Photo of the day: Sainsbury's "large" onions

I don't have a complaint about the quality of these onions, but Sainsbury's are taking the piss with their description. I can't see how an onion with a diameter of 60mm can be considered large, and at £1.29 for 3, these tiny onions are damn expensive. I bought these onions online, so had no way of actually telling how big "large" would be.

New banner

For absolutely no reason at all I can't resist buggering around with my "DrGaz" blog banner now and then. Depending on what date you read this it may or may not be at the top of the blog right now! Otherwise here it is below. I was going to do a major overhaul, but got bored and decided to leave it for a rainy day. Instead I just adulterated the existing version - messed around with the colours and bunged in a few more random images.


Just for the hell of it, here are some of my old versions:

Organism Consciousness

This is another one of my experimental weird sketches done over the Christmas period when I was a bit bored one day. I know it’s a bit wacky, but don’t worry – I’m not on drugs or having a nervous breakdown or anything (or at least I hope not). This drawing follows the same rules as my Mechanics of a Damaged Mind drawing I did a few months ago. I am of course referring to the “make it up as you go along and just draw anything that pops into your head” rule. I drew this one in pencil instead of pen, the idea being to try to create a bit more texture and a 3D feel that my Mechanics pic lacked. I also added some highlights to the big swirls afterwards using an eraser to try to make them more 3D.

Purple bally thing in space

This is something I did ages ago in 3D on Autodesk Inventor 9, that I just found on my PC. I thought I'd just give it a quick Photoshop job (add some stars and stuff) and bung it on here.

DrGaz's Music: The Tripods

Contrary to the slagging off most Doctor Who fans give The Tripods, I have to say that I bloody loved the series! I recently re-watched some episodes on YouTube and was amazed to find that even after 20 years it is still gripping and the effects hold up surprisingly well.

I recently had a bash at trying to emulate Ken Freeman's magnificent theme tune using Garageband, and you can listen to it here. You can either use the above player or hear it on the video below where I've dubbed it over the title sequence:

Above: my version of the theme opening title sequence.

Aaargh it's all out of sync! The bassline's all wrong! Where did those drums come from at the end? It's ALL wrong! (But I sorta quite like it).

Well I'm not saying it's perfect and I have to admit that I did this when I didn't have an internet connection so it's completely from memory. Listening to it against the actual theme music, I know now that my instruments, tempo, key, phrasing and baseline are all wrong (well everything's wrong then).

I'm been slowly working on a more accurate version, but sadly I'm limited with the voices available on Garageband - I just CAN'T seem get the strings to sound right on my new version - they don't have enough attack and sound too relaxed. Maybe I can find a way around that somehow...

Mechanics of a Damaged Mind

This is an experiment that I've been working on sporadically for a few weeks and I finished it today. I set out to draw a completely random picture - just anything that came into my head. I stared in the middle of the page and progressed round and round until I got to the outside, aiming to cover every inch of the page with some sort of design.

During the process I realised that is that if everything is completely random it is not so interesting to look at - the eye is not drawn to anything specific. Therefore, as I progressed to the extremes of the page, I tried to work in more geometric designs and bolder patterns. I think that they work much better. I suppose that even chaos needs a few rules.

Photo of the day: The Sugar Palm, Thailand.

It's amazing how quickly time goes. I can't believe it's 6 months since we were here:

This is the Sugar Palm Resort & Spa in Phuket, Thailand. It was a damn good hotel. Very reasonably priced and excellent service. We stayed there for the first couple of weeks of our trip to Thailand. I took this just before we left. I like the modern, stylish design.

Virtual haircut

This is a good laugh to listen to... but use headphones and close your eyes or it won't have the right effect! I must admit it felt pretty wierd when they bring the scissors and razor close to your ear.

House Price Crash Vids.

As interest rates are probably heading north again imminently, and with us seemingly on the precipice of a house price crash in the UK, here's a couple of vids that I found on YouTube that are quite amusing. The first is from the last crash of the late '80s/early '90s. It's from Spitting Image. All you need to do is swap Maggie for Blair, and "prices dropped by 50 grand" to "100 grand" and there you go!

The second video is my favorite. It mocks the whole media and other vested interest groups' endless ramping and spin on the market, and the government's "no more boom and bust" promise. It's from a couple of years ago, but is still relevant.

Random stuff: Animusic

I came across this video by accident earlier. It's bloody amazing, quite frankly. I just couldn't resist putting it here! It's made by a comany called Animusic. a content creation and licensing company. They must be raking it in (and having lots of fun in the process). Some bloke on YouTube seems to have ripped all their videos, so you can see more of their stuff here.

Random stuff: Evil Maria.

This is the name of a great little song that I came across on a rather interesting little website that had been languishing in the backwaters of my bookmarks for months. The site is called grke, which is a shortened version of the name of site’s author, Graham Keeling. I somehow stumbled upon his site whilst browsing the forum on Outpost Gallifrey.

Anyway, about Evil Maria. It’s damn catchy - so catchy in fact that it’s been in my head for the last few days. Aaargh! People who can write songs like do that should be making megabucks! I have cheekily bounced “Evil Maria” over to this blog (using odeo.com) for your listening pleasure (use the player above). I hope this is OK, grke!

You have been warned - it's catchy!

The interesting thing about Evil Maria, is that it’s loosely based on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum game, “Jet Set Willy”, which is an astonishing coincidence as only just a week or two ago I was buggering around downloading Spectrum emulators and games over at www.worldofspectrum.org. There’s more to come on all that later...

Anway, all about Evil Maria (including the lyrics) here, and do check out grke.net – there’s some great tunes he’s written – fun and quirky (and damn catchy) stuff, and some other interesting things too.

DrGaz’s House of Horror

A few years ago I had the pleasure of working for a technology company that was based in a 19th century manor house in Essex (pictured). One day I was chatting to the receptionist, who gave me the following account of how she’d once seen a ghost there:

“I was sitting at reception one winter afternoon, just before Christmas. It was approaching the end of the day and the light outside was fading. As I sat there in front of the PC, I could feel that someone was watching me. I turned around to see a young girl staring at me incredulously. I’d say she was perhaps in her late teens, and was dressed in a maid’s outfit. She had curly, golden hair. She peered at me and my computer for what seemed like a very long time before turning to study the Christmas tree in the same way. She then turned her back on me and walked straight through the wall. The whole experience lasted for about a minute”.

A pretty intriguing little story I thought. I took a look in the room behind reception, and there was a doorway exactly in the area that the girl had supposedly walked though. It was sealed off and paneled over on the reception side.

I found out later that there were all sorts of ghostly rumours about the building. Artifacts from as far back as the Bronze Age have been found on the site indicating that the area had been inhabited for a long time before the manor was built. The manor itself started life as an 18th century farmhouse. Over the years it was extended and embellished, gradually mutating into a mansion. Some of the original farmhouse exists at the heart of the building. These areas are reputed to be the most haunted, the focus being a particular corridor at the centre of the mansion.

Naturally, I didn't stay too late for overtime.