Gradient brushes in Illustrator

They said it can not be done but it can. Evidently you cannot use a gradient in an Illustrator brush.

First create your gradient within a small rectangle and then go 'Object ... Expand' and make sure fill is ticked and Specify say 200 steps. Grand ... and here's the trick, now look for the gradient object in the Layers pallete and see where is says Group, open that and another Group and you wil see a Clipping Path. Delete that Clipping Path.

Now when you drag your gradient rectangle to the Brushes pallete you will get no complaints about objects it can't use. These gradient brushes are obviously very heavy data wise so bear that in mind.

Importing a backup of Mac Mail

Many mac users backup their Mac Mail to disc. Importing it back into Mac Mail to retrieve some mail can be a confusing and frustrating experience. The 'Import Mailboxes' in Mail is looking for a .mbox file within the folder of your backup.

I've a dot.mac mail account and a cable pop3 mail account, backed up onto a dvd. Could I get Mail to import the pop3 account from the disc? Nooooo! It could get the dot mac stuff but the pop3 was all but invisible.

Ok, so Mail wants to be stoopid, I decided to keep it real simple and dragged the pop3 folder onto the desktop ... and then sent Mail to Import Mailboxes and look in that folder on the desktop and wonders of wonders it found it and successfully imported my pop3 mail backup.