Since I met Kev, Hallowe’en has become much more important than it ever used to be. Out in the wild depths of Dorset we didn’t make Jack o’ Lanterns. In fact, I’d never made one until 2005, when we killed Kenny. This year I did the pumpkin carving on my own, which rather took some of the fun out of it, but I’m pretty happy with how it came out. Photos are a little fuzzy – Kev’s got the good camera with him – but so it goes.

The tools

The Pattern
Nicked, shamelessly, from the cover of Neil’s Graveyard Book.

Transferring the pattern

Starting the carve

The finished thing… with the lights on

And with the lights off

And, if you’re still unsure wtf it is:

Been ages since I’ve joined in with a silly meme, so here goes. From WhatIFoundThere, the Dadaist rock band album cover meme:

Instructions:

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr’s Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days any nice appropriately Creative Commons licensed photo* will be your album cover.
4. Use your graphics programme of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

Photo by studebaker2008.

The full quote was:

“We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package. It’s a messy business, life. It’s hard to figure–full of surprises. Some good. Some bad.”
Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991

What amuses me about this meme is that many of the resulting album covers are far better and more interesting that a lot of real ones. But we really need an Dadaist album cover builder (akin to the LOLcat builder) for the real fun to start.

* You’ll note I changed the photo source. When I looked, most of the “Most Interesting” photos on Flickr are ‘All Rights Reserved’, and as someone who champions openness and sharing online, I have to also respect the wishes of those creators – especially photographers – who do not want to share. I don’t always get it right, but I always try, so rather than just pick the third photo on the most interesting page, I found a nice Creative Commons licensed photo instead.

It’s disappointing to see that Flickr hasn’t really done much else with Creative Commons except produce a rather clunky search page. I’d like to see them do a much more refined CC search, so that one can search across CC licence types. They should also apply the ‘most interesting’ algorithm to CC photos, so that we can see the best of the open photos. I’m sure there’s a lot more imaginative stuff that could be done, but it’s a shame to see Flickr not even doing the basics.

Just thought you'd like to know that the pictures I took during my trip to DC are now up on Flickr. Lots of the snow, and lots of the zoo, and several of the zoo in the snow.

Kate and I have finally taken some photos of the jewellery I made (with her assistance) on the weekend. They don't really do the glass justice, so when I get back to Dorset I might well have a stab at doing some more.

Kate's jewellery really is gorgeous – if you want to buy some from her (and it's all for sale) then drop her a line. She'll even do you a custom-made piece if you'd like.

Ed: Any zombies out there?
Shaun: Don't say that.
Ed: What?
Shaun: That.
Ed: What?
Shaun: That! The Z-word. Don't say it.
Ed: Why not?
Shaun: Because it's ridiculous.
Ed: Alright. Are there any out there though?

The story goes, and I think it was Jonas who told me this, that the guy who built the Sutro Tower made it look the way it looks because he liked the idea of the Devil looking down on San Francisco. Get it from the right angle, and you can certainly see Satan.
Anyway, more pics on Flickr.

Some fantastic photos of a tornado in Bunbury, Western Australia. (Via Cam.)
UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter who pointed out that these photos are part of a set that's been doing the rounds on email/blogs for a while. Wherever they come from, they are fantastic photos.

Came across the most fantastic set of pictures on Flickr today of Macs with 'transparent screens'. Some of them just look amazing, particularly this gorgeous one of a cat:

So, me being me, I had to have a stab at doing my own. It's not brilliant, because I was running out of battery on my camera and I have those nasty lines on my Tibook screen to contend with, but it's mine and I did it:

Mae Nic wedi dechrau defnyddio Flickr, ac mae popeth yn y Gymraeg. Lluniau neis iawn, Nic. Diolch am rannu!
Ond… Dw i newydd gweld oedd Nic yn arfer byw yn Cathays Terrace, c. 93. O'n i'n arfer byw yn Cathays Terrace, c. 93, hefyd. Spŵci.
cymraeg

OK, crappy photo, but it was a dimly lit auditorium and I wasn't exactly right under their noses. There was someone there taking proper photos, so maybe they will appear on the ScriptFactory's site or somewhere.

I signed up for a Flickr account ages ago – before I'd even moved CnV from Blog-City to Blogware so it must have been early March – but although I've been signed up for months, it's taken me until now to start uploading photos. The impetus was wanting to post photos from last weekend's drinks with Joi, Cory, Tom and a raft of other lovely people, but not really wanting to blog about it all.
Anyway, I have to say that now I've used it, I really like Flickr. It's easy to upload and tag photos, it's fun when people leave comments on them, and because Flickr doesn't require any standard file size or anything, I don't have to resize in Photoshop. I just maybe crop and tweak.
It's also easy to see what other people are uploading and to explore their photo albums. Plus, you have an RSS and an Atom feed, and I think the pro version does even more than the free one. So yes, I'm a convert.
So, finally, I've started to upload my photos from Vienna and BlogTalk2 for your delight and pleasure. Enjoy!