them's good broth

In Praise of Markdown

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:02:30 +0100

I hate word-processors. They are the spawn of the devil, for anyone of an artistic temperament. Ugly, bloated and stinking of corporate dullness, they sit there, sucking the very creativity out of you. Every time someone sends me a Word document, a bit more of my soul withers and dies. And it’s just as bad when I have to write up some kind of formal document myself. Even though I’ve eschewed Microsoft and its evil bug-ridden virus-infested software for years, I still feel the bile rise in my throat when I fire up the equally ugly-stick-beaten freebie alternative, NeoOffice, on my mac.

Quite apart from the fugliness, the launch times measured in ice-ages and the general stinkiness of word-processors, I hate using the damned things. I hate their stupid impenetrable style menus. I hate the way they seem to switch fonts willy-nilly. I hate the way pasted in text never formats up the same as existing text. I hate their stupid use of fucking tables. I hate the way they make the lovely practice of crafting words and sentences feel like having your teeth extracted, without anaesthetic. In short, I hate them.

If any of the above rings a bell with you, then meet Markdown.

Markdown [created by Apple pundit John Gruber] is a really easy to learn syntax for formatting [or ‘marking up’. Do you see what he did there?] text, which can then be converted into PDFs, HTML etc. You can write Markdown in any text editor, so no need to fire up some huge bloated word-processor, and there are also some nice looking dedicated Markdown editors, which make writing a pleasure again.

More on that later, but first let’s take a look at this Markdown syntax itself. I said it was easy to learn and, if you’ve been frequenting internet forums and the like for any length of time, you probably already know some markdown –although you might not know that you know it!

Ever seen anyone on a forum use asterisks to *emphasise* some text? Well, that’s Markdown. Most forum software doesn’t understand Markdown, so just shows those asterisks as asterisks but, with forum software that did understand Markdown, or working in a text editor that understands markdown; instead of those asterisks, you’d see italic text. It’s really that simple. with Markdown, instead of having to pick through stupid style menus, or highlight text and apply formatting, you just stick the appropriate punctuation at the beginning and end of the word, line of text or paragraph and, when you export to PDF, or HTML, or whatever, Markdown automatically converts that to nicely formatted text.

Some simple examples: showing the syntax and what it does:

One asterisk gives you *italic text* — One asterisk gives you italic text

One underscore gives you _italic text_ too – One underscore gives you italic text too

Two asterisks give you **bold text** – Two asterisks give you bold text

Two undersores give you __bold text__ too – Two underscores give you bold text too

Hash symbols give you headings in various sizes. Markdown follows the HTML convention that size 1 is the biggest and size 6 the smallest:

######A Size Six Header######

A Size Six Header

#####A Size Five Header#####

A Size Five Header

####A Size Four Header####

A Size Four Header

###A Size Three Header###

A Size Three Header

##A Size Two Header##

A Size Two Header

#A Size One Header#

A Size One Header

If you need to use some of those horrible bullet point lists, beloved of Word document monkeys, you can do that in Markdown too. Just put each item on a separate line and insert an asterisk followed by a space at the start, if you want a bullet point [ie. unordered] list and a number plus full stop and space, if you want a numbered [ie. ordered] list. Like so:

Unordered list:

* dog
* cat
* albatross

gives you

dog
cat
albatross

Ordered list:

1. dog
2. cat
3. albatross

gives you

dog
cat
albatross

If you need to embed images, or add links [handy when you’re composing a blog post, or otherwise generating text for use on the web], Markdown can do that too. The syntax is slightly more clunky here but not too onerous [and should be pretty familiar to anyone who’s ever edited an article on Wikipedia:

To make a normal link, just enclose the text which you want to make into a link in square brackets and then immediately follow this with the actual link URL in normal brackets. So:

[Click here for the beeb](http://bbc.co.uk) gives you this: Click here for the beeb

The syntax for embedding images is similar, with the addition of an exclamation mark at the start. In the case of an image, the text in the square brackets is optional [though you still need the brackets]. If supplied, that text will become a caption under the image.

No caption:

![](http://www.throup.org.uk/images/doctor_who/bbc_1986.png)

Caption:

![An old BBC logo](http://www.throup.org.uk/images/doctor_who/bbc_1986.png)

An old BBC logo

Well, there’s a quick run through on the basics of Markdown syntax. As you can see, it’s pretty simple and, I reckon, a lot easier to knock out than working with a clunky word-processor. But you might still be wondering what’s the point. Why learn this [admittedly simple] syntax, when we can just use fugly old Word anyway? Well, here are a few benefits:

Accessibility –Since Markdown is just plain text with asterisks, hashes etc added in, you can write it in any text editor. You don’t need no ‘steenking’ office suite. Markdown files can be saved with a .txt extension, so any app which can read text files can open them. Compare that with Microsoft Office, where different versions can’t even open other versions of Word documents, never mind word-processor documents from other office suites, such as iWork or Open Office.
Re-usability –Since a Markdown file is just plain text, it doesn’t have all the formatting crud embedded in it that proprietary word-processor documents do. Therefore it can easily be converted or output into different formats. Byword, the markdown editor I’m using to compose this post [yes I will come onto software in a minute!] allows me to export what I’m writing here as either HTML, or a nicely formatted up PDF. Daedalus, another one I use also does PDF and HTML but, in addition, allows you to export your Markdown documents as ePub format, which is the most widely used eBook format. Not bad eh? a web-page, a PDF, or an eBook, all from the one document –which can be created or edited in any text editor.

OK. I’ve already waffled on a lot longer than I meant to, but let’s wind this up with a quick look at some nice software apps, which make working with Markdown even easier:

Byword

This is my favourite Markdown editor. It comes in OSX and iOS flavours. so you can use it on your mac and your iPhone or iPad. Since it also integrates with Dropbox, you can work on your Byword docs on any of your Apple gadgets. You can get the iOS app on offer for £1,99 at the moment and [seeing as its a universal app] that means you get both the iPhone and iPad versions for that. The OSX version is £6,99 at the time of writing.

Byword, running on my iPad. Note the extra bar it adds above the keypad, offering easy access to things like asterisks and brackets[although, for some weird reason, not to the hash symbol]. You can also swipe the bar left and right to reveal other tools, such as word count, image embed, etc:

Byword has a preview markdown* button, which is handy for showing you that your document is going to look like you intended:

The Markdown preview. Yes, I did remember the image syntax properly, after all!

Choice of export formats. HTML, PDF, or copy HTML –handy for pasting into blog posts.

Daedalus

Daedalus is my second choice Markdown editor. It’s available for iOS only [so no integration with OSX] for £2,99 at the time of writing. It also integrates with Dropbox, to help you move your stuff between iPhone and iPad. Daedalus Touch, to give it its full name is arguably more polished looking than Byword. Daedalus’s creators make a big thing about doing away with folders and files. Instead Daedalus organises your creations into Stacks and Sheets of paper [ie. folders and files]. But, credit where it’s due, it does look nice and slick. Here’s the Stacks view, showing all my Stacks [ie. folders] of Sheets [ie. files]

Pinch or double-tap on a Stack and it opens up to reveal the Sheets inside. Pinch or double-tap on a sheet to open it for editing:

Daedalus also adds a bar across the top of the keyboard, giving access to commonly used Markdown symbols. The buttons on the Daedalus bar act as popups, with more choices nested inside and are also customiseable:

Daedalus also has more export options than Byword:

And more preference settings:

As well as a built-in look-up function, for doing basic researching from within the interface. I haven’t used this yet though. It seems a bit gimmicky to me, when I can easily switch to a full-featured web browser and back

On the whole, I think Daedalus is the more elegant, better featured and slicker-looking app, but it has two major drawbacks which keep it second choice behind Byword for me. The first, I have already mentioned: Daedalus has no OSX version, so it’s not as integrated across all my gadgets as Byword. Secondly, Daedalus doesn’t offer a preview function, which seems like an unforgiveable oversight on the developers’ part. The only way to see what your Markdown looks like is to export it as a PDF, open that and then, if you need to make any changes, go back and edit the original –and then repeat the whole process again. It’s a horribly clunky way to go about things, for an app which is otherwise so well thought out.

Well, there you have it folks. A brief introduction to the nerdy-but-accessible world of Markdown. If you hate word-processors as much as I do, why not give it a go. You might like it.

