Getting ready for Artweeks again

Yes, it is that time of year again - Oxford Artweeks approaches in May. I am enjoying it already. Well, everything except the awful smell of the vinyl banner sitting in my studio, it must have been fresh from the printers when I picked it up. The proprietor of our neighborhood bakery is demanding more brochures than I gave her this morning. More, we need more! I have fallen behind on my comics project, but have not forgotten it. In fact, I am working on getting my handwriting made into a font to use for the lettering. I just have to work up the nerve to fill out the form - it’s a little daunting to write characters that you’ll have to live with. At the moment I am uploading impossibly large image files to the Giclee printer (a person, not a device) in Southsea so that I have some additional unframed prints available for sale. New, better postcards are (in theory) on their way in the post. I took three prints to the framer in Headington today, and brought along one that he did last year so we could match it exactly. This to me is a sign of getting older - the willingness to take trouble over details because you have personally experienced the many different and exciting ways that things can go wrong. What seemed like unbearable fussiness when I first left school now seems like a good idea that may preserve your sanity. Even if you do find yourself carrying around a framed picture in a blanket like some flat, angular baby.

I should mention, in the Web 2.0 spirit of “what are you doing right now” - I am listening to a song by the 80’s Irish band In Tua Nua. I’m not sure why I have a lingering affection for this group - but I went to quite a bit of trouble to obtain a used copy of their CD “The Long Acre”. Those who are horrified at such retro listening habits - I can only apologize.

Night lights

On Saturday night we went into the City Centre for the final night of Luminox, a public art piece in Oxford by Ted Dewan. The atmosphere was amazing - it felt medieval. Kudos to whoever managed to get approval for this event, in a regulatory environment where the office toaster is sometimes deemed a hazard.

Unknown tree in our back garden

I would dearly love to know what type of tree this is. It was here when we moved in, and although this portion is healthy and flowering profusely, other parts have dry brown leaves. I had to remove quite a bit last fall because of this. The way the leaves are attached to the branches is very unusual, they are distibuted around it in a alternating pattern. It looks a bit like a monkey puzzle tree. Any clues to its identity would be much appreciated.

And now for something completely different…

Just as I get my machine ready for some real graphics work, I find myself suddenly pursuing athletic and political activities. Anyone who tries to do creative work will be familiar with the syndrome - anything other than sitting down to produce something seems fascinating and urgent. I will say that I really enjoyed skating at the local ice rink with some people from work the other evening. I had no idea whether, after a 20+ year hiatus, I could still ice skate, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could. The whole experience was rather jolly, the perfect antidote to the clouds of gloom that gather when one ponders civic life in modern Britain. Happy citizens of various ages/abilities/ethnicities/hairstyles were enjoying themselves on the ice, moving to the bouncy pop music, and periodically “snow” descended from globes in the ceiling. The Oxford city council comes in for a lot of criticism, but someone is doing something right here.

And politics: on Saturday I went on my first ever protest cycle ride, from Oxford to Radley Lakes. Thrupp Lake is in danger of being filled in with noxious fire ash from the nearby power plant at Didcot. The campaign seems to be gathering strength and it was a very good-natured yet determined event, complete with children in bicycle trailers and friendly dogs. I was particularly happy that I got to wear one of the terry cloth frog outfits handed out by the organizers before we left Broad Street.

Oh, and I’ve decided to start sewing.

Great news for Open Source, the radio show

It couldn’t happen to a better program…

Page 1

As promised. On to page 2.

Installed Vista, survived to tell the tale

Yes, never one to hang back from trying the latest technology, warts and all, I have installed Vista Home Premium on a part of my hard drive. I do still have the option of booting into my old XP setup, which allows me to sleep at night. So far, the transition has been surprisingly painless. One big exception: Second Life. I am a virtual exile from SL until my video card manufacturer (Hello ATI) releases drivers that don’t make Second Life crash when you launch it. At least they’ve released Vista drivers for my card (Radeon X1600 for those playing along at home), unlike NVidia who are getting lots of grief because they haven’t. I can sync my ancient Handspring Visor Edge organizer which is a lifesaver - I only found out that there was a Vista compatible version of the Palm Desktop software by consulting this helpful list, the palm site doesn’t make it clear. Anyone else in the same situation wants Palm Desktop version 4.1.4E.

On the graphics front, Photoshop CS and Painter 9 seem to run well. I am working on Page 1 of my comic and should have a b/w version of the first page ready to post in a day or two. Without text yet - I’m going to see how much of the story I can convey in pictures, then add text as needed.

In the garden, some of the 50 Free Bulbs I planted recently are starting to appear which is quite exciting. I’ve also planted three white agapanthus that were starting to grow in the plastic bag they arrived in… I took pity and put them in the ground over the weekend.

An observation…

Nothing more. But in the last couple days, Firefox 2.0 has slowed to an unusable crawl on my home machine. In contrast, IE is running at full speed. I’ve now installed FasterFox which lets me actually count the painstaking seconds it takes a page to load in Firefox. This afternoon, I was trying to listen Radio 4 online. RealPlayer was performing terribly, dropping the stream frequently. I switched to Windows Media Player. Much better. Coincidence? If the pattern continues, upgrading to Vista will make me wealthier, thinner and smarter.

Update: I may have spoken too soon. I’m listening to Radio 4 with Windows Media Player now, and it sounds as if there is a small pig grunting in the studio. I thought it was a report about farming.

Back to work

Just as I was building up a little post-holiday momentum - reworking the JT Agapanthus story, blogging, reorganizing my studio - I came down with a flu that reduced me to shuffling around the house and coughing for about a week. Today we had significant snow in England, so I walked to work rather than riding my bike. I hadn’t walked along the Cowley Road (our main drag here in East Oxford) for a while, and I really enjoyed browsing. I went into out a Brazilian shop/art gallery, a middle eastern grocery and a retro old-style pharmacy where I found a German liquid iron supplement called Floradix that was recommended by a colleague when, post-flu, I was looking a bit pale. Here is a *partial* list of the ingredients: Carrots, nettles, spinach, quitch roots (?), angelica roots, fennel, ocean kep, aftican mallow, orange peel, pear juice, grape juice, blackcurrant juice, cherry juice, orange juice, red beet juice, lemon juice, carob extract, apple juice, yeast extract, honey, and MORE. I should be leaping tall buildings in a single bound any day now. This is just one more stop on my tour of European health tonics - at Christmas I had the novel experience of imbibing a French herbal remedy delivered in - I kid you not - individual glass pipettes that taper to a tiny sealed point on each end. You are literally supposed to *snap the glass ends* and shake out the contents into a glass. It may keep the contents sterile. It may be great for the manufacturing process. But if you delivered something this way in the US you would be sued before the first batch left the plant. I was really careful, and still managed to stab my finger. And this was a standard product, recommended in two different pharmacies for a common complaint. I’ll try to post a picture of one of these things so you can see what I’m on about. Anyway, I am not abandoning my comics storytelling project, and will post some more sketches ASAP.

Tiki mugs

Tiki mugs to benefit Katrina victim. I love these, especially the fleur-de-lis nose. What would I do without boing boing?