Just went to see Jeff Beck, live at the Tivoli, Brisbane (Australia)
It’s true, Jeff Beck is the guitarist’s guitarist!
The man is a legend. His skill with the ax is nothing short of masterful.
You may be able to tell from the praise I am pouring onto him that I loved his performance. It rekindles my urge to get out my electric ax, loosen the rust and kinks out of my fingers and play that guitar again.
Jeanette and I were right at the barrier before the stage at front and centre. We could se every move the master made, every grin, wink, and gesture. Brilliant.
It doesn’t hurt that we scored a pair of his excellent drummer’s drumsticks too.
Pictures and vids here, and on FaceBook and YouTube soon.
Finding out about Twitter Plugins for WordPress
It’s almost more trouble than it’s worth to find the right plugin for getting your blog updating your Twitter account. FaceBook seems to be no problem, yet, but tweeting?
Misery loves company; if a company can be found.
I’ll confess it now, I am a wanna-be cartoonist. I’ve had little practise at drawing but a few of my doodles have attracted encouraging comments.
I bought a couple of good books on comic/cartoon drawing for beginners, by well respected artists and inkers, and they all state use non-photo blue pencils (also known as non-copy and non-repro pencils) to do the initial drawing because they don’t photocopy or scan in (in B/W or grey-scale) easily. Then you carefully draw over the top of these in ink or darker pencils etc.
So far so good.
But can I find these non-photo blue pencils in any of the local (Logan and Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) art or office shops? No. No one has even heard of them, let alone stocks them.
I tried the Newsagents (well, I wasn’t expecting them to have them anyway, but you never know), then I tried the larger department stores (Big W and Kmart) with the same expectation, after all they are not specialist stores.
Next was the one I thought would be it, an art and craft store called Riot Arts & Crafts, surely they would have them: nope.
I then tried my usually-last-but-never-failed-me-yet Australian Stationery Supplies but they failed me this time too.
I tried Officeworks; nothing.
OK, on to eBay, Oztion, Bidmate – eBay had them in USA, for a decent amount but 72 pencils is a lot to buy for an “I’m going to try this” experiment. Nothing on the other sites.
Google to the rescue. On searching for non-photo blue pencils I came up with a company called Unique Stitching at http://www.artquiltsupplies.com.au/ who did have what I wanted. They are in Canberra, but postage is cheap and I’ll have my desired pencils by next week at the latest.
What a saga!
New phones are hard work
I don’t know why I bother, really; well, actually, I do know why. I was not happy with my previous phone’s performance and I was bitten by that green envy bug when my partner got her TOUCH-SENSITIVE phone.
Well, I’ve got one now (a Samsung JET icon), and, after fiddling with it as you do when you get a new toy, I’ve finally remembered to change all the settings to the way I like them, find out how to silence the thing – and it’s louder than my previous phone (an LG ‘Shine’) and different in the way things are handled.
The touch-sensitivity is good but the problem lies in having large fingers with this phone. You keep selecting letters and numbers you didn’t want… and browsing the net! How are you supposed to do that effectively AAARGH!!!
Anyway it is a good phone and I’ll get used to it soon.
OK back to my latch-hook project -pictures coming soon.
Change Damaged Characters
Words and phrases that mean something
I really resonate to the phrase I now use as my blog’s title “Change Damaged Characters”.
Why?
- First, it is a term used in copyediting in the Common Proofreading Marks handy reference chart I use. It indicates that the characters (letters etc) that are circled in the text have not printed correctly and need to be altered.
- Second, because it encapsulates my feelings about the personalities and mentalities of many of the well-meaning but misguided people I meet and hear about in my long journey through life.
Another phrase I use is mucous trooper, in fact it is one of my email addresses mucoustrooper@tobiasware.com and it is my username on YouTube. What is a mucous trooper?
Simply put it is the idiosynchratic stupidity of the ‘concientious’ employee still soldiering on at the office/factory/school because “work would grind to a halt without me” even though they are infected with a contagious disease, which, consequently, spreads across the entire workforce causing a severe reduction in productivity and a potential temporary closure of business due to a viral epidemic which could easily have been prevented by the ignorant, misguided, stubborn and, above all, infectious employee taking a few days off due to illness.
20100208 – 20100210 Nepenthes “Mardi Gras” update
It’s come a long way from the small bud measuring 2 cm tall. It now measures nearly 8 cm tall and has filled out, inflated in fact and is almost ready to pop open its lid.
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20100208 2
20100209 1
20100209 2
20100210 1
20100210 2
20100210 3
20100207 Nepenthes “Mardi Gras” update
WE can now see the effects of a couple of days of constant rain. Humidity at 90% or higher and fairly high temperatures suit pitcher plants.
HooSedWot