Getting Stuff Into and Out Of your iOS Devices

Sat, 12 May 2012 10:38:22 +0100

Being an Apple ‘fanboi’ of long standing [I got my first mac way back in ’93] I love my shiny iPhone and iPad. But one bugbear I have with these gadgets is the way that Apple makes it so difficult to get stuff on and off them, without either using only Apple apps, like the execrable iTunes or using clumsy workarounds such as emailing files back and forward as attachments.

So here are a few goodies I’ve discovered, over the years, which will help make this process a bit easier. First up, I’ll give Apple’s own iCloud offering a mention, seeing as it does have some good features.

iCloud

Apple’s built-in cloud storage is a pretty easy way to get files to and from your iOS gadgets, providing you don’t mind being forced to use Apple software for the entire process. I use it to synchronise my Address Book, iCal calendar and info from a few apps, which don’t need too much storage –iCloud gives you 5GB for free, with more available at pretty ungenerous rates.

The reason I find iCloud annoying and have had to look for additional alternatives lies with PhotoStream. This is a handy feature, whereby the last 1000 photos you’ve taken on your iOS gadgets are automatically stored in iCloud. In fact, it turned out to be a bit of a life-saver a few weeks back, when the missus realised she’d deleted a load of photos off her iPhone, that she needed for a college project: luckily they were all still in her PhotoStream on iCloud.

The problem with iCloud is that to get photos off it and onto your mac, you need to be using either iPhoto or Aperture [Apple’s two photo management tools]. Given that I’m already using Adobe Lightroom to manage my photos, this is a major annoyance. Both iPhoto and Aperture are hefty downloads and in my opinion Aperture [the supposed ‘Pro’ offering] is nowhere near as good as Lightroom, so I don’t see the point in installing a huge lump of crappy bloatware, just to allow me to download the odd photo to my comp.

Hence the quest to find out what else was out there.

Dropbox

There can’t be many people about who haven’t heard of Dropbox but, just in case, here’s a quick run down: Dropbox gives you a free 2GB Dropbox folder of online storage, which appears in your Finder sidebar and automatically synchronises over WiFi across all your computers and iOS gadgets. Dropbox was originally intended as an online backup and a means of synchronising your files across, say, your work and home computers, but its availability on iOS makes it equally useful for getting files onto or off your iPhone/iPad: just shove them in your Dropbox and pick them up at the other end.

Because Dropbox has been around for so long and is so well-known, you’ll find that a lot of iOS apps already support saving to and opening from Dropbox directly but, even for those that don’t, you can always open the Dropbox app, tap and hold on the file in question and wait for the Open in… menu to pop up, to open that file in any app which thinks it can handle it.

If you want more than the measley 2GB storage you get for free, Dropbox have paid plans, going up to 100GB and beyond. But one nice thing they do is a referrals system, whereby you can earn 500MB extra storage for yourself and anyone you refer. So, if you sign up with my link below, you’ll get an extra 500MB free [and so will I, so it’s all good!]

Dropbox

SugarSync

SugarSync is pretty similar to Dropbox in the way it works and synchronises across your mac and iOS devices. The main difference is that, where Dropbox creates a special new Dropbox folder on your mac, into which you have to drag anything you want to synchronise or access from your iPhone/iPad; SugarSync allows you to choose a folder or folders that already exist on your mac and use those as your synchronised folders.

SugarSync offers a more generous 5GB free, when you sign up. However, it’s not as popular as Dropbox, so not as many iOS apps support open from / save to SugarSync, as do with Dropbox. But again, Open in… makes this pretty much a non-issue. SugarSync also allow you to earn extra storage [usually 125MB at a time], by completing ‘tasks’ such as installing the mobile app, making a file available via a shared link etc. As with Dropbox, you can also earn 500MB for referring a friend, who subsequently signs up. Here’s my referral link, if you want to sign up and ‘spread the joy’:

SugarSync

Droplr

One real annoyance I had with trying to get real work done on my iPad was the absolute turd-fest that is trying to work with Tumblr on iOS. I’ve tried about three different Tumblr apps over the years and they all sucked the arse of Beelzebubb. The biggest annoyance, which they all seem to share, being the inability to add photos into a text post.

