Author Archives: Maria Langer

Creating a Photo Calendar with InDesign

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An overview of how I did it and the results.

This year, I decided that I needed an affordable yet memorable holiday gift to send out to all my customers and the folks I do business with. I wanted this gift to be an in-your-face-all-year-long item. That means it had to be something the recipients would want to keep and refer to.

A calendar seemed to fit the bill.

Now every year, I get sample calendars with my company name on it from various printers who print promotional items. They’re usually pretty boring; certainly not the kind of calendar you’d want to use all year long. Clearly, I had to do better than that.

The solution was a custom calendar using the photos I’ve taken over the years to show off the places I fly to and my helicopter. The challenge was to make a professional-looking, attractive calendar that was cost-effective to print.

iPhoto’s calendar printing option was the obvious choice for creating the calendar. It offers several different formats, many of which would meet my needs. What did not meet my needs, however, was the price: $19.99 per calendar. Since I figured I’d need at least 50 of them, that was far more than I wanted to spend.

My husband suggested MagCloud, which I’ve been using for other print-on-demand needs. At first, I didn’t think it would work out. After all, MagCloud produces stapled magazines sized just under 8-1/2 x 11. But then I held a sheet of paper up to the Robinson Helicopter calendar on my wall. And guess what? It was the same size.

So I decided to go with MagCloud for printing.

At that point, it looked as if I’d be creating a 28-page calendar from scratch. Not something I looked forward to. But I did a Google search for 2010 InDesign Calendar Template, which directed me to the 2010 InDesign Calendar Template by Juliana Halvorson on the Adobe Web site.

I downloaded it and discovered that it was almost what I needed. The template assumed a landscape orientation. I wasn’t sure if MagCloud would accept the document created that way. So I modified the template to make it portrait orientation and rotated all the calendar grids. A few adjustments to the margins and bleeds (which I initially got wrong) and it was a good starting point for my own project.

First up was reviewing the holidays. Juliana had included several extra religious and “Hallmark” holidays that just weren’t appropriate for a general use calendar. I removed them. I also changed the wording of some holidays — for example, changing Thanksgiving Day to just plain Thanksgiving.

Then I needed to redo the thumbnail calendars for the previous and next month that appear on each calendar page. The type was just too small. That turned out to be a time-consuming chore, as I had to basically reformat each little calendar individually. But it was worth the effort; the numbers are now far more readable.

Here’s a little movie of the calendar’s pages. You’ll need QuickTime to view it.

Then the big task: finding the images I needed in my calendar — 12 full-page images and about 16 smaller ones — cropping them for the right proportions, saving them as TIFFs, and dragging them into my working file. It took me two full days to get the job done. In the end, it was very tedious and I just couldn’t wait to finish it.

Since the calendar’s pages had to be in multiples of 4, I had to stretch my 26 page document to 28 pages. That also meant filling in 2 more pages with something. I decided to put information about Flying M Air’s services, along with thumbnail images from the big pictures.

Once completed, I created the PDF MagCloud needed to print my calendar. The first upload (which took 4 tries on my miserably slow Internet connection here in Wickenburg) resulted in an error. I’d gotten the bleed measurements wrong. I fixed them and (fortunately) did not need to adjust the layout. Two hours later, after about 8 upload attempts, the file was online. The preview looked good.

I ordered the free proof and am now waiting for it to arrive. If it passes muster — and I’m about 95% sure it will — I’ll order about 50 copies to give as holiday gifts to clients and friends.

In the meantime, I’ve “published” the calendar so others can preview and (hopefully) buy their own copies. There is one caveat, however. Because MagCloud publishes magazines and not calendars, if you buy from MagCloud, you’ll have to punch your own hole in the top of the calendar.

I’ll be doing a lot of hole-punching next week.

Spelling Checkers Don’t Work if You Ignore Them

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Reminding my brain not to block out the red underlines that indicate potential spelling problems.

Check Spelling as You Type has been a built-in feature of many word processors for years. It’s now in most applications I use — including my Web browsers, for Pete’s sake! — and the red squiggly or dotted underlines are an integral part of my writing life.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about — do you live in a cave? — I’m referring to the feature that indicates when a word you’ve typed may have been spelled wrong. This is supposed to flag the word so you can check and, if necessary, correct it.

A Blessing…

I vaguely remember when this feature first appeared in Microsoft Word years ago. It was a blessing — and a curse.

I initially loved the feature because it often identified my typos. I’m a touch typist and can get up to 80 words per minute when I’m tuned in. But those aren’t always error-free words. Check Spelling as You Type was a great feature for finding typos as I worked, eliminating the need to run a spell check periodically or at the end of document creation.

As you might expect, it also found spelling errors. My spelling was always pretty good, so it usually found more typos than actual spelling mistakes. But that’s okay. An error is an error and I want to remove all of them from my work, whenever I can.

…and a Curse

But over the years, I’ve found some problems with the Check Spelling as You Type feature — and spelling checkers in general.

The feature does not identify all typos or spelling errors as errors. For example, suppose you type bit but you really meant but. A spelling checker doesn’t see any problem with that, so it won’t flag it. That means you can’t depend on a spelling checker to proofread your work. (And yes, in case you’re wondering, a grammar checker would likely identify this as a problem. As well as the sentence you’re reading right now, because it isn’t really a proper sentence. And this one, too.)

So you’ve got a feature that makes you lazy by doing about 90% of the proofreading work for you, as you type. If you neglect to do the other 10% of the proofreading work, you could be very embarrassed — especially if you write professionally and editors expect your work to be error-free.

The unflagged error that zaps me most often? Typing it’s instead of its. At least I know what it’s supposed to be.

It’s worse, however, for people who don’t know the correct word. How many times have you seen people use then instead of than? There instead of they’re or their?

The feature has degraded my spelling skills. In the old days, before spelling checkers, I simply knew how to spell. If I wasn’t sure of the spelling of a word I needed, I looked it up in — can you imagine? — a dictionary. It made it worthwhile for me to actually learn how to spell words. Knowing the proper spelling saved me time in the long run.

But now, I simply type the word as I think it might be spelled and wait to see if it’s flagged. If it is, I use a context menu — Control-click or right click the word — to choose the word I meant to type. Yes, it’s convenient. But I seem to be doing it an awful lot more than I used to use a dictionary.

(Perhaps it’s also expanding my vocabulary by making it easier to use words I’m not as familiar with? There’s something there.)

The feature identifies any word it does not know as a potential spelling error. That means that if your document is filled with jargon, technical terms, place names, or other words that do not appear in a dictionary, those words will be flagged as possible errors. The word unflagged, which appeared earlier in this post, was also flagged. Is it an error? Or does my spelling checker simply not recognize it? Seems like a word to me, so I let it go.

And herein lies my biggest problem: I’m so accustomed to seeing words flagged in my documents that I’ve managed to tune out the red underlines. (It’s kind of like the way we all tune out advertisements on Web pages these days.) This happened to me just the other day. I typed the word emmerse in a blog post. My offline editing tool flagged it with a red dotted underline — as it just did here. But for some reason, I didn’t see it. I published the post with the error in it. A friend of mine, who referred to himself as a “spelling Nazi,” e-mailed me to point out my error. I meant immerse, of course. He knew that. Readers likely knew that. But I got it wrong and I shouldn’t have. How embarrassing!

Spelling Checker

Here’s a look at the spelling check feature in ecto, my offline blog composition tool of choice. It works just like any other spelling checker. (And yes, I do compose in HTML mode.)

The correct way to go about this is to look for every single possible spelling error and resolve it so those red lines go away. That means learning or adding the unknown word so it’s never flagged again or ignoring it so it doesn’t bother you in this document. All of this should be done with the appropriate menu command. Simply telling your brain to ignore a problem just sets you up to be blind to it when it occurs. That’s not how the software was designed to work.

The Point

This post has a point — most of mine do — and here it is: spelling checkers, including any Check Spelling As You Type feature, are only as good as allow them to be. Use them, but don’t depend on them. Follow up on any flagged words and resolve them using the software so the red underlines go away.

Spelling checkers are just a tool. Like any other tool, it won’t help you if you don’t use it correctly.

Arguing with a True Believer

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It’s a waste of time.

