My Frosted Rose

Sad smiles.

Thanks Kirsten. The loss of a beloved pet sure takes the wind out of your sails for a while. :) I appreciate your thoughts - Big HUGS

I just read you comment on Kat's puzzle about the loss of your cat. And I just wanted to say sorry. It's really hard to lose one of our furry family members. All the best, Glenys. Hugs.

Thank you JohnJones :)

Good job astrojoy! Enjoyed! TFS
judy

OH no - can't take up knitting again - that would be too productive and use up my leisure time LOL AND take me away from this wonderful website - and then I'd never have time to share conversations and friendships with everyone here!

LOL Glenys! Yes, it would be great for you to be knitting again!!
Elizabeth

Well, if its OOS, then any treatments are totally free, funded by our ACC - which gives free treatments (to any level at all from a plaster to a full on surgery and long hospital stays) for any accident or injury from any cause, be it a fall on a sports field, or a car accident, or falling off your ladder at home doing home handyman projects etc or any work related injuries, like OOS. Even tourists are covered! But illness, or cosmetics and such like,... if you want to wait for treatment, its free too, but if you want it faster - then you pay. And you pay to see your doctor, unless its an accident, then those visits are free too.
I can't knit anymore cos of my OOS - maybe two rows of knitting before the pain is too much. I SHOULD stop moaning about it actually, and go do something about it... You really are a good "shrink" aren't you LOL!!!!

Actually I never heard either acronym before. Here they usually identify the specific thing, like carpal tunnel. But I guess we are luckier here in that it doesn't matter how you got it if it needs treatment. I can't think of a more worthwhile way to get it than recreational knitting soft woolly things for families and friends.

You know Elizabeth - that they don't call it RSI over here anymore (repetitive strain injury) but now its called OOS (occupational overuse syndrome) - I guess so you can only get assistance if you can pinpoint the cause to employment situations and not say... from too much recreational knitting soft woolly things for families and friends...

Yes, I think carpal tunnel is only one of the forms of RSI...

I know several people who have benefited from carpal tunnel surgery - but apparently I'm not likely to benefit from that solution. Mind you, I've not complained to any doc about it now for years - so who knows. Maybe I might investigate it one day. :)

Ouch Glenys!! I had carpal tunnel in both wrists and found a brilliant surgeon who fixed them up arthroscopically: just 1/2 inch scar. But that's just one kind of RSI. I hope you find a way to get some relief!!

Found it! Thank you so much, Kirsten!!
Elizabeth

Oh Kirsten - we might get some pretty puzzles from Elizabeth soon!
And Elizabeth - I have OOS or RSI as it used to be known - just from years and years of typing. I was diagnosed with it back in the 90's! I cope only because I'm fortunate enough to have a job I can do from home where I can pace my hours over an entire week rather than just a few solid days work. So, I type for say half an hour, then rest and do something else for a bit... but on days I have to push through more hours, it gets very hard. Then my arms don't want to work by the evening. :) Cheers!

It's a pleasure, Elizabeth! (❛ᴗ❛)

And despite being fearful of overloading your brain, this discussion actually started here, so there may be some other info there that you think is useful:
http://www.jigidi.com/jigsaw-puzzle/BH7LIRXU/Kaleido-Kosmos-H

Glenys I'm sorry your arm hurts so badly. Do you have a diagnosis?
Thank you, Kirsten and Glenys for the technical discussion. I never knew the difference with .png files before, and I love knowing the names of these programs in case some day I get inspired.
Elizabeth

I've made over a dozen kaleidos so far in my "learning" phase. I just don't think they are good enough to post. Besides, I spend all my jigidi hours solving puzzles rather than creating. There just aren't enough hours in a day to indulge my puzzle obsession.

Lovely kaleido!!!
Looking forward to more!!!
(Also want to write again when I have a little more time--lots of reactions to your discussion...)
Elizabeth

First one but nice one,i know you have many hidden talents Glenys..
Thanks ,by the way I like the lemon green background.
Ronny.

(❛ᴗ❛)

Well Kirsten - you have outlined so much info in this thread that I've bookmarked it so I don't forget which puzzle all the info is in. My memory is pretty bad nowadays! LOL!

