That's a negatory

I have an exam on Monday - I should probably sit down and start reviewing my notes.


Well, I guess I have been working a lot lately. It would be nice to get creative and do some crafting.


Jeez. Maybe I can just sit down and -

Study aids

Reduce, reuse, recycle

I'm not sure what we could reuse her for... although I always say I vacuum enough cat hair each week to make a brand new cat. That sounds like a kind of never-ending cycle though -  creating a new cat out of the old cat's old fur? And then, you can make a new cat from the fur from the cat you made from the old cat's fur, and then before you know it your cats have multiplied every 20 minutes like bacteria and then they build an evil cat army intent on chewing your toes through the blanket at four in the morning and coming out of the litter box to park their butts straight on your school assignments.

I think I need another coffee.

Cats being strange

These are my mom's cats... and the orange one, Llewellyn, is always strange. He's struggling with diabetes at the moment, and although his blood sugar still won't go down, he has recovered almost 100% in terms of coordination and energy. But he's strange. We sort of wonder sometimes if he's a little... challenged, because he'll often sit staring into space with his tongue half out. In retrospect, maybe it was the diabetes.

Today, I heard strange yowls coming from upstairs. The cats were lying on the landing, as you see in the photo, and Llew was making strange noises and pawing at Princess, the white cat. At first I thought he was feeling amorous, but it didn't seem to be so; he was just squawking and pawing at her paws. Not getting up, not being particularly active, just... poking her. It was... strange.

It does look like they're holding hands though, which I guess is cute.

A reluctant model

work impediments

It's amazing that I get anything done around here.

A message from our sponsors

Potential Christmas card?

Twilight

Shop Assistants

A couple of months ago I wrote about how I made a cheap DIY light box out of cardboard and tissue paper, with some assistance from my cat Jasmine.

My other slave driver shop assistant is Jasmine's sister Ariel. We adopted them both as kittens from the SPCA about 6 years ago, and they've been the smallest and hairiest members of our family ever since.

Although we do sometimes find them in places they oughtn't to be, giving unsolicited advice.

"I'm just inspecting your quality control... your light box sucks. It's clearly not cat-proof."


"We're going to have to have a talk. What's your 5-year business plan? I would say that your focus on jewelry is somewhat short sighted. You're totally missing the booming household market for cat treats and extra scratches."

Simon's Cat

I don't have anything spectacular to blog about today (about to start writing 5 term papers...) so I thought I would share a video with all you cat lovers and anyone who's ever lived with a cat. Simon Tofield, an eminent cat behaviourologist talented animator has done a series of cartoons on common cat strategies for waking their slaves up, getting their slaves to pay attention to them, and making their slaves let them inside. I'm sure many of you have seen these, but if not, enjoy!

Llewellyn the Great

Two years ago my mother adopted two cute but highly overbred Persians from the humane society. She named the male Llewellyn fairly quickly, as she is interested in the history of many of the different cultures in the UK - the Scots and the Welsh especially. The female we had difficulty coming up with a name for - Alba, Guinevere, Boudica - none of them seemed to fit. We started calling her Princess out of lack of anything better, as it suited her delicate appearance and imperial personality, and the name sort of stuck. We've decided her formal name is Princess Milkweed - weighing in at a hefty six kilos (I weighed more when I was born) she has a difficult time going for her walks in strong winds.

Walks. Llewellyn came declawed and Princess is, as mentioned, diminutive. Both cats love the outdoors but because of this their adventures are limited to our small fenced back garden. My mom will occasionally take them for outings in the common area behind our backyard. They're very well-behaved, don't dart off, and generally just sniff at bugs and chew the grass. The problem though, is getting them back home. They really resist. My mother has discovered the best way to do this is through distraction - she drags a leafy branch along the ground and eventually they end up at our back gate.

Like so.















This cat cracks me up.

F. Stop.

Today is my one-month anniversary with my beloved Nikon D60, which my beloved Davis and his parents and my parents bought me for my 25th birthday. I took photography for a year in high school, but along with trigonometry and iambic pentameter this knowledge has fled for greener, more fertile pastures. So I've been scouring my manual and my favourite photography blogs to try and reacquaint myself with things like shutter speed, ISO, apertures and F-stops. It's a strange world, but I'm having lots of fun.

One thing I've picked up is that wide aperture = small f-number = bokeh = good. Another thing that I've learned the hard way is that bokeh with jewelry = half your piece out of focus = bad. I decided to play around with apertures today trying to shoot my newest earrings to see how they compared.

This was taken at F/5.3 and 1/400 s. I like the softness of the base of the bowl, but I wish I could get both earrings in focus, or at least one whole earring with sand dollar and waterdrop.


This was taken at F/8 and 1/160 s. When I've been playing with the aperture lately I've been leaving the shutter speed for the camera to decide. All those choices make me a little anxious and plus, I can't figure out how to adjust them both on the fully manual setting. This one is pretty good, I think. More of the rear earring is in focus, though I'd like the droplet to be sharper.


This one is probably my favourite, even though my focus was a little off the sand dollar and more on the seahorse. But the droplets are in focus, while there is still some dreamy blurriness around the periphery. The F-stop here was 13, and shutter speed 1/60 s.



F/20, 1/30 s. To me not a whole lot of difference between this and F/13. I did notice though how the shutter speed is getting longer as my aperture gets smaller to compensate for less light getting in. That was making it difficult for me, without a tripod, to control shaking even with my vibration reduction lens. I was looking at Gorilla pods the other day because I had a coupon, but man they were still expensive. I know I don't need a Gorilla pod - that's like saying I need Nike shoes - but they are cool looking. Incidentally, when I was working at the animal care centre at UBC over the summer, someone brought in an injured snapping turtle who'd had his leg bitten off by a raccoon. The staff named him Tripod. I thought that was hilarious.


F/29, 1/13 s. The blurring is more obvious in this one. though the crystals come out looking pretty nice so maybe it was more a problem with the focus. You can see though that the bottom of the bowl is a lot sharper than in the earlier photos, and the texture of the table is starting to come through.


I can't even imagine being into photography before advent of the digital camera. I guess, when we did film photography in high school, that we were a lot more careful and took a lot more time to set up each shot. It makes me feel a lot of respect for photojournalists and sports photographers back then. I use at least 50 shots trying to take a picture of a stationary pair of earrings and pare that down to 5 keepers, if I'm lucky! If I'd had to spend time adjusting the exposure of a film camera while shooting these earrings outside this morning, I wouldn't have been able to turn around and grab this shot of my mom's tribbles: