Fun and profit

Dave pointed out:
For you, the last line should read, "but I collect and post pictures of nude women for work."

Yeah, it's funny what the world will pay for. Some of the richest people play sports with other people watching them!

Disturbed - Liberate (your mind)

Find a color

Pretty cool, and must have a use: find photos of a certain color.
If you click on more colors, it combines them.
Using the same colour more than once increases its prominence in your search results.

(Click a picture to see it in Flickr.)

... Hey, I just thought of a use: to find ideas for paintings! I often start with colors I want to use. So in the example below, I felt like making a painting using brown, red, and beige. So I can find a composition to be inspired by. (Obviously not plagiarizing a photo.)


Oooh, another use: a designer wants a picture to match the colors in a web page or magazine page. He can find one here, and then offer to buy use of it.

I, a luddite

(No, not me.) A luddite cries out, article.

A Scam?

My phone rang, and a polite woman asked to speak to "the owner". I said that was me. She said she called from some company name I don't recall. And then she said she was calling "regarding the bill I'd received in April, from the council". I said "I'm not sure what you're talking about". And she hung up, not a word of explanation or even goodbye.
That has to have been some kind of scam.

Snowcanopy

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Nikon D90 with kit zoom lens, 1/15 second (the lens has Vibration Reduction), ISO 1250.
Surprisingly to me, virtually no image processing in computer.

Your force field

The whole progress of an artist, I guess, is to learn what your gravity is, what your language is, what your force field is, how you can draw others in to see as you see, rather than giving in and seeing as others see.
- Melinda Gebbie, colaborator with Alan Moore on Lost Girls

That's very smart. It is so tricky to learn to "draw good" that in the process one can easily lose sight of the fact that there are other ways to see things than the Great Average.

Comics?

How come comics are selling only a tiny percentage of what pure text is? They should be much more popular, given that you have the communication power of text, plus the communication power of images.

I speculate that the issue is that you don't get that power without a proportional increase in complexity, and very few creators (if any) can really harness that. I've been studying comics all my life, thinking about how to make them, and sometimes making them, and I think I've barely scratched the surface. And that's just understanding the principles, not even acquiring the skills necessary to make them!

The F16

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by. The F-16 jockey decided to show off.

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, 'watch this!' and promptly Went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished With a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot Asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?

The C-130 pilot said, 'That was impressive, but watch this!' The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 Pilot came back on and said: 'What did you think of that?' Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, 'What the heck did you do?' The C-130 pilot chuckled. 'I stood up, stretched my legs, walked To the back, went to the bathroom, then got a cup of coffee and a Cinnamon bun.'

When you are young & foolish - speed & flash may seem a good thing.
When you get older & smarter - comfort & dull is not such a bad thing.

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It speaks to youth because they can laugh at how lame old folks are. And to seniors because they can laugh at how wise they are.
For me, I'm barely middle-aged, but I've been on the Comfort side of things since I was about 10.

fuel expenses

I just found out I have significantly reduces my electricity/heating bill since last year. I did it by changing to a better provider, and keeing an eye on where I wasted.

It was not an expense which threatened my budget, but the savings still make me happy, since they were accomplished without any compromise to my comfort. So that's "free money" which can go to some fun or towards a rainy day, or for a gift to family.

Starry Night

Starry Night made from photo mosaic.

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Blondie: Slow Motion

I remember seeing Debbie Harrie on TV for the first time (1977 maybe). I was thunderstruck. My older brother and mom half-teased me: "I'd like to know what you're type of girl is." I said, "well, her! Duh."
I think the song we saw was Heart of Glass:



... It would fit, she is frigging gorgeous in this one.

I always saw Blondie as the closest thing to the model band for the band Frozen Gold in Iain Banks' woderful novel Espedair Street.

Blondie was disbanded between 1982 and 1997. They came together because interest had grown. Their albums since then, No Exit and The Curse Of Blondie, are surprisingly nice. (Funny enough, both titles can be interpreted as meaning the band members had tried to get rid of/out of Blondie, but just can't. I wonder.)