Lena's altered stuff

May 1 - Change of direction

2009-08-06T14:50:00.001-07:00

It's the first day of a new month and I've learned that the approach I adopted for this project isn't working for me. Before I launched into my "Learn Something New Every day" project I thought it would be easy to learn something and create a new artwork from it every day for a whole year. Others told me I was mad but I insisted that it would be easy.

The idea to blog the learning process and then create the artwork from that seemed to be an efficient way to go and, for a time, this was true. Until I got stuck, that is.

In February I was working on a scrapbook album for my Dad's 90th Birthday. Part of it was to produce four pages about his war service and it became a fascinating learning process for me. He fought against the Russians in the Second World War and it had been such a traumatic time that he didn't speak of it until fairly recently. For the album he wrote 12 pages for me and that's when I found out what it had been like for him. To honour his war service I spent a good deal of time on the pages and this halted my work on the blog. Also, I used the work from the scrapbook pages in my "Learn.." book so for a long time it was stuck at that point.

So, by the end of February my good intentions for my project had gone off the rails already and it all got away from me and I started to fall further and further behind with it. So I had to alter the process in some way or give it up entirely.

The solution came with the addition of just two words. In the introduction of my book I've written that it's about 365 things I learned in 2009, to which I've added "and beyond". With these words I've given myself permission to finish the 365 things over a longer period of time, so that's what I'm now going to do. Beginning in May I'll add as many entries as I can for that month, and so on. What a relief it is to allow myself to change my mind about something. It doesn't happen all that often and I think it should become a habit to avoid the stress I put myself under.

Yay! I feel so much better about it now.

April 30 - The internet of things

2009-08-06T14:49:00.002-07:00

This is Joe Pemberton's photo from today's Future Tense. The article was about the internet of things. Anthony Funnell's introduction went like this -

"Imagine your toaster has an inbuilt computer and it can speak to your fridge. Now imagine your fridge talking to the computer at your local shopping centre. All without your involvement. More and more everyday objects are becoming internet connected. So are we about to witness a new phase for the internet? An internet where objects, not people, communicate: 'an internet of things'"

The idea is that you can put intelligent microchips into everything now, including people, and this means that if those chips are wirelessly connected to the internet then you can track them wherever they go. Interesting, but scary in a way. It solves the problem of stolen goods because they can never disappear, so that's a good thing, but I'd be interested to know what life would be like with everything sending out "I'm here! I'm here!" signals to everything else.

Perhaps convergence is a good thing to a certain point only. I guess we'll see when it starts to happen, then we can decide whether we like it or not.

April 29 - Stitches and Craft

2009-08-06T14:49:00.001-07:00

This is the ATC I made for this month's swap. As I thought back on the sewing and craft projects I've worked on over the years I realised that the drive to do this is in my blood.

My mother is a tailor and from a very early age I was taught how to sew. My sisters and I used to sew clothes for our dolls from patterns that my mother drafted for us. I don't even remember learning it and it seems that I have always just known how to sew. When I had my first sewing lesson at school I knew it all already but didn't know how I did.

I think it's a really good thing for young children to spend time playing with and working on craft projects. Who knows what genius ideas may come out of a basic knowledge of manipulating objects and learning how to connect things?

April 28 - These Boots

2009-08-06T14:48:00.001-07:00

I made this art piece for an exhibition a while ago. The show was called "These Boots" and the brief was to make a piece by altering a pair of shoes/boots so they tell a story.

For the piece I wrote this story and attached it to the back of the box they were displayed in. The story was this -

"These Boots had an identity crisis from the very beginning. It wasn’t just that they wanted to be something else, they also wanted to think outside the square and that wasn’t easy.
It was the postcard that finally did it. Just an innocent-looking thing that arrived one sunny spring afternoon. These boots had been relatively happy until that moment. Well, at least they thought so. The postcard was from a friend travelling around the world. It smelled of exotic, faraway places and hinted at new worlds and new ways of thinking. It spoke of freedom.
Freedom had been just another word until that moment but now it brought about alteration and innovation. It was the reason behind the whole redecoration thing and influenced the new designs and textures that now emerged. The designs and desires had been there all along, really. They’d just been hidden behind a facade of conservatism. A facade that had been broken down on that sunny spring afternoon by the idea of freedom.

From that moment on creativity had emerged and made itself known. That creativity provided the energy for the painting and beadwork that adorned the previously conservative boots.
Freedom of speech also emerged during this time. Long-repressed ideas and opinions sought a way out from the dungeons of the mind. The boots discovered how easy it was to express feelings and thoughts. Thoughts about the meaning of life and the nature of time and many other things cascaded from a mind that had been freed from its imprisonment.
Life is all about creation. In every moment of every day we are creating the reality we see. What we see is what we expect to see as a result of our conditioning and environment. We see with our brain, not our eyes. The eyes are just the way we capture information for our brain to process. The world we create for ourselves is totally personal and unique. Just like these boots."

I had a lot of fun making the piece and just today I found it in the corner of my studio. It looks a bit worn and sad and insects have made a home in them. I realised that the boots had embarked on a new journey - this time the inevitable process of decay that is a fact of life itself. The cycle of life.

As everything else, art is ephemeral.

April 27 - memory and the brain

2009-08-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

My brain is an incredible tool. It processes billions of bits of information from multiple sources every moment of every day, and it does this automatically. I don't have to consciously monitor its functions to ensure that it works perfectly and it does a fabulous job in performing the things it's meant to do.

Inputs to the brain functions come from multiple sources - sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, all of the body's internal organs, the nervous system and the rest of the body's structural systems AS WELL AS my thoughts. Whatever I think in every given moment will affect how my brain directs its internal orchestra.

For example, I'm in a cinema and watching a scary movie. One of the actors is hiding behind a tree in a dark forest waiting for the bad guy to find him. It's a tense and nervous moment and I can feel my heart beating quickly and my breath becomes shallow and rapid and only returns to normal when the situation returns to normal and all is well. My body went into "fight or flight" mode because of my thoughts, not because of something that was actually happening. This is the power of my brain.

So, whether I'm consciously aware of it or not, my brain is reacting to my thoughts every moment of every day because that's what it's programmed to do. Therefore, if I spend most of my time consumed by thoughts of anxiety then my brain will translate those thoughts into action in my body and, perhaps, tense up my shoulders and neck to reflect those thoughts of anxiety. Make sense?

So here's my light bulb moment for today.

For some time now I've been complaining about my memory and how I don't remember things and of course my brain has been politely making this so all along. BUT there are some things I always remember without any effort at all (like the fact that DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid) and I'm good with phone numbers. So the "I'm not good at remembering things" is not a rule at all. It's become a belief simply because I keep on thinking it and telling people about it.

So if a belief is just a thought I keep thinking then it stands to reason that if I now replace that original thought with this one "My memory is perfect and I can recall all relevant facts whenever I need to" and if I keep thinking it then it will become my belief and, hey presto, my brain will comply and make it so.

Here's to my brainy conductor leading my internal orchestra in playing a new tune!

April 26 - Bilbao

2009-08-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

Bilbao in Spain featured on Artscape. Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum was praised for it's design and visual appeal.

I looked Gehry up on Google and found that he has some detractors who say that: the buildings waste structural resources by creating functionless forms; the buildings are apparently designed without accounting for the local climate; the spectacle of a building often overwhelms its intended use, especially in the case of museums and arenas; the buildings do not seem to belong in their surroundings "organically"; the buildings are often unfriendly towards disabled people. The Art Gallery of Ontario, for example, had most ramps removed at Gehry's behest, making it very difficult to navigate.

I think I'd have to agree with Gehry's detractors because whilst the Guggenheim Museum looks interesting I expect it took a lot of tricky engineering in it's contruction and also caused a lot of waste in resources.

Gehry has been described as "the one-trick pony" and an "auto-plagiarist", referring to the fact that a lot of his buildings are similar in style, as you can see in the images below.

April 25 - Anzac Day

2009-08-06T14:45:00.002-07:00

Australia and New Zealand commemorate the ANZAC Day holiday on 25 April every year to remember members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed and fell at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.

In 1951, Australian and Turkish Soldiers came together for the first time after World War I. It was the Korean War and this time they were allies. In the first year of the war in the lead up to ANZAC Day they planned a shared commemoration. Members of the Turkish brigade were to meet up with the 3rd battalion but unfortunately on the night of the 24th the Battle of Cap Yong started and the 3rd battalion were committed to that battle as were the Turkish brigade elsewhere. Even though this joint commemoration in 1951 didn’t take place the idea was not forgotten and two years after the end of the Korean war to the sound of Turkish bugles, they finally realised their dream to commemorate Anzac Day together. We have been allies since.

Since 1998 the Turks have been permitted to march in the Anzac day parade. You can read more about this in the Compass archives at -
http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1353484.htm

April 24 - tramp art

2009-08-06T14:45:00.001-07:00

I heard something on the radio about Tramp Art so I checked it out on the web and found this definition -

"Tramp Art was a popular form of folk art that flourished in America from the 1870's to the 1940's. It took many forms, mostly functional but some purely aesthetic: its creators notched, layered, and whittled picture frames, elaborate boxes, and even full-sized furniture pieces. The most common materials for making tramp art were cigar boxes and wood from disassembled crates.

The term "tramp art" was not used to identify this type of folk art until the 1950's, even though by then its production had all but stopped (largely, some think, because of a decline in cigar smoking and thus a decrease in the availability of cigar boxes). The lore persists that tramp art was made by wandering souls, largely anonymous, and that the fruits of their labors were bartered for food and shelter. While there is some truth to this, many who produced tramp art were skilled craftspeople who devoted major amounts of time to their creative pursuits. Most tramp art is unsigned and undated, adding to the mystique surrounding it."

I find it interesting that creative pursuits seem to pop up everywhere and it seems as if we're hard-wired to make things with our minds and bodies. It just goes to prove my belief that everyone is creative, but not everyone realises it.

I'm involved with a number of craft groups and one of the activities that seems to be becoming more poplar is the decorating of cigar boxes. You can buy them cheaply from shops that sell cigarettes and all things smoking related, but I guess they'll gradually disappear if smoking becomes more and more unpopular (as it should).

April 23 - sunny money

2009-08-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

I watched Catalyst this evening and one of the articles was about the use of polymer panels for solar generation.

Polymer bank notes are an Australian invention and we now print polymer notes for 26 countries. The scientists at the manufacturing facility that prints the notes have been working on a polymer panel that can be used to generate solar electricity.

The current technology for solar electricity generation is expensive, which makes the payback period for a new system very long and often uneconomical. The polymer sheets are not very efficient at this stage but because they are inexpensive and flexible they can be used in a larger variety of locations. For example, you can afford to cover an entire roof with them.

Dr Gerry Wilson says "If the world had about six one hundred kilometre by one hundred kilometre grids of ten percent efficient solar cells scattered around the world, we would be able to satisfy the world's current energy needs. These plastic solar cells, we’re not restricted necessarily to put them on land. We could use them to cover our dams to stop evaporation. We could use them in the ocean."

Mark Horstman says "If this high speed printer was printing solar cells, it could do around 200 metres every minute, or 100 kilometres every day. At that rate, in just two months, it could print more generating capacity than a coal-fired power station. And that’s got to be a licence to print money. Here at Securency, they’re rolling out their first proofs of polymer solar cells – six months ahead of schedule, and just in time for a clean energy future."

You can read more about it here http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2550612.htm

April 22 - A new paper cutter

2009-08-06T14:42:00.002-07:00

I watched New Inventors this evening and was very excited to hear that someone has invented a new way to cut paper. I can't include an image here as the inventor, Bill Rayner, only had a prototype to demonstrate. You can read about the invention at his site http://www.billrayner.com.au/ and you can also watch the extract of the New Inventors episode where he appeared here http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2544957.htm

The capacity of the human mind for invention is amazing.

April 21 - resource reuse

2009-08-06T14:42:00.001-07:00

I went to Reverse Garbage today. It's one of my favourite places in Brisbane.

As a founding member of RG I feel very passionately about the issue of resource use and reuse. My biggest interest in the management team was Education. By taking resources to schools and providing art activities I hoped to convey the awareness of where "stuff" comes from and the importance of considering the environmental impacts of manufacturing and resource use.

From it's early beginnings, the Education arm of RG has gone from strength to strength and I am really pleased to see the effect it's having on school students and the community in general. I believe that it's fundamental to the decisions made at management level in all areas of business to take into account the environmental impacts of projects being considered. The students of today will be the decision-makers of tomorrow and it's important for them to be aware of the environmental aspects of their decicions.

The main message of resource reuse is this -

Every time you manufacture something there are costs associated with it that go beyond the simple financial ones. These costs include the waste stream (leftovers and offcuts) and any pollutants involved (waste water, gases, smoke etc).

Whenever something reaches the end of its practical life it generally ends up in landfill unless some other strategy has been put into place.

Recycling is part of the resource use message but too often it's implemented as a first resort, rather than a last one. By this I mean that resources (like cardboard and paper) are pulped and remade rather than reused in the first instance. Whenever something goes back through the manufacturing process the waste stream is repeated. Reuse would minimise this.

The role of organisations such as Reverse Garbage is to divert the leftovers, offcuts, overruns and surplus stock from a range of businesses to the community for reuse in a variety of ways. Reuse can be the reuse of the product/item in it's original form/intention; reuse in a different application in its original form; or reuse in an entirely new and creative way.

Creative reuse of resources is a great way to divert materials away from landfill.

***

A few years after RG had opened the doors at West End I was pleased to see how far our reach had stretched when I walked through Myer one Saturday afternoon and saw a display cabinet of watches and the shelves had been covered with little colourful plastic dots, which looked good. I looked closer and recognised the dots as being the offcuts from a company that manufactures plastic washers. The "holes" are punched out of the washers and discarded. Fortunately, they now go into the bin destined for RG, rather than the one destined for landfill. I have some of them in my stock of art materials in my studio, although I haven't decided how to use them yet.

I left RG five years ago and went on to other things and I recently went to the tenth anniversary of the business, still going strong. The current mangement team is doing a great job maintaining the momentum we began.

April 20 - printing on acetate

2009-08-06T14:41:00.002-07:00

My friend Yvonne invited me to her place to play with her myriad of stuff. She's a keen card maker and craft fan and she's collected loads of tools and materials and was keen to share them with me.

One of the things I learned about while I was there was how to create images on acetate using stamps and pens. When I got home I experimented some more and made the piece in the photo. I took the pic with the acetate taped to a glass door and the view of the garden behind it.

The transparency film I used is an HP film for inkjet printers. It's designed for overhead slides and has one side that's a bit rougher than the other so that the ink from my pens sticks better. I used black India ink with a rubber frame stamp to begin with, stamping it on the smoother side of the film. Then I placed the frame over an image from a Be Creative magazine of stained glass and used a black Sharpie pen to trace the image into the centre of the frame. Then I turned the image over and coloured it from the back, the rougher side. The pens I used are Marvy brush markers from Uchida and they came out really bright.

I like the stained glass effect of doing this and am now thinking about how I might use this process in my other work.

April 19 - Buttonhole bookbinding

2009-08-06T14:41:00.001-07:00

There was a tutorial scheduled for today at the bookbinders Guild about Buttonhole book binding. As they didn't have enough people to do it the tutorial didn't go ahead so I thought I'd look it up on the web to see what I could find instead.

The photo here came from Google Images and I found a great website where the author shares many bookbinding techniques. You can find his instructions for this book at
http://cailun.info/index.php?/archives/337-Sewing-sections-for-hybrid-button-hole-and-long-stitching.html

When I went to the website to check out the instructions I also read about the artist and found out that Cai Lun was the inventor of paper in China in 150AD.

Despite all of the complaints about the web, I find it very safe and informative and I use it regularly for self education. I am grateful for the generosity of everyone who's willing to shares their thoughts and skills.

April 18 - What's in a name?

2009-08-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

It's my son's birthday today so I thought I'd tell you the story of how we decided to call him David.

My husband has an older son, Luke, from his first marriage. Luke was 13 years old when I was pregnant with David. He lived with his mother and only visited us on some weekends and I was keen for him to feel like we were all a family. So my husband and I went out to a cafe with Luke to decide on a name for his soon-to-be brother. We agreed that it would have to be a unanimous decision so we each started suggesting names until there was no disagreement from any of us. It took quite a few options to arrive at the first name so then we went through the process for his second name.

David is now 20 and he and Luke have a really close relationship. I would like to think that the name thing had something to do with this. Interestingly, when Luke's first son was born David was 13 so there's the same age gap between him and his nephew as him and his brother.

So if I ask myself the question "What's in a name?" then I'd have to say that in this case there's a bond and kinship that "by any other name would smell as sweet."

April 17 - Public art murals

2009-08-06T14:39:00.002-07:00

This waterfall is part of a mural I painted at Upper Mt Gravatt Community Kindergarten with my friend Chrissy. I was really pleased with the way it turned out because I was new to public art murals and at first not sure of myself and what I could do. After this mural Chrissy and I went on to paint a few more together as well as separately.

When I heard about a mural being painted along Barry Parade in the valley by an Italian artist who works with passers-by and volunteers I decided to drive by and have a look. I ended up doing some work on it today and will go back a few more times to help.

Since prehistoric times when the first humans started making marks in caves we've been daubing paint on walls and leaving our mark in a variety of ways. I find it incredibly satisfying to create an image that is recognisable and which (hopefully) beautifies the surface it's painted on. A bonus is the reactions of people walking by. When I was working on the one I painted on Platform 4 at Milton Railway Station I had regular visits by a mother and her little daughter who insisted on stopping by to watch me work.

There are hundreds of artists around the world creating beautiful paintings (and chalk drawings) in public spaces and leaving their mark. I like the idea of being one of those people and will continue to make my mark whenever I have the opportunity.

April 16 - The future of Journalism

2009-08-06T14:39:00.001-07:00

I listened to Future tense this morning. Antony Funnell was talking about a number of new models for journalism in this technological environment.

The first example he looked at was "Spot.us". In this model a journalist submits a pitch for a story and also states how much he/she needs to fund it. Anyone who thinks that the story would be a good one to cover can donate some money towards it. To avoid bias, no single donor is permitted to cover the entire amount. If the donations don't reach the sum requested then the journalist has the option to produce the story anyway. If he/she decides not to go ahead the donations are refunded.

The www.spot.us website states that -

"Spot.Us is a nonprofit project to pioneer “community funded reporting.” Through Spot.Us the public can commission investigations with tax deductible donations for important and perhaps overlooked stories. If a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content, donations are reimbursed. Otherwise content is made available through a Creative Commons license."

The second example was The Printed Blog. This is the world's first daily newspaper comprised entirely of blogs and user-generated content. You can find it at www.theprintedblog.com

The third one was about Every Block. In this model stories are compiled about what's happening in particular communities, as opposed to the usual national or international focus. The idea is for readers to find out what's happening near where they live. The www.everyblock.com website says -

"EveryBlock is a new way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city."

My personal opinion about journalists is that, generally, they have a lot to answer for in terms of fear-mongering and misleading the public. I hope that these new models of journalism will bring with them a new ethic of truth in reporting.

April 15 - book binding

2009-08-06T14:26:00.002-07:00

This evening I went to my first meeting of the Queensland Bookbinding Guild. As a book artist I know all about making artist's books so this is about adding another skill to my toolbox.

The guild meetings are attended by a diverse group of interesting people who are all passionate about making books. They have a stock of materials to buy and a cupboard of books to borrow. It's wonderful. As a member I can go along to monthly workshops to use the guild's equipment as well.

There are two parts to the construction of a book - the text block and the cover (or "case") . The text block is put together using a set of rules and it's pretty-well defined before you even start. However, the design and manufacture of the case can be a totally individual and creative process. It's like the creation of a book is a whole brain process, using the left brain for the text block and the right brain for the case. Very satisfying.

I'm keen to learn about how to use leather for binding and I'm already planning the books I'd like to make.

April 14 - Japanese non-meat products

2009-08-06T14:26:00.001-07:00

I went on a walking tour of Chinatown with a friend today. It was with a crew called Taste Trekkers and we were shown around asian supermarkets and other food outlets from different cultures. It was great fun and we both learned a lot.

One of the really interesting things I learned about is the Japanese non-meat products in the supermarkets. Made mostly from beans, these products actually look like the meat products they are replacing. I'd expected the non-beef patties that I saw but the non-bacon rashers of bacon were a real surprise.

The trek was part of my culinary training and I've been practising my asian cooking since then (and getting really good at stirfrys) but I think it may be some time before I'll have the courage to try food like the non-meat bacon.

April 13 - Public Holidays

2009-08-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

Today is a Public Holiday (Easter Monday) so I thought I'd check out "public holidays" on Wikipedia. This is what I found -

"Holiday is a contraction of holy and day. Holiday originally referred only to special religious days. In modern use, it means any special day of rest, as opposed to normal days off work or school.

Vacation
In the United Kingdom, vacation once specifically referred to the long summer break taken by the law courts and, later, universities—a custom introduced by William the Conqueror from Normandy where it facilitated the grape harvest. The French term is similar to American English: "Les Vacances". In the past, many upper-class families moved to a summer home for part of the year, leaving their usual family home vacant."

So there you have it. William the Conqueror introduced quite a few new things to England, the buildings of castles being one of them, as well as this idea of summer vacation. I also didn't know that about the link between the word vacation and leaving your home empty.

April 12 - Council of Nicaea

2009-08-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

It's Easter Sunday so I did a Google search and found out about the Council of Nicaea. It happened in the year 325AD when Constantine the Emperor of Rome was unhappy with the unrest between the pagans and the Roman Catholic Church and he sought a compromise between them.

Of the council the RCC says this -

"The year was 325 A.D. according to the Roman calendar. A council was convened by order of Constantine, the Roman emperor. He had been a leader in the cult known as Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun) and now wanted to unite the Christian sects in the empire under his existing church; the Universal Church of Rome. Many changes to the religion of Christianity were about to take place at that council, including:

Formulation for wording concerning the Trinity based on Anthanias
Changing Verses of Bible
Eliminating certain verses and books from the Bible
Declaring Arian's "unitarian" (belief in the Unity of God) as heresy
Changing the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday
Changing the date of Jesus' birthday to December 25th
Introduction of Easter (pagan worship called "Feast of Ishtar")
Church of Roman "officially" became the "Universal Church of the Holy Roman Empire" (the word 'Catholic' means 'universal')

The Roman Catholic Church took on a new face."

This means that the RCC hijacked an existing pagan feast and turned it into a religious event instead. I guess at the time it helped to unify the pagans and Christians living in Rome and was probably a good thing. It also means that the next time anyone laments about Easter being more about chocolate than church you could say that it was originally about eating nice things so it's legitimate to go back to there.

April 11 - Sarajevo Haggadah

2009-08-03T16:06:00.001-07:00

I'm reading 'People of the Book' by Geraldine Brooks and have decided that it's one of my favourite books ever. Her skill at character and plot development is amazing and I'll definitely have to read some of her other books.

The story is about the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated manuscript that began it's life around 1350 in Barcelona. Geraldine has taken the known history of the manuscript as well as theories about it's journey to the present and created a beautifully crafted story.

As a book artist, I'm fascinated by the story of a manuscript that's managed to survive through many situations when it might have been destroyed. It's as if the book itself charmed it's owners into protecting it.

April 10 - A frenzy of inactivity

2009-07-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

At times I feel like this possum looks - stunned and frozen.

It comes about when I overwhelm myself with things that MUST be done by yesterday. I get into a mode that I can only describe as a 'frenzy of inactivity'. With a thousand things calling for my attention I find I can't do anything at all and descend into this quagmire of fast-set glue and DO NOTHING at all.

Sometimes in my state of feeling guilty about doing nothing I fill my time by playing Solitaire on my computer. Spider Solitaire is best because it takes longer to play. (Sigh)

The best solution I've found for this is regular meditation because I feel more relaxed and in that case am able to focus better on the important things, although this is no guarantee that I won't get myself into this frenzy in moments of weakness and inattention.

As a fallible human being I have to accept that I'll continue to have good times and bad times. Hopefully the bad times will arrive less and less as I get better at my meditation practice.

April 9 - singularity university

2009-07-19T15:15:00.000-07:00

I listened to an interesting article on Future Tense about a new university that's based at NASA's Ames Research Centre in California.

Singularity is a scientific term that refers to a point in time in the development of something when there is a jump to exponential growth and the outcome becomes unpredictable.

Singularity University has been set up to research developments in technology and to prepare the population for the implementation of these developments. The concern that brought about its establishment was that today technology is advancing at an exponential rate and there's a need to keep up with this and create bridges between disciplines.

An example of this growth rate is the Human Genome project. It was initially predicted that the genome would take 30 years to map but it only took 8 years because of the development of faster computers.

The university doesn't have to look too far in the future for ideas to follow up because of the rapidly-advancing current technologies. The profile of the ideal student for the university is one who already has an in-depth knowledge of a particular scientific field so they can work on cross-disciplinary projects with other students.

It certainly sounds like a great idea to me!

April 8 - Into conflict

2009-07-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

I've just come across some information about an Australian figurative artist called George Gittoes. His work encompasses many forms of media: painting, photography, film making among them. He's based in Surry Hills and spends time visiting war regions to collect material for his work and sometimes making Bollywood-style docos about them.

From his website, www.gittoes.com, I copied this comment "Gittoes acknowledges his journey is one into the heart of human darkness. He has become a witness. “ I believe there is a role for contemporary art to challenge, rather than entertain. My work is confronting humanity with the darker side of itself.”"

To find out more about this amazing artist, visit his website.

April 7 - Samuel Pepys

2009-07-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

Samuel Pepys (pronounced "peeps") was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for his diary. This is his entry for this day 346 years ago -

"Tuesday 7 April 1663
Up very betimes, and angry with Will that he made no more haste to rise after I called him. So to my office, and all the morning there. At noon to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, where I found my wife had been with Ashwell to La Roche’s to have her tooth drawn, which it seems aches much, but my wife could not get her to be contented to have it drawn after the first twich, but would let it alone, and so they came home with it undone, which made my wife and me good sport. After dinner to the office, where Sir J. Minnes did make a great complaint to me alone, how my clerk Mr. Hater had entered in one of the Sea books a ticket to have been signed by him before it had been examined, which makes the old fool mad almost, though there was upon enquiry the greatest reason in the world for it. Which though it vexes me, yet it is most to see from day to day what a coxcomb he is, and that so great a trust should lie in the hands of such a fool. We sat all the afternoon, and I late at my office, it being post night, and so home to supper, my father being come again to my house, and after supper to bed, and after some talk to sleep."

Today is also a Tuesday. Interesting coincidence.

April 6 - Craft

2009-07-06T23:50:00.000-07:00

On LifeMatters today Richard Aedy interviewed Pip Lincolne about a new craft movement that's happening possibly as a consequence of the current financial crisis.

There's a general trend back to the old crafts as more people seek simpler and more economically effective life choices. Sewing machines are back in vogue and there's an increasing interest in knitting and crochet and other craft skills.

Pip has a blog that's worth checking out. It's at http://meetmeatmikes.blogspot.com/

My mother is a tailor and taught my sisters and me to sew when we were very young, so sewing and craft have been in my blood all my life. It's pleasing to me to see so many people discovering craft as a worthwhile activity. It's such a big part of my life that I couldn't imagine my life being any other way.

April 5 - Simple Living

2009-07-06T21:51:00.000-07:00

I listened to Future Tense with Antony Funnell. He was interviewing a woman on the Sunshine Coast who has decided to live more simply and considers lifestyle decisions from a sustainable living perspective.

Her name is Rhonda Hertzel and her blog is well worth a look. Since starting the blog she's attracted followers from around the world. Her original idea was to write a book but when she was turned down by publishers she decided to set up a blog instead. Now that she's become popular through the blog she's been approached by a potential publisher.
Check it out at http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/search/label/Simple%20Living

April 4 - Green Gestures

2009-07-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

I listened to a PODcast of yesterday's LifeMatters discussion on ABC radio where Richard Aedy was asking the question whether gestures like Earth Hour can make a difference.

Earth hour was started in Sydney in 2007 by WWF and there was so much enthusiasm for the idea that it went global the following year. This year the support was even greater and many captial cities worldwide joined in.

The experts felt that gestures like Earth Hour can only make a difference if the politicians are actually listening and realise how many people are concerned enough to do something about it. Generally, there was a feeling of skepticism among the participants so I did some research for myself on the issue.

One of the common threads in the discussions I read seemed to imply that the unused excess power gets grounded anyway and doesn't make a difference but this was refuted by an electricity generation technician. He said that generating systems are very responsive and can be adjusted according to demand, so it does make a difference when a lot of people switch off their lights.

Well done to the WWF for this initiative. It has given individuals an opportunity to make a positive statement about their concern for the environment. I'm going to put some thought into how I'll personally respond to the Earth hour project in 2010.

April 3 - How old are you?

2009-05-31T05:30:00.001-07:00

According to my birth certificate I'm 54 years, 2 months and 7 days old (but who's counting?) But from a different perspective I'm a lot younger than that.

No part of my physical body is more than 10 years old.

My body is made up of cells that renew themselves on a regular basis. The type of cell it is and where it's located determines the rate of renewal. Cells in the stomach lining, for example, are replaced every 5 days and the entire skeleton is renewed about every 10 years.

Even though my birth certificate says I'm 54 years old the only part of the physical me that is actually that age is my mind. This leads to the question "Where in my no-more-than-10-year-old body does my mind reside?

The only logical answer to this is that my mind resides in every cell of my body, moving into the new cells as they grow and creating the body-mind being that is me. This makes sense as every cell of my body contains a complete DNA map of my whole body.

Another question you might ask is "Given that my cells renew themselves, why don't scars and injuries disappear over time?" I imagine that this is where cellular memory comes into play and the memory of an injury gets passed down through the generations of cells. I expect they mirror the condition of the cell they replace, but can this be changed?

I assume also that the mind controls the aging of the body and the rate at which this happens as there can't be some sort of Universal Aging Rate for everyone. As evidence of this assumption I present the following story -

When I was in Year 12 at High School there was a teacher that most of the girls lusted over. He was tall, dark, gorgeous, a great teacher and about 35 years old. Less than 5 years after we'd left school a friend and I ran into him and were totally stunned because he was grey-haired, wrinkled and looked more than 20 years older.

The reason for his transformation was that his wife had become gravely ill and he'd nursed her for 3 years until she died. She was the love of his life and her illness and death had devastated him. With such powerful negative emotions consuming him his mind accelerated the aging process in his body and turned him into an old man overnight.

If thoughts and feelings are the language of the mind and this dialogue translates into the form of the body then it must be possible to influence the wellness of the body by ensuring that the majority of our thoughts are positive and happy ones.

I'm so convinced about the truth of this assumption that from this moment on I'm going to direct my thoughts away from negativity and sadness towards a happy feeling place.

What do you think and how will you respond to this idea?

April 2 - Thought is everything

2009-05-25T06:35:00.001-07:00

Having called this post "thought is everything" I realise I could have reversed the order and said "everything is thought" and both statements would be true.

We think of ourselves as being a body that exists in what we generally refer to as our reality. Scientists analyse that reality and tell us the facts that make up the "truth" of this physical manifestation. We observe the physical world that we move around in and believe that we know exactly what's true and real. How much of the picture are we actually aware of?

My reality is unique to myself because my mind filters all the information coming from the outside world through my viewpoint and beliefs. No one else can occupy the same physical or psychological space as me. My personal reality is therefore created by my thoughts on a moment-by-moment basis. To illustrate how this works consider the following situation -

You've gone into the city with a friend and you walk through the mall on the way to a coffee shop. You notice an altercation between a police officer and a suspicious-looking middle-aged man in a shop doorway and make the assumption that he's been caught shoplifting or something. Then your attention is drawn to a busker who looks rather poor and shabby and you hope that he can play well and will get enough money from his music to buy dinner. Near the busker is a mother trying to console a crying infant and looking very drawn and tired. You wonder if she ever gets any help at home.

By the time you arrive at the coffee shop and take a seat your mood is somewhat deflated by what you've seen and how it's made you feel. In total contrast your friend starts talking enthusiastically about the fantastic artwork display she's just seen along the mall. Her excitement about it takes you by surprise because you didn't see or notice any of it at all. You may as well have been in two different places!

