Quietly Creative

Been quietly creative of late. Nothing earth-shattering, just quietly doing stuff and then keeping on doing stuff. And before you know it, stuff is done. Stuff exists. Baby steps I know, but still satisfying all the same. I don't want to make too much noise about it for fear that I'll stop and that would be a shame.

So, some things I have been doing...

1. Digitizing old tapes of my music. OK, so maybe this is not entirely creative but it's hopefully part of a process that leads to creativity so it gets listed here. It's my list. It's a chore that's been on my action-list for ages and I'm pleased that I've finally started. The hardest part is locating the tapes.

2. Making collages in Photoshop. I'm trying to keep this quick and not fiddle too much. Starting from a photo of mine and setting the Photoshop controls for stun it's lots of fun. It has highlighted how much I've forgotten in Photoshop. I'm tempted to pause and dig into some tutorials but I'm resisting that to just carry on making more images.

3. Taking lots of photos with my phone. Driving home on the motorway listening to Boards Of Canada and taking photos into the sunset. These will end up in the collages mentioned above.

In other news, the Artsfest brochure is B-I-G. There's lots of stuff happening. You can see the programme online here. I haven't a clue how to decide what to photograph as part of the Flickr project. I'll definitely being doing plenty of composites that's for sure.

Chancers Meetup Summer 2006

The Chancers meetup happened yesterday with everyone gathering in Brum for a few beers, much chat and some Chinese nosh. Even though we've all only left Siemens for a matter of weeks, so much has happened in this short period of time that there's lots and lots to talk about.

It was great to see everyone, and inevitably in this kind of situation I felt I never got to chat enough with each person. It was a treat to meet up with Phil and get a chance to hang out again. In the Apple Store, at the Ikon Gallery or just standing in Victoria Square drinking German wine, it was great to be chatting and sharing our common enthusiasms. Just like old times back at Coventry. I hope we can somehow manage to keep in touch like this in the future cos it's always a pleasure.

Managed to avoid drinking to much which I am pleased about. I was on my guard about drinking too early in the afternoon as it never ends well for me. Missed out on some of the eating time at the Big Wok as I had to help Dan find where he'd parked his car!

Lewis

Graham Lewis played at the Notting Hill Arts Club last night. Mike and I drove down to London listening to the great Bill Hicks. Parked up in Ealing and got the tube for a few stops. Not many in the club when we arrived. The regular crowd were still enjoying their crayfish. A while later Graham arrived and came over to warmly greet the IC massive in attendance. In conversation it seemed he was considering the gig a bit of an experiment. I was really looking forward to hearing his new stuff especially after Fergus had described it as 'poppy'. Chatting with Graham he seemed to be quite upbeat about the prospect of future Wire activity. This is great news. Fingers crossed.

Graham was playing as a guest of Sci-Fi Skåne who were a bit hit and miss for me. One or two things hit the spot but an ill-advised reggae version of 'She's Lost Control' most definitely did not! The IC troops showed great patience waiting an age for Grahams slot. Eventually the moment came. Shades in place, he took to the stage.

The great man from Wire was in fine form. The first track interrupted the flow of dance beats and put a glorious stop to some of the excessive 'party dancing' that had previously been on display. The beats restarted and the new tracks definitely had a 'pop' tinge with some great tunes being belted out.

With his short set done we had to get going on the journey home. I managed another quick chat and congratulated Graham on the set. I hope he considers the experiment a complete success.

The drive home was long and I'm eternally grateful to Mike for generating some great conversation which kept the mind focussed. Could have done without his rotten arse though!

Tiredness

Life goes on as normal but I don't seem to want to blog about it much. Am I coming to the end of this experiment? I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired.

Well, I am tired. I've stayed up much too late, too many times this week. It's ok for Jacq as she's on holiday, but I'm still getting up for work (and the dog) at 6 in the morning. Last night I went to bed early but it hurt not having any 'fun-time'.

And another thing. I'm struggling with my eyesight at the moment. It might be tiredness but I think it's more likely that I need some glasses. Must get that sorted out soon.

Missed out on a Flickrmeet last weekend. Weather looked grey and I couldn't be arsed. I'm not that fussed about the meet itself but I really have an urge to photographs at the moment. Must try and get out with the camera this weekend. Maybe some Bearwood shots, I've not really done that yet. Fergus uploaded a bunch of shots from his recent NY trip. Jealous. I bet you don't even have to look through the viewfinder there to take an interesting shot. Just walk about clicking.

Current talk is of a meet-up next Saturday for the Chancers. It will be great to see them. I just hope I can pace the drinking. Afternoon starts always end messily in my experience.

The Blog Not Rolling

I'm really not keeping the blog rolling recently for which I offer no excuse. Thankfully no external pressures are driving me at the moment, and that's a good thing.

Good chat with Mike last week has me thinking about music stuff a lot. I've got my new laptop at last so now I can do something about it.

Good weekend just gone. Dylans swimming is coming on great. He's the fastest in his class by far.

Walking The Dog

While out walking the dog tonight I took some shots with my phone. I took quite a few with Dylan on my shoulders and Harriet and Jacq walking behind. Although they are just casual phone pictures they really capture the moment for me. Watch the slideshow here.

Photosynth

If Photosynth ever makes it though to some sort of real interface it will be VERY exciting. I would love to explore that 3d world of photos. At the moment there's just some videos to look at but they do look very nice.

Underworld

REALLY impressed with what Underworld are up to on their UnderworldLive website. Don't know why I've never checked this out before. There are some really interesting packages of audio and images available for purchase which I must get around to getting. But also lots and lots of free stuff too. It's well worth registering with them (also free) for a chance to browse through all this stuff. One of the downloads looks intruiging, a zip of 1,700 camera phone photos from a Japanese tour! Excellent stuff.

Let's Recap

Been a bit slack at blogging recently and not sure why. So let's recap...

We got Jacqs car at the weekend. She's chuffed with it and has been having a busy week because of it. Sunday morning we went to see Cars. Dyl was really looking forward to it. Harriet went to Mollys in the afternoon and Molly came back for a sleepover later. On Monday Jacq took Pebbles for her first grooming session then went and got the groceries in. Having a second car means less chores stacking up for the weekend. Hurrah! Pebbles looks great with her groomed coat. Tuesday they all went over to Marys for a fun day. Wednesday they visited Jacqs dad. And today, Thursday, Carol and the kids came over. I think tomorrow Jacq's looking forward to a quiet day of household chores!

And me? Well, the third week in the new job. Steady. After much chuntering I decided to order another Dell laptop. Let's see what this one looks like. Just need the display to be up to scratch. I'm already impressed with the Latitude build quality. Fingers crossed. Pimped the RAM to 2 gig for a better VMWare experience. Mike came over for a chat and beer. Great to see him. Hopefully next week also. Spent my Amazon voucher from the old place. Ordered the Comic Strip boxset. Hopefully that comes before the weekend and I can get some viewing in. Another payday tomorrow. Yummy!

Up And Running

Phew! Got paid. That's a relief. Now that the systems are in place I can finally relax. The freelance thing is up and running. Timescales on the current project are very tight so some overtime may be required in the next few weeks. Which is nice.

The Dell laptop got picked up the other day and I'm waiting for my refund to come through . Then I have to get me a machine to work on. Can't stop thinking about a Mac-based solution. It would be so cool. Jacq thinks I should get a PC to keep work and play separate. But I want to combine them more. Surely getting an Intel Mac running Boot Camp means I get two machines?

Looking forward to the weekend. Jacq gets her car tomorrow. Going to see Cars at some point.

Also, I've signed up for duty on the September Flickrmeet at Artsfest. Seems like we could get some sort of official status. Cool.

Second Week Still Hot

Weather is still uncomfortably hot in my second week as freelance. Got my timesheets in Monday morning and hoping for my first payment this Friday. Should also get my last Siemens payment at the same time which will be nice.

The bad news dropped on Monday that Siemens have pulled the plug on the sale and are closing the Coventry and Winchester offices by September. Seems like I got out just in time. What a mess has been made of a perfect decent business. They failed to run it well and they couldn't even sell it properly. That's if they were ever serious about selling it in the first place. I can't understand what they did, and I will never forgive them.

A redundancy payout may have been a nice little bung but I wouldn't want to be looking for work at the same time as everybody else. Plus the extra money I will have made by getting out early probably comes to a similar ammount. So all in all I'm better off out and a lot less stressed.

And talking of stress, it seems that Phil had a bad day yesterday prepping his kit for a 3 week holiday in France. The clutch failing on his motor must have been an absolute disaster. I do hope his recovery plans have worked today and he's safely on his way.

Jacq is looking forward to picking up her car on Saturday. Then the summer holidays will really start for her and the kids. At the moment they are staying in the house hiding from the sun and trying to keep cool.

Just spoke with Mike who's on the number 7 bus on his way to visit his mum. Now he's back from a few days away and I'm back in Bearwood full time, I hope we can catch up soon. And by catch up, I obviously mean crack open a few cold ones and shoot the shit. It's well overdue.

Pebbles

Freshly bathed and super cute!

Breaking Up For The Summer

Got to the end of the first week as a freelancer and the kids broke up for the summer holidays. By the Friday I got into some code which helped pass the time. My new laptop arrived on the Friday and first impressions were great. Unfortunately a closer inspection on Saturday morning revealed a very poor screen display which was very dissappointing. I checked on some forums and found it was a common complaint. I'm afraid it's going back to Dell and I'm back at square one. What I'd REALLY like is Jacqs MacBook. It would be so cool to use that. I could boot into XP to run programming packages and take the risk of usb-to-serial interfaces working. I wonder...

