Frog Brained

Blog. Blog. I had one of those someplac.. OH! Hello. I’ve been super lazy on the blogging huh? I don’t even have a good excuse, apart from some issues with templates. I found one I liked for the crafty section of this site, but since updating WP I don’t know if it’s the update or the template, but I can’t even log in. So meh to that. This is a new template as of today, because the other one was feeling too heavy. Someday I’ll customise, but don’t hold your breath.

Today Mum and I went over to Bulleen Art and Nursery to check out the gallery exhibition by the ceramics group my Aunt is a member of. You should totally go there and buy one of my Aunt’s chooks, because they’re basically awesome:

While you’re there, poke around the nursery, because amongst the plants and garden stuff, there’s wonderful art and sculptures like these sheeps or maybe goats:

Of course, I did happen to spot a frog or 16. I bought a froggy mug and bowl, as well as a jar of humbugs, but these fountains are gorgeous. Little overpriced for my means, sadly, but still something I would LOVE to own!

I spent an hour or so yesterday wandering my town with a camera, taking typical touristy shots in order to make Hurstbridge specific postcards (although apparently the Post Office sells them, trust me not to notice).  Part of the art of postcard photography is to hide the ugly and highlight the attractive. I would say, overall, my town is pretty much attractive. Like any town of course there’s eyesores such as the razor wire festooned train yards, the bloody hideous tennis courts (they used to be alright, but they’ve been resurfaced in neon blue - ugh).  Today I had intended to crack open my 6 pack of film and wander the city, but I woke to a grey blah sky and didn’t bother.  Melbourne is a great ol’town, but under rainy skies it tends to look a little bleak in places.

Here’s a fast sample of the sort of postcards I’m doing:

Yesterday was good sunshine, as you can see. I’m doing a range of these because I’ve recently begun PostCrossing, and people seem to like specific area cards. Nearly everything for sale locally is generic Melbourne which alright, but I like sending little bits of Hurstbridge around the place.

Postcrossing in itself has been interesting. As a newbie, I can have up to 5 cards “traveling” at any one time. When you ask for an address, you’re given a unique code to write on your postcard before you send it (obviously. After you send it would be quite the challenge). You mail the card and the site keeps track of when you  mailed it and how long it’s taking to get to who you sent it to. Once it arrives at the destination, the person who got the card enters in the code, the card is registered and then your address goes into the random pool for sending. There’s a complicated system in place to make sure everyone is roughly balanced on sent and received.  What I particularly like is that no one knows when there’s a card coming their way. When your address is given, there’s no notification. You don’t know a thing about it until the card lands at your house.

I’ve developed a recent interest in postcards, collecting vintage Aussie ones and now of course postcrossing ones. If you’re feeling a bit disconnected from your planet, try Postcrossing.

Yesterday I went into the city with Mum and Jan to see the Illuminated Manuscript exhibition at the State Library.  These are books from the days before movable type made mass production possible. These are page after page of minutely detailed decoration. Hundreds of pages hand written in the smallest writing, using only a quill, and decorated with the most elaborate and detailed borders and images. To think they were all done with quill and candelight is just mindblowing. I adored every minute of it, most especially the tiny books smaller than the palm of your hand, still highly detailed and beautiful. Even the choir books were decorated with care and detail, pages containing music on a 4 line staff with a corner taken by a boldly coloured painting. The colours, protected from the light by being inside books, were just as bright and breath taking as they would have been. One page, from a book illuminated in the 1500s, was brighter and clearer than you can get with acrylics today. The dyes used gave them a rich palatte. No wonder they chained books to the shelves, the value of a book was so high. You can see a few samples at this link, presumably until the exhibition is over.

Go me!

That is all.

This comic raises an interesting point. Some years ago when I was a mere newbie at the library, there was a big fuss made about the eBook revolution. A demonstration was held where we got to have a look at a chunk of plastic with a faux leather cover which opened to show a screen. The thing was about the dimensions of your basic phone book, and about three times as heavy. For a while, the library intended buying a few of these per branch and allowing people to borrow them with a couple of eBooks. It was decided however that someone who would happily pay $20 for a book they dropped in the bath probably wouldn’t be willing to pay $900 for the eBook reader they dropped on the slate floor.

