Butterfly

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

Today’s TDC is from long time friend Sheri and asks us to:

Create a butterfly of your own in whichever medium works for you.

I really want to do this one later on with pencils and crayons, but it’s a busy day at work so for the time being here’s a version createdby NightCafe. The prompt I gave it was:

A butterfly with patterns made of fuchsias, strawberries and blackberry leaves

Well, what it gave me was lovely, but not quite right.

Butterfly
Butterfly flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Creator appreciation

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

From what I’ve read about this week’s challenge, it seems that this was originally aimed at giving appreciation for games developers. Well, I don’t really play games or like them, but I have a huge amount of appreciation for anyone who creates things that I do enjoy. Often I’d use this type of post to wax lyrical about DS106 and the Daily Create, but with my whole month of Blaugust being spent blogging my responses to the TDC I wanted to take this post in a different direction.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am an avid knitter. I always have at least one pair of socks on my needles – this is my current pair (they’ll be an Xmas present for my sister, the Rev Polly):

Socks
Socks flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Knitting socks like these are great for times when I just need to keep my hands busy, but they’re not challenging. So as well as socks, I always like to have a bigger project on the go. Every year I’ll make my OH an aran jumper – the same pattern every year, as he likes it a lot. Here’s the Xmas 2025 version:

Aran Jumper
Aran Jumper flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

And, over the last few years, I’ve started to really enjoy knitting Shetland Lace in very fine yarn. Here’s a hap that I made for a colleague’s first baby recently from a traditional patterns:

Hap on stretcher
Hap on stretcher flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

And a stole I made for myself, from a pattern by a Shetland designer called Elizabeth Williamson:

Roerwater Stole
Roerwater Stole flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

So my creator appreciation is for the Shetland women who knitted the haps and handed the designs down to us, and to the modern designers who keep the craft alive.

And also to my OH, who made me the hap stretcher.

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Where in the universe is @dogtrax now?

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

Today’s TDC asks us

Our Daily Creator Kevin aka @dogtrax has been an award worthy participant and contributor (hundreds of ’em) to the Daily Create. We received word that he would be travelling and away from the TDC for a few weeks, let’s treat him to some wildly creating art about where he is now.

Create a story describing what adventures @dogtrax is up to or speculate which Strange New World from NASA he might be touring. Sending good TDC vibes to our friend, Kevin.

Well, I know he said he was travelling to NZ and Aus, but I’ve found him further away – look where he is!

Dogtrax on TYC 8998 760 1 b
Dogtrax on TYC 8998 760 1 b flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Sestetle

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

Sestetle
Sestetle flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Today’s TDC is a familiar one, though not a remix. The last time the prompt was to write a sestetle, which is more appealing than today’s suggestion:

Give Mark Sample’s Sestetle generator a spin for a 6 line poetic stanza made of 5 letter words, generated Wordle style, then wrote a lofty sophisticated title for its appearance in some snobby journal.

Meh, TDC rules are made to be broken, and I really don’t feel like writing jokey titles for academic journals, given the news this weekend. So here’s the poem, as it was given to me

Those
Wiser
Dares
Curry
By the
Proof

And a version by ChatGPT, with me asking it to write a poem with these words in each line:

Those who wander wonder where the answers lie,
Wiser hearts can read the secrets of the sky.
Dares taken boldly lead where dreams may hurry,
Curry-scented evenings warm away all worry.
By the moonlit river, shadows softly move,
Proof enough that life is stranger than we prove.

And the image that NightCafe gave me from the original words:

Those Wiser Dares Curry By the Proof
Those Wiser Dares Curry By the Proof flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Then I asked ChatGPT:

Can you write me a title for an academic paper with thee words in the title? Those Wiser Dares Curry By the Proof

Here’s the response:

Those Wiser Dares: Curry by the Proof

That’s made me laugh!

Posted in AI Art, Blaugust, DailyCreate, DS106, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Silent Sunday

Bingham's Pond
Bingham’s Pond flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Bernard Pivot Questionnaire

Question postcards
Question postcards flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA 2.0) license
During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

This post is an answer to Roger’s Blaugust post. I also like quizzes and questionnaires, so here’s my answers to the Bernard Pivot Questionnaire (the post byRoger omits question 4, but I’ve answered all 10 here).

