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Getting the Most Out of Blurb

http://www.consumptive.org/?p=544

Technical notes on making a Blurb book:

Use the B3 custom work flow; this will help assure color and density consistency from book to book. Also you will be able to see a very close soft proof on your monitor of what your printed images will look like. You need to have a color calibrated monitor for B3.

Use the premium paper; it is thicker and brighter white. This makes for a more brilliant image with clean highlights.

Convert your images to the sRGB color space. Also resize your images at 300ppi to the size requirements of the layout [remember to use "bicubic sharper" in Photoshop image size dialog box if reducing] and save in RGB mode as a jpg at the highest quality setting. Should you leave it to Blurb to convert the color space and resize your images, you lose control.

For monochrome images I recommend using a duotone preset from Photoshop. I’ve read complaints that it can be difficult to obtain a neutral grey image from Blurb’s printer. With a duotone, though the color might subtly shift from screen to print, it will present far less of a problem than a slightly magenta or green tinted neutral grey would. Also a duotone will lend a pleasing dimensionality to your images.

Blurb’s printer renders midtones and highlights beautifully, but tends to block and muddy the shadows. Also, due to the difference between subtractive color [ink] and additive color [monitor], images often look darker when printed than they appear on screen. Its likely your first book will look too dark as mine did.

I was uncertain how much to lighten my images, so for the second attempt I simply lightened all the photographs by 10% using the “lighter” preset from the drop down menu in Photoshop’s curves dialog box. I knew this was going to be too light — but that’s ok. Between the too dark first proof, and the too light second proof, I had two known control points – 10% apart – with which to more accurately judge the correct density for optimum shadows.

For the third proof I individually adjusted the density of each image to where I felt it should be between the too dark and too light proofs, making careful note of the curve data. When I received this book, it was very near acceptable. Following my curve notes for each, I  re-adjusted the density of about a third of the images; very slight increments were needed at this point, just 1% or 1.5% up or down to open up a shadow or bring back a little mystery, as well as to balance the layout as a whole.

If I were to make another book I’d use the same process, but print the too dark and too light images in one large book, to save time and money.

For you darkroom printers, you might recognize my strategy as not unlike zeroing in the correct density by using test prints. Michael A. Smith’s outflanking the print is my guide.

Ronnie Britt Training

Ronnie Britt Training

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New Orleans Katrina 1-Year Anniversary

New Orleans Katrina 1-Year Anniversary

Credit Karma

Credit Karma recently launched the free Credit Report Card service that assigns letter grades to each component of your credit score. If you want to improve your credit score, try to bring up your performance in areas where you have low or failing grades. Not every component has the same bearing on your score, so underneath each section Credit Karma tells you how much weight it has. For those who look at their reports and scratch their head, the Credit Karma report card, which is drawn from your TransUnion report, makes understanding why your credit score is the way it is a snap.

http://www.creditkarma.com/

Boy Sleeping in Church

25 Free People Search Engines

http://www.findermind.com/free-people-search-engines/

25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World

I’ve been in this people search industry for over 2 years now and while researching, I found many free, high quality free people search enginesto help you reconnect with friends, family, school friends or any other person from your past. So I decided to put them in one huge list. Here they are:

Find People Online – Search if a Person is present on the Internet

1. 123 People

What does it do: 123People searches through many social networks (like Facebook, Hi5, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster) forums, Wikipedia and other communities to see if the person you’re looking for is a registered member there. You can also enter additional details to narrow your search by city, zip code, country and so on.

2. MyLife

What does it do: MyLife is in my top 3 list for best people search engines. It searches over 800 million social network profiles via name, age, email address and so on. You can keep the contacts in one place via their interface.

3. TinEye

What does it do: With TinyEye you can search by PICTURE. Yeah, I’m serious. If you have a picture of a person and you want to see where that picture appears elsewhere on the web this is a great tool. They currently index 1 billion images…and this is a very small proportion of the web but the index grows rapidly every month.

4. Tweepz

What does it do: Search for people on Twitter by name, profession, religious background and many other criteria. Twitter grows every day and so the number of people registered there.

5. Spokeo

What does it do: If you have your friends’ email address and you want to see if they’re on Facebook, MySpace or any other social networking site Spokeo is the perfect site for you. It currently supports searching over 40 huge social networking websites.

