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June 22nd, 2011

Cartoon talk at Westcliff

Cartoon talk at Westcliff

Report from cartoon talk: The crowd was really quite small, but people seemed to quite enjoy themselves and everyone was kind and lovely. All in all a very good evening. The preparation didn’t go terribly well though – nothing at all to do with the fact that I didn’t get on with doing it early enough. Anyone following me on Twitter yesterday will have heard me moaning about my computers, which really didn’t behave well (dull technical details below), but I’m sure it is just me being inept in one way or another. I really enjoy the actual talking, but the lack of functioning technology and the fact it takes me forever to prepare means that I have no further plans for more public lectures at the moment.

Sorry not to have done anything visible with your marvellous questions yet. I am intending to do so soon.

—–
[Incredibly boring technical details: Using OpenOffice Impress because it means I can switch between PC and Mac. Unfortunately the normal very reliable OpenOffice (it might be called something else now) doesn't work well when it comes to creating presentations with large numbers of images. On the PC the pictures kept dropping out of the presentation for no reason whatsoever, whilst on the Mac you can't just drag in the image icons like you can on the PC as it doesn't work. So there is lots of messing around trying to get the images in and drag them into being the right size and being central, and my Mac can't cope. The Mac is a lovely computer to use in many ways, but very often falls down on the details. Give me file sizes when I search for an image so I know which is the high res version, for goodness sake. Sorry, nearly began to rant there. I know, lots of you think I should switch to Linux or somesuch, but I don't have the time and energy to do such a thing at the moment. Using Keynote means (I think) that, having no Mac laptop, I'd have a problem being compatible with church computers in the places I go to do these things.]

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This is a single post on the Cartoon Blog by Dave posted on Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 7:42 am. Click here to read all of the latest posts. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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13 Responses to “Cartoon talk at Westcliff”


  1. Kathryn says:

    If I have to deal with more than one platform I generally do as much work as possible on one machine, then save my work in a .pdf format. No idea if that’s any use for presentations though!

    I use a Mac because I got sick of Windows and the music notation software that everyone else uses isn’t available for Linux or other open-source platforms.

    June 22nd, 2011 at 8:05 am
  2. andym says:

    A little tip that may help a tiny amount:

    On the mac, you can set the view options in Finder to display the pixel size of the image below the thumbnail – not perfect, but at least gives you an idea of which is the hires, which is the lowres version…
    Select an image in Finder > Option Click > select “Show View Options” > tick “Show Item Info” box and then click “Use as Defaults”

    Hope that helps
    a

    June 22nd, 2011 at 9:39 am
  3. Dave says:

    Kathryn – compatibility (or lack of) is a continual pain isn’t it? Whoever invented the computer ought to have specified that in all future developments everything must be compatible with everything else.

    Andy – thank you, I hadn’t heard of doing this before. I will look into it when I get home. Will also tick boxes that say ‘make everything work the way I want it to’ and ‘use as default’.

    June 22nd, 2011 at 10:04 am
  4. FrPaulB says:

    Warning! This may not be useful advice!

    Can you produce your presentation in Keynote and ask it to save it as .ppt file?

    You could by a MacBook (I told you it might not be useful advice) they’re very shiny and apparently make you young and hip. (Needless to say I don’t have one.)

    June 22nd, 2011 at 1:06 pm
  5. Nick Sharp says:

    I’ve been to several places (churches & schools) lately doing presentations, and I always take my own laptop.
    That way, I can obsess away at home getting everything set up the way I like it, and be sure that it’ll look the same when I get to my venue.
    Also, I use Open Office with its rather groovy Presentation Console, which allows me to use my laptop to display speakers notes.
    Never trust anybody else’s equipment, unless you can arrive 19 hours before the talk begins, with all the tools you need to take everything apart and put it back together again first.

    June 22nd, 2011 at 1:23 pm
  6. Nick Sharp says:

    Oh…I was trying to use amusing and ironically self-deprecating fake html tags in that comment, and they didn’t appear.
    Never mind, everyone will just have to assume I’m a really boring person.

    What do you mean I am?

    June 22nd, 2011 at 1:25 pm
  7. Bob Palmer says:

    I was at the ‘Evening with Dave Walker’ and thoroughly enjoyed it. If you can get dave to come alomg and talk I can highly recommend this
    Bob

    June 22nd, 2011 at 3:00 pm
  8. Dave says:

    Hi Dave

    I know this doesn’t help you unless you spend money but I’ve found that my iMac at home and Keynote to prepare presentations works beautifully if I then transfer the presentation to my iPad. The iPad then hooks up to the projector and Robert’s your Father’s Brother. I was really pleased with how quick and easy it was – the iPad knew it was plugged into a projector and automatically switched mode.

    It’s at least a somewhat cheaper option than a Macbook.

    Dave

    June 22nd, 2011 at 4:27 pm
  9. Russ says:

    “I know this doesn’t help you unless you spend money but I’ve found that my iMac at home and Keynote to prepare presentations works beautifully if I then transfer the presentation to my iPad. The iPad then hooks up to the projector and Robert’s your Father’s Brother. I was really pleased with how quick and easy it was – the iPad knew it was plugged into a projector and automatically switched mode.

    It’s at least a somewhat cheaper option than a Macbook.”

    Sounds another good option! Must try that with my iPad. You can pick up a first generation one on eBay these days for £250-300.

    June 23rd, 2011 at 8:41 am
  10. Ben says:

    Cheap option:

    Buy flip chart and learn to draw really fast.

    June 23rd, 2011 at 12:55 pm
  11. The Church Mouse says:

    Sorry the Mouse couldn’t make it.

    June 23rd, 2011 at 8:19 pm
  12. Doug Chaplin says:

    What about using PowerPoint which is available for both platforms and (IMO) better than LibreOffice / OpenOffice?

    If, however, you don’t use animations within slides, the suggestion of exporting from Keynote to a PDF slideshow is probably as good an idea as any.

    June 24th, 2011 at 12:10 am
  13. Raewynne says:

    You can export from keynote to powerpoint. I’ve had no problems with it.

    June 24th, 2011 at 3:49 am