Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Got home from Winnipeg and finally got around to selecting one of the free gifts offered to me by Adobe for registering the copy of Adobe CS4 that I picked up recently… For anyone in the know, you may ask why on earth I bought a copy of CS4 when CS5 is apparently just around the corner. Well, it’s like this… I’ve been drafted into helping create a yearbook for my son’s grade 7 class and it seemed more important to get the software sooner than later, so I bit the bullet and took a bid leap and spent a schwack of cash on the software bundle… There are rumours of being able to get a cheap or possibly free upgrade given the proximity to the release of the newer version, so I’ll be keeping my eye on that very carefully… Apparently Photoshop in CS5 has some pretty nice improvements and new features…
Anyway, as part of buying the software and registering it, I was given a selection of ‘thank you gift’ options from Adobe one of which was a one month subscription to the on-line training available at Lynda.com
I’ve known about Lynda.com for years and was first introduced to their software training programs by my friend Jim McCombe back in the late 90’s when we were both just getting into the whole webpage thing… Back then bandwidth was so limited that the idea of streaming videos was quite simply out of the question. These days with things like YouTube and various video codecs designed specifically to keep file sizes down and quality up video is a reality that we can enjoy on the internet painlessly. In fact, in my house, my kids spend more time watching YouTube videos than the TV…
I’ll have to admit that, even though the technology has improved to the point where these videos are easily consumed over the internet, I hadn’t really given much thought to revisiting Lynda.com until I got this free months worth of tutorials as a gift from Adobe. This may have been in part due to the fact that if I’m working on Cruise Ships the internet is both slow and expensive which doesn’t make it an ideal location to be tapping into on-line tutorials. April however is a month that I determined a few months ago would be spent at home and right after getting home from Winnipeg I signed up for a month’s worth of training thanks to Adobe and have been watching videos every day.
Yes I’m a bit of a geek to begin with, but I know that with certain pieces of software I own I’m just scratching the surface of what is possible. I know how to do what I want to do in most cases, but am also aware that there may be more efficient ways to do things and really haven’t taken the time to explore some of the hidden features and options that many software packages offer. I’m also keenly aware that just because I know how to accomplish a certain task it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m doing it in the most time efficient method. Sometimes it’s just easier to do things the way you know than to find the additional time to actually learn how to do it right.
Well, it feels good to be making the time to actually sit down and go through the tutorials for a couple of pieces of software and fill in all sorts of gaps in my knowledge. Even with task that I AM familiar with (writing this blog for example with in the WordPress world) I’m making the time to go through the instructional videos and am picking up tips and tricks that I know will end up saving me time in the weeks and months to come.
Years ago I actually purchased a DVD tutorial from a different company so I could learn the Final Cut Pro Studio suite of software and at the time it made sense because I was traveling a lot and didn’t always have an internet connection. At the moment however the trainings I’m watching at Lynda.com are the perfect way to incrementally increase my knowledge on various software packages that I know I should know more about. Got some time? Want to learn how to get more out of your computer and the software on it, well then, the $25/month subscription price well worth the price of admission.
