This is the complete archive for 2004. [Show full posts]
Returning to this blog after so long? What do I think I’m doing?! As if this is what it’s all about! I don’t want to return to this God-awful dive of diurnal dialog with myself; I don’t want to say, yet again, “Ooh, yes, woodwork is grand, but surely my life is–better?!–if I combine the [...]
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Doing lots of coding; not much woodworking. Doing what I want, getting stuff done, having a good time. Seems useful. Am I to continue with wood? Not thinking about it; just doing that which has my thoughts mostly. Feeling a bit guilty, but not ’cause I don’t like what I am doing. Doesn’t really matter. [...]
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The crisp morning, cold but nothing to worry about; sitting reading at 6AM quite possible, wrapped only in everything I own. I am captivated at the moment by the ‘international community’ (and I use this phrase sarcastically) of the web, and especially the open source development ‘community’. There is something fascinating about collaborating with people [...]
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The Unesco Archives Portal is a wonderful directory (among other things) to all sorts of archives and archival-related information, all over the world. I found the ISAD(G) there, and I think it will be of great value in building the structure of [a project I'm working on].
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This morning I have been playing around with CSS. I know it doesn’t look too great just now, but I’ll fix it soon… maybe. I want to get back to working on my main PHP project, but it’s such a drag working on it without the lovely syntax high-lighting of a useful editor… Something interesting [...]
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An unexamined life may indeed not be worth living, but what of constant, total re-evaluation of everything?! Is that a state to be envied? It seems utterly unavoidable, quite outside of my control, this daily, hourly, questioning of is it worth it, is there any point? At one moment I’m rolling along happily, smiling at [...]
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I’M BACK!! Today was wonderful! I actually wanted to be in the workshop, working; amazing! I gave up on trying to work towards any particular project, and went back to the basics. I felt like I could’ve been in year eight! I cut a mortice and tennon joint, with no view whatsoever to doing anything [...]
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I have not blogged for ages. I am sick of forcing myself to work with wood. If I were to be doing just what I want at the moment, I would not even be thinking of wood. I would be sitting in a nice place reading, or at my desk at home coding. Instead I’m [...]
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By Pamela M. Oliver INTRODUCTION: That there was a change in the nature of the Society between the years 1647 and 1742 seems indisputable. It was withdrawing from outwardly-observable religious acts or witnesses to the Truth. Was it an increase in spiritual zeal: the belief that inaction or quietness would lead one to hear the [...]
I awoke this morning with a very sore back, but got up, breakfasted, read for an hour and was out of the house by eight. I had no wish to go back to the workshop, nor to make anything; all I wanted to do was read. There is so much that I want to read [...]
[Keywords: University, Woodworking] [One comment] [Permanent link]
Making, creating, working with one’s hands, is a wonderous thing. An absolute requirement for being human, hugely satisfying, and I love it. Thing is, I am just as happy patching my old pair of army pants as I am working the finest wood – possibly more so, because I’ll not have cold wind blowing in [...]
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A moment of doubt: I have come to the workshop this morning to work again on the scroll. I am bevelling the ends of one of the rods with my blockplane, using the bench-hook as a shooting board. I have just realised that i am wearing a groove in the bench with this arrangement, and [...]
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This morning, outside the workshop: “It is so very good to be back at school. Even though niether the library nor the workshop are open yet, I feel relieved, and insipired to study. It’s a bit like a fraction of what Harry Potter felt when he got back to Hogwarts…” Went from there to Menzies, [...]
[Keywords: Uncategorised, Work] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Soon I shall return to the workshop. I have books to make!
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By Edward Morgan Forster “To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.” — p.35, a thought of Margaret’s. “You remember ‘rent’? It was one of father’s words – Rent to the ideal, to his own faith in human nature. You remember how be would trust [...]
I have spent far too long on the computer. My mind is in quite a strange state. What am I to do? All this coding suddenly seems pointless, and I want to stroll on the terrace, prehaps sit with a quiet cup of tea, or be warmed by the fire and Keats. Escaping the world [...]
[Keywords: technology, Uncategorised] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Around and aound I go as always, but now at least I am starting to see the pattern. For the last few days I have been in techno-mode, spending a lot of time on computers and ignoring the world. Predictably, this immersion in the web has resulted in my this afternoon rearranging my room and [...]
