Today we went to Ikea, where you have to follow the ‘yellow brick road’ round the store, except …
Actually, the yellow brick road with the arrows painted on the floor has been modernised, updated and illuminated. Now its a light that projects an arrow on the floor. How enterprising. I found it less intimidating. I could stand under the projector and the arrow disappeared. That meant I was free to go wherever I pleased, without being condemned to go where the arrow pointed, because I was controlling the arrow!! Excellent. We just browsed the ground floor of the store because we were looking for a floor lamp. We didn’t find one that Scamp liked. I got a frame for the pastel picture and tonight I cut a mat and framed it. It’s hanging behind me now, but it’s a bit dark in this corner and I think I might move it.
When we came out of Ikea at Braehead, Scamp wanted to go for a cup of coffee, so me being a bit flash, typed Costa into the satnav and sure enough it showed all the nearby Costas. Off we went following the directions. Only, it took us down a filter lane at a roundabout, then promptly changed its mind and decided we should have gone straight ahead. Worse still, the filter lane became the slip road on to the motorway, taking us back into Glasgow. After much swearing and harrumphing by me, we settled on going to the Costa at Robroyston instead. Much easier to navigate. Possibly the worst part of the whole escapade was that I KNEW where the Costa was, I was just following the sat nav to see if it knew an alternative route. I’ll be more circumspect when taking its instructions in future.
Back home I started looking for a website where I’d used a Java powered page that worked out optimal rebates for a picture mat. That’s the edge bits round the aperture that you see the picture through. I found the references to the page, but apparently the page itself has disappeared. Every link gave an error 404 (not found). Gave up eventually and took some useful information from a picture framers forum, then started to write my own program in Excel. Mine only uses metric sizes, although I did see one written for Excel where you could put in sizes down to 1/16th inch accuracy. I’m still not sure how the writer managed to code the conversion to decimal inches and then back again to fractions for the output. Too much work. I remember working out sizes of bolt groups for steelwork using feet and inches and being so relived when we went over to the metric system. Anyway, I got it working and it produces a decent mat.
After the mammoth calculations in Excel, I went out to St Mo’s to clear my head and try to get some photos. It had been a decidedly wet drive in through Glasgow in the morning, and a dry and bright drive home, but by the time I went out for a walk it was just our usual dull. Today’s photo I liked because of the twists and turns in the dried weed, but the ISO was 1000!
Yes, I did open the box. I’m sure you knew I would Hazy. Like I said in the description of the sketch on Flickr:
*I opened the box, and inside was a thin slab of black glass with a silver rim. Amazingly this slab of glass can bring me pictures from all around the world and allow me to speak to people thousands of miles away. I call it black magic!*
When I look back on it, it’s been a busy day. Most days are now we’re retired. When did we ever have the time to work, or to put it another way, what did we have to give up to allow us to work?
Tomorrow the weather should be better than today. We may go out and take pieces!