Have we done anything productive today?

[Mr Peter Harrow, Esq]

I post off of my iPhone which does not like Photobucket.

I got a cheap 'Charlie The Chameleon" Toy (similar to those damn singing fish) I filled and retextured the screw holes and joins, painted it by hand in the Veiled Chameleon pattern (its original coloration unrealistic), added faux foliage, created a new base for it, built a display case from four cheap photoframes, got a brass plate with both common and Latin name. Looks like a good stuffed specimen, but you can trigger it with an IR remote control and it talks, sings and moves its head, jaws and eyes.   As I have genuine stuffed specimens, it sits nicely with those although I intend to give guests a surprise.

[rovingjack]

I finished re decorating the living room. I have two housemates, one is a man in his late twenties who believes he's a 'masculine'. The other is finishing her first month here. She's in her mid twenties... and likes hello kitty. I am amused by hello kitty, and am secure enough in my masculinity to not be bothered by it and have fun with goofing around. So I got some things together and this past weekend while he was up north I redid the living room as hello kitty as I could with our budget.

Much of it I made myself. Two wall scrolls of hello kitty, two hand painted frames with hello kitty posters made by me from online images edited and printed.  Hello kitty throws over the furinture. I bought some wall decals of a fairy hello kitty and butterflies. She has a hello kitty plush, and a hello kitty lamp. I made a paper craft hello kitty. I also designed the pattern for a hello kitty wall clock. I cut it out with a scroll saw, wood burned the lines in a d painted it, then set the mechanism in place and hung it on the wall. If I'd had more time and money the curtains would be pink, there would be a pink butterfly throw rug, and I'd have made hello kitty slip covers for the furniture, and I'd have made a hello kitty light fixture to replace the dome light in the ceiling.

Oh and I wouldn't mind making a hello kitty themed faux stained glass for the window with a hello kitty paper blind for the other window.

yes I am evil, and yes it is fun.

[LizerSparkes]

Spent the better part of the day trying to get my almost-brand-new laptop to recognize when it has devices plugged into its USB ports.  Failed epicly, which just ticks me off, as it was working just fine when I went to bed.  Anyone know anything about fixing computers?

[karoshi]

Spent the better part of the day trying to get my almost-brand-new laptop to recognize when it has devices plugged into its USB ports.  Failed epicly, which just ticks me off, as it was working just fine when I went to bed.  Anyone know anything about fixing computers?

probably not the case but was the laptop on battery power rather than on the mains charger? if so was the battery low and do the OS power saving options turn off the usb headers?

have you checked / reinstalled the usb header drivers? failing that main chipset drivers from the laptop's manufacturer website?

...

was slightly productive yesterday in a retail fashion, borrowed my father's macro card and stocked up on what i conservatively estimate to be 9 months worth of washing machine tablets and over a year's worth of dishwasher tablets.. the saving made in buying these items in quantity might be miniscule, but it allows me to feel that somehow I've got one over on the Revenue

[Capt. Dirigible]

Well I've just had to ring a debt collection agency and tell them that the person to whom they sent the  letter last week  (threatening court action  over non payment of a credit card bill) doesn't live (and never has lived) at my address!! No wonder my credit rating is so low!! I couldn't work out that why I had such a crap credit rating! Turns out someone else has used my address..or at least my address has somehow been attached to their bank details! And they now owe nearly £5,000.

[Arkwright]

Today I decided to back a film made by a complete stranger in a foriegn country.

I think that is what is called an act or random kindness.

Arkwright

[Captain Shipton Bellinger]

Planed and trued up some nice beech wood.

Got the major bandsaw out and cut blanks for the first batch of this season's mediæval stock.

Memsahib got the fretsaw out and did rough shaping.

Later will be minor bandsaw, drill press and bench sanders before final shaping and sanding by hand.

Time to start filling the 'garden waste' bin with wood shavings and sawdust again. 

Today I decided to back a film made by a complete stranger in a foriegn country.

I think that is what is called an act or random kindness.

It could also be called ... something far less complimentary.

What prompted your selfless philanthropy?

[Arkwright]

It could also be called ... something far less complimentary.

What prompted your selfless philanthropy?

I have made no secret of the fact that I would like to make a film, but do not have the means to do so. Across the big pond is a man with the know how, experience, vision, equipment and crew to make a film, but needs to raise the money.

