL connection has been ridiculously slow. I couldn't even get a connection on Saturday. I called on Sunday to see if there was some sort of problem; the automated service said there were no network issues, but at that moment my connection was mysteriously restored, and I haven't had any problems with my ISP since. Hmmmm.

But it's still slow. Like, dial-up slow. Maybe even 2400 baud slow, where you can see individual letters typing themselves across the screen. My shopping style has definitely been cramped. And now that I'm trying to upload and, worse yet, edit photos for the Venus Vanguard stocking tomorrow, I am really feeling the pain. I prefer how Picnik handles color corrections to my desktop photo editing programs, but it is taking forever to load photos, and the batch edit option hasn't worked for me for weeks now so Picnik has to relaunch every time for each photo.

Since it was so pokey, I thought I'd give Adobe Photoshop Express another try. Still don't like it. It took even longer than Picnik to launch. And the editing options seem much less flexible and intuitive than Picnik's. For instance, exposure and contrast are bundled together; you can't adjust them separately as far as I can tell. I would definitely not call it Photoshop Lite; it's more like Photoshop Zero.

I did manage to edit my photos of my new soaker ornaments. I think they're pretty darn cute. Though they're not quite shaped like my normal-sized soakers. I am having a hard time resisting the urge to rip them out and redo them. I happened to buy a Christmas wreath today, and it made a nice backdrop for the ornaments.





I also dyed a new colorway this week, Coldfire. It's inspired by C.S. Friedman's trilogy of the same name. Silver, frosty and royal blues, and deep, deep black. I really like it.