The Phyllis Jones Ralph Squirrel

Hidden in the centre of this weeks TV guide is another social barometer book, or 'special' presents for special people just like me and you. A quick glance through and this week it seems the double dip recession is starting to take a grip as the adverts have taken a more ominous note...

 Now, hidden amongst the soft 'noiseless' incontinence briefs and professional callous removers are things for the thrifty. Not only can you count your money scrooge style with two handy counting machines, one digital for those who know what the interwebnet is and a manual one for those that remember George Formby and Arthur Askey. Times must be really hard though, for those OAP drug deals why not buy your self a handy pocket scale. Apparently these scales never lie, even though you dealer might.

So if your an OAP and strapped for cash maybe buy a set and start your own cash4goldielookingthings or be creative and cut your vitamin pills with something more exciting. If nothing else you can always weight your false teeth before and after a meal to see if they need cleaning.

This I like. A creative way to add a bit of prestige to an item, include a name. These are all probably genuine but they seem to have gone a bit overboard this issue, I particularly like the Phyllis Ferrari bag. Not too sure about the Pat Butcher six head electric shaver or the Winston Churchill 2-way shoe stretcher.

Then I got to the back page and nearly dropped my Burt Reynolds Slipper Shoes in shock. Now you too can give your dog authentic roadkill.

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

 The perspex winter coverings on Bunnyopolis have been taking a battering over the last two weeks with almost constant rain. Aaran, Jura and Iona are getting a little tired of it all and can be found often sitting wistfully on a shelf looking out of the window.

Grumpy is one word for it, even though the door is wide open for them they really do not like getting their feet wet at all, probably because their woolly feet act like little sponges and the rain annoys their ears.

Over the last few weeks though when they have been out I have been trying to get them to jump over the special gate I made. A gate which is shrinking by the day as they gnaw away at it. During these sessions we have now learnt a new form of bunny communication. Two nudges is a greeting to a friend, often delivered in quick succession, this we already knew but our new bit of information involves the bunny meaning for happy and having fun.

All of them display a slight head flick complete with floppy ears. It's only tiny but it means they are pleased. If you return the gesture (although my ears don't flop as much) they will copy it and want to play. Play essentially involves them staying quite still until you are just about to grab them upon which point the run away flicking their heads, this can be repeated four or five times until they decide they have had enough and turn to face you ready for a stroke, a final flick of my head says thank you and they return with a single tap.
Very cute and all three do the same thing, what's even more impressive is that they display these characteristics to both me and Jayne in slightly differing ways confirming that they identify us as individuals and not just the fur less giants that bring food.

You know, I might just be getting the hang of this bunny talk.

St Georges Spectrum

Yesterday on ST Georges Day the humble UK computer the ZX-Spectrum reached it's 30th birthday, immediately reinforcing the fact that I'm getting old. Way back in 1982 I remember opening my first 16K ZX-Spectrum that had winged it's way from Sinclair Computers after a pre-order based on their previous foray into computing the ZX-81. It, of course, didn't work. Sinclair used to have a lot of issues when releasing new machines and I had to wait another eight weeks in crossed legged anticipation until it returned, was powered up and I immediately fell under it's trance of 15 shades: seven colours at two levels of brightness each, plus black, user definable characters, high resolution graphics (256x192) and of course sound, thorough the use of a single channel beeper underneath. I was easily pleased it seemed but then again computers were treated with awe in the early eighties and any kid who had one was greeted by adults as a wizkid or computer genius.

Many of us were not. We just had a handy tool that looked to parents as if it would teach us stuff but instead we primarily used it to play conversions of popular arcade games and occasionally programmed a simple routine to type into the shop display in WHSmiths.

10 PRINT "WHSMITH SUCKS!!!  ";
20 GOTO 10

More complex stuff included the command INKEY$, which could be programmed within seconds to make sure the next time a key is pressed on the public display a rude word flashed up. Anyway I digress...

Computers before the ZX-Spectrum were for nerdy types and involved either a lot of soldering and breadboarding or you needed to have the patience of a saint to program the thing using a membrane keyboard whilst trying to do the equivalent of typing War and Piece onto a A4 page with your massive 1k of memory.

For those that are not familiar with computers of this period let me try and describe one for you. Imagine a bit of black plastic with a keyboard, the keyboard though has the feel of dead flesh as it's made out of rubber. Each key not only displays a letter but can also be changed to do four other options all illustrated on the same key making it incredibly clumsy. Now attach it to a television, plug it into a wall socket and turn it on.

Well done. You may now play with your new computer. Your options are :

1) Type in a game from a listing, it will take you nearly all day to do and when you run it the program will not work, but hey, think of all that programming experience you will get.

2) Load a game from tape. Attach a tape recorder (if you have just said what's that? then I suggest you skip the rest of this blog annd listen to your iPod), adjust the volume and try to LOAD a pre-written game from tape. It may take 7-700 minutes to load depending on the quality of your tape recorder, how many times you have to keep retrying it and if your sister has recorded the top 40 over the top of it.

3) Try to program more than 10 PRINT "HELLO"

4) Type BEEP 1,3, go hum a little then experiment trying to write music like Baa-Baa Blacksheep. BEEP 1,3; BEEP 1,3; BEEP 1,3... and so on.

5) Really learn to program and make £££!

It was the last one that fired a lot of people up, suddenly the ZX-Spectrum opened up a world to everyone where home programmers could write that popular game making them millionaires. Well, not quite, but a lot of people did it and a lot of people made a lot of money.

Classic games of the period include Jetpac, created by Ultimate Play The Game. Never heard of them? Well, they went on to program a slew of arcade games and the incredible Donkey Kong Country series under the name of RARE. Hungry Horace, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Monty On The Run, Pyjamarama, Lords Of Midnight,Chuckie Egg and The Hobbit to name only a few from over the 50,000 that were released in this golden age of computing.

You can see the difference the Spectrum bought with it, here's a screen shot from the ZX-81, Sinclair's earlier machine...

So no wonder I nearly wet myself when this popped up...

 Full colour!

OK, it all looked a little less exciting once it started but boy was it a good game for it's time. Pleasures you see were quite simple in Spectrum days. You got used to imagining quite a lot. If this was made again today we would have a fully pre-rendered moon scape, realistic meteors, 3D modelled astronauts and the whole game would be played out online against the world for a modest fee.

The beauty of simplicity though was part of it's charm and gamers used to take games to their heart and even produce fan art and maps to help other players. This one is for another excellent game Sabre Wulf, a sort of exploring maze game with weird flowers looking for parts of a amulet.

As you can see as soon as I start I could write all day about this so before I bore you to death let me show you some nerdy screens from back in the day. Do you know which machines they are from?

Brollywood

The British weather is a strange beast, declare a hosepipe ban and we get a five days of rain, forecast a barbecue weekend and it's middling to average. Forecasts, particularly on the radio are very general at the best of times, I think my favourite one was "Sunny spells with occasional cloud, chance of rain in most places, feeling cool at times out of the sun." which more or less could be read out most days and be particularly accurate.

So, with the latest update to the Metoffice website and numerous other new ways such as phone apps and mini wifi weather stations to find out if you need a brolly you would expect things to have improved a little. To test them out I downloaded quite a few and synchronised the locations, all of them purported to use the same weather station but all were different in their prediction, some were quoting warmer temperatures whilst others were lower. One particular app quoted 88% precipitation, or rain as we like to call it, whilst another read zero for the same figure. Things it seemed were not much improved until by chance I found this...

No longer do I have to worry about the weather I just chose what I am doing for the day and it does not bore me with the details, simple!

So if I want to know if my hair will frizz today the handy Hair Frizz Risk recommends I wear a bathing cap. Skiing on the other hand is poor, probably due to lack of mountains and not being winter might have something to do with it but on the bright side Dog Walking is on the up whilst that Outdoor Concert in the back garden has now been cancelled due to a poor outlook. At least I don't have to worry about malaria with the low mosquito risk.

All it's thats missing now is an app that answers one question "Do I need a brolly in the next 24 hours?" Y/N? I'm sure it would make squillions.

Photoswapshop

I have noticed a new trend appearing in supermarkets and giftware shops up and down the country, photoswapshop. Essentially you simply replace the image in photo frames with new more interesting ones to score. The more gasps you get without being offensive or too rude with your pictures the better, this one is particularly stunning.

Oh my, is that a shotgun in your hand? Probably a 7/10 picture on the weirdness scale. More of a titter than an all out lol.