I don't use cloud storage much (got a bit shy away from it after the Megaupload drama). But I do email heaps of stuff to other emails of mine for backup plus also keep copies myself on physical hard drives and email all my work to my boss for him to store as well... I'm paranoid!

But work is different from personal stuff. I'm not so attached to personal stuff. I've lost everything a few times in my life and had to start again - so... things that seemed important at one time in my life, turned out not to be afterall :)

I was pretty pleased with my time too. But I think I only came anywhere near your time because this is a kaleido. I think there's a certain rhythm to solving them. I couldn't solve the flower photo this was based on in anywhere near that time! And funny you mention your missing keys on your laptop. Some of the letters have rubbed off mine too. The I, O, H and L. And half of the N and T. I can't imagine what the words are that I type so frequently that uses those letters enough to wear them off the keys!

I'm glad your arm is better with some rest too. And there are an unbelievable number of free run-in-browser kinds of programs out there. But after years of regularly researching, I can tell you that some aren't worth the money you didn't pay for them! LOL Other than those I've already mentioned, my other personal faves for range of effects and options, and ease of use are befunky, pixlr, ipiccy, ribbet and G'Mic online (https://gmicol.greyc.fr/). And if you can cope with downloading a program, and then finding all the filters/effects plugins, then GIMP or paint.net are great too. Paint.net is what I use mostly. But you would want to be really comfy with layers for either of those last two suggestions, as that's what they are all about. They aren't the super simple programs like the run-in-browser ones I've mentioned. I know you said you were OK with layers, so they could be options for you. Although there's always good old sumo, and no download!

But you know what? I think when you're starting out, you want to find and use everything! And then it all becomes overwhelming. And you end up focusing on just a couple of programs. Once you have them mastered, it's easier to learn the others. So if I were you, I would consider just focusing on Sumo and picmonkey.

And I use cloud storage for my files. It means that I can access my files from any device, which I find useful. But my free account with dropbox is nearly full, after five years of puzzle-making. So I'm looking at alternatives. I found an NZ based, well-regarded option the other day, whose name escapes me right now, so may explore that more.

And I love the sounds of your view from your lounge room, and your be-hatted mountain! But I don't want a desk in my lounge room, not to mention it's not very big - so a laptop works best for me. (❛ᴗ❛)

Wow Kirsten - thanks for giving it a go - you made excellent time :) Only a few seconds more than me and my great big giant screen! LOL!!! My little laptop is over 10 years old now, still chugging away when I drag it out of the bag and blow the dust off it... its even missing a few keys now, but I keep it for sentimental reasons. I can't believe how I managed to work full time on it for several years though....!

My arm is a little better tonight because I didn't do so much typing today (should have worked harder, but I didn't....). I think I will play around in picmonkey for a while more yet and you just keep naming more and more programmes - I had no idea there were so many of them out there! And I'll have a more studious look at Sumo too.

And big files aren't a problem for me - my pc is quite powerful and has 5 hard drives and many tbytes of storage available!

Your view out of your lounge sounds wonderful! I have bush right up against the edge of my deck out my kitchen window where I love to watch the birds flitting around and I have a wonderful view of Mt Pihanga out of my lounge windows - she sometimes gets snow on her bonnet in winter but usually all you see is her fluffy cloud hat.

And a month or so ago, I moved my office out into my lounge because it is so big that half the room was just sitting there empty - and well... the fire place is here as well as the heat pump - so why freeze in a back bedroom office, when I can sit out here in the warmth in winter, and air conditioning in summer!

I posted a smaller puzzle a short time ago, if you fancy checking out the frost on my deck railings!

Cheers! Glenys :)

Thought I would give solving this one a shot. It looks great! And it all went together pretty nicely! And my time's not too bad, for someone on a laptop! Thanks Glenys. (❛ᴗ❛)

Sorry to hear about your hand/arm/shoulder pain, Glenys. I hope that the rest relieves it.

I haven't signed up with pizap, and can still use the basic features. But I'm not running an ad blocker either. For other interesting collage/montage preset layouts, you could try fotor too. It doesn't have as interesting range of templates IMHO though. And I don't use it, as the grid ones are rectangles, not squares, and I prefer squares.

But if you can manage layers, then sumo will enable you to create any kind of montage you can imagine. Sumo is an amazingly powerful program for a freebie. And comes with all the effects/filters you could possibly want, unlike PhotoShop - where you have to find the plugins for effects and download and install them. But in the meantime, the "design" features of Picmonkey should keep you entertained for ages. There are loads of backgrounds and stickers you can use there too.

And I agree about file formats. I've been making them pngs since I started. Shame the file size is so big though..........

And I've become accustomed to my laptop. What I like about it is that I can use it in my lounge room, which is my favourite room in the house. I have big floor to ceiling windows that look out on my garden (a term used loosely about my property! LOL!), so I get to see the wonderful native birds that come in and visit, and a vista of green. Okay, sometimes a bit brown in summer, but it's still a better view than any other room in the house. So I don't feel deprived at all by my small screen real estate.

Hope you're feeling better soon. (❛ᴗ❛)

Thanks for that Kirsten - I've just bookmarked those sites and had a quick look at picmonkey - its straight-forward enough whereas pizap stops me because I run ad-blocker on my pc and I don't want to "join" just yet so will give that a miss.

Layering is something I don't enjoy doing (sometimes I have to do that when layering my rain maps onto isobaric maps for reports I occasionally produce. So for now, I might just stick to preset layouts :) (which I recognise from other people's puzzles!).

And yes, I did save all my designs I did the other night as pngs as I know that format is the best for keeping the integrity of any picture no matter how big or small you make it. I had one publisher wanting me to redo several years worth of daily maps as tiffs because thats what they preferred when the programme I'd made them in had the default as jpegs. So... days of work later, I had them redone as tiffs - and then the next year - the next editor wanted them not as jpegs, nor as tiffs, but as pngs. Thank goodness that picture manager in microsoft office just converts - so now, I do everything as pngs because they are the best if anyone wants them converted to anything else. Sigh...!

But I won't be looking at any more tonight. My arm is in so much pain from so much typing today, I can barely make my fingers move, and handling the mouse really hurts, right up into my shoulder. I think I need to give it a rest. I can't even bare the pain of solving a puzzle right now...

And how on earth can you function solving any puzzle on a little tiny laptop ... shudder! I use 27" monitors on my desk - (two of them). And I'm looking at getting a third monitor soon. I might just use my 40" tv as the third screen - since I've not turned the tv on in 2 years now - All Hail The Internet! LOL!!!!

Yup, Too big. I can go a collage in 100 pieces, but a single kaleido, on my little laptop, is a challenge too far for me. I could do it. But I wouldn't enjoy it. Which wouldn't really be the point of puzzle solving! LOL

You know you could have changed the colour of the background in sumo too - but if paint is working for you - go with that. And when you say you want to mix the kaleidos together - do you mean in a collage (grid) format? If so, the simplest to use is picmonkey. It's what I use for all my collages. Like the kaleido options I suggested to you, it's a free, run in browser program too. I love those!!

But if you mean more of a free-form kind of a design, like my Kaleido Kosmos for example, that is harder to create if you've never not mastered "layers" in programs like photoshop. Or sumo for that matter. There are two possible workarounds for you that I can think of, that will allow you to create something similar. One is using the preset layouts in pizap (another free, run in browser program). It will give you something like what you want to create. But it will still be a preset layout.

The other option is that you can use the "design" function of picmonkey, and you can place your kaleidos on a background via the "overlays" effect, and then use "your own" option. However, if you don't want a background on the individual kaleidos, you will need to save them as "png" when you create them, which gives them a transparent background.

Did I just blow your mind?

Too big for you Kirsten??? Surely not :) I actually had a play a couple of nights ago and whipped out a dozen or so kaleidos just to see how things work out. I also played around looking at all the other options within the programme, plus checked out the other two programmes you recommended. Then I stewed for a day about how to change the background colours and figured that out in paint. Now all I have to work out is how to mix several kaleidos together into one picture. I'll probably perculate on that for a few nights again, unless you have some suggestions.

Glenys!! You didn't tell me you'd made and posted something. Naughty Glenys!! LOL I just found this when I was cruising "mosaics", which is what I do occasionally to see if there are any new puzzles makers I should be adding to my follow list............. But back to your kaleido. It looks lovely! It looks like you made it from sumo too - so it's good to know that you have managed to have a play with it. Better than have a play actually! I'd love to solve it, but alas it's too big for me. But look at how many people have solved it. That's wonderful! Well done you. (❛ᴗ❛)