In our modern cynical age, there is a tendency to look at those with the opportinuty of doing something we'd like to do and saying "It's not fair. Why should they ... when I can't. I never had the breaks" and so on.

But I don't think that such an attitude is either seemly or right. So I decided to put my money where my mouth was and support someone who is, at the end of the day, having a go at what many of us want to do and would like to see happen.

I haven't pledged a fortune. I don't have a fortune. If I did, I would probably be making films myself.

So I have stood up to be counted. I can't do much, but I will do what I can to help. Somebody is doing something creative and I would like to see him succeed.  Isn't that the spirit of steampunk?

TTFN

Arkwright

[Sum in Ona]

I convinced my mother today that making the coat of Adele Blanc-Sec (the one she wears on the cover of the casterman edition of Adele et la bête or the green one she wears with the feathered scarf in the same volume) would actually be a pretty good idea
for both of the options are both victorian and still wearable when not wanting to seem victorian

[Argus Fairbrass]

Well I finished Castlevania Lord Of Shadows today   um.......that probably doesn't count does it.

I'll get my coat 

[James Harrison]

I've started to write one of my essays.  It's an architectural history one on.... *drum roll* The Development of the Gothic Revival.  

So I've started in the 1760s talking about the ideas of the Picturesque movement and the Picturesque landscape garden, social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution 'upsetting' the aristocracy, who not only largely lived in homes constructed of the ruins of Medieval monasteries but also were keen antiquarians, the European wars of the era bringing a halt to the 'Grand Tour' of Europe and the consequent change to the 'British Tour' with the discovery that 'hey, our ruins are just as grand as those in Rome', the idea that a Picturesque garden *had* to have a ruin of some description to be Picturesque, the follow-on idea that Gothic in itself was seen as base and grotesque but then stretching the idea of 'beauty' to include emotions, thus making them beautiful by association and the growing literary taste for gloom, horror and decay.  

That's taken up about 600 words.  I have 2,200 maximum to play with to talk about not only that, but also how it developed.  So I have to talk about how it developed from a style for follies and garden pavillions to something viewed suitable to 'bolt-on' to Classical buildings.... which is basically what Strawberry Hill is, then talk about how it further evolved from that to a more scholarly approach, led notably by Pugin, and the growth in depth of understanding that took the style from something of an oddity or plaything for the idle rich to rediscovering how the style worked structurally and then talking about how by the mid-Victorian period it had evolved from this lasseiz-faire playful, barely understood style admired only by Romantics and antiquarians to a national ideal.  

A big ask, I feel.  I'd need about 5 or 6,000 words to properly do justice to it.  

-EDIT-

My word; just noticed the number of errors that managed to creep in!  See, the subject gets me so fired up I have an excess of energy and thus fingers move faster than brain.  I've stopped writing for a while to calm myself down 

[AlandraD]

I made a coffee-mocha-milk-sugar-peanut butter version of a Caf-Pow! I shall now consume it and start my fat ol steambot cross stitch while watching overly dramatic australian teen scifi shows. (The drink is the same size as Abby's)

[ForestB]

I rescued my sewing area from entropy(for now).. Next I need to deal with the remainder of the bits and pieces that didn't belong in said area, but also don't belong all over the floor...

[LizerSparkes]

Recovered most of the files from doing a factory restore to Shadowmaru, which was only done in an attempt to fix the USB port issue... and which, like everything else I've tried, including checking and downloading chipsets and drivers, has failed.  I am thinking I may very well have to call tech support on this one... *Sigh*

oh, and started on a response to Socrates' comments for a class later today.  Procrastinate much? Yup. frustration? Abounds.

[Wormster]

Finally.................Finally..................I can sign off the dole............an interview that I went for yesterday has paid off.............I have a job.....................whoop, whoop, whoop!!!

[Sir A Poiselamppe]

Finally.................Finally..................I can sign off the dole............an interview that I went for yesterday has paid off.............I have a job.....................whoop, whoop, whoop!!!

Congratulations...

[karoshi]

Finally.................Finally..................I can sign off the dole............an interview that I went for yesterday has paid off.............I have a job.....................whoop, whoop, whoop!!!

nice one, congratulations!

