Leopard and Photoshop don't get along

A few weeks back, I decided to make a big effort to spend less time on the computer, and also to make sure to put the computer to sleep mode when I'm not using it. Computer use is probably one of our remaining 'biggies' in terms of our use of resources. We already bus or bike a lot, produce relatively little garbage (more about that later), reuse, recycle, compost, ripped up the grass, and planted a gazillion trees. Most of these things I've done all my life, or at least all of my adult life, so it's not a passing phase. Although I have to say that most of these things also don't seem to take a lot of trying either, but maybe that's just because I'm used to them.

When I started looking around to see what else we can do to reduce further, computer use was the first candidate. We run several computers at home; we both use them a lot; and they stay on all the time. Certainly for me, there's no professional reason why I need to be on the computer a lot, it's just a leftover habit from before. When I have a free minute or two, I check my mail, and then I get distracted by other things, and before you know it, I've been on the computer for half an hour doing nothing.

So I've been trying to limit my computer use to just twice a day (unless I'm doing real work that requires computer use) — once in the morning to check mail and to read news/blogs, and to respond to anything that requires immediate attention; and once in the evening to finish doing what I didn't finish in the morning, and write my diary. And in between, I put my computer to sleep and turn off the monitor.

Well, this has worked out well enough EXCEPT that the automatic backup no longer backs up my computer, because that runs in the middle of the night when the computer is asleep and can't be backed up. This lead the Good Prince to set up the backups to happen another way, which required upgrading my OS to leopard. And of course you already know the rest of this story.

Photoshop puts it quite delicately though. It says something like "I will now exit," instead of crash-n-burn and taking the rest of the computer with it.

This of course means I will have to upgrade to Photoshop CS3 for $200. I don't know how much electricity we'll be saving when my new less-computer-use routine, but I bet it's not $200 worth!

Anyhow, this was the long way of saying that I tried to work on the Portland Open Studios web site today, and discovered that I couldn't because I could no longer run Photoshop. I did finish trimming all the paper for senior #2's book though. (Oh yeah, and on the days that I'm doing real computer work, or at least trying, I also allow myself some fun time on the computer too.)