Author: Kimliatach

Colossal
by Kimliatach

Daily

My firstborn’s eighteenth birthday today!

Spent a bit of time investigating possible group adventures to take on in Amsterdam later this year. After wading through more bicycle tour pages than I care to remember I was rather excited to discover that an exhibition of the deeply creepy Gunther Von Hagens‘ plastinated corpses are on display there.  I’m excited, I missed the travelling exhibition that came to Australia years ago.

I would also like to go and see this mural while I’m there as well as plenty of other attractions.

Links

I have today come to realise that ‘Colossal‘  host of the link above has become the absolute favourite in my feed lately.

By way of example of why take four links, favourites from their most recent posts as evidence of their superb collating abilities.

Enchanting Storybook GIFs Animated by ‘Sparrows’

tumblr_nk1ii98lVI1qgdvlco2_r1_540

A 360-Degree Black and White Drawing of a Japanese Landscape Inside an Inflatable Dome by Oscar Oiwa

New Rainbow-Hued Origami Street Art by Mademoiselle Maurice

Maurice_02

Theatrically Composed Scenes Highlight Human’s Impact on Earth

"Precipice" (2015)

Creative

Plodding away at the castle card. Plenty more to do. Progress:

castle-progress-7

Reading and Naps
by Kimliatach

Curriculum documents always make such somnambulic reading.

All but L had a lovely siesta and he contented himself with audiovisual entertainment care of ABC3.

Watched the only vaguely offensive ‘Hotel Transylvania‘ with the boys this evening. Not a memorable film, which apparently passed Bechdel but I blinked and missed it amidst the constant casual sexism.

A Good read on the origins of and problems with Neoliberalism. 

 

 

Curses
by Kimliatach

Thwarted again…

My giant Fresnel lens has a linear focal point.

It is better than the focal point on the previous lens I salvaged but not, as I had hoped a spot focal point. The frame and stand are finished and at some point I will attempt to remove the linear diffraction grooves and turn it into a spot lens using this method. As it is the lens would be great for solar cooking but that is not sufficient for what I have in mind. I should have taken some photos of the testing but it’s not like it was dramatic.

lensstand

The sun guide bracket is visible in this image. Basically a bracket perpendicular to the lens’s surface with a whole the shadow and bright spot from which allows alignment to the sun.

lensstand1

Salvaged timber throughout as usual.

 

Last day with visiting family members, nice barbecue and long talks. Four year immunisations for L, car registration transfer hurdles completed.

Ready to paint.

 

 

 

Magnification
by Kimliatach

Daily

Family tour of the farm, feeding cows, admiring the dogs exploring abandoned machinery piles.

Projects

Had an hour or two to build in this afternoon and knocked up a frame for my biggest Fresnel lens  Hoping to have a stand made tomorrow to test it with. The previous lens of this type I found didn’t have a tight round focal point and although I still own it it is unsuitable for my purposes. This one appears to have a round focal point. None I have yet found has the clarity I have seen others find online. though it is not as clear as I would like it to be. Again while making this I was practicing taking a shot for every single step of the process, right up until I forgot and did three or four things in quick succession without thinking. I think I need to film rather than photograph builds.  Stand and test run tomorrow. If I’m lucky this baby aught to be able to produce temperatures in excess of 1000ºC at focal point. 

lens

Painting again tonight. Decided I’ll push on with colouring even though principal line work is not 100%. It is easy enough to add detail layers over the top.  Progress:

castle-progress-6

 

Link

It takes him six minutes to get to the point but dammit if he doesn’t make it very well when he gets to it. I find FriendlyJordies caricatures strained but occasionally funny. As I understand it he lives in PM Turnbull’s own electorate so he has plenty of reasons to be angry.

 

Red dirt country
by Kimliatach

A walk to see first nation rock art with family and a little woodwork today. Collected another piece of the paperwork puzzle required for transferring a car registration from QLD to NSW this morning which involved the use of a surprisingly old mechanism.

Some painting yet in store this evening.

Interesting read about the failure of our present government to do well… much of anything.

