Personal blahs, and Bento playing
Not doing a whole lot today other than resting as I've caught another cold. Head cold this time. I think I got it from Relle, but even Rob is sneezing often. Blah. I am also stuck at home since my car's battery is dead, so until it is fixed I go nowhere. Hopefully it will be fixed on Friday when Rob has the day off.
So, I am sitting here playing with FileMaker's Bento program, which Doug suggested on FB. I wanted something that I could organize my sewing room inventory. But I am finding that I can not only organize that, but I can keep track of my historical patterns, and all my creative projects, from old completed ones, to new ones (still entering stuff).
The cool thing is that once I am happy with a template form, I can offer it to other Bento program owners on Bento Exchange, so that others could use whatever I create, or I could use what they create. Sadly, no one had created a sewing inventory program, or any program using the term "sewing". But I was able to take a basic Inventory template and make it into what I needed. Did the same for the pattern template, but I had to create my Creative Projects template all from scratch, which in drag and drop mode really isn't that hard to do. I just had to figure out what fields I wanted in the form, and went from there. It really is easy to do.
I think what I appreciate the most on this is the ability to add images to the raw data. My old sewing inventory program that I had when I had a PC didn't allow this. I could put in the location of where the images were, but not actually view the image on the same page. Being the visual person I am, I prefer seeing what I am working on, and can even add more than one image on a page, but that does take up more space. I am still trying to figure out how to post a whole series of images, but while Bento does interact with iPhoto, it doesn't pull them up by my organized albums, unless I import in all the images in an album. I will fiddle with it more to see how to work around that. But even having just one to two images are fine with me.
And just a note, I do have an old bento lunch box, that was mine from childhood. I haven't used it in years, but it holds great memories of my Mom making rice, dried fish wrapped in seaweed balls in it. mmm... I need to buy some dried fish on Friday.
Well, I just got sidetracked and cleared out my Download directory, only to find it really didn't have much in it taking up space. I guess more burning of DVDs is required. Well... back to boredom before heading to bed.
So, I am sitting here playing with FileMaker's Bento program, which Doug suggested on FB. I wanted something that I could organize my sewing room inventory. But I am finding that I can not only organize that, but I can keep track of my historical patterns, and all my creative projects, from old completed ones, to new ones (still entering stuff).
The cool thing is that once I am happy with a template form, I can offer it to other Bento program owners on Bento Exchange, so that others could use whatever I create, or I could use what they create. Sadly, no one had created a sewing inventory program, or any program using the term "sewing". But I was able to take a basic Inventory template and make it into what I needed. Did the same for the pattern template, but I had to create my Creative Projects template all from scratch, which in drag and drop mode really isn't that hard to do. I just had to figure out what fields I wanted in the form, and went from there. It really is easy to do.
I think what I appreciate the most on this is the ability to add images to the raw data. My old sewing inventory program that I had when I had a PC didn't allow this. I could put in the location of where the images were, but not actually view the image on the same page. Being the visual person I am, I prefer seeing what I am working on, and can even add more than one image on a page, but that does take up more space. I am still trying to figure out how to post a whole series of images, but while Bento does interact with iPhoto, it doesn't pull them up by my organized albums, unless I import in all the images in an album. I will fiddle with it more to see how to work around that. But even having just one to two images are fine with me.
And just a note, I do have an old bento lunch box, that was mine from childhood. I haven't used it in years, but it holds great memories of my Mom making rice, dried fish wrapped in seaweed balls in it. mmm... I need to buy some dried fish on Friday.
Well, I just got sidetracked and cleared out my Download directory, only to find it really didn't have much in it taking up space. I guess more burning of DVDs is required. Well... back to boredom before heading to bed.