That’s where Droplr comes in. Droplr doesn’t have any of the online backup connotations that Dropbox or SugarSync do. It’s billed as simply being an easy way to move stuff about from one device to another. You only get a teensy-weensy 1GB of storage with the free version and there is talk of it being ad-supported, though I’m not quite sure how this works, or you can upgrade to 100GB storage for $3/month, which I make about £1,87. Not too shabby.

I’ve not explored Droplr’s potential for moving round files yet, but have been using it as a way of adding multiple pictures into text posts, while writing on the iPad. This is doable thanks to a really cool feature of Droplr’s handling of images:

When you upload a file to Droplr, you get a link to that file, which you can then use, or give to someone else, to download that file again on another device. However, with uploaded images, if you add a plus sign to the end of the link then, instead of working as a link to the file, it actually embeds the image itself in any web page you use it on, which means you can use this trick to add images into Tumblr posts, written on iOS, provided you upload the images to Droplr first.

Here’s what I mean. Here’s one of the images I used in my Starsky & Hutch review, which I wrote on my iPad:

http://d.pr/i/fXFw

As you can see, if I write the link normally, you just see a link to the file, back on Droplr. However, if I add a plus sign to the end of it, you see the actual image embedded right here in this post:

Pretty sneaky, eh? [And, as I’m writing this very article on my iPad, all the other images were added in the same way].

Well, that’s my round up of a couple of the ways you can get some nice free extra storage, get files onto and off your iPhone or iPad and also sneakily get round not being able to add photos into Tumblr text posts, when composing on iOS.

Tune in same time next week, when I’ll be showing you how to build a fully functional nuclear submarine out of old milk cartons and string!

Another Hefty Scroodl Roundup –Part 02 Here’s the next...

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:50:03 +0100

Another Hefty Scroodl Roundup –Part 02

Here’s the next batch in ‘Operation scroodl Catchup. This lot takes us from 24th April to 07th May.

Now the smart boys and girls amongst you will have noticed that there are less scroodls here than there are days between those two dates.

“What has happened?…” I hear you cry, with your stupid faces twisted in confusion “Has our hero and role model failed in his challenge of doing a doodle every day for a year?”

Well, dear hearts, you can put that notion right out of your heads! YH&RM has not fallen on his idiotic face a mere four months into the race. He has, however, been on holiday, towards the end of April during which time a strange phenomenon was observed, whereby the more he drank, the more piss-poor his scroodls became.

So, it is in order to save your delicate sensibilities from having to witness such risible scratchings, that I’ve chosen to filter out a couple of the most cac-handed ones. Given the quality of what remains, I’ll leave it up to your imaginations to contemplate how wank the ones which were culled must have been!

———

The mighty scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Another Hefty Scroodl Roundup –Part 01 I’ve been...

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:33:00 +0100

Another Hefty Scroodl Roundup –Part 01

I’ve been neglecting my increasingly froth-lipped scroodl repostings of late and I have so many accumulated in the reserve stash that, when I tried to upload them all at once, all smoke started coming out of Tumblr and a man shouted “Hey, you! Stop that, or you’ll break the internet!”

Anyway, here’s the first batch. these were originally posted on scroodl between 14th and 23rd April.

As ever, top British secret agent Colonel Wanderbury features quite prominently, fighting his ongoing valiant rearguard action against the despicable Baron von Brücken-Stempfl and his invading hordes of Nazi triffids.

Fans of middle-aged men in lingerie will be relieved to hear that Wanderbury’s propensity for somehow ending up in a bra, against his will, continues.

———

The mighty scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Review: Starsky and Hutch

Sun, 06 May 2012 18:44:01 +0100

Seeing as it’s a proven scientific fact that all popular culture created after the mid 1990s is complete shite, I’ve resorted to downloading complete TV series of classic television from ‘the good old days’ off the internet, to give me something to gawp at while shovelling my dinner into my gob, of an evening.

At the moment, I’m working my way through all four seasons of the 1970s cop show, Starsky & Hutch and I thought I’d share the delights of this old classic with those of you, amongst my vast readership, who are unaware of this televisual delight.

