Some good news stories for your weekend

Sneak preview of what you can make with Timebox 8.0.

We’ve almost got Timebox 8.0 ready to submit to the App Store. In the meantime, we felt we could all use some relief from the big topics in the news so here’s a few good news stories.

Enjoy your weekend!

Three Nigerian-Irish teens are the champions of Technovation Girls, an international competition that challenges young women to develop an app that can solve a problem in their community. Their award-winning app will help patients with dementia and will launch later this month in app stores.

The next 3 stories are from The Washington Post’s Inspired Life column that focuses on inspiration, help and humor to improve your life and the lives of others.

• The beginning of Gloria’s Gladiators a group that has more than 15,000 members — many of whom were inspired by Scott’s story to begin doing free home repairs in their own neighborhoods.

• This kid is amazing! “My goal was to help 1,000 people,” Cavanaugh said. “But so far, I’ve helped more than 8,000.”

• One more - A skeleton comfort toy was as good as any and gets to go everywhere.

About Miss Moss from “Martin Marten” by Brian Doyle

According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, a project of the Oregon Historical Society "Writer Brian Doyle explored the spirit of Oregon’s small towns and the wonders of the world. Describing himself as “a story catcher,” he wrote about spirituality, family, nature, place, wine, and the human heart with a distinctive playful style and zest.”

The excerpt below is from his book Martin Marten (2010) and describes the stories belonging to Miss Moss one of the book’s characters. We love the way he talks about stories, how they change and how they get told.

“A great deal of who she really is are stories we do not know, stories she may or may not share, stories perhaps even she does not know the meaning and shape of quite yet. People are stories, aren’t they? And their stories keep changing and opening and closing and braiding and weaving and stitching and slamming to a halt and finding new doors and windows through which to tell themselves, isn’t that so? Isn’t that what happens to you all the time? It used to be when you were little that other people told you stories about yourself and where you came from, but then you began to tell your own story, and you find that your story keeps changing in thrilling and painful ways, and it’s never in one place. Maybe each of us is a sort of village, with lots of different beings living together under one head of hair, around the river of your pulse, the crossroads of who you were and who you wish to be.”

Chapter 38, Location 2018 - Kindle version.

Martin Marten, Brain Doyle, St. Martin’s Press, 2015

We’re working our way through his writings and have enjoyed every one so far.

About Brian Doyle

Fun With Cutouts

Timebox now includes a new 3D model called a Cutout. A Cutout model is a customizable photo frame with special features so you can add realistic photos of people to your Timebox scenes.

A Cutout model is a customizable photo frame with special features so you can add realistic photos of people to your Timebox scenes.

Cutout models remove or “cutout” the background of iPhone or iPad portrait mode photos. They also preserve the transparent background in PNG photos so the person in the photo will appear as if they’re standing (or floating) in the scene without the background of the original photo.

A Cutout model:

• Looks like a vertically-oriented, smoked-gray glass.

• Is usually added to the ground or floor in a scene.

• Takes advantage of iPhone and iPad portrait mode photos and the new Select Subject feature in Adobe Photoshop 2020 for iPhone, iPad and Mac.

• A Cutout is also a customizable Photo Player to show and play any Timebox photo stories.

To add a portrait mode photo to a Cutout:

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1. Use the Camera app on your iPhone or iPad to take a photo in Portrait mode. Currently Portrait mode is only supported on recent devices listed here along with helpful how tos and lighting tips: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208118.

2. In a Timebox scene, tap the ground or floor where you want to place the cutout, then tap the + button, then Signs & Screens, then tap Cutout.

3. Tap the new Cutout model, then tap the Photos button, then Photo Library, then Albums, then Portrait from Media Types to choose one or more portrait photos.

4. You may want to tap the Photos button again to adjust how the photo is positioned or cropped in the Cutout by tapping Player Settings, then No Cropping.

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To make any photo useful for a Cutout using Adobe Photoshop for iPad:

1. Launch the PhotoShop for iPad app and open or import a photo of a person.

2. Tap and hold the select toolbar button until the popup with Select Subject appears, then tap Select Subject.

3. Once the person is selected, tap the Mask button on the toolbar that appears on the bottom of the screen.

4. Crop the result as desired, usually making a vertical photo works best with the Cutout model.

5. Tap the Share button and choose Publish and export, then choose PNG format (to preserve the transparent background).

6. Then choose where you’d like to save the PNG photo.

7. Then follow the steps above, starting with step #2 to add the photo to your Cutout model.

Give cutouts a try! We’d love to hear what you think. Thanks!

(updated 11/11/2020)