By your thoughts you created one reality while your friend created an entirely different one. So which one is true? They both are. Everyone lives their own truth and that truth is constructed by your thoughts. Thought is everything.

Rene Descartes, a philosopher, was born in 1596 and died 53 years later. He was a profound thinker and writer and his most famous statement is "I think, therefore I am; OR I am thinking, therefore I exist". It appeared in his "Discourse on the Method" published in 1637 and also in "Principles of Philosophy" published in 1644.

Descartes believed that the only thing that truly exists is thought and that thought creates what we perceive as reality. Everything is thought.

If this is the case, and I believe it to be so, then I can choose the thoughts I wish to have and the direction that I want my life to take. I am the one with total control over my thoughts, no one else. It's a comforting idea to think that I'm no one's puppet unless I choose to be so.

The next time you're in the mall will you see the poverty or the artwork?

April 1 - Just for Fun

2009-05-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

For some years now my husband and his older son have talked about starting a family business called "Just for Fun".

A few years ago they both learned to fly and have their pilot's licences. At the time my husband said he'd never buy an aircraft but fate had other ideas and not long afterwards he owned a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron. It's been fun and has covered its costs by being available for charter.

The second thing he said was that he'd never own a flying school, but guess what? Today, April 1st, was the launch date for a new flying school and charter business at Archerfield Airport in Brisbane. It isn't called Just for Fun, though, as that doesn't provide the right sort of image for a serious flying school. It's Flight One and they shortly expect to have 3 aircraft in the fleet.

As most of the discussions about the business were held out of my earshot it seemed to me that Flight One just appeared one day as if by magic.

March 31 - Horse Boy

2009-05-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

I listened to Late Night Live with Philip Adams and heard his conversation with Rupert Isaacson about his search to find a connection with his autistic son, Rowan—a search that took them to Mongolia to meet traditional healers and the famous horsemen of the Steppes.

Rupert told of his inability to communicate with his son how this all started to change when Rowan encountered a horse in the property next to theirs. The horse unlocked something in Rowan and this development set off a chain of events that led to their journey to Mongolia.

There seems to be a shift in thinking about autism that's very interesting. It has generally been viewed as some sort of personality deficiency or disorder up to now but the shift in thinking says that it may be a change in the communication process. I watched a video on the Abraham-Hicks website with a woman who works with autistic children and she's concluded that they communicate in an entirely new way and she's been able to work out how to connect with them and has changed the lives of families as a result.

I expect that Rupert and Rowan's story is an example of finding a way to connect that allows communication. In their case it was through horses.

March 30 - Laura Milligan

2009-05-25T05:14:00.000-07:00

Laura Milligan is Spike Milligan's eldest daughter. She was a guest on Life Matters today with Richard Aedy. She spoke of his depression and how it affected her life and also of his sane times and the wonderful childhood she had with this unique individual.

In 1973 Spike wrote a book called "Badjelly the Witch". Laura loves the story and so do her children and she wanted her father to write a sequel but he refused and told her she should do it herself. She didn't feel she could do it at the time but now she has and it's called "Hocus Pocus versus the Stinky Pong".

She has other books in the pipeline so the legacy of Spike's sense of humour lives on through his daughter.

March 29 - Making silk paper

2009-05-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

In June we're having an artist's play day at Brookfield and the activity I'm going to set up is to make silk paper. I learned how to do it a couple of years ago at a Fibre Forum and this is one of the pieces I made.

I looked it up on Google this morning and found out that there are many different ways to make it, so I thought I'd explain my process to add to all the other ones out there.

You need silk fibre tops in assorted colours, textile medium, netting that's more than twice the size of the piece you're making, a foam roller and a container to use it with, sponge, towel, dishwashing liquid and embellishments (optional).

Start by laying out the netting in a tray or on a surface that can be cleaned. Tease hand-sized pieces of silk fibres from the top and lay them out thinly in a horizontal direction on one half of the netting. (I used one colour for this layer). Then lay out a second layer vertically over the first. (This one had many colours in it.) At this point you can add some embellishments (just a few and very small) like metallic thread, dried leaves, sequins etc. Then top this with another horizontal layer of fibres and fold the netting over the top.

Put a few drops of dishwashing liquid in a cup of water and use the sponge to thoroughly dampen the silk in the netting. Turn the piece over and wet the under side as well. Make sure the piece is thoroughly wet and then soak up the excess water using a towel.

Make a 1:1 mix of water and textile medium in a container and use the foam roller to apply this to both sides of the piece. This time don't dry it off with a towel. Place it on a wire rack to dry or hang it on a line. When it's dry remove the netting. At this point it can be ironed or stitched. I used a sewing machine to do freestyle embroidery on mine.

It's fun to make silk paper. Why don't you have a go?

March 28 - Sharks in the sky

2009-05-25T00:49:00.000-07:00

I listened to a report on Country Breakfast this morning by Adam Stephen from Cairns about flying fish to Dubai.

There's an aquarium in the Dubai mall that's been constructed using the world's largest piece of acrylic ever constructed. It's 80cms thick and 2 stories high.

Lyle Squire junior from Cairns Marine has just finalised a 190,000kg shipment to Dubai from his base in far north Queensland. The shipment included thousands of reef fish, sharks and stingrays from the Great Barrier Reef. Each shark in the shipment needed a 5000l round container weighing 2-3 tons so the logistics of the exercise were a challenge, but only a few of the smaller fish didn't survive the journey. All of the large animals made it.

They weren't fed for a few days before the journey and not at all during it and when they arrived in Dubai they had to go through a lengthy aclimation process. Because they were checked for disease before they left Australia they could go on display as soon as they got there.

They expect to get about 30million visitors per year and there's an education centre next to the aquarium which gives the message about the need to conserve these animals so they are ambassadors for our region.

I wonder if they suffered from jetlag?

March 27 - wise words

2009-05-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's Friday and I watched "Can We Help?" on ABC TV as usual. My favourite segment is "wise words" with Kate Burridge (Professor of Linguistics at Monash University). Tonight's question from Syaakir, NSW was -

"Why is the plural of chief, chiefs not chieves?"

Kate's reply - "The older word is ‘thief’. It was around in Old English times (it appears as early as the 7th century). At that time, English speakers always turned ‘f’ into ‘v’ when it occurred between two vowels — so one thief, but two thieves (the vowel in the plural ending was originally pronounced). This pronunciation rule is no longer a living part of our language and what we’ve been doing over the past few hundred years is regularising words like thieves, so they fit in better with what is now the usual rule for making plurals. The plural of ‘cliff’, for instance, is no longer ‘cleves’. There are some words that have been quite successful in resisting this kind of regularising. Typically, these are everyday words; think of leaf and its plural leaves. The word ‘chief’, however, didn’t come into English until the 14th century from French. So it arrived after this pronunciation rule had disappeared from the language – chief therefore has always been regular (chief-chiefs).

As an aside, it seems that words relating to fairy tales or fantasy have somehow been successful in retaining irregular plural forms. It almost seems as if irregularities like wolf-wolves, dwarf-dwarves and elf-elves-elvish have now become a feature of this style of writing. Tolkien himself, I suspect, has a significant role in this linguistic development, particularly with respect to the success of the form dwarves. In this case, the plural of dwarf was originally regular; in other words, dwarfs. So even though it sounds older, dwarves is actually a new form. The earlier pronunciation of dwarf was ‘dwerg’. It ended in a consonant not unlike the gutteral [ch] sound at the end of Scottsh ‘loch’. English eventually lost this sound — in this case, it changed into ‘f’. However, this change happened long after we’d lost the pronunciation rule that changed ‘f’ to ‘v’ between vowels. Hence, the plural of dwarf was always dwarfs, pure and simple. Tolkien chose dwarves, even though as a philologist he knew this was historically wrong. He has a note to this effect in the beginning of ‘The Hobbit’. He writes, ‘In English the only correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs, and the adjective dwarfish. In this story dwarves and dwarvish are used’. These forms have an antiquated ring to them, and even though in ‘Lord of the Rings’ Tolkien offers a different explanation, I feel sure it’s primarily this reason that he chose dwarves to describe the ancient people in his tales. The popularity of Tolkien’s writing, I think, will mean that archaic forms like elves, elvish, wolves and, indeed, the late arrival dwarves will not be regularised to elfs, elfish, wolfs and dwarfs but will remain as an earmark of the fantastical."

I think this is a great example of life following art. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings is a favourite of mine because when Tolkien did his research for the trilogy he studied Finnish folklore and he based the Elvish language on Finnish.

March 26 - Optimism

2009-05-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about "optimism" today and decided that it's a state of mind about which we have a choice. The "glass half empty" versus the "glass half full" attitude applies and we all have the freedom to look at life through the lens of our personal viewpoint.

It seems to me that while we may not be able to control the cards that we're dealt in this life, we have total control of the game we play with them. We can choose to be bold and adventurous, timid and retiring, or adopt the role of the victim in the game, or indeed any other role.

At any point we can decide that the game is not to our liking and not working for us, in which case we can adopt a change of strategy. It's all about free choice and it all hangs on how we feel and whether we want to continue to feel that way.

I guess these thoughts were prompted by a story I heard on the radio about a particular child soldier. He was kidnapped at the age of eight and forced to live and fight as a soldier until he was 16, when he was rescued. There was enough abuse and trauma in his life to have turned him into a permanently scarred mental case, but this didn't happen. Instead he chose to use the abuse as a catalyst for personal growth and, having resolved the situation for himself, go on to help in the rehabilitation of other children. He didn't see himself as a victim and was therefore able to step out of the role that circumstances had put him in for a time.

There are cases like this all the time in different situations and it leads me to wonder what influences different people in their reactions to circumstances. Personally, I'm a "glass half full" type and I'm yet to encounter a circumstance that has me totally floundering in victimhood. Given that I'm now more than halfway through my life I don't expect this to change anytime soon. For me optimism begets more optimism. I can't help myself.

How do you react when bad stuff happens?

March 25 - Jump ring bracelet

2009-05-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's time of playing with metal wire I decided to make a jump ring bracelet from steel rings.

The steel wire I use is sold as tie wire and has been heated so that it's soft to use. The heating process also leaves it covered in soot so it's dirty to use as well, but that cleans off.

To make the jump rings I twisted the wire around a metal rod to form a spring that was about 3 cm long. I needed quite a few rings so I made 5 of these. Then I put the springs one at a time into a small vice and used a jewellery saw to cut lengthwise through one side of the spring. This gave me the jump rings.

I looked on the internet for ideas on how to form the rings into a bracelet but I didn't see anything I liked so I worked it out for myself. First I linked 2 rings, then held them together and put another ring through both. Then I put another ring through just 2 of them and continued in this way, attaching the next ring to the previous 2. When it was the length I wanted I formed a hook with wire and attached it with another jump ring. Voila!

To clean the bracelet I first used a wire brush to take off the soot, although a lot of it had already ended up on my hands by this stage through working on it. The forming and cleaning of the wire acts to harden it so by the end of the process the bracelet really was as hard as steel.

After the wire brush I used a set of polishing papers from 3M. They graduate from rough to smooth and I put a lot of elbow grease into it, so the steel was very shiny at the end. To finish it off I rubbed Renaissance wax into it. This stops it from rusting and keeps it shiny. I am very happy with the result.

March 24 - Avid Diva day

2009-05-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

It was my turn to host the Avid Diva day. We're a group of artists who get together to share arty tips, food and gossip. You'll find our blog at http://www.aviddivas.blogspot.com/. We called ourselves that because we liked the idea of having a name that's a palindrome.

I had decided to spend the day on tools and metal stuff so I set up a workstation for making chains from steel wire and another one for using a dremel.

As I said in an earlier post, I did a workshop last year with Keith lo Bue and learned heaps about the correct use of tools so I was keen to share what I'd learned with my friends.

The thing I learned in the process was that there's a fine line between being too prepared and not being prepared enough when you go to teach something.

Being too prepared may sometimes result in an inability to be spontaneous and not being prepared enough may result in an inaccurate result. Both of these outcomes were part of my experience of the day but I'm sure noone else noticed.

As always, getting together with people who share your interests is fun.

March 23 - teaching philosophy

2009-05-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

Lynne Hinton, the principal of Buranda State School, won an award in 2005 for a program that encourages students to think about and discuss the big issues of life. The system involves regular lessons in philosophy and the introduction of this in all other subjects.

"Philosophy is concerned with the process of thinking, rather than finding the right answer," Lynne says. "Students learn to explore issues together, to question, and to disagree respectfully."

You can read an article about it here -
http://education.qld.gov.au/learningplace/stories/articles/art-edviews-mar05-2.html

I love one of the comments by a year 4 (age 8-9) student of the school who said "Walls can be made from brick, stone, metal or other building materials. They can also be made from emotions such as fear or hatred."

I hope this teaching methodology becomes more widespread.

March 22 - Background Briefing

2009-05-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

On Background Briefing today (Radio National) there was another discussion about graffiti.

Reporter Brendan Trembath - "As old as mankind, graffiti can be seen as a cultural expression and a tourist attraction, or as vandalism inducing fear. It can morph into high art, political comment, or territorial border security. "

The reporter looked into many aspects and perspectives of graffiti and interviewed a broad range of people, from taggers to police officers. It was a really informative report.

Some of the things that appealed to me were -

A comment by one young artist saying that "you're not a graffiti guy if you've never done a train"

Doer is an artist on the Sydney scene. "Doer says by the time he was 13 he was hanging out with bigger and more notorious graffiti groups. Some members would give up graffiti after a while, and others became involved in more serious crime. But Doer went down a different path. He saw the artistic potential of graffiti and studied art at university. Doer still does the graffiti murals known as pieces, but says he now concentrates on legal walls."

A group called Dirty Rotten Scoundrels are a really nice bunch of guys who don't really get involved in the politics of violence over territorialism, it's more about the art and they're all really artistic graffiti writers.

An artist called Ben Frost lives in a warehouse in Surrey Hill, Sydney, and the walls of it are a moving feast of changing graffiti. If an artist thinks he can do something better then it's generally okay to paint over someone else's work.

Well known artist, Banksy, did a piece in Melbourne that was much prized by the building owner. Uprotected, it stayed in place for 5 years and then the owner put a piece of perspex over it to make sure it didn't get trashed. Soon afterwards someone sprayed silver paint behind the perspex and destroyed it.

From the drawings scrawled across the nation by Aboriginees, to the scratchings of the early convicts, to the political statements of the 1960's and the spray cans and stencils and pasteups of today it seems that graffiti is alive and well in this country and anyone who's conducting a war against it is fighting a losing battle.

March 21 - Luka Bloom

2009-05-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

Today I listened to a podcast interview that Margaret Throsby had with Luka Bloom and I was surprised to hear his comment about his creative process.

Song writing is an agonising process for him and he says that the large part of the work he produces is never heard because it gets tossed out early in the piece. He works really, really hard because he believes that this is the only way to produce work that people will like. Sometimes, but this is very rare, he'll write something very easily and he thinks of this as a reward for his efforts.

Is it actually true that only hard work produces worthwhile results? Maybe not. According to his biography, Paul McCartney composed the entire melody of "Yesterday" in a dream one night. Upon waking, he hurried to a piano and played the tune to avoid letting it slip into the recesses of his mind.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, "Yesterday" has the most cover versions of any song ever written.

So the creative process exists in a multitude of forms.

March 20 - my studio

2009-05-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

I was working in my studio today and wondered what sort of photos I'd take of my work area to illustrate what I do. It was difficult because there's a jumble of stuff everywhere: things finished and forgotten, work-in-progress, assorted materials (lots of them) and tools (lots of them too).

I decided that I could really only get a snapshot at any point in time, so that's what I did. The scrapbook page of my dad cutting a hole in the ice in Finland (1955) is for an album I'm doing for his 90th birthday this year. It's my favourite page of them all because I think it works so well and yet it took me less than 20 minutes to do, unlike so many more that I've agonised over.

I just love tools and have many, many of them for all the different things I do. I did a workshop last year with Keith lo Bue and one of the best things about it was what he taught us about tools. I discovered that I'd been abusing my drill for years and am very happy to understand how best to use it now. I also learned how to use a dremel properly and am very happy with it.

