PowerPoint Master Class with D.Wallace Peach

For those who don’t know, Diana Wallace Peach is an immensely talented writer in the scifi/fantasy genre, but today we’re not talking books. Today we’re talking book trailers, and the graphical wizardry that Diana achieves with PowerPoint.

I have to tell you that despite knowing how to use Power Point as a presentation tool in business, I never knew it could be used to create something like this:

Part of the upcoming trailer for D.Wallace Peach’s new novel ‘The Necromancer’s Daughter’.

I wish I could show you the whole trailer, but that won’t be available until Diana’s new book launches in mid August. In the meantime, I’m going to share with you what Diana told me when I asked her how on earth she achieved such amazing effects.

Take it away, Diana. 😀

Hi Andrea, my techie friend. Thanks so much for having me over and asking about trailers and how I make mine. I’ll try to give enough information to get someone started.

I’m pretty clueless when it comes to technology, so I rely on my old business days, and I make my trailers using PowerPoint. Yep, just old-fashioned PowerPoint.

I learned by trial and error and just playing around with the program. It’s fairly intuitive, or I wouldn’t have been able to figure it out. I encourage lots of experimentation, and no one should stress – the undo button is our friend.

Finally, don’t try this if you’re facing a deadline. It’s not hard at all, but it is very time-consuming.

Now, to get started, here are ten basic steps:

• Start with a blank slide, and “insert” a black rectangle that covers the whole thing.
• Choose an image (or 2 or 3) that will work as your background and cover the black rectangle. Use copyright-free images, and stretch them to fit if necessary. Pixabay and Unsplash are great resources for free images. Or use your own! (Example 1)

Example 1

• Insert the images that you’re going to blend into your final picture. I chose 4 of them for this tutorial, but for some of my slides, I might have many more. Before I can use them, I might need to remove the background. Note that when you double click on an image, a little box appears in your menu bar that says “Remove Background.” (Example 2)

Example 2

• One at a time I remove the background from the images by marking areas to keep or remove. (Example 3)

Example 3

• Then I’m going to layer the images, rotate them, resize them, and position them until I like how they look. (Example 4).

Example 4

• To make them blend a little better, I right-click on each image and click on “Format Picture.” Here, there are loads of options from softening edges to adding a glow, shadow, or special effects. You can lighten, change contrast, or crop. You can also manipulate color. I softened the edges of these flowers a little, but for most of my composite slides for trailers, I do a lot of manipulation to make them blend into one scene. Just experiment until the slide looks right to you. (Example 5)

Example 5

• Insert text and format it! (Example 6)

Example 6

• Transition: Transition determines how your slides are going to transition from one to the next. Play with the “how” of the transition (fade or wipe, for example) and how many seconds you want it to take. Your whole slide will transition with all its images.
• Animation: Animation is how to delay the appearance of some images once the transition is underway. Again, you get to play with the “how” and “how fast.” You can have images fade into view or fly in (for example). I will typically create all my slides and then add transitions and animations at the end. You can preview what you’ve done under “Review” and make a hundred adjustments (like I do) until you’re satisfied. (Example 7 – video)

• Audio: You can add copyright-free music or add your own recording. For me, this means more fiddling with transitions and animations to make the slides line up with the music. Once you’re done you can export the entire trailer to an MP4 video. Easy Peasy! And Have Fun!

Easy Peasy she says! -grin- I don’t know about you, but I still think there’s a bit of magic in there somewhere. I also think that Diana is much more of a techie than she gives herself credit for, so…. I’m making her an Honorary Geek, complete with this lovely engraved award to put on her mantle piece:

If you want to know more about Diana’s work, in both words and graphics, pop into her blog at: https://mythsofthemirror.com/ where you’ll find a welcoming community of authors and readers. I know because I did. Or you can visit her Amazon Author page at: https://www.amazon.com/D-Wallace-Peach/e/B00CLKLXP8/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1 to see all the fantastic novels she’s published.

As for me, I’m so revved up I can hardly wait to start playing around with PowerPoint again.

Have fun,
Meeks

Pink tea, pizza and glasses

I don’t normally do plugs for brands, but I’ve totally fallen in love with this Nerada, Organic Rosehip with Lemongrass and Ginger Tea. It has no tea in it, which means it contains no caffeine, which means I can drink it after 12:00 midday without losing sleep at night. But the best thing about it is the flavour. It actually tastes nice…as in, I actually look forward to drinking it.

Who’d a thunk a herbal tea could taste good?

Apologies to all my Greenie friends. You were right. I should have listened.

