Exterminate!

I got a cell phone recently. It's very shiny. Also, it has bluetooth. My Macbook also has bluetooth. Hmm . . . I thought, I bet I could make them talk to each other. Last night I managed to figure out how, though I couldn't think of anything useful to do with the ability. I've also been trying to figure out how to make my own ringtones. This phone can use mp3 ringtones, but you can't just transfer from a computer. Well, you can, and you can then listen to them, but you can't set them as ringtones. Some investigation online revealed sites that will convert mp3s to ringtone files and send them to you on your phone. But the file I wanted to use was already an mp3. Hey, I thought, what if I use bluetooth to send the file? Alas, it just saved it on the phone's memory card (sold separately ;) ). So I took the memory card out and re-sent the file. This time when I selected "store" it gave me the option to set the file as a ringtone. Yay! Now whenever someone phones me there will be Daleks exclaiming, "Exterminate! Exterminate!" Now I just need some people to phone me . . .

And here's a blurry cellphone photo of a weird thing I saw on the way home from my coffee date (drank a London Fog, had good conversation, saw cool photos):



Hmm . . . I don't know why that's sideways. It's not sideways on the phone and it's not sideways in Photoshop. Oh well, you'll just have to tilt your head. It's a snowbank on the side of the road with a big pile of shiny icecubes on top. It was very surreal in the weird night light.

Crap

Had my last day of work at the VRC (aka slide library) today. Had my last day of printing the lithographic photoplate experiment today. Got some information today that made me cancel a date. I don't know if the information was good or not, but I thought it best to err on the side of caution and only have dates in public places for a while. Feelings ended up hurt on both sides. Oh well, I thought. I will drink tea and eat xmas chocolate and watch anime and things won't seem so bad. Maybe I will stop feeling guilty (I am very good at feeling guilty). Apologies didn't help. Apologies didn't seem to do anything except make me feel like I was apologising too much. And Naruto seems to have vanished off YTV's schedule, so I have to wait for anime. So tired. Shower now, then Bleach and Deathnote, and maybe it will help, but probably I'll go on feeling guilty for a while. Probably quite a while. I love words, but sometimes they don't communicate. Crap.

Random Photo

Deva and Ryan in New Brunswick this past summer. I can't remember the name of the town, but they had sea caves and a really nice park with hiking trails.

Slippery Dog

I just got a spam mail with the subject "Dalmation lubrication." It had an attachment. I did not open it.

Random Picture

Too many words, so here's a picture from the field trip we took to Gaspereau Press with my wood type class this summer. Old machinery is fascinating.

Free Paper!

(Yes, another update. You'd almost think I had some free time. Don't get too comfortable--my free time is still pretty minuscule until after Friday.)

So what I did today. I got up groggy and even more zombie-like than yesterday. With the weather having warmed up and the heat in the apartment not seeming to have adjusted, I was too hot to sleep, and the wind was whistling in the window and earplugs just got annoying. But then I drank tea and things weren't so bad.

I went in to school and just had time to make one lithographic photo plate (no pics, sorry, the plates are light sensitive; if I remember I'll take some when I start printing tomorrow). Then I dashed to work (approximately a minute and a half dash to the library from the printmaking studios, luckily). There was a lot of going through slides to get them back in their proper order after a semester of use. I'm working my way through Asia, and so did a lot of wrestling with the dynasties of China and trying to figure out exactly what principle was behind the cataloging of the art and architecture of India. Alas, no one who actually worked on setting it up is at the library any longer. The rare times when someone came in to return or sign out a video seemed like special treats. And when Joe phoned to let me know that they did indeed want to hire me at the Dawson Printshop it was better than xmas. So then I had to tell Victoria that I'm going to take the printshop job and not return to the VRC (aka slide library) next semester. And Friday will be my last day.

After work (which ended at four) I went back to printmaking, cut (or rather ripped) some paper, set up the middle press, and pre-stretched the paper (well, half of it--part of the experiment will be to see just how much not pre-stretching cocks up the registration on different papers). While I was setting up, the technician Murf (without whom the printshop would probably not run half so well) asked me what I was getting out of being the guinea pig who gets to try the new photo-transparencies. Well, I explained, I get to keep the plates after, and I get however many copies of the prints I make on my own paper. Bob keeps the prints on the paper he bought for me to print on. Murf seemed to think I ought to get more out of it, so he went to wherever it is he stashes things and came back with some paper he put away eons ago when the Printmaking Workshop part of NSCAD printmaking shut down (they used to make prints with big-name artists). I was expecting a few sheets; printmaking paper is expensive (which is probably why I am so poor this semester). Instead, he brought me a pile of perhaps 20 sheets of gorgeous thick greenish-tinged paper. It's a teensie bit yellowed around the edges, and curled from being so aged, but it's really , really nice. I can't wait to try some intaglio prints on it. Woo hoo! Free paper. Really nice paper.

Then I made three more photoplates (for the c, m, and k--made the y this morning), cleaned up and came home. I am thinking I should probably eat something, as my lunch was really more of an afternoon snack. I don't really feel that hungry, though. If I find some energy somewhere, maybe I'll make a little pizza. I have a couple of gf crusts in the freezer, and some sauce already made. Or maybe I'll just melt some cheese over a plate of blue tortillas and eat them with salsa.

So much wrongness

Add "guys who list anal sex in their interests wrong" to the list in the previous post. Shudder.

It's alive!

Yeah, so, not dead. At least not literally. I look a bit like a zombie:


But anyway. I seem to have survived the semester. I also seem to have grown a few muscles and lost some fat. Printmaking is hard work.

Speaking of which, here are some more work-in-progress photos of printing, this time relief printmaking.

Here is a reductive linocut all ready to print the final colour. There isn't much left of it now. Behind the block is a newsprint proof of the one colour all by itself.


If I back up a bit, you can see more of the area where I'm working.


And here's the block on the press, waiting for me to add paper:


And backing up a bit from the press . . .


The print, covered with a tympan and blanket, as it comes out the other side of the press. Unlike lithography or intaglio printing, relief printing requires very little pressure so it's really easy to crank the bed through the press.


Here's the print from the back. I've used a thin Japanese paper, so all the colours show through.


The finished print alongside the block I just printed from. This was the final run, of dark blue over the other colours.


And finally, the print itself. I've titled it Kitsune Kaze, which means "fox shadow" in Japanese (which I do not speak, but I know a few words).



---

So, what else have I been doing . . .

I signed up for some stuff, like Facebook, which I tend to ignore until someone posts something on my page or sends me a message.

On a whim, when I was supposed to be writing a paper, I signed up on Plenty of Fish, which I am not going to link to here. Much to my surprise, I met a few interesting people (in real life, even!). One signed up on a dare, and another in a fit of madness. Or something. Even so, I have come to the conclusion that dating sites are strange and disturbing places. And while I am, at times, all for strange and disturbing, dating sites are really the wrong sort of strange and disturbing. Very, very wrong. Like old men with big mustaches and no beards who like country music wrong. Like men from Europe who proclaim you drive them crazy in obviously not first-language English wrong (not that not having English as a first language is itself wrong, that's silly). Even guys who, when you tell them that colour, size and shape are not important, tell you to spare them your liberal nonsense and inform you that skin colour is how we know our own kind wrong. But I'm sure these things are great for some people. For me, I'll be giving my real email to a select few people (well, one of my real emails, anyway) and getting the hell out of there.

I suppose there is more, but I should sleep before I have to get up for work and I still have a few people (non dating site people) to email before that. Probably, due to the hols, it'll be less than a month before I update again. Until then, here is an amusing picture of Poe: