Philosophical Musings - Part 2

Suddenly the world is full of meaning. A man yawns in the Mercedes next to me. What made him tired I wonder. Crossing the road, a mother pushes a baby in a pram. The baby kicks its feet with glee at the sight of a Golden Retriever. What brought on that joy? What does his future hold? His brain is a blank book with pages waiting to be written on.

As I bite into my organic Pink Lady apple, the cool crispness of it fills my mouth with a pleasant sensation. It is only 8 degrees outside, but the cool feeling on my lips and tongue thrill as they make me shiver.

I raise my eyes and look at the clouds above. How old is the sky? I see a palette of colours and shades. Shapes and forms come and go. A rabbit, a bear, a hand, a boat. Enormous structures made of nothing. Thick enough to block the sun, thin enough to let a plane pass through.

People are like clouds. They can be thick and strong enough to deflect and block the harshest of attacks. But sometimes they are pierced. Pierced through. Cut to the core. A simple word or a harsh act can destroy the calmest of hearts. With a landscape of flitting windblown grass, the mind can be stroked in many directions. Some good, some bad. Some positive, some negative.

We think that we control our mind. The reality is however, that we are controlled BY our mind. Our body is simply the puppet of the mind.

Dirty car art

Wow! I just read this news article on news.com.au and followed a link to this guys website and have been sitting here astounded at his artwork.

All of this is done on the back windows of dirty cars! Not on canvas or anything standard, but on dusty glass. Far out.

Here is a sample, here is the website for more: http://dirtycarart.com/index.html

Uh oh

It would appear that my laptop has DIED.

I feel like my arm has been cut off!

It powers up but the screen remains black and dead. I did a bit of a Google hunt on Mrs B's laptop and sure enough, it appears to be a common issue with HP laptops. Oh stink.

It is still under warranty though, so that is good, but we probably have to send it back to New Zealand to get fixed.

How long will that take?

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggghhh!!!!

Beach balls

Just read this on Fail Blog and did a pee pee I laughed so hard! Try and read it and keep a straight face...

Twittering away...

One of the latest internet fads is a little thing called Twitter. You may have heard of it. It is a little gizmo that lets you update everyone with mini updates as you move about your day. Being a geek, I have of course signed up. It is a bit like a mini blog that you can update via the web or from your mobile phone. I haven't got it set up on my phone yet, but all in good time.

On the right hand side of the page here is the little widget and you can see my updates from here and there.

We went up to a place called Upper Yarra Reservoir on Saturday. What a flippin' beautiful place. There was absolutely no-one else there and it was literally in the middle of nowhere. The reservoir is one of a network of dams that feed water into the city for us to drink.

Here are a couple of pics, e.mail me if you want the link to the rest of them:

And just to show how bad the water situation is here right now, this dam is at 38% capacity. The clay coloured area between the water and the trees is where the water normally covers. Yikes!

Slow news day?

This morning I was flickering through the news headlines and came across this article linked below. I laughed my head off when I read it. Check it out:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25350362-13762,00.html

My favourite line: "He (the husband) escaped prosecution because he was less noisy than his more enthusiastic wife." Read the article to figure out what that means, although you might have figured it out by now.

The other hard case thing? The partially deaf neighbours surname is BALL.

It reminded me of some friends of ours back in New Zealand who had to put up with the same problem from their neighbours!

Let it be a lesson to you all.

Photoshopping - Part 2

You might remember a while back I mentioned that I was learning how to use Photoshop. Well, I have been doing a bit of fiddling and learning. Thought I might share with you one of my works of art. First of all, here is the original pic:

And now the new and improved version!

Yes, I am still a weirdo. Some things never change.

Lazing on the long weekend

It is Easter Monday. It is 11:45 am. We are still in our pajamas. We are on to our third round of coffee.

Contented?

Yes.

Across the Sea

You are 18 year old girl
Who lives in a small city in Japan.
You met me at a meeting about one year ago
And you wanted to know all about me, and my hobbies
My favorite food and my birthday.
Why are you so far away from me?
I need help and you're way across the sea.
I could never touch you - I think it would be wrong.
But I've got your letter and you've got my song.

They don't make stationery like this where I'm from
So fragile, so refined.
So I sniff and I kiss your envelope and fall to little pieces every time.
I wonder what clothes you wear to work,
I wonder how you decorate your room,
I wonder how you comb your hair and curse myself for being across the sea.

When young I shaved my head and tried to be a monk.
I thought the older women would like me if I did.
You see, Ma, I'm a good little boy.
It's all your fault, Papa, it's all your fault.
Goddamn, this world is really lame,
I gotta live on an island to find the juice.
So you send me your love from all around the world,
As if I could live on words and dreams and a million screams
Oh, how I need a hand in mine to feel.

Why are you so far away from me?
I need help and you're way across the sea.
I could never touch you - I think it would be wrong.
But I've got your letter and you've got my song.

Photoshopping

I just love ambiguous titles.

I hear you wondering: "What is photoshopping?" "Is he shopping for photos?" "But its all one word not two words 'photo' and 'shopping' what could it be?"

Well, call off the hounds, the answer is simple. I am learning how to use the computer programme Photoshop. You may have heard of it. It is a program that you can sharpen, adjust and manipulate photos. You can also mix and mash photos to create amazing effects and build beautiful graphics for websites and printing.

All stuff I am interested in of course.

I present for your viewing pleasure my first bit of work. First of all here is the original pic of Mrs B:

And the rework:

This gives the pic a more grainy, colour / sepia feel. Makes it a bit more gritty. For the techheads out there, the pic has a high pass of 142.0 pixels and sheened with Hard Light.

Anyway, we are going coffee table shopping. We are sick of using a cardboard box.