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)