I’ve just download MacJournal, which is like a blog, but it’s personal on my computer and not for the internet. A diary I suppose. But I can have a journal open that connects to my internet blog at wordpress.
Sometimes I want to write something to get it off my chest, but I don’t want to share it with the world. also I’d like to have a more personal diary that works like a blog.
It appears that I can have it on Mobileme, so that I can use it from anywhere I like. I’ll look into that later – I’ve got a story to write in the meantime and I’m just putting off the inevitable moment. It will be interesting to see how it works… Im on a free trial
Oh… and here’s a drag and drop photo of autumn-ness that I reduced on screen by 25%.
I’ll just add a bit more text to see if WordPress wraps the text around the picture, so I know how to format things in future.
Actually I got this bit to work thanks to a posting here at 58twelve http://www.58twelve.com/?p=647
I’ve just downloaded wordpress 2.0 for iPhone. So far it seems to be a massive improvement.
I stopped using it before because it would often hang while sending the post to the server and then it would wipe the post I’d written.
Hmm! That seems a much happier experience!
The wonderful illustrator, Sarah McIntyre, has been watching my drawing school and has done her own version of my Rhino. I hope she doesn’t mind me putting it here.
Go and see Sarah’s website or better still, get her wonderful book, Morris the Mankiest Monster
I’ve been over to Whitchurch C of E School this week, to discuss a project we’ll be working on together. They have an unusual year five – there are only four girls in the class! This cohort has moved through the school years.
I met them recently when we did a story planning session. I’m going to work with them on how I can release Dark Claw as a Creative Commons project. I hope that we will produce a body of work that will be of interest and a template to inspire other schools and groups around the world to have a go themselves. I think there is a lot to be explored – a whole alternative universe in fact. It is a writing project, but we’ll be using all sorts of modelling and technology to make it more interesting and relevant.
I’m really looking forward to it. I normally meet groups of 30 to 600 for an hour and talk about me! This time I’ll get to see how individuals and a class work on something over time and will get to know the students too. Planning things with their teacher, Beth Stevens, I realised how much I don’t know about what goes on in the classroom over the week. I’m sure it will all come out in the wash and I’ll learn to pace myself and my expectations. Either way I think it’s going to be fun and VERY interesting!
Today I visitednnsworth Junior School in Gloucester.
We did lots of drawing as well as storytelling. I should heave taken some pictures of the drawings. I love the way everyone draws the same thing and yet all the pictures are so different according to the way each child sees what I show them to do.
sometimes little mistakes or misreading of my instructions can be really creatively interesting. The best bit is when We’ve finished and go on to Q&As. some children carry on drawing – adding stuff and expanding their drawings.
I encourage a light touch for the planning and underdrawing. Then I show how to press harder for the finished drawing on top. If this was ink then the under drawing can be rubbed out afterwards,
What’s interesting is that at the beginning there are lots of calls for erasers. I tell them they don’t need them – just keep drawing.. By the end everyone is drawing and erasers and rubbing out are forgotten.
One or two teachers joined in and seemed more pleased with their efforts that the children were with their own!
Thanks for a great Day, Innsworth.
I nearly crashed the car this morning. I was listening to the radio when a news article about carbon trading came on. The Friends of the Earth claim that Carbon trading is now being wrapped up into derivatives by the financial world, setting us up for another crash.
The Financial expert came on and, with a patronising tone, said the the FOE lady obviously didn’t understand the complexity of financial markest.
What! I yelled at the cows in the field. It’s the Financial experts who do not understand the the financial markets. They have made that very clear. If they had the slightest clue of what they were doing we would not be in the mess we are in now. It’s the financial experts that created the crash and the recession. They are driven by greed and care only to rob those who entrust their money to them.
As for the carbon trading scheme – What a scam! Could anyone think up a scheme more open to fraud? Well, maybe the old milk quotas were as bad – similar scam really.
Why do we put up with it?
If you voted for the Pink Car rally on blingmycoach.com last Friday, many thanks. The pink Car Rally won the competition and so will have a pink coach join the rally next year, raising funds for the Little Princess Trust, who provide real hair wigs to children suffering hair loss due to cancer treatement.
My latest Drawing School offering, follows a request from Tom Greenfield, who I met at Blundell’s School recently. I have drawn Rhinos before both in the Just So Story, How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin
It’s hard to decide what the drawing should look like. I suppose the cop out would be to promote Millie and Bombassa – maybe I’ll do that drawing lesson when the iphone app comes out.
Being asked to show how to draw something like a rhino makes me go and look at rhinos again. I think I often draw what I think a Rhino looks like, but when I really go into it, I realise what extraordinary things they are. Drawing a rhino as a rhino, i.e. without clothes on, makes me follow the lines and really understand that their heads are huge and that parts of their faces are not in the places that you might think they are.
There is nothing like observing and drawing to get to really understand how something works, otherwise we half look and make assumptions.
Sometimes I think I’m only now getting to grips with drawing. I suppose I’ll still be thinking that when I’m ninety two.
Is it just me or is the sound on the X Factor rubbish? The music is far too loud so that we can’t hear the singers.
When Dermot is introducing the programme the backing music is so loud and he is so far back in the mix that it is hard to hear what he’s saying.
Often, one of the acts does a duff performance and the judges think it’s brilliant. There is something going on in the studio that does not come across on the TV.
Stacey was so far back in the mix this week, I thought she was out of tunen most of the way through – I don’t think she was though.
Pumpkin 2009
The classic Pumpkin has eyes and teeth cut right through to the inside. But by carving shallow cuts into the flesh, more complicated patterns can be made. I did this with my little pocket Swiss army knife. I had to cut each swirl twice, a cut on each side of the line. Next year, I might see if I can get a better carving tool. and be a bit more adventurous.
The kind of pumpkin is important. Some have very thick skins and tough flesh inside. This one was nice – it had quite a soft skin and nice dark colour to contrast the light inside.
