Pleasing composition

One of the advantages of snapping millions of photographs every time the camera is out is that some of the photos turn out quite nice - often by accident. Both of these pictures, taken at Denny's in Chch, have something about them that I like - in lighting, composition, capturing a sense of movement. They's neat.

There were also a lot of blurry photos of the back of Dom's head as he ran away from the camera, more often than not towards an employee only area or other hazard :P

Product Review: Edifier M2200 Speakers

So I bought some new speakers this weekend, as the old speakers I had for my computer kinda died. There was a loose wire in one of the speakers and it kept cutting out. Being as they were cheapy came-with-the-computer speakers anyway I wasn't sad to be upgrading.

I wanted 2.0 speakers as there wasn't much in the way of room on or under my desk for a subwoofer. I checked out the Warehouse, DSE and Harvey Norman and found a few options, but decided to go for the Edifier M2200's for the following reasons:

1. They were $50, right in the middle of the amount I wanted to spend. There were cheaper speakers, and some $80 Logitech ones that looked nice, but $50 felt like a good amount.
2. They felt like a good weight, where good = feel solidly constructed.
3. They're sleek looking, black and tall and simple.
4. Their output is apparently 4 watts RMS each speaker, for a total of 8 watts. This is more than any of the cheaper speakers by a substantial margin (3 watts combined for one $40 set). I think this means they are capable of going louderer.
5. They have a headphone socket and a mic socket on the front of one of the speakers. This is handy when Dom's napping and I don't want to scramble about under the desk looking for the headphone socket on the PC.



So I took them home and plugged them in. Result? They sound nice. Good amount of bass for some small desktop speakers, clear crisp sound, and they do indeed go loud. Much louder than I will probably ever need.

Even at relatively low volumes the bass is audible (as loud as the cheap 2.1 speakers I used to have a few years back with the sub cranked up, but cleaner). At medium volumes they sound quite warm.

Verdict? If your crappy sub $20 computer speakers fall over and you're looking for an inexpensive but not absolute bargain basement replacement, these are some good speakers to look at. I expect to get a good deal of listening pleasure out of these speakers - I just wish I'd upgraded years ago :-)

And now, the end is near...

School holidays are great. Even when marred by extended sickness, not being at school is a lot cooler than being at school. Tomorrow I'm back for a day and a half before taking an afternoon off to take Dom to Porirua to see the specialist. Dom's having an x-ray before the appointment, which is a standard follow-up dealy, so it should be relatively stressless (though getting him to sit still for x-rays isn't always easy). We are the proud owners of a new set of speakers for our computer - speakers which sound a lot better than the old ones and work in stereo :-) Our desk setup precludes subwooferness, so it's a 2.0 pair, and I'm happy to have them. They were $50, so not exactly high end, but given that the old speakers were probably sub $20 (they came as part of the package with the computer) it's still an improvement. I have a small amount of marking I should probably do, but I'm feeling distinctly unmotivated. I don't need to do the marking today, it'd just be nice to be starting the term with a clean slate. I suspect it won't get done, though. I have been thinking about my impending birthday, and whether I could make some suggestions for family about pressies I might want. Here's the working list: - A4 visual diary (blank page sketch book) - Armani Code smelly stuff - Cheap USB flash drive (I have a big expensive one, but could always use a couple cheaper ones to have kicking around the house/in my bag etc) - Interesting graphic novels - Colourful/cool t-shirt (size M) - Comfy black socks I'm sure there are loads of other things I'd like...

Christchurch was fun!

I have been sick for the last 6 days. Yesterday I was feeling almost OK - just a headache and a slightly off tummy - but this morning was horrible, with feeling close to vomitting and having a headache and no energy. No more stabbing stomach pains though, so that's awesome. Hoping to be well again before school starts!

Back in the north island

Hurrah for holidays. We are now back at home after a busy fun-filled trip to Christchurch. It was lovely to see family, especially my two extremely cute nephews, and Christchurch is very pretty in Autumn. Lots of stunning trees with leaves in various shades of red, yellow or brown. There were way too many cool things for me to go into detailed descriptions so I'll go for bullet-point highlights.