Next, I’d like to draw your attention to the artfully displayed slices of pizza next to the tea. The filling includes tomato paste, homegrown basil, Greek fetta and homemade caramelised red salad onions. Oh, and the pizza base is homemade too. Click here to be taken to the recipe.

The Offspring made it all last night for dinner, and because it isn’t super greasy like commercial pizza, we could reheat it for lunch without feeling as if we were swallowing bucketfuls of grease! But the Offspring didn’t stop there. This morning, my clever Offspring fixed my computer glasses for me!

Back in the old world, I would have hopped in the car, driven down to Warrandyte village and asked the nice people at Eyes-on-Warrandyte to fix it for me. But the old world is gone. We’re not quite into a doomsday scenario, but it’s still not safe to go shopping, whatever the politicians may say. So what was I to do?

DIY, of course. I got out my trusty computer tools and a small magnifying glass and quickly realised that the screw holding one arm to the frame was close to falling out. Part of the reason for that was that a small thingumajiggie was bent.

I won’t bore you with the, um, technical details. All I’ll say is that I took the screw out and straightened the thingumajiggie, but could not get the damn screw back in. I simply could not see what I was doing, even with the magnifying glasses. See for yourself. These are my specs next to the tools:

Now, this is a closeup of the screw that goes in the glasses to hold the arm in place:

I was swearing in a very ladylike way, “Oh poppycock and balderdash!” when the Offspring came to my rescue. Said Offspring did some swearing too, but in the end…ta dah…my glasses are as good as new!

Thank you, Offspring. You will eat tonight. 🙂

And there you have it. An eccentric post for the new era of Do It Yourself. 🙂

cheers
Meeks

How to apply for an ABN – the basics

After the near disaster of my previous attempt to reactivate my ABN, I thought I’d better do a quick how-to for others.

FIRST!

The website you need to go to is:

https://abr.gov.au/

[Note: no www required]

That web address will take you to this screen:

Whether you’ve never had an ABN before, or want to reactivate an old one, this part of the process is the same: if you’re a sole trader, you have to click ‘For Business, Super funds & Charities’ [as shown above].

[Note: there are unscrupulous companies that hire people as employees but then force them to get ABNs in order to avoid having to pay entitlements such as holiday pay, sick leave etc. The government will NOT issue an ABN in these circumstances. In order to qualify as a sole trader, you must be carrying on some kind of business of your own. Being a self-published author qualifies me for an ABN].

Next, click ‘Applying for an ABN’

Then, scroll down the page until you reach this:

Click the bright yellow ‘Apply for an ABN’ button as shown above.

The next screen involves ticking checkboxes:

Click the screenshot to see a larger image.

For the second checkbox from the top, it says “I have the TFN, date of birth and name…” etc.

TFN stands for Tax File Number. If you are a sole trader, the only Tax File Number you will need is your own. Tick the checkboxes and then click ‘Next’.

The next screen is for your ABN entitlement. Click ‘Sole Trader’ and then click Next:

Remember, this is a government website so click the button for ‘Sole Trader’ again, then select the answers as shown below:

When you get to ‘What is the nature of your activity?’, click the small down arrow as shown and select ‘In the form of a business’. To be honest, none of the options seemed particularly relevant but this one worked for me so I guess it’s the general purpose one. Again, click Next to continue.

The next two sections – Application Detail and Business Information – are fairly self explanatory. The only tricky bit is if you’re seeking to reactivate an old ABN. If you don’t know what it is, you can check the ‘Look up’ table here:

http://www.abr.business.gov.au/Tools/AbnLookup

Or you can follow the ‘Look up’ link on the screen itself:

To find your old ABN, simply type the name associated with it into the search box and start the search.

If your ABN was cancelled through lack of interest, you won’t find it on the first page of results as they are for active ABNs only. Click the tab for ‘All ABNs’ :

So long as you typed the name correctly, the ‘All ABNs’ page should display your old business name at the very top of the list. Type, or copy/paste the ABN into the Application Detail form.

The second page of the Business Information section is where you type in your personal details, including your Tax File Number. Click Next.

If you are reactivating an ABN, the next page will have a big red error message saying that the system has detected that you already have an ABN…

-facepalm- “No? Really?”

Ignore this and click Next again. You won’t see the error message again, or at least not that one.

The next screen is a little odd:

There is a text box that allows you to type in your ‘…main business activity’. For mine, I mentioned needing an ABN to print my books via IngramSpark. I assume the word ‘print’ triggered something because when I opened the list of categories [see above], they ALL seemed to be related to printing. Anyway, click the category that most closely matches your business and then click Next to continue.

