Onion in the dark

A chance to touch the stones

I went to Stonehenge a week ago in celebration of the annual Summer Solstice - the celebration of the sunrise for the longest day of the year. (Ironically, people stay up all night to witness this, and then most will spend the longest day of the year sleeping to recover.) Anyhow, it is a sacred place, a thing of beauty, the only time anyone is allowed to physically touch the stones, and the fields are full of people, all drunk, high, or plain happy. Hippies, druids and other strange types hoard together.
It was a beautiful night, and sunrise promised to be equally beautiful. My plan was to take photos of the event - I thought there could be some interesting ones. After failing to buy a disposable camera (I thought the style would suit) due to lack of stock in Boots, I opted against taking my SLR and took a standard digital camera.
It quickly ran out of battery, so I resorted to my phone. And instead of taking photos of the interesting people, the stones, and of course the sunrise, I got these...

No people on the Gator.

This here is a vehicle we drove occasionally whilst working at the golf course. It is a gator, and is designed purely to transport tools and such around. It doesn't go fast.



Anyway, whilst sitting in it wondering what next to do one day, we noticed the signage on the dashboard. I took a photo:



It appears you should not ride upside down on the vehicle, nor should you sit upright on it.
It obviously doesn't mean that. I'm just being pointlessly critical in my observation, but it did make my friend and I chuckle on this particularly mundane day of work.

China Photos - The Trip

Welcome banner
Originally uploaded by wj90

My first set of photos from my month long trip to China over Easter 2010 are now up on Flickr.
Unfortunately, with the free account, I cannot upload many photos, as it only allows for 100mb per month. I'm debating whether to upgrade, but I don't know much about Flickr at the moment, so we will see...

Jesussed

My youngest sister Emma, 12 yesterday, was recently given a piece of homework to research and display information on Jesus - who he was, what he said about himself, and what other religions thought of him.
I offered to help, and yesterday we created a game. It is a simple trivia of related questions and answers under the above headings, in the form of a board game. I designed the board and packaging combination, which has no need for an outer box due to its' minimalistic form. The box/board combo has the game name (Je-sussed - I came up with that one!) and the instructions on the outer. It then folds out to reveal the board, and the cards and pieces are kept neatly inside the box. Instructions are written on top of this box for convenience during gaming.

(left: outer, all closed up. middle: box open with contents and board unfolded. right: instructions on show as game is mid play)

Another self portrait

The same process as the last portrait, but here I have used the new Photoshop CS5. Not that I really expiremented too much on it.

CS5

In a previous post I explained how I wanted to learn more graphics related software. I now have the Adobe Creative Suite 5 Master Collection. I will try to play around with some of these programmes over the summer, in amongst my summer job, holidays, festivals and learning Chinese.

Self portrait

I realised I had no profile picture for my blogger account, so I set about drawing a self portrait. Here is the result. Hand-drawn, and then coloured on Photoshop.

Blog Headers

So I've had this current header for a while now, but I thought I'd display it alongside my new STIL header as a post, as I'm sure they will move on in the future...

Film 5: The Idiots (1998)

The Idiots (Idioterne) is a Danish film that has been subtitled in English. It depicts, documentary fashion, with unstable camera work, a group of seemingly healthy adults who enjoy acting as retards in public situations and amongst each other.
Made to look as though the whole thing is genuine and not staged, the film focuses on events and the awkward situations presented regarding the company of retards, as well as pawing into the pyschological controversies, and really exploring this rather odd and potentially controversial concept.
It certainly borders on the socially and morally wrong, but the idea is pyschologically interesting. The characters talk about the 'inner idiot', a part of our psyche which we ordinarily keep hidden away. People talk about 'the real you' coming out when one is drunk, and perhaps this is a similar state.
To access this 'inner idiot', one must be free to express themselves in whatever way they wish to, ignorant towards the social and moral quelms and normalities. One must forget what normal is to mean. If a group of people are all secluded together, and all set about to find this inner idiot, then it is considered normal amongst this group, and there is nothing in the way of achieving this. Anything is acceptable, and nothing is frowned upon or 'wrong'. This sounds potentially dangerous, but if the right people are together, I can see no problem and it certainly sounds like some interesting sides to yourself and others could be revealed.

Some quotes I like from the film:

"And you feel you'll be more of an artist if you go a teeny bit mad?"

"It was an experiment."

*****

"Ped, Henrik, Jeppe and Josephine are just as good retards as you."

*****

"If you can go back to your families or jobs and still be a spass I'll believe you're serious."

"Of course we can. If we couldn't, it would be pointless. We're either idiots or we're not."

*****

(after/in response to the above):

"You're right, I have no pride in my inner idiot."

*****

It makes you think. It could be an interesting experiment. And it reminds me of the dice therapies Luke Rhinehart talks about in the fictional book 'The Dice Man'. To an extent, anyway.

Goodbye Carlton Hill

On Monday, I packed my things and left my accomodation in Uni to come back to my hometown for the summer.
I remembered at the start of the year when I first arrived there. I was greeted with a selection of pins grouped on the board which spelt out the previous tennant's name. I decided to continue the legacy.