I was looking for some free GIS Data to import into Google Earth Pro for a classroom demo. I found this very cool, somewhat free site for GIS Data at http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/

For this demo I downloaded the “Current County and Equivalent Shapefile” at http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/US/61089/group214.html, of course you could download The County Shapefile for any state.

1.    First download and extract the GIS Data you want to use.
2.    Next in Google Earth Pro go to the file menu and choose import

Google Earth Pro Screen Shot of Import

Pointing to GIS Data File

Importing GIS Data

Creating GIS Style Template

Creating GIS Style Template

Georgia County Map in Google Earth Pro

Georgia County Map from Google Earth Pro

A really cool new feature in After Effects CS4 is the ability to now take advantage of Photoshop CS4‘s new 3d capabilities. Another new feature of Photoshop CS4 is the ability to open .kmz or .3ds files. If we take a look at the extensive free models we have on Google’s 3d warehouse we find a ton of models to choose from. If you can find the model you want on the 3d warehouse as a kmz you are in luck. Open the kmz in Photoshop CS4 and save it as a psd. Import that psd into After Effects CS4 as a composition (making sure to check the box that says “Live Photoshop 3D”). Now you have a new composition in After Effects with a 3D model as well as a null to control it and a camera to pan around it. If you can only find a skp of the model you want on the 3d warehouse, you will need Google Sketchup Pro to export that model out as a 3ds or kmz. Open the 3ds or kmz in photoshop save it as a psd, import that psd in After Effects and you are set.

Question from a student I had in my After Effects training class in Hartford, Connecticut:
“Hey Damon,
You showed me how to get a lens flare with nothing else (no backgrounds/alpha keyed) on the screen using a luma matte…I think! Do you remember the actions necessary to produce such an effect? I keep ending up with a black lens flare! Help!
Thanks again,
Bryan”

Duplicating the solid with the lens flare and using the top one as a track matte can accomplish this. Here are the steps; you can download an example of this as well.

Step one: Create a solid and add the lens Flare filter to it, get the lens flare just how you would like it and duplicate the solid.
Step two: on the top solid added the Hue/Saturation filter and take the master saturation down to -100, Also add the Levels filter and slide the white point slider till it just touches the beginning of the levels histogram.
Step three: Set the bottom solid to use the top solid as a track matte (Luma Matte)

That’s it transparent lens flare.

I have successfully got coldfusion talking to a Filemaker 9 database. It turned out to be pretty simple really.

I enabled ODBC/JDBC in Filemaker server. Installed the latest SequeLink on the coldfusion server. Setup a System DSN and pointed to it in the coldfusion admin. The only odd thing I ran into is in Filemaker field names can have spaces so when I do an insert into a field I have to put double quotes on the field name.

I have done this before when the data was clean and when I only needed to worry about one ID by just adding or subtracting one from the ID value. On my photo album pages I wanted to create a way to view my photos without lytebox. I have 2 IDs photo album and photo. Also my data is not the cleanest for example in my Denver photos I do not have a photo 1. I came up with a solution, not the most elegant I will admit. My work around for this problem includes looping the query to set the row number to a variable than instead of displaying against the photo ID I display against the row number. To create the next and previous I just add or subtract 1 from the row number. I also had to put a cfif to check to make sure my previous row variable was not -1. The code is below. You can see it in action here.

<cfloop query=“QPhotos”>
<cfif QPhotos.Photo_ID eq URL.PHOTO>
<cfset displayrow = QPhotos.currentrow>
</cfif> </cfloop>
<cfset nextrow = displayrow+1>
<cfset previousrow = displayrow-1>
…
<cfif previousrow GT 0><cfoutput query=“QPhotos” startrow=“#previousrow#” maxrows=“1″>
…
<cfoutput query=“QPhotos” startrow=“#displayrow#” maxrows=“1″>
…
<cfoutput query=“QPhotos” startrow=“#nextrow#” maxrows=“1″>

Continuing my week off playing around with cfimage, I am thinking this is fast becoming my favorite new feature in Coldfusion 8. This morning I was thinking it would be cool if Coldfusion could watermark images for me. After about 30mins playing around I came up with this.

<cfimage source=“img_2566.jpg” name=“image”>
<cfimage source=“watermark.png” name=“watermark”>
<cfset ImagePaste(image, watermark, 0, 0)>
<cfimage source=“#image#” action=“writeToBrowser” format=“jpg”>

First 2 lines I basically give both images a name. The reason the watermark is a png is I want to have the ability to use alpha channels. Next line I paste the watermark onto the image at 0x and 0y. I cheated and created the images the same size, but you could easily read the image info get the size then calculate where you want the watermark to be. The last line writes the image to the browser in the format of a jpeg. You can check it out in action at my CFwatermark page.

I have been playing around with the new cfimage tag in coldfusion 8. I am very impressed with the resize capability. Coldfusion 8 seemed to do a great job resizing my images into thumbnails. I created a tutorial here.

Here is a little bit of code to create thumbnails.