I’ve looked at the Kindle by Amazon and sure, it’s a neat concept. It’s not something I particularly want. We hear a lot about ebooks and ebook readers and whatnot but what seems to be falling to the side of the discussion is Form and Function. Books have persisted in their present papery form simply because it’s a good form. It’s easy to use, easy on the eyes, portable and comfortable to use. I’m not saying they’ll never be replaced, but it’s certainly not happening just yet. Given the choice between curling up with a paperback or curling up with a slab of backlit screen, I think most people prefer the paperback.

I repotted the roaches today - in so far as I emptied out their old substrate and gave them some new. After digging around on the net I went with a 50/50 mix of sand and peat moss, however I think I’ll tip it out again in a couple of days and just go with sand. I broke up the substrate a lot, but they seem to have trouble digging into it. Also since the peat is so dark, it’s very hard to see them and I like to be able to spot them easily when I dig them up so I make sure I don’t do any damage. I also need a better holding tank for them, it’s very difficult to get them out of the tub I have without squeezing them (this time around I lifted them out on a teaspoon).

Overall they are looking well. One seems a little thin so I’ll tempt them with some carrot slices and a little bit of mashed banana. They have an extra 2 inches of substrate to play in at the moment, and it should stay more evenly damp for them.

Well that wasn’t the major drama-rama I thought it would be. See, what I done did here is take my old old blog and my new blog and MOOSH THEM TOGETHER IN A JOYOUS SPLODGE. Some of you might remember the old old blog at horizonpurple. The main reason I stopped being there was due to someone paying way too much attention. I wasn’t worried about losing all the posts, I just wanted out. That was almost exactly a year ago, in which time i poked around at ohpfft.com but never really got into the blogging swing with it. Meanwhile, my ownership of horizonpurple.com has technically ended about 6 months ago, but since no one seems to think I registered the domain with them, it’s been kicking on. However I suddenly didn’t WANT to lose all these posts (even though 84.7% of them are just WHINING), and the realisation that the domain could die at any time meant it was time to go ahead and splodge.

So why not just shift them all over to ohpfft? Well, I want to create a more webpagy page for myself, broken up into various bits. Frogglin is the name I’m using mostly on the internet now (a merge of Frog and Lyn), and i had the domain handy anyway. Domain addiction? What domain addiction?

So here’s to hopefully a more interesting page in itself, and a more regular addition to the blogosphere!

CAUTION: Sharp. Do not use for any purpose other than cutting. Contains sharp blade.

One might be forgiven for thinking this notice on a packet was a warning about the contents of something OTHER than a knife. However, it was on a packet containing one of those bright orange box cutters. It is a deeply sad situation the human race finds itself in when people need to be warned that a knife is sharp and that they shouldn’t be cleaning their ears with it.

Which brings me to my idea for society - we need Common Sense Laws. We need a set of guidelines that when Joe Bloggs tries to cut his hair with a set of garden shears and loses an ear, he cannot take the garden shears company to court. Because it was a stupid thing to do.

Take those bossy little boxes that people stick in their cars now to tell them which turn to take. People are crashing off closed bridges because their GPS said that road was okay. Giant warning signs on both sides of the bridge can’t possibly be as right as your satnav.  Quick tip for satnav junkies - you still need to look where you’re going. It’s honestly a worrying thought that if a school group is crossing the road, someone won’t stop because their satnav didn’t mention anything about school groups. However, if anyone has tried to sue the satnav companies for accidents, I surely hope they didn’t win.

What the hell happened to people that we need to be so chronically babied all the time? Why do we need actual warnings about coffee being hot or knives being sharp? Hell, back in the day if you wanted to clean your ears with your boxcutter that was your own problem.  Of course these days you take the box cutter makers to court and rant and rave about how there was no warning on the packet that said you shouldn’t insert your blade into the bodily orifice of your choice.

And so, in an effort to save time, money and pointless courtcases fueled by greed and stupidity, I propose we set a list of laws that says the minute - the very MINUTE you decide to insert your finger into the lamp socket “just to see what happens” you lose your right to sue by default.

Common Sense laws that say if the item you have is operating as it was INTENDED to operate, but you happen to have decided to put it to some other use, then you don’t get to sue. We shouldn’t need warnings, we shouldn’t be worried about being sued because we didn’t explicitly tell people not to ingest a handful of thumbtacks.

Honestly. Jeeze.