Recovered most of the files from doing a factory restore to Shadowmaru, which was only done in an attempt to fix the USB port issue... and which, like everything else I've tried, including checking and downloading chipsets and drivers, has failed.  I am thinking I may very well have to call tech support on this one... *Sigh*

don't know what OS you're on so not sure how it'd show up but if the usb headers are showing as installed and ready with no conflicts or issues, are you able to ascertain what type of usb peripheral isn't working.. mainly, are all the things you've tried along the lines of memory sticks, mice or keyboards that need to take power off the usb connection? do you have anything that you could try that provides it's own mains power.. like a usb printer or scanner?

I had it on my previous desktop system that (~5volt?) line part of the PSU that feeds the USB headers had fried and therefore none of the usb headers were able to provide power to peripherals.. if you don't have a self powering usb peripheral you can check this with a multimeter set to measure DCVoltage, with the system on the two outer pins of the 4 in a usb socket should measure at or around 5volts (pin1 is positive, pin4 is ground).

oh, and started on a response to Socrates' comments for a class later today.  Procrastinate much? Yup. frustration? Abounds.

"All we are is dust in the wind, dude.." *air guitar*

[GarethG]

Finally.................Finally..................I can sign off the dole............an interview that I went for yesterday has paid off.............I have a job.....................whoop, whoop, whoop!!!

Congratulations! Might I inquire as to what the employment entails?

Today, I sleep-tested my new mattress, which I took delivery of this morning.


That's productive, isn't it?


I'll get my coat.

Gareth

[James Harrison]

Wrote another approx. 1500 words for my essay.  I've gotten as far as to mention Pugin.  So what I still have to talk about is:

-Pugin, his early work copying Medieval details and why they are important (basically because they allowed architects to have a ready source of accurate Gothic details to hand and thus improved the historical accuracy of their own works and by extension the body of work produced in the Revival)
-Pugin, his works at the Houses of Parliament and churches, leading onto....
-The Camden Ecclesiatological Society and the revival of English Catholicism (as a part of a wider revival of Medievalism going back to the 1700s)
-Pugin's influence on succeeding architects (whether by virtue of his writings or works)
-Other architect's works leading the Revival into the High Victorian style.

-And then conclude it.

I have 200 words to play with at this point.  I can see this being one of those essays where the first draft is just 'absolutely everything I know about the Gothic Revival, why it happened and what influenced it 1700-1860', then successively pulling it back to actually answer the question, which is "Discuss the reasons for the revival of Gothic architecture in nineteenth-century England, and the ways in which it developed".   

[Sir Nikolas Vendigroth]

Have we done anything productive today?

No. No I have not, and it feels wonderful.

Lit review in yesterday, bam. "Three references only" my peers said. The fools. You can't get away with that at this stage. You need to show evidence of further reading and commitment to your work.

And that's why I submitted a hand-written illumunated manuscript on vellum yesterday. With a lot more than 3 references. 'Cos I may not be particularly bright, but I'm not stupid, and 3 references just isn't going to cut it.

So now I'm having a day off. Har.

[Jeremiah Pauers]

Got my taxes taken care of, renewed the license plate for my car, and ordered the parts for my new computer.

I feel like that's a good extent of productivity until the parts come in.

[Sum in Ona]

glued my hat and made my first gun.. which looks like.. well... crap.. anyways..

[darkshines]

I had a good day today. I handed in my notice at work yesterday and it is the first night since October I have gone to sleep before midnight, slept through AND not had nightmares. I put on make up and a pretty dress for work, and only spoke positively all day. I truely feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders

[ForestB]

I had a good day today. I handed in my notice at work yesterday and it is the first night since October I have gone to sleep before midnight, slept through AND not had nightmares. I put on make up and a pretty dress for work, and only spoke positively all day. I truely feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders

I remember when I quit my nightmare job- I had an ear infection that was into the second course of antibiotics, and when  I announced I was giving my notice, my ear popped, then cleared up and gave me no trouble for a long time after that... sometimes you have to do things for your health and sanity... I'm glad you are feeling better already!

Today I researched cheaper cell phone plans, bought a battery for the dog's invisible fence collar, and made homemade whole wheat pasta.

[Mercury Wells]

Re:- Pugin

The houses built in the suburbs between the wars, weren't they based on Pugin's work in some way?