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Miscellaneous Ramblings
by Larry Moss and Sheena Beaverson
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| This creation by Patrick Brown was one of the first things seen when entering the Headquarters Plaza Hotel. It was intended as a tribute to the rescue workers that perished on September 11, 2001.
Check out other photos from All Star Revue. |
- Looking back at the All Star Revue 2001
- Other recent events
- Future convention coverage
- This month's featured portfolio
- How-to: Searching the BHQ Photo Database
- New BHQ member feature
Looking back at the All Star Revue 2001
The fourth annual All Star Revue took place in Morristown, NJ on November 8-11, 2001. Balloon artists from around the country showed up to teach, learn, or just hang out and talk about their experiences and ideas. Thanks to the producers for making it enjoyable to attend.Highlights of the convention included top instructors and parties (no other balloon convention has as much food available as ASR) sponsored by the leading manufacturers and suppliers to this industry. What I've always found best about ASR is the small classes that allow students to get personal attention from instructors (in and out of class) and the fact that once the hotel and convention is paid for, there are never any other expenses. Food and evening activities are all included. Sure, some choose to venture out for a meal or two, but it's not necessary.
We've always done what we can to get pictures and write about as many events as we're able to attend. This year at ASR, we improved our methods of getting new pictures online throughout the event. There's a huge collection of event photos online with full descriptions, so you can get an idea of what you missed (or what you experienced)
Other recent events
ASR isn't the only event that occurred recently. Looking at the BHQ events page, we see that quite a few small jams, get-togethers, and classes took place around the world. Two of the larger ones were the Eurojam in Melle Germany, and the Show-Me 2001 Balloon Artists Retreat in Kansas City, Missouri. BHQ representatives were not able to attend either of of those, but we wanted to. I (Larry) almost made a virtual appearance in Kansas City, but a technical glitch caused trouble. Maybe we'll try that again some time in the future. Hans Siemons provided a nice collection of photos from Eurojam to share with the BHQ audience.
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| This Halloween photo can be found in Sammy J's portfolio. |
Future convention coverage
Since it isn't possible for everyone in the industry to get to every event, we do our best to provide coverage of all of the big ones. If there's an event you think we should be at, let us know.This month's featured artist portfolio
After a lot of positive feedback last month when we featured a BHQ member portfolio, I thought I'd pick another that grew over the last month. Thad James aka Sammy J from Fenton, MO showed us a bit of his work, focusing his recent photo submissions on Halloween creations. Take a look at his pics by visiting http://sammyj.balloonhq.com.How-to: Searching the BHQ Photo Database
The searchable photo collection is growing at an almost unbelievable rate. As of today, there are over 3400 photos accessible to the public. Last spring when the BHQ Photo Database was unveiled, it came with a disclaimer. It went a little something like this:We are working to integrate all images in the BHQ Photo Archives into this new interactive database. Remember to look in the old photo area for images added prior to May, 2001.I (Sheena) am happy to say that, in large part, that promise has become reality. Photos previously shown under the categories of "Entertainer Balloon Sculptures" "Round Balloon Sculptures" "Monthly Photo Additions" and "Miscellaneous" are now accessible from the interactive photo database. All those great One Balloon Sculputures, Balloon Sculpture Parodies, Class Round Balloon Decor, and Web Member pictures have been assimlated!
These changes mean that it's more important than ever for you to learn how to use the search capabilities of the database. Currently, BHQ Members can do a search by Title or Artist on those older photos. Category searches (ex: multi non-round, single balloon, parody, etc.) are not yet possible. These photos will be assigned their proper categories over the next couple months. They appear toward the middle and end of the database photo browse sequence.
Finding photos that are more current is very easy. Entering the main photo page will always show you the most recent additions first. Recently, there have been new photos added on a daily basis. Due to the large number of photos associated with each special event, event photos are not displayed in the main viewing area. To see those, either click on the link for the event photos on the main photo page, or go straight to the event photo page.
Now, we'll present some more detail about using the photo database search page, which accessible from a link on all Photo Database pages. Note: that this is different than the "Search BHQ"link found on every page of BalloonHQ.com near the upper left corner of the page. That is the general search facility of BHQ and does not search the photos.
The photo database search page can be reached through a link on the bottom of every database driven photo page. This is a BHQ Member Service not available to other web site visitors. This is because of the intensive resources needed to preform complex searches. The photo database search page allows you to search for photos by criteria like category, artist, title, and description. It's even possible to combine searches on all of those fields and find, for example, all photos by a favorite artist that are categorized as Christmas sculptures that contain the word "tree" in the description.
Let's try a basic example. Suppose you want to find all photos of animals constructed with round balloons. On the search page, you'll see a line like the following:
In the default state, searches will ignore categories. So you'll need to drag down the menu to select "match all of the checked categories". Next, click to place check marks next to "Round balloon sculpture" and "Animal". Now click the "submit" button. At the time this was written, that returned 34 results.
Play with the search options. See what you can do. You can't hurt anything by trying and you might be surprised by some of the discoveries you make. Most importantly, check back often. As more of the older photos get classified, you'll be able to find even more information.
New BHQ Member feature
In the olden days (also known as last week) accessing member portfolios could only be done with a long, ugly URL such as:
http://www.balloonhq.com/portfolio/usernameThere has been some interest in making that shorter so it looks better in promotional material, or at least so is easier to give to someone on the phone. The solution is here. All BHQ Members can now go directly to their portfolios using the following form:
http://username.balloonhq.com
BHQ Membership is currenty $25 per year or $55 for three years.