A new work in progress!

You may remember me mentioning in my last blog that I wanted to change the direction of this blog.  And as you can see we have a work in progress!  I'm not sure at this stage whether the change in layout will be the final one, but I think it's clearer and better laid out, although I'm sure that most of my regular readers will only notice slight changes, but I think the change is for the better.

As will be seen I've now added a photo of me, constructed from a warped mind that loves surrealism in all its many splendours.  I make no apologies for looking very weird and demented, except to say that I got very happily carried away with GIMP and trying to manipulate the mugshot in question, so that I'd look 30 years younger...I've always been a naive optimist!  What I was thinking of at the time of manipulating I've no idea but I do like the idea of combining punk with the romantics....it's also satisfying to see that I have a head of hair again.

I continue to work on my second short film, working title 'Penguin Amore!' and it's almost finished.  30 minutes ago I found a piece of music that I hope fits the film.  I never realised how hard it was to add a soundtrack to a film, especially when you come up against copyright.  Personally, as an author and film maker, I can understand your work being used in an inappropriate way, but music I want to use is 40 years old and hardly likely to reach the heady heights of the pop charts again, but we have to play by the rules.

I continue in my creative mood, last weekend saw me on Saturday getting wet due to the early autumnal rain.  Sunday a much brighter and drier day, and as the gods were smiling off I traipsed to a local fountain to take some surreal shots.  One of my glaring faults, yes I have one or two, is that I tend to become preoccupied with whatever I'm doing when in an arty mood.  The fountain was particularly well lit by a slowly setting sun, which added a sense of the cheerful unknown, tiny wavelets from the cascading water sparkled and glinted and danced merrily before disappearing into watery nothingness.  To take the shots I wanted I lay down so I was at eye level to the surface of the water.  Five minutes later I was wet, wet, wet due to lying in a puddle of water I hadn't noticed.  How one suffers for one's art!

Of course the week begins again and two hours of raw film footage has to be looked at, which is always enjoyable until that moment you realise that the camcorder is out of sync with your brain cells.  Thankfully I don't record such moments, a man crying into his pint mug of tea is perhaps too much for everyone to bear, and likely to cause the few friends remaining in my life to finally bid farewell to the antisocial, miserable git!

So it's now back to the drawing board and coming up with ideas for content.  Whatever I end up with as content I'm sure it'll be useful, at least to me.  There I'll finish, acknowledging that I do like me and thinking how cute I ended up looking when I'd finished mucking around with GIMP.  Anyone fancy a makeover?

I'm GIMPing this week!

Having now almost recovered from a cronky back, it only complains bitterly when I do the food shopping, which is as good an excuse to follow a diet as I can come up, I'm back to exercising the body dubious. If nothing else I'll be the body beautiful by the time it's too late. Although I will say, being an Englishman, it's quite a novelty prancing around in the birthday suit, I never knew there was so much freedom to be had! in terms of political ideology I still haven't worked out yet whether I'm swinging to the left, the right or happier being in the centre; Oh well!

Enough of this drivel, he says dribbling down his chin. I'm still in a state of suspended animation as to where I should be taking this blog. As it's been some time, for which I'm getting as tired as you with me rabbiting on about nothing in particular; unless something's got my back up, or put it out as the case may be. I'm still toying with ideas, but no further forward in coming to a decision. I'll admit I'm being indecisive, not much helped by contemplating whether taking a long run off a short bridge will help my lack of manhood.

But I do feel a change in direction is required. Happily for me my creative urges are beginning to thrust to the fore and I've just discovered that GIMP can do far more than my undeveloped brain can cope with. GIMP is an advanced image manipulation program that can do the normal editing things we all do when playing around with digital photos we've put on our computer hard drives. But yesterday I discovered I can do the same kind of things I do as a matter of course when editing with Final Cut Express and laying images, still or moving, on top of each other. Best of all GIMP is free, yes I've linked to the website again, just in case you missed it the first time; nice to know you're not paying too much attention to a raving old git.

I've no idea how GIMP fares against programs such as Photoshop (Adobe) and Aperture (Apple), I've not used either, but they cost a bucketful of bucks although reading lots of homework, yes I'm also a boring old git who's gone geeky, GIMP is on a par or better than either of them. I really don't know which is the best, but as GIMP IS FREE and it does me, that's about as good a recommendation as it gets! Sadly the two photos I manipulated yesterday involved friends so are not for public consumption, but I'll continue to play and see what I can do.

If anyone reading this, I live in eternal hope being born an optimist, would like me to combine 2 photos together e.g. you in front of a building, scenery, landscape etc, or combine two elements together, please send them to 'englishsupport.de@googlemail.com': there will be no charge it's practice for me. Please send only JPEG images, along with a short description of what you're looking for in terms of a finished photo.

However, to gain access to this potentially excellent offer you will have to subscribe to this blog, and follow me; carrot and stick might work. And if you haven't spent a few moments watching my first short film, why not? I've had some excellent feedback about it from those who've watched it, Thank you and you know who you are! Don't forget to leave your comments!

Graveyards, gimp and the decline into senility!

As we move towards the joys of spring, you know all those lovely, brave, flowers poking their head above the trench tops, birds noisily arguing and sorting territories out whilst chirping incessantly 'location, location, location, the mind naturally welcomes the thought of longer days.  If nothing else, this past winter, now finally buggering off into a receding memory, matching the ever hastening receding hairline, it's been a very long one and never ending.  But we can look back on it with some affection and a careless smile, which lasts all of 2 minutes on my ugly mug, knowing that it'll be back before Jack Frost can say 'I saw Santa Claus coming down the central heating flue, chimneys being a distant memory.

It's a happy time for there's the good weather ahead, the rain, the blue grey hues of fluffy clouds, prancing about in the azure sky.  Then there's the stroll along the river to one of my more favoured spots, the graveyard where I can hang about with a lot of people who don't mind listening to you moaning about the state of the economy, and patiently let you prattle on about this or that.  As a passing thought at this moment in time, perhaps if I was to become an actor I'd love to perform Hamlet there, at least the audience would have some real appreciation of the 'Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well' speech, as I hold his skull in my hand.  Graveyards and renditions of Shakespeare are vastly underrated as natural bedfellows in my opinion.

Be that as it may, I'm slowly plodding through the 4,000 odd photos I took in the US, both trying to put them into categories for a slideshow and do the necessary improvements using GIMP, a wonderful photo editing programme that can be found at www.gimp.org for those so inclined.  There are versions for mac, windows etc and best of all it's free.  As with everything concerned with new software and my mental faculties, or lack of them as I head towards a doddering autumnal season in life, it's a steep learning curve only slightly softened by its immensely forgiving nature and the ability to let me do numerous 'undo' actions due to my lack of technical knowledge being far greater than my boyish enthusiasm for playing silly buggers. But then if it keeps me off the streets and out of trouble, who cares?

Thankfully my life remains absolutely boring, apart from the occasional delight thrown in to keep me on my toes and ones causing enough of a bodily movement to remind me that I'm still breathing, although remembering most things seems to be more troublesome than forgetting them.  That I guess is due to the same problems that King Canute had, more often than not the things we want to hold back we are powerless to do so.