Category: Personal History

Interview Success
by Kimliatach

Daily

Got all dressed up for my suitability interview this morning. Silly me I forgot to take a selfie. Interview went well, felt like I impressed. Who knows how long until I get the formal response, Queensland ed took almost three months.

Creative

Carpentry is not my strong suit. I set about making handles for the chook tractor today. I am almost complete except that I am so unhappy with how one half turned out that I am going to do it again tomorrow. Some video of build captured so I’ll have a crack at editing that together when I’m done. Painting again tonight, not much achieved last night.

 

Link

First dog on the budget by our gormless and frankly disreputable government:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2016/may/03/if-this-budget-was-a-tomato-in-a-shop-you-would-leave-it-there-it-is-a-bad-tomato

Monday 2nd
by Kimliatach

Daily

Roving non contact relief, five classes in one day. Almost a high school experience if two of them hadn’t been from the junior school.

Waiting on infant bedtimes to get our GoT on.

Preparing for my interview in the morning and making packing lists for the adventure only 14 days out now. 

Creative

Next to nothing done last night. Noble aims of at least an hours painting or illustrating tonight.

Link

There was a press like this at the auction weekend before last. It went rather cheaply really. I fancied it, not that I would put it to any other use but squashing things.

 

 

 

Vlog1
by Kimliatach

Daily

First attempt at ‘Vlogging’.

A day trip to the farm for L’s birthday. My apologies for the dodgy wind audio in some clips, I’ll figure out how to remove that in Auditions at some point. This five and half minute, two hundred meg video took nearly an hour to upload. I guess I cant make to much of a habit of this which is a shame as it is quite fun.

 

https://youtu.be/ea8nK72RBEI

 

 

 

Had a lovely day celebrating L

L is 4 today, Hooray! #birthdayboy

A photo posted by @liatach on

Back to work tomorrow and readings to do tonight for an important interview Tuesday. 

 

 

 

 

Lovely work by Paul Kelly care of American Songwriter

 

#bogeye #lizard safely sheparded across the highway. #reptile Tiliqua rugosa

A photo posted by @liatach on

#beetle rescued from drowning in a trough at the farm. #coleoptera #insect #macro

A photo posted by @liatach on

2 Daily
by Kimliatach

Daily post separated from my rant.

Yesterday I crashed hard. When the boys finally went down at nine thirty I climbed into bed as well. I have had a productive two days. Yesterday I painted for much of the day. Watched ‘Maru‘ on my second monitor. Made progress on the castle card and some scribblings for evolution cards. A little thought on the logo progression and a bit of tweaking on the first of a set of text and infographic political posters.

castle-progress-9

Progress is so slow on this card

 

Today I dealt with my bank to expunge fraudulent credit card purchases from my statement (new card issued no dramas). Tinkered in the back yard. De-nailed a bunch of reclaimed timber. Attached a saw guide to my circular saw and affixed the other saw to a piece of wood with the intention for it to act as the hinge in my saw table. Decided my saw table is too terrifying and as seemingly not a single piece of timber I have is square it will likely not cut straight anyway, I have decided against continuing that build for now. I’m going to go straight to the job I was making a saw table to help with instead. Making a better handle for lifting and moving the chook tractor before we have to pack it and the hens within off to the farm for the duration of our trip to Scotland.

I experimented with filming today, Ill try again when the larger new SD card I’ve now purchased for that camera arrives.

Tonight I’m focusing on finishing an evolution card and watching some tutorial videos from Feng Zhu.

Link

The more I read the more keen I am to see a real longitudinal experiment with a universal Basic Income. A good long form on the topic here.

 

 

 

Back in public
by Kimliatach

Daily

It’s good to be back in the public system, the difference in staff dynamics is subtle but significant. Today was a pupil free day and a great opportunity to get to know the local staff while completing cumbersome mandatory online training modules. I have another day in the state school tomorrow, likely with some time on class and a couple of days lined up at the Catholic next week. Tutoring was back in full swing today as well and kept me out of the house from 8 until 6:30. A long day by local standards.

Media

The first episode of GoT season 6 was quite the little ripper. Very nice to see them wrapping up loose ends from the books and forging wholly new story lines for others. There is really no telling how the story will play out now that the TV versions is freed from the books.

Started listening to ‘The Long Utopia‘ last night because ‘Religion for Atheists‘ error’d, hopefully repairably for me. I suspect this last Long Earth book is Pratchett only in name and is in fact wholly Baxter’s work but for preparatory conversations between the authors. But it is nice to have at least one more ‘Pratchett’ to listen to all the same. I have thus far greatly enjoyed and been frustrated by the long earth series. The concept has been well developed though I find the well realised consequences of humanities spread across the breadth of the parallel earths discovered on ‘step day’ quite sad. The very believable spread of the extractavist capitalist mindset into the infinite earths is quite upsetting. As exciting as the world they have written is, I’m glad it is just fantasy.

Politics

I have accepted that Sanders has lost his bid for the democratic candidacy. I don’t think that means he should just bow out though and articles like this make a very strong case for him staying in until the convention in June.