Bit too strange for me, 4/10, more along the lines of WTF. I suppose there could be a special strange category though and it would score a little higher.

Oh my, this guy has got it right, slightly disturbing, risqué and funny all at the same time. Clearly a 9/10 attempt.

For sheer randomness though armed cowboys with a dancing girl in a saloon setting is a good attempt. 7.5/10 for effort but for a 10/10 you really need this...

OMG! 10/10, well played!

 

Route

Bit of a geeky one today I'm afraid, as you probably noticed the blog was out of action yesterday after I broke the internet. It all started quite innocently yesterday with the addition of a new backup hard drive for the office network. A simple task, just plug in and switch on, simples, then all the backups will synchronise perfectly and automatically.

So spending a day sorting out router problems was not what I wanted to do but this little addition seemed to tip our network over the edge. First the phones lost their wireless connection, then the PC's lost the t'internet and finally the speed light dipped from 100mb to 10mb signalling a problem.

Sigh. It took me a while to work it all out and ultimately discover that I needed to enter ALL the IP addresses manually to avoid conflicts and with plenty of wireless equipment that WAS fun. Secondly I stumbled across another problem of wireless interference, it seemed that several new Wifi's had been set up and was causing a bit of mayhem with two devices, again a switch to a new channel was required, the second in a year, what's going to happen when I have no more channels to switch too? The final problem was the automatic mapping of the new hard drive and the way it announced itself across the network with big heavy boots, suddenly it was everywhere and had kindly given each PC three new mapped drives interfering with the existing mapping then proceeded to back up anything it could find without asking thank you very much.

I suppose that's the way with technology today, everything is on overload. Over the years much has changed, computers have become more useful and portable changing us in ways we never thought possible. Just consider Facebook, the equivalent of that fifteen years ago would be a cork board in the kitchen the whole family used, occasionally adding photos, notes and reminders. Today it is a global cork board and the whole world is treated like a family, suddenly you have access to millions of photos, notes and snippets of other peoples lives not only that but you can access it anywhere on a myriad of equipment and that's the problem, where do you stop?

So with that in mind I went back to my network and re-evaluated it. I removed all the equipment and started from the very beginning. Utilising Dropbox, iCloud and a local cloud network hosted on the new hard drive I managed to cut the amount of devices utilising my small router. Sharing data is now done from a central point, certain pieces of equipment only have access to certain tools like Facebook for instance, dropping the amount of Facebook able technology from six pieces of equipment to just two suddenly the bandwidth became a lot less cluttered. Location services were cut down and a little tweak on the router allowed me to use a faster speed on one of the channels.

Bit of a pain to do it all yesterday and I did miss writing the blog but everything seems faster and this de-clutter has done everything some good. See? a really boring entry, at least today I'm back in the studio painting so lets have a cat with a top hat picture to finish.

Jackanory

I thought after yesterdays blog entry we would have a bit of a treat and I will share with you the Legend Of The Knitted Growler, are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I'll begin...


Deep in Leicestershire hunters gathering at their latest meet near Melton Mowbray in 1878 noticed, after chasing a fox into a nearby thicket, an uncovered section of earth that had recently been turned over. Fearing they had stumbled across something quite sinister the Lord of the manor was immediately called and the earth removed.

The hole contained a pink ball of wool, underneath this they found several jars of a bitter hot sauce, several portions of cheese, tomatoes and a curious mixture that looked like mud but actually tasted sweet and sharp all at the same time. Muddy footprints around the hole showed a pig like creature had been there some time before.

Charles Burroughs our explorer had been in England some time writing up his latest discoveries and cataloguing the finding from his recent discovery, Edison’s Sherlock Sidewinder, when by chance he read about the discovery in the London Gazette. Charles had already had dealings with a similar creature in 1870 that he failed to discover in Germany, the Peppered Pork Pie Pig, and wondered if this could be a relative. The only difference it seemed was the German Pork Pie Pig buried Sauerkraut, cabbage and mushrooms instead and deduced that the bitter hot sauce that was found was obviously mustard, a passion shared by both species.

Charles arrived in Melton Mowbray in July of the same year and immediately asked to be shown the discovery. Although it had been several weeks since Charles notice a white fleshy transparent skin still scattered around the area creating a barely discernable trail leading deep into Brentingby Wood. Quietly Charles made his way deep into the forest. After a mile or so the forest seemed to change, gone were the wooden trunks, now they were replaced by stiff semi transparent ribbed curved columns, Charles had stumbled into Celery Hollow, a wild wood fabled for it’s heady smell and edible trees.

As he ventured further in he became aware of a clearing ahead and heard a soft grunting noise followed by a whirring. Charles paused and using moss from a nearby stone covered the base of his shoes to quieten his footsteps. The closer he got the more intrigued he was until at last as he saw the source of the noise.

A six foot high pig, or to be more accurate, a six foot high pink knitted pig complete with a corkscrew shaped tail and black and white furry ears. Its entire body was circular in shape with little ‘crimps’ around its rotund back. Charles was amazed, even more so as the Knitted Growler as we now know it, used its curlywhirly tail to twist out of the earth a massive pickled onion with a distinctive whirring sound. An onion so big it was the size of Charles head, the aroma smelt paradisiacal and was complimented with an additional aroma as the Growler used a dainty trotter to take a small piece of cheese, place it on top of the onion, add a dollop of the brown sweet sharp stuff and finally finish off the pickled tower with a slice of cucumber.

It was at that moment that the celery stick Charles had been leaning on decided to snap and he tumbled forward head over heels out into the open bringing him face to face with the Growler. The Growler looked at him, sniffed the air, gave a soft grunt and gently pushed the pickled tower towards him. Having been in situations like this all too regularly Charles took it to be a friendly gesture and using his handy pocket knife he sliced himself a bit of the large onion, added the cheese, a bit of the mysterious pickle then finally a slice of cucumber and took a bite.

It was one of the best things he had ever eaten, the onion was like nothing he had tasted before or since, peppery, spicy, juicy, sweet, it was all these things together and more. The Growler joined him and ate too but only after placing it’s snout in a large jar full of what Charles had correctly surmised to be mustard first.

This surreal Growler picnic went on until the giant onion was finished, all the cheese gone and nearly all the pickle and mustard had been consumed until both sat contented and unable to walk from overly stuffed tummies. Later that night Charles bid farewell to his new friend and returned to Melton Mowbray with news of his find.

In order to shield the Knitted Growler from sightseers and even captivity Charles shared the location with one of the town’s most respected residents John Dickenson, owner of the towns Pie Business and creator of the Melton Pie popular with the huntsmen of the era.  John promised Charles that he would visit and protect the Knitted Growler for as long as he should live and true to his word over the years John Dickenson built up quite a rapport with the Knitted Growler.

It has been said that the John and the Growler eventually came up with a special mix of flavours that was so good John used it in his pies, pies that eventually came so popular due to this secret ingredient they took the name of the town they were produced and even survive to this day, the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie.
Rumour has it that even the distinctive shape is based upon the Knitted Growler and somewhere in Melton Mowbray is a secret room that holds the special ingredients used in its production that makes them so distinctive, peppery, spicy, juicy, sweet... sound familiar?

Knitted Growlers

growl-er

noun: 1. A person or thing that growls.

2. An artisan pork pie.

A few weeks ago I started work on my Knitted Growler, a distant relative of the Peppered Pork Pie Pig of the Black Forest, a tricky piece as it required the construction of said beast using real ingredients. It all looked rather promising at the start, my growler was going to be built around a small pork pie accompanied by pickled onions (which it digs up and eats) and other assorted ploughman's lunch type stuff.

The tricky bit was not the growler itself as this was quickly made by adding plasticine to the pork pie but the surrounding forest, a forest of celery. Not the greatest building material as it tends to wilt rather quickly, my celery wasn't that good in the first place and I found myself strengthening them with pipe cleaners and matchsticks.

 By the time I had got to the garnish a few hours later my forest had started to sag even more, adding in the cheese and cucumber helped liven things up but the celery had to be dunked in water to refresh it.

Working with speed I dished out the pickle, scattered onion skins around, added a few more lumps of cheese and took my photographs. The whole thing though had to be left for me to work with as I painted the first layers over the next two days, even though I refrigerated it overnight by the third day things were looking decidedly ropey and a thin pervading sweet sickly smell was filling the studio, the last day was spent painting and yacking like a dog in equal measures between brush strokes.