<cfimage action=“info” structname=“imagetemp” source=“Path to your image”>
<cfset x=min(150/imagetemp.width, 113/imagetemp.height)>
<cfset newwidth = x*imagetemp.width>
<cfset newheight = x*imagetemp.height>
<cfimage action=“resize” source=“#Path to your image#” width=“#newwidth#” height=“#newheight#” destination=“#thumbnail destination#”>

Update: My Using CFIMAGE to Generate Thumbnails tutorial was published at learncf.com

My Photoshop NTSC action is now on Adobe Exchange. If you have not check out the Adobe Exchange it is a great place to download tons of mostly free stuff for all of the Adobe products.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&extid=1304020

I have been playing around with Ray Camden’s BlogCFC for the past few weeks. I am planning on moving over from BlogCFM. One think that I really wanted with my new blog was the ability to easily update links in my blog roll. BlogCFC did not have this out the box, but I came up with a very easy whay of doing this. Using BlogCFC’s Textblocks feature I created a textblok called “blog roll”. Next I created a pod called blogroll.cfm and called my blog roll text block using

SELECT BODY
FROM dbo.tblblogtextblocks
WHERE LABEL = ‘Blog Roll’

#QBlogroll.body#

Now all I have to do is update the links in my blog roll textblock, refresh blog cache and my blog roll is updated.

I discovered this great video how to on the net. It demonstrates how to setup remote desktop on the Macintosh for free, no need for apple remote desktop. It also allows you to control your Macintosh via a Windows machine. I have configured my Macintosh this way and it works great. I setup everything on a thumb drive so I can take it with me anywhere.

1. On your windows, machine download puttygen.exe from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
2. Generate a private key file and save it on your thumb drive also save your public key file and copy it to the Macintosh you want to control.
3. On your Macintosh, copy the “publickey.txt file you created in step 2 to your user directory.
4. Make sure that port 22 is open to this Macintosh if you have any firewall in place
5. Open terminal (applications/utilities) and type “mkdir .ssh” to create the .ssh folder
6. Type “chmod 700 .ssh”
7. Type “mv publickey.txt .ssh/authorized_keys”
8. Type “chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys”
9. Type “sudo nano /etc/sshd_config”
10. After you type in your password hit control W and type “AllowTcpForwarding”
11. Delete the # sign
12. Control W again and type “PasswordAuthentication”
13. Remove the # and change the yes to no
14. Control W and type “UsePam” and remove the # sign from this line
15. Control X and save the file
16. If you want the finger print type “ssh-keygen –l –f  /etc/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub” and write the hash value down or save it to a text file on your thumb drive
17. Open up system prefs and click on shareing make sure you have a check next to the remote login service
18. Next download OSXVNC from http://www.redstonesoftware.com/products/vine/server/vineosx/index.html and start it up
19. Back on the Windows machine download putty.exe from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ and UltraVNC from http://ultravnc.sourceforge.net/ I put both of these application on my thumb drive
20. Start Putty and under session IP type the IP address of your Macintosh, goto the Data item in the list on the left and Auto-login username type your Macintosh short name, go under the SSH item and on auth private key browse to your private key file you created in step 1, finally goto tunnels 5900 for source port and localhost:5900 for destination and click add.
21. Now click Open if this is your first time on the machine connecting to the mac you should get a popup with the hash value from step 16 if this does not match some one is possible doing a “man in the middle” attack to hack your Macintosh
22. If the hash matches click Ok and then type the password you setup for your private key file.
23. Startup UltraVNC and connect to localhost

Bruce the Yak in Final Cut Pro 5.1. To get to this easter egg, Open up your video scopes (tools menu – video Scopes) Control click on the vectorscope area then choose magnify do it again then control click and double click on magnify. If you do it just right a little patch of grass will come out and then along will come Bruce the Yak. If you are patientBruce will bubble up some words of wisdom.

I installed Coldfusion 7.0.2 and my TSX Avg MPG chart would not display in IE. It would display fine in FireFox and Safari. After doing some searching I found a trick that worked for me, under your web root create a folder named CFIDE inside of it create a folder called Scripts. Do a search on your hard drive for cf_runactivecontent.js and copy it to the CFIDE/Scripts folder you created. It is working like a charm for me now.

I have been a Tivo fan for a while so I was excited today to see the UPS man left my new dual tuner Tivo. First thing I have to upgrade it 80 hours will not do. I got a 300 gig HD from Compusa for $57.00 after $10.00 mail in rebate. I got the Tivo from Amazon.com for $45.00 after a $20.00 coupon I had and a $150 mail in rebate from Tivo. Now on to the upgrade, I have documented the very easy process with pictures and instructions after the jump.
Step one: Make sure you have basic computer knowledge (setting jumpers on IDE Hard drives, not being afraid to take electronics apart)

Step two: Download Instant Cake from http://www.ptvupgrade.com< make sure you download the correct version for the Tivo you have. Your model number is listed on the back of your Tivo. Note: you can hunt around http://dealdatabase.com/forum/for some hacked together ISO. I just find it much easier to drop the $20 for Instant Cake<

Step Three: Burn the ISO you downloaded with your favorite cd burning software.

Step Four: Shutdown your computer and install you new HD as the secondary IDE master make sure your CDROM is setup as primary IDE slave and your bios is set to boot off of the cdrom drive.

Step Five: Boot your computer with the CD burned in step three answer the few questions you are presented and let Instant Cake do its magic.

Step Six: Shutdown your computer and remove the HD and hook everything back up.

Step Seven: Install the new HD into your Tivo

Step Eight: Power your Tivo back up and do a clear and delete everything

You are done enjoy your increased recording capacity!

I have been busy the last week or so creating 3 new tutorials. I created a Final Cut pro Lower Third with luma matte tutorial last Sunday on my way to San Jose, CA. I have also been meaning to create two using some CSS tricks I discovered. One is a three column layout using CSS (I use a variation of this on my own site). The second is a link color schemes using CSS (I also use this on my site).

I added a new tutorial to create an easy watermark on an image in Photoshop. Photoshop Watermark