Boy, I guess I should write about my Ryerson class a little.

Not much to tell so far: I’m still in the “safe” Fireworks section, where most of my Photoshop/ImageReady knowledge keeps me afloat in terms of the blinding speed at which my teacher whizzes through complex tools and terminology.

We won’t start Flash for another two weeks yet, I think, but that’s when it’s going to get dirty. I know nuthink about Flash, or animation, or anything from there on in. After Flash comes Dreamweaver, where I anticipate further head scratching, sobbing, weeping, my hand constantly agitating the air around my head as I search fruitlessly for answers, etc.

So, yeah, class is okay. I learned a few new things, namely:
– the eraser doesn’t just make things erase… it can also make things only sort of erase, like 30% erase, giving this groovy transparent look. I didn’t know that previously.
– when using the ellipse tool to create ovals and rectangles and what have you, you can drag the gorram oval around using the spacebar while it’s still active and malleable. Did. Not. Know. So handy!
– some crazy combo of shift + alt + click lets you intersect shapes such that, say, three circles can be blobbed together to make a Mickey Mouse head, then you can paint bucket fill it or crop it or whatever. Was not aware of that either.
– and I learned how to make a nice, feathered out vignette, so portrait studio photography, here I come!
– also didn’t know that TAB toggles your toolbars on and off.

So I’ve learned a bit, as you can see. But perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned in the past 24 hours? On the inside, I’m a Riker.