You may be wondering what is going on with this blog since I haven’t posted for a while.
Essentially, moving abroad takes a bit of time 
. I will probably get round to writing or finishing a post at some point but I don’t currently have my own fixed Internet connection. Right now I am typing this on my iPad in a library in Denmark.
Happy new year to those who are still subscribed!
Today I took a few photos but nothing different enough to the earlier images. Instead I dug out a photo from July and did some editing with Snapseed, a handy but fairly limited photo editor which has Nik’s control point technology for local adjustments.
The subject is a glasswinged butterfly in Chester zoo. It was a couple of weeks after I had purchased my macro lens and my first encounter with an interesting stationary insect.
This coming week I won’t be posting every day. I will try to write something but I don’t intend to subject myself to a daily posting schedule just yet. I’d like to write something about my quest for a new mobile phone and perhaps a discussion on creativity and procrastination, but we shall see if I can avoid the latter ;~p.
I am back at home for the weekend, and whoever planned the tree planting around here in the 1980s certainly designed a colourful autumn show for us.
It was tough to think of what to do today. Fridays are always tiring and involve a rush to get things finished before the weekend, then a 3 hour trip from Hinxton to home. This image is of the last thing I see before my Friday night slumber (no, my vision is not that bad, I just thought I’d deliberately not focus so you can’t really tell what it is). Continue reading
I really don’t like the piece I uploaded yesterday. At the time I felt like I was unlikely to think of anything more interesting to draw, so I just doodled a bit. One of the reasons for this ‘week of images’ is to force myself to create something every day. It doesn’t have to be something I think of as great, but the more time I put in, the more rewarding it is.
I wanted to draw a “thing” today. I tried to draw my iPod using just 2 colours, but that was a little dull. So I skimmed through the photos on my iPad and was inspired to try a mushroom and continue with Monday’s theme of smallish natural objects. This was a chance to practice using the brushes and smudge tool in my favourite drawing app, Procreate. I don’t feel it’s quite finished, but it might be interesting to come back in the future and improve things.
Working as a programmer involves thinking at multiple levels of abstraction. You might be coding a web application, but at any one point it could be data modelling, presentational markup or low level architecture changes. Sometimes it is hard to think of something to draw or photograph. It shouldn’t have to be a real or obvious subject all the time. Therefore I just let my stylus wander and this is what came out.
Today it’s a photo. I sometimes like the play of light on elements of architecture. This is from one of the cafeterias where I work. A brief glint of sunlight came through the window after a short rain shower.
This week I’ll be trying something slightly different — I will post an image made each day — either a photo or a sketch. The only limit is that it is created or uploaded with my iPad.
Here I am, a little over one year since I started writing journal posts every two weeks (or so). Recently my tempo has dwindled thanks to working full-time. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop, just that with only so many hours available each day I can’t always do everything.
At the moment I am living in Cambridge for 5 nights a week. I commute by bike, which takes about an hour each way including a shower and getting changed at the work end. When I get back after working I brew a mug of tea and spend a bit of time cooking and washing up. Once or twice a week my evening commute is diverted via a shop to stock up. By the time I sit down at the computer (my old laptop — not a fun machine to work on) it’s often 20.30 and I spend the a while surfing the web. Afterwards I am pretty much exhausted for the day and all I want to do is watch a TV episode or go to bed with a book. And so the cycle goes on…
It’s nice to be working again, but I forgot how much your free time becomes valuable. The weekends, previously a time to continue with all my hobbies and interests, have become a time to recover and basically avoid sitting behind a computer. My wrists and eyes are not fond of being parked at a desk for so many hours of the day, yet that is what I subject them to.
Moving forward I hope to catch up with some of my draft posts. I don’t know who reads this (especially when I write too much in one go) but I shall continue and strive to come up with new things to write about and perhaps manage shorter, weekly posts.
Things have been quite busy lately; it seems impossible to relax when you have too much time on your hands.
Tomorrow I’m starting a contract that fills the rest of the year. I’ll be working near Cambridge and staying there during the week. Hopefully the early winter will not be as bad as last year as I am hoping to do most of my commuting by bike.
This week I’m going to be revising Java, algorithms and data structures during my free evenings. I have a day of interviews coming up at a large software company, and it’s wise to be familiar with a lot of the first year computer science material.
I’ll be using a mobile hotspot for my internet during the week. So far it’s proven faster (on upload) than standard ADSL so I may write up my experiences in the next few weeks.