[I believe that, in accordance with the current trend for rehashing the past, rather than creating anything new, a Starsky & Hutch movie was made not long ago, but this review is about the ‘real’ thing, not some crappy modern rip-off]

David Starsky and Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson are a couple of West Coast American coppers. They drive around [mostly] in Starsky’s souped-up red & white Ford Torino [disparagingly referred to as ‘The Tomato’ by Hutch,] crashing down cardboard box-filled alleyways, across truck-filled junctions and through red traffic lights, shooting and beating up baddies, and trying to kop off with a never-ending conveyor belt of women sporting hideous 1970s hairstyles –all in the name of the law.

Drive it like you nicked it,

In this ongoing quest to make the mean streets a safer place, they are aided and abetted by their pet ‘grass’ Huggy Bear and harangued by their permanently furious boss, Captain Dobey.

Starsky and Hutch is great low-brow fun for all the family [except your uncle Arthur, who would fucking hate it!] and, even though the last couple of series are not as good as the first two, it’s still well worth seeking out, if you happen to frequent certain Swedish buccaneering themed websites.

Paul Michael Glaser [L] as Starsky, David Soul [R] as Hutch

Here is my quick run-down on all you need to know about the characters involved:

Dave Starsky –is the smaller, dark-haired one. He’s played a bit more for laughs than Hutch. Starsky’s pride and joy is his aforementioned Ford Torino motor. Running jokes in the series include the fact that older women the duo come across always seem to fancy Starsky, leading to much merriment as he tries to extricate himself from their amorous advances.

In earlier series, Starsky is the chilli-guzzling, burger munching foil to Hutch’s yoghurt-swigging, alfalfa-chomping health fanatic, but these roles seem to become a bit blurred partway through.

Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson –is the taller, blonde one. He’s a bit more of a straight man than Starsky and tends to be more successful at ‘pulling the birds’. Hutch’s car is a battered old wreck which tends to break down or have bits fall off it at the crucial moment, whenever the duo use it ‘on duty’ –which makes you wonder why they ever do.

Hutch’s way with women leads him to fall madly in love on a regular basis; an infatuation which usually ends badly for the lassie involved, as she inevitably ends up dead, blinded, crippled, raped or imprisoned, by the end of the episode. Thankfully Hutch’s grief coping mechanism is highly developed and, by the following week, the dear departed is forgotten, as Hutch begins sniffing round his next amour

Captain Dobey –is the pair’s boss. He spends most of the first series stuffing his fat face and yelling furiously at Starsky and Hutch. Sometimes he seems to yell at them to “get out on the streets and catch…” whoever they’re looking for, just so he can help himself to the lunch they were about to tuck into. It may be apocryphal but, in our house, a shouted “Starsky! –leave the pizza!” has become a popular Dobey-esque catchphrase.

Starsky! –leave the pizza!

Huggy Bear –is a pimp-tastic groover, sporting the flariest flares and the widest lapels in all of christendom. Occasional bar owner and general street hustler, he manages to combine an encyclopaedic knowledge of what’s ‘going down’ amongst the underworld, with an ongoing willingness to spill the beans on these shenanigans to his pals Starsky & Hutch –somehow without ending up minus kneecaps, or cemented into the foundations of a flyover somewhere, for his troubles.

Huggy Bear in one of his more subdued numbers

Every episode will begin with a violent crime, inevitably perpetrated by, perpetrated upon or witnessed by, a ‘glamorous’ [1970s style] female and, after justice has been well and truly meted out, will equally predictably end with a humorous throw-away scene wherein one of the characters will end up the butt of some excruciatingly bad joke, initiated by one of the others.

In between, Starsky & Hutch will narrowly avoid mowing down pedestrians and decimating the civilian population as, with gay abandon, they hurl their car through oncoming traffic and fire their guns across crowded streets, after their fleeing quarry –whilst simultaneously vying for the affections of every young female they encounter.

It’s not all burning rubber, gunfights and kicking ‘baddy’ ass, though. In more thoughtful moments, the pair maintain a relationship that sometimes seems to veer towards the homo-erotic side of ‘best buddy’-dom. This subtext is reinforced when watching from this distance in time where, with the advent of same-sex marriage, the pair’s frequent emotionally expressed concern for “my partner” seems invested with an extra significance.