No Surprises.

There is no future in deregulated capitalism.

 

Family
by Kimliatach

Another day cleaning and preparing for visiting family. My father and stepmother arrived safely in time for a good dinner with generous wine accompaniment of wine. Plenty of rich conversation and attention lavished on children.

A really great read relevant to my listening these past days found this afternoon.

Change in the Air
by Kimliatach

‘This changes everything’ is an astonishing book. Clearly a book I have been needing to read for some time. I’m at about 7 of 20 hours in and I am just blown away. No other document I have ever read about climate change has ever spoken so clearly about the hard realities of facing climate change, nor has any other document at the same time offered such reasonable hopes.

I don’t yet know what my response will be, it is very clear to me that I have become too complacent, too apathetic, too comforatable looking away. I will not ignore it any more, what I will do remains to be seen.

I write this five weeks before my family and I fly to the other side of the world, around Europe and back like the comfortable twenty percenters we are.

I am increasingly aware that global warming is not presently the headline issue it needs to be in both Australia’s and Americas elections this year. America at least has one potential candidate who is treating the issue with seriousness here in Australia neither of our majors want to talk about it and The Greens present marketing isn’t I’m sad to say, going to rock the status quo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxLwmGPMLJk

 

I just love rockstar statistician Hans Rosling have some more if you liked that one. Start with my favourite and the close second.

Build Complete

Finished my saw horses which involved almost a complete rebuild of the first. My joinery leaves a little to be desired, but they are solid, square and built to fit me. Nice and tall at almost 800mm high so I don’t have to bend over to much but also not so high that it is uncomfortable to brace a piece with a foot. I was keeping a build log but I abandoned it in a fit of pique at my carpentry ineptitude, I’ll persevere with the next project regardless. Thinking of trying to film it in fact. There is room in the design for a cross brace between the legs but it doesn’t appear necessary at the moment.

Saw-Horses

All timber scavenged from the tip, screws from my now dwindling collection.  Looking forward to using them in the next project.

Creative

No painting last night making up for it this evening, pressing on with the castle.

 

 

 

Blue Oysters
by Kimliatach

Daily

Lots of driving, a tip run which yielded a much more limited supply of timber than hoped and some more unsatisfactory carpentry. I didn’t finish the second sawhorse today. Borrowed an old saw and wood plane from the farm today hoping to achieve cleaner cuts. Instead although finer the saw cannot cut straight and the wood plane needs new handles, disassembly and sharpening before it can be used, reverted to my own tools and am facing the same assembly stability issues as on the first, at least I am not having to do it squatting on concrete though.

We are eyeing up the creation of a fence dividing the front from the back yard so we can allow our hens to free range more and stop our youngest F from bolting straight out the front to rattle the gate whenever he has his boots on. The hen house needs a better handle for moving it because at present the mover has to be very close to its wall which is awkward. The dump has again furnished me with the timber required for this modification. I find the tip a terribly depressing place it is all so wasteful, the wall of green waste which could be enriching the local parched soils, the mountain of mixed metals and the disgusting fly blown scree of plastic is disgusting and filthy in more ways than one.

Finished ‘Career of Evil‘ while taking a crowbar to palettes and crates at the tip. It stumped me in the end as with the others. I was about half way though by the time I got around to googling Blue Oyster Cult lyrics from which are used in every chapter heading and elsewhere throughout the book. I was half convinced they were fictional as if I have heard before I have no recollection of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdXfkkyI1nQ

Politic

Immediately began a book which has been on my need to listen list for months now ‘This Changes Everything‘ Naomi Klein. It is of course infuriating but very, very good. I downloaded it after reading this excerpt last year and have postponed or as she says ‘looked away’ since then.  I am self assessing my own political complacency in recent years already so we are of to a worthy start only an hour or two in.

Noticed that one of my former teachers and generally cool person Dr. Kristen Lyons has recently announced as The Greens federal candidate for Moreton. An area I have lived in repeatedly, getting the candidacy seems unlikely at this point but not impossible. As always I will be encouraging everyone I can in both left and right politics give their first preference to the greens or minor parties as I don’t believe either of the majors deserve the $2.50 in campaign finance a first preference is worth to them.

