Impressions
I'll just repeat the warning - the weblog below may contain strong language and explicit references. All links within the posts will open in the same separate window.

/insanity
07/02/00 07/09/00 07/16/00 07/23/00 07/30/00 08/06/00 08/13/00 08/20/00 08/27/00 09/10/00 09/17/00 09/24/00 10/01/00 10/08/00 10/15/00 10/22/00 10/29/00 11/05/00 11/12/00 11/19/00 11/26/00 12/03/00 12/10/00 12/17/00 12/24/00 12/31/00 01/07/01 01/14/01 01/21/01 01/28/01 02/04/01 02/11/01 02/18/01 02/25/01 03/04/01 03/11/01 03/18/01 03/25/01 04/01/01 04/08/01 04/15/01 06/10/01 07/01/01 09/16/01 10/21/01 11/04/01 12/09/01 12/16/01 12/23/01 12/30/01 01/13/02 01/20/02 01/27/02 02/03/02 02/10/02 02/17/02 02/24/02 03/03/02 03/10/02 03/17/02 03/24/02 03/31/02 04/07/02 04/14/02 04/21/02 04/28/02 05/12/02 07/07/02 07/28/02 09/01/02 09/29/02 10/13/02 11/10/02 12/08/02 09/07/03 09/14/03 11/09/03 11/16/03 07/04/04 01/16/05 08/07/05 02/12/06 02/26/06 03/19/06 03/26/06 04/02/06 04/09/06 04/23/06 05/07/06 05/21/06 06/04/06 06/11/06 06/18/06 06/25/06 07/02/06 07/16/06 07/30/06 09/03/06 09/10/06 10/01/06 10/08/06 10/15/06 10/22/06 10/29/06

Current posts

/bloggers
Babblogue
Womble
Frood Burbles
Frood's Fairy Death Log

Linkwatcher

Weblog Madness

Bird on a Wire

< # blog girls ? >


/sam
Home and Sam Rantz
Bicycle Junkie
Hippyshit«---
Pagan Leanings
The Science Bit
Mail


Blogger


All contents on this site
© Samantha Fleming 1998-2006, unless otherwise stated or bloody obviously the work of someone else (I'm talking the userpics here). All rights reserved

 

Saturday, December 23, 2000

00:11    archived    
Incidentally, that's far more disturbing on a white background than the black one here. Weird.


(0) comments | links to this post

 

Friday, December 22, 2000

23:52    archived    
I reckon the inside of my head looks like this sometimes:


Abstract #1


There are some really cool effects with this thing, but I think there is a problem with my machine because it is complaining of insufficient memory and hanging to the point of havingto be shut down all of a sudden. It could be that the processor fan is having real problems, I suppose, but it seems to be working ok. It's spinning round quite quickly and everything. Hurm.


(0) comments | links to this post

21:28    archived    

The more I play with this Painter Classic thing the more useful it is. It's not a graphic design package like PSP or Fireworks, and you can't do the sorts of things with it that you can do with something like Photoshop, but it's such good fun if you have any interest in art at all.


The house on the hill with sheep and birds


The different styles you can use give you so many options. I can definitely imagine being able to do really good stuff by taking photos and painting from things in the photos.

It's odd. I used to do a lot of art. I used to do enough art that I was paid for it occasionally. I've always fancied using watercolours but have been an oil pastel and chalk kind of person, with an occasional foray into the world of paint pencils. This software is great because you can play with the various media without actually having to spend money on the materials, which is brilliant.

My issue at the moment is that I've almost forgotten how to take what's inside my head and put it onto a piece of paper, and I'm still learning the myriad ins and outs of this package. The graphics tablet has to be my best acquisition in a long time, though, it's great.

Bought a Lowe Alpine balaclava today as well, and an MSR insulated mug. The itchy feet are getting itchier, and I can see myself getting to the stage where I have to go out for a day's walking no matter the weather or if I have to do it alone. I might see if I can persuade Frood to come somewhere with me on Boxing Day, assuming we're not too hungover to drive. I really want to go walking in snow, for some reason. I have this hankering to be sat in a little hollow in the snow, boiling up some water on the trangia and making hot chocolate.

It's that Kim Stanley Robinson book I read in Scotland. I'm a sucker for KSR. I've read two of his books only, because they have such a profound effect on me I have to space them out. One of the most gloriously pagan and ecologically minded books I have ever read is Pacific Edge, which almost altered the way I think and feel about a lot of things. I wish I had my own copy of that, but the one I read belonged to an old, dear friend of mine (Frannie, if you ever read this, some of the peculiar things I think are your fault for lending me that book - thank you). I know that, right now, if I were to come into a pile of money (but not a huge pile) it would go on winter outdoor gear for Frood and myself, so that we could get out sensibly.