Create

As expected nothing much completed last night. Starting late but aiming for a sketched evolution card this evening.

Do doo d d doo d d doo
by Kimliatach

Daily

ANZAC march this morning. F was particularly impressed by the horses.

We went to the local ANZAC march and service this morning. In recent years I have been a bit disturbed at the subtle (or maybe not so subtle) shift towards ANZAC day as a celebration, rather than a commemoration, but there was none of that this morning. For me it has always been a pretty solemn occasion and I usually tear up for at least part of the time. I feel a great sadness that so many men and women sacrificed and were sacrificed, I feel for the families of those who served and never returned, and for those, like my great grandfather, who did return but were never again whole in mind or body, I feel sadness at the horror they witnessed, the horror they were required to commit and that which was committed against them. I am reminded right to my core that war is neither glorious or noble and above all else I think lest we forget.

A photo posted by Nadine (@nadinemmitchell) on

We had to leave the service as F became well at truly out of sorts. I think N has above expressed pretty succinctly our feelings on the ANZAC tradition.

Big day tomorrow, first day at the local public, mostly doing mandatory trainings I believe. Two client afternoon as well.

Finished listening to ‘What If‘ By Randall Munroe which was great fun but unfortunately read by Will Wheaton. As an actor and celebrity sometimes I really like him, as an audio book narrator he drives me bananas, not the first book I’ve listened to read by him, hopefully the last. Started listening to  ‘Religion for Atheists‘ By De Botton. I read and enjoyed about half of this as a library hire early last year, returned it unfished and overdue and am already glad to have picked it up again.

Create

I disassembled and cleaned one of the circular saws I bought for $2.50 each at auction. Began preparing pieces of ply and timber with which to fashion myself a temporary saw table.  In order to use the Skilsaw for this purpose I had to remove its blade guard, a benefit of having done this is that it will likely allow the 7 1/4″ saw to take a slightly larger blade.  At some point I plan to invest in a new saw and a Triton or similar saw table.

Speaking of Triton tools, I’m pretty happy to have scored an older model of this for $5

Last night I completed a terrain card sketch and retired early, as for tonight well, there is this thing I want to watch…

 

 

 

An awesome thing.

 

 

Auction
by Kimliatach

N’s uncle’s retirement shed auction today. A really amazing collection of tools and oddments auctioned off over about 6 hours.
I missed out on a couple of the key items I was hoping for, but I did grab a couple of bargains. My $35 haul below includes a portable saw horse vice, two circular saws one Black & Decker of pre logo update vintage and one Skilsaw (bundled for $5) a saw guide/mitre attachment an old wood plane in need of a sharpening and a set of traffic alert triangles for the car boot.

auction-haul

auction-haul1

I had my eye on a drill press, electric plane, board thicknesser, Angle grinder and a whole lot of Lego that went in a big lot with highly sought after tin toys all of which went for good prices beyond what I was allowing myself.

Creative

A lot of cut and pasting later the Spiderman pinata is ready to be beaten to a pulp tomorrow. I should have documented the build as I was pretty happy with the wheatpaste mix I made and the resulting mache has good structure.

 

pinata

I kind of doubt we will get this kind of response. But if we do I’m prepared to resort to brain surgery out of sight of the children to retrieve the sweets.

Working on the logo or the castle card tonight.

 

Edit: Should probably make mention that it is Earth Day. Not much of an event locally but still one of the more important such ‘events’ in the year.

 

Show Day
by Kimliatach

Two rather expensive and kind of socially required trips to the local show.

A rather impressive fire work display this evening.

Party preparations continue, paper mache this morning and honey joy’s baked this afternoon. Though I will need to make another bath of them tomorrow because ah yum…

Best in show. #chicken and clearly uncomfortable #duck highlights of the #Cobar show.

A photo posted by @liatach on


The boys rode expensive mini trains and L has his first ever show bag. L has been really getting into Gonoodle which is great.  Side effects include having had this mind worm stuck in my head all day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pW5_ZfAkt0

Link

Speaking of paper mache, I found this incredible paper mache dragon blog while looking for something today. I am pretty sure I had a book by him as a child, Gremlins, Gargoyles, Goblins or something.

A Run
by Kimliatach


Spent the afternoon completing online mind numbing mandatory trainings all built around some descendant of Adobe Shockwave player. All using a chuck by chunk page reveal that assumes a pretty mediocre reading speed. All of which could have been done by jumping straight to the assessment were it allowed. I am now certified for the NSW education departments own brands of WHS, Emergency first aid theory and Anaphylaxis management.

In part in inspired by the brilliant transformation N’s very old friend KT has undergone in recent years I finally got off my arse and went for my very first run in many years this morning. Oh my aching calves.

4 weeks to go…a good point to reflect ?! Thistimeican.wordpress.com

A photo posted by KT Ridge (@ktmems) on

 Creative

Very productive Skype business meeting with the games creator ate into painting time last night. Back to it this evening.

Link

Quite touched by this remembrance of T Pratchett: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/

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.