-Dominic was awesome on the plane both ways. It's a little daunting taking a little one on a flight (especially remebering one nightmare flight we had on the way to Japan with a toddler in front of us crying for the _whole_ flight. Fortunately, we had Pooh and Grover movies on the iPod touch with portable speakers so Dom was either happily eating or watching these for the flight. On the way back, we had a wndow seat and he loved looking out the window after take off. He even started flapping his arms around, so I think he grasped the concept that we were in the air although he later realised he didn't actually need to 'fly' himself :-)

- Seeing Dom hanging out with his two cousins was awesome, and his other relatives too. He was always super excited to see everyone and had no hesitation in fully taking over his uncle's home (especially the Darth Tater potato head).

- Going through Christchurch Muesum was very cool - lots of romping room and interesting things to look at. Dom particularly liked the Discovery area with drawers full of shells, insects and other things.

- Dom loved the massive play area at McDonalds and I discovered that McCafe actually do a quite reasonable muffin.

- The Christchurch Aquarium is awesome. Sharks, sting rays, pretty fish, turtles and an obliging show-off octopus. Dom really liked the swing bridge over the waterfall and the touch pool (or splash pool for him really).

- Cathedral Square - Dominic dragged me in and around several shops.

- Taking the Tram.

- Romping around the Arts centre in the sun. Lots of live music, markets, delicious hazelnut lattes and heaps of dried autumn leaves for Dom to play in.

- I got to squeeze in some shopping but the highlight of that day's excursion for Dom was riding in the Wriggles ride with his cousins.

- On the last day we went for breakfast with the whole tribe to Denny's which is an excellent place for little ones. Dom liked the food but exploring was even more fun.

Denny's photos

 

Dom becomes aquainted with the penguin using the traditional hand-to-beak greeting.

The boys gather around the jukebox.

Waving to Daddy (who is outside with a camera as the reflection shows).

Ride

 

Off on holiday!

 We're off to Christchurch early tomorrow morning. Dominic has been very interested and helpful in the packing process.

He enjoyed climbing into the suitcase. We had to convince him that he was actually allowed to ride with us in the plane and didn't need to stowaway in the case.

Fun with Mixcraft

In preparation for the 48 I have been looking around online for public domain music. I'm also very curious about 'Garage Band', a piece of software available on the Mac which is apparently very easy to use to make your own music. I googled 'Garage Band for PC' again yesterday (having searched for it last year and found no satisfactory alternative for the PC) and was very please to find references to a program called 'Mixcraft'. The best part is that it has a free, fully working 14 day trial (something like a 45mb download). I've been playing with it this morning and it is, as it promised to be, fairly easy to use. I'm not so interested in looping recorded audio samples as I am in building music note by note in the program and then looping it. Mixcraft has a handy piano-roll interface for composing loops and plenty of midi instruments to choose from. It also appears to be a multi-track recorder, so you can construct a bunch of midi tracks and then record vocals or instruments into their own tracks, mix them and save to audio file (mp3 or whatever). There are probably a lot of these sorts of programs around and I've only played with a few but so far I'm impressed with Mixcraft. By the end of the holidays I should have some idea of whether I'm impressed enough to pay US$65 to register my copy. Apparently a lot of the functions still work in an unregistered copy post-trial, so I shall wait and see...

Smelly Elliot

A short piece of fiction from earlier this year. Where it was going is a mystery to me now :-) I could see the neurons firing in his spiky head and I knew nothing good would come of it. For months he’d slugged at the back of the class, refusing to listen to the teacher or do any work, mocking those of us made the effort. He was a constant irritation in my peripheral vision and I knew he was a ticking time bomb. He couldn’t last a year without going completely off the rails. He knew it, the teacher knew it, we all did. It started with the deodorant can. He’d started spraying it on his crotch one day in class, his primitive caveman brain highly amused by the fizzing jet of spray and the sudden cloying lack of oxygen in his vicinity. God knows why he started doing it but as soon as the jeers of people sitting nearby and the stern voice of the teacher zeroed in on him there was no way he was going to stop. I was sitting by a window and I could barely breathe, not helped by the fact that the security bolts on the windows – clunky steel contraptions installed by a zealous caretaker – meant that the windows wouldn’t open more than a few centimeters. Eventually he was kicked out of the room, trailing a cloud of man-spray behind him. Of course he started spraying again as soon as he was out in the corridor and we all had to endure the remainder of the lesson sans the luxury of breathing normally...

