Word on a wing

Exhibits

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:09:05 +0200

Two more exhibitions to check out.

The Andy Warhol exhibit at the Stedelijke Museum and the Lou Reed photography exhibit at Galerie Serieuze Zaken. Both were opened by Lou Reed, who apparently spent quite a bit of time in Amsterdam then. All of which I missed. Sucks. It'll all have to wait until I come back from Budapest anyway.

Speaking of Budapest, I'm having a severe Halloween costume crisis. :-/

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Union Jack

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:12:38 +0200

I found out MySpace isn't all that bad. I popped of a message to Fiction Plane on it with a link to the pictures I took and promptly got a reply from Joe. He really seemed to like them and asked me whether he could put them on their site. I decided to be cheeky for a change and say "Sure! Can you fix me up with tickets for the Antwerp show?". Then he said "Sure!", so I may be going to see the Police again. How cool. I'm quite thrilled.

Even cooler is it to see the comments people leave on my pic on Fiction Plane's MySpace site. A nice little ego boost :-]

Other than that, there's miserably little going on in life at the moment. I did fuck all this weekend, slumming around the house doing the standby duty for work (which basically means doing fuck all all weekend and making 300 bucks doing it). Did some minor shopping in preparation of Halloween this weekend. Found some really nice fabric swatches in a local shop, which will do me just fine. Some dark blue velvet, bright red cotton and some white fabric, which has a plasticy layer, which will do great for varnishing and making it shiny. The idea is to make a Union Jack coat, and go with a bit of a Dr. Who theme. Maybe a Seven of Nine-like eyepiece and a mini Dalek to follow me around. We'll see how it works out. I'm looking for a second hand sewing machine at the moment, which is faintly amusing as I have never learned how to use one :-P I'm a wee bit late this year starting preparations, and the cats aren't helping. But we'll see how it goes.

I managed to find a ticket for the London Calling festival on Marktplaats. There aren't a lot of bands playing that I now, but it usually ends up being a lot of fun regardless, and 6 months later, half of the bands have had their breakthrough. Such as Kate Nash, whose picture I took at the March edition of the festival earlier this year. Sadly enough, I failed to get me a ticket to her show at the Melkweg november 29. Shucks.

Kate Nash

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Hall-o-ween

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:02:49 +0200

I did some more spraying in the middle of the living room last night which was a Bad Idea in that now my very cool looking smooth hardboard flooring is now covered in a silvery grey dusting, which left me on hands and knees last night trying to scrub it clean. Emphasis on trying. I always do stupid shit like this...

The upside is that the final result looks absolutely stunning. I should have some time tonight to finalise the whole thing, so hopefully everything will come together the way I imagined it and the Hungarians won't start World War III while I'm there :-]

Someone posted this link from an icelandic paper on a Nick Cave forum. It mentions Nick trying to ride Icelandic horses, which (being a rider myself) just cracks me up. Icelandics are typically very small, strong little horses, which are often made to look even smaller when ridden by tall, thin men. I'd love to see a picture of that!

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Utter chaos

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 13:38:48 +0200

Halloween 2006 preparations

This is what my living room looks like at the moment.

For the disaster gawkers out there. That furry brown thing will be the vest for Halloween, it still needs some stitches. In the middle the grey wings. The one on the right is more or less finished, the one on the left I just sprayed and needs to dry out, hence the discolorations. I started all this on my balcony, but it's been raining so much that I had to move indoors. Then there's a couple of cans of spraypaint, grey, silver and black. Various towels, papers, tissue, fabrics, needles, thread, pliers, drills and so on. I did myself the favour of not including the huge pile of laundry just to the left of this picture. Disaster zone.

Just called my mum, who also seems to have that feeling of relief regarding Sammie's passing away. She told me one of my nephews (4.5) had called last night in tears saying how bad he felt about Sammie dying and asking what the vet had said. It's sometimes amazing to see how much these little kids pick up from their environment. So tonight I'll be digging up some pictures I took last year, to see if I can find a nice one of her to give to him.

Oh and speaking of my nephews... I'll be getting another one April next year. There's some message in there about life and death going hand in hand or something.

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Back to work

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:13:14 +0200

Life is hectic at the moment, and frankly, it's only getting worse. Good worse, but worse nonetheless :)

Thursday and Friday I spent in a course that I'm taking. It's about communication and listening and observing and whatnot, and trying to better yourself. Kind of blah blah blah corporate shit, or... well, that was my opinion of it anyway. Nevermind that it is (in my eyes) way overpriced. It did end up being quite intensive and a bit of an eye opener though, and actually was a lot of fun. A fun group and while not 100% of the course's subjects will matter to me, I can see how some of it will actually help me personally as well. Even after two days, I have the feeling I am more aware of the way people talk, like you start saying something, and halfway you start becoming aware of how you're actually delivering it and maybe there's a better way. Right now that's a bit of a pain in the ass, because my thoughts run all over the place while I'm talking.

Either way, that's what had me tied up all day Thursday and Friday. Aside from that, I've been putting bucketloads of work in my Halloween costume, which is now finally coming together. About time it did too, because I am flying off to Budapest this Thursday evening and it would be nice if it was finished then. The papier machee didn't turn out as nice as I had imagined it. It seems the wallpaper glue stuff I used just wasn't sticky enough, so the paper feels a little "loose" in places. I sprayed one of my wings yesterday with it's base colour and it looks pretty nifty. Planning to detail it with a little black and silver later today, if I manage to get home while there's still some daylight left.

Saturday I got up quite early and went into town to check out the information day of a photographic academy type, who offer a 3 month part time course (on saturdays) and also the option to take it up a level and do a real, proper education as well, which actually gets recognised as a Proper Education (of which I have none). Downside is that it's pretty expensive, and of course, the time and attention it'll need. I am interested in maybe doing the 3 month course and see how I cope with going to school on Saturdays before taking the plunge. As for the finances, I may be able to deduct the actual course cost from taxes and maybe even scrounge a nifty lens out of it. Need to check up on that.

