• I’ve had couple of suspicious goings on on my website this year then, on Monday, Damian Harvey emailed me to let me know my site had been hacked. The homepage showed some juvenile nonsense obviously put togehter by some spotty youth with nothing better to do with his life.

    I sorted it out, but soon he was back even though I had changed passwords, which meant that he had to have a backdoor into my site. I feel I can’t trust anything on my site, so I’ve wiped it clean and I’m rebuilding it with new clean files.

    If he gets in easly again, then I suspecvt my ISP has a back door to my site and I’ll be very cheesed off.

    It’s such a waste of time and makes me realise how vulnerable the net really is. We are putting the whole of western civilisation into a monoculture that will eventually be so prone to a virus thaat will spread through the net wiping out site after site – a sort of swine flu of the net. If it happens, we are stuffed! I give it two years.

  • I had a great day yesterday at John Wycliffe Primary in Lutterworth near Leicester.

    We were doing character and story ideas with KS1. We came up with a very funny idea for guinea pigs at the olympics, how the Giraffe got his long neck and a very bizzarre idea involving eyeballs with arms and legs!

    Later I visited the Library for a story session. Lutterworth are due to get a new Library in the Peugot Showroom in the Autumn, so they were busy planning the move.

    Thanks everyone for a great day and thatnks for all your drawings and models – I came away with an armful!

  • I’ve been so enjoying my pond this summer. There are masses of tadpoles. As I look out of my studio window, the surface shimmers as the pop to the surface for a mouthful of air. I got a picture of one breathing, below.

    tadpoleplus

    I love the way they turn belly up to breathe. Also on this picture is something new and unidentified. If I get to close is spirals down to the bottom of the pond at great speed – it then floats back up to the surface just a s fast. It’s hard to see by eye, but from the blown-up picture it looks like it has a springy tail.

    tadpoles1

    This lot look happy enough. There are shrimps or lice (not sure which) and a snail or two.

    The pond attracts other wildlife, some of which like to see what I’m up to. This large red Damsel Fly came into the studio yesterday to have a look around.Â

    largereddamsel