I’m still here!

Hello

I managed not to post at all in 2013 because I was busy with various projects. Firstly I had a proper go at illustration, which went OK, but didn’t produce anything I’m ready to release. Maybe something later this year.

Secondly was a ridiculously time-consuming project: A 6-minute family action film starring my daughter and some puppet skeletons. It took literally months of frame-by-frame image editing. Hours and hours and hours. It’s not publicly viewable online, but here are some stills:

My current project, which has been in renewed development since November is my circular calendar. I think it’s pretty cool. It plots sunrise and sunset times for a year, along with moon phases and sometime tides:

Link to site: TimeandTideWaitForNoMan.wordpress.com.

I’m nearly ready to leave that project for a bit and get back finishing off my second family film which I started in August 2013.

Bye for now!

 

 

New Aquistions

We cycled to a car boot sale yesterday. I got some pretty good stuff. Look, here it is all piled up:

• 3 packs of file cards plus alphabetical dividers and cardboard box: £1
• Linex 1177 stencil: 50p
• Book about churches: 20p
• 2 ammonite counterparts: 50p and 20p

I’ve got a bit of a thing for file cards. I think I’m attracted to their utilitarian appearance and hand-size scale. I’ve got my software and design notes at work in a card index and index cards have found a role in our life as an art material for my daughter. They’re a good size to take on the train and can be used flat or folded into shapes. I spied these on a nearly empty table and suspected from their age that they’d be nice quality. Assumption correct. Nice thick, smooth card. The lady selling them included the box and dividers as a job lot for the £1. I don’t have a use for those although I do like the box.

The stencil I think is for doing flow diagrams. I’ve googled around a bit but haven’t found them on the Internet yet. I’m going to have a more thorough look to find the exact symbols and see which system or methodology they belong to. I’ll add this to my stencil collection, population 1.

Some ammonite  counterparts. The counterpart is is the bit that isn’t the fossil; the negative. The man and lady did have some fossils proper too but they weren’t as big. I’ve got a nice ammonite anyway so I went for the counterpart.

Final item: What to look for outside a church, P J Hunt, 1972. Illustrated by Ronald Lampitt. Another lovely old Ladybird book. I don’t believe in the big guy but I do like some of his houses.

Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

Still, we got this pile of 25 for £1. What a bargain!

Dinosaur in the Hollies

At last! My quest is over, I have found the diplodocus in the Hollies in Leeds.

Actually my 5 year old daughter spotted it.

We used to visit the Hollies a lot when we lived in Leeds (Headingley, 10 years ago). It’s really nice and is like a cross between a botanical garden gone to seed and an old quarry. It’s very picturesque. A hillside site full of winding paths, rocks and streams.

This is our favourite spot in the park. We call it the LARP Stone because one time when we were sitting there a group of live action roleplayers emerged from the woods, skirmished a little amongst themselves and moved on. It’s a big rock, maybe the size of a car, and has a stream running past it with two wooden bridges to cross.

It’s carved on the top with a pattern and on the side with an eye.

Bark Beetles

My primary source of tree knowledge is The Tree and its World,  Ladybird, 1975.

It helped me identify these strange markings on a fallen tree as the work of bark beetles.

It’s a really nice book like all the other old Ladybirds. Scarlett and I have been slowly reading through it.

Greek Quest

My quest, it is over! I have found ten air conditioning units arranged in the shape of the Greek letter pi!

Aldermanbury, Bradford

Tree problem fixed

Back in October I did a post about trees which included this rather picturesque semi-fallen tree:

It had the caption ‘Is it safe?’. Maybe it wasn’t, maybe is was, maybe it was just cramping the other tree’s style but last weekend it looked like this:

Safer but less interesting.

Bradford Industrial Museum

Last weekend we went to Bradford Industrial Museum following a recommendation from Dean.

It all went to plan – train, train, bus, walk – and the museum was even better than expected. We had a fairly quick go round, which I think is the key to success with young children and museums.

The highlight for me was the printing room which had a Linotype machine, Monotype machine and lots of old presses. I won’t explain what a Linotype or Monotype machine is because it’d just be me quoting from Wikipedia. You’re probably aware that in ye old days you built up your text by arranging thousands of individual metal letters by hand, inking them up and then pressing the paper onto them…

A development from this was hot metal casting where the process of preparing the letters was automated. This is what the two machines did (with slightly different approaches) from the late 1800’s until the 1960’s. The most important thing about them in my opinion is that they look awesome.

The Monotype even had a ‘save’ function…

Another joy was this beast. If you’ve got a massively heavy iron piece of equipment, why not top it off with iron animals:

Actually it’s called a Columbian Press and the eagle is required as a counter-weight. It didn’t have to be eagle-shaped of course, but that’s how they did things back then.

There’s a lot more to see than what I’ve shown here and we intend to visit again, perhaps combining it with another visit to the fantastic Undercliffe Cemetery.

Finally, a warning to those intending to break into the museum:

13-Headed Cat Dragon Attacks Pyramid by Moonlight

 

The valiant knight defends the pyramid and treasure chest whilst the terrified citizens flee into the night. Awesome! This is one of Scarlett’s, not mine by the way. She’s been watching the 1980’s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and obviously Tiamat is proving an inspiration.

Book Acquisitions

Stourbridge has got some good charity shops for books, and I picked up these three at Christmas.

The first find was the Niven. I’m working through the sci-fi classics so was pleased with that. I’ve not read any of his stuff but I’ll give it a go.

The Vygotsky looked interesting and it was only 50p so I got that. The internet tells me it’s worth a go but heavy. I don’t mind a bit of heaviness but will have to abort if it becomes too dense. It’s not all in Russian by the way…

The pick of the bunch is Waddington’s Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Games. I see quite a lot of paperbacks about (in charity shops) on the subject of card games but they don’t do anything for me. This book covers all sorts of traditional games except card games. The biggest section is on board games; chess, draughts, nine men’s morris, mancala, pachisi etc. in their various guises. Lots of games have national and historical variations and the book explains these.

Some of the games, like Hyena Chase below, can be played just on the ground with a board drawn in the soil or sand. I love the idea of using pebbles, seeds and shells as pieces. Dice too, you can use shells as dice.

The book doesn’t go into detail as to strategies, just gives clear instructions with nice clean diagrams. Nowadays you could find a lot of the info online but it’s nice to have it all in one book.