Not as different as I thought...

Hmmm, I thought this would look more dramatic. I guess I avoided or deleted bad photos a year ago. Still, I look fairly different to the way I looked last April holidays...

Confirmation code

Confirmation Code: GH164628 

Enhanced history and comedy knowledge

This week I've been listening to The History of Radio Comedy, a BBC series presented by Peter Jones. So far it's a history of wartime and post-war radio comedy, starting in the late 30s and moving through to the 50s. I'm up to episode 8 of 13, so I suspect it may not go much beyond the 50s. It's fascinating to listen to on both a historical and a comedic front. Hearing the changes in styles of joke and humour, as well as the history of wartime and postwar Britain through a comedy lens, is most educational. At less than 7mb a half hour episode it's very good value-for-bandwidth, and I've found it excellent value for time too. Especially good listening for hanging out washing, tidying up and so on. I stumbled on the series here, the same place I got the excellent Absolute Power.

Busy Easter

Happy Easter!

It's been a lovely start to the holidays and there's plenty of exciting fun stuff coming up too. Pretty soon we'll be heading down to Christchurch to visit family, and there are lots of other lazy holiday days ahead.

We've had a number of visitors in the past fwe days and it's been great to catch up with people. We don't seem to make it out to social events all that often at the moment so it's lovely when people drop by :-)

Happy Easter!

Dominic seems to be enjoying the Easter holidays so far. There was a giant bunny (OK, man wearing a rabbit suit but Dom's brain melted with joy and excitement when he met the talking adult-sized bunny so I don't think he realised it was fake) outside the supermarket yesterday handing out free Easter eggs so that was a good start to the chocolate-filled holidays.

We then gave him an Easter egg hunt in the backyard. Given that he's small and only just learning that tin-foil wrapped ovals tend to be chocolate (although he has caught onto this fact very quickly), we decided to have plush bunnies to act as guides to where the eggs were.

 

The intrepid Easter hunter spots the first sign of Easter goodies in the distance.

With a tremendous amount of glee, Dom sees that Peter Rabbit has some Easter eggs waiting for him.

Instinctively, the Easter egg hunter knows to strike quickly and grab the egg before the bunny changes its mind.

Dom enjoys the rewards of a successful hunt before moving onto the next clue.

Oh joy! Dom spots another chocolate-bearing bunny!

Hmm, a bunny in a basket? The now-expert hunter knows to examine this carefully.

His suspicions were correct. The bunny had the chocolate goods!

Dominic then zaps off to the final and biggest bunny of them all!

"I've got him!" Dom holds the big bunny in place by the ears while the camera crew catches up.

Dominic succssfully seizes the last egg.

Although he soon discovers that this particular egg was not up to his chocy standards and decides to give it back to the bunny.

The hunter leaves the backyard triumphantly!

Pegs

At the last gym class of the term last week, they added some new 'delux manual dexterity building' equipment. A bunch of old wooden pegs and an empty tin can with a small hole to post the pegs through.

Dom loved this game.

 

It didn't take much encouragement from Mum at all before he was into the peg posting groove.

His intense concentration on posting every single peg wasn't even broken when a girl came over and started staring at him. (I've cropped the photo because a little girl staring at your young son while she has her hand down the front of her pants doesn't not make for a cute Kodak moment in my books).

At the end of the class when they were supposed to be getting certificates and stamps and so forth, a bunch of the kids wandered back to the tin to form an obsessive group peg posting session.

If you want to start a freaky little blonde 'Midwich cuckoos' style kids cult, obviously all you need is a tin can and a bunch of wooden pegs.

