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Google Says … I am Not a Number

"Google ... I am not a Number ...," animated GIF by @aforgrave

“Google … I am not a Number …,” animated GIF by @aforgrave

I like Visual Assignment 1244: Illustrating Odd Autocompletes. I’ve done it a couple of times before, although I can’t find any examples in my Media Library and it’s not showing up in the Assignment Bank examples. Maybe it’s in the Assignment Bank more than once? Like maybe in the AnimatedGIFAssignments?

For this one, I didn’t necessarily illustrate the odd autocompletes, but there are a couple good ones in there.

  • “I am number four.” (Six would not say that.)
  • “I am not a robot.”
  • “I am not a nugget shirt.”

Anyway, I knew what I was expecting with this one, and Google did not disappoint. The real fun was getting that tiny little visual summary of the opening credits to animate in the search results.   (2 & 1/2 Credit Units)

Process

This challenge is essentially driven by adding letters one at a time into the Google search bar, but taking a screen shot after each new letter so as to capture the autocomplete suggestions and hopefully capture some interesting gems. I also like to try to capture the odd text cursor, and put in a few “pauses” where the cursor blinks as if waiting for input. That’s simply done by repeating two successive frames (one with the cursor and one without) a couple of times.  A 0.5 second interval seems to be appropriate.

Image Capture Tools:  Snapz Pro X2 (left) and Skitch (right)

Image Capture Tools: Snapz Pro X2 (left) and Skitch (right)

Snapz Pro X  🙁  Skitch?

My long-standing screen capture tool of choice, Snapz Pro X, doesn’t play nice under the latest versions of Mac OS X, and unfortunately it appears support for updates is not forthcoming, which is sad. I’ve used it for over a decade.

Recently I’ve been making use of Skitch for my screen captures. My limited familiarity with Skitch has me having to pause after each snapshot and save the file out to a determined location. (Snapz Pro X and even the native OS X screen capture tool just save to a predetermined folder automatically.) Given that the save-each-capture-every-time slows things down considerably, I investigated the Skitch integration with Evernote. (Turns out Evernote bought Skitch 4 years ago.) Authenticating Skitch with your Evernote account allows for a single “Save” button, and the files go to Evernote automatically, numbered in sequence. Fortunately there was an easy Save Attachments command in Evernote that let me get the images back down out of the clouds.  The nice thing about Skitch that makes it work nicely is the  Previous Snapshot Area command, which allows you to grab successive images from the same section of the screen — something that really comes in handy when you want to layer them for animation later on. And the integration with the cloud and access on multiple platforms is a benefit when you need to share files between devices.  But I think I’ll be investigating something that I can count on locally for when I’m deep in the throes of creating. Uploading just to download don’t make no sense.

In the meantime, I think I need to find the duplicate entry of the Google autocomplete assignment. I know I’ve done it before. Or someone I know has. 

#BeSeeingYou