sprignaturemoves

Very nice.

So I finally got around to wasting an hour and a half (sans commercials) watching the new  Knight Rider — or should I say Ford Rider.

Sorry, but, um, it’s cheesy and lame.    Stiff acting, gratuitous skin, weak plot, plus all of those other standard bad review descriptors.

I think an Ask-A-Ninja review is in order.

Now that Barack Obama is likely to squish Hillary and win the Democratic nomination, it’s time for the real Barack Obama to step forward. With so much talk about change you would think that he (or someone else in the _Mainstream _Media for that matter) would talk about what he stands for and the positions he’s taken on issues in his brief political career. Hillary isn’t going to trot out some of is more eyebrow raising principles and associations, because, honestly, most of his beliefs fall in line with those of the Democrat party.

Once the nomination is official, the GOP won’t hold back. Because Obama is so dreamily charismatic and the _Mainstream _Media swoons for him, it will end up as a double-team against McCain.

I digress. Back to Obama’s stand on some of the issues that concern me:

Abortion – supports Roe v. Wade, against the partial birth abortion ban, supports embryonic stem cell research, supports the interests of NARAL (no link for you!) and Planned Parenthood (no link for you!)

Civil Rights – believes being gay or lesbian is not a choice, thinks the gay rights movement is like the civil rights movement, support affirmative action in schools and government, did not support a ban on flag burning, voted against the constitutional ban of same-sex marriage in 2006, supports the interests of the ACLU (no link for you!) , suggests that the Bible tolerates homosexuality in his Audacity of Hope (no link for you!) book,

Energy – does not believe we should expand oil drilling on our own land, supports increased ethanol usage, believes global warming is a real threat

Foreign policy/War on Terror/Homeland Security - believes we should pull our troops out of Iraq, willing to meet with foreign dictators one-on-one, supports a larger role for NATO in world affairs, sees China as a competitor and not an enemy, supports military action in Pakistan, supports providing Habeas Corpus for detainees of the US

Health Care – supports universal health care (except for babies; see Abortion section above), supports decriminalization of drugs

Immigration – supports giving drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, supports allowing illegal aliens to participate in Social Security

Taxes – against permanently repealing the death tax, generally against making tax cuts permanent

Other – officially endorsed by MoveOn.org (no link for you!) , voted the Most Liberal Senator in 2007 by the National Journal, apparently doesn’t care for the Star Spangled Banner, stopped wearing is US flag pin as sign of patriotism, has been tied to the Nation of Islam, has plagarized Spike Lee movies, has been linked to crook developer Tony Rezko

Sources: ontheissues.com, votesmart.org, nationaljournal.com, newsbusters.org, youtube.com, debbieschlussel.com

There you have it.

Adobe Photoshop has a nice posterize command built-in. Not so in Fireworks. I searched high and low for a nice way to do it. In desperation I posted an entry on the official Adobe Fireworks message board and Ilya Razmanov was posted exactly what I needed.

Here’s the steps with pictures to illustrate his technique:

1. Open a cool photo in Fireworks (Yes, Ray Allen is cool, if you didn’t already know).

2. Add this effect: Adjust Color -> Levels

3. Set the max value in Output Level to 4

4. Add another effect: Add this effect: Adjust Color -> Levels. This time set the max Input Level to 4

6. Voila! Here’s what you get. You can tweak the levels on both sides to get the amount of posterization you want.