Tag: Blogging

Keyboard fixed!

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The bug is fixed thankfully.

It’s useful having a computer shop just down the road…

Apparently it was an “unusual glitch” whatever that means. My normal keyboard shrank last week to a smaller version. I just thought it was an upgrade but apparently it was the computer downloading another version because the first one had stopped working, it was only when my computer kept flashing up “unfortunately, Samsung keyboard is not working” that I realised that something was wrong.

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So every couple of seconds the message flashed up, technology is like that, it tells you there is a problem but not how to resolve it. How do you sort it out when you cannot type in a question to Google, for instance, to ask what to do?

So, switch it on and off, switch it on and off and flick the SD card out and back in, then try to remove duplicated photos, clear cache’s, uninstall apps you don’t use. Clear the cache’s again. Run the anti virus, remove old unwanted emails and messages……

Nothing worked, though I had freed up memory on my external memory SD card…..So it had to go to the shop, they could not type anything in to even get on the internet to download a new keyboard. So they kept it in to fix. You don’t realise how attached you are until you have to leave your computer behind. Talk about separation anxiety! But it has come home fixed.

Thank you one stop computers in stoke. Very helpful and they only charged me half of what they estimated.

Cheers and thanks x

Don’t stare at me. .

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Instead of poetry a few words……

Large green eyes, look out of a dark green face. Paper thin skin, layers of chlorophyll ? What are you,  green, sap green, olive green, hookers green, lime green, a green apparition. Staring eyes that cast a spell over my mind. A sneer on your lips, worldly thoughts cascade in your brain.

What are you? Again, I think. Some mammalian plant? A simulacrum of humanity?

Leaves break out through your skin, vines, ivy, convolulus. Grow longer, twisting violently across your face. Your hair is fern fronds, feathery, tiny leaves on twining stems….

Your body is green as grass, a cauliflower and cabbage mass of leaves, courgette fingers, marrow thighs, feet stretching into the mud, but mobile like a human woman.

Veins like phloem and xylem gather fluids, rise up your trunk. Transpiration instead of breath. Are you deciduous or evergreen? Do you have an autumn season and wither into winter? Or are you still young in the cold months? Red berries blossoming on your lips? Heart of Oak or Yew?

You stand and stare at me. Looking into my room, glass holding back your strength. Your witch like hands or twigs beat on the widow pane. You cannot enter. But I cannot leave. Trapped by your tangled leaves. Tendrils fight their way in through the letter box. Green woman, earth, Gaia ….

 

 

Talk time

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I miss talking to people sometimes. I have a tenancy to isolate myself as I have said in the past. But today was a good day, I saw an old artist friend who has an idea for a travelling exhibition, and my work fits with it. It’s great to get some positive vibes. Also, a painting that I did a couple of years ago was bought at my exhibition. Someone really admired it and decided to buy it. I feel like a parent seeing a child move into the world. It’s amazing how attached you can get to things, and to see something you love go to a good home gives me a glad feeling inside.

In fact what started out as a quiet weekend has turned out very well. People were interested in my exhibition and some of the new things I have went down really well. I have to thank a friend for creating necklaces for me from some fused glass I made in a workshop earlier in the year. Also a photographer who turned some of my paintings into cards. Again they sold well.

I have not made a fortune, but it has boosted my confidence. Even the chap that came in and said my art was not his cup of tea was not rude, just honest.

The only bad thing is that I seem to have caught a cold! Maybe talking to all those people meant I picked up a bug. We will see….

Organ grinders

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One thing about Britain, and in this case specifically England is that we have our fair share of eccentrics, collectors, restorer’s and skilled artisans.

Today was a case in point. I met some lovely people who restore and make their own organs and are known as organ grinders because they turn a handle at the back of the machine to work a set of bellows to play music.

Apparently you can get various sorts of organs. A lady showed me how hers worked, with a roll of paper, held on a tube (a bit like a toilet roll). As she turned the handle to pump the bellows the paper roll passed over a series of holes attached to pipes at the top of the machine. the paper was slightly waxy or plasticised, it had small holes cut in it and as each set of holes lined up with the organ pipes it played a note, pipes that were covered with the paper did not play. The lady told me the organ was made in Germany by a famous maker. Sadly I forgot to get a note of his name.

Other organs music was on flat peices of card joined together like a jacquard pattern for weaving. One even had a sim card in it and all the player (grinder) had to do was turn the bellows handle.

The owners of the machines were all dressed in Victorian costume and were dotted around the Etruria Industrial museum. They were there for there national meeting and had come from all around the country. They are staying for a week and will be here until next Sunday.

X

Inkwell..

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There is a particular filter on Instagram that I sometimes use when I want to convert colour photos to black and white. There are a few options you can use including one called willow I think, but I  prefer inkwell. I generally adjust the colour balance first and then go to the filters and choose inkwell. The blacks are rich and deep and the light and white colours are not overexposed. The grey tones are warm and the overall picture remains as it was when I took the original photos.  I generally don’t do any more editing than that.

One thing that can be confusing is when it snows, the image of the wire and gemstone ygdrasil tree hanging in our window , with snowy roofs behind is a case in point, I chose it from a tiny thumbnail, and now looking at it the sky seems a bit pink? Actually when you look closely you can see the brass ring on the window hanging is coloured. The world can be black and white without filters!

Ways to prove the Earth is not flat!

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I keep hearing about people who think the Earth is flat so I decided to do a thought experiment to see if it is possible…

• If the Earth was flat it would be daytime all over the world at the same time, or night time all over the world.

• The sun would rise at the same time everywhere and set at the same time.

• There would be no equator, and all parts of the world would be at the same temperature.

• There would be no north and south poles and no northern or southern lights.

• There would be no need for time zones.

• Flat earthers say the horizon is flat, but that is because the globe of the Earth has a very large circumference.

• If the Earth was flat boats would not go over the horizon.

• If the Earth was flat you would be able to see all the way to the other side using a powerful telescope on top of a big building.

• If the Earth was flat we would be able to travel to the edge.

• A flat Earth would cast a flat shadow on the moon during an eclipse of the moon. (this is because the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon when it happens and if the Flat side was facing the Sun if would be overhead and you would not see the moon, but it would cast a circular shadow).

•  Finally….If the Earth is flat….what’s on the other side? Is it Elephants and Turtles all the way down? ( according to Terry Pratchett)

The live and dead tree

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The live and dead tree sits hard on the ground.

One twist of bark still attached…

Like Ivy clinging to the trunk,

Twisted knotted rope like round and taut.

 

Green leaves, large and serrated, sprout out,

Twigs and branches caught in the embrace,

Dead wood holds up life to the sun,

Wise, wide trunk so aged.

 

How did you die?

We’re you struck, hit, broken, by wind or storm?

Did you find disease in your skin?

Is the clinging umbilicus of your wooden baby your clone?

 

Your age is ancient, your body skeletal.

Your upper limbs and branches peeled of all skin.

But still you sit hard on the ground,

Immortal, in a way reborn.

Swirled

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I did another doodle today, just because I can I guess. I wanted to do something bright and colourful. Something cheerful during this hot spell of weather.

Primary colours with a touch of green and orange to brighten up my day. A tiny bit of black for contrast….curves like a fountain give a flourish to the doodle.

I’ve explained I the past what apps I use, I don’t want to bore you again!

Sometimes I can see animals in these patterns, today I think I see cats or dogs…I used to see patterns in old wallpaper and curtain patterns. There is apparently a name for it but I cannot remember what it is.

All the best and have a good weekend!

Premonitions

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What makes the world go round? How do we experience time? What is a premonition?

Some people pretend to prognosticate, be aware of portentous events before they happen. Other people do not give these ideas credence, or use logic to work out what is actually happening.

On a few occassions something will happen that I thought of the day, hour or minute before. For instance yesterday I remembered hearing a radio play with a particular character in several months ago. Today another play with the same character was on the radio….it made me quite confused. Could it be I had had a premonition? When I look back on my life I can remember other instances when I knew something was going to happen. Almost as if Time was playing in reverse, so I knew because it had already happened?

Then the sceptic in me woke up. Perhaps I had heard a trailer for the play on the radio yesterday but only on a subconscious level? Maybe other premonitions were coincidences. Although I can’t explain when I dreamt that I would meet some friends on a cycle ride and have to take shelter from a storm in a bus shelter? That actually did happen!

Weird, maybe something to do with quantum entanglement. But thats another story. This thing has never allowed me to predict lottery numbers or winners of horse races. Although I do win more than my fair share of raffle prizes!

Colouring books….

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My partner is not an artist, but he does enjoy art, so he has started colouring adult art books. The themes in them don’t seem to have progressed much more than in children’s books, but they do allow him to relax by concentrating on a subject.

The art in the books appears to have been drawn with a bit more skill, and if you choose something with a specific theme they appear to be of higher quality. He recently bought himself one based on the Lord of the Rings books.

I dont know how anyone else feels about this? Is colouring in  a book an art form? Is the artist the person who draws out the initial image or the person shading in the image?

I guess its like old fashioned painting by numbers….however it is a hobby for those who want to engage in artistic projects.

It would be interesting to see how an artist tackled filling in the pictures. Would they use traditional felt pens, or more interesting methods such as acrylics, oil paints, different types of charcoal or even collage and gold leaf. Turning something which is mundane into a spectacular rainbow of colours.

So maybe that is a challenge. To take one of these books and transform it into a true piece of art….