Needless to say it all went straight into the bin with the last brush stroke but what I was left with was the first view of a Knitter Growler, the mysterious beast that lives in a secret location just outside of Melton Mowbray.

Chop, Chop

This weekends appearances ended in the picturesque Keswick in Cumbria in what seemed like the perfect day for walking. Blue skies, a little chilly but sunny and crisp clean air was the order of the day as we perused the various shops and wares on offer to visitors.

One place I was particularly keen on visiting was Keswicks excellent toy shop. Tucked away around a corner and hidden behind a kayak and canoes display is probably one of the best toy shops I have ever been in with oodles of stuff to look at and masses upon masses of jigsaws, their stock alone must run into tens of thousands of items easily.

I could spend all day in there, it's tightly packed, a nightmare to navigate if you need to pass someone down the aisles but full of the most wondrous stuff both past and present. The model plane making section alone extends a good twenty feet long and possibly eight feet high packed with everything 'Airfixy' including those little pots of enamel paint you used to get. Turning the corner you find a section dedicated to the Sylvanian Families, which for those of you that have never seen them consist of a range of cute animal collectables like rabbits and sheep, all with their own 'house' or play area to collect.

The next corner it's board games, the next it's toy cars, then wall to wall dolls, the shop just goes on and on and on. Puzzles, Lego, wooden toys, rifles, crossbows, CO2 Power pistols, knives. Yes, you did read that right, for this thriving toy shop also sells on the first floor, larger boys toys too. A bit of an eclectic mix I know and it took me by surprise too but hey, it seems to work for them, just make sure you don't get the wrong floor and buy little five year old Johnny a brand new Rambo Killer Serated Edged Weapon with Extra Killer Barbed Spikes and Rubber Grip instead of that latest Buzz Lightyear plastic ray gun.

Still, it seems that edged weapons are very popular around the area. Leaving the toy shop I was spoilt for choice with this impressive array of axes. An axe for all seasons, a chopper for every eventuality. The residents of Keswick are probably the best prepared in the country to cope with a zombie apocalypse.

So, laden with the latest triple blade multi cutting Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum axe with oak handle and toothpick, Jayne chose a more modest Pocket Chopper for her handbag, we made our way merrily through Keswick looking for that perfect accompaniment. There must be a body armour and machine gun shop somewhere around here, if not that I'd love a full sized trebuchet from the How Medieval-R-Us chain, not quite sure how to get it in the car though, do they deliver?

LP

Found this excellent place recently, The Kitten Covers, classic record album covers recreated using the medium of cats. How cool! Lets start with ACAT/DCAT and Furway to Hell.

 The Kitty Hendrix Catsperience with cool retro kitties.

 The Squee Gees and Caturday Night Fever, Stayin' Alive kitten style with Jive Stalking.

Kitallica! Claw The Lightning, classic album including Trapped Under Blankets and For Whom The Catnip Tolls.

 Blondie and parallel lines, to show you how accurate these are take a look at this...

Ok, a little size difference but hey, they couldn't find six foot cats.

 Squeen II with Freddy and Brian Meow in this classic pose.

May favourite though is Kitten Floyd - Dark Side Of The Meow. Classic tracks include The Great Kit In The Sky and Any Catnip You Like.

This weekend we are back on the road with fun filled appearances at The Hawthorn Gallery on Saturday 14th and on Sunday 15th we are in Keswick, Cumbria at Treeby and Bolton, both events are between 12-3pm.

Any Old Iron

 I'm not sure if I'm detecting a slightly more sinister tone creeping into the little change your life supplements that have appeared recently. Normally they are full of stuff that other people buy and the words barge pole and wouldn't touch comes to mind but this recent one is a little more creepy.

It all starts promisingly with this wonderful toilet roll holder. Fine unless you pull off the last sheet only to find you need to do bathroom aerobics whilst seated to get the remaining spare rolls up and off the top after removing the old one. It all looks a bit of a cuffufle, I'd have visions of struggling, overbalancing and cracking my head on the wash basin only being found in a puddle later not knowing who I am or why my trousers are down. See? It all starts really well so what's next?