Q1: What is your favourite word?

There’s lots of Scots words that I like – dreich is one that I use a lot as it describes so many Glasgow days.

Q2: What is your least favourite word?

Any word that describes dead animals. Steak, yuck!

Q3: What turns you on?

Any creative challenges, like the Daily Create and anything else inspired by the DS106 community, or the annual calendar that we do as CLMOOC.  Talking about remix and bricolage, and writing about it.

Q4: What turns you off?

Selfish behaviour of any type. Arrogant arses taking others for granted. Competitive games. All sport.

Q5: What sound do you love?

The sound of a cat curled up in an Amaxon box licking a paw. It expresses safety and comfort.

Q6: What sound do you hate?

Any song by Dido. She’s awful.

Q7: What is your favourite curse word?

I like the phrase ‘hell’s bells and buckets of blood’. Dad used to say it when I as young, and I still hear it in his voice.

Q8: What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?

I’d quite like to have been a politician. Not one of the self-serving ones that are the majority at the moment, one that actually believed in “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Actually, I’d really have preferred to live in a real anarchist society, or a direct democracy, but that’s a thought to another post.

Q9: What profession would you not like to participate in?

Anything to do with sales or marketing. I did some sales jobs when I was young – I wasn’t very good at them.

Q10: If heaven exists, what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

Well, I could quip here about god being a woman. But given all of the evil in this world I’d be too busy shouting at her to hear what she was saying. I used to really enjoy teaching philosophy of religion, and I do think the problem of evil is proof that the theistic god does not exist.

Posted in #CLMOOC, Blaugust, DS106, Philosophy | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Biodiversity Heritage Library

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

Today’s TDC says:

The Biodiversity Heritage Library is a huge treasure trove for fans of the natural world (not my words, the Guardian told me so). Visit its web pages and look around. Make some art about what you find, or look through the Flickr library for something to inspire you.

I headed over to its Flickr library and chose a pic of a tsetse fly. I cropped it into a square and headed over to Lunapic to add some filters. I chose the ‘illusion’ filter and then added the smoke cloud animation. Here’s the result.

I could have spent hours browsing the whole library, but it’s Saturday and the cats are asking to go out into the garden.

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Mandala Madness

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

A lovely TDC today:

Mandala designs — a sort of mirrored gathering of lines in circular patterns — are interesting and rather relaxing to create and to view. Use the Mandala Maker (or some other site or draw one on paper) and share out your artwork.

Here’s mine

mandala
mandala flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Inner monologue

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

Today’s TDC asks us to:

Tell us about your inner monologue. Bonus points for recording it.

224/365 Non Eclipse
224/365 Non Eclipse flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Work’s tricky at the moment, so a lot of my inner monologue is best kept to myself, but there’s one thing on my mind today. Yesterday was the day of a solar eclipse, with a pretty good partial eclipse in Glasgow. We were prepared with pinhole cameras, but the day was cloudy. Above is the picture I took at about 7pm, the time of the maximum eclipse. It’s a dramatic picture, but no sign of the eclipse itself (pinhole cameras were also no good).

I woke up this morning to a hot summer day(though it is getting more cloudy again now). So my inner monologue is all about f***ing clouds and Scottish weather.

I hope you all managed to see it where you are.

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Summoning Words

During the month of August I will be participating in Blaugust, a month long blogging challenge.

Magic Wand
Magic Wand flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

Today’s TDC links to a toot to ask us

Which words make you prick your ears up and get your attention? What do others know to call out to make you respond? Tell us what your real name is, and why.

For a long time we only called Cagney by her name when she was being naughty, so when she heard her name her ears would go down and she would slink away. Even now when I call her name when she’s in the garden she races to the door because she assumes she’s being told off. So there’s that …

But the words that get my attention and make me prick up my ears are numerous. Anything to do with DS106 or the Daily Create will grab my attention, likewise just mention remix or bricolage and you’ve got me hooked. Indeed, my online handle of NomadWarMachine is so much a part of who I am that I’ll happily answer to that, or the more usual abbreviation to Nomad.

And other words that will work are anything to do with knitting – say ‘yarn shop’ and I’ll follow you wherever you are going!

Pizza and real ale also work really well.

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