After that I dropped in at the so called "Halloween Specialist of Amsterdam" and stocked up on some make up, latex horns and ears and lots of mastix. It's all coming together very nicely, methinks. On the way back I took the tram up to the market, where there's a great trimmings, buttons and godknowswhat shop, where I bought... trimmings, buttons and godknowswhat. I want to brighten up the boring grey army typ jacket I got a while back and make it look a little more appealing. I'll post pictures of that too, if I ever come around to it :-]

Sunday was the best. I got up early and went to the stables, hooked up my trailer and set off to the beach with a friend. She really wanted to go, but her mare has never been, so she needed me and Solon as rock solid types to give her mare some confidence. What can I say? Solon was an absolute gem. He was giving me the evil eye because I dared showing up before 9 then didn't even put him out in his field. All that changed the minute he spotted the trailer. His ears perked up and he walked right into it, which would make some horse owners real envious :-] The beach I like to go to is only about 30 minutes away and it has very easy parking. There was a lot of wind, so the sea looked really rough with waves and whatnot, but that also meant it was moderately quiet. This particular beach at IJmuiderslag is very wide, and we'd checked the tides beforehand, so we got on the beach just as the tide was going out, and sand banks start to form. This is great, because you get puddles where the waves are a little less fierce so the horses don't get as spooked from them.

Solon was a great little trooper, plunging right into the deep of a steep sandbank, until he was in about knee deep and started splashing around, which gave my friend's mare the confidence to follow his example. We walked, trotted, cantered, galloped (=race the horses) and got complete soaked because the horses splashed so much. Solon got so into it, he even braved the waves, which rode up and broke against his belly. So Sunday left me with a real proud feeling of how my little boy (he was 2.5 when I bought him) has now grown out to be this rock solid companion. That's quite a neat trick, considering he's only 7 himself. He's grown into a nice little horse, which is pretty awesome, considering that's all my work. Well, my work, and his personality I guess. If only he didn't have those temper tantrums...

In the evening I worked on my Halloween junk some more, sewing together my furry vest, while watching CSI and Bones. I'm no great fan of CSI and Bones type shows, really, because I tend to eat late and all the blood and gore tends to put me off my food. But now I watched with half an eye. The Bones episode was about a boy being killed while trying to pretend to be a superhero or something. It was kind of funny, especially because I spotted the little easter egg. The boy's name being Warren and one of the other characters' last name being Ellis, which must have been a little nod to the comic book writer Warren Ellis, but not the Dirty Three's Warren Ellis. I'm not entirely sure if it was a positive or a negative one, as they then started slagging roleplayer, comic book lovers and geeks in general, and stereotyped the whole lot and mixed them in together, while playing Hard-Fi in the background (I confused them for Bauhaus at first!). I had mixed feelings about that, yanno, having been a roleplayer, geek, liking Hard-Fi, and not so much being a comic book lover, but I do love Neil Gaiman's writing, so I guess that makes me a weirdo too (Neil Gaiman also got a mention on the show). Whatever... it was fun to see they do their research. Someone in their team must be a geek, which makes it alright, I suppose.

Oh yeah, and I also spent 250 quid before breakfast on a twin bed room + festival access to the All Tomorrow's Parties festival. Now I just need to find someone who'll want to come with me =) The lineup is starting to look pretty cool. Somehow it reminds me a little of the Liss Ard festival, back in the days.

Now I am unfortunately back in work, installing a server and staving off people who want me to do more work than I have time for and telling them no.

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MIA

nobody@vox.com(Eva) — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:16:17 +0200

I'm back!

Over the weekend I stayed at the folk's house, and while they do have an internet connection, their puter is slow and dreadful and I simply didn't feel like using it. Instead, I cuddled up on the couch with the doggies. So very little updating from me.

Cisco switches

Then monday morning I set off to exciting Leeuwarden where we're opening a new branch this December. I've been up to my eyeballs in preparations, and spent two days in the city doing some of the footwork. Perhaps "in the city" is a big way of saying it, since I spend most of it holed up in a dusty, unfinished equipment room, where a few guys were still wiring up the whole thing. Really yucky.

What I didn't know is that Leeuwarden is actually quite an old city, with lots of little canals and old houses, cute little cafes and small restaurants. While my company for the "trip" wasn't my most favourite of people, I did enjoy the dinner and lunches we had. Great city... I'll have to go back sometime when it's not actually for work.

To anyone interested in "geek stuff", here's a picture of what I actually did. Pretty slick looking, but I suspect you need to be a geek to appreciate it :)

Take these wings...

I also did some more work on my Halloween "wings" this weekend and found some great fabric for a coat or vest at the market. I wanted to go all dark-grey, but ended up with a dark brown fake fur type of thing, that I'll use to make a long coat out of.

Wire frame wings

This is how the wings idea started out. A quick sketch of batlike wings on a piece of paper, a roll of chicken wire, steel wire and a couple of pliers. Along the way some more materials were used, but this was the very first start. I put all that together and something winglike quickly started to form. I took apart my old backpack and used the metal frame to give it a little more support as well as some more bits I found at the hardware store. I have now attached some straps and wired it up a little more, so they're more or less ready to be papier macheed (how the hell do you spell that?). Hopefully I'll find some time to do just that this weekend. I'm thinking it's going to look good. They're bloody huge though, which is kind of cool, really. I hope the idea with the coat/vest works out too, which will make the whole look pretty good. Gentle reminder to self: buy some latex horns and maybe pointy ears and VERY IMPORTANT! Mastix remover :)

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