Visitin' Granny

And making a mess :-) Dom particularly liked throwing the pinecones onto the floor so the seeds fell out (in a large pile by the time he was finished).

Zombie and Gorilla

Whilst doing starter activities for writing horror stories my students asked me how to draw a zombie, and how to draw a gorilla. This is what I came up with:



It's always a fine line for me when showing kids how to draw stuff - the line between making things look good, and making them simple enough for non-arty kids to copy. Capturing the essence of zombie without using any complex drawing skills. It's a fun challenge :-)

Park photos

Alas poor Dominic is not feeling too great at the moment. He has the wretched teething plus blocked/runny nose combo which led to a rough night's sleep last night. He's never really has a cold before so I'm finding it quite stressful as he seemed to think it's my fault for not fixing his leaky nose problem.

I have learnt a few things about toddlers with blocked noses.

1. Small children do not like having their noses wiped no matter how gentle you are or how soft the tissue. Dom now runs away if he sees me coming towards him with a tissue so I have to hide it and sneakily pounce on him to get any wiping done. He also decided to try to sabotage the tissue supply by grabbing the box and shredding as many tissues as possible when I foolishly left the box lying around in the lounge.

2. The Plunket recommended solution of using nose drops to clearout their nostrils is about as easily executed as giving a tablet to a stroppy cat. You don't realise how strong something relatively small can be until you try holding them went they really want to break free.

3. The preferred position to fall asleep in when a a young boy has a snuffly nose is slightly upright lying in the arms of Mum or Dad. This becomes very uncomfortable the parent after a while because a toddler is substanially heavier than a little baby.

4. There is a range of tastes and flavours in Pamol medicine. The last bottle we had was tasty, the current one, not so much.

5. Dom can quite effectively cover his mother in a sticky mess by spitting out yucky tasting medicine.

On a happier note, here are some photos of Dom at the nearby Kotuku Park playground:

 

Dominic enjoys a turn on the spinner.

Cruising in the driver's seat.

Poop! Poop! Forget about Toad. It's Dom, the terror of the highway!

A suspicious game of peekaboo.

Swings are a lot of fun.

Wheeee! Down the slide.

Of course, climbing back up the slide is even more fun.

Dom makes his way up onto the tower.

'I bet I could climb up this ladder...'

'Hmm, I wonder if Mum would approve of my climbing attempts. I have this strange feeling she might not somehow...'

Fake RPG Cover

Hix pointed out an interesting thread where people are taking random images, titles and quotes and putting them together to make fake RPG covers as a vehicle for learning about cover layout, how to use photoshop and so on. I decided to give it a go, but ended up using photos we've taken and making up a title of my own. So not really doing the same thing at all, but I did learn some more about photoshop :-)

He walks solo...

 

Mountain Revenge

Photoshopping

Debbie and I have been playing with photoshop a little to try to get the most out of photos before getting them printed out. A tweak or two with contrast, warming filter and such can make a small but noticeable difference :-)

Stoner Steve

Person: Stoner Steve Place: Under a bridge Weather: Rain Time: 10am The rain was lashing down onto the surface of the river creating endless ripples which spread for a moment before being bombarded by heavy drops, smashing them into pieces. Steve watched the surface of the water, entranced. His hands were numb with cold as the water dripped from his sodden jacket onto the ground. He was stoned again. He knew it would mean the end of his time at college, knew the drug test he had coming up would be his last, and he’d given in to temptation anyway. It was impossible to resist a cone of sticky buds, no matter what the consequences were. If he was offered a smoke, he took it. End of story. It really was the end of the story, too. When he was kicked out of school he’d be kicked out of home, and without a job or anywhere to go the bridge he was sheltering under was going to become his home. He sighed, feeling the weight of every bad decision he’d ever made pressing down on his shoulders. Why wait for the executioner’s axe to fall? Why walk willingly into that particular noose? Better to end it on his own terms. Steve stepped to the river’s edge and took a deep breath. He couldn’t swim, which would make things simpler. Even if he had second thoughts it wouldn’t help. He jumped.

A walk on a bridge