6. Wink

What does it do: With this free people search engine you can search by name, phone and email. It does something similar to MyLife and 123 People.

7. Spock

What does it do: Its primary purpose is people search. But I found Spock to be EXCELLENT if you’re searching by profession. For example, you can type: professor “University of Sydney” and get lists of professors of that university! Very neat.

8. Username Check

What does it do: If you know that the person you’re searching for has an unique username you can use this tool to search by that criteria and see where he is registered.

9. Pipl

What does it do: Pipl is also one of my favorites free people search engines. They get their data from various sources and display them on one page where you can see online profiles, blog posts that person made, archives and other valuable information.

10. Yasni

What does it do: Yasni is a mind-blowing resource that you can use to find people by name.

11. PeekYou

What does it do: PeekYou will search by first, last name or user name and deliver you all-in-one results on one page.

Find Classmates & Workplace and Military Friends

12. Alumni.net

What does it do: Alumni provides a list of alumni websites all over the world to help find your classmates. It is the biggest website on the internet of its kind.

13. Classmates

What does it do: Classmates is a big people search engine to help you find your friends from college, workplace and military.

14. ZoomInfo

What does it do: Zoominfo will search for large range of employees for different companies. Use this site to find professionals and workplace friends.

Find People using White Pages Directories

15. White Pages

What does it do: White Pages is the most popular directory to search for a person’s addresses and phone numbers. You can also do a reverse phone and address search so if you know the address or the phone, you can easily find the name.

16. AnyWho

What does it do: I’ve found AnyWho, although it has a smaller database than WhitePages, it containts some information about people that White Pages does not currently have. So I recommend you use them in a combination.

17. ZabaSearch

What does it do: This is a quite different website than the previous two. Here you can also find addresses and phone numbers like in Anywho and Whitepages. Sometimes they display different data than White Pages, but that is not often.

Find Maiden Names and Relatives

18. US Search

What does it do: This is a website for background check and it is not free. However there are some free functions they provide and that’s why I put it in the list. If you type a person’s name, in the results you’ll see previous names of the person. Often if you’re looking for a married female you can find her maiden name this way (or if you don’t know her married but know the maiden name.) You will also see previous locations where that person lived.

19. Private Eye

What does it do: If you go here and click the first “Search” button then you’ll get to a website where you can see possible relatives and room mates of the person you’re trying to find. You will also see the ages of the relatives and the room mates so you can determine more accurately if that information is true.

Find People using Public Records

20. Public Records Finder

What does it do: If you scroll down below you’ll see a list of public records by state. There you have thousands of websites that provide free public records.

21. Infobel

What does it do: Infobel is by far the world’s largest directory of white pages resources. Use it for international people search.

22. Ancestry – Social Security Death Index

What does it do: Search people by their social security number and see if they’re still alive. Or you can use this search engine to find deceased people and do further research.

23. Criminal Searches

What does it do: This is the only free criminal records engine. You can search for a person and see if he has a criminal record.

Find People Using General Search Engines

24. Google People Search

What does it do: You can use Google to enter a phone number (this is only for United States) and it will give you the owner of that number. You can also search for a person using Google. Just make sure you surround the first and last name in quotes. So, write “John Smith” instead of John Smith.

25. Yahoo People Search

What does it do: Yahoo uses their search engine to find people for you. It is a great resource.

So those are the top 21 free people search engines to find anyone no matter where they’re from. Which is the best? There’s no best engine here. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. So the more you use, the bigger the chances are you’re going to find the person you’re looking for. Good luck!

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Ronnie Britt Training

Ronnie Britt Training

Ronnie Britt Training

Project Gutenburg: Audiobooks

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1

Free Audiobooks

Free Classic Audiobooks

Foreign Languages

http://www.openculture.com/2006/10/foreign_languag.html

Audiobooks

Free online College Courses

Free Lectures & Courses from Great Universities (Audio and Video)

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Gethuman: Bypass Automated Customer Service

Gethuman, the awesome website that lists shortcuts to help find your way past automated menu trees and reach live people, now has a free standalone version for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.

http://gethuman.com/

Ronnie Britt Training

Ronnie Britt Training

Ronnie Britt Training

Mixed martial arts fighter Ronnie Britt, 44, trains for his last professional fight at Spartan Strength in Clive.

MMA Fighter Ronnie Britt Training for His Final Fight