22mar2023

O hai, I saw somewhere that Ramadan starts at sundown today, so, Happy Ramadan if you celebrate it (& a lovely Wednesday if not.)

I unfortunately don't have any Ramadan themed links, but I rather like this catchy pop song I found via bb, which notes:

The music video for genre-bending pop singer Ashnikko's song Worms contains some pretty badass animation. Each shot is rich in detail, and the creativity that went into the character design is off the charts. The animation, although digitally rendered, looks like a stop motion film. I love the hand-made look to the spunky monsters in the video as well as the gloomy, post-apocalyptic setting that Ashnikko is driving through. The song itself is awesome, too!

A sentiment with which I agree:) Though I'd add there's also very much an homage to Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights (which is not exactly how I think about gardens, but that's the theme this week, so...here we are with another garden themed collage.)

Enjoy.

21mar2023

I was sure sure sure I'd posted at least two links to cool fungi photography, but sadly can find only one but here's an overview that gets into some of the reasons why fungi are so wonderful, besides their admittedly wonderful forms.

I think it's helpful to consider these larger contexts, because otherwise people tend to divide them into two categories, ‘things good to eat’ (tiny) and ‘annoying’ (a larger category including diseases such as athletes’ foot, yeast infections, and stuff growing where it shouldn't, such as your live trees & (ought-to-be) dead baseboards.

I didn't think to incorporate any (obvious) fungi in today's art, but that's probably because I tend to associate them with autumn, not spring.

20mar2023

Today is the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring. I thought this meant the days were of equal length, which is a common but incorrect assumption (which assertion the Encyclopedia Britannica makes, so you could hardly be blamed.) What it actually means is that the Earth is half lit and half dark (at a certain point)—I thought the video embedded in this space.com page did a lovely job of illustrating the concept.

Of course, for folks Down Under, it's the Autumn Equinox.

So! Happy Equinox everyone. Have some spring flowers courtesy of the changing season, and a little bonus piece of lampworking.

17mar2023

Happy St Patrick's Day, for those of you who celebrate it! (& a pleasant Friday to those who don't;)

This year marks a return of my rather erratic tidy studio series, which I realize probably interests very few people besides myself. But as today is the day one traditionally wears green (I often forget/don't bother, because clothes are soooooo important to me;) today's linkie features fashion:

Cluttercore is, I guess, the term currently being applied to teens’ mix-n-match (“eclectic”) sense of style, built out of thrift store finds. I have purchased all but the most technically demanding clothes (e.g. bike gear) from thrift shops for years, as it's cheaper and faster than making my own, but I haven't much in the way of style, as natural fabrics, comfort, and practicality reign. Thus, I haven't the foggiest what's in right now—despite Threads Magazine's pattern roundup—but consider myself very fortunate that I don't have to please anybody but myself with regard to clothes; I dislike almost all women's clothing (yet another symptom, I guess, that yes, I really am nonbinary): I mean, the latest issue had one, count it one pattern that I actually sorta kinda liked. Usually it's none.

A friend tired of her athleisure wardrobe reported that the personal shopper at Nordstrom's wasn't nearly as au courant with current fashion as her high school and college aged kids—big surprise, teenagers, however much we old folks are loathe to admit it, really do drive culture, because they have the time, energy & desire to do something different—though the woman could evidently tell at a glance whether something would fit, a nice bonus.

The most fashionable person I know definitely does this vintage grandma style and started with it...about a decade ago, in her late teens. Interestingly enough, though she, a lover of shoes, has often joked about her ‘granny shoes’, she's never called her aesthetic, which especially features a love of 1950s vintage, “cluttercore”, though she certainly has kept up with others interested in the same trends, making me wonder whether the actual practitioners are actually onboard with this term. But the article does seem to be a reasonable summary.

Like so much of our current culture, it's all bricolage, pieces and parts jammed together. Which as a assmebler of bits bead-stringer, is just fine by me. —Specially when I've got a tidy space to work in.

14mar2023

Heh! Today's pi day, which of course means there's a new Vi Hart video on the topic and in my usual way, after the video ended I said to the wizard,

you know, there must be a joke in there somewhere, but I'm not getting it. Though I do wonder why her character was behaving so ...irrationally.

Oh.

Man, I'm slow.

Anyway, always a cause for celebration, and if listening to Circle and Triangle battle it out over pi's digits don't do it for you, well, here's my contribution to things round & thus, pi based...

Happy Pi Day!

11mar2023

I rather like doing the thematically linked pages for a given week, so here's another drawing in a similar style to Monday's.

Or you could read about this guy's adventures with the cops snarfing down his Ring cameras’ data (including inside his bedroom)—he had a lot of them, and I don't think he really considered how much privacy he was giving up: cops get a warrant rubber stamped by a judge, and Bob's your uncle. (He was lucky one was unplugged.)

I personally loathe the fact that my neighbors have installed these things, because while people are entitled to spy on me once I cross their property lines, I should be able to walk down the sidewalk without being recorded. This used to be the expectation in this country...

It could stand to make a comeback. I don't really want us to turn into London, where CCTV watches your every step. Ugh.

And speaking of ugh, here's a drawing that falls into that category.