Creative

Began colouring the castle last night a little preemptively as the ink layer needs another pass. But it was cathardic to see such progress on a card that has taken such a long time already. Update picture soon.

Links

This lovely thing

Ma’agalim – Jane Bordeaux from Uri Lotan on Vimeo.

Thanks to this for reminding me that I haven’t touched my colouring project in a week or more.

 

Go home Hut. You are drunk.

A photo posted by @liatach on

Saw horsed
by Kimliatach

Wrecked my back making many of the final cuts for the saw horses in a half squat today. Lack of work outs over the past fortnight must also share the blame. As usual as soon as I allow muscle tone to slip my back starts twinging. Assembled the first sawhorse today but I am not calling it finished as once I have assembled the second using it in place of the low to the ground wood planks I used as a workbench for the first, I plan to disassemble the first and reconstruct it with more care to the tightness of leg joins. All in all I am quite pleased with the design I came up with. I just wish my woodworking skills had more finesse. Some better tools would help but only so far.

This guy I am not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_ZrISMO7iE

 

Attended a local and rather disappointing town street party and in violation of our rules we ended up spending close to fifty bucks on food and drinks.

Back to painting the castle again this evening.

 

 

 

Mass
by Kimliatach

Attended my first mass today. Church is church, they sang some songs, children fidgeted and ritual cannibalism was practiced.

What struck me though, was why is it that Australian churches are so ugly?

Maybe I’ve been listening to too much De Botton but the construction and layout of a space is very important to how we treat it and how we feel within it. Australian churches are from my admittedly limited experience overwhelmingly ugly.  Resembling as they so often do, municipal amenities buildings with ‘modern’ pipe framed steeples, or fiberboard 70’s spaceships dropped from considerable height. I have been in a generous estimate maybe fifteen Australian churches in my life and maybe to or three times that many elsewhere in the world. Perhaps my visits have not been characteristic but they are my anecdotal experience.

The Church I was in today is a lovely red brick classical nave with white crenelated turrets and a vaulted wooden ceiling. But… everything within it was shabby, kitch and often fake. Clearly the church has in the past had a wealthy and active congregation. These days however the impression is of hastily completed repairs and half measures, dodgy AC units sitting out of plumb on walls whose paint is marred by the cord marks and paint chips left by the removal of the previous and the the sagging conduit lazily tacked on to provide power. The tacky and now probably half a century old electric votive candle stand. The mishmash of Christ imagery. Here a screen printed British medieval madonna and child on a one piece vac formed plastic frame and canvas. There are poorly painted three quarter scale plaster of Christ offering benediction luridly painted but for his alabaster skin in a manner that recalls the recreation of how the Greek classical sculptures may have looked. The signs of the cross hung at uneven spacing around the hall. The whole set dish cast in waxy green/grey resin. All of left me kind of saddened at the state the building has been allowed to wallow into. Where is the glory?

true-colors-of-greek-statues-peplos-kore

 

It is not fair to compare the local church with far more impressive European equivalents many centuries older than the local but I still found the whole experience underwhelming. Compounded no doubt by having to repeatedly shush impatient and bored seven year olds around me.

I am looking forward to some days back in the secular system in term two. As grateful as I am for the work I’ve had and the days I’ve already locked in at the catholic for next term. I am very clear that religious education is not my home.

Creative

A reminder that the game I am working on as well as some others from the mind of Jack will be available for playtesting this weekend at this event. 

No creative output so far today other than designing a new art activity off the cuff in class this morning.  The plan called for colouring pre-printed .jpg artifact ridden grey mandalas during religion time. I had students draw their own by tracing around the edges of interesting shaped objects within the classroom in black marker to make mostly radially symmetrical patterns which they then coloured in. Some pretty results though I didn’t think to take photos unfortunately.

 

 

Juvenile #truebug with great #pareidolia on its back. 10mm #hermiptera #insect #macro

A photo posted by @liatach on