Have been working on and off for the last week on a flash movie for the school website. Showed it to the powers that be, expecting them to cut it down to 5 photos and they liked all of it - which made things a bit difficult because the file size was so large. There are 28 photos in the movie.
ANYWAY, I sent it off to be uploaded and the lady rang me back and said that the file size was too big and that I needed to optimize my photos. I was a little upset because I have spent hours optimising the photos. I mean I have worked hard at it. Spent hours. So I said as politely as I could that of course I had optimised my photos.
ANYWAY, big problem. Page won't load weighed down with a 1.6mg flash video. Remembered JAlbum - decided to give it a go. THEN.. noticed as I opened the folder of images that one of the images was 1.2 meg. Ouch. Somehow in the heaps of images that I have done, I missed one photo.
JAlbum is the best. I highly recommend it. I choose the folder with my optimised images, and set it to go. It reduced most of the photos again by half (down to around 30k) and the really large one down to about 50k.
http://jalbum.net/ is the link to the JAlbum page. If you have to optimise images, use JAlbum. Honestly it would have saved me HOURS over the last week. It belongs in my "Top 10 useful FREE software list".
Sometimes I get really depressed. It is so hard when I get a little better - I am suddenly well enough to know what it could be to not be so sick and yet, and yet, it is all still so out of reach.
Had to do parent teacher night and so ended up not well.
I read somewhere and I think it seems to be true for me, that I am much worse in the mornings than I am in the afternoons.
Reason for depression was just plain frustration. I walked all the way over to the new Creative Arts staffroom at college - wow it must be a couple of hundred meters, - sat down in a chair (instead of on the floor) when I got there, and then walked back. Admittedly it was after a full day at school. Then I helped a student for a while and did not sit in my good chair. End result - very low... just no energy when I got to school this morning. I was crying and Sylvia the lab assistant caught up to me as I was walking in to the staffroom like a person with cerebral palsy. She said I should have stayed home. but - I cry from frustration. I don't want to walk like that. I DON"T WANT TO HAVE TO PAY SOOO MUCH for expending a little extra energy the day before. ( I was at school from before 7.40 am to almost 5pm so it was a long day).
It is late now.
Got a funny message on my phone. Apparently they were testing my Dad's new phone, and they rang me up and left a message, just to make sure that the new phone worked!
The discipline required is exactly the opposite of the discipline so valued in the scholar, professional or athlete. It is the discipline to recognize and adhere to one's known limitations and to follow a strict regimen without periodically lapsing. It is the discipline not to succumb to family or societal pressures to get back into the rat-race. It is the will to protect oneself, to not over-do and to find ways to be productive and find fulfillment under unfamiliar and difficult circumstances.
