My dearest visitors, first af all Happy New Year to all of you!
I, personally, to give a good start to 2011 posted my entry to the Handicap International Contest, run by a french site Monsieur Poulet.
Here it is and if you like it, please hurry up and VOTE! Thanks!!

Is it the extended weekend that I somehow forgot about all to-dos, shoulds, have-tos etc? Totally laid-back – it’s not very me… (yet?).
About the afternoon I felt I miss my macbook, woke it up and had this sudden urge to change my avatar. The one (to the left) I’ve been using up to now was a self-portrait created in Illustrator. The plan was to modify it and make it more for spring and summer. Ear muffs and my warmest yellow sweater are deep down in the closet now.
My hair got longer so I used the pen tool to draw some more. Since I took the scissors and cut myself a straight fringe I needed to reproduce the effect with the ‘delete anchor point tool’ (-) and the direct selection (not sure which one was harder: RL or Ai).
Anyway, here are the results, it was mainly a direct selection work.
What I decided to be the new avatar:

My new spring/summer ;) avatar

My new spring/summer avatar - vector source in colors

When you change from a pc to a mac, one (out of the many) facility to discover is the extremely easy screenshotting. The commands below let you save screenshots of the entire screen, a selection or a single window:

• Cmd+Shift+3: saves a screenshot of the entire screen (png) on the desktop
• Cmd+Shift+4+select an area: saves a screenshot of an area (png) on the desktop
• Command+Shift+4+space+click a window: saves a screenshot of a window (png) on the desktop

Plus, if you are making the screenshots at the same time you use them then there are ‘save to clipboard’ commands:

• Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+3: copies a screenshot of the screen to the clipboard
• Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4+select an area: copies a screenshot of a selection to the clipboard
• Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4+space+click a window: copies a screenshot of a window to the clipboard

That’s a huge advantage already!

But… Now, what I want to explore and check if it works for me is a mac OS X application called LittleSnapper.
What I’ve discovered so far:

• With LittleSnapper you can organize your snaps within collections and folders. Add them tags, descriptions and ratings.
• The snaps are editable, the nondestructive vector-based annotations (highlighted/blurred areas, frames, arrows, text boxes) can be activated/deactivated while a snap is being dragged to another application.
• You can screenshot the web address (it takes a bit longer). Then you can open the snap in the LittleSnapper built-in browser where you don’t need to use crosshairs and select an area – it’s enough to roll over the elements you want to snap with a mouse. Smart as they call it.
• You can export a snap as a pdf (with or without pagination).

We’ll see, sad thing is – if me and LittleSnapper have a future ahead of us, I’ll probably have to spend 39$, 30 images is not a lot…

This is my very first post. Some people say it’s not about how you start. And I so agree.
Still, it’s probably the rightest time to outline the future content (at least in my mind).
I don’t want pehaa.com to be a ‘bla bla’ daily diary blog (don’t get me wrong – some of them are fascinating). I won’t blog about politics (pretty sure), shopping or recipes (though that may happen from time to time…).
What then?
Inspiring journeys (also virtual) – very likely! Things that amaze, enchant or simply touch me – even more. But mainly, I want this blog to accompany me while I learn, master and create in Photoshop and Illustrator. I want to have it by my side.