Kim Siever’s Blog

I enjoyed the flurry of activity that Cameron Moll inspired by asking everyone to post cropped screenshots of their current projects (version 1 and version 2). I received a lot of inspiration from what I saw.

Veerle has asked for everyone to post photos of where they work. Some of the workspaces are very cool and I covet them. I am grateful for my workspace, but I sure could use a better desk and a chair with arms. :)

Anyhow, I was inspired while testing out our digital camera at work to invite others to post photos of themselves. Part of me wants to put faces to all of the faceless designers out there whose work I have been admiring and blogs I have been reading. Another part of me wants to see what people look like when they do not have time to freshen up.

To start things off and hopefully discourage others from prepping themselves before posting, here’s my photo.

I haven’t cut my hair since I shaved it in the summer. My winter beard has been growing since the last week in September. My wife keeps threatening me with a haircut this week or next.

For posting your photos, please be sure the photo is 300 pixels wide and 225 pixels high. Please also host the photo on your own webspace. You can use regular XHTML to post your photo.

Oh, and if anyone is shocked at my ad-lib photo, you can find a prepped me over here.

(Thanks to Jonathan Hollin for the hat tip.)

If there is one thing I hate about digital image manipulation it is scanning in photos. Specifically it is scanning photos on a dirty scanner bed.

I should qualify this post by saying that my scanner bed is not inherently filthy and grimy. However, it attracts dust particles like my stomach attracts fried chicken. I end up spending ten minutes trying to clean up photos after they have been scanned in.

I try to clean the scanner bed as often as I can, but as soon as I open up the cover, dust particles drop down like atomic bombs on the bed.

How do other flatbed scanner users overcome this annoyance?