Learning new Techniques: The best way to pick stuff up - ideas please!

I am a keen illustrator user, and have been for years. It would be fair to say that I'm not n00b any more (although working with some of the people i do, they might say i am!)
In my experience, my personal artwork and enthusiasm levels setup when I have learnt a new technique (do you know what I mean? trying out your new skill can lead to you creating some amazing art)
I just wanted to hear about the experiences of other people when learning... do you prefer video tutorials? (and is free or purchased best?) Magazines, d you read the actual manual?? (I have to confess I never have read the Illustrator Manual!)or just pure experimentation....
Daisy

I learned a ton just by lurking here. There are some smart people posting on this forum.
Also, all the sample brushes and patterns and symbols, etc... that come with Illy are meant to show you what it can do. Pick them apart and in doing so, learn how the appearance pallet (panel?) works, as well as many of the effects...

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    Adding to babowa, enable the system firewall in System Preferences>Security>Firewall tab. Click Advanced and check Stealth Mode.
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    What is the best way to transfer my iphoto library from current imac to my new imac.  Both imacs have iphoto 9.2.1
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  • What is the best way to set up my new Mac Pro?

    Not wanting to screw up in a process I've not done with a brand new machine before, I'm looking for feedback on my plan for setting my new Mac Pro next week...
    The physical plan is this:
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    oh mighty Hatter, I knew you'd have helpful guidance to offer! And thank you. You've confirmed my anxieties about the Sonnet card; kind of a 'too much, too quickly' sort of thing. And it's not that Sonnet's not a good company. Just everything to do with new technologies and the growth curve we all, manufacturers and users, go through when they come out. And, for sure, the new Mac Pro's are new technology; the single biggest forward leap in Apple's top-of-the-line machines for some time far as I can tell. Just reading at Intel's website about the Nehalem's is a joy!
    So, I will proceed now with everything except for the controller card, leaving that 'til later. In the meantime, I think I'll just happily run with the four hard drives all running independently. No software RAID. I know just those, the SSD boot drive plus Velociraptor trio's going inside of a 2.66ghz 8-core Nehalem Mac Pro is going to be a working pleasure. Heck, this way, I'll get settled in and used to the machine's speed, have a great time doing so and then, in however many months, I can jump into spending another chunk of money on an excellent RAID card, RAID card's dear Barefeats will have tested and reviewed for us, set up my RAID 0 set and head of to those new races watching my computer leap for joy! Could be that, by then, the cost of Intel 160GB X25-M's will have dropped enough that I can afford to go for a second and have a two SSD RAID 0 boot drive... Yummy!
    Thanks for the help. Like I say, I knew there was useful guidance hanging on some limb within your personal kit, (otherwise referred to as your mind)!
    Interesting to read about the problems people have had with Sonnet's 2.17 update in PPC's... In this computer, my PowerMac G5 dual 2.7ghz, I have a Sonnet 'Tempo Sata X4P' controller card. I downloaded and installed 2.17 and got the same troubles; no cut, no paste, no 'drag and drop' etc. It was miserable.
    Mine, fortunately, magically corrected after running the 'permissions verify and correct' process in Disc Utility and, after a restart, all was back to almost normal but for one exception; the Sonnet card was no longer present or functioning including the four eSATA ports out the back. (I ran Tech Tools Pro 5's repair suites first but, and who knows why, it didn't correct the problem...) This one was absolutely in the 'who knows what the f_'s going on and why it disappeared but did' class.
    Oh, the other remnant is that, when the computer goes into sleep, after about five minutes, the fans rev up, and up, and the computer's frozen; only access is to do a forced shutdown pressing and holding the power button, so I've had to adopt a 'shut down whenever leaving it for more than fifteen minutes' approach to this dear friend. Once I've fully moved into and established my new one (which should arrive today, by the way... Yippeee!!! Can't wait!), I'll do a complete restoration on this one including taking out the Sonnet card. Usually, I sell my old Pro's but, this time, I'm going to keep this one as a back up and just general second computer for times I might need it. It has been such a great and dependable machine. Keeping it seems the right thing to do.
    thanks Hatter. I'll let you know how things go, including what happens with the SSD. I don't have speed test software so I won't be able to track it's performance like that guy in the post you gave me did...
    JQ
    ps- Gotta love that ILLogic fellow eh? Talk about not getting the essence!

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