Publishing woes

Friday April 21, 2006

What a crappy, stressful day. Really feeling a bit put out about things today.

I had an issue with Macromedia Freehand in the afternoon that just did my head in.

I couldn't get a Vietnamese translation into the design template of the brochure I'd designed in English (everything needs to be done in two versions). Everytime I copied the text from word and tried to paste it into Freehand the entire program would freeze.

Now this happened at about 3pm when the final translation finally came to me – and we were due to go to print on Monday morning. So, my planned Friday night of working on my blog turned into a night trying to research the problem and find some solution – then try many different techniques of getting freehand to accept the text.

I installed Vietkey on my computer (allows you to write Vietnamese tones etc), but couldn’t get it talking properly with Freehand. I tell you, it was a crash course in Unicode and the whys and wherefores of how it all works.

To ease my troubled mind I put on some Aussie hip hop. But that only made things worse. I listened to Delta’s new album and then the Hilltop Hoods – and it made me homesick. I wondered why I'd put myself into this situation in the first place when I could have been at home, kicking back and enjoying catching up with all my friends and working on the next edition of UniSANews!

It made me so home sick. I wanted to cry with the tough week and then the extra problems - then to hear some hip hop made me want to jump on a plane and fly right home.

Andrew and Jasmine must have heard my cries of "homesickness", because I got a call from Andrew – it was so good to hear from him. A familiar voice, a dear friend! It was music to my ears.

We chatted and caught up on what everyone is doing and what’s been happening in our lives. He and Jasmine are even going to be on Dr Harry’s how very soon with Rahni. Apparently she doesn’t like being walked in bright sunlight, so Jasmine emailed Dr Harry and they got a reply. Andrew promises me he’s going to let me know the date. I definitely want mum or Ben to tape it for me – that will be gold!!! Little Rahni the Superstar.

So that cheered me up immensely.

I decided to think positively about the Freehand issue and if worse came to worse, retype it directly into Freehand.

When Suzanne got home I was still battling with the program. I’d gotten all annoyed with it again so I was having a spit to her about the frustration of it and also the frustration of having problems like this but feeling like there’s no one to call.

I don’t have my support base of designers like I have in Adelaide, let along cold-calling someone and trying to explain in broken English the problem and hoping they a) understand me b) understand the problem c) can fix it d) can explain in English how to fix it. Ahhhh! The wonders of working in a non-English speaking country. :)

By the time I went to sleep I’d managed to get Vietkey working (although wasn’t really clear about how to get the different variations of tones on the different letters) – so at least that was something. Tomorrow is another day.

Thanks for the call Andrew and Jasmine!!!