Best buddies

Starsky and Hutch is classic 1970s fare; violent, sexist, pontificating and wearing some atrocious ‘threads’. But, in spite of the ceaseless diet of crime and violence, it’s also oddly comforting and, for me at least, drenched in nostalgia, as I remember being glued to the telly watching it, way back when it was originally broadcast.

Download it now, you shits!

Not your usual weekly scroodl round up… As I’ve been...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 16:36:00 +0100

Not your usual weekly scroodl round up…

As I’ve been enjoying a well-deserved week off work for Easter, I’ve been able to devote a bit more time, than the usual half-arsed effort at the end of the day, to my daily scroodls this week.

So, I did a mini set, still featuring my fuckwitted creations, Wanderbury & co. but paying homage to iconic movie posters. See how many of them you can get.

——-

PS. I’m still looking for new blood to sign up for the scroodl challenge:

It’s simples. Just commit to doing one doodle a day for 365 days in a row. Just think of the sense of achievement you’ll feel, some time next April, when you’ve inflicted your 365th piece of badly-drawn crap, on an unsuspecting intarwebs!

MESSAGE ME HERE, with your name and email address, to sign up

No.100 –One Hundred, Not Out!

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 23:39:00 +0100

My one hundredth scroodl. Go me!

scroodl:

Having donned his best driving bra and taken a firm grip on his joystick, Colonel Wanderbury is looking forward to an exciting evening’s racing, when he discovers to his horror, that the rampaging triffids have completely smashed his Scalextric!

[With apologies to B-movie fans, everywhere!]

Fourteenth week’s worth of scroodls. You know the score,...

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 21:38:19 +0100

Fourteenth week’s worth of scroodls.

You know the score, by now!

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

No.95 —Huddersfield Tapestry For the past two days I’ve...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:30:00 +0100

No.95 —Huddersfield Tapestry

For the past two days I’ve been in Huddersfield at the Subject Specialist Conference, which is part of my PGCE/Cert. Ed. Given that the entire course up to now has consisted entirely of essay writing and spreadsheet sucking, I was expecting the conference to be similarly creativity-sapping. So imagine my delight when, on arrival, we were all given long strips of paper and invited to make some kind of ‘artistic reflection’ during our two days there.

Wow! –official licence to doodle. Usually I’m getting told off for not paying attention in classes and meetings, when I have to keep scribbling to preserve my sanity, but this lot were actively encouraging it. Get in!

Anyway, here’s my effort. It’s the tale of my first day in Huddersfield, from getting on the train at Manchester Piccadilly to falling asleep in my B&B. Some of it was drawn on the Monday, but I finished it today, so that qualifies it as today’s scroodl, in my book. Actual size is about 2-3 feet wide.

All drawn in begged, borrowed and stolen black biros, as eejit that I am, I forgot to fill my drawing pen before I left.

Mini Review: The Last Station

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 20:13:38 +0100

One of the websites I frequent is currently holding a poll to find the “Worst Film Ever”. I added my tuppence worth to the debate and then realised that, with a bit of cynical recycling, I could rehash my post there as a review here . So here it is. Apropos of abso-bloody-lutely nothing, save the fact I’ve not actually written anything for a while, just been re-posting my scroodls:

If you measure awfulness in sheer tedium, as opposed to irritation, then you couldn’t do much worse than “The Last Station”:

Christopher Plummer [as Leon Tolstoy] spends almost the entire film, lying in bed, waiting to die… with a beard.

Full-on beard thrills.

Occasionally his slumbers are interrupted by the arrival of one of either of two visitors; his wife [Helen Mirren], who berates him for toying with the notion of leaving his money to The Siberian Beard Research Collective, instead of her; or a young representative of The Siberian Beard Research Collective, who likewise berates Tolstoy for potential betrayal of beard-dom, should he leave the cash to the missus.

The film continues in this vein for what seems like several days, with Tolstoy contemplating the ceiling and [presumably praying for death] while Mirren and whoever the hell the other bloke is, rotate in and out of his room on a carousel, repeating their demands that they cop for the eventual loot.

There may have been some flashbacks, featuring Tolstoy looking out from behind the different lengthed beards of his youth, but I’m not sure as, by this stage, I was watching my own whiskers grow, as a more action-packed alternative.

Thirteenth week’s worth of scroodls. McYadda,...

