Summoning Words

Posted on 12th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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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Make (expensive) art yourself

Posted on 11th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

Today’s TDC asks us to

Since we know 1 taped banana can be sold for lots of US $, let’s make some money by making our own masterpieces.

Ron tapes some bananas to his wall and takes a pic of it for us. I was just about to pack my saandwich lunch into my bag, so here’s part of it. Feel free to make me an offer for a copy!

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

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My super power

Posted on 10th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

There’s two apps on my phone that I really like, and use a lot. The first is Merlin, the app from Cornell that helps people to identify birds. The second is Pl@ntNet, a free app that helps people to identify plants. They are both great, and thanks to Merlin I am getting better at guessing which bird I am hearing as I am out walking with my OH. I’m better at plants, but still appreciate having something to check when I’m not quite sure, and again it’s adding to my enjoyment of my walks. The problem is that both depend on having an internet connection, and quite often I don’t have one while out and about in rural Scotland.

So the super power that I’d like is the power to identify any flora or fauna, by sight and sound for birds, and to always be right. Here’s a coot I saw earlier – no need for Merlin to help me to know what this is, but I wish I’d had my phone out to record it shouting as it swam towards me.

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

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Image the Alt Text

Posted on 10th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

Today’s TDC asks us to:

For this Daily Create, you are tasked with imagining the image that is described by the alternative text below.

Close-up of a chain-link fence with metal wires, set against a cloudy blue sky and distant green fields.

What do you “see” in these words and given context? Create it as an photo you might find, draw as a sketch, as a short poem, or just write a longer narrative description. If this is your jam, use it in a prompt to feed a GenAI image creator, maybe add a few more elements to go beyond the literal.

I like to use my own images for stuff like this where I can, but a quick search through my Flickr albums didn’t bring up anything that matched. So I headed over to NightCafe and dropped in the prompt. The result was pretty good:

Close-up of a chain-link fence with metal wires, set against a cloudy blue sky and distant green fields
Close-up of a chain-link fence with metal wires, set against a cloudy blue sky and distant green fields flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

However, as I am not working today and therefore have a bit of time to play, I decided to search through some of my photos for partial matches. Here’s some fences from Strontian and Ross Priory, with added birds.

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

 

Posted in AI Art, Blaugust, DailyCreate, DS106, Photos, Scotland | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

3-30-300 rule

Posted on 9th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

Glasgow is called Dear Green Place, and looking around where I live in the suburbs you can see why. Today’s TDC says that:

3-30-300 is an urban forestry concept which states that every resident should be able to see at least 3 mature trees from their home, live in a neighbourhood with at least 30% tree canopy cover, and be within 300 metres of a high-quality green space. Make a version of this rule for an online community, or show us an example of it from where you live.

Here’s the view from my bedroom window this morning – so many trees – apple, plum, lilac, rowan. Yesterday I counted 14 sparrows sitting on a branch on one of them. Sitting here in my study on a drizzly day I everything looks green through the window and the berries on the rowans are gleaming.

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

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Silent Sunday

Posted on 9th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

214/365 Heron
214/365 Heron flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Right Angled Doodle

Posted on 8th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

A fun activity for today’s TDC. I chose the digital option and doodled away before clearing the page and making  a clean spiral.
Spiradoodle
Spiradoodle flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

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Stranger things

Posted on 7th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

Today’s TDC asks:

Have you watched Stranger Things on Netflix? Even if you haven’t, imagine just how strange the world can get. Then write a story or create an image, or a soundtrack, or a video, of the Stranger Things you imagine. We won’t judge. Too much.

The worlds is strange in ways I don’t really want to imagine at the moment, so I jumped over to Lunapic to see what filters I could use. I chose the color glitch effect and added it to yesterday’s image of Cagney and the lemurs from Madagascar. She really pops out as the strangest of the things in that image!

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

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Madagascar

Posted on 6th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

Today’s TDC asks us to:

Place the word Madagascar somewhere in the response in a way that makes no sense

As I web searched for Madagascar I noticed that images of lemurs featured heavily in the results, and that gave me an idea for a twist. I stole an image from this web page and edited it slightly. I am sure nobody will notice that I added a little cat to it.

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

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Summer Art

Posted on 5th August 2026 by NomadWarMachine

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

Today’s TDC is this:

Today is Summer, make summer art today

Well, this week Glasgow is back to dreich rainy days, so instead of heading outside with my camera I searched my Flickr archives for a sunny image and chose this one:

189/365 Sunflower
189/365 Sunflower flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license

I downloaded it and cropped it, then headed over to Lunapic to play around with it. Here it is with the heat map filter.

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

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