Mutterings - Nov 30

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. That’s awesome! :: Fist bump
2. Moldy :: Cheese
3. Cloth :: Damp (probably goes with the above!)
4. Boys :: will be....
5. Chains :: Slaves
6. Tennis :: Elbow
7. Chart :: Pi
8. Band :: Aid
9. Clinking :: Ice cubes
10. Pores :: Examines (closely)

Teaser Tuesday - Nov 24

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

'Yes, your Highness. Chota fought well,' said Jahan. He did not tell her how the animal had gored soldiers, and how he still felt guilty about having taught him to do so.

From Elif Shafak's 'The Architect's Apprentice' - our book group book of the month. Here's the review from the Spectator. So far, an easy read which I'm quite enjoying, lots of derring-do and holds the attention, as that review says there's a simplicity which might almost suggest a children's book apart from some uncompromising scenes. Shafak is a Turkish author who conjours up 16th century Istanbul well and in the plot I'm about to get to Rome and Michelangelo!

Prayer

This poem by Carol Ann Duffy seems appropriate with the debate about an advert containing the Lord's prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, a small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, a radio's prayer —
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

It was quoted in a piece for Remembrance in a Guardian earlier this month.

Mutterings - Nov 22

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Plenty of :: questions (but no answers?)
2. Peanut :: Farmer
3. Gulp :: Gaping (I think I had Gaping Ghyll in mind)
4. Framed! :: You've been
5. Caged :: Animal
6. Chilly :: Morning
7. Instrument :: Solo
8. Officer :: Krupke
9. Solution :: Purple (going back many years all chemistry lesson solutions seemed to be purple, maybe the teacher could keep better tabs on what was happening if they were vivid?!)
10. Dolphin :: School (or is that porpoises?)

Tarn again

I've done a bit more on that terragen mountain scene and have installed the new erosion shader. I think I need to limit the erosion a bit!

And from a slightly different viewpoint having sorted out some more things:

From the same file having moved the camera and added a few more things, maybe I need to calm down those stones in the foreground a bit?

(I had to recover this post there appears to be some sort of blogger bug where changing tabs while editing ends up with a different post in the edit window and if you save it it overwrites the original!)

Getting boulder

After working my way through Neuspadrin's
fake stones shader tutorial here's my boulder.
Just lying on the ground with the default background - with some added shaders. Base of the boulder looks a bit as if it has been wrapped in clingfilm maybe that's the redirect shader altitude?

Teaser Tuesday -Nov 17

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

It is now William who is stepping into the sunset and Dorothy who has lost direction, looking behind her as she goes. She writes up the honeymoon as is she were feeling her way back into herself.

A final teaser from The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth' by Frances Wilson. I said last time I teased from this book that I was finding it very hard going. I found the final 3 chapters a lot easier. Maybe I was getting into the style but it did feel as if there were more of a narrative thread I could get a handle on towards the end. The honeymoon was that of William and Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy was 'just' an onlooker. I was reading in parallel with this the short stories of Somerset Maugham and it was spooky to be reading his tale the Bookbag alongside this (totally coincidentally!) which deals with a tale of brother sister incest told in the light of the probable relationship between Lord Byron and his sister!

Mutterings - Nov 16

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Polish :: Solidarity! (or maybe French)
2. Reshare :: Social media
3. Quality :: Street
4. Ordeal :: Fiery
5. Raindrop :: Prelude (Piano work by Chopin)
6. Cute! :: Kitten!
7. Soil :: Compost
8. Ice cream :: Freezer
9. Suffering :: Silently
10. Pressure :: Cooker

Mutterings - Nov 9

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Wired :: Ethernet
2. Whine :: Threaten
3. Umbrella :: Company
4. Wing :: Right
5. Corrupt :: Organization (trying not to name names!)
6. Symbolize :: View
7. Week :: Hours (as in working)
8. Wine :: Red!
9. Submit :: Button
10. Weird :: Atmosphere

Mutterings - Nov 2

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Habitually :: Check List
2. Generational :: Gap
3. Proudly :: Stance
4. Determined :: Look
5. Consoled :: Sympathy
6. Hosted :: Web
7. Creepy :: Spectral
8. Yelled :: in pain
9. Inept :: Broken
10. Success story :: Agile (software development, though whether agile(tm) is a success story is another matter!)

Mountain scene

I've made the plunge and upgraded to Terragen 3 here's a render where I rather like the outcrops. I was trying to get some stones in the foreground but seem to be failing, there are though some nice tutorials with the new release I will have to dive into! I commented a few weeks ago at the slowness when running this windows app under linux with wine, this slowdown isn't quite so bad when running on a 64 bit Ubuntu installation, I'm not sure whether this is the 64 bit terragen, wine or the base operating system that's responsible for the better performance!
As a later comment it would appear that most of the slowdown was due to a PassThruSvr.exe process - investigation revealed this .exe had nothing to do with the ordinary running of wine but was something I must have installed when I was trying to configure my old HTC phone. I renamed the file and renders ran rather more quickly!

