Monthly Archives: Aug 2006

The only course of action….

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18°C, humid

I felt very sorry for John Hogan who jumped off an upper floor of a hotel with his children when it was featured on the news yesterday.
The BBC broadcast footage of him so distraught that he had to be carried into the courtroom on a chair. No doubt the gutter press will attack hime like a pack of wolves, but then they would.
He’s going to be in agony every time he remembers what happened and how it turned out, a far greater punishment that anything the Cretian legal  system could mete out.  I can only see one outcome that could retain any honour; he ought to now commit suicide.

Sparrows & finches

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18°C, high cloud; Ç=42miles

Puzzling behaviour, when disturbed flocks of finches fly along in front of a scarey cyclist- in the same direction. We travelled at least 200 yds with about a dozen little birds just in front and to my sides. Odd- why not just fly across and behind?  On further thought, parhaps they have a good reason to do it this way. They presumably have to keep to field boundaries, their best protection would be in hedgrows and avoid the open middle of fields where they’d been seen easily by a high-up predator. I saw a few hawks today (namely a Kestrel and another I couldn’t identify). Anyway, that means that I, being that cyclist would be travelling along parallel to the hedges would follow along their favoured routes of safe escape. So there we were, terrified birds and charmed me.
Maybe they weren’t scared off, maybe they were just embarassed about getting caught bathing in a puddle.

A Will?

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18°C, heavy showers

Feeling better, well enough to think about death. I am going to write a will.
What if I get squished under the wheels of a lorry riding to work next week? Who will get my Frank Zappa collection? Big questions to deal with? Suggestions welcome here.
 
3Ds Max: just to continue an August thread, here is a texture map for the Walrus. It’s overlaid with the template and saved here ¼ size. In case you didn’t know, it works like pulling a part a cardboard model and opening it out flat. Then use photoshop to create all the surface colouring and stuff.

On hold

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18°C, showers

Paused. Does this mean the last week of the holiday is going ot be wasted, the weather isn’t so good and I have a cold. So few entries over the last weekend and painting progress is slow. You just can’t paint unless you feel sharp, I keep getting the pictures off the shelf, but then don’t paint.
Picking up the 3D modelling is easier for short periods, so that’s how it goes.

Sleep is needed here.

Pluto wants to to know…

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20°C, clouding over

Is it a planet?
 
Some days it is, some not. Nice to see astronomers arguing over something small.
 
Just realised that I have done no painting for a week! Time dilation effects can occur at any time. I lost a chunk of time this afternoon, it’s hard to explain as I was asleep at the time. It was a ½hour nap that started at 17.00 and finished at 18.30. The weather has been odd today also, I got soaked cycling but the roads didn’t get wet- a day of conundrums.
 
3DS Max: as you’ve seen from the photos, that Biplane looks ok, but on measuring it, all sorts of errors appeared. Some bits were only 1 inch out, but several others were considerably more. It’s taken 2 hours to get that right, plus to make some other modifications. the problem appeared because the undercarriage wouldn’t fold properly into the wing, the pivots/levers were way out.
 
Picture(right) is the new plans imported to max and (left) a render showing the new rounder leading edge on both wings, it was rather angular before. It has nearly reached 6,900 triangles.

Following with trust & optimism

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20°C, turned out nice, strong W

Riding home today on a fast A road that sweeps in curves roughly in parallel to the Trent river. About 100yds I spotted a bird running across the road, a juvenile pheasant, large & lanky but still with stubby wings. I heaved a sigh of releif as it made it to my side, then I could see just as a car cleared that another was following. This one was struck squarely but a large 4×4, with a crunch itbecame a tumbling rag or diminishing life, only the legs left with any movement after the vehicle passed at over 50mph. That bird had followed it (sibling?) with trust and it’s whole life before it.
 
That’s the bit that disturbs me, the bludgeoning of noble qualities. It’s death was quick and probably painless as it looked like concussion from the way it rebounded under the vehicle. I felt just as bad after watching The Trawlermen on TV, tragic for those fish.
 
I always get rather perturbed when animals get killed on the road, but I have to confess here, it’s not that much worse when I see people killed
 
Otherwise a rather good day.
…It doesn’t matter

Malice in Malaga

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20°C, rain

Soapbox: "Guilty of Tavelling whilst Asian": is a phrase used by a British muslim commentator last week- (Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent- Ali Dizaei). His premonition came true yesterday:
 
A Monarch airlines flight from Malaga was disrupted by passengers who took a dislike to two co-passengers. Interviewed on TV this morning they said some passengers thought they heard them speaking Arabic, also they pointed out that they were wearing warm clothes while the other passengers wore flip-flops and shorts. Some passengers then refused to fly and got off the plane.
 
Is this to be expected? You travel on a flight loaded with holiday-makers from Malaga, did you notice how many were carrying copies of the Daily Mail or Sun newspapers? These two guys were cleared later by security, the flight delayed by three hours and they had to fly on a separate flight. Those passengers missed an opportunity to apologise to the two "asians". I hope they received some compensation, and learnt not to fly on a plane full of British chavs.
 
 
 

Quick! lightning

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upto 20°C, sun & storms

Cycle in electrical storm and you’re at risk I feel. It’s the one thing that scares me while cycling (apart from joy-riders & white vans). It felt like a race because the black clouds were approaching home while I was still ten miles away to the North. So I rode hard and got into town just as the first drops fell. Big feeling of relief, but shaking.
 
Walrus:
____
Lots of little fixes today- strict sizes, wires, mapping and panel lines started.

Peregrine poop

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26°C, sun(in London), but a cold start.

I got Dumped on by a Peregrine Falcon who lives on the Tate Modern building today. They live on Pidgeons I was told by the RSPB bloke. Peregrine poop isn’t like pidgeon poop, it’s more like toothpaste, but doesn’t smell (not even of Spearmint). there was a series of telescopes set up by some RSPB people who shwed me these birds of prey nesting on the Tate tower, they are actually breeding there. Several breeding pairs have set up with no human encouragement at all. It turns out they are preying on the London pidgeon population. Very impressed am I.
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Anyway, that’s jumping ahead on the story of my day.
It goes like this:
02.45: get up to drive Hannah to Stansted Airport
06.15: Arrive at airport, drop them off and drive to service station for soem breakfast ansd some sleep.
08.30:  drive to Hendon & get tube to Waterloo; that takes an hour.
09.40: Arrive at Tate Modern. Sceptical at first but on seeing the paintings I soon changed my mood.
Started looking at the Surrealism section and moved on from there.
It’s such fun that I end up staying much later than my plan (to go to RAF Museum Hendon by 14.30)
the walk across London was fun, so many thing to photograph and apreciate.
15:30, arrive at Hendon for Part two of my plan. It turns out though I took dozens of photos there,
it isn’t as much fun as a really good art gallery.
17:40, set off up the M1 for home= now.
 
this is the bridge that has millions spent on it because it was wobbly, but "sshhhh- don’t tell anyone", it’s still quite wobbly- more so when joggers trot over it.
 
It’s been a privilage to receive that peregrine poo award on my legs
Perhaps I sould write about the artworks that impressed me today tomorrow when I am less tired.
 They did impress me though, some made me laugh (as they did other people too).

Spaces Live

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16°C, clouds & liquid sunshine

Uh oh! I don’t mind the new formatting bar a couple of problems:
  • the page is too wide, looks fine on my 21" monitor but most people are on 19" screens and that forces side-scrolling
  • no option for a black background for text boxes, this grey is fine except many of the old posts have highlight-colours chosen against black.
  • I prefered the tabbed preview pane
"Live" may fix this sometime.