I made this mask for a ball I went to last year. The dress I wore was a snakeskin design in black and white with silver sequins so the mask is silver, black and white too.

I redecorated these Ugg boots for an exhibition at Sherwood called "These Boots". They were fun to do but now they sit neglectedly in the corner of my studio and I can't really wear them anymore.

March 19 - ice skates

2009-05-13T04:51:00.000-07:00

I went ice skating today and decided to find out when skates were first invented.

Skates made from bones, like the ones here, were first designed 5000 years ago in Finland for survival. As there are 100,000 lakes in Finland it's a benefit to be able to cross them quickly in winter so this is what they came up with. We Finns are certainly an inventive bunch.

Whilst these gave the user more speed than walking they wouldn't gave been great in terms of control so the technology of skates changed when steel came on the scene many years later.

These antique skates from 1941 are quite cute with their curved blades and leather boots. Given the style of the blades I think they'd trip you up if you tried to do more than go in straight lines.

These are like the ones I use. I bought them in Canada when I was there in 2006. Keeping them white is a challenge given that the mats at the rink are all black rubber ones and tend to rub off onto them. If I was a diligent person I'd clean them regularly but that's just wishful thinking.

March 18 - Google Earth

2009-05-13T02:35:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of organising a trip to England for a wedding in June. It involves renting a cottage near Tonbridge in Kent and through the process of investigating properties I've found Google maps to be an invaluable tool.

One of the cottages I enquired about was perfect in every way and I was about to contact the owner when I thought I'd check it out via the maps first. By doing so, and zooming in on the property, I found out that it backs onto a railway line! Needless to say, I deleted it from my list of possibilities.

If you haven't used it yet go to http://www.google.com.au/ and click on the 'maps' option in the top line. When you put any address in the search box you'll see it and some properties even have street view photos.

Up on the right hand side are three option - map, satellite and terrain. The satellite option is best because you get to see what the place is actually like. I've used this to familiarise myself with what the road is like near where I'm going so that when I drive there I know what to expect.

March 17 - St Patrick's day

2009-05-13T01:41:00.000-07:00

I've heard of green beer and green food but this is the first time I've heard that the Chicago River is dyed green every year on St Patrick's day. This is the photo that was taken of it in 2008. I wonder what they use to colour it?

March 16 - Liminal spaces and ghosts

2009-05-12T03:37:00.000-07:00

I listened to the podcast of yesterday's Late Night Live with Philip Adams. He was speaking with English author Owen Davies about his book "The Haunted, the social history of ghosts".

Owen has studied the belief in ghosts from a historical perspective and makes the following oservations -

500 years ago ghosts were seen as rural folk and now they're urban, so it seems that observers see them through the lens of their own cultural perspective

ghosts manifest themselves as pale beings, generally at night, which could possibly indicate that what the viewer is seeing has more to do with moonlight reflecting from something than a physical object.

visible ghosts are in the minority and non-visual phenomena are more common: for example, a feeling of clammyness or the smell of someone's perfume.

the Anglican church is more likely to have exorcists than the Catholic Church.

opinion polls tend to indicate a distinct rise in the belief in ghosts and this trend is consistent with a decline in religious beliefs.

demographically English ghosts are more likely to appear in churchyards.

very few ghosts appear as infants or babies which is surprising as there were so many infant deaths.

the desire to believe in an afterlife prompts the belief in ghosts and this wishful thinking has resulted in many movies about ghosts.

Owen spoke of the state between life and death and referred to this as the "liminal" space. The word derives from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold" and refers to a conscious state of being on the "threshold" of or between two different existential planes. In an anthropological context this state is the time for a rite of passage which involves some change to the participants, especially their social status. For ghosts it's the line between life and death and folklore says it's a porous space that allows travel between the two, hence the appearance of ghosts among the living.

According to Abraham (via Esther Hicks) the transition from life to death is instant and the consciousness rejoins source energy from whence it came. At this point we become fully aware of who we really are. For more information on this see http://www.abraham-hicks.com/

I believe that there are more "beings" in existence in our vicinity than we can see through our lens of "reality". If this is the case then it may be that sightings of ghosts are actually examples of our picking up on the vibrations of these beings. It follows, therefore, that our minds interpret these vibrations through images of familiar things because they have no other context to relate them to.

March 15 - School of everything

2009-05-12T03:03:00.000-07:00

I discovered today that this organisation exists to "help learners find local teachers in all subjects worldwide". What a cool idea!

It was apparently set up by some guys who were unhappy with the way education was happening (or not) so they decided to set up a social learning network. Participation in the network is free but the cost of the individual tutoring that results is an arrangement between the tutor and the student.

The idea is that you either sign up to teach something or to learn something, or both, and the subjects you can learn include just about everything you can think of.

The site is here http://schoolofeverything.com/

I just love how the internet is changing everything about how we function in our communities and in the world as a whole.

March 14 - Single Sheet Structures.

2009-05-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

As unbelievable as it may seem, the catalogue in this photo has been made from a single sheet of paper and, when folded up, fits into the box that you can see at the back. The box is also part of the structure.

Ed designed it for the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in 1995 for a show of Artist's Boxes.

As part of the session we did today on single sheet structures Ed took out the single sheet that had this catalogue printed on it and demonstrated how it folded up to produce this catalogue in a box.

Needless to say, the structures we learned to make today were many times simpler than this. We learned how to fold and cut A4 sheets to make books and how to illustrate them so that the images appear in the correct place. Always a useful thing to know. We made some boxes as well.

The items I made are way too noddy to photograph for posting here so I'll make some decent samples before I do that.

March 13 - the animated page

2009-05-12T02:18:00.000-07:00

I attended a weekend workshop with Ed Hutchins at the Qld State Library.

Ed is a master at making artist books and the ones we did today were on the topic of the animated page.

Animated pages first appeared in children's books in the early 1800's and, over time, have become more and more elaborate. The first ones involved mechanical components that the child could push and pull to make something happen. There were also pop ups and books with pages that folded out into 3D scenes. Ed had some examples of very early animated work and I was truly amazed at the ingenuity of them.

We made loads of different types of mechanisms and went home exhausted at the end of the day.

The work I did during the day has been added to my growing pile of UFOs. When I finish it (and I hope it's sooner rather than later) I'll post a few pics here.

Tomorrow we'll be working on Single Sheet Structures. Should be fun.

March 12 - Vitamin D

2009-05-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

This evening there was a great story on Catalyst about vitamin D.
Dr Norman Swan reported on the problem we're now encountering with Vitamin D deficiency. It turns out that it's not a vitamin so much as a hormone and it's made by the skin from sunlight. As a result of the skin cancer awareness campaign we're not getting enough sunlight for the skin to manufacture vitamin D and the problems this creates include auto-immune diseases such as diabetes.

The recommendation is that we should spend eight minutes a day in the sun with 15% of our skin exposed. This is for the summer time and needs to be longer in winter.

You can watch the report here http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2514231.htm

I find it interesting that there's been such pressure to avoid sunlight to date and now we find that it perhaps wasn't such a good idea as we didn't consider all the issues involved. Rather than being the bad guy we find that the sun has potentially been our friend all along.

March 11 - The Language of Things

2009-05-11T03:37:00.000-07:00

On By Design today Alan Saunders interviewed Deyan Sudjic, the director of London's Design Museum, about his book " The language of Things".

Deyan writes about what things say and how and why they say it. He was driven to write the book to make some sense of the sheer number of useless things in our lives today. He says we buy, collect and consume a great number of things and do so sometimes without really knowing why. People have never before been more burdened with things than they are now.

The idea of consumption started after the Depression when it became the duty of advertising to convince us to buy more stuff to get the economy going. Objects made by crafts people were moved to mass production and this was when design first appeared. Deyan refers to design as a "curious artful thing" that is trying to make world a better place.

Designers have become so important in our consumer environment that we have pursuaded ourselves that some things are very special because of the person whose name is on them.

Design speaks of the culture that produced it. When the Russian and US space rockets were next to each other it was obvious to which country they belonged. The US one was not just functional but streamlined to look good at the same time.

Some things have become archetypes of design. For example the symbol that we use to denote a telephone is still the image of an original handset, the sign used to mark a train crossing is that of a steam train, and a speed camera sign is of a bellows and lens camera.

In the 1980's and 90's design was more flamboyant and that's been replaced by a much quieter style. The original definition of luxury was about things being handmade in small quantities, but now the idea of luxury includes objects made in an industrial process. eg mobiles being studded with diamonds. These days objects have a much shorter life span so we tend not to build a relationship with them.

With these current economic times we may be on the verge of a trend against consumerism, which I think is not such a bad thing.

March 10 - Shakespeare's portrait

2009-05-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

Ben Hoyle, Arts Correspondent for Times Online, reported the following -

"The only surviving portrait of William Shakespeare painted from life has been discovered hanging in an Irish country house, experts claimed yesterday.
For perhaps three hundred years the exquisite oil painting has been passed down through the Cobbe family, aristocrats who can trace their heritage back to Shakespeare's only known literary patron, Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton.

The sitter's identity was always a mystery although there was a family suspicion that it might have been Sir Walter Raleigh. Now Stanley Wells, one of the world's foremost Shakespearean authorities, is “90 per cent” convinced that the debonair figure with a glint in his eyes is actually Shakespeare, captured in 1610 when he was 46.

He would have been at the height of his powers, fresh from the gorgeous romance of Antony and Cleopatra and about to plunge into the fairytale worlds of The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest.

Most previous candidates for a likeness, including the familiar balding man engraved by Martin Droeshout for the front of the First Folio, were inferior corruptions and copies of the Cobbe portrait, Professor Wells believes. All were either made posthumously or leave greater room for doubt about their authenticity.

The Cobbe portrait was “executed with panache, as you would expect from a painting made with a sitter”. That much was clear yesterday when the painting was unveiled in an imposing mahogany panelled room at the English Speaking Union's headquarters in Mayfair.

A barrage of scientific evidence supports the claim, including tree-ring dating of the oak panel on which the portrait is painted, X-ray analysis and infra-red photography. Several of the copies made of it were identified as Shakespeare within living memory of his death, Professor Wells said. With the plausible provenance linking the Cobbe portrait to the Earl of Southampton it amounts to a compelling circumstantial case.

If the identification is correct it alters what we know about Shakespeare in a number of ways. It depicts him as a man of wealth and high social status, undermining the conspiracy theorists' claims that he lacked the refinement to write the works attributed to him.

Intriguingly, it also suggests that he had a longer-lasting bond than previously thought with the Earl, one of the most flamboyant noblemen of the era and a known bisexual who, some scholars believe, had an affair with Shakespeare. "

Wouldn't it be nice to have a scholar from the past who could appear as a ghost and confirm all of these kinds of discoveries? I watch Time Team on ABC1 and they spend a lot of time speculating about what life was like for the people whose history they excavate. I wonder how close they get to what it was actually like?

March 9 - Brooch

2009-05-05T15:54:00.001-07:00

I went to my Book and Paper group meeting today and Sue showed us how too make these brooches. We could choose square-shaped ones or round ones.

Sue was very organised and had made up a kit for us to work from that included a template for the pieces, cardboard to cut them from, assorted beads and wire. We then chose the decorative bits from assorted papers, fabrics and fibres.

It was an enjoyable activity and we all agreed that we'd wear the finished items to our next meeting.

March 8 - Nanotechnology

2009-04-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

I listened to a podcast of Thursday's Future Tense on Radio National and heard a really interesting story about a collaboration between universities in Australia and China in the field of nanotechnology.

The exact description of the partnership is the Australian Technology Network, a group of five universities in Australia, and ISTA, the International Strategic Technology Alliance which is a consortium of Chinese tertiary institutions.

"The partnership has its focus on the development of nanotechnology. That is, the science of using and manipulating extremely small particles to perform certain tasks or to achieve certain results."

One of the areas that nanotechnology is being applied to is in environmental science and I've copied part of the transcript from the show to illustrate how potentially useful this work is.

"Mike Ford: One of the big areas that we work in is energy efficiency. So, for example, a really big issue in Australia is cooling houses, and the way we generally do that is with air-conditioning, which has significant problems for a number of reasons. It's a huge drain on energy, there's all sorts of other issues involved with it.

So what we're trying to do there is to try and come up with ways of making materials that can help us cool buildings without using lots of electricity. An example of that is you can take nanoparticles, very, very small particles of gold, and these are typically in the range of maybe one thousandth of the diameter of a human hair, so if you coat those on to a window, you can make the window so that it absorbs infra-red light, which is the heat that comes from the sun; you can block out that part of the sun's light, but let through all the visible light. So from the inside of the building it looks very, very similar but none of the heat gets through, or a lot less of the heat gets through. So you don't obviously have to air-condition the inside of the building.

One of the other areas that we work in is one of the really big sources of energy usage, is lighting. So we all light our houses, factories, like the insides of their buildings and so on and so forth, traffic lights, car lights, whatever, and we use light sources that are very inefficient. And one of the other projects we're working on is to try and find ways of making light sources that are very, very efficient, that last a long, long time, so you don't have all of the environmental disposal issues associated with it, you don't use so much electricity in generating the light, and one of the ways that this is going to go in the future is to use what's called solid-state lighting. These are LEDs, basically, and so we've seen LEDs.

The real challenge now is to be able to make those LEDs very, very cheaply, so that you can put them into every light bulb in every single house, and in the short term, the energy saving associated with that is enormous. So these are really good short-term solutions to things like climate change."

it's encouraging to think that there are developments going on that will eventually result in very beneficial outcomes.

March 7 - Habits

2009-04-18T17:31:00.000-07:00

I listened to a podcast of By Design with Alan Saunders. He was speaking with Elizabeth Shove who is a Professor of Sociology, University of Lancaster and Visiting Professor, RMIT and Swinbourne, Melbourne.

They were discussing life choice changes that are necessary to accommodate climate change and asking the question “How are our habits standing in the way of real change?”

We acquire habits from observing other people and adopt shared conventions in terms of our habits and these show themselves in our daily practises. These conventions dictate our daily rituals and show up in the processes we follow, from getting out of bed in the morning to eating, work and social habits and bedtime rituals.

Our choices are constrained by the infrastructure design of our cities which tend to dictate that we generally have to live in one area and work away from home. This design hardwiring resists the sort of changes and choices that might address climate change considerations. While infrastructure design is a more difficult thing to change there are still many things that can be changed and that are already changing.

There is a greater awareness of the need to live a life that responds to the seasons. This involves the knowledge about living in a particular house: when to open and close the curtains; insulation and shading; which native plants to have; the best building materials to use; and efficient resource use. The international standard of setting air-conditioning systems to 22 degrees everywhere means the seasons have gone for many people’s lives so they have to relearn how to adapt best at home.

Alan mentioned that Harold Magee in the US pointed out that people in the US could save energy just by cooking their pasta in less water. This infers that many small changes by lots of people can potentially influence things in a big way.

I believe that the best way to bring about change is for everyone to make better, more informed choices about lifestyle issues. As consumers, we are powerful directors of the decisions that governments and manufacturers make. If, for example, we decided only to buy goods in environmentally-friendly packaging then the companies not doing this would have to change or go out of business.

What outcome do you want and what decisions are you making?

March 6 - Fractals

2009-04-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

Fractals were named by Benoit Mandelbrot. He's a mathematician who devised a way of mathematically explaining the tendency of many things in nature to follow irregular patterns.

Natural fractals include the shapes of mountains, coastlines and river basins; the structures of plants, blood vessels and lungs; and the clustering of galaxies. Fractals are found in human pursuits, such as music, painting, architecture, and stock market prices. The stock market fractals idea was used in the film "The Bank", starring David Wenham, where fractals were used to bankrupt a bank.

Mandelbrot believed that fractals, far from being unnatural, were in many ways more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry: "Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line." —Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature.

This is an example of fractal geometry, where each component of the pattern is exactly the same as the pattern as a whole.

When you add more components to the images you can get amazingly beautiful results.

March 5 - Sacred Geometry

2009-04-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

This came up in a conversation today and I didn't know what it was so I went to Google and found out that "Sacred geometry may be understood as a worldview of pattern recognition, a complex system of religious symbols and structures involving space, time and form". I don't agree with the "religious" connection because complex patterns exist in nature by design and religion is a man-made construct.

