What are you doing for New Years Eve?

Thanks to Darrin for buying The Ultimate Matrix Collection (10 DVDs) from my Amazon wishlist in payment for the header graphic I made for his site, I’ll be sitting around with my family, pigging out on lots of good food, while we hold a Matrix Marathon. Yes indeed, we will be watching all ten dvds, one after the other in the order they came out. (Thanks, Darrin!)

I’d also like to give a special thank you to the blog reader (and elsewhere contributor) who gave me a very special Christmas gift which will pay for the next year’s hosting at TextDrive. (THANK YOU!!) I won’t mention his name so as not to embarrass him or anything, but if he feels like letting you all know who he is, he can give a shout out in the comments. Needless to say, this is a blessing I never ever thought would happen to me and it came at a time when I really needed it. I am so grateful for this… I will do my best to build some sites that are worthy of the gift. Thanks! :))) And yes, I cried when I saw the notification from paypal. (So much for my “Evil Queen” image, eh? LOL)

In other news from here… I’ve been going through PaintShop Pro tutorials I’m finding online and learning all kinds of new techniques, and teaching myself better ways of doing things. At this point, I am still using v.8.10 but may upgrade sometime in the next few months to the latest version. I’ve been a PSP user since v.3, when it was still shareware, and I *still* don’t know how to do everything it can do. There are so many different options and settings and it’s all user-customizable. Like PhotoShop, we also have vector text and graphics, masks, layering, filters, custom brushes, scripting (or “actions” if you’re a PhotoShop junky) and various other goodies to play with. I’ve tried the demo versions of PhotoShop several times over the years, but it’s user interface just doesn’t seem intuitive to me like PaintShop Pro’s does. I don’t know why, but I just never could get the hang of PhotoShop like I did with PaintShop Pro… and I don’t think using PaintShop Pro makes me any less “professional” than I would be if I were using PhotoShop, so take THAT, you snobbish PhotoShop people! muahahahaha! Besides, now that Corel has purchased Jasc, there is a much better Research & Development team behind PaintShop Pro for the foreseeable future of the product, and I’m already seeing some of the features from the old Metacreations Painter in v.9 of PSP (which Corel also owns). If you don’t remember Painter, it was the graphics program that was packaged in an actual paint can. Remember that? Painter is also the most “natural” digital paint program I have ever used. And yes, I still have Painter Classic, all I’m lacking now is a Wacom graphics tablet.