Dean Koontz is one of my favorite authors. His writing is mysterious, intriguing, and laced with a comical sense that I enjoy. His new book Odd Hours came out yesterday, in hardback and audiobook. To accompany the book, but separate, there is a whole series of webisodes on YouTube that follow Odd on his journeys. The webisodes are not written by Koontz but stay true to the character.

I also discovered, from the Dean Koontz mailing list, that Dean now has a podcast which you can get from his site, or from iTunes.

I like Photoshop, I use it just about everyday. It’s running a little slower these days on my G5 iMac, but it gets the job done. However, sometimes there are applications that come along and get the job done without the extra fuss. Picturesque, by Acqualia, is one of those applications. It’s easy, beautiful, and just upgraded to version 2.

Picturesque makes easy work of rounded corners, shadows, reflections, strokes, and now rotations and tilts. It’s perfect for styling images for the web, or to provide a little something extra to thumbnails. I used version 1 extensively on images I took for StylingSalon.com last year.

Here’s a small gallery of what version 2.0 can do.

When I was probably in jr. high or so I heard L.E. Romaine known to most as Romaine, the Assistant Pastor to Chuck Smith at Calvary Costa Mesa, speak at another Calvary. He opened his message with an audio clip from Pastor S.M. Lockeridge. Lockeridge was a Pastor at a Baptist church down in San Diego is perhaps most known for his sermon entitled “My King.” All these years later I came across several videos on YouTube featuring Lockeridge’s famed sermon. The one below is set to a dance remix and some nice visuals.