Freedom! – 1 March 2020

Sketching is fun and so is painting, but when you have to do it every day and also dance to someone else’s tune, it becomes work.

Today was the first day of March and that meant the inaccurately named 28 Drawings Later and Every Day in February were finished for me. It was fun for most of the time, but when it starts to resemble work, I have to draw a line (no pun intended). I’m quite happy to do the odd sketch as the notion takes me, but I’m also happy to let it lapse for a few days. All being well, I’ll probably take up the cudgels again in May for EDiM.

It seems the news people are having a field day with all the Coronavirus stuff. They’ve found a perfect way to take up hours of screen time giving us updates and filling our screens with stats and visual representations of how bad this virus thingy is. Most folk don’t really care all that much. Until it actually affects them, it’s just another blah blah blah that takes up too much time and deflects the serious news to the last five minutes of the program. The gigantic map behind the presenter with whole countries splashed in RED don’t really tell the whole story. Yes, there’s a case of the virus in Scotland, but because of that, the whole of Scotland is painted red. Someone somewhere has read and applied “How to Lie With Statistics”, a brilliant book written by Darrell Huff and as valid today as it was when it was first published in 1954.

So, today, after lunch I went for a walk in a soggy St Mo’s. Got today’s PoD which is a dried up looking hummock of moss growing on a branch of a dead tree. It’s amazing what interests photogs with a decent camera and a macro lens. Apart from startling a couple of deer, that was the only interesting thing that crossed my path today. A dull windy day which eventually turned to sleety rain, but not until much later.

Curry from the Spice Tailor range for dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad one. Didn’t read the instructions properly for this one and left the chilli in for a bit longer than necessary, but it was fine, just spicy enough.

Drove in to the Record Factory for Salsa tonight, but the music was so dire we left earlier than we’d intended. It wasn’t just us, either. Almost all of the ‘old school’ were complaining too. It seems that a lot of Jamie G’s ‘Advanced Class’ have now gone over to The Opposition, Sergio & Patricia. I can’t say I blame them. The move from the STUC building out to the West End hasn’t endeared Shannon to a lot of people and the fact that Jamie seems to be away from class more than he’s there is bound to affect the continuity of teaching. At least they now cancel his advanced classes when he’s not going to be there. That is a move in the right direction.

Spoke to JIC tonight and found out all about his short trip to Boston. Poor soul hardly got to see round the city at all. All work and no play by the sound of it. Never mind JIC, you have a week to enjoy the peace between studying, working from home and looking after Vixen!

Tomorrow is a Gems day, but we also need to cram in some dance. Hoping we make a better show of things tomorrow night.

Sunshine! – 30 December 2019

The sky was clearing when we woke, but it took a while for it to clear completely.

Scamp was feeling a lot better today. Good enough to go for the messages. Rather than face the crowds and the traffic jams, we chose to shop locally in Tesco. I think we nearly emptied the place, judging by the amount of stuff in the trolley we wheeled to Scamp’s car. She had decided to give the Juke the day off because it had worked hard these last few weeks.

After lunch I took the ‘old’ E-M1 out for a spin round St Mo’s and got some lovely light because the clouds had all cleared away and the low sun was warming everything up. Not actual temperature ‘warming’, but colour temperature warming. The Mired value, but you don’t need, or want to know that, do you? Let’s just say it was lovely light during what’s know to photogs as the Golden Hour. Today it was macros again and my favourite and therefore the PoD was one of some moss on the limb of a tree.

By the time I was heading home, Scamp was getting ready for a Gems Christmas/New Year party at Carol’s. A good name to have for this time of year. I wasn’t invited, of course as this was a girls only night, but I was the nominated driver for Scamp and Margie. I was even getting the privilege of driving Scamp’s car, probably to extend the Juke’s holiday. Dropped the ladies off and headed home to do battle with the MacBook Pro again.

This time I was ready. I’d read the script and the the different pieces of software. The first attempt didn’t work. Apparently the secret is to change the system date of the MBP to something about two years ago and try again. I did, and it worked. Panicked after that because although the screen looked right, I had no mouse, no keyboard and no way of progressing with the install. Back to the ‘big’ computer and read the ‘Problems’ section. It was a know problem with a solution. I did a reboot and edited one small tick box before I lost control and voila! MacOS Sierra running on a 2009 MBP. You PC owners may be saying “So?”, but this is a big deal. Apple control what can and can’t be installed on their hardware, but one clever bloke has stymied that. Well done to him. Tomorrow I’ll populate it.

Got the message just about 11pm that a taxi was required. Checked the temperature (actual temperature, not Mired!) and it was -1ºc. Had to scrape Scamp’s car, inside and out!!

When we got back, Scamp was feeling sick. I suspected self-inflicted alcohol induced poisoning, but she said that wasn’t the case. She did look a bit under the weather and went to bed just before midnight. Hope she feels better tomorrow.

If Scamp is feeling better I may go in to Glasgow tomorrow to source some ink for the printer, or then again, I may not. It’s that certain.