Skyberries and Voidmelons or Voidberries and Skymelons

Things to See and Do

2009-12-10T12:26:24Z

Things to Do:
20th December - London: Tube Walk 72.
21st December - Brighton: Burning The Clocks.
28th December - London: Monochrome BBS London Micro Meet.

Art Installations to See:
London: Bunker by Robert Kusmirowski at the Barbican.
London: Seizure by Roger Hiorns at Artangel.

Salzburg

2009-12-09T12:10:14Z

More photos on Flickr: Salzburg.

15 Years

2009-12-01T12:48:27Z

This Christmas, I will celebrate having owned a modem for 15 years.

Rearranged Flower

2009-11-26T23:24:44Z

Manchester

2009-11-11T14:37:56Z

I wandered around Manchester for a while after BarCamp, taking photos of Vurt, of reflections, of red tree bark, brightly coloured leaves in puddles, of abandoned wigs, and oh, all kinds of random things. BarCamp was awesome, and Manchester.. well..'One particularly weak point in the barrier between dream and reality existed in the psychic air that surrounded Manchester.' - Jeff Noon.

Alternating Travel, Swings, Pumpkins and NaNoWriMo

2009-11-01T21:23:35Z

I tried Alternating Travel yesterday, but that ended quickly, even after retracing my steps a little and heading underneath low dark bridges. I then decided to instead follow the river and wandered across fields, through a lot of mud, past cows, and ended up at a shimmering lake, full of reflections of Autumn leaves. I found a deserted playground and started swinging, watching the treetops and looking up at the sky, and that made me happy.

Today I've been attempting NaNoWriMo, although have already managed to injure myself while chopping up a pumpkin, whose smile was just too sinister, and I very almost lost consciousness.

My text adventure so far is set in a town where it hasn't been Spring for 3 years. This is mostly because when it gets to Spring in the UK, it will be a year and a half since I last experienced Spring. I am still confused about seasons. I thought I saw snow today even, which sort of makes sense if it is Calan Gaeaf today, the first day of Winter, according to Welsh culture.

Crush

2009-10-27T14:20:11Z

NaNoWriMo Text Adventures

2009-10-22T14:54:50Z

NaNoWriMo starts soon, and as I've been reading Twisty Little Passages, I'm vaguely contemplating writing some kind of interactive fiction/text adventure type thing for it.

View Poll: Text Adventures

Morning

2009-10-21T08:35:25Z

The hills were misty and I felt like I was in a dream, wandering to work. He moved to the left to let me pass, and I did also, as if we were dancing, amongst the puddles, the burst balloons hanging from the fence, the paper aeroplanes littering the pavement, and the dismantled speed cameras.

Reasons to get fit

2009-10-20T12:43:51Z

1. To be able to run away from zombies. (Zombieland Rule #1 - Cardio.)

2. For your wishes to come true. (Chester has steps leading down from the city walls, which if you run up, then down, then up again, without taking a breath, you can make a wish and it will come true.)

Parties

2009-10-19T11:07:09Z

House-warming party on 14th November 2009 will have the theme of: Eyes, Pies and Dragonflies.

I am also planning to celebrate my 40th birthday on February 27th 2010, probably in London, so mark it on your calendar now.

View Poll: Songs

Melbourne

2009-10-14T14:15:12Z

It's a year since I arrived in Melbourne, hoping I'd never leave. My working holiday visa has expired now, so there's no turning back.

Wrexham

2009-10-13T11:21:20Z

tackline and I explored Wrexham and saw: Button moon ice-cream; An old church with a painting of the Last Judgement, bodies rising from the graves; A stone circle constructed in the 1960s; Poetry adorning stones, written by school children, about Acton Park; Piles of fallen leaves; Zombieland; The blonde long-haired guy; The abandoned shell of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle on a pub crawl; The last song a band played that night; Black and white fungi, like ghosts, haunting the inside of a burnt out tree; Reflections of the sky on the Cup and Saucer Fall; The former location of a motte and bailey; Squelchy Mud; Falling acorns.

The Fear

2009-10-12T08:50:03Z

Celestamol

2009-10-09T08:46:20Z

squirmelia takes celestamol. She floats through life like a ghost ship. There's nothing inside her. The streets are dangerous, tidal waves of people. She leaves her house every day after taking a pill, coffee half-drunk, biscuit half-dunked, and then she drifts onwards.

Walking

2009-10-08T11:02:20Z

We were walking in the same direction, yesterday, and I saw the red patterns on the bottom of his black shoes, and I noticed that he is far more careful than I am when crossing the road.

squirmelia @ 2009-10-07T10:03:00

2009-10-07T09:03:18Z

It was cold enough to see my breath this morning.

Homework

2009-10-01T19:09:48Z

I had to say this for homework:

Anyone else fancy a go?

squirmelia @ 2009-09-30T19:06:00

2009-09-30T18:06:10Z

Sorcery

2009-09-17T10:02:08Z

I've signed up to learn Welsh. I am now therefore a student again, as well as being staff.

I found that the Welsh for "cider" is "seidr", and "seidr", according to Wikipedia, is "an Old Norse term for a type of sorcery or witchcraft which was practiced by the pre-Christian Norse." Cider is sorcery.

Captured Shadows, Shimmering Cupcakes, and the Moon

2009-09-08T22:39:44Z

I was back in England for only two months, and now I am no longer in that country. I am in Wales, house-hunting, and planning to start work on Thursday.
--
It seems somehow glorious and amusing to watch the raindrops, after previously living in a city with years and years of drought.
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I went to the London Girl Geeks 4th Anniversary Dinner at Channel 4, and listened to speakers, such as Maggie Philbin (from Tomorrow's World) talk about technology as candy, and pink laptops, and then ate cupcakes that shimmered.
--
I've strangely been logging onto Monochrome BBS a bit more than usual, after seeing a number of people I met there (when I was in England.) I realised I missed Mono meets.
--
I watched Nick read a book on the Fourth Plinth, in Trafalgar Square, as part of Antony Gormley's One & Other. I felt voyeuristic watching a friend reading, much more so than if I had watched reality TV.
--
I went to the Techniquest Science Discovery Centre in Wrexham last week, and my shadow was captured, temporarily. I also made DNA out of plastic beads, read about female astronomers, and played with the plasma ball.
--
I saw Douglas Coupland in London last week, talking about typography. I am still not sure what my favourite font is though.
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I read Generation A and realised that it has been at least 15 years since I first read Generation X and my life is made up of more stories now than it was then. The stories don't always have the weirdest storylines and I wish more of them had happy endings, but they are there, I have stories to tell, I have had adventures. I should write about them one day.
--
'There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time, well you still can’t live without him. And even if he wakes you up every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes more than anyone else's kisses.' - 2 Days in Paris
--
I showed wintrmute, who I had last seen in Melbourne, around Eynsford, and we walked through a field that had recently been plowed, and it reminded me of the moon, as it was so grey. We hugged and it was then that I missed Melbourne. I still am amazed that the Dutch moon rock was fake.
--
I've been reading about augmented reality (via City of Sound):
Soundwalk for Android phones and LEDs in contact lenses.

The Mystery of the Dancing Stones

2009-08-30T19:28:25Z

Lanyon Quoit

I saw Stonehenge on my way to Cornwall, but Cornwall also has stone circles, quoits, cairns, holed stones, fogous, logan stones, and other ancient stone features, so I decided to investigate some of these. I saw the Merry Maidens, a stone circle, formed out of girls who danced on a Sunday and were turned to stone for doing so. I saw Chysauster Ancient Village, a late Iron Age village, consisting of the remains of stone houses, covered with heather. I saw the Lanyon Quoit. (A quoit is otherwise known as a dolmen, and is part of a tomb). I saw Carn Kenidjack, also known as the "hooting tor", supposedly a den of giants, witches and dancing devils. I saw Logan's Rock, from a distance, while on the boat to the Isles of Scilly. I saw a St Buryan sanctuary marker, allowing wrong-doers to claim sanctuary, even while outside of the church.

I didn't see the Tregeseal East Stone Circle (also known as the Dancing Stones), probably because I did not walk far enough. I think the stones were surrounded by cows in a field I didn't walk into. Modern ordnance survey maps and the St-Just-in-Penwith Area Guide both mark the Tregeseal Stone Circle at the same place (SW387 324), south of Carn Kenidjack. Apparently there were once two or three stone circles, in a east/west line. (According to one website I found, one of the stone circles was destroyed due to a farmer removing the stones when he wanted to plough the field.)

The 1966 Ordnance Survey, which I was using, did not have the circle marked at that point, but instead, "logan stone". (A logan stone is a rocking stone.) To the north of Carn Kenidjack, on the 1966 guidebook, a circle was marked.

The remaining Tregeseal Stone Circle (at SW387 324) has apparently been subject to heavy restoration over the years, but so much so that it has moved to the south? Or so much so that in 1966, it was a logan stone, and has now grown into a stone circle? Other reports of the circle say that over the years, the amount of stones in the circle has increased, so that there are now nineteen stones.

I am confused by the whole circle, of the stones that have danced from where they once were. I did not see the stones, but I imagine them dancing, over the tor, around the logan stone, from the west circle to the east, dancing non-stop, and maybe the mystery is what music they were dancing to.

Rockpool

2009-08-24T08:45:45Z

Pink tentacles and sea lettuce, pink encrusting seaweed and coral weed, beadlet anemones and orange mushroomy ears, and red stones, and little fish. I peered into a rockpool at Prussia Cove. Oh, they all glistened with clouds, and it was like staring into another world.

One day I will go scuba-diving or snorkelling, and maybe I'll get a waterproof camera so I can show you what I see.

I've returned from Cornwall now, but in Kent, apparently there are good rockpools at Samphire Hoe and Botany Bay, so I may visit them.

What words look like

2009-08-22T20:07:51Z

Anyone fancy coming to see Douglas Coupland talk about what words look like, and the power of text as an art object, at the ICA in London on Thursday September 3rd? Helvetica is also being shown that evening, so I might go and see that as well.

Jellyfish

2009-08-19T19:17:14Z

View Poll: Jellyfish