Bernskiold Media

Drobo S: The Backup Robot

Likah Roux — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:00:29 +0000

The Drobo has become a big hit as one of the simplest RAID systems out there for storing your data. It is supposed to be a “backup robot” automatically sharing your files between the drives you put in, minimizing the risk for hard drive failure, in which case a red indicator light will let you know about it, so that you can exchange the drive.

Me and My Drobo

We were instantly friends, just for the peace of mind alone. Drobo is like the superhero that flys in with a red cape at the exact moment of need (be the need real or imagined) But like every relationship, only when you start spending quality time together do you find what exactly what it’s made of. I have spent the past four weeks with Drobo, and am here to give you the tell-all account of the little robot that could –with a bit of help from tech support, drobo support, and a not too shabby techie, yours truly.

My need was real. Working on the Dell Studio XPS345 with a mirrored raid system of 640 GB with a 1TB automatic backup drive attached via USB worked well but it filled up fast. Literally pushed against the wall with less than 5% space on my storage harddrive (bad, very bad as your tech friends will tell you!)

I purchased my first Drobo S online. You can purchase Drobo from several authorized retailers online and if you’re one of the lucky few- locally. Drobo S fits 5 hardrives. You can purchase it as a bundle with drives already loaded into it or buy the robot empty and fill him yourself. Have extra harddrives lying around? Perfect! Put them to work! The Drobo can take different sizes and brands of hardrives. I decided on a bundle which was more cost effective and included my HD company of choice. 5 2TB drives filled my Drobo for an enjoyable 10TBs of space (about 7.4TB of usable storage room).

Plug (in the right cable) & Play

“Plug & Play” is one of the biggest advertised features of Drobo, no tech mess, just plug and it’s ready to roll (of course read the instructions first). I read the instructions, and when I was well educated on the ins and outs of Drobo & my system, I plugged in eSATA… nothing happened.

I plugged in USB and it became a live working Drobo. But USB is slow. Turns out Drobo doesn’t like certain types of eSATA cards, mine in particular. (See DataRobotics support for information on supported eSATA cards DroboS does like.) It took on the up of about 8 hours to transfer 600GB of information using the USB connection. But it was working and I was happy about that. There is nothing that makes you feel more insecure as a professional than data that is not backed up.

After the backup was complete I had total access to all my data on Drobo. I also had the option to start regular back-ups to another location of my data via DroboCopy. This is one thing that gets overlooked by many people- Drobo stores and protects your data, but it does not (necessarily) back-up your data. It can protect against two hard drive failures by making your drives redundant and taking up more of your storage space. More on that here.

So even though Drobo is like a super hero, he needs a back-up. Take care of your data and back it up too.

Simplicity Talks

I have to commend the Drobo creators for the simplicity in which they created the Drobo language: lights. Once you speak fluent Drobo your heart will palpitate to these Drobo messages:

Green: No action required, all drives are healthy

Solid Orange: Replace this drive with a larger drive soon, Drobo is running out of space.

Blinking Orange and Green: Don’t remove these drives; Drobo is working to protect your data.

Solid Red: Replace this drive with a larger drive immediately, Drobo is critically low on space.

Blinking Red: Replace this drive immediately, this drive has failed and needs to be replaced.

Harddrive Failure Already?

Alright, it’s not Drobo’s fault, he performed like a hero, but seriously, 3 weeks into the game and a hard drive fails?! Needless to say, brand matters on your hard drive choice and though I did my research, my choice in Hitachi proved not to be a good one. The ominous blinking red and orange lights greeted me one morning- “Hard drive failed, working to protect your data.”

It was all I could do not to hover like a mother hen. I invested my data to Drobo and now it was the ultimate test, he was in there, fighting 1’s and 0’s against corruption. There was nothing to do but sit back and wait. An entire day of waiting. Drobo came out victorious and my data is safe and sound. Big sigh of relief and I feel one stronger having lives through that.

Conclusion

Pros: Drobo pulls in some strong points for living up to its reputation and protecting my data when push came to shove- that is after all, the most important job for this little machine.

Cons: I am not happy that my eSATA card is not recognized and really, I’m more upset that prior to my purchase I never heard anything about eSATA stipulations. When they say eSATA compatible it needs an *asterisk because you or your techie is going to do some work to make it happen unless your machine is already compatible. Another glitch: DroboDashboard does not always recognize my Drobo even though I can access my data and it is indeed connected.

The Final Word: This machine lives up to its super hero hype and at the end of the day, your data is safe with Drobo.

Simplistic Web Product Header

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:00:01 +0000

In this video tutorial, we are making a modern web banner that aims to display a product.

Adding an Identity Plate

Erik Bernskiold — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:00:27 +0000

Lightroom has a feature that lets you replace the Lightroom logo in the top left corner with text or an image of your own.

Step 1

Start by going to the Lightroom menu if you are on the Mac, or the Edit menu if you are on the PC. Then go down to Identity Plate Setup…

Step 2

In the Identity Plate Editor, you can either select to use a graphical identity plate by selecting a file from your hard drive or to use a text plate. This is all on the left side of the editor.

On the right side, you can change how the module picker buttons will look, in terms of typography.

When you are done, click OK to add it into the interface.

Designing a Realistic PostIt Note

Erik Bernskiold — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:00:52 +0000

PostIt notes make for great additions on website and some uses have gotten quite famous. In this tutorial, we are going to take a look at how to design a realistic PostIt note.

Creating a New Document

Create a new document (File > New). In order to have some workspace, make it 600×400 pixels at 72 ppi. If you are going to use this in print, you might want to increase the resolution to 200-300, depending on where it will be used.

Drawing the Base Rectangle

Select the Rectangle Tool (U) from the toolbar and draw out a rectangle at the size you wish to have the postit.

Colorize into PostIt Colors

To make it look more like a postit, double click on the color icon next to the shape layer in the layers panel. This will bring up the color picker. Set the color to a light yellow, #fffdb9 (R: 255, G: 253, B: 185).

Transform into PostIt Shape

Go into Free Transform by using the shortcut Command + T (PC: Control + T). Right-click inside of the canvas and select Warp.

With the Warp mesh over, drag the top and bottom handles on the left and right sides to create a curvature as indicated. Also click in the middle of the middle box at the bottom and drag it slightly upwards to create a curvature there as well.

When you are finished, click the Enter key to apply the edits.

Adding Some Style

Right-click on the shape layer and select Blending Options.

Apply a drop shadow with a 9% opacity, an angle of 143°, a distance of 5px and a size of 4px. This will add just a slight drop shadow below the note.

Final Result

This yields the final effect that by adding some text (in the example the font Kelly Script is used), can be used in your design elements.

Smart Template for iPhone App Showcase

Erik Bernskiold — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:00:19 +0000

On BestAppSite.com, me and Terry White publish news and reviews of iPhone apps, every day of the week. On every review, there are two iPhones ontop of eachother, each showing a screenshot of the application in question. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to make such a template, that you can easily update with new graphics through smart objects.

Creating the Canvas

Start off by creating a blank canvas. For this example, I am using 500×300 pixels at 72 ppi as the size with a background color set to white.

Adding in an iPhone

Let’s next grab a photo of the iPhone from Apple. They have many photos on the PR website part (apple.com/pr) that you can download. Place it on the right hand side of the canvas.

Duplicate to add a second

Duplicate the first layer with the first iPhone (Mac: Command + J, PC: Control + J) and place it to the left of the first, just slightly overlapping. Also move it down about ten pixels.

Adding the “Editable Regions”

Select the main display and create a new copy of the contents of the selection (Mac: Command +J PC: Control + J), which will put it up on its own layer. These two layers (Layer 2 and Layer 3 here) will be the ones that we replace with the individual app screenshots.

Converting to Smart Object

To make these two areas easy to replace with any file, we are going to right-click on the previously extracted bit (Layer 3) and select “Convert to Smart Object”.

Repeat this for Layer 2.

Replace Contents…

On both of the extracted placeholders, you can now that you have converted them to smart objects, right-click and select replace contents. This will use the same funciton as the Place command and place the screenshot into the same area, fitting it without reshaping it, into the area you have set up.

Final Result

Replacing the placeholders with actual app screenshots (here from Billings Touch), this look will be achieved. Remember that this is a template that once saved can be used to make these layouts quickly for a new app.

Wacom Cintiq 21UX is Released

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:40:50 +0000

Wacom has long been the premiere maker of touch sensitive tablets and following the Intous 4 launch last year, they are upgrading their touch sensitive display series, the Cintiq 21UX display, now compatible with Intous 4 system.

The updated display has almost the same specifications as the previous version had, but now offers a number of updated features such as:

Better sensitivity now with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, doubling it from the previous model, a real benefit when making fine-grain adjustments or drawings, relying on the touch.
Updated design that is more ergonomic with the express keys located on both sides of the screen. There is also a new top ExpressKey that will bring up on on-screen display with the settings of the keys and touch strips. These new buttons are all iconized by the LED display as in the Intous 4 line, indicating their present action.
The stand lets you set the display at any angle between a minimum 10 degrees and a maximum 65 degrees. It can also be rotated 180 degrees in either direction, all to help your position while drawing.

The new Wacom Cintiq 21UX, now in full black, costs $1,999 and will be shipping by early April.

Designing a Simple Business Card

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:43:15 +0000

In this tutorial, we are going to be designing a simple business card together with a simple logo element to place on it, all in Illustrator.

Setting up the new document

Set up a document with the size of the business card you wish to make. In this case, 90×52mm. If your printer requires it, enter their bleed requirements. For this example, we will be designing it without the bleed

The Background

Using the rectangle tool, make a rectangle at the entire size of the document. Make sure it has no stroke set, but a dark grey (R: 43 G: 43 B: 43) color.

Logo Element

Create a new layer. On it, drag out a square, again using the Rectangle Tool. Hold down your shift key while dragging to keep it square. Set the fill color to orange (R: 255 G: 139 B: 0). Set its stroke to the same color as the background (R: 43 G: 43 B: 43).

Repeat this to make two more boxes, in different colors, blue (R: 39 G: 175 B: 229) and green (R: 133 G: 196 B: 65). Set the stroke on the duplicates to the same as the first box.

Aligning the boxes

Align the three boxes together into a shape as you can see above. You will see that the strokes helps to add to the logo element, by defining the edges a bit.

Adding the text

Create another new layer and using the Type Tool, type in your name and place it on the right side of the boxes, about in the vertical bottom of them. In this example, the font Hypatia Sans Pro at 12pt in Bold weight. If you don’t have Hypatia Sans Pro, try Myriad Pro instead. Set the text color to a lighter grey (R: 201 G: 201 B: 201).

Drag another text frame out below the text and fill it with contact information about you. Make this in a smaller size than your name (8pt here) and change the weight down to Regular, instead of bold. Format the contact information as you want it.

Final Result

After you have filled in your information, you have a simple and modern business card that can be used.

Hydra 2.2 for Lightroom 2 Released

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:41:23 +0000

Hydra 2.2 from Creaceed is an HDR application that is now available in a new version and as a Lightroom 2 plugin.

The news in the new feature is plenty, with the most important one being the Lightroom 2 plugin (for both 32 and 64 bit) that makes all the features from the standalone version available in the Lightroom plugin.

Hydra supports up to 10 input images, 2 image alignment techniques and 3 tone mappers to help make the HDR image. It has a 1:1 preview loupe, allowing you to see the image in full resolution. Apart from the Lightroom 2 plugin, there are plugins available for Aperture 2 and 3 as well.

Hydra 2.2 requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later on a computer with at least 64 MB of VRAM. It is available for $79.95 and this license can be used for both the stand-alone and plugin versions. If you currently have a 2.x license, this upgrade is free, while the upgrade from Hydra 1.x costs $19.95. There is a time-unlimited trial version available, which generates watermarked image files.

Photoshop 20 Years: Watch Celebration Party on Live Webcast Tonight

Erik Bernskiold — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:07:38 +0000

It has been 20 years since Photoshop first was introduced (that makes it two years older than I) and in these years, it has come a long way. Expect not that this occasion simply passes. NAPP (the National Association of Photoshop Professionals) and Adobe are together hosting a special party to celebrate the 20th Anniversary and you can watch the event live.

It starts at 7:30 p.m Pacific Time, which sadly means 3:30 a.m for my fellow Europeans (GMT time). Luckily, if you miss it, I have gotten confirmations that it will be rebroadcast.

Some of the guests there, showing live Photoshop tricks are: Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, RC Concepcion, Corey Barker, Julieanne Kost, Terry White, Russell Brown, Johnny L and of course Scott Kelby who is also promising some surprise guests.

It is also being mentioned that we will be seeing some sneak peeks at Photoshop things that nobody has seen before, which makes it of course, a very good reason to tune in.

You can see the broadcast as it starts 7:30 p.m Pacific Standards Time, right on the Photoshop 20th Anniversary page.

Making Drop Caps using CSS

Erik Bernskiold — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:00:33 +0000

Drop caps have traditionally been used in print giving a different style to the first letter of a paragraph. This can be done using CSS as well and be implemented on websites.

The theory behind is to use a pseudo-selector called :first-letter that will target only the first letter of the paragraph.

The CSS

In this example, we only want the drop caps applied to a paragraph, only with a special class, .with-dropcap. This is to prevent every new paragraph from getting this style.

/* First, we style the general paragraph */
p {
     font-size: 12px;
     line-height: 18px;
}
 
/* Styling the drop cap */
p.with-dropcap:first-letter {
     font-size: 200%; /* Makes the drop cap span two lines. 100% = one line, 200% = two lines, etc. */
     font-family: Georgia, Times, serif;
     font-style: italic;
     font-weight: bold;
     float: left; /* Floats the letter to the left of the rest of the paragraph. */
}

The HTML Code

The HTML for this will be stunningly simple, just entering a new paragraph, with the class that we chose above.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...

Example

To check out how this looks, visit this example file.