Speaking of books, Frood bought me Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa. It is edited and annotated by Donald Tyson, who claims to have corrected the vast majority, if not all of the errors included in every edition, including the Latin, for the last 500 years. I find myself feeling rather dubious about this, especially as he claims that some of the figures he has had to redraw with no guide, using only the internal logic of the figures themselves. So, it's corrected as far as he is concerned, although I wonder what Agrippa would make of it. Still, the notes are very comprehensive,and it is very well referenced, and I don't have any material like that at all. Even if he is nutty enough to claim that any magician using the material before his corrections are actually doing it incorrectly, I expect I'll get some use out of it. If only to be able to find out what other people are talking about (or think they are talking about - which is an entirely different matter) sometimes.

Oh crumbs. There's Frood. Best get some tidying up done.


(0) comments | links to this post

 

Thursday, December 21, 2000

16:48    archived    
I take it back, there is a way of controlling brush size, but it's not as good as PSP. Still, this graphics thing is a real lark.

Be able to get my tattoo done soon. I'm so nervous about it. I'm scared of wussing out because I know it's going to hurt lots. Lots.


(0) comments | links to this post

15:35    archived    

I finally got a graphics tablet. It's a Wacom Graphire, and has a mouse with it as well. It comes with Corel's Painter Classic, which I thought was going to be shite, but actually turns out to be a whole heap of fun. It might be that finally I have found something that I can use to make impressions of things as I see them.

Artist's Impression of Fly Agaric


This isn't quite as good as I'd like, but I didn't spend very long on it, it was the first thing I did using the new software. It's astonishing how quickly one can adjust to using the pen, but I have heaps to learn about using it. Already I'm thinking of all the things I can do - finally maybe I have a way of taking pictures with the camera and turning them into impressions of things as I see them. Or perhaps just doing them straight. If I can get the scanner working and acquire a copy of Photoshop there are all sorts of things I can do.

The Painter Classic software isn't the most user friendly software I have come across. Unlike PaintShop Pro, which is the one I'm used to using, there is no way of controlling the details of the brush such as tip size and opacity, but I do like the way you can apply effects from the brush tip with tools such as "Big Frosty Water" and "Auto Rain Effect".

I wonder what the psychiatrist would think if I told her that I'm trying to paint things as I see and feel them?

Ah, yes, the psychiatrist. Apparently I am freakish for not wanting to have children, and I must be a hypochondriac because I have researched my condition and know a lot of medical terminology. Perhaps I should have pointed out that I used to abstract medical patent applications, so of course I had to get to know medical terminology, and that if the medical fraternity expects me to sit around on my arse doing nothing, waiting for them to hand down some decision regarding my health from the Olympic heights of their profession, then hey have a major problem. Why is it that they treat you as a bag of symptoms rather than an intelligent, feeling person who has motivation and drive to get better? These are psychiatrists. You'd have thought, of anyone, that they might be able to comprehend that apart from the doctor-patient relationship there is the far more immediate person-person relationship. I know that they are human beings, that they are not infallible, that they have opinions and theories that may not be correct. If I can see that, why can't they?

As a scientist, I derive theories from data. I know that those theories are not necessarily correct. I don't assume that they are. However, when I am told "The medical profession no longer treats fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue as being different" and am then told that I don't have classic chronic fatigue (well, no, but I do seem to have a pretty classic set of FMS symptoms), I wonder what's going on in their heads. Have they suddenly decided that the ten year old World Health Organisation diagnostic criteria for FMS is incorrect, and that the problem doesn't actually exist?

Cognitive behavioural therapy, I was told, is the current usual way of treating chronic fatigue. First I've heard about it. Apparently, in Oxford, such things are considered to be psychiatric illnesses. Oxford always has been a weird place.

Pondering what to do about it now. I'm wondering whether to write them a letter and pint out how stupid I think all of this is. It's such a shame, because we really seemed, finally, to be getting somewhere. Maybe Prof Peto was a one-off. I found it strangely disconcerting that the woman I saw kept telling me how friendly and nice everyone in the psychiatric department was. I'm not sure why she found it necessary to keep telling me that. I also found it very off-putting to have her answering her bloody mobile phone several times during the two hour (two ours!) interview.

It's so depressing having to deal with medical people. Still, at least my dentist is nice and I've had my root canal done.

Oh, and I have my tattoo design as well.


(0) comments | links to this post