Anne Olwin's Scribblings
1/29/2010
Daily Scribblings: Dreamweaver redux
The computer tech attempting to resurrect my laptop pronounced it officially dead last week.
Meanwhile, my new computer seems to have developed a personality of its own. The cross-bred, two-faced, maniacal half-wit residing in the black box that passes for a computer under my desk was built with all the newest technology and a few spare parts from Daffy Duck and Attila the Hun.
Daffy the Hun loses pieces of programs with regularity, particularly if the program’s name starts with Adobe. In addition, Daffy can’t remember how to completely uninstall a program and the Hun concentrates on crashing Firefox at any inopportune moment.
Currently, Daffy the Hun has rendered most of CS3 non-functional and supposedly uninstalled—but not. Dreamweaver continues to half work on Daffy, so I’m digging up old files to cobble together this site. Any new images come courtesy of the Dinosaur, an antique computer sporting Photoshop 5.5—formerly residing with a daughter who needed a keyboard with word processing ability back in the dark ages.
It will almost be a shame if the computer tech manages to tame Daffy the Hun. What will I do for a challenge next?
1/28/2010
Daily Scribblings
Spring is coming--The seed catalogs have arrived.
1/25/2010
Savoring the Inspiration
Swans winter around here. Their trumpeting resounds through the fog on quiet mornings. Awkward on foot, but the very definition of grace on water or in flight, they add a sense of wonder to our winterlands.
12/14/2010
Studio Stories: Anne vs The Beast
Artists should never mess with three things: a car, a computer and a nail gun. At least, that's my experience.
The accelerator, brake and shifter comprise the extent of my vehicular knowledge. Beyond that, things get fuzzy. Change wiper blades, pump gas, check oil? No, no and nope. Better to leave that to my husband.
Resolve a computer issue? Don't make me laugh. Give me Photoshop on a souped-up computer in working condition and I'm set for the afternoon. Should the computer flash me a "Configuration error..." or "Really-I'm-telling-you-to-uninstall-this-piece-of-junk-program-and-check-the-'you-can't-find-it-because-I-hid-the-system'-file-then-run-around-the-desk-three-times-and-bow-twice error" and I'm in the corner playing with my lips.
Then there is the nail gun--a horrendous beast designed by some three-armed fiend sporting a testosterone overload.
The 2 x 4 walls of my soon-to-be art studio necessitate furring strips nailed to each stud to accommodate the extra insulation. Having built our own house in the past, I watched my husband grab The Beast by its tail and create beauty out of chaos. Surely, I could do the same.
Mimicking John, I grasped The Beast and attacked the problem. All went reasonably well until the nail hopper ran dry. Slipping another nail strip into The Beast's tail, I raised it once more and pulled the trigger. Bad plan. The real problem attacked me, propelling the strip of nails back toward my chest.
Determined to win the battle with The Beast, I stuffed the strip of nails back up its tail, raised the gadget designed to hold the strip in place--How had I missed that the first time?-- and took aim once more.
The Beast and I fought our way across the ceiling rafters. As I tired, it sensed my fatigue and fired a nail into space. The nail ricocheted off the interior roof and zinged past me, narrowly missing my head.
Enough fun for one day. The Beast took round one and I took a rest.
12/12/2010
Dreaming of Dreamweaver
Just decide to rebuild a website and see what fun lurks around the corner.
My adventures in this department began with searching for some missing software--Dreamweaver, to be exact. With it and its Adobe cousins installed on my laptop and desktop, I put the original disks "someplace safe" just prior to our last move.
As a side note for further discussion in a later post, I'm talking about the move to our dream home a year and a half ago--the derelict property we purchased and have since been attempting to resuscitate. Many of the boxes from our move remain unopened, stacked like monoliths in corners of various rooms yet to be finished.
I thought "someplace safe" resided somewhere in one of those monoliths. Over the course of the last year and a half the aforementioned laptop and desktop decided to terminate their usefulness in that drama-queen manner that computers manage with flair. Now with a new computer and no website, circumstances forced me to abandon the insulation in my soon-to-be studio to form a search party.
Since Friday, my darling husband and I have searched every box in every monolith--nothing. "Someplace safe" currently eludes me, but my spirits remain high.
Still scribbling...
12/7/2010
Scribbling on it
Yay for new beginnings. Deciding to take the plunge to a new service provider, new template for the moment as I upgrade and freshen my website, and start all over left me indecisive for far too long. A good swift kick in the pants occurred when I realized spammers hijacked the server that housed my site at my old service provider rendering my website frequently down and untold emails lost forever in digital never-never land.
For those of you who saw my old site and the vast amount of content, give me a little time...
Students intimidated by a large piece of blank white paper get the following advice from me: Just make a scribble on it somewhere.
Welcome to a fresh and new blank page. I now have a scribble on it.