miscellaneous

Artnatomy and life casts

Posted by hil

pout
Artnatomy is a fantastic anatomical facial expression learning tool by Victoria Contreras Flores. Play with
the actions, especially in naturalistic mode. The pout is wonderful. (via Drawn!)

This reminded me of a collection of life casts that I had seen a while ago. Life casts are plaster casts of actors’ faces, made so that makeup artists can develop prosthetics. The thing I find curious is that with no hair and eyes closed, the faces seem to lose much of what makes faces distinct and individually recognizable. (via Extreme Craft)

Updated links 2015

Catching up

Posted by hil

I’ve been distracted by my OPML blog the last week or so; The OPML editor is so nice and off-the-cuff to use that this feels almost ponderous. (The software and hosting are only for evaluation at present, courtesy of Dave Winer – thank you!) so the blog is likely only temporary). Here are some links that I posted there, so I get caught up here!

Pandora: very cool! (thanks Lynda!)

Diana Adams: Painter of bold contemporary New Zealand landscapes

Information aesthetics:
Intreguing blog run by Andrew Vande Moere from the Centre of Design
Computing and Cognition at Sydney University, and nominated in the Bloggies. I haven’t had time to explore yet, except to have a play with the unseen weather video. I put a few stills from my version in the pool at Flickr. They look dry and late summery compared to the European ones, don’t they?

The design that got best designed is unusual, lush and colourful. I like it.

Squid: Laughing Squid’s blog for all things squid. Love the Welcome squid overloards t-shirt. But probably not as much as this silly blog t-shirt.

Brides of March. I really liked San Francisco the few days I’ve spent there. Whenever I read Laughing Squid I think what fun SF could be to live in and be part of.

More Jane Austen TV adaptations : that Andrew Davies is writing the screenplay for Sense and Sensibility assuages some of my feelings that the JA popularity wave is getting out of hand.

Speaking of Austen, this made me laugh.

Last.fm: an open source music/social networking site (via Doc Searls)

Articulate, the ABC’s arts blog, is blogging the Adelaide Festival of Arts.

Newsvine: an innovative and possibly fundamental change in news sites. Here is an enthusiastic rundown on it. I wonder if it will get bogged down by the derisive comments and divisions that often happen in political discussions?

Updated links 2015

Banana cake!

Posted by hil

This is my absolute favourite cake. I like it best when it’s completely cooled down, and without any icing. It’s also really good buttered like bread. It always has interesting little dark specks in it, though I have known people to make banana cake that doesn’t – but that’s just weird!

Cake

Banana Bread

2 cups SR flour
125 g (1/4 lb) butter or marg
2 eggs
3 or 4 ripe bananas (can be over-ripe, variable number)
1 cup sugar
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch salt

Cream butter and sugar, add mashed bananas, beat well, add beaten eggs. Sift flour and salt and add to mixture with 1/4 cup water in which the soda has been dissolved, beat well. Bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour.

The picture is me aged 7, showing off the first cake I ever made. I still have the little apron with the African animals, as I was fond of it. But I don’t bake often these days, and I discarded aprons many years ago.

Starting and finishing

Posted by hil

I was thinking today about how we go about starting and finishing things. It’s kind of curious and fascinating, don’t you think? How do we decide exactly what to do first, and how do we know when to stop?

This was prompted because I’ve started a new project in the last few days. I’m making a large body suit, and it has some mechanisms that have already been made, which I have to integrate into it. It’s a one-off, no prototype, so nothing to really draw on, and I anticipate quite a lot of problem solving.

Although this character has been discussed and planned on paper for a while now, making a physical start feels like a challenge, and I’ve been circling it at a distance, and doing ‘busy work’ around it. It’s rather like when you see someone swirling their pen in the air a few times before actually being able to sign their name, or like a dog going round and round before being able to settle down to sleep. So today I have been to the fabric shop to see what is available, and I’ve measured things and had lots of cups of tea. And I fiddled with some parts of the mechanism which needed bulking out, because that was a fairly straightforward thing to do. Tomorrow I will make a small plasticine model to make a pattern from, and then after all this nibbling around the edges I can probably make a more convincing start.

In the past I’ve regarded this phase as procrastination, or just something silly I inevitably do, but today I have shifted and decided that instead it must be a necessary and positive part of the process.

Finishing is equally as interesting. In this case, though, the exact finish will likely be dictated by a deadline!

Loftus Hall

Posted by hil

LoftusMy friend Lynda is globetrotting at the moment. She has just finished a driving tour of Ireland, and relates her Haunted House experience. I love the way she writes.

Not quite diamonds on the soles of my shoes

Posted by hil

BrightThis is a cool idea: LED slippers! I’d like LED ugg boots instead, please.

Speaking of shoes, Mimi linked to the Painted Shoes Manifesto by Howard Rheingold, wherein he says he has been painting his shoes for 7 years (it would be 10 now, if he is still doing so), and urges us to do the same. He starts with black clogs, which last him 2 years wearing them every day. Somehow this was a surprise; it didn’t really fit with the mental image I didn’t have of Howard Rheingold. Isn’t it funny that you can have an impression of someone without ever consciously thinking about it?

Coo!

Posted by hil

The neo-natal manager at a hospital special care baby unit says “Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me.”

I can see the thinking but it just makes me laugh because babies are designed to be cooed over! It’s a cunning part of the process of interaction which allows babies to survive, engage, learn, talk and become social beings. When I was involved with public radio in the early 80’s, the sound engineer at the station remarked that the soundproof studio doors would hold out all sounds except a baby’s cry, because their cries are designed to get our attention no matter what. It’s the same deal. Go to Goodhappyfun and mouse over the main links. I bet you can’t help smiling. I even get those spine tingles at the back of my neck that I was speaking of before.

I don’t particularly buy the infection argument either. In normal circumstances I would go with the ‘boosts natural immunity’ outlook.

Updated links 2015

Deep Peace

Posted by hil

I heard a lovely Gaelic blessing at yoga tonight:

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep peace to you, deep peace to you.