Year: 2018

Getting crafty: Avengers keyring made from melted pony beads

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I made some fridge magnets a while back using an Avengers silicon ice cube tray sent to me by @pith by melting pony beads in them. It worked really well, and I’ve been meaning to make a purple one as a keyring (Hawkeye, natch). I got around to it today (and made a few more for more magnets), so I wrote up how to do it because I know a couple of people were interested. So if you want to make these yourself, I’ve got the full instructions up over on Instructables.

And while I’m mentioning Instructables, I feel like I should show off my table made from cardboard, duct tape and papier mache. It won third prize in the 2016 cardboard contest. I’m still pretty chuffed with it, we use it as the bedside table in the spare room.

Keyring of a purple Avengers logo. A rectangular white table with red mosaic patters around the edges and floral mosaic decoration in the middle.

Bright flowers stare into the inky black void

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White chickweed flowers on a black background.

Today has been so much better than yesterday that I’ve actually had the energy to take, sort and post photos to Flickr, and get a blog post up. Go me! Flowers (and some bracken) on a black background. Produced by putting black card behind the flowers, angling it so the background is as dark as possible (mostly cloudy day helped), and then tweaking the brightness and contrast a bit to make it properly back in post-processing. The tricky part is getting it so the background is dark enough to make editing the editing for impact worthwhile. There are nearly thirty of these, so head on over to Flickr if you’d like to see more.

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Photography of flowers in the sky (and a few extra friends)

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Pale aquilegia flower with a bright blue sky in the background.

Yesterday was not a good mental health day. I was in a better frame of mind by late afternoon, so took a bunch of triffid photos with the sky as a backdrop, because they please me. I was pretty exhausted by the time I’d got them sorted and up on Flickr (along with a few other random photos), so I opted to go to bed and do the blog post today. There may be another one later on as today I’ve been experimenting with black backgrounds, and I’ve got some regular triffid shots as more new flowers appeared. May be tomorrow if I’m still tired after sorting them all.

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Experimenting with photographing flowers on white backgrounds

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Mixed flowers.

I wanted to do something different than the usual flower photography (mainly due to the fact there’s nothing new blooming just yet), so thought I’d try some flowers on a white background in softer light than the death ball in the sky. I’ve got a soft light cube… somewhere. (It’s the shed. It’s in the shed. It may never be seen again, though the preserving pan turned up at the weekend, so it may not be a lost cause.) As it wasn’t accessible, I decided to do some quick and dirty experimentation. I’ve put what I did below the thumbnails with a picture. Different plugin, the other one seems to have been abandoned and there were some annoying caching issues. No extra photos on Flickr as this was a trial and didn’t produce a whole pile of images.

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Vampyr review: a gorgeous vampire game that delivers despite its flaws

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Title screen for the video game Vampyr.

Anyone who’s known me for, oh, five minutes? They know I like vampires. A lot. Since I was a child watching The Little Vampire on TV in the 80s. I will consume vampire media like it’s chocolate, so I was especially excited for Vampyr when I heard about it. After months and months of waiting, it finally landed in my grubby paws on Tuesday the 5th, release day. I finished it on the 7th, and I enjoyed it very much, it was a fun game, I loved the vampires, much of the story and lore and the world building. I also did a lot of nomming of bad guys. It was pretty satisfying. So I feel the need to waffle about it and write a review. Advance warning, I’ll be putting actual spoilery content after the bug list, as it’s a pretty obvious place for you to jump off if you want to avoid any important plot points. Anything before that is right at the beginning of the game so is basically on the box and doesn’t count, or discussion about mechanics and how the game works.

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Triffid photography 6th & 7th June 2018

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Inside an orange and yellow Alstromeria flower.

Bunch of photos taken earlier in the week over two days. I’ve been sidetracked with playing Vampyr (I’m halfway through a review post for that, but it’s probably not going to be done tonight) and have only just gotten around to sorting and posting these now. The Flickr plugin seems to work a treat, so I’m sticking with that. Even more triffids to be found on Flickr should that tickle your fancy. Otherwise, enjoy what’s below.

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Triffid photography 3rd June 2018

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Bracken

I had plans for today, but have effectively been a zombie, hence the unimaginative post title. I did manage to take a satisfying amount of photographs, but it took until nearly midnight to get them uploaded and write up this pretty simple blog post. Jake still managed to help (see Instagram for the set of Jake photos), but a full battery and reasonable weather allowed for more photo opportunities. As always, see Flickr for a whole bunch more.

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Photographs of raindrops on foliage

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Raindrops on geranium leaves.

In typical British weather news, it’s raining. That’s fine, we need it. I’m annoyed we didn’t get any storms, could do with one to clear my headache. It’s the type of rain that’s light enough we get drops forming and pooling in leaves, which I always think looks pretty cool. Anyone else also find things just look more real when they’re wet? Wonder why that is. Anyhow, photos of leaves below, more stuff uploaded to Flickr.

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First of the month, the Triffids are getting into the swing of things

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Pink saxifrage and geranium flowers.

This was the photography post I was planning on making today, before Jake decided to steal the limelight. As usual, there are a few more up on Flickr, though not as many as I’d have limed because the battery ran out. Jake videos use up all the juice, he’s decidedly not cute and is very unhelpful (and it’s totally not that the battery was due a charge anyway *cough*).

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Obligatory gratuitous cat post – Jake helping with photography

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Jake the fluffy orange and white cat's fur.

Anyone not aware (hard to imagine, he gets tweeted about on a regular basis), I live with a fluffy monster by the name of Jake, who has a very floofy Tail. I was doing some Triffid photography, lying on the grass to get up close and personal, when I felt a gentle tug and found Jake had developed an interest in my camera strap. At that point I got completely distracted with taking some photos and video of Jake being adorably ‘helpful’.

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