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I scribbled the following, sitting on the cold hard concrete of the city: This is the other side. This is the side that eschews all forms of pomposity, vanity, indeed any care taken over appearance or manner. This is the sleepin’ rough, carrying-little techno-savy activist. This is the only time I will listed to non-folky/classical [...]
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The house/room/attic that I dream of making, inhabiting and remaking; – where is it? What will it seem like to strangers seeing it for the first time? Many articles I have read of poet-build abodes, and rarely have they captured any true poetic image of the space. Descriptions of construction method, natural environment, recyled materials [...]
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A seminar by Ian Percival, a man who’s life embodies so much of what is wonderful about tools, making, and what might be termed ‘industrial technology’; a thoroughly inspiring talk. Then a lunch with the other post-graduate students and Ian (a usual Wednesday afternoon thing), during which the talk focused mostly around my book plans. [...]
[Keywords: Seminars/Lectures/etc., Uncategorised, Work] [No comments] [Permanent link]
This really is dreadful! I am going around and around in circles with this image stuff! There is a promise that the next release of WordPress will include better photo functionality, so I think my best bet is to wait until then, and go now to find a nook in the library in which to [...]
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Yesterday I did interesting things with InDesign and two bits of wood. I read. I chatted with people. I investigated the bookbinding studio. All things that were good and I left campus feeling so very excited! Then: I stayed up too late, and am now too tired… So back to the PHP I go, with [...]
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I wonder how much of this journalling I should create? Am I to go on and on, putting down my world as it comes by me – as if it were a film and I a critic taking notes – and heedless of the reams of text, the “ocean waste and wide”, that I leave [...]
Shopping, Sharing, Socrates.
Shopping, Sharing, Socrates.
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Working at the co-op set me thinking (and chatting with a few people) about how utterly enjoyable is work that we do from a sense of love. Fabulous! After a few hours at the co-op I went to the library to continue with Bachelard. I am finding him hard-going, but every so often bits emerge [...]
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The loveliest thing happened this afternoon: I sat down to sewing the signatures soon after lunch, an lo! 2½ hours later I looked up! It is so nice when work occupies one so; I don’t really care what I do so long as I can experience this feeling sometimes. It didn’t take long once I [...]
[Keywords: Uncategorised, Work] [No comments] [Permanent link]
I began the morning in good spirits, lying watcing the grapevine outside my bedroom window, and the small bright blue patches of sky between the leaves. It didn’t seem to matter if I got out of bed or not… I have this morning begun binding a book: A small piece of blackwood from my table [...]
[Keywords: Uncategorised, Work] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Hurrying off to uni after remembering the chai & cake stall, I forgot my lunch and the honey (not sweet mate), but managed to prove to myself the wisdom in having a slow bike. [Oh how I wish I could get my digital camera to work with these uni computers!] I got the chai on, [...]
[Keywords: Seminars/Lectures/etc., Uncategorised] [No comments] [Permanent link]
Some ways of affixing wooden boards to books, and a short history of same.
Some ways of affixing wooden boards to books, and a short history of same.
I got up early this morning to grab the phone line before the others awake – there’s eight here today and I guess someone will come hassling before long. I have returned to using wordpress (the software that I was using last year briefly) for this site, and have updated it to the latest (stable) [...]
[Keywords: technology] [No comments] [Permanent link]
A Created Environment — March 31st, 2004, 5PM
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Ben Lee, animation designer for computer games.
Ben Lee, animation designer for computer games.
[Keywords: Seminars/Lectures/etc.] [No comments] [Permanent link]
By Gaston Bachelard “Imagination augments the values of reality.” — p.3 “…they describe [the humble abode] as it actually it, without really experiencing its primitiveness, a primitiveness which belongs to all, rich and poor alike, if they are willing to dream.” — p.4 “…the recollection of moments of confined, simple, shut-in space are experiences of [...]
The two forms of blind acceptance of how things are – one unable to question, the other not wanting to; the old and the new – and me, balancing a knife-edge in the middle and seeking to hone that edge to razor sharpness.
The two forms of blind acceptance of how things are – one unable to question, the other not wanting to; the old and the new – and me, balancing a knife-edge in the middle and seeking to hone that edge to razor sharpness.
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How strange things are! Yesterday I was on the verge of dropping out, the meaninglessness of it all swelled up so – but fret not! an evening of friends and tea, followed by a good night’s sleep, turned it all around. Now the same wrenching division between the high-tech and the low that was causing [...]
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