Charles Coburn

April 15, 2009

I'm sort of back up and running.... I do have a new painting (Charles Coburn) and I did manage to get it scanned into the computer, but I am having VERY mixed feelings about the new computer! Mind if I steal about one (maybe one and 1/2) paragraph away from Charles Coburn to voice my problems with my new macbook?

1. I cannot figure out how to print things a specific size, like 5x7 on 8.5x11 paper, which is something I used to do ALL the time. 2. I have most of my information stored on an external Free Agent hard drive, and while I can open all of the images, etc. from the hard drive on my new macbook, the entire hard drive is read only!!! I can't even add new paintings to my art folder. 3. I have to re-purchase Photoshop & Illustrator because mine were for XP and I can't live without them. 4. Hence why this scanned painting doesn't look absolutely perfect-- I couldn't selectively edit contrast, brightness and saturation. 5. Only two USB ports (I just ordered a hub so that I can connect all of my many usb cords) 6. I am using the same exact scanner I was using before, and yet I can't figure out how it works with this computer! Update: I figured all of this out, so the paragraph is now redundant :)

On the bright side: I really like a lot of the features, I've always liked apple software better than Microsoft (I used to use the safari browser on my pc) and except for those few MAJOR problems I'm having above, I really hope I can overcome the issues & figure everything out because I want so badly to love my new macbook!

OKAY! On to Charles Coburn... winner of last week's poll!




Who among us does not love Charles Coburn? Personally, I prefer his comedic work (he did do an awful lot of melodramatic movies) like in The More the Merrier, The Devil and Miss Jones and The Lady Eve. He was a comedic genius, often stealing the picture from such heavyweights as Jean Arthur, Robert Cummings, Henry Fonda and Joel McCrea.

Originally part of a Broadway team with his wife, Charles Coburn made the switch to Hollywood when his wife died in the 1930's.

While my very favorite Coburn roles are all in screwball comedy, ranking right up there is his role in The Green Years. It's one of those movies where the first half - 3/4 of the movie is fantastic and then the rest is only so/so-- and one of the main reasons is because Charles Coburn's character isn't a major presence in the second half. In another stroke of character acting brilliance, Coburn plays a jolly old bearded man who befriends his young, orphaned great-grandson. It's a really sweet performance in (at least the first half) a very sweet movie. If you like Charles Coburn and you haven't seen it yet-- add it to your queue!

ps. I have a Jean Harlow painting drying on my desk, but I'd really like to figure out how my computer works a little better before I do another post. I may end up just hooking up my scanner to my dad's computer until I can work everything out. If anyone has a mac and is willing to give me some tips, they are VERY much welcome!!

pss. To everyone who entered the giveaway- you've probably noticed that I haven't e-mailed you yet... I promise I will do so by tomorrow evening. I'm like a fish out of water with this computer right now, and I need another day to figure it all out :)

10 comments:

Classic Maiden said...

I hope you figure everything out with your new mac :)

I truly love your painting of Mr. Coburn. As you, I love his comedic roles the most, especially in The More the Merrier....

Unknown said...

I really like that Coburn painting-- a lot of expressiveness.

Wish I could help with the mac, but sadly I only know PCs, & am also hanging onto XP for all it's worth because I hear some disheartening things about Vista. But I bet you'll figure it out-- Google searches often bring really good tech tips; I've done this a number of times with pretty good results. Hang in there!

Anonymous said...

I love Charles Coburn! He's such a well rounded actor. I agree, he is great in comedic roles. The More the Merrier and Devil and Miss Jones are two of his best. But he was an awesome heavy too. He was absolutely chilling in King's Row with Ronald Reagan.

Sarah Mann said...

Macbooks freak me out. I'm sticking to my little green Dell buddy :D
I love Charles Coburn. I kinda feel bad tho, because I can only see him as Piggy from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I've seen him in other stuff, but he will always be Piggy!

John said...

Charles Coburn is one of the many great characters we have to enjoy. "The Lady Eve", "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and "The Devil and Miss Jones" to name a few.
Not too long ago I recorded both "The Devil in Miss Jones" and "The More the Merrier" off TCM and I only got to watch "Miss Jones" before misplacing the disc! Hopefully, TCM will rebroadcast it soon. I have heard and read so many good comments about it.

DKoren said...

I only really know him from The More the Merrier, but he's just plain awesome in that. Great painting!

Carrie said...

Gah, love the first one - captured his spirit perfectly!

Operator_99 said...

I think the problem with the Free Agent drive and the Macbook may be that the drive is NTFS formatted which the Mac can't work with. Any external drive, especially if you are shifting between Windows and OS10 must be FAT32 (a bummer cause its slower than NTFS. I have a Macbook and PC (my main machine) and keep one drive formatted in FAT32 just for the Mac. Too much PC software, including ALL adobe products, to switch and really have no problems on PC - both just tools.

Anyway,I hope that helps. You may need to put your files somewhere else for a bit because it the issue is format, you will lose data when you shift from NTFS to FAT32 - phew!

I use Idrive (nothing to do with Apple) that gives me 150gigs of offsite "cloud" storage for $50 a year. That's in addition to my Drobo - yup totally paranoid. :-)

Anonymous said...

Operator_99 is right about the formatting of your external drive. It's probably still formatted for your Windows OS and you'll have to manually go into the settings and reformat it. I just got an external HD for our family computer and I needed to do just that for Windows (because it was pre-formatted for Mac). Don't drive yourself crazy trying to figure stuff out. Googling is the very best idea for all the problems. Yesterday, iTunes mysteriously stopped working on my computer so I googled the error message and the word iTunes and found the solution right away. It's a tremendous resource. The websites of the products usually have extensive help sections, too, so you may want to check that out.

On the printing issue - are you using the same printer? This may seem basic, but I'll offer it anyway: make sure you're printer driver software is installed on the new machine. Same goes for the scanner.

The PS/Illustrator dilemma is really annoying. I wish Adobe would offer an option to buy their software in a format that could be compatible with both systems at the same time.

I hate the limited number of USB ports, too!

Your Charlie Coburn painting is so cute! I love it! And you're so right about The Green Years. He makes that movie and the part he is not in really suffers.

Hope the tips help! You can feel free to send me an email and I'll do my best to help. :)

Unknown said...

Sebina- So far so good with the mac! I think The More the Merrier is my favorite, too! I love Benjamin Dingle :)

John- Thanks! Oh, I have Vista on my downstairs pc, and believe me - the rumors are true! It's the worst operating system in history. My old laptop had XP, and that's one of the reasons that when it broke I got a mac; it's impossible to find new pcs that don't come with Vista now!

genxsters- me too! And I totally agree about Kings Row! He was great in heavyweight roles, I just love him as the adorable guy in his comic ones :)

Sarah- lol. That's the one nice thing about Dell pcs- they come in color! I love color, so the white mac is a little bland for my tastes. I may have to get a skin or something at some point.

Charles Coburn is great as Piggy! He's so adorable!

John- Oh, you have to see The More the Merrier. It's probably his best role ever!

DKoren- it's his best role, so if you could only watch one, I'm glad that was it!

Carrie- Thanks!

Operator- I ended up calling Apple help, and they told me exactly what you just did. I could have saved myself 1/2 hour on the phone if I had just read my blog comments :) It was a mess, though, because I did have to transfer all of my files to another computer first. But now all is fine :)

casey- I am using the same printer, and I had the installation disc, too, but the software for the mac is totally different! The problem is that it doesn't give you as many options; before I could choose what size to print and now it's 8x10 or nothing. It really stinks.

I wish all software came in Mac/Pc formats combined. It would make everything simpler. As for the USB ports, I just bought a little Belkin USB hub for like $10, and it's solved the problem completely.