I’m a skeptic. I’ve been a skeptic for at least the past 10 years, although I didn’t have a label for it way back when. After realizing that there was no proof in a lot of things I’d been told to simply believe, I started looking at things with a more skeptic eye. Although you can’t prove a negative — for example, something doesn’t exist — you can withhold believe until proof of the positive. That’s where I sit now.

Mary’s Mother

It’s also where I sat a few days ago when a house guest brought up the topic of a person’s spirit continuing to exist after death. When she — we’ll call her Mary (not her real name) — asked me whether I believed a person’s spirit existed after death, I said, without hesitation, no. She then launched into a long story about why she believed that spirits do go on after death.

It was kind of pitiful. Mary’s mother had died about two years before after about a year of declining health. Mary lived in California. Her mother lived in New York. Her mother was financially stable and had hired in-home nurses to care for her as she began the dying process. She’d been an alcoholic for most of her life and although she was always upbeat and fun, her last months were painful. Mary believed that the Hispanic nurses had held back on pain medication until her mother “accepted Jesus” — not very likely, as she was Jewish — and, as a result, her mother’s eventual death was more painful than it should have been.

Mary and her brother visited during the months their mother’s health was declining. In the end, they stayed until it was over.

Mary claims that a few days after her mother died, she had a dream that convinced her that her mother had died “a horrible death.” (I have trouble believing that, as she was fortunate enough to die at home with family nearby.) Mary claimed that her mother’s spirit was trapped in her house, unable to escape to whatever other place spirits are supposed to go.

Desperate to resolve the situation and save her mother’s tortured spirit, she sent a family member to the now unoccupied house to tell her mom to leave. (Mary was back in California by this time.) I don’t know if this family member actually did this.

Mary then contacted a psychic in California for assistance. I didn’t get all the details on the first contact. Apparently, Mary e-mailed the psychic a photo of her mother. I don’t know if she provided her mother’s name. In any case, they spoke by phone and the psychic managed to convince Mary that she could communicate with her dead mother. Tarot cards were involved; Mary didn’t understand why she needed them but was willing to put that aside. She told Mary that her mother was indeed trapped in her home and that the only way to free her spirit was for three people in three different places to light candles and play her mother’s favorite music and pray to her mother to “cross over.” I think they had to do this for three days in a row, but I may have that wrong.

So Mary asked her husband and cousin to do this. She did it, too. She says she’s not sure if her cousin did it.

Afterwards, she met with the physic in person. The psychic told her she did not remember their initial contact. She asked the psychic about her mother’s spirit. The psychic said that her mother’s spirit had been trapped but then something had “popped” (her word) and her mother had crossed over.

Mission accomplished.

I don’t know how much money exchanged hands, but I know Mary can afford whatever it was. And I do know that Mary is happy now, so I guess you can easily argue that no harm was done.

I’m not quite that generous, though.

Cold Reading

What followed was a discussion of cold reading, where a “psychic” makes a bunch of guesses and then reads his subject’s response to zero in on actual facts. It is documented that the human mind is more likely to remember correct guesses than incorrect ones. So if a “psychic” does a “psychic reading” and makes 5 correct yes/no guesses, 9 yes/no misses, and one direct hit, people come away thinking that the “psychic” has real psychic power.

Of course, John Edward came up in our conversation. Mary fully believed in his power. She had examples of “proof” of his power. She was not interested in the fact that every John Edward Crossing Over show is taped and then edited. They edit out the discussions he has that result in mostly misses and leave in the results that are mostly hits. The result might be something like this, which I don’t think is very convincing:

Did you watch this video? This is classic cold reading. Throwing out a common name, picking the person who responds, and asking questions to get information. Guessing all kinds of things that are relatively common — cancer, military service, etc. Pulling info out of people with questions. And they think he has real power. But listen carefully. How much is he actually getting right? How much is he telling them? Isn’t it more of a fishing expedition to suck information from people who already believe in his ability?

As Joe Nickell writes in his piece about John Edward:

The “psychic” can obtain clues by observing dress and body language (noting expressions that indicate when one is on or off track), asking questions (which if correct will appear as “hits” but otherwise will seem innocent queries), and inviting the subject to interpret the vague statements offered. For example, nearly anyone can respond to the mention of a common object (like a ring or watch) with a personal recollection that can seem to transform the mention into a hit.

