Not fantastic, mind you . . . no one showers me with accolades, money, and songs, but also no one is calling me names, spitting on me, or kicking me.
I get up, have a coffee, feed the birds, do a few things, go to the gym, come back and have a snack, do a few more things, eat dinner, watch a few shows with Melisa, do a few more things, then head to bed.
All in all, a pretty good life. Occasionally, something brings a bit of a downer, and this was such a day. Don’t worry; nothing personally terrible, but still a downer.
I don’t look at my stats much because — as mentioned before — they can be skewed by many things. Views can be skewed by having a gallery in the post, and visitor numbers can be skewed by back-and-forth comments between two people. Meaning, two people conversing over the course of a day would show up as multiple visitors (as far as I know, the system doesn’t check for unique visitors on any given day — or ever).
There are widgets that will give you better stats. I have one on my sidebar, but, as I said, it don’t matter none since the only person with any possible interest in the number of visitors during the recent past is me, and I’m not invested as much as some.
But, I am casually interested in another metric . . .
It would be nice filling-in that world map. Having said that, I got to thinking about how many countries I’m missing.
For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.
For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options: 1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos. 2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).
If you want the full experience, keep reading.
A few of my apps can ‘insert’ fire into a photo. I don’t use them because I don’t think the results look realistic
Here are a few photos; from a few flames to a raging inferno.
I came across an image on the web, and I felt the call to recreate it . . . but, also, I felt the call to artsify it . . .
Now, the artsifications were made with the intent of obfuscating the subject of the image . . . so kudos to readers who can work out what it is before the reveal.
I’d crossed paths with the above graphic in early December and saved it for this occasion. For them interested in it, it came from THIS website (the above is a link to the image).
I’ve written of my feelings about the Holidays, and Christmas in particular, both in 2019 and 2020.
In general, I have nothing against the celebrations; the lights look nice, and, yes, after a month, the music begins to grate, but it’s also (mostly) nice.
Of course, as an atheist, the underlying reason(s) are of no concern unless forced on me, and since we don’t socialize much, not much is forced on me.
For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS SmugMug Gallery.
For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE. When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos. 2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.
Painting pergolas is tedious work . . . especially since the people who originally painted it didn’t do a good job of prepping it.
When I went to scrape off the loose paint, I found a few boards were rotting away. I don’t think the joints were properly caulked, so moisture got trapped between two of the support beams, and since they rested on a flat board, the water didn’t have many places to drain … so it didn’t.
So, rather than take the thing apart — which would basically mean replacing it all, I executed repairs, stripped as much of the old paint as I could, recaulked everything, and I’m now ready to prime and paint.
What was meant to be a one or two day job, got longer because people can’t be bothered to do a good job. Really, it was a half-assed effort and I’m now having to put the other half-ass in. Plus, I don’t think they primed the pressure treated wood (or it was still too wet) so lots of the paint was loose. If I were to give advice to someone who built a pergola, it would be to either leave the natural wood or stain it. You can paint it, but then every two years or so, touch it up before the paint starts to peel, otherwise you’ll have a messy and tedious job on your hand.
So, I’m tired, don’t feel like writing, don’t feel like doing a proper post . . . so I played around with the above photo.
I’ve been busy this past week redoing our Master Bedroom closet. This next photo shows a photo of the closet as it appeared in the real estate listing (February 2019). Meaning, those are not our clothes (we don’t have anywhere near that many clothes).
As we’re not fans of those wire shelves, we decided (after two years and after doing other stuff) to update the closet.
. . . but that ain’t my name. At my current rate of progress, Art and I will never be intimately acquainted. Still, I persist . . . because I have a Note 8 and that comes with a stylus.
When I go to bed, I usually unwind by watching a movie that involves lots of shooting of bad guys with extreme prejudice. However, sometimes I pick up the phone, extract the stylus, fire up Painter, and . . .
That’s about a ten minutes effort. Would have been finished faster were it not for something I discovered . . . despite a clear mental image, it’s difficult drawing a sitting dog that doesn’t look like a misshapen goat. Heck, even what I got requires a big heap of imagination . . . like, imagining the figure as a dog.
Note: I copied the original post instead of writing everything anew. If you read Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3 or Part 4 or Part 5 or Part 6 Part 7 or Part 8 or Part 9 or Part 10 or Part 11 or Part 12 or Part 13, you can skip most of the writing and just go to the calendars section. Can’t stop now or they win.
I used to do monthly calendars, but they were a lot of work and few people bothered downloading them. At the beginning of 2016, I switched to doing a yearly calendar . . . which I did not do for 2017.
The calendars I did were neat prism yearly calendar generated using one of the free actions PanosFX offers to subscribers and people who register at his site. It lets someone, let’s say me, create a prism yearly calendar. Like, for instance, these.
Each three-sided calendars can be customized with any set of three photos. You can change the colors (I left them as they are), the language (I left them in English), and choose whether you want the week to start on Sunday or Monday (I left it on Sunday).
Now, the above photos are the ones I had done for 2016. I show them so I can give people an idea of what they look like (I don’t currently have a color printer hence why the old photos), but I’m doing new calendars for 2018. Panos made a few improvements and I decided to dump a bunch of calendars here. If you want to download the action and make your own calendar (you need Photoshop or Elements), click HERE. All you have to do is register and you get any of the free actions (high quality and fun to use).
Disperser Tracks 