Richard Harrington, with whom I was privileged to work with on the Broadcast Graphics on the Spot book, has announced the release of Photoshop for Video, the second revision of his Photoshop for Non-Linear Editors book.

Photoshop for Video 3rd Edition
(previously titled Photoshop for Nonlinear Editors)
• Major updates with tons of new content and more than 75 new pages of material
• Over 2.5 hours of training videos
• Expanded coverage of DVD and Motion Graphics
• In-depth look at HD graphics and workflow
• Full coverage of Photoshop CS3

Richard is a really amazing teacher / trainer. I would say this book is worth a look, whether you have either of the previous editions or not.

Since Iran is in the news so much right now for both their nuclear program and for kidnapping British sailors, I thought some interesting facts about the country might be nice.

The flag of Iran consists of three equal horizontal bands of green (top), white, and red; the national emblem (a stylized representation of the word Allah in the shape of a tulip, a symbol of martyrdom) in red is centred in the white band; ALLAH AKBAR (God is Great) in white Arabic script is repeated 11 times along the bottom edge of the green band and 11 times along the top edge of the red band.

Catherine Bell is the daughter of a Scottish father and Iranian mother.

And finally, Barbie dolls are banned there.

Those are the really important things about Iran.

If time travel were possible, consider the following exchange, which might very well have taken place in the 1970s.

Future Guy: I’m here from the year 2007, ’cause things are crazy there and I wanted to get away for a bit.

1970’s guy: Cool! Mind if I ask you some questions?

FG: Sure, go ahead. I’m in no hurry to get back.

70s: Groovy. So, in what year did the first hovercraft show up?

FG: Never happened. We’re driving around the same crappy cars you guys have, only they look a little more futuristic and they get worse gas mileage. Also, I noticed you avoided ending your sentence with a preposition. We phased that rule out somewhere along the line, too.

70s: Jinkies. That’s a bummer.

FG: Yeah, basic grammar and punctuation skills are not really relevant anymore, but at least Aerosmith and the Rolling Stones are still around.

70s: Woah. What about computers? Some people say they’ll be powering nearly everything by the year 2000.

FG: Well, just about every household in America has at least one computer, but most of them use a pretty crappy operating system.

70s: Dang. How about nuclear war? Did that ever happen?

FG: Nah. We still say it might, but mostly just to scare each other. We’ve also all developed a pretty short attention span. Speaking of that, I’m bored. I better get back.