Started the PhotoShop course over the Internet today at the office. The software they wanted you to download was Real Networks RealPlayer G2, a chat room plug in for the browser and Adobe Acrobat. I didn't have the chat room plug in for my browser, but I had the others, so after a simple download, I was ready to go.

This is a beginner's course. I've been using PhotoShop for over a year, yet I haven't really been very adventuresome about learning what it can do and the results of my efforts have been, um, modest.

Same with Illustrator. Haven't a clue how it works, except I know with a little effort I could greatly improve the looks of things around here so if PhotoShop seems to be going well, I'm going to sign up for Illustrator and do them together, learn the magic of graphics in tandem, so to speak, maybe find a clever way to rid my pages of the magic of frames (and the crummy dumb way they display in the Netscape browser). Adventure, my friends, adventure.

But other things. Today I dodged a bullet of my own making. A friend, who lives in a large house up in the hills with a group of web developers, sent me an url to take a look at, so I dialed in at the office and found a site that at first look was essentially the presentation through photographs of the photographer's "significant other" (Shit, I hate that term. We used to say "old lady", but there are those that don't like that one very much either.). I thought, well, this is one to look at when I get home, so I sent him an email saying I liked the idea, particularly as a photographer, and said, writing about the photographer, "he could tighten some things up a bit."

The return email said he'd not been referred to in the third person in an email before. Oh, shit. It was his site. Review my email: I was positive about it, thank god, particularly since we're having dinner together tomorrow.

I have to admit the idea of the site struck a chord. (I'll post the url here when he gives permission to the world to view it.) It's really a permutation of the entire journal/personal expression wave, except there are two people involved shaping photographically and in writing their shared vision together, artist and model, in web format. What they are doing is edge of the envelope stuff, the web as an art form, and I'm looking forward to hearing what they have planned. Jogs the juices, gets the imagination up.