Away from work and computer stuff, it's been a lovely weekend although Dylan has been a bit poorly today. We gave Pebbles a bath and lots of hugs after. This afternoon we went out to a Nissan dealership to check out Micras. Suprise, suprise, we ended up buying one! It wasn't a planned purchase so it may appear to be a rash decision. But there's a logic to it. We got a 2 year old motor for half its list price and only a bit more than we were planning on spending on a much older one. We should be picking it up next week which gives Jacq and the kids complete freedom to make the most of the six weeks holidays.

The Hottest Day On Record?

It's supposed to be the hottest day on record today. That's what I've been told. We shall see. Yesterday was a scorcher, not helped by the closure of the motorway making the journey home murder. I'm working at the offices of my first client as a freelance engineer. The place and the people seem ok, which is nice. Although they could do with air conditioning in the building! But in the new freelance mindset, it doesn't really matter what the place is like. All that matters is getting my hours in and getting paid. No other mental baggage involved.

I've even restarted my meditation practise as I had let it drop during the last few weeks of working in Winchester. Hotel life plus changing jobs did not provide a conducive atmosphere. Now all of that is behind me and I'm moving on to pastures serene, I'm ready to restart mindfulness.

Leaving

So Friday I left Siemens. In the end I was glad to get away. No regrets at all. Even a last stroll around the building couldn't bring up any real nostalgia. I was looking forward more to seeing the lads at the traditional lunchtime leaving drink. There weren't many in the office today for a start and a few had to get off home. So the few that came had drinks bought and we took a table outside. Thankfully very soon after the boys arrived. Phil, Dan and John, fantastic to see them. Took them inside to buy a drink and the talk was all about payday. Text messages displayed. Dan suggested a money fight! Adrian popped in to say hello which was nice of him as he'd been at a funeral that morning. Finally Steve turned up on his way back from Milton Keynes. Good to see him again and bring him up to speed with the decline of the office. And by 2:00PM I was on my way home.

Done.

Picture Note: Check the photos above, taken with my nice new phone. Notice anything about them? The only people smiling in them DON'T work for Siemens anymore!!

Last Few Days

My last day tomorrow at Siemens. I've been clearing out stuff from the office over the last few days and occasionally remembering some good times during the last eight years. Throwing out stuff like eight diaries can make you do stuff like that. But in general I don't as nostalgic as I thought I would. That has got to be because so many others are leaving around the same time as me and my real mates have already left. I thought of doing the lunchtime walk today one last time but in the end realised that it's not the same without the entertaining chat. Even when we were just bitching over the same old topics, it was always fun.

Leaving this place and moving on is so much easier because keeping the network together is so much easier than in previous times. Email, blogs, texts, etc. are invaluable. The contracting thing would be much scarier were it undertaken in isolation. The good comms provides real support.

Flickrmeet

Yellow,
Photo by Aeioux.

A walkabout in Birmingham with a bunch of Flickr people. Most enjoyable it was. It's been a long long time since I walked about taking pictures purely for the art of it. Got me looking at my surroundings again with a fresh eye. Aeioux took this picture and I reckon it must have the only one he took where I wasn't smilling like a fool. Thanks for not making me look a fool Aeioux. He seemed like an interesting character who's into loads of creative stuff. And here's me moaning constantly about getting a creative moment to myself. Must try harder. Roll on the next Flickrmeet.

Susans Wedding

Saturday was my cousin Susans wedding day. We went up to Manchester for it and Mike kept an eye on Pebbles. It was very nice to see people who I haven't seen for ten years or more. Everyone looked well and seemed to be having a great day. Our kids didn't enjoy it much and in retrospect maybe it would have been better to have gone without them. Still, Susan had a great day and that's what really matters.

Working At Home

Worked at home yesterday and will do again today. The reason for this is combination of roadworks on the motorway and the current heatwave. Sitting in my non-air-conditioned car in a traffic jam on the M6 really seems to hightlight the utter futility and stupidity of the daily grind. Much smarter to just stay at home, keep cool, do a bit of work.

Wilting In The Heat

It's SO very hot! It's every door and window of the house wide open type heat. Too hot to do stuff. I was working at the Coventry office today and the lunchtime walk with Adrian was ill-advised. I felt awful afterwards. Clothes drenched in sweat and eyes on fire from hay-fever.

Yesterday (Sunday) was just as uncomfortable. Plans to go to the local Harborne Festival were shelved and we just flopped in the shade of the house. Saturday was nicer. Dylan had his friend Mitchell to play after swimming. In the afternoon we went over to Theresas for Lucys 8th birthday. Me and the Steves endured the England v Portugal match with much shouting at the TV involved. As is traditional, we lost on penalties and like times before, I couldn't watch. Hanging out in the garden was fun with the kids playing various water games and Pebbles running around exploring their huge garden. At one point I took a number of shots for a composite of everyone just sitting around. I've just got the basic layout done in Photoshop so far but I hope to do some detailed editing to get the kind of effects that Panoramatic gets in flickr.