~ The Block ~
Fresh hewn square of wood
With clean unadorned surface
How do I start this?
~Richard
52 week challenge: week 16
WEEK 16: Portrait: Movement – Most portraits are stationary, so this week explore adding some movement. Dancing, twirling, or even hair flips.
Lots of choices this week – skateboarding, bicycling, etc. In the end I went for more localized movement – portrait of a drummer jamming in the basement…
Surface Thoughts
More fleeting than white horses
that rush in the foam,
these sparkling diamonds
dance lightly on wavelets;
a brief but dazzling reflection
of our home star,
their fluttering white brightness
skates untroubled across rippling surface,
paths shaped by ephemeral winds.
Like transient thoughts
they twinkle
when exposed.
No two moments the same.
~Richard
Spring has finally sprung… the tulips are here
It has been a month since we “sprung forward” with the annual clock moving, and we have since had some odd weather in Pennsylvania, fluctuating between a nice 70°F (21°C) all the way down to 21°F (-6°C) depending on the day. We even had one full day of snow last weekend!
All very frustrating, but all part of the change of Seasons.
Well, today was finally nice enough for me to get outside into the garden and start work tidying things up, cutting the lawn, building up the veggie plots and generally appreciating the outdoors life. And what’s more, over the last few days the tulips have finally come into bloom.
Happy Spring!
I’ll have a P please, Bob
Any British followers may know that today’s post title refers to a long running quiz show, Blockbusters, that was hosted by the late Bob Holness, the veteran radio and TV presenter and erstwhile James Bond (at least on radio). During the show contestants would have to pick their way across a lighted board by choosing letters and it became almost a rite of passage to use a variant of the phrase “I’d like a P please, Bob”, in order to elicit a giggle from the young audience through the use of the great British double entendre.
Anyhow, for totally unrelated reasons, and more for the use of corny alliteration, my blog description centers around words beginning with the letter p, and yesterday I added another one –Pottery!
In my continuing quest to seek out new activities, expand my skills and broaden my mind’s artistic capabilities I have started a pottery course at Chester County Arts Association. I think it has been over 4 decades since I played around with clay and last night was great fun. We were given a basic introduction to different art pieces and “practical” pieces being made in clay and I proceeded to make a couple of hand made pots and a few stamps for use in the future. Then the highlight of the evening – I was shown how to use the potter’s wheel.
Again, for those British readers, “The potter’s wheel” was an oft shown piece of film in the bygone days when the TV was not being broadcast 24/7/365. This black and white short film used to be shown on the BBC during the program “interludes” from February 1953 and throughout the 60’s and showed the work of Georges Aubertin. Although it predates my TV viewing by a decade or so this iconic short was occasionally shown during the 1970s and it stuck in the back of my mind.
So, with the visions of great pots and bowls being made I embarked on my training from my instructor, Meghan, and following an initial failure, I was pleased to have produced this as my first ever pot from a wheel!
The strange thing is that, basic as this is, I felt so pleased at having been able to do this – almost like a young schoolchild again, coming home with a barely functional pinch-pot ashtray that I had made and glazed all those years ago. I think I am really going to enjoy the next few weeks of pottering about in pottery!
6 sentence story – War of the Worlds Redux
They had never really understood our true nature.Had it really never occurred to them that the attackers in the tripods were merely doing our bidding? The seeming ease of their conquest should have warned them, but their pious arrogance precluded further analyses.
By the time our Martian hosts had expired we had already moved on – initially hibernating and then carefully molding our genes as we adapted to the new environment.Our new hosts were smaller but much more robust and so varied.
And we now have all the time in the World!
Haiku: Java
As I reported on an earlier post, I have been assisting my daughter with some Java programming recently, which has been both stimulating and frustrating. As today’s loose schedule calls for a haiku I thought I would use this as a subject matter, playing on the double meaning of the term…
~ J A V A ~
Rather like caffeine
this ubiquitous language
awakens my brain
The Elephant in the Room
Many eyes and ears have been on the Donald, and many mouths left agape in bewilderment, over the last several months as he blusters and bullies his way towards his goal as Republican Presidential nomination. Others have fallen by the wayside over this time and his only main rival now appears to be Ted Cruz.
Now, I cannot be unique in finding it more than a touch ironic that the GOP logo is an elephant since it seems to me that the party is now so obsessed with beating Trump at all costs that they fail to address the other elephant in the room, that is – who this would put as their top guy if they succeed in derailing Mr T.
I could wax lyrical about my opinions on Ted’s big adventure, including the childish Dr Seuss filibuster episode, his religious zealotry, compassion-less views on immigration and women’s issues, and more, but instead I offer up a graphical statement that represents my opinion, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words…
52-week Challenge: week 15
WEEK 15: Artistic: Metal – Cold, hard steel. Shiny Aluminum. Or even rusted and broken down. Find your inspiration in metal this week.
Metal, one of my favorite subjects for artistic photography. I love rusty old metal, shiny metal, industrial, forged, ironworks, you name it. I have even tried my hand at blacksmithing only a couple of years back and would love to have my own forge. Heck, even one of my favorite songs of my youth is about it.
I already have a reasonable collection of suitably themed images available but, keeping true to the challenge I decided to try something a little different. Given that I spend 8 hours a day in an office environment I thought I would choose an everyday object from my desk and see what I could do with it using my handy iPhone5.
Can the Old Dog Learn New Tricks?
I have set myself a really steep challenge this week. I promised to help my daughter with a math assignment. Shouldn’t be a big deal, I just have to learn how to program in Java in order to be able to advise and assist her!
Although I am reasonably “tech savvy” and handy with most office applications it has been a really long time since I did any proper programming, so this is quite a challenge. In fact since my last programming was in BASIC back in 1988 a lot has changed. And I mean a lot…
For example, back in the late ’80s the only Java I knew of was through reference to the 1969 film, “Krakatoa, East of Java”. We didn’t even refer to coffee as java! (Starbucks didn’t exist in the UK then, either). In fact it was a full 7 years after I finished my MSc, in 1995, that James Gosling designed this object oriented language which, over the following 20 years became one of the most popular programming languages in use.
Duke, the Java mascot Copyright © Sun Microsystems Inc
So, to answer the question posed – can the old dog learn new tricks? Well, time will tell, but I’m having a good try! I have taken a short break from my cramming and experimentation, reading “Java for Dummies” and conferencing with my daughter. I have a fair grasp of how it all works, on a superficial level at least, and I understand the logic of what needs to be done. And yes, it’s going to be a challenge.
Much to the surprise of my family I am actually enjoying this and I think I will even try to develop this further after my immediate needs are complete. Oddly, it brings back memories of late nights working the College of Aeronautics honing my BASIC programming for calculating crop sprayer flow rates for different nozzle sizes before popping out to the student bar for a quick pint.
Who would have guessed than nearly 30 years later I would be doing similar on another continent with my daughter? I just hope that I still have sufficient grey matter in the old noggin to complete this!
searching4theshot 