Ahh, lets inject a bit of terror into any journey by describing in lurid detail how in the most embarrassing fashion your luggage could be mistreated enough to split and disgorge it's contents of underwear during coach tours, transfers or even on the airport carousel. Problem solved, a handy double lock strap that includes your name. I nearly bought one when I read the scary line '...wondering if it has burst open on the way to the hotel'.

Personally I'm more concerned that the plane lands safely and the wings don't fall off, the coach driver has not been certified criminally insane and is convinced he's on his last journey to hell and he's going to take everyone with him, that large man that is sat next to me doesn't dribble as he is now asleep and leaning on me or when I open that little bag of nuts on the plane I don't cause it to explode and shower it's contents liberally over seats 4b-22a and watch a myriad of strangers picking nuts out of their hair.

Straps on cases are the last thing on my mind.

This is the spooky gizmo though, for £99 you can have your own surveillance system for you car that constantly records everything on the road, it even has night vision. As the blurb states and I quote '...if there's a dispute about who's at fault, things can turn nasty. Enjoy the protection of the ultimate reliable witness'

All this of course is designed with the fact that it wasn't your fault, I can image a quick erasing would follow if you inadvertently rammed a few stationary cars in the car park or bounced the occasional old person across your bonnet. Not quite sure how it fits in a magazine full of portable loo's (keep one in the car it suggests, Spill-proof too!), fiddle free phoning on a mobile phone with keys the size of house bricks, mattress stain removers, micro hearing aids and a rather unattractive 'media' cabinet to hold all your CD's and video cassettes probably next to your laser disc collection and 8-tracks.

But then again, for incontinent, short sighted, deaf video watchers maybe it's a boon and if you are really lucky you may get some excellent 'happy accident' footage worth £££, then you can really go to town and afford that Ear Cleaner you have been hanging your nose over.

Refining

The new remastered Impossimals are gradually taking shape after extensive model making to make sure they are just right with massive scenes being created to get the shadows and light as accurate as possible. It's the same principle that was applied to the Losts and again I have refined the Impossimals to give a lot more emotion through not only their body shapes but also their, yet again, redefined eyes.

Once the basics are down I can then start work on the main piece. Plywood is primed and working from the model and photographs the painting is gradually built up from the background to the foreground.

You can see here that the background has received it's first coat and the general shadows and highlights are starting to go in. Next would be the eyes, then the stripes, a process that would probably take another day or so as getting the ultra fine lines and blending takes a while.

Here's one scene I built a little more closely, as you can see everything has been constructed, even down to the little bathroom scales and taps. The towel is actually kitchen roll dyed pink whilst the painted wooden panelling and skirting board is thick cardboard. The floor is covered with a thin layer of acetate to give plenty of reflections.

You can see from the detailing on the final painting that the sense of depth and clarity shows a lot more when working from a live scene. Even the reflections are more natural and I can also see the bounce back of light onto the Impossimals body to allow me to paint it more accurately. So today I will be mostly painting!

Planet Bacon

No I haven't found a new planet and yes, it does look a little like bacon. Instead after reading an article on exploding custard powder (it really does explode too!) and wanting to doing something on a rainy Bank Holiday Monday a little less dangerous I found these two things to play with.

A pocket microscope that I have had for many years and a cheap but functional digital camera. I used to use the microscope to help with colour balancing printers and monitors along with something called a Pantone spider many years ago. Strapping them together Heath Robinson style they gave me a microscope that I could record video and photograph things at a ridiculous zoom level so off I went. The first picture is actually red oil paint over white acrylic on what I thought was a smooth piece of wood, looks very tactile at x30.

 In the garden a single piece of rosemary shows all the hairs on what looks like a smooth plant. Hairs on a plant? Urgh. Still tasted nice though.

My ultra sharp inkjet printer doesn't look so sharp up close. The dots look very random in their pattern to produce this text, even the paper looks ropey.

 I suppose this is the type of things that most people go for when using a microscope. Things that make you go urg!. This is the knee joint of a spider leg. Full of hairs and stuff again. The power of this cheap little toy is immense, I'm just trying to think of a practical use for it though. Back to painting today though and more work on the Impossimals with two new ones to be started.

Hope you all had a great Easter, the blog had it's Easter break, Bunnyopolis is nice and clean with a new coat of preservative, some random fixings to chewed wood and three happy Easter bunnies who are extremely glad we didn't have any more snow. Roll on the good weather!