Pythagoras apparently discovered a relationship between geometry and mathematics to music and he believed that "this gave music powers of healing, as it could "harmonize" the out-of-balance body, and this belief has been revived in modern times".

My understanding is that the planet and everything on it is made up of vibrations of different frequencies. This means that everything, by it's very nature, exists as a pattern of vibration with a mathematical basis. For example, colours have particular vibrations and the visual cortex of the brain interprets those vibrations as the colour they are. Taking this a step further, objects that are vibrational in nature can interact in proximity to one another and affect each other's frequency, so that would be consistent with Pythagoras' theory of harmonizing with music.

The concept that we are vibrational beings is backed up the fact that our thoughts are pulses of energy moving around neural networks. Our ears collect sound vibrations and send them to the hearing processing centre of the brain where they are translated into a recognisable form. Our eyes collect vibrations of light and transmit them to the visual cortex where they are translated into images. If you hold your hand near a heat source you can detect the vibration of the heat energy. Your nose translates the vibration of smells in your vicinity.

Matter, the objects in our environment, the stuff we think of as solid, is not really solid at all if you look at it from the perspective of the atoms that make it up. They're moving around in space in the same way that everything else is.

So where does this fit in with Sacred Geometry? If you take the "worldview of pattern recognition" definition then you can say that we, as universal translaters of vibration, recognise the oscillating patterns that exist in the world around us and have identified and reproduced some particularly pleasing ones, such as the one above.

What do you think?

March 4 - Leprechauns

2009-03-22T03:26:00.000-07:00

St Patrick's day is coming up and I have to work on an Artist Trading Card for a fibre arts group I belong to so I'm researching leprechauns.

This is what's in Wikipedia -

"In Irish mythology, a leprechaun (Irish: leipreachán) is a type of male faerie said to inhabit the island of Ireland. They are a class of "faerie folk" associated in Irish folklore with the Tuatha Dé Danann and other quasi-historical peoples said to have inhabited Ireland before the arrival of the Celts.

Leprechauns usually take the form of old men who enjoy partaking in mischief. Popular depiction shows them as being no taller than a small child. Their trade is that of a cobbler or shoemaker. They are said to be very rich, having much buried treasure. According to legend, if anyone keeps an eye fixed upon one, he cannot escape, but the moment the gaze is withdrawn, he vanishes."

I love mythology. The human mind is capable of such fabulously imaginative creativity, isn't it?

March 3 - geckos

2009-03-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

I love geckos. They're realy cute. I've drawn them, painted them and made sculptural pieces of them. However, I think that I may have overdone the whole "I love geckos" thing because I seemed to have attracted vast numbers of them to me. The house is gradually being overrun by them.

I did a search on the web for some way to control them and found out that they don't like mothballs so now I have mothballs located near their favourite places. The only problem is I now have to decide whether I prefer the geckos, and all the hassles they bring with them, to the smell of mothballs. And I still don't know if the mothballs work anyway.

If anyone out there has any better ideas then please feel free to share them with me.

March 2 - Ghostpatrol and Miso

2009-03-10T05:12:00.000-07:00

Ghostpatrol and Miso are two emerging young artists in Melbourne. They are street artists as well as professional artists. Their street art mostly takes the form of paper cut paste-ups that they put up overnight.

Their work is original, beautifully-executed drawings that they produce as collaborative works. They've produced 2 books of their work.

This is one of Miso's pasteups.

I love their work and I find it interesting that one of the comments made on the Artscape programme about them was their uniqueness in producing actual pencil drawings, rather than computer-based work. I guess that's where art is heading right now and it's a good thing that there are artists out there who still pick up and use a pencil.

In and exhibition that featured on the Artscape programme there was a close look at pieces that Ghostpatrol has done. They are drawings that he's done using pencils glued together as a drawing surface.

March 1 - lizard longevity

2009-03-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

I watched "Wild Caribbean - Hurricane Hell" on ABC TV and learned that there are islands in the Caribbean that regularly get totally flattened by hurricanes and as a result the flora and fauna have adapted to survive.

Here's a description from the ABC website-

"The Caribbean is no stranger to the wild forces of nature. Between June and November, during the hot summer months - Caribbean heaven turns into hurricane hell, as the pristine waters and lush rainforests are hit by the extreme winds, water and rains that accompany a hurricane."

"Storm surges have been known to cover the entire surface of the Caribbean's low lying islands. Over the years, the inhabitants of the Caribbean - coral reefs, animals, marine life and even fauna have done their best to adapt to the hurricane season. Rainforest trees for example, use their roots to literally anchor themselves to the forest floor, while leatherback turtles head to the deep waters.

But while a hurricane may devastate a reef or rainforest beyond recognition, the Caribbean is able to renew itself time and time again."

The story of survival that interested me is about the lizards. Occasionally the inundations are so severe that the entire population of lizards is wiped out but the species survives because the lizard eggs can survive under water and within weeks of the water subsiding the population of lizards is replaced. Clever survival mechanism I think.

February 28 - Shostakovich

2009-03-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

I went to a concert by the Queensland Orchestra with the Symphony No15 in A by Shostakovich in the second half.

Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer who was born in St Petersberg in 1906 an died in Moscow in 1975. Apart from being a Harry Potter lookalike, I found an interesting story about something that happened during WWII.

"The 1941 German invasion of Russia inspired the composer's Seventh Symphony, subtitled "Leningrad." Impressed by the symphony's epic-heroic character, Toscanini, Koussevitsky, and Stokowski vied for the Western Hemisphere premiere; the score had to be microfilmed, flown to Teheran, driven to Cairo, and flown out. The work became an enormous success the world over, but eventually fell into obscurity. Still, the composer had for a time become a worldwide celebrity, his picture even appearing on the cover of Time. " (from Answers.com)

According to the programme from the concert he was "arguably the greatest symphonist of the 20th Century". I haven't heard enough classical music to judge, but I enjoyed his 15th symphony very much.

February 27 - Abraham

2009-03-05T22:54:00.000-08:00

Esther and Jerry Hicks (pictured) form the Abraham-Hicks team and they travel around the world giving workshops about a new way of looking at life.

Some years ago Esther became a channel for messages from a group of spiritual guides who call themselves Abraham. Jerry had been asking questions about the meaning of life for many years so it became a perfect partnership. Jerry asks the questions and Esther (as Abraham) answers them. At first they used the process to get answers for their own questions but now they hold workshops and invite the attendees to ask whatever they want to know about how life is working for them and how it might be better. According to Abraham, life works like this -

(1) The Law of Attraction. Whatever you spend your time thinking about will automatically come your way and the more you do this the more you get of it. This applies equally to the things you want as well as the things you don't want, because your mind doesn't distinguish between "want" and "don't want". So if you spend a lot of time thinking about bad things happening to you then you'll attract bad things. Have you ever noticed how some people tend to be unlucky all the time and things seem to go from bad to worse for them? According to Abraham it's because they spend all their time anticipating bad things, so that's what they get. Conversely, if you spend all your time anticipating good things coming your way then that's what will happen too.

(2) The law of Deliberate Creation refers to the idea that if you want something then you can send out a "rocket of desire" for it and Abraham says that whatever you desire is there for you, ready to manifest for you as soon as you're ready for it. The reason we don't get what we ask for immediately is because, most of the time, we're not tuned into it yet. We might have negative thoughts/feelings that are keeping us in a mindset of lack and preventing positive energy coming our way.

(3) The more thought you put into the object of your desire, the closer you get to manifesting it and the best way to see where you are on this path is to follow your personal guidance system. According to Abraham your personal guidance system is your emotions. If you are feeling happy then you're moving towards your goals but if you are unhappy then you're going away from them. The way to realign yourself, therefore, is to do something that changes how you feel from sadness to happiness. The trick is to keep on doing this until you feel better and better and better and when you achieve joy then that's when manifestation happens. This sounds too simple, but it works.

There are many free downloads available on the website at http://www.abraham-hicks.com/ that will explain these laws and how to apply them to you life. Until I started listening to this stuff I didn't realise that it's what the book "The Secret" is all about.

I've been applying the knowledge I've gained from this to my life and anticipate great things to come.

Page in book to follow at an appropriate time.

February 26 - bricolage

2009-03-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

bricolage n. Something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available.

On By Design (ABC radio) I heard that there's a competition in Tasmania for designers to come up with products which can be made from industrial discards and that could have marketing potential.

The dolls in the photo were the winning entry for the inaugural competion in 2008. They are called Redivivus dolls and were made by Susan McMahon using reconstituted sawdust and recycled flour bags. She liked the idea of creating something that lasts from materials that would usually be discarded.

Tasmania has a tradition of reusing things and the products made available to the designers include plastic offcuts, rubber, metal bits, fabrics, cardboard etc.

These necklaces made from laminex offcuts was another of last year's entries.

Other ideas included a sprinkler made from car parts.

Maree Bakker, competition organiser and Sustainability officer in the Tasmanian Environment Division explains:
"Many industries are trying to reduce their water and energy use and reduce their waste, but a large amount of waste still goes to landfill. This competition is an opportunity to reuse some of that waste and encourage new market opportunities through design innovation. "

Reverse Garbage is a re-use concept with operations in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, providing clean industrial discards for anyone who wants to be creative with materials that would normally be sent to the waste stream. I think it's great that many people are now looking at creatively diverting these resources fom landfill.

I'll HAVE to make something from industrial discards for my page in the book on this topic.

February 25 - Argo floats

2009-03-05T00:00:00.000-08:00

I was watching Catalyst on ABC TV and learned about these cool robots that monitor the conditions at the bottom of the world's oceans. They're called Argo floats and the transcript from the Catalyst website explains them thus -

"Humans have been weather forecasting for thousands of years. But the ocean also plays a huge role in our climate patterns and until now the processes that go on beneath the surface have been largely a mystery. But that mystery is being slowly revealed. Ten years ago Australia released the first Argo floats into the Indian Ocean. These nautical robots dive up to two kilometres every ten days and surface to transmit their precious measurements to Argo headquarters. Twenty countries maintain the global armada of more than 3000 Argo floats... and they're providing oceanographers with an unprecedented wealth of data from deep beneath the sea."

Isn't technology wonderful?

February 24 - Colour Literacy

2009-03-03T22:14:00.000-08:00

Peter Travis was the guest on the morning interview with Margaret Throsby.

He was the guy who designed the speedo swimming costume in 1959 so that's why I've chosen to use this particular photo of him.

"Colour literacy" is an expression he invented and it describes the process of putting colours together so they make sense. He speaks of putting colours into phrases or sentences. As colours affect and change each other when they are put in close proximity then the quantity of a particular colour is as important as the colour itself. Any individual colour is reflected around whatever is nearby and therefore the groupings of colours and the light source shining on them is important too.

His most surprising statement was that colour doesn't actually exist in the world at all. Our brain makes colours when our eyes bring in the light. As colour is a result of ambient light then the colour of a paint sample in a paint shop is quite different from that same colour when it is in your home.

We tend to think that certain colour combinations to be harmonious as a rule but Peter believes that every combination can work if you understand them. It's all about the proportions of colours you use. Even tiny pieces of discord can look good in the right place.

His interest in colour has been with him from a very early age. When he was four years old he advised his mother which colour fabric to choose for a dress she made. When anyone complimented her on the colour she'd tell them that her son chose it for her.

Peter designed the speedo in 1959. At the beginning they weren't liked by the beach inspectors but the court decreed that they had to be allowed because they covered all the important bits. The speedo was the first male leisure garment in the world.

Peter is presently designing an installation for the opening of St John's Cathedral in Brisbane. He's using an installation of light to produce colours in the eye of the beholder. The piece includes a yellow kite that represents the sun. The idea is to go and see it as a work in process as well as the finished piece that will remain there for a year.

Extract from the Cathedral brochure - "ART The Wonder of Light The Maker of Colour. Aerial sculptures by Peter Travis. An evolving installation throughout the festival year. Sydney artist PeterTravis is an international specialist in ceramics and glass sculpture, and former designer of kites installation for St John’s Cathedral."

I must go and see it. I'm intrigued.

February 23 - Cressida Campbell

2009-03-03T15:38:00.000-08:00

I listened to an interview with Cressida Campbell by Richard Fidler. I saw her work at a gallery in Brisbane last year and I was inspired to try something like it. Needless to say, I haven't done anything about it yet but I'm just about to be reinspired as the latest exhibition of her work is about to commence at the QUT Art gallery.

She said that she likes to work every day and loves it because it relaxes her. In her work she combines painting and printing and the process she's worked out suits her well.

She starts a piece by doing a line drawing on the block, which is a sheet of plywood. She then uses a high-tech engraving tool to carve out the lines and thinks about the colours as she does this. Although the line drawing has usually been done from a real-life setting, she paints the colours onto it in the studio so they are not the actual colours. The idea in doing it this way is to transform the image into something a bit different from the real scene. She adds tension to the work in some way and Margaret Ollie describes this as being like adding a bit of the artist's handwriting.

The next part of the process is to add colour using a fine sable brush. She applies two thick coats of watercolour paint. This done, and while it is still wet, she sprays it with water and puts a dampened piece of watercolour paper over the image. It is then rolled to transfer the image onto the paper.

The process sounds simple and, by itself, it seems to be so. However, the detail that she achieves in her work is just astonishing. Cressida's artistry is the result of devising a process that works successfully every time and applying it with extraordinary skill, patience and creativity.

A major influence for her work was Japanese woodblock prints and she spent some time there studying the process. Her work is more about painting than printing, however, as all the colours are on the same block, while Japanese printing uses a different block for each colour.

The work takes a long time to do. Sometimes she can multiprocess but other times she has to give it her total concentration. She commented that when she consciously tries to experiment it doesn't work as well as when she works intuitively.

When Cressida was a child she was a collector and started with stamps becasue they were like visual art galleries. Then she collected shells, especially from a particular rock pool. She tells a lovely story about how her mother would buy shells from somewhere else in the world and plant them in the rock pool for Cressida to find. When she discovered they weren't local her mother would make up some fanastic story about how they came to be there. Cressida believed her and only found out the truth of this about 8 years ago. Her mother was obviously creative and imaginative and no doubt influenced Cressida's own creativity.

The book of her work is a beautiful piece of work in itself and the first edition sold out quickly. When it was being printed Cressida monitored the process carefully to make sure the colours were accurate. The printing house had a place where she could sleep between colour runs so then every hour and a half she'd be woken up to check the colours and allow it to continue.

Her husband coproduced the book with her.

I'd like to think that the page in my book about this will include my own version of a Cressida Campbell print but, given that I'm already WAY behind with my book, then the likelihood is close to zero. I'll put in something of Cressida's instead, I think.

February 22 - What is cancer?

2009-02-24T00:09:00.000-08:00

You may be wondering why I'm asking a question that seems to have an obvious answer but, in fact, the medical researchers looking at cancer don't actually know what cancer is. They know how it behaves but, without knowing what it actually is, they don't know why it behaves as it does.

Dr Tullio Simoncini, an Italian doctor, decided to look at cancer and see if he could work out what it is and the conclusion he came to is that it's a fungus. He believes that it starts from candida albicans and produces fungal growths in optimal growing conditions in the body. The body then launches a counter-attack whereby the fungal growth is enclosed and confined so that it can't spread. This is what a tumour is about.

The worst thing to do at this stage is to cut the tumour because, by doing so, the spores of the fungus can escape into the bloodstream and take root elsewhere, which is exactly what happens.

Dr Simoncini, by understanding what cancer is, has come up with a cure. Sodium carbonate. He floods the region of the tumour with a solution of Sodium Carbonate and the tumour recedes because the fungus doesn't like it. You can see a video of the paper this doctor gave at a convention in 2008 here http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/video-drsimoncini-cancer-convention-2008.html

The reason he believes that no one has come up with a cure to date is because the pharmaceutical industry has such a HUGE investment in the maintenance of the chemical response to the problem that all of the research money goes into the production of medication, rather than finding out what the problem is.