I could not convince Mary. She was not willing to believe in my explanation of how he could have gotten a particular detail correct. The discussion got heated. She kept trying to convince me. I could not be convinced about a “trick” when I knew how it was done.

What I find particularly disturbing about all this is that Mary has a PhD in psychology and treats patients with particularly troubled backgrounds. She should be the voice of reason in these people’s lives. I hope that “woo” does not find its way into her diagnoses or treatments.

Another Friend

When I tried to relate this story to another friend of mine, he said two conflicting things in the same sentence: “You know I’m skeptical about all kinds of things, but I really believe the psychic I go to has real power.”

It was difficult for me not to explode with laughter.

He then went on to tell me about what was likely a personal, one-on-one cold reading. He’d make an easy subject. He’s a real talker and it wouldn’t take much to pull information out of him. He’s also willing to believe, which makes him more likely to remember hits more than misses or turn partial misses into hits by voluntarily providing information that makes a wrong guess right. This is why true believers will always continue to believe. They don’t understand that if a person had real psychic power, he/she should be able to make far more factual statements than errors. And the technique wouldn’t be a glorified guessing game, like the one John Edward plays on his television show.

My friend told me I should go see his psychic for proof. He’d set up an appointment. He’d tell her that I was a skeptical friend —

I stopped him right there. I told him I’d go, but only if he didn’t tell her a single thing about me — including my name. He didn’t seem to understand that she could simply Google me to learn all kinds of things about me that would be useful in her “reading.” It wouldn’t be a cold reading anymore; it would be a hot reading. She could simply recite things off my bio.

Will I go? Only if I’m sure she doesn’t know anything about me when I arrive. I may throw out my first name to see if she takes the hispanic bait (in Arizona, it’s far more likely for a woman named Maria to be Mexican than Italian). I’ll likely dress myself up a bit to alter my appearance and lead her to believe things about me that might not be true. I think these would be good tests of her ability to read minds rather than physical appearances. It would be an interesting experiment.

After all, I am a skeptic. Although I don’t believe that anyone has psychic power, I’m willing to let them try to prove that they do.

Helicopter Career Advice Sought…and Provided

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I answer another request for “my insights” submitted via e-mail.

This morning, I got another e-mail message today from someone interested in starting a career as a helicopter pilot. Here’s the content, with identifying information XXXed out:

I ran across an article about you and Flying M Air in this years Az. Highways and thought you might be able to offer some advice when you had some free time (though reading about all of what you do on the job, I’m thinking you don’t have much free time).

I am currently a director for a large multi-national XXX company in XXX doing global IT security operations, as I have done for other fortune 500 companies for the past 8+ years. I foresee another 2-4 years in the industry as I try and setup my exit strategy from corporate America. The deeper I get into the business side of things (finishing my MBA at XXX in May) and coupled with what I already know from doing IT security for large corps, the less I like the idea of spending the next 20 years behind a desk working for a corporation.

I’ve always loved helicopters as far back as I can remember. Tried to get a guaranteed shot at them in the Army but they wanted me to be in the infantry first so I entered the Air Force as an EOD tech (not helo’s but still fun). I did get to partake in several rides in Blackhawks getting air dropped into zones for work and training. Had a blast, even in the back of helo.

You seem to have escaped the corporate trap and entered the world of helicopters so I am hoping you can share some tips/pointers on how to enter the field. My current research and plan has me thinking I go to XXX helicopters to start training in 2010/1 and start to work my way up to get commercial to instructor tickets while working corporate job. Then I am not sure how to make the break from corporate America into aviation. I am really interested in medevac jobs as well as other jobs around XXX (versus long range/extended travel as I have a family based in XXX).

So in an attempt to wrap up what has become a long winded email, any insights, pointers, advice you might be able to share when/if you have some free cycles would be greatly appreciated.

First, I want to say that it was a pleasure to receive an e-mail like this from someone who was actually literate and could explain himself clearly. I suspect this guy can succeed at whatever he puts his mind to.

In formulating a response to him, I realized that although this blog has lots of posts containing my thoughts and opinions and experience on the topic, there isn’t one post that links to all of it. So I composed a response to him that collected the links and offered some additional words of advice. I’m repeating that response here for the benefit of folks looking for the same kind of information. In the future, I’ll simply link to this.

Thanks for writing.

I need to clarify something: I didn’t escape corporate America for a job as a pilot. I escaped for a freelance career as a writer. That’s where I make my money. If I had to depend on flying income and my flying business to cover all helicopter costs AND pay me enough to cover my mortgage and other living expenses, I’d be broke.

I’ve written about helicopter pilot careers extensively in my blog and that’s probably the best place to get my insights. Here are some specific posts to get you started:

And, for a lighter look, check out the video in this post: The Truth about Flying Helicopters

My biggest piece of advice is to NOT sign up for any “program” that takes you through the process of getting your ratings if that program requires an up-front commitment. You’ll understand why if you read the “Broken Promises” link above.

Don’t be lured by promises of a high-paying job as a helicopter pilot. It will likely take at least 5-10 years to quality for such a job and right now, the helicopter pilot job market is absolutely overflowing with low-time pilots competing for the entry level jobs needed to move forward in a career. If an employer has a choice between a 25-year-old career pilot and a 40-year-old on his second career, who do you think he’ll choose? Hint: inexperienced kids are willing to take all kinds of crap from employers because they simply don’t know any better.

Be a pilot because you love to fly — and be prepared to sink a LOT of money into flying before you see any money in return.

On that dismal note, good luck.

One more word of advice: if you want to be a helicopter pilot, subscribe to publications about helicopters, such as Vertical (excellent), Rotor & Wing (so-so but free), and HelNews (Australia-based but excellent). If you’re going to participate in helicopter forums, take every comment with a grain of salt and try to block out the comments by the trolls. I don’t think forums are worth the time, but I have limited time and patience; if you have more, give them a try. Immerse yourself in the helicopter pilot/flying community before making a career decision and spending a lot of money on training.

MagCloud

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On-demand magazine publishing.

I need to start this blog post by thanking RickHap for his comment on my blog post, “Marketing Madness.” My post whined a bit about the chore of putting together a 12-page package of information about Flying M Air‘s helicopter tours and day trips for Phoenix area concierges. Rick told me about MagCloud, an HP service that can turn a PDF into a slick, bound, full-color magazine.

The deal seemed too good to be true: only 20¢ per page for full color printouts with no minimum purchase. Just create the PDF, upload it to the site, and get a free proof. If it looks good, click the Publish button. Or, if you’re confident about your PDF production skills, simply publish it without waiting for the proof.

So I tried it. I threw together a quick PDF of the files I’d been printing at my local print shop for 80¢ per page and painstakingly slipping into special binders. I went away on a trip — have you noticed how much I’m traveling lately? — and when I got home, the proof was there.

And it was pretty damn good.

The print quality was better than I’d been getting from the local print shop’s fancy printer. It was smartly bound with staples, so it wouldn’t fall apart. And on the back page was an address area to make it easy to mail the materials out.

Not only was I hooked, but I began to see the possibilities in using this service to meet my own publishing needs.

Exploring Arizona by HelicopterFirst up (after the concierge package was properly done) was a newsletter for Flying M Air that I’m calling Exploring Arizona by Helicopter. I had to come up with a new design that utilized my company colors. The resulting PDF looks pretty good for a first effort, if I do say so myself. I can’t wait to see the printed version.

Although this first issue is a bit heavy on the marketing content, some comments from Miraz will help me focus on content with more universal appeal in the next issue. This issue does feature a few of my better photos, though, many of which can be found in my photo gallery. (Hey, a girl has to pay for this photo equipment, doesn’t she?)

I’ve ordered 20 copies to send out to former clients and hopefully entice some of them to submit photos and first-person accounts of their experiences flying with me. I’ll also be dropping off copies with some of the concierges I’ve been visiting to get them interested in what’s new.

If you have a newsletter or magazine you’d like to get printed on demand, I highly recommend MagCloud. And again, I’d like to thank Rick for sharing this info with me. I think it’ll really help me get the word out about all kinds of things in the future.