Teaser Tuesday - Oct 27

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

There is also, Liveing says, a form of migraine 'trance' in which the sufferer feels a drowsiness so extreme that he falls into a waking sleep or a living death. Dorothy described to Jane back in her Forncett days how she was unable to deal with the tiredness that came on with her headaches, being 'less able to support any fatigue and ... more troubled with headache than I ever remember to have been'.

From our BATS (book group) book of the month - The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth' by Frances Wilson. It's described as a biography of Dorothy, there's an awful lot of digging into the psyche, and I'm currently finding it hard going (and I'm not alone!). Here's an extract, she quotes this -

Ernest de Selincourt's describes Dorothy as 'probably the most remarkable and the most distinguished of English prose writers who never wrote a line for the general public'.

and the Guardian review.

Mutterings - Oct 26

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. your point :: get to it!
2. scarf :: Readers (a Church link - I'm a reader and a blue scarf comes with the office)
3. termite :: nest
4. willing :: God
5. silk :: worm (nearly got scarf again!)
6. center :: earth (I saw the film based on Jules Verne back in the 50s)
7. flash :: in the pan
8. warehouse :: pallett
9. costume :: drama
10. candy corn? :: no idea! - I guess it's an Americanism

Mutterings - Oct 19

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Frustration :: Frequent!
2. Ordered :: Set (Maths and computing...)
3. Imagination :: Vivid
4. Horizon :: Flat - Ringed by the Flat Horizon (a TS Eliot quote and used as the title of a musical work by George Benjamin)
5. Flu :: Spanish
6. System :: Operating
7. Bombastic :: Bullying
8. Windows :: Microsoft :-(
9. Pumping :: IO - Pump IO an open micro blogging platform
10. Scorched :: Earth

Alps - virtual ones

Here's the latest terragen render:

About 7 hours of rendering. I quite like this and am currently deciding whether to indulge in the planetside sale and upgrade to Terragen 3 more features, a version that gets bug fixes, but I think I'm still wandering around in the shallows of the application. But enjoying myself!

Teaser Tuesday - Oct 13

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

But beside the missionary the only white man who lived on Baru was Ginger Ted, and he, of course, was a disgrace to civilization. There was not a single thing to be said in his favour.

I'm continuing with volume 2 of Somerset Maugham's short stories, this is from The Vessel of Wrath. Lots of stories of white Englishmen bringing civilisation (or not!) to the colonies.

Mutterings - Oct 12

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Walmart :: Mall
2. Submarine :: Yellow
3. Cub :: Scout
4. Department :: Aquitaine (ummm Bordeaux!)
5. Back :: Pain
6. Third :: Minor
7. Straight :: Flush
8. Sofa :: Bed
9. Editor :: Emacs!
10. Typing :: RSI - I was at a piano group on Saturday where a teacher present was having problems with RSI so not just typing!

Teaser Tuesday - Oct 6

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

The odour of this island would never change for her now. She smelled dust, rat droppings, decay, blood and bitterness.

A final teaser from Victoria Hislop's The Sunrise. We had the discussion last night - I still have a few chapters to go - it was an ok read but I wouldn't give it too high a score. I felt that it wasn't sure whether it was a novel, a travelogue or a history with great chunks of various styles sitting next to each other. Hislop's style tended to the melodramatic

The expression of demonic greed was unmistakeable..

and the way Aphroditi morphs from a bimbo into someone you're meant to identify with without any apparent reason. I think some of my misgivings were held by others in the group. Here's the goodreads discussion. The book caused me to read up on the history of Cyprus but for decaying hotels inhabited by refugees - I think JG Ballard does it a lot better!

Mutterings - Oct 4

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Housing :: Ladder
2. Bumps :: Pregnancy
3. Humming :: Bird
4. Bright :: Star
5. Cloudy :: Outlook
6. Temporary :: Failure (a web based error!)
7. Ladder :: Snakes
8. October? :: Red
9. Wagon :: Wheel (not sure I ever had these?)
10. Cunning :: Little Vixen (a Janacek Opera)

Teaser Tuesday - Sept 29

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

With the mark-up in the club, he would make thousands of pounds from reselling it. Yes, it had been a good day, but he knew the best of it was to come.

Another teaser from Victoria Hislop's The Sunrise, after what I felt was a stilted start I'm getting on rather better with it!