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:58:17 +0100

Thirteenth week’s worth of scroodls.

McYadda, McYadda

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Twelfth week’s worth of scroodls. Blunderbuss and...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:27:00 +0100

Twelfth week’s worth of scroodls.

Blunderbuss and Bacon-Slicer again… or whatever they’re called

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Eleventh week’s worth of scroodls. Wanderbury and the...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:45:58 +0100

Eleventh week’s worth of scroodls.

Wanderbury and the Baron again. More exciting than finding a cornflake in your cornflakes!

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Tenth week’s worth of scroodls. I’ll not even bother...

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 23:19:00 +0000

Tenth week’s worth of scroodls.

I’ll not even bother introducing this week’s offerings. same old, same old.

———

The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Floor Plan. More work done on the set for Project Innocence,...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:11:00 +0000

Floor Plan.

More work done on the set for Project Innocence, this Monday.

At the weekend, for the good of the team, I put myself through the soul-destroying hell that is a visit to B&Q. After being harangued by Alan bloody Titmarsh on loop tape in the garden department, searching in vain for the right sized wood and then futilely trying to find a price on the not-quite-right sized wood, which was all they had —I emerged broken but unbowed and loaded up my van with some timber and hardboard sheets.

On Monday afternoon, me and Stefan got to work, laying down some more cross-pieces and staple-gunning on the hardboard for the floor and rear wall. As you can see, the hardboard was just annoyingly too small for the stage frame, so we had to improvise a bit.

Next job will be the side walls, which will take some more imaginative botching. Here is Stefan doing all the work, while I stride up and down, bawling contradictory instructions and signing the occasional autograph for passing fans of slipshod carpentry.

Ninth week’s worth of scroodls. More Colonel Wanderbury...

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 16:13:00 +0000

Ninth week’s worth of scroodls.

More Colonel Wanderbury and Baron von Brücken-Stempfl. Nothing to see here. move along, please!

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Eighth week’s worth of scroodls. Another week dominated by...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:29:38 +0000

Eighth week’s worth of scroodls.

Another week dominated by the adventures of Colonel Wanderbury and Baron von Brücken-Stempfl. Oh well. No point fighting it. Let’s just see where this goes.

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

All the World's a Stage

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:16:12 +0000

As self-appointed “person who stands at the back, pointing at stuff” and general dogsbody for the animation 2nd years stop-motion “Project Innocence” it fell to me to ~~knock up~~ lovingly hand-craft the stage, within which the ‘magic’ will take place.

A few weeks back me and Stefan did a bit of setting up cameras, fiddling with tripods, measuring distances etc. in the dirty room at college and arrived at a set of dimensions which constituted the maximum field of view we were going to work within. So, after scavv’ing a bundle of timber off Estates [cheers Mike!], last weekend, I got to work…

It’s measure once, cut twice, isn’t it?

My students will be well aware of my oft-expressed incredulity on the fact that about 99,9% of them never seem to carry a pen or pencil. Well dear reader, this unpreparedness is apparently not limited to art students. My girlfriend is studying a fashion degree, so you’d think she might actually be able to lay her paws on the odd bit of sewing or dress-making equipment. But this is what she [eventually!] unearthed, when I asked to borrow a tape measure.

Some on-the-spot calculations

It’s good to get the chance to use some ‘proper’ art equipment, for a change, instead of messing about with namby-pamby computers. Mind you, it’s still not a patch on the fun I had with Oxy-Acetylene cutting torches during sculpture lessons, back when I was at Art College.

Much sawing, drilling and screwing [ooh er, missus!] later, I’d run out of timber, but was the proud father of this rickety wooden framework which, with the addition of a bit more cross-bracing and some hardboard panelling, will hopefully become the stage for “Project Innocence”.

Seventh week’s worth of scroodls I’m afraid the...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:38:00 +0000

Seventh week’s worth of scroodls

I’m afraid the Post-It note offerings have continued into a second week.

[it’s just so much more convenient than dragging my sorry arse all the way over to the computer and setting up my Wacom tablet!]

I also seem to have created a monster; namely Colonel Wanderbury and his arch-enemy Baron von Brücken-Stempfl, who seem to have taken over my scroodls, at the moment. Trouble is, having given spