Archive for the ‘My Stuff’ Category

In the winter a slightly odd phenomenon sometimes happens when I do the rather mundane task of doing the washing up. When its cold outside and I fill the bowl with hot water steam produces tiny water drops all over the bar of soap on my window sill. I’ve normally only seen this at night but a few times I’ve found its happened late in the day. Tonight it was light enough to get a few photographs before the drops succumbed to gravity and ran into the soap dish.

I set out to write a Red Phone Box story back in June but couldn’t find its middle.  So I let it stew for awhile.  Yesterday I found the middle and got the first draft together.  It was 50% too long but I’ve edited down worse miscreant short stories to length (pretty much every Dirk Dangerous story had superfluous words).  Now I ment to leave it to mature a little but somehow that didn’t happen.

I got it down to 25% over length but the end was just mechanically getting through the plot.  Plus I’d discovered two lines that needed fleshing out with multi paragraph flash backs to satisfy my story telling urges.  So I split it in two and hived off the flash backs as new stories.  Hopefully Salome will like them.

I’ve had a little fiddle round with this site to add Google +1 button, Tweet Button and Facebook like. Not because I exepect anyone to use them but so I can use all three in anger. The formatting needs a bit of work still but all three seem to be working.

Last weekend I took myself to London to throw myself round a series of exhibitions. One of the highlights was going to see the 2011 Pavilion at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens by Peter Zumthor. I’d only seen shots of the outside and have to admit I was a bit concerned it was going to be a rather boring black box. Fortunately while from the outside it appears to be a plain black box punctured by rectangular openings on two sides it has a more interesting interior.

Going through one of the entrances you find yourself in a passageway that runs around the entire outside of the Pavilion openings into the interior staggered from the exterior lead into a rectangular courtyard.

The outer edge of the courtyard, below the buildings inward sloping roof, has continual bench seating broken only by the entrances. Simple chairs and tables are arranged around the edges. At the heart of the courtyard is a long thin bed planted densely with a variety of plants of different heights and colours.

I managed to get to see the gallery on two trips to the park. It reminds me of a cloister but as though designed for monks who have a very modernist, minimalist aesthetic taste. With its inward sloping roof I’d have been interested to see what the interior is like during a heavy rainstorm. I imagine that water races off the roofs, especially at the corners.

This years Pavilion will be at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens London from July to October and entry is free.

…You’ll not like him when he’s angry.

My avatar was mistaken for a goblin’s mugshot and he really isn’t happy about it.  First he’s never been in trouble with the law.  So they don’t have his DNA, clawprints or photograph on file.  Secondly he’s not a goblin:  Goblins don’t have tails or wings – at least not the goblins he’s come across.

A quick post for a quick render – Sunrise City – my first proper test render with my new 64 Bit PC built entirely with it.  My last PC was supposed to be 64 Bit but there was a complication in the manufacturing (otherwise known as Dell used some 32 Bit parts thus rendering the whole box trapped in a 32 Bit body with 64 Bit RAM and Processor).   Anyway I’m now enjoying the 64 Bit life style.  This quick image was made by taking a quickly built Wizard City from CityEngine and dropping it into Vue 9.5 Infinite.  A few tweaks to one of the out of the box atmospheres to make it redder, to add a low cloud layer and to darken the buildings’ materials so they became stronger silhouettes and nine minutes later a larger version of the cityscape above was done.  Resources never dropped below 85% even with both Vue and CityEngine running at the same time.

The Colonnade (or Loggia) at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire.