Daylight savings has begun in Eastern Australia. It began about a month ago in NZ and in Tasmania, and also according to the myna bird who has been waking me up *daylight savings time* for the last number of weeks. So I guess I'm already adjusted. Nevertheless, I can't help but feel a bit ripped off that the weekend lasted one hour less. Does this make my life one hour shorter?
This one was rejected because it appeared to be a derivative of a copyrighted work...??! Ironically, it's one of the few I've scanned in from my own sketch. How original can you make a fish anyhow? That must be the most grey area of copyright. This, in fact, is the copyright version of the phrase 'What's that got to do with the price of fish?'
This was rejected because it contains 'open shapes'. Yip, it does. This is one of the first vectors I did and although it's a passable final product, it's a mess if you look at it in outline view.
This is the strange creation I was working on at the library. It's for a paper called 'creativity'. I'm not sure I learnt how to be more creative out of this, but I did learn how to integrate Photoshop and Illustrator... and how to work with lots of different people all giving me different ideas!! The result is a patchwork quilt in front of a camel. Guess ya had to be there. (And no, I'm not changing it!)
I recently had my first illustrator masterpiece accepted into Shutterstock (above), and have since sold 3 eps files of it. First it was rejected at iStockPhoto because I included my original drawing in a zip file and that's not allowed. Apparently there was nothing else wrong with it. But when I fixed that mistake they rejected it for some bizarre reason. There's obviously no continuity between the people accepting and rejecting submissions. They also have an unfair ranking system, where the most popular files are sorted first in a customer's search. This doesn't seem right because popularity is self-perpetuating. It's like having John Howard's name at the top of the voting paper, first and last in the leader's debate and emblazoned on billboards larger than Rudd's. Now that wouldn't be allowed, would it?
So I've decided to submit future vectors to Shutterstock, which has a more transparent list of acceptance criteria. Oh well, I've learnt a lot about Illustrator, a wonderful piece of software which has improved greatly in its latest release, CS3. I used CS2 again for the first time in a few months at work last week and already found myself frustrated not to be able to shrink the toolbars how I wanted them and I couldn't find the radial gradient tool... Funny how quickly we get used to new software!
A while ago I wrote a review of someone's book, someone who lives on the other side of the world. So I was kind of surprised to see this author read my blog, when hardly anyone else does, and made a comment on my review of his book. Apart from a reality check of the power of a public blog, this got me wondering about the power of the internet. How do you keep tabs on what people are writing about you? Well, 5 months later, I think I've worked it out.
I've subscribed to Google Alerts. All you need is a google account and you have access to all sorts of tools, Alerts being one of them. You type in a keyword, just as you would in an ordinary search, then arrange for google to send you a summary of what's new on the web since the latest crawl. Every day I get new adobe tutorials because I have an 'adobe tutorial' alert. Some of them are good, even if they only provide me with a link to a decent website rather than a decent tutorial, per se. Then I decided to 'Google Alert' myself to see what came up. I got the first alert today with a surprising number of instances of me. I'm one of these people who do ego searches quite regularly, so I was pretty surprised to see what comes up. I guess this is what the author has set up on his email account, and I guess that's why he'd find my blog even when I can't even find my own blog when I do random google searches for excerpts out of it. (I'm trying to understand the spider.) Yes, Google Alerts is a mystery, as is google itself, but it's something I'll definitely be keeping my eye on. Especially if I intend to take up a new career as an *&^hole or something.
Yesterday Dan and I went to the movies at Civic to see a film I knew absolutely nothing about: Michael Clayton. Sometimes this can be a good thing, as I can go into the theatre free of expectations. This time, though, I felt I was missing something. If you work in law you probably 'get it' but I found the plot to be a bit confusing. The good thing about it is that it's a thinking movie. It's not a weepy, it's not soft, there are several jump-outta-ya-seat moments (which was followed by embarassed snickering in a packed theatre) and you have to concentrate the whole time. Dan agreed it was a bit long. This, perhaps, is due to the fact that you're concentrating the ENTIRE time, with too few down moments. You think you're going to miss something. At the end of it, I was left frustrated, as a few ends were dangling for me.
However, the internet is a wonderful thing, and I have since found out the following, which won't be a plot spoiler if you're planning to see it, quite the reverse. Bear in mind that:
Clayton's older brother just happens to be a police detective
The weird thing with the horse is connected to a picture Clayton sees in the 'red book'
Clayton refers to himself as a janitor in his law firm because he gets the messy jobs, the dangerous jobs.
There are a number of reality checks the viewer must put aside when watching this movie. The one that probably grates the most is the one where crime is confessed over a cellphone mic, and the police rush in to arrest the confessor. (Okay, so that's a spoiler.) Does that seriously happen? Don't people wonder if they're being recorded when they fess up these days? Perhaps that's what's meant by the byline: The Truth Can Be Adjusted.
The thing about working on a computer all day is I don't feel much like turning my own on when I arrive home in the evening, especially as the evenings are now growing warmer. So I've lost the habit of blogging regularly, which happened after a month traveling around NZ in July without regular use of the internet. It's funny how habits don't take long to break. I read once that to establish a habit you have to continue it for six weeks before it becomes automatic. I'd like to add to that: it depends on whether it's a GOOD habit or a BAD habit.
Bad habits I've picked up lately without even trying:
Eating beef noodles for morning tea
Compulsively checking emails while trying to concentrate on something else
Leaving the dishes unless there's a 'decent amount' (This, apparently, saves on water consumption but leads to a smelly benchtop...)
Good habits I find easy to lose:
Brushing teeth for the full two minutes, especially when tired at night or rushed in the morning
Putting clothes away in drawers before re-wearing
Swallowing iron supplements (they stink)
Regular exercise
And I'd have to add to this, sadly, blogging. Which is something I thoroughly enjoy! Now when you stop doing something you enjoy it probably comes down to life balance so I shall seek to rectify the balance, because I find when I'm in the habit of blogging I'm in the habit of looking at the funny side of life. I get lots of 'Must blog that' moments... In fact I've had countless numbers of those lately so I shall attempt to begin to catch up.
I finally made it to the Queanbeyan library before closing time. Okay, so I do work in a library, but haven't actually borrowed any books from there yet! (Mainly because having an overdue there would be just embarrassing, as it would create more work for the workmate who sits right next to me.) Anyhow, I've recently been listening to Famous Five talking books, and if I were cool I wouldn't ever admit that. One thing that strikes me about those, apart from the sexism, racism and the dated language, is the ability of Blyton to get right into the action and hook the reader from the start. I hadn't read these stories since I was a kid, but it was amazing how the same stories conjured up the same settings in my mind, and it felt as though I was revisiting old stomping ground. This despite the fact I thought I had completely forgotten the plots in the last 20 years.
As a kid my reading diet consisted of a no doubt unhealthy amount of Blyton, interspersed with a good dose of Roald Dahl, and the life of Roald Dahl has been well recorded. If you've read Boy and Going Solo you probably feel as if you have a real sense of the man. This isn't the case with a more mysterious figure such as Blyton, so I was driven to find the Blyton Biography by Barbara Stoney at the library.
Enid Blyton was probably the J.K. Rowling equivalent in her day, being financially very successful and having millions of adoring fans from around the world. She was surprisingly modern in some ways, cutting her hair short when girls were supposed to wear it long, starting her own family in her mid thirties after establishing her own career, and divorcing her first husband in an era when it was not respectable to do so. (Of course it would have been more common had more women had the financial means.) Yet she was a woman of her times too. She despised foreign culture, had a strong preference for everything English, and seemed to have not the foggiest idea that perhaps using Golliwogs as baddies might be construed as racist. (She also used Golliwogs as goodies, so I don't know if she really was racist... just naive.)
Enid Blyton seems to divide people into those who love her and those who can't stand her. It's easy to criticise the predictable stories and simplistic language, and her hackneyed phrases such as 'lashings of butter' and 'If it weren't for you kids we'd never have found the robbers!'. Nevertheless, the divide seems to be between those under 12 and those over 12. Enid Blyton never really seemed to grow up, and this is no doubt what contributed to her enduring success.
