On drawing

When I was at school after the age of 16, I specialized in maths, physics, and chemistry. The powers that be worried that we did not have a general education, so I was forced to take a course called "general studies".

This subject was meant to be a mixture of all things, such as art, languages, and maybe other liberal arts. Personally I thought it was a waste of time, but I did manage to just pass the exam.

As part of this course we had to spend a few lessons in the art lab. I can remember two things about that time. One was when one of the female students spent some time telling the class, how and why she gave a blow job to her boy friend.

The other thing I remember is being asked to paint a daffodil. When I looked at the resulting picture it looked as though it had been painted by a five year old. I was a bit ashamed by this, but on the other hand. Who gives a shit. I don't need to paint or draw. If I need to draw a diagram, I use a computer -- although usually the resulting picture still looks like it was made by a 6 year old.

I was reading a book about creativity in software, and the author suggested drawing as way to unleash some additional creative energy, by drawing

During my holiday I spent a very small amount of time working through the exercises: "Drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards. Betty's idea is that I am crap at drawing, because I use the half of my brain that deals with science and language. I am not using the arty-farty-creative side enough.

I have inserted my picture of a horse. The actual picture was a knight on a horse. I got bored, so I didn't bother with the Knight. The idea was to copy it from the book upside down, so that the drawing was not stopped by the language side of the brain. It still looks crap to me, but there you go. My goal for drawing is to be as good as an untalented adult, rather than a 5 year old child.

Of course I could unlock the creative arty side of my mind in the traditional way, by taking a shit load of drugs. If my drawing doesn't improve I will install linux on the arty side, and praise cmcneile-laptop-II >head -80 blog When I was at school after the age of 16, I specialized in maths, physics, and chemistry. The powers that be worried that we did not have a general education, so I was forced to take a course called "general studies".

This subject was meant to be a mixture of all things, such as art, languages, and maybe other liberal arts. Personally I thought it was a waste of time, but I did manage to just pass the exam.

As part of this course we had to spend a few lessons in the art lab. I can remember two things about that time. One was when one of the female students spent some time telling the class, how and why she gave a blow job to her boy friend.

The other thing I remember is being asked to paint a daffodil. When I looked at the resulting picture it looked as though it had been painted by a five year old. I was a bit ashamed by this, but on the other hand. Who gives a shit. I don't need to paint or draw. If I need to draw a diagram, I use a computer -- although usually the resulting picture still looks like it was made by a 6 year old.

I was reading a book about creativity in software, and the author suggested drawing as way to unleash some additional creative energy, by drawing

During my holiday I spent a very small amount of time working through the exercises: "Drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards. Betty's idea is that I am crap at drawing, because I use the half of my brain that deals with science and language. I am not using the arty-farty-creative side enough.

I have inserted my picture of a horse. The actual picture was a knight on a horse. I got bored, so I didn't bother with the Knight. The idea was to copy it from the book upside down, so that the drawing was not stopped by the language side of the brain. It still looks crap to me, but there you go. My goal for drawing is to be as good as an untalented adult, rather than a 5 year old child.

Of course I could unlock the creative arty side of my mind in the traditional way, by taking a shit load of drugs. If my drawing doesn't improve I will install linux on the arty side, and praise "logic" over humanity, so that I am like a character in a Star Trek episode.

On the Ouza question

I estimate that 80% of the people staying at the hotel were British. I heard a lot of Scots accents. This means of course that the main alchol drunk was beer, and most of the men wore no shirts. There was only wireless in the bar, so while hacking around, I watched a bit of the recent Man City versus Manchester United football game. I was amazed to see people supporting United, because there were shouts of joy when United, scored three goals after City had a 2 goals to 0 lead.

Anyway on the booze question. As well as beer I did drink a fare anmout of Ouza. Ouza is almost the national drink of Greece.

One advantage of Ouza is that it is clear on its own, but goes milky when you add water. This of course means, that you can order "that milky" stuff and then wink at the waiter, while your fellow diners think, "wow that's good he is only drinking milk these days.", but still get a bit shit faced.

On Greek TV I saw a program with what looked like gangsters. They were in a club drinking Ouza. I was watching TV drinking Ouza. I am like a Greek gangster, I thought. Yeah!

Although I am not a great fan of mixing water or soda with spirits, I am not sure I can drink Ouza neat. I like aniseed like the next man, but there are limits. After some experimentation, I prefer to drink Ouza with ice -- this that is still a bit strong. At the hotel they recommened drinking Ouza with lemonade, but that didn't taste so good.

While looking at the wikipedia entry for Ouza, I noted the connection to Absinthe. Obviously I know they taste similar. I was introduced to absinthe by my cousin over 10 years ago, before a trip to Prague. While in Prague, I sat in the Marquis De Sade bar with an absinthe and a beer. My life has come to this, I thought as I took a little sip from both glasses. I am living the dream.

Somehow drinking absinthe conforms more to my own self view. It is the drink of artists, and poets, people living on the edge. I dimly remember that Edgar Allen Poe died from drinking it. I see from the web that Aleister Crowley used to drink it. It was banned in many places, but not the UK. I just wish that it wasn't so fucking expensive.

Rule 34

Another of my holiday books was "Rule 34" by Charles Stross. It took some time to get into this book, but I enjoyed it the end. The plot is complicated, but it was all about the future of spam and policing -- with huge databases, social networking and spam bots, all connecting together. Although the technology was buzz word compliant, the characters were fairly real.

Of particular note was the use of the "nudge theory" in the planning of crimes, or the anti-crimes. This nudge theory stuff is topical, because Cameron and his Tory buddies like it, because they can control people without hard rules.

Perhaps I should read the nudge theory book, but I am shocked to see that I now have over 50 items on my kindle.

The woman in black

I got a late flight back from Rhodes to Cologne. I got into the Cologne airport at 2:00 in the morning. Luckily the trains run through the night, so I caught a train at 3:14, and after two changes I ended up at the Wuppertal railway station at 5:00 in the morning. It seemed like a reasonable idea when I booked it, because it saved me money. But last night I was dreading the trip her home.

However, I had a good book "the woman in black" by Susan Hill. This was a scary ghost story written in the classical style of someone like Henry James. A lawyer goes to the isolated house of a recently deceased old woman. Then follows ghosts, madness, and more unjust death.

kindle

I am a cheap kindle book junky.

This morning I finished Immune (The Rgo Agenda) by Richard Philips, Three children find an alien ship. The goverment has an another alien ship and they are using it to release sinster alien technology.

I feel guilty because I yesterday I finished "The Alchemist's secret" by Scott Mariani. The plot involved an ex special services hero looking for the potion that would give importal life (elixer of youth.) for a little child. This was enjoyable, but not really great writing.

A couple of days ago, I finished reading "Area 51" by Bob Meyer and Robert Doherty. This book involved alien ships ans humans trying to fly them.

Earlier in the holiday I read Soulles: The Parasol Protect by Gail Carriger. This book didn't involve aliens ships, but was about vampires, werewolves, a woman with no soul, all set in the astodgy Victorian age

I seem to be reading a lot of "escapist" fiction at the moment. Am I unhappy with my life and reality in general? I think probably yes. Most of the thrillers I am reading break down into two main catagories. One: a group of losers who take on the shadow goverment with the help of one special forces kind of guy. The other plot theme is someone with friends is taking on a goverment conspirancy. This time there is no special forces person, but there is much more paranoia and madness. Books that don't include a special services charachter are usually better written.

cats in Greece

There are some cute cats around the hotel. They are small and lean, and thn tend to beg for food at breakfast time. Cats are simple beasts, usually you just give them food and then they give you love (or at least they let you pet them). The white cat often comes to me on my balcony and tries to sneak in. But I have no need of love, so we just stare at each other, an it goes away trying to find a more gentle man.

Rhodes holiday sloth

I know that Rhodes has many important sites, but I really need a relaxing break, so I have been just hanging out on the balcony of my hotel room. The sun is way too hot to do anything, but there is a nice breeze.

I am at family run hotel. There is a swimming pool, bar and cafe. I have always wondered what it would be like to have a holiday where you sat by the pool sun bathed and drank cool drinks, such as beer all day. Given that my skin burns quickly and I get all nervous and sweaty when I see women in swimwear, I have not actually sat by the pool yet.

This lazy sloth was broken this morning, when it seemed that the kettle in my room was broken.. The red light was on, but the waer didn't heat up. One can not read all day with out frequent cups of tea. But this afternoon I had one more try at getting it work again.

The majority of the people staying at the hotel are from the UK. I also heard a few people speaking French. Thi does mean that they put on bingo and karoke in the bar in the evening. Many of the conversations I have overh involve "how cheap their holidays were." Althou on the bus back from Rhodes, I did hear someone talk about going into a gun shop and looking at a MP4 and AK47. It was not clear whether these were replica weapons or not. He did say he had (hopefully replica) AK47 at home. He had a happy common face, so I don't worry.

City and the city

as one of my holiday books I read The City and the city by China Mieville. The book was essentially a detective story set in two cities that overlapped. Citizens on of city were not allowd to look at the citizens of the other city, even though they shared the same streets. they had to unsee things from the other city -- if the didn't they would be "arrested" for something called "breach".

Look it is a confusing idea, but very clever.

Cakes and Ale

Sometimes I go though stages of trying to read more highbrow books. So many years ago I bourght "Cakes and Ale" by William Somerset Maugham. I decided to read it this holiday because it was a small paperback book and I needed somethuing to read on the plane, where I don't think they let me use my kindle.

When I started the book I was a bit worried because in the introduction it the author told me the book was about a man of letters. This is going to be boring I thought. A writer complaining about his poor book sales, but it was such a clever book, that it hooked me. It has portaits of how writers increased their careers, but there was a sense of irony. I liked the way the charcters of the book were trying to make points about writing, but the author of the book made his points by more subtle means. I particularly liked the last line of the book.

More holiday taxi hatred

I enjoy talkig to taxi drivers in the Uk. If they like to talk, then it can be interesting. For exmpla one time, a taxi driver told me that he had got into fight with a younger driver over who was going to use an air pump first. He said the guy looked as though he was on drugs and he wanted to fight The driver told me he beat the guy up quikly because he was so unfit that he would be able to cary on. This sounds arrogant, but the driver was out of shape and not bragging just letting me know the importance of fitness. I learnt a valuable life lesson.

However somehow when I am on holiday taxi drivers turn from providing a useful service to people who want to get from A to B, to a person who wants to steal all my money.

When I arrived at Rhodes airport I looked around for a taxi. Strange I thought, normally airports are full of taxi drivers who are trying to drive people places. But I didn't see any taxis. After walking around in typical confusion, I decided to ask someone. An official said "the taxi drivers are on strike --your best bet is to get a bus".

Given that I didn't have an accurate address and the hotel was in a snall village close to the airport. The bus was not an option. I should point out that I arrived in Greece at 22:40, so this was all done late at night.

I had read on the web site of the hotel that they would pick me up. Although I am an international traveller I don't make so many phone calls. I have a cheap phone and I am not an expert on international dialling codes. So I spent some time trying various options like the pay phone (that wouldn't take coins), before discovering I was calling the wrong number on the print out from Expedia.

After I arranged with hotel for someone to pick me. I was waiting at the airport entrance. I looked over and saw the taxi rank. There were a number of taxi driver waitin there, looking a bit hostile and consperital -- not just a bunch of lovable crooks. A black taxi stops in fron of me. Two drivers from the taxi stand rush over to him and start talking to the driver. A women gets into the car. It looked like a scab driver was taking a ride. I suddenly thought that asking the oerson from the hotel who was going to drive me to the hotel to pick me in front of the taxi rank of striking drivers was not such a good idea. What if they walk over and kick the shit out of him and set fire to his car. Look I have read "The general strike" by Rosa Luxemberg, but it was 23:00 at night and I wanted to get to my hotel. I didn't want t phone the hotel again to sat "look the last person you sent got beaten up. Can you send someone else, but I will meet him someplace else."

I was thinking all this when a taxi driver comes over from the striking taxi rank and asks me if I need a ride to my hotel, because they had seen me waiting for a long time. I as trying to explain him that the hotel was going to pick me up, which he wasn't so happy about, particulary as the figure of 50 Euros was mentioned for a 5 minute drive.

Five minutes later the driver for hotel turned up and I got into the car without the need for violence (or cowardice on my part). When I got to the hotel. They gave me a complemantary beer. So all was well.

R and R in Rhodes

It is tradition in Europe to take very long holidays. Many people in the group I work in tend to take a month off. I am not so good at taking long holidays. I start to get bored after a week, also when you stay in a hotel the costs go up.

About three weeks ago my body decided I needed a break. Both the times I had been out of Germany this year, I had to give a talk when I got back, so the breaks were not as relaxing as they should have been.

So I am in Rhodes for a week. It is a small Greek Island. Mostly I cam here because the hotel was cheap, the slight disadvantage of this is thet there is not that much near by. I have tried to do some exploring bt frankly it is too hot. There us a nice cool wind.

My hotel room has a nice balcomy, that is a good shady place to read in. The tree with fruit is cool, but the view of the white wall is less impressive.

The hotel has an outside swimming pool. As an abstract idea I like the idea of lounging by the pool, but in reality my body burns very quikly.

The hotel is geared to an Englisg crowd. For example one of the options at breakfast was a bacon sandwhich. I would like to point out that because I am living in Germany, a bacon sandwhich is a real treat. My guide book tells me that most Greeks, don't eat breakfast, so pleased on't give me any of that "the engklish abroad crap."