The next screen is also a little odd, or perhaps this is simply how the bureaucratic mind works. You will be asked to enter the business address details. One of those details is the email address, but instead of asking you to type the email address twice, one after the other [as most other websites do], the ABR site only asks for it once. You click next and it flags an error message. Essentially, you have to check that the email address you entered is correct. -more facepalm- That’s all it is. Click Next to continue.

This next one has to do with the business phone number, and it’s a fudge. I imagine the form was designed back when landlines were the no. 1 form of business communication, even for sole traders. Then, everyone started using mobile phones for their businesses. Recognizing this, the form was…changed, but not properly.

If your mobile phone is your only business number, do NOT type it into the box clearly labelled as ‘Mobile’. Type it into ‘Business’ as shown below:

Put the first 4 digits into the area code box and the last 6 digits into the number box…-sigh-

Almost done.

Under ‘Reason for application’, select the closest match from the drop down list.

For ‘Position held’ type ‘Sole Trader’.

Before you click Submit, try to print off the completed form. It didn’t work for me, which is one reason I took screenshots of everything, but it may work for you. When you’re done, click the Submit button.

The last screen is a confirmation screen. As I was simply reactivating an old ABN, I was told that it was active again. You may be told that it will take xx days.

Congratulations!

Meeks

DIY silver foil photos [update]

My scrunched aluminium photos didn’t work terrible well, but Dawn sent me some pics of real silver:

Going to have a play with them tomorrow. Fingers crossed. 🙂

* * *

I was searching online for photos of silver foil to use as a texture in the Innerscape cover when I had a light bulb moment – why pay for someone else’s graphic when I have metres of aluminium foil in the draw?

This is a screenshot of the five photos I took in the kitchen:

I lightly crushed the foil before positioning it in various places to achieve different light effects and angles. I’m still a lousy photographer, but I hope these pics allow me to create a true metallic effect for the ‘wires’ on the circuit board. And the best part is, if it turns out to be an absymal failure, it won’t have cost me anything but time. 🙂

cheers

Meeks

A [small] flood with big consequences

Warrandyte is a very hilly area, and my house is near the crest of a hill so even heavy downpours simply flow away from us. See exhibit A to the left.

Thanks to my poor photography, the land in the photo looks flat, but it’s actually very steep. If you click on the photo you will see a much larger version in which you can just see the roof of the house down the bottom of my block. That should give you some idea of the actual lay of the land.

Unfortunately, even a well-placed block cannot compensate for owner stupidity [mine]. Explaining what I did wrong will require a few more pictures :

This first photo is of the area leading to my firefighting pumps. To protect them, I had a pump-house built. Nothing wrong with that. To further protect them I had a wall built in front of the pump-house with an earth berm on the other side [the idea is that fire will rush up the hill and be deflected over the pump-house]. Also not a bad idea, especially as I had an ‘agi’ pipe laid to carry away any water that might flow into the pump-house area.

So what went wrong?

Well, late last year I had this idea of laying flat paving type stones in front of the the pump-house. My reasoning was sound; every north wind deposited heaps of eucalyptus leaves and branches in front of the pump-house. This debris was not only a potential hazard during a fire but also a real pain to clear. [I’d originally covered the ground in a layer of big pebbles, and you can’t sweep pebbles].

Long story short, I thought the drainage in the area would not be affected if I simply placed paving stones on a thin bed of sand…

I was right, and I was wrong. Light showers drained away without any dramas, but as I discovered to my horror, two days of solid, pouring rain just collected in the pump-house area as if it were a very big bucket.

I don’t have any pictures as it was 2am and I was too busy bailing water with a bucket to remember my camera. To give you some idea though, I was wearing gumbies [knee high rubber boots] and the water reached above my ankles.

When bailing was not having an appreciable effect, I tried pulling up the paving stones in the pitch black… Needless to say I eventually gave up and went to bed.

Since that awful night I’ve pulled up the pavers and dug up most of the agi pipe to check if it was working. It was. See exhibit C below:

[Note: agi pipe is agricultural pipe that has holes or slots cut into it. The idea is that water seeps in through the holes and then flows away through the pipe]

So what went wrong? The sand, that’s what. I’d used very fine sand and it basically just clogged up. Water did seep through but very slowly, and so when the flood happened, the water could not drain away fast enough.

Digging all this out has been a back-breaking job, and I still have not been game to test the pumps, but I think they’ll be okay. -fingers crossed behind back- Once I finish, I’m going to hire in someone to install a grate the full length of the agi pipe [in front of the pumps]. Then I’m going to get the rest of the area properly concreted. I shudder to think how much it will cost, but DIY got me into this fix in the first place so I’m not game to learn concreting as a hobby.

Anyone else with DIY horror stories? Please tell so I don’t feel quite so alone [and stupid]. 😦

Meeks