01.012509 - 02.012609 - 03.012709 - 04.012809

CASE NO.: 100127845
ITEM NO.: 01.012509

DATE COLLECTED: 01/25/09
TIME COLLECTED: 9:30 - 11:00 pm
LOCATION OF COLLECTION: stove, kitchen of victim's home
COLLECTED BY: Officer MC

DESCRIPTION OF EVIDENCE:
The problem my 'Make a Thing a Day' project addresses is my lack of knowledge of the real nitty gritty InDesign CS3 shortcuts. I know the basics like ctrl+c and ctrl+v, but ask me the shortcut for preflight, and I will end up with my fingers tied in a knot. The idea to learn a new shortcut a day is admittedly an old one, but that idea never had the chance to come to fruition until now. At the end of 30 days, I may still not be able to convince people that I am a true master at ID, but at least I can shave time off of the much dreaded and highly anticipated catalog production at work.

I will record the daily shortcut on an 'everyday' object (PC on one side, MAC on the other - I use both systems), i.e. items I come across or even consume on a regular basis - you are what you eat, right? Or on the rare occasion, an outstanding object that outweighs all others. As challenging as it sounds, I will also attempt to somehow tie the ID shortcut to the day's object or 'evidence', as obscure as the connection might be, because any associations will help jog my memory as to what effects the shortcut actually achieves.

This white, plastic bread bag tag is taken from a Quaker Rice Cakes package. I can pretty much eat an entire pack in one sitting, and that night, I almost pretty much did. I love white cheddar flavour, but the tomato & basil is quickly growing on me. Strange, the handwritten shortcut looks kind of cryptic, as if it is an alien message of some sort...

Because the shape of the bread tag reminds me of the type window, or type guide - that's the correct terminology (I had to do a quick google), of an old fashion typewriter, so I thought it was appropriate to choose a shortcut related to the positioning of the cursor:

Ctrl-Up Arrow / Apple-Up Arrow | Move cursor to Previous paragraph
Ctrl-Down Arrow / Apple-Down Arrow | Move cursor to Next paragraph

TYPE OF OFFENSE: clearly, asphixiation
SUSPECT: white, plastic bread bag tag
VICTIM: Quaker Rice Cakes - Savoury Tomato & Basil bag

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CASE NO.: 100127845
ITEM NO.: 01.012609

DATE COLLECTED: 01/26/09
TIME COLLECTED: 8:05 am
LOCATION OF COLLECTION: desk, office cubicle
COLLECTED BY: Officer MC

DESCRIPTION OF EVIDENCE:
Alt-right arrow / Option-right arrow | Increase by Increment (set in Preferences)
Alt-left arrow / Option-left arrow | Decrease by Increment

Believe it or not, I actually take one of these enormous pills in the morning with a big gulp of green tea to wash it down. And if necessary, another gulp to ensure that it goes all the way down the tube and into my stomach. It's a combination of B plus a full recommended daily dose of C, so it cuts down on the number of vitamins i have to pop, and I remember reading somewhere that B helps the absorption of C, or vice versa. Due to the size of the pill, the lodge factor is extremely high, and the shortcut of the day deals with kerning and word spacing. Choking on a pill, characters of a word choking...get it?
That's okay, I am not totally convinced that I do either.

The vitamin is not as difficult to write on as I initially had thought it would be, but the pill's surface is surprisingly quite porous. The ink started to bleed in isolated areas where my pen had lingered too long. The trick to making sure the pill doesn't spin around
when you write on it is to use blue tacky gum to hold it in place.

I placed the yellow pill in a small plastic zip lock bag to protect it from getting dirty or wet.

TYPE OF OFFENSE: posing as a potential lodge+choke threat
SUSPECT: orange-speckled, yellow vitamin B+C pill
VICTIM: your esophagus

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CASE NO.: 100127845
ITEM NO.: 01.012709

DATE COLLECTED: 01/27/09
TIME COLLECTED: 7:45 - 8:05 am
LOCATION OF COLLECTION: table, kitchen
COLLECTED BY: Officer MC

DESCRIPTION OF EVIDENCE:
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-C / Apple-Opt-Shift-C | Fill Frame Proportionally

Happy Chinese New Year! :) It's day 2 into the lunar year of the ox, and I have finally received my first red pockets of lucky money - they're from the parents, so one is from my mom, and the other is from my dad.

The connection between this item of good fortune and the chosen ID shortcut is rather obvious: there is a large picture on the front of the red and gold envelope, so I decided this would an opportune time to learn exactly what the shortcut is for sizing an image proportionally to fit the frame, rather than relying on the series of hard-to-differentiate buttons at the top of the screen for fitting content or pictures all the time.

When I had placed my third 'Make a Thing a Day' item into yet another zip lock baggie, I realized that the not-quite random assortment of objects were starting to look like a collection of evidence material. Hence, the running concept of this journal is now in the form of an evidence log. The photographs feature not just the daily piece of collected evidence, but evidence markers, which numbers each entry, and a ruler a la CSI.

Sorry, the idea of taking scene-of-the-crime style pics didn't come to me until late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning, so that, combined with Blipfoto's strict rules, explains this multiple-evidence entry.

TYPE OF OFFENSE: none*
SUSPECT: none*
VICTIM: none*

*All 'none' because it is auspicious to mention such negative things on Chinese New Year.

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CASE NO.: 100127845
ITEM NO.: 01.012809

DATE COLLECTED: 01/28/09
TIME COLLECTED: 2:30 - 3:00 pm
LOCATION OF COLLECTION: desk, office cubicle
COLLECTED BY: Officer MC

DESCRIPTION OF EVIDENCE:
Shift-click / Shift-click | Multi-Page Autoflow (creates additional pages)

I will state on the record that I love these mini honey mandarin oranges! Just like with my beloved rice crackers, I could eat tons of these at any given time, but particularly, at my work desk because they are fun to eat and so convenient. They are extremely easy to peel in comparison to your regular run-of-the-mill oranges and mandarins, and thus, don't saturate your hands with citrus juice, which smells good, but taints your nail tips orange.

My goal was to end up with a continuous peel from beginning to end, and I succeeded. I had laid it outside on my covered porch to dry, but my dad thought it was garbage and threw it out, so the evidence pictured here is a re-do. Well, I guess I just got more practice peeling a honey mandarin in one go.

The idea to recover organic and living specimens is an intresting one that I may delve more into in later entries. I will be waiting in anticipation to see how this mandarin peel will look like once it is completely dried and shrivelled.

TYPE OF OFFENSE: obessesive-complusive throw-out spree
SUSPECT: dad
VICTIM: me, my 'make-a-thing' project, and time - oh, how I forever mourn the loss of time!