I believe this also applies to the Multiple Sclerosis Industry. I refer to it that way because all of the money that's raised for research into MS goes into the production of drugs, rather than looking at the problem itself. I say this because I have MS and I think I've got a bit of an idea about what goes on. I've had it since 1981 and have managed to "get over it" by reprogramming my neural networks, possible because of neuroplasticity. I feel disappointed that none of the money raised goes into investigating possible recovery options, just into drugs. The pharmaceutical industry has a lot to answer for.

So I'm hoping that this latest news about Dr Simoncini's work is going to take off and shake the foundations of medical research and the pharmaceutical industry as we know it. Here's hoping.

When I do the page in my book I'll post it here. I seems to be lagging behind on this part of the exercise.

February 21 - Learn from mistakes?

2009-02-21T18:18:00.000-08:00

The bushfires in Victoria are a tragedy that will take many, many years to recover from. I would like to think that this recovery will also involve a certain amount of learning from the mistakes made and setting in place some new processes that might prevent a similar situation in future.

I mean, that's what's supposed to happen when things go wrong, isn't it?

Sadly, this isn't always the case.

History tells us that "The bushfires of January 13 1939, known as the ‘Black Friday’ fires, were the result of a long drought and a severe, hot, dry summer. Fanned by extremely strong winds, these fires swept rapidly across large areas of Victoria, causing widespread destruction. " Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

There was a Royal Commission to look into the fires and it was deemed that they were deliberately lit and a number of recommendations came out of the report. A lot of those recommendations resulted in changes that brought reform into the management of forests and fires, and determined, to some extent, how things are today.

However, one of the findings of the report was that many lives were saved at the sawmills because of dugouts and a recommendation of the report was that these should be used more extensively.

Phillip Adams spoke with a couple of guests about dugouts on Late Night Live . One was a woman who had survived the Black Friday fires. She had one brother who died in one dugout and another who didn't survive in another dugout. The difference between the two was that one was constructed properly and the other wasn't.

Phillip's other guest was Andrew Sullivan, a Senior Research Scientist with the CSIRO's Bushfire Research Group. He commented that dugouts, as a viable option during bushfires, went out of favour when the demographics of the community changed. In 1939 people were forced to stay in place as there weren't cars to drive away in.

Studies into the practicalities of dugouts deemed them inadvisable, although Andrew mentioned that some of the research was faulty and could therefore had resulted in a false recommendation.

One family survived in a dugout during these current fires so perhaps this idea needs to be looked at again. With modern technologies in terms of materials it seems to be a good time to reconsider them as a viable option.

The whole debate about this issue prompted me to ask the question "Why don't we learn from our mistakes?"

There are a number of layers to this issue, I decided. The first is that through our education system we are encouraged to get things right and that mistakes are a bad thing. Risk-taking is discouraged and yet taking risks, and sometimes making mistakes, are an essential part of learning. By making mistakes, analysing what went wrong, and choosing a better alternative we're able to learn from them.

Another layer is government. The way the system works is that decisions are made to last only as long as the current term of office. There seems to be little, or no, long-term planning going on at any level. Why would they? Any government knows that if they take risks in terms of policy they may well lose the next election if things don't go to plan, so they don't risk it.

The third layer is the media. Their present strategy seems to be to tell us what went wrong and who's to blame. This generally bad-news-minded bunch of ambulance chasers can't seem to see beyond the latest 5-second-grab of "hot news", in my opinion. Sure, there must be a few decent people among them but they seem to be few and far between.

But how about this for an idea? Why couldn't some media hounds set up a group to follow up some of the ideas, recommendations, suggestions and comments made during crises or events and make sure that there's some sort of continuity from one government to the next or one policy decision to the next. To make sure that things happen as they should and that other things don't fall by the wayside. Surely if someone is around asking questions then the important things might stay on the agenda long enough to be addressed? Or am I being entirely idealistic and unrealistic?

Is anyone listening in or am I merely speculating alone. What do you think about a system that is open to learning from mistakes and growing in maturity as a result?

I'm not sure how to interpret this topic as a page in my book but I guess I'll do it somehow and post a pic when it's done.

February 20 - wordle

2009-02-20T23:38:00.000-08:00

Today I went to an Avid Divas get-together. We are a group of artists who share our work with each other. Sometimes we just do a show-and-tell thing and at other times we share skills and techniques. It's always a great opportunity to learn new stuff, and this one was no exception.

One new thing I learned today was about Wordle.

At the website - http://www.wordle.net.au/ - you will see that "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Wordle is a terrific way to create images using words that you can then use in many, many applications, including cards, stationery, scrapbooking, embroidery, painting, etc etc

Here are some examples -

When I do my book entry for this topic I'm certainly going to have some fun with words.

February 19 - uq antiquities museum

2009-02-20T23:29:00.000-08:00

Today I visited the R D Milns Antiquities Museum at the University of Queensland. I didn't know that it existed nor that it's open to the public as well as the students.

The mission of the Antiquities Museum is "to play a major role in Classics and Ancient History as a teaching and research tool for staff and students and in the promotion of the program to the community. "

"The collection provides the only comprehensive survey of ancient Mediterranean antiquities on public view in Queensland. The objects span almost 3500 years of history, and are in a variety of materials - stone, pottery, terracotta, metalware and glass. Together they give a picture of the technological and artistic advances made over that time by the forerunners of Western civilisation. "

You can do a virtual tour of the museum online at http://www.uq.edu.au/antiquities/

Book page to follow when I've done it.

February 18 - carbon farming

2009-02-20T23:08:00.000-08:00

It seems that sometimes when I find a particular area of interest for this blog, the theme seems to repeat for a few days. Having covered vertical gardens 2 days ago, then vertical farming yesterday, today is also following a farming theme.

Today's "Future Tense" radio program by Antony Funnell included a discussion about a new type of farming methodology that works towards storing carbon in the soil and going some way to solving the CO2 problem generated by current farming practices. I dowloaded the transcript of the interview and summarised it below.

Traditional farming practises, which involve clearing land and ploughing it, then sowing seeds, harvesting and clearing the leftovers prior to re-sowing have the effect of speeding up the release of CO2 from the soil. But what if we could change our farming habits to use techniques that not only help us build more productive farms, but also capture and store more carbon?

For the last two years, retired soil scientist Dr Christine Jones has been travelling the country, talking to farmers and politicians, speaking at forums and field days and running farm trials. She believes that rebuilding carbon-rich agricultural soils is the only real productive, permanent solution to taking excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Christine Jones: “This year Australia will emit just over 600 million tonnes of carbon. We can sequester 685 million tonnes of carbon by increasing soil carbon by half a per cent on only 2% of the farms. If we increased it on all of the farms, we could sequester the whole world's emissions of carbon.”

Her approach involves getting farmers to keep their ground covered with plants all year round. She says plants are the key to removing excess carbon dioxide from the air, so the more ground cover there is, the more carbon will be stored in the soil, because bare earth gives its carbon up to the atmosphere. Dr Jones knew that if her ideas were to carry any weight, she'd have to show that farmers could profitably graze and crop their land, and maintain permanent ground cover. Two years ago, 18 farmers in three states agreed to trial her ideas. In return, she'd pay them $25 a tonne for the carbon they built.

Christine Jones: “We will be getting the first data in Australia from landholders that are doing something different and building carbon in their soil and that'll be the basis of a whole new set of models and a whole new data set that can be taken to their Ministers, and they can then say, 'Well we have some new advice, Minister; the old advice, I'm sorry, wasn't right.'”

Central Queensland cattle farmer Noel Moretti was one of those who signed on for Dr Jones' trial. He was attracted, not just by the cash, but because he knew by adding carbon he'd increase the fertility and water-holding capacity of his soil. By being carbon-smart, Mr Moretti aims to lift farm income by 10%, and he's not the slightest bit bothered by Christine Jones' skeptics.

Noel Moretti: “We've been very precise on our ground cover, making sure we don't chew our grass down too far, and we've reaped the benefits, we've made a lot of money out of the extra growth.”

He also tried pasture cropping. It's a pretty unconventional practice, as the crop is actually sown into a pasture. In 2007 he and his son Michael, grew an oat crop; it was a success. The conventional wisdom is that there shouldn't be enough soil moisture to sustain both pasture and a grain crop. But Dr Jones claims farmers can have both, because soil high in organic carbon has better structure, is more fertile, and holds more water.

Christine Jones: “So what we're going to do is plant a crop into this bare area, and into the buckle-grass area, and we're going to measure everything that happens. We'll measure the carbon under it, the water under it, and we'll measure the yield of the crop.”

She says when she started her work there were many soil carbon sceptics. Now she says more people are at least prepared to listen. Politicians from all sides have visited her trial sites, and she says it won't be long before the results vindicate her.

Christine Jones: “I think once people realise how important it is, and once we've proved that you can build the carbon and you can measure it, and that landholders can be rewarded for it, I think it'll open the floodgates, and I think we'll see enormous amounts of research, hopefully by the state agencies, so that I don't have to do it, but all over Australia and in other countries on soils, I think research into soil carbon will be huge.”

I find it very encouraging when I hear about people who have the tenacity and courage of their convictions to follow them to a logical conclusion. Too frequently new ideas are dismissed by the skeptics and fall by the wayside. Good on Christine for being brave and proving her theories!

Book page to follow when it's done.

February 17 - useful enzymes

2009-02-19T04:25:00.000-08:00

We all know that carbon dioxide is the major player in the greenhouse debate. Scientists have been proposing ways to capture it and prevent it from adding to the load of gases causing problems for our ozone layer. No cost-effective systems have been found to date.

Today it was announced that a team of scientists from four universities in India say they have discovered a low-cost method of converting carbon dioxide emissions into a useful building material.

What they've managed to do is to use 7 enzymes that convert carbon dioxide into calcium carbonate, which is the mineral found in limestone, shells and chalk, etc. The calcium carbonate can then be used in many different ways. Currently, it's used for the following -

The main use of calcium carbonate is in the construction industry, either as a building material in its own right (e.g. marble) or limestone aggregate for roadbuilding or as an ingredient of cement or as the starting material for the preparation of builder's lime by burning in a kiln.

It is also used in the purification of iron from iron ore in a blast furnace.

Precipitated Calcium carbonate, pre-dispersed in slurry form, is also now widely used as filler material for latex gloves.

Calcium carbonate is widely used as an extender in paints and as a filler in plastics.

It is also used in a wide range of trade and DIY adhesives, sealants, and decorating fillers. Ceramic tile adhesives typically contain 70 to 80% limestone. Decorating crack fillers contain similar levels of marble or dolomite. It is also mixed with putty in setting stained glass windows, and as a resist to prevent glass from sticking to kiln shelves when firing glazes and paints at high temperature.

Calcium carbonate is known as whiting in ceramics/glazing applications, where it is used as a common ingredient for many glazes in its white powdered form.

In North America, calcium carbonate has begun to replace kaolin in the production of glossy paper. Europe has been practicing this as alkaline papermaking or acid-free papermaking for some decades.

It is used in swimming pools as a pH corrector for maintaining alkalinity "buffer" to offset the acidic properties of the disinfectant agent.

It is commonly called chalk as it has been a major component of blackboard chalk.

Ground calcium carbonate is further used as an abrasive (both as scouring powder and as an ingredient of household scouring creams).

So you can see that if it's possible to convert Carbon Dioxide, which we have too much of, into Calcium Carbonate, which we have many uses for, and do it economically, then it's an all-round win-win situation.

A few hours after I heard this news I excitedly told a scientist friend of mine about it and he was not surprised because the knowledge that it's possible to convert CO2 into CaCO3 is old news. He said that it hasn't been done because it was an expensive process. I guess the reason why this is such good news now is because the Indian scientists have worked out a cost-effective way to do it. I'm very happy that there are people around who pursue lines of enquiry persistently until they find solutions.

Page to follow.

February 16 - vertical farm

2009-02-19T03:53:00.000-08:00

There's a new show on ABC radio national called "Future Tense" with Antony Funnell. He features subjects that address where we are going in the global response to environmental and sustainability issues. It's interesting that yesterday's blog was about vertical gardening and today's is the same idea on a much bigger scale.

Antony's guest, Oliver Foster, has designed a 12-story vertical farm for Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast. You can read more about it on the website at http://www.verticalfarm.com/Default.aspx

Here is an extract from the web, explaining the reason behind the project -

"By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?

A Potential Solution: Farm Vertically

The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming."

Whenever I hear about projects like this one I feel encouraged to think that maybe, with a bit of lateral thinking, we can find creative solutions to the problems that the planet faces today.

Page to follow.

February 15 - vertical gardening

2009-02-19T03:03:00.000-08:00

I've only just become aware of the idea that vegetable gardens can be planted vertically as well as horizontally. I did know about trellises for plants like beans but somehow it hadn't sunk in that you can plant a variety of vegetables and herbs in a vertical structure that can be on a balcony or even in the house.

I remember recently seeing a vertical garden that was designed and built for a shopping centre. The huge wall of greenery was stunning and did well because of the glass roof above it. The designer explained that he chose plants that, in their natural environments, were used to clinging to the sides of cliff faces, or on tree trunks.

On gardening Australia last week one of the stories was about an italian immigrant who'd created a market garden in his small suburban yard. It was a series of trellises with narrow walkways between them. I wondered whether he had a problem with some of the trellises shading others and then realised that all you have to do is build them with an east-west orientation and you wouldn't get shading from one to the other.

A couple of years ago I had a vegetable garden put in at home. It worked well, to a point, and I had a bumper crop of tomatoes (which ripened when we were away on holiday). It's been lying fallow for some time because I hadn't worked out how to do it properly. I now understand that I just need to do it vertically as well as horizontally (for the potatoes).

It would be good to do something about the garden over winter this year. Let's see if I have the time, or can make the time, to do it.

Page to follow

February 14 - fragile fleece

2009-02-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

I visited a friend at Maleny and learned something new about wool. Marylou has a number of sheep on her property and she uses their fleece for spinning, knitting and felting. She told me that if a sheep experiences stress for a time then the fibres of the wool it is growing become thinner than normal.

This means that when the sheep is shorn then the wool fibres may actually break at the thinner part. The way to check for this potential problem is to pull on the fibres to check their strength.

Page to follow

February 13 - black friday

2009-02-17T23:48:00.000-08:00

It's Friday 13th today so I had to find out something about the superstition associated with Black Friday. There's even a word to describe the reaction to it - Paraskevidekatriaphobics — people afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th.

There's loads of stuff on the net about superstitions, including -

The Egyptians at the time of the pharoahs considered 13 lucky, because they believed life unfolded in 12 stages, and that there was a 13th stage-the afterlife-beyond. That meant the number 13 symbolized death-as a happy transformation. Egyptian civilization perished, but the symbolism of the number 13 lived on as fear of death. (In Tarot decks the "Death" card bears the number 13 but retains its original, positive meaning: transformation.)

I like the stuff I read on beliefnet.com. Extract follows -

"Many people consider Friday unlucky because that's the day of Jesus' Crucifixion, but historians believe the superstition goes much farther back and has something to do with the sacrifices offered to the goddess Frigg (goddess of marriage and fertility) or Freya (goddess of sex and fertility) or both, in Norse mythology.

Frigg/Freya's emblem was the fish, which was associated with the worship of love and was offered by the Scandinavians to their goddess on the sixth day of the week, Friday. But the worship of love on Fridays, according to Popular Superstitions, developed into "a series of filthy and indecent rites and practices."

According to Emery, Friday was considered lucky, especially as a day to get married, because of its associations with love. In other pagan cultures, Friday was the sabbath, a day of worship. Once Christianity entered the scene, Freya-whose sacred animal was a cat--was recast in folklore as a witch. In the Middle Ages, Friday was known as the "Witches' Sabbath."

Later, early Christians began attributing just about everything terrible to Friday: Eve offering Adam the apple in the Garden of Eden; Abel's murder by his brother, Cain; St. Stephen's stoning; the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod; the flight of the children of Israel through the Red Sea; the Great Flood; the destruction of the Temple of Solomon; and the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel.

Which brings us to.

Superstitions about Friday the 13th
Add it up, and Friday the 13th is clearly doomed as a bad luck kinda day.
Most historians believe the main reason--in addition to all the gloom and doom you just read above--stems from the Last Supper. Jesus and his 12 disciples gathered in the Upper Room, where Jesus predicted that one of them would betray him. Here is how Jesus' words are portrayed in the Gospel: "Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil? He spake of Judas Iscariot . . for he it was that should betray him." (John 6: 70-71)
And that scene, of course, set the stage for the Crucifixion, on Good Friday.

Some sources add an additional wrinkle, however. They pinpoint the origin of Friday the 13th-phobia to a specific historical event: the rounding up of the Knights Templar for torture and execution by King Philip IV of France on Friday, October 13, 1307.

Read and weep. Shiver with fear. Dive for cover."

Page to follow (complete with black cat)

February 12 - vata who?

2009-02-17T23:40:00.000-08:00

I was in a doctor's surgery this morning, flicking through health magazines, and I saw lots of stuff about body type according to Ayurvedic principles.

I went home and found this info on the indiaoz website.

"According to Ayurveda, the first requirement for healing oneself and others is a clear understanding of the three doshas. The concept of Vata-Pitta-Kapha is unique to Ayurveda and it holds the potential for revolutionizing th healing systems of the West. However, the concept of the three principles and the Sanskrit words, Vata-Pitta-Kapha, are very difficult to translate into Western terms.

Tridosha Concept: Inside the body, there are three doshas which govern the phyico-chemical and physiological activities. These three doshas are Vata (from ether and air), Pitta (from fire and an aspect of water), and Kapha (from water and earth).Individual constitution is acquired at birth and remains constant through life. Through Ayurdic books, teachers, and courses, one is able to determine one's individual constitution and thereby knowing which direction to take for self-diagnosis purposes.

A balance among the tridosha is necessary for health. For example, the air principle kindles the bodily fire, but water is necessary to control fire, otherwise the bodily fire would burn the tissues. Vata moves Kapha and Pitta, since Kapha and Pitta are immobile. Together, the tridosha governs all metabolic activities; anabolism (Kapha), catabolism (Vata), and metabolism (Pitta). When Vata is out of balance, the metabolism will be disturbed, resulting in excess catabolism, which is the breakdown or deterioration process in the body. When anabolism is greater than catabolism, there is an increased rate of growth and repair of the organs and tissues. Excess Pitta disturbs metabolism, excess Kapha increases the rate of anabolism and excess Vata creates emaciation (catabolism).

In childhood, anabolism and the Kapha elements are predominant, since this is the time of greatest physical growth. In adulthood, metabolism and the element of Pitta are most apparent, because at this stage the body is matured and stable. In old age, catabolism and Vata are most evident, as the body begins to deteriorate. "

So now I know what it's about.

page to follow

February 11 - about mosquitoes

2009-02-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

Margaret Trosby had a guest on the ABC Classic FM morning interview, Dr. Cameron Webb, whose specialty is mosquitoes.

Whilst I'm very familiar with these pesky insects, I learned some new things about them.

Not all mosquitoes get their sustenance from people's blood. Some of them prefer frogs and snakes and others only drink fluids from plants. Some even prefer to drink their blood from crocodiles.

If there's a wrinkly granddad sitting next to a baby in a pram, the mosquito will go for the old guy anytime. This is because the insect is attracted to the hormones and vapours coming from the guy, while they reject the relatively scent-free baby.

Page to follow.

February 10 - What have you read?

2009-02-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

On Late Night Live today Phillip Adams had, as one of his guests, Robert Crawford, Poet and Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at St Andrews University.

It was a very interesting interview and you can download and listen to it from the ABC website. The part of the interview that caught my attention was when Robert asked the question "What have you read that was published in the year you were born?"

Hmmm! I don't know, I thought, so I went to Google and enquired.

One of the results caught my eye - "Teach Yourself the Sliderule", written by the Managing Director of "Unique" company and published by Burns Snodgrass in 1955. Haven't read it.

Books on questions of the peaceful application of atomic energy (published 1955–1956)
Journal of Atomic Energy. Published by Springer New York. Nope, none of those either.

"Tunnel in the Sky" is a science fiction book written by Robert Heinlein and published in 1955. I've read lots of Heinlein Sci FI, but not that one.

THE BOY'S COUNTRY BOOK - published 1955 - 1st edition. Not this one either.

SINGER SEWING SKILLS REFERENCE BOOK 1955. Didn't need it. I have a Husqvarna sewing machine.

Schumacher’s Taliesin Line of Decorative Fabrics and Wallpaper (Published by E.W. & Co. - Sample Books, Chicago) in 1955. I'd love to see a copy of this one!

Graham Greene published "The Quiet American" in 1955. I haven't read the book but I've seen the movie.

Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" books came out at this time. The first two were published in 1954 and the Return of the King was on the 20th October 1955. I've read them all many, many times and will no doubt read them again sometime. I have the Collectors Edition of the three movies and have watched them many times also. So this is my answer to Robert Crawford's question.

I was wondering what to put on my page for this topic but it's going to be easy. I'll post it when I'm done.

February 9 - bookbinding

2009-02-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

Today was the monthly meeting of the Book group at Queensland Spinners, Weavers and Fibre Artists. A creative time was had by all, as usual. Karin showed us how to make Slot and Tab books.

As I have worked on S&T books before I decided to spend the time working out a way to bind individual pages into a book so that the whole of the page is visible. Last year we had a project in the group to make altered pages. The idea was that those of us who participated in the project would each make a number of pages (equal to the number of participants) that we would swap when we finished. The idea was for everyone to end up with a full set of pages that we could then bind into a book using our own choice of method.

The specification for the page was that it should be double-sided and have something (like a photo) to represent ourself on the page somewhere. The idea was to start with a page that already had printing or images on it and alter it using any method we liked. At the end of last year we swapped the finished pages with each other and I now have a folder of pages to bind into a book.

I decided that it would be good to work out a way of binding the pages into a book so that no part of the page is lost, so that's what I did on the book group day.

I started with a strip of thin card and folded it into a small concertina, then I stitched pieces of card onto the "mountains" of it. Given that pictures make things a lot easier to understand, I'm not going to try and use words to explain the method I ended up with, I'll post the pics of the process as soon as I can.

February 8 - The Story of One

2009-02-12T21:47:00.000-08:00

Terry Jones made a very amusing documentary film about the origins of our current numbering system, and specifically the number 1. Some of the points he makes in the film include the following -

Numbers and counting things were the world's first example of writing.
Australian aborigines have no number system in their language. They don't count things, they name them.
The need for counting seemed to be associated with the building of cities, where the numbers of people and things are important.
Archimedes developed formulas to describe theoretical mathematics.
The Romans liked to count things, especially the number of men in their armies, and so they developed the numerals system to record large numbers. This system was spread across Europe by the expansion of the Roman Empire.
The arabic system of numbers that we use today was created in India in 500BC. It was picked up by Fibonacci and introduced to Europe, and it travelled to the Middle East from there.
A system for taking human error out of calculations was proposed as early as the 1600s but not built then. The theory was implemented in the development of the code-breaking machine, the Colossus, at Bletchley Park during WWII.
The binary number system, whereby calculations can brought back to patterns of ones and zeros, forms the basis of our computers today.

It is a very well made film that provides a simple and amusing explanation of the history of our number system. If you're interested you can watch the film at

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Story-Of-One-Terry-Jones-BBC-number-documentary-5904

Page to follow

February 7 - feeling grumpy

2009-02-12T21:40:00.000-08:00

I was unwell today and it made me feel very grumpy. Consequently I was short tempered with a few people around me. I then considered the possibility that when other people have been grumpy with me it might have been because they were not feeling well at the time. This led to the idea that if someone is being grumpy with me it might be nothing to do with me at all and I shouldn't take it personally. I decided to see other people's behaviour in a new light in future.

I wondered why it's taken me so long to work this one out.

I have no idea what to do in my book for this one, but I guess I'll think of something.

February 6 - Dad's war service

2009-02-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

It's my Dad's 90th birthday this July and my sister and I have decided to make him a scrapbook of his life, as we did for our mother when she was 80. We've each chosen the aspects of his life to make pages for and one of the things I'm doing is his war service.

We originally came to Australia from Finland, where military service is compulsory, so Dad was drafted into the army when he was just 20 years old. He was trained as a gunnery sergent and sent to the Russian front for three long years.

When I was growing up Dad never talked about his experience in the war. He just said that he'd rather not have to remember that time. I knew nothing about what he did or where he went. It was only fairly recently that he was able to start talking about it and now he's given me a full explanation, in the form of 12 handwritten pages, about what happened to him all those years ago. He also has a number of photographs that I've been able to copy and enlarge for the scrapbook. This is the first time I've seen them and it's touching just how young he was. I guess this is true for all of the young men sent to war for their country. So sad and pointless.

The exercise of making this scrapbook for Dad has sent me on a trail of research about Finlnd's history. From extracts from Virtual Finland by Dr. Seppo Zetterberg, professor of history, University of Jyväskylä, I've learned the following -

"Until the middle of the 12th century the country was a political vacuum with both Sweden (and the Catholic church) and Russia (and the Greek Orthodox church) interested in taking control. Sweden won and took over most of the country in 1323, with the eastern edge being under Russian rule.

Under Swedish rule the Finns retained their personal freedom. The Reformation started by Luther in the early 16th century also reached Sweden and Finland, and the Catholic Church consequently lost out to the Lutheran faith.

The Reformation set in motion a great rise in Finnish-language culture. The New Testament was translated into Finnish in 1548 by the Bishop of Turku, Mikael Agricola (1510-1557), who brought the Reformation to Finland and created written Finnish. The entire Bible appeared in Finnish in 1642.

During its period as a great power (1617-1721), Sweden extended its realm around the Baltic and managed, due to the weakness of Russia, to push the Finnish border further east. With consolidation of the administration in Stockholm, uniform Swedish rule was extended to Finland in the 17th century. Swedes were often appointed to high offices in Finland, which strengthened the position of the Swedish language in Finland.

When Sweden lost its position as a great power in the early 18th century, Russian pressure on Finland increased, and Russia conquered Finland in the 1808-1809 war with Sweden. The country became The Grand Duchy of Finland. The enlightened Russian Emperor Alexander I, who was Grand Duke of Finland in 1809-1825, gave Finland extensive autonomy thereby creating the Finnish state. The Lutheran Church retained its position in Finland, and so did Swedish as the official language of the country.

The Finnish national movement gained momentum during the Russian period. The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, created by Elias Lönnrot, was published in 1835. J.V. Snellman (1806-1881), who was a senator and professor at the University of Helsinki during the reign of Alexander II in 1855-1881, worked to promote the Finnish language and to make it an official language alongside Swedish."

Years of to-ing and fro-ing and struggles for control ensued and it's interesting to note that part of the restructuring of government and legislture meant that Finnish women were the first in Europe to gain the right to vote in parliamentary elections.

"On December 6, 1917, Parliament approved the declaration of independence drawn up by the Senate under the leadership of P.E Svinhufvud (1861-1944).

At the same time, the breach between the parties of the left and the right had become irreconcilable. At the end of January 1918, the leftwing parties staged a coup, and the government was forced to flee Helsinki. The ensuing Civil War ended in May with victory for the government troops, led by General Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951). Finland became a republic in the summer of 1919, and K.J. Ståhlberg (1865-1952) was elected the first president."

My Dad was born in 1919, the year that Finland became a Republic. The years of his childhood were a time of much change and growth for the country. When he was just 20 Russia hit back.

"In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non aggression pact, which included a secret protocol relegating Finland to the Soviet sphere of interest. When Finland refused to allow the Soviet Union to build military bases on its territory, the latter revoked the nonaggression pact of 1932 and attacked Finland on November 30, 1939. The "Winter War" ended in a peace treaty drawn up in Moscow on March 13, 1940, giving southeastern Finland to the Soviet Union.

In the Winter War Finland stood alone; only sympathy and modest assistance was offered by other countries. During the War Finnish ski troops, their white uniforms blending ghostlike in the snow, inflicted heavy casualties on the Russian army. Finland's survival against overwhelming Russian forces became legendary all over the world. Unlike all other states on the European continent that were involved in the Second World War, Finland was never occupied by foreign forces."

When Dad was still at the training camp, preparing to join the troops fighting the Russians, the Winter War ended (13/3/1940) and he was not involved in that conflict. When his artillery section was mobilised on 21.6.41 they were ordered to march to the Russian front and reclaim the lands taken in the Winter War. They had to bunker down at the front and hold position there. They did this for three years.

It's interesting for me to read the account of his time at the front. And sad too. At the end of their time they were forced to retreat under massive bombardment from the Russians. There were 110 men in Dad's section and during their time at the front 10 were killed and 21 wounded. When I read the account I'm surprised that anyone survived. I guess war is like that. Sometimes the soldiers make it home.

Dad's closest call happened exactly a year after he was drafted into the army. On the morning of that day the Russians decided to obliterate them by heavy bombardment with 150mm shells. The bombing was so heavy that all they could do was retreat into the bunker and wait it out. A 40kg shell came through the window of their bunker, missed all of the 8 men hiding there and exploded in the sand on the other side. Dad caught some wood splinters in the back of his legs and couldn't stand for several minutes but that was the extent of injuries sustained. When they excavated the shell the next day they found the cone and discovered that it had been set to 0.4secs. This meant that it was set to explode 0.4 seconds after impact, rather than on impact. This meant that they had survived the shelling by a mere 0.4 seconds. I guess Dad and his team were not meant to die on that day.

After the war the Russians claimed reparations for their losses and annexed Karelia as payment. The residents from that part of Finland had to leave their country and homes and it has been a sore point ever since.

Dad's motivation for fighting in this particular war was to keep the Russians out of the country that had fought so hard and so long for its independence. He gets angry whenever anyone speaks of Finland as "that part of Russia". I can understand and I feel the same myself, even though I've only gained this feeling by osmosis.

Page to follow

February 5 - Post it notes

2009-02-12T17:44:00.000-08:00

In 1968 Dr Spencer Silver, a scientist at 3M, developed a "low-tack" reuseable, pressure-sensitive adhesive. For five years, Silver promoted his invention within 3M, both informally and through seminars, but without much success. In 1974, a colleague of his, Art Fry, who had attended one of Silver's seminars, came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor his bookmark in his hymbook. The idea was now mature and 3M launched the product in 1977, but it failed as consumers had not tried it so a year later they issued free samples and 90% of people who tried them said that they would buy the product. By 1980 the product was being sold nationwide in the US and now they're everywhere.

I've chosen to use post it notes on the page of my book, and made it look like they've been pinned to a corkboard. The story abot Harvey Milk is on the top part of the page and the notes overlap so you can't read the story from this pic.

February 4 - Milk and twinkies

2009-02-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

I saw the movie "Milk" with Sean Penn. It was very thought-provoking and superbly acted by all the cast members.

I extracted the following information about Milk from Wikipedia -
Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not Milk's early interests; he did not feel the need to be open about his homosexuality or participate in civic matters until around age 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.

Milk moved from New York City to settle in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men moving to the Castro District in the 1970s. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977 a result of the broader social changes the city was experiencing.

Milk served 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned and wanted his job back.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk has become an icon in San Francisco and "a martyr for gay rights", according to University of San Francisco professor Peter Novak. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". John Cloud remarked on his influence, "[After Milk] many people—straight and gay—had to adjust to a new reality he embodied: that a gay person could live an honest life and succeed."

When Dan White was convicted and went to trial for the murders there was no question that he was guilty, but in his defence it was claimed that there were several factors influencing his mental state.

"At the trial, noted psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that White had been depressed at the time of the crime, and pointed to several factors indicating White's depression: he had quit his job; he shunned his wife; and although normally clean-cut, he had become slovenly in appearance. Furthermore, White had previously been a fitness fanatic and health food advocate, but had begun consuming junk food and sugar-laden soft drinks like Coca-Cola. As an incidental note, Blinder mentioned theories that elements of diet could worsen existing mood swings. Another psychiatrist, George Solomon, testified that White had "exploded" and was "sort of on automatic pilot" at the time of the killings.

Because of the testimony from Blinder and other psychiatrists the defense "successfully persuaded the jury that White's capacity for rational thought had been diminished; the jurors found White incapable of the premeditation required for a murder conviction, and instead convicted him of voluntary manslaughter. Public protests over the verdict led to the White Night Riots."

After the successful use of this argument in the defence of this case, it became known as "The Twinkie Defense", even though Twinkies weren't mentioned at the time. In other words "But, your Honour, the chocolate made me do it". It adds a new perspective to the expression "I'd kill for a piece of chocolate". Just kidding.

My own opinion of this is rather more black and white. He chose to become slovenly and eat junk food. He chose to take a gun to the office and kill two innocent people. He should also have had the guts to choose to take full responsibilty for his actions, rather than hiding behind so-called expert opinions about his state of mind. After all, it was (supposedly) HIS mind.

After spending just a few years in prison White was released and subsequently committed suicide.

In terms of the movie "Milk" Sean Penn was superb in the role and I hope he gets an Oscar for it.

The page is set up to look like notes pinned to a corkboard.. The notes are written on post it notes and overlap so you can't read them from this pic. I like the effect of using paper with a cork print on it.

February 3 - Nuts and washers

2009-02-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

I picked up a book at the Lifeline Bookfest that I thought would interest my husband, but then found that it's useful for me too. It's called "Tools and their uses" and it was originally prepared by the Bureau of Naval Personnel as a handbook for US navy. The manual is so useful that it was subsequently printed for use by anyone interested in "learning the basics of choosing tools and using them as they were meant to be used".

The first paragraph of the back cover says "Do you have trouble with tools - find they wear out too quickly, find that you can't decide which tools to buy or which tools to use for a specific job, find that things continually go wrong? The only way to learn to use tools, of course, is by using them, but first you have to know which tools to use and why."

The manual is full of a wealth of diagrams and simple explanations and I finally found out about how to use washers properly. Flat washers are used with nuts to provide a larger connecting area to prevent the nut head from damaging the work surface. Split lock washers are used under nuts to prevent loosening by vibration. The ends of these spring-hardened washers dig into both the nut and the work to prevent slippage. Shakeproof lock washers have teeth or lugs that grip both the work and the nut.

So now you know.

This is the lower half of a page that's made to look like it's notes pinned to a corkboard. The upper part is the pic in the "About Fat" entry. I like the effect.

February 2 - good news about fat

2009-02-08T00:26:00.000-08:00

I have the opposite problem to most people when it comes to fat. I'm underweight and I struggle to put it on. I was doing a Google search for ideas to put on weight and was overwhelmed with the volume of bad news about fat and how to avoid it. I thought there had to be some good things about it so I typed in "10 good things about fat" and this is what came back -

"Fat has had a lot of bad press over the years and for many people, just a mention of the word can evoke misery or complaints about ones weight. You can try to lose it, try to hide it, try to avoid it, but your body still needs it! Did you know that fat helps to insulate our nerve cells, keeps us warm, balances our hormones, keeps skin and arteries supple, lubricates joints and is a component in every cell? The key issue here is recognizing which type of fat your body needs, how much your body requires and which type is your enemy. Armed with the right information, you can focus on getting more of the good fats and less of the bad fats into your daily diet.

There are two types of fat to be aware of. Saturated fats - let’s call them “the enemy” and unsaturated fats - “the good guys”! It is easy to tell the difference because saturated fats are hard at room temperature. Saturated fats are not essential to your health. They come from animals and are found in meat, eggs and cheese. They are harder to digest and full of cholesterol.

Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature and have been divided into two groups. Monounsaturated fats such as olive oil, and polyunsaturated fats such as sunflower oil.

Here are some important facts about fat in our diet.
1. Fat is the ‘energy reserve’ of animals, plants and humans.
2. The ideal body-fat ratio should be approximately 19-26% of a woman’s body weight, and 12-18% of a man’s body weight.
3. There are two different types of body fat - brown and yellow. Brown fat is situated inside the body and is ‘active’, containing mitochondria that produce heat (thermogenesis) and as a result burn energy. Yellow fat is found nearer the surface, is less active and more likely to accumulate. Women tend to have a higher ratio of yellow fat than men.
4. Women need higher levels of fat because it is essential for reproduction and so the body stores it ‘just in case’.
5. An average healthy intake of good fats in the diet should be approximately 30-40 grams a day. The fat content of diets in affluent populations can be nearly four times this amount!
6. Most foods containing fat combine saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat in varying quantities. For instance, butter’s fat content is almost 100%, of which 60% is saturated, 30% monounsaturated and 10% polyunsaturated, compared with sunflower seeds’ fat content of 73%, of which just 12% is saturated and 21% monounsaturated and 67% is polyunsaturated.
7. Heat, light and oxygen destroy essential fatty acids, which is why it is best to keep oils in dark containers.
8. Essential fats must come from the diet because your body cannot produce them. The essential healthy fats are Omega 3 and Omega 6 (known as essential fatty acids).
9. Weight for weight, fat provides more than twice the amount of usable energy than carbohydrates or protein (you’ll find 9 calories in every gram of fat).
10. Fat contributes to the palatability, texture and the smell of many foods, it also slows down the process of digestion providing an extended period of satiation after a meal.

When you know the good from the bad, fat is fabulous!"
(This came from a blog at http://www.badpills.us/)

So now I don't have to feel bad about wanting to eat good fat to, maybe, put on some much needed weight.

I based this page on the look of notes pinned on a corkboard. The notes about fat are written on two separate post it notes and overlapped so from this photo you can't read the full story. I like the effect of using a page printed as a cork board for the base. There's more on the lower half of the corkboard as the whole page covers 2 days. if you look at the next entry on nuts and washers you'll see the bottom of this page.

February 1 - Cherub of the mist

2009-02-08T00:07:00.000-08:00

The red panda is a rare animal that lives in a region from Nepal, north-eastern India, Bhutan and into China. Their population is believed to be about 2500.

Cherub of the Mist is a documentary about two red female pandas, Mini and Sweety, who were bred in a zoo, released into the wild and followed up for a period of 14 months. The documentary was filmed by Naresh Bedi and Rajesh Bedi.

The objective of the project was to see if it's feasible to breed pandas in captivity to replenish wild populations. It proved that this option is certainly possible.

January 31 - Zero

2009-02-07T23:50:00.000-08:00

I didn't know that a lot of thought went into the invention of zero as a mathematical concept. It was actually the subject of much philosophical debate before it popped onto the scene.

Robert Kaplan has written a book about it called "The Nothing that is". It traces the history of zero "back to its origins as two wedges pressed into a wet lump of Sumerian clay" and explains how "it now forms part of the binary code which powers our computers".

January 30 - buttons

2009-02-07T23:39:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered why the buttons on men's clothes are done up on the opposite side to ladies clothes? It's because they were invented at the time when men carried swords and had duels with each other. In a rush to defend himself the guy could undo his jacket with the left hand and unsheath his sword with the right.

So now we know. I wonder how that worked for anyone who was left handed?

January 29 - Canada's forests

2009-02-07T23:31:00.000-08:00

I was watching David Attenborough's Planet Earth episode about the world's deciduous forests. The forests of Canada are so extensive in area that when their colours change in Autumn the blush can be seen from space. If you get a chance to see the program then do because the images produced by the time-lapse photography they used to demonstrate this are truly amazing!

January 28 - speeding

2009-01-31T00:43:00.000-08:00

I've just learned about the world's first speeding ticket for an automobile driver. In 1904, Dayton, Ohio, police ticketed Harry Myers for going twelve miles per hour on West Third Street. He was going 2mph above the speed limit.

January 27 - graffiti

2009-01-31T00:03:00.000-08:00

I have always thought that graffiti is a modern thing, born out of frustration with society or political inaction, but not so. As many as 1500 wall scribblings were preserved under the ash in Pompeii and created 2000 years ago.

Answers.com gives these examples of translated graffiti -

Successus was here.
Gaius Julius Primigenius was here. Why are you late?
Lovers, like bees, lead a honey-sweet life.
I don't want to sell my husband.
Burglar, watch out!
Someone at whose table I do not dine, Lucius Istacidius, is a barbarian to me.
The fruit sellers ask you to elect Marcus Holconius Priscus as aedile.
I am amazed, o wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.

I guess at that time they had nowhere else to express themselves, except on the walls of the town.

Some of today's graffiti artists, like Banksy, have built a successful reputation for themselves around the world and their work is highly prized, although there are those members of the establishment who feel that ALL graffiti is bad and should be wiped out, painted over or destroyed.

My view is that I've seen some extraordinary graffiti around the world and I admire the skill it takes to produce it. Graffiti artists tend to respect each others work and won't go over it unless they can do better. However, there is a new lifeform called the "Tagger" that has no respect for anyone (possibly including themselves) and I can only assume they have some totally foreign motivation for making their mark on public property all over the place.

I thought I'd enjoy doing this page but it turned out to be the most difficult one I've done. I think it must be that I don't have the mindset of a graffiti artist. In the end I had to take the book to a meeting of book artists and asked them to add some scribbles for me.

January 26 - My birthday

2009-01-26T04:05:00.000-08:00

As well as being Australia Day today it's also my birthday and I think it was very clever of me to arrange to have a public holiday for it every year. This was especially a challenge at the time as I was born in Finland and had to arrange this as a long-distance task.

As well as sharing this birthdate with Paul Newman I also share it with two Finnish actors - Viljo Kervinen and Irja Kuusla, both now deceased.

This morning I went to the State Library of Queensland to visit their Game On exhibition. It's a history of computer games and most of the gaming consoles are available to be played with/on. The first computer game I played was Space Invaders and they had a number of different consoles on which to play it at the exhibition. I was interested to see whether it would seem very slow given the speed of current technology but it didn't seem to be overly tardy, although the controls were not as responsive as I'm now used to. I also learned that it's one of the most succesful games ever.

I'm a fan of Douglas Adams and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and I found out that he's developed an online, text-based, game of the book. It's obviously been popular as there's now a second edition. If you're interested in the quirky you can play it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_nolan.shtml

Gaming has moved into a whole new world now with the Nintendo Wii system. It's apparently being taken up by a generally older audience than previously. The Wii Sports and Wii Fit programs lend themselves to being used in Old Folks Homes for exercise programs and I believe they are also being used in a few gyms as a supplement to personal training. I use the Wii Fit system at home and was advised to use it by my physiotherapist for improving balance.

The page I've done for this day includes the Game On brochure from the libary-

January 25 - Stevengraph

2009-01-26T03:48:00.000-08:00

The ancient English town of Coventry was, for centuries, identified with silk weaving, especially the manufacture of ribbons. Here, at the opening of the twentieth century, stood the well-known factory of Thomas Stevens, who, acting in the adventurous spirit that was quickening all branches of industrial enterprise, began to make innovations in the general character of ribbon design. He produced silk-woven bookmarks, greeting cards, and mottoes with ornamental designs and appropriate wording. (from http://www.stevengraphs.com/)

The Stevengraph trade name was coined by Thomas Stevens in about 1863 to describe his woven articles, and today that includes his silk pictures and portraits. He began in 1854 using the Jacquard loom to produce an infinite variety of items. The fashion for such gradually reduced until few were being produced in the 1920's, but the factory continued until blitzed in 1940. Many items were exported to the USA, and this explains their popularity there today.

Here's my book entry -

As the first stevengraphs made were bookmarks I decided to make a bookmark for this page. Mine is not a slk weaving, however, I wove it from linen threads using a loom I made first (see below).

The loom is in two "U" shapes, with one fitting into the other and it's adjustable so I can make short or longer pieces on it. There are holes drilled along the sides and I used nuts and bolts to connect the pieces. The combs on the ends are actually old plastic combs but they tend to be a bit too bendy so I'll replace them with metal ones before using the loom again. For the shuttles I cut milk bottle plastic into the shapes I needed.The challenge of designing and making an appropriate loom for the job was fun.

January 24 - Food jammers

2009-01-26T02:58:00.000-08:00

This group of guys in Canada are in a show called "Food Jammers". Their task is to come up with culinary contraptions. A kind of Jamie Oliver meets Scrapheap Challenge program. A few of the episodes Taken from the website at www.foodtv.ca/foodjammers follow -

Episode 2021: Gallery Eats Art
Story Quest: To put on an edible art show in a gallery.
Contraption: Tools and edible presentational devices to allow for the advent of vertical food.
The Food Jammers decide to put on an edible art show. They get invaluable inspiration from an expert pastry chef and silk-screening artist but it doesn’t answer all their problems. The challenges are in keeping the food on the wall, and keeping it fresh. Their efforts exhaust them, but in the end, their art opening is an artistic and edible success.

Episode 2017: Office Smoker
Story Quest: To smoke pork in a filing cabinet, in an office.
Contraption: A smoker filing cabinet.
Nobu is stuck with an office job but Micah and Chris aren’t about to let their friend get lost in the 9 to 5 by offering to turn his filing cabinet into a meat smoker. Their research includes talking with a restauranteur and a butcher to ensure that their meat will be the sweetest. The Food Jammers engineer the transformation over the weekend so they can enjoy delicious smoked pork sandwiches come Monday, with Nobu’s boss being none the wiser.

Episode 2015: Automated Taco Machine
Story Quest: To create a taco vending machine, as a fresh fast food alternative that is accessible anytime.
Contraption: Vending machine with taco maker, heater, full topping selector.
The Food Jammers want instant access to fresh tacos close to home so they make a taco vending machine. The guys consult with a Mexican chef, a vending machine company to overcome the tricky mechanics of providing fresh food on demand. In the end, the Food Jammers are able to enjoy fresh and tasty hot chicken tacos any time they want

There are videos of the shows available on the website but I suppose Australia hasn't bought the rights as we can't watch them here. A shame, it sounds like a great show.

Here's the page for it-

January 23 - voting from space

2009-01-26T02:46:00.000-08:00

I was websurfing issues about space when I came across a site about the International space station. There's a video by the guys currently in residence up there explaining that some years ago a process was put in place for off-world astronauts to be able to cast a vote in the elections taking place in their absence. It was obviously put together to encourage US citizens to vote because they ended with the line "If we can vote from up here, you can too."

Speaking of space, last year I was working on an altered book about art when I came across an explanation about the use of space in painting. I decided to reverse the idea and added an illustration of an astronaut painting in space. I thought it was kinda cute.

Here's the page I did-

January 22 - Berthe Morisot

2009-01-26T02:26:00.000-08:00

Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges, France in 1841. She was the third daughter of a prominent and wealthy government official. Raised accordingly, Morisot and her sisters were provided tutors for languages and literature and, in 1857, art lessons. Morisot and her older sister Edma quickly developed both a passion and a high level of skill in drawing and painting. Alongside her sister, Morisot copied masterpieces at the Louvre and painted out of doors under the direction of well-known landscape painter Camille Corot. She first exhibited her paintings at the prestigious annual Salon in 1864, and her work was shown there regularly through 1873.

In the winter of 1868-1869, Morisot was introduced to Edouard Manet. Manet's reputation and aesthetic innovations were well known to Morisot, and they began a lifelong friendship. Over the course of the next five years, Manet would paint Morisot 11 times. (The painting at the top of this post is one of them) While Morisot learned much from Manet, she never formally studied with him. She often disagreed with his suggestions, most notably in her decision to join the Impressionist circle. Morisot remained faithful to the Impressionists after others abandoned the movement, participating in seven of the eight exhibitions and single-handedly organizing the final show in 1886.

When she was 33, well after she was established as a professional artist, Morisot married Eugène Manet and became Edouard's sister-in-law. Eugène readily supported his wife's career, never asking her to abandon her painting for matrimony, yet despite his acceptance of her art, Eugène in particular and men in general appear extremely infrequently in Morisot's paintings. Her wide range of subjects often included portraits of her mother, sisters, and nieces, as well as of her own daughter Julie, to whom she gave birth in 1878, and who would become her favorite model and painting companion; still lifes; landscapes; and the domestic scene, particularly traditional feminine occupations.

Morisot continued to paint and exhibit in her later years, receiving her first solo exhibition only a few weeks after her husband's death in 1892. While selling paintings had never been a priority for Morisot, she actively collected works by her colleagues, including Manet and Monet. In these years, Julie became her mother's constant companion, painting alongside her just as Edma had done years earlier, joining her visits with Renoir, Monet, and Degas, and helping to fill the void left by Eugène's death. In 1895, Morisot died from pneumonia at the age of 54, leaving the majority of her works and collection to Julie who served as Morisot's champion by lending her works to international exhibitions until her own death in 1966, ensuring her mother a prominent place in the French avant-garde tradition.
Here's my page.