October 20, 2006

PEN 10.06 - The Art of the Dash

Well, I finally went ahead and did it. It seems as though everyone is podcasting these days, isn't it? Well, here's my offering -- I hope you like it! Feedback is of course, always welcome!



Pen is a video podcast that focuses on Illustrator and related content. It's for that reason that I call it "infinitely scalable content". Special thanks to the Creative Professional Association for sponsoring this.

The link to the video podcast -- formatted for the iPod and iTunes -- is here.

NEW! I've added an iTunes subscription link here.

NEW! Due to popular demand, and because I just want to be different, I've decided to provide my readers with a text version of PEN - The Vector Podcast. So I guess you can call it a simulcast. You get both the video, AND the PDF, all for the same low price. Now how can you possibly beat that? The link to the PDF is here.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Slick -- thanks for publishing this.

Anonymous said...

Great episode, Mordy!

It would be great if you could have this posted to iTunes so I could subscribe to it there.

Unfortunately, Safari on the Mac doesn't handle your M4V link well. If I click on it, it spews garbage on the screen (it doesn't seem to recognize the M4V extension, and I don't see a way of setting that in Safari). If I Control/right-click to choose download to disk, it adds a ".m4v.txt" extension.

Firefox on the Mac handles it better, but this is kind of a hassle. Much better if I could just subscribe through iTunes like I do for my other podcasts. Also, when I download it separately, iTunes puts it in the Movies category instead of the Podcast category.

Unknown said...

Thanks Steve. I'm jsut getting started with this whole video podcast thing, so I have much to learn... :)

I'll work on getting the iTunes subscription thing as soon as I can...

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Mordy, for creating this new addition to the wonderful world of Adobe product podcasts. Looking forward to many more!

Anonymous said...

Your web server is not configured to deliver the correct MIME headers for that file type, so when it sends:

Panopticon:~ nate$ curl -I http://www.mordy.com/pics/pen_1006.m4v
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:56:57 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) PHP/4.3.11
Last-Modified: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:57:48 GMT
ETag: "32801f-7a7dd2-4539384c"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 8027602
Content-Type: text/plain

Safari takes its word for it and assumes the file is plain text. Try adding something like

AddType video/mp4 .m4v

to an .htaccess or httpd.conf file in charge of that domain.

Anonymous said...

Hi Mordy,
The podcast was fantastic and well worth the wait : )

Something that I would like to see in future podcasts would be a visual demonstration of the plugins mentioned in your 'Direct Selection' feature. The screenshot was fine but, when you said that Rick's plugin will not align corners perfectly, it would have been brilliant to have been able to see just how close it can get...

If your sponsors don't mind, a slightly less compressed version of the podcast for those of us who don't watch these things on video iPods would be a great addition.

Looking forward to seeing more - all the best : )

Unknown said...

Thanks Nick!

Yes, I'm on an Intel-based Mac (MacBook Pro), and the -0 is prevalent all throughout the app. 10.4.8 doesn't help it at all (although it does fix the decimal problem in InDesign).

Anonymous said...

Hi Mordy

It seems to be a really great source of information your blog, but I just don't get why I should see/listen the podcast on my browser, if it would be much easier for me to download it to my iPod, like the other podcasts I see/listen to...

Marcos, Denmark

Unknown said...

khiltd, you're a genius :)

Thanks -- I edited my config file and the video now correctly loads in a browser. Now I just have to get the feed published correctly to iTunes, and we'll be in business!

Anonymous said...

Mordy,

This podcast sold a copy of your book. THANKS!

Now for the question. I created a path using the pen tool (CS2, btw), changed the stroke to dashed and set the gap to 0, 20 and the cap to round. Now I've got a column of buttons that follow the seam perfectly! I want to expand this object's appearance so I can use the circles in a live paint group, but Expand Appearance is ghosted under Object. If I just expand it, it creates a fat, wavy, round-ended, closed path that's filled with my stroke color. What to do?

Unknown said...

Oooh, I KNEW I forget to add something to the podcast... SIGH....

To expand a dashed stroke while retaining the appearance of the dash, choose Object > Flatten Transparency and make sure the option marked "Convert All Strokes to Outlines" is checked.

It shouldn't have to be this way, but that's the workaround until Adobe decides otherwise :)

Anonymous said...

Way to go Mordy!
Great introduction to the world of Podcasting. A nice video and the bonus PDF will be a real winner!

By the way, what does the 10.06 means? October 2006?

Unknown said...

Hi JC!

Yes, 10.06 refers to October, 2006.

I'm almost done with version 11.06 of the podcast -- I think it's quite a good one. And I've improved the format somewhat... I think you're gonna like it :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the PDF version. It lets me satisfy my curiosity about what is in the podcast. I imagine the video shows more pictures, though, right?

What I would really like, but I imagine I'm too much of an oddity to be worth targetting, is a video with subtitles instead of audio. (I can't stand hearing audio come out of a computer and will hit the back button the second I hear a peep out of the speakers.)

Why, by the way, do you recommend creating pattern swatches before using them in a pattern brush? I never do. It is faster to just click on the New Brush button with the art for the side tile selected on the artboard, and then alt/option-drag the art for the corner and/or end tiles from the artboard onto the blank squares in the Brushes palette.

Unknown said...

Great question Teri. The answer is simple -- I had no idea you could drag art directly into the Pattern Brush dialog. Cool stuff.

David Page Coffin said...

Great stuff, Mordy. IS there any way to create an asymmetrical multi-stroked dash, such as a filmstrip with holes on only one side? I guess you can do whatever you want with a pattern brush...but how ‘bout as a graphic style?