Talkfolk™ - Addictive Personalities

"It was then I realized that having an addictive personality was not necessarily a bad thing," she opined. "It's like a powerful current of water: if we can channel it we can accomplish things that 'normal' people only wish they could do.  All this time I thought there was something wrong with me, but not everyone has the ability to dive as deep as we can.  We just have to be really careful what we jump into (and be quick to pull out/seek help when we've jumped into something dark)!"

Talefolk™ - Happiness

"A lot of spiritual gurus will tell you that true happiness is found within and is not based on external cirsumstances," she said.  "But personally I think that a lot of our happiness is based on the choices made by those around us: our children, our neighbors, our bosses, our government leaders.  So it's pretty important to be doing all we can to influence and persuade those people to care, to be honest, and be socially responsible."

SQL Database Table Rowcounts

How to get the rowcount of all tables in a SQL Server 2000 database:

select distinct convert(varchar(30),object_name(a.id)) [Table Name], a.rows
from sysindexes a inner join sysobjects b on a.id = b.id

Thanks to:
venkattechnicalblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/list-out-all-tables-and-row-count-in.html

Talkfolk™ - The Mountain

When he finally arrived at the foot of the mountain, he found a large village of people.  They welcomed him warmly.  He discovered that most of them had come just as he had, after careful searching and long journeying.  When he spoke of his intention to climb the mountain, everyone understood and was encouraging.  Some even said they wanted to go along with him, but at the agreed upon hour they didn't show up.  As he got to know them better, some of them shared their experiences of trying to climb the mountain. Some laughed, and some cried, but there was always pain and regret behind it.

Talefolk™ - Strength and Compassion

“Your care, compassion, and benevolence must increase in proportion to your strength, ability, and intelligence,” he said.  “Otherwise your power will hurt and destroy all the more in your careless and angry moments.”

Talefolk - Your Calling in Life

"Stop searching for your calling in life," she said. "Your life is your calling. Waking up each day and facing its challenges and loving those around you. You will find your calling as you stop looking for it."

"Opportunity"

by Walter Malone

They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in,
For every day I stand outside your door
And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.

Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
Each night I burn records of the day;
At sunrise every soul is born again.

Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.

Tho' deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend my arm to all who say, "I can!"
No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep
But yet might arise and be again a man.

Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
Dost reel from righteous retribution's blow?
Then turn from blotted archives of the past
And find the future's pages white as snow.

Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;
Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
Each night a star to guide thy feet to Heaven.

(I was introduced to this poem from a talk given by Vaughn J. Featherstone at a BYU devotional on 12 September 1995.)

Talefolk™ - The Three Degrees of Glory

"I know, I know," he said rolling his eyes.  "Bad people go to the Telestial kingdom, good people go to the Terrestrial kingdom, and super-good people go to the Celestial kingdom."

"I think you're missing something," she replied.  "There may be a minimum standard, but no one earns their way into the Celestial kingdom.  You make covenants with God and you keep them.  God even helps you keep them.  I don't think it's possible to keep them without His help.  That's the secret.  The Celestial have learned how to ask for and receive God's help and grace.  They have come to trust Him, more than anything else."

Talefolk™ - Listening

“Some people don't hear things until you've told them many times,” she said.  “It used to drive me crazy, but now I find myself doing the same thing.  Life just throws too much at you; it's the patient repetition I've learned to listen to.”

Talefolk™ - Faith

“The hardest thing about Faith,” he said, “is knowing whether it means to act or to wait.”

Talefolk™

The coach said, "I don't care if you can slam dunk the ball from the foul line.  I don't care about your fancy dribbling or your expensive shoes.  I don't want a hot shot that does his own thing.  I want players that play as hard in the fourth quarter as they do in the first.  I want players who execute our plays as a team with precision.  I want someone I can give the ball to with seconds left, and know they will drill that 3 pointer."

Your Inkscape Envelope (Arched Text) Tutorial

Dear SixThings,

Thank you for all your work on your tutorial about how to create arched text in inkscape.  It looks like comments are closed for this post, so I thought I would email you.

First of all, this tutorial is the premier tutorial on the web for using inkscape to envelope deform text.  We thank you heartily for it!!

Secondly, I notice a lot of people in the comments having trouble with the technique.  I have experimented with it, and here are some additional helpful suggestions I can make.

1. Make sure both the object and the bounding box have been Path > Object to Path converted.
2. As you have pointed out, the order you select things in before using "Extensions > Modify Path > Envelope" is important.   Select the object you want to deform first, then the bounding box (I'm using Inkscape version 0.48).
3. A bounding box must have only four nodes.  Don't bother adding vector curving because envelope will ignore it.
4. If you start having strange results with this process, double check these constraints.  Then press Ctrl-N and start trying these things on a new, blank document.
5. If your artwork gets rotated during the envelope process, undo and then rotate your bounding box to compensate in anticipation of the rotation you think will happen. Adjust the rotated bounding box's nodes to match your original, then try again.
6. You only need to do this envelope process one letter at a time if you need a curved look to your text. If you just want to envelope your text into a straight 4 node quadrilateral, first break apart and combine all your letters into one path, then do a bounding box for the whole thing. (Also try Modify Path > Perspective this way!)

Best regards,

Baodad