Living in interesting times

Monday, April 7, 2014

Day 36

Computerless.

The baby is in having its 1T heart transplant.

Last night watched THE AVENGERS in one of the lecture theatres with Greg and his son John and gourmet pizza and Rosé.

Mixed chrome tests and sprayed larger quantities of blue and turquoise from home.

Got firing on at 9pm.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Wash Day at the Pa again. Needed to catch up on essentials.

Was adventurous. Caught a no 939 bus on a "scenic tour "up to the Watson Arts Centre, home of the Canberra Potters, to see Jane Jermyn's last open studio day.

See her Facebook page

Strange to be there when I should have been teaching a Masterclass?

Really glad I wasn't because I have decided to have a 1T hard-drive installed in my laptop tomorrow. The 500G was always telling me it was full.

SO it has been backup heaven here. Tristan (yes) the technician says it will be a complete clone of my existing drive only bigger.

He says everything will come over, even the Fusion part which boots up as a PC for my accounting programme.

Scary because my GST is due in a few weeks and I haven't quite finished entering up my books.

Think I might just get a cheap small PC Laptop especially for my accounts, because every time Apple introduce a new operating system, you have to buy a new version of Fusion AND reload all the programmes. (Microsoft yes) So for using twice a year, for six monthly GST, a dedicated laptop makes sense.

Sorted out my week well sort of sorted.

As I left things before the last Black Firing.

Maintenance and Cosmetic Surgery needed for Resurrection.

Also want to glaze some cones and rings in blues and turquoises, to go with the ones I already have at home, for the exhibition the NZ Fuping Five are having at Kerrie Lowe Gallery in Newtown opening 3 May.

Tests with Australian materials- quite a bit different?

Have the pieces bisqued already. Waiting.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Day 34

And it is Saturday, went to the Farmer's Market with Christine and Mark. Cool Veg.

Was excited because I was going to an afternoon performance of
traditional Chinese Dance, Shen Yun.

This is how it was promoted.

Foyer was promising, a profusion of little Chinese girls in their best pink.

But I was totally unprepared for the event that followed.

The company are not from China, they are from Falun Gong headquarters in New York, which masquerades as a Dance Academy.

The frocks were classically pretty, no actually they were beautiful and the dancers were great, but I objected to being harangued with ideology.

What it was, was American anti-Chinese propaganda combined with at least a third of the show proselytizing the religiosity of the Falun Gong cult.

There were 4 arias, sung at a black grand, extolling the benefits of Dafa. Cringe.

Worse were the dramatizations of Falun Gong adherents being persecuted while meditating.

Their attackers looked like a Tong gang in black casual street gear with red stylized hammer and sickle emblems on their shirt-backs. Looked like the propaganda vignettes from the 60's Cultural Revolution.

Can't imagine what the pink girls thought.

Worst was the American compere with his female Chinese translator.

He said that what we were witnessing was unique and it was impossible to see traditional Chinese classical dance in China, which is simply not true. The times I have sat through cultural performances from Minority peoples.

This site sums up what I felt. Basically false advertising.

http://factsoffalun.wordpress.com/tag/shen-yun/

A kind of fusion of North Korean spectaculars with Scientology recruiting tactics.

The irritating compere said it was heading for Wellington.

DON'T GO. WARN PEOPLE.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Day 33

A touch of the post-natals today.

It feels like Saturday and it should be but it is not.

In my mind the exhibition was always opening on Friday not Thursday, so I guess I was pre-programmed on auto pilot.

After the opening went with Greg and his son John to see CAPTAIN AMERICA : The Winter Soldier (not in 3D alas) but the foyer of the Electric Cinemas looked incredible like one of Rabbit's recycled timber sets.

The two Sundays Masterclass for Canberra Potters has been called off.
Evidently they didn't have a single taker.

Must have put them off with this blurb

“Creating a new consistent body of work”

Sunday 6^th and 13^th April

Join John for 2 days of creative instruction and making

The Master Class will be over 2 consecutive Sundays 6 and 13 April, to allow for the normal most advantageous process of making and turning to occur.

The second day will follow the Canberra Potter’s AGM. John will present a PowerPoint talk for the Master Class and other interested members following the AGM.

He says: “I am interested in developing each participant’s personal best. At the end of the workshop we will present an exhibition of your individual ideas.

My strengths are in throwing and turning. I am a better turner than thrower. I do not draw or paint, but rather use the wheel as a decorative tool in its own right.

I am equally concerned with the presentation of work. My parallel career is as a theatre designer”.

Their loss. My 2 day's of freedom, well 1.5 days accounting for still having to talk at the AGM.

Spent most of the morning working on my PowerPoint for it. I have to be fantastic and organised to wow them and not have a repeat of Tuesday's near disaster.

I had carefully prepared one for the student talk last week. I had shown it to Greg and tested it right up til 30mins before the talk.

But then when I plugged my MacBook into the projector, nothing would work.

It is a situation I loathe in others i.e. incompetent AV management, but now it was my turn to squirm. Greg copied the .pptx file and opened it with Keynote and it worked fine apart from the embedded videos which in Microsoft have to be in an associated folder, which wasn't copied.

I still work with Mountain Lion because I was told to wait because my Vectorworks is not Maverick ready yet. (Must be soon.) Problem was finding an older version of Keynote.

But success later, I am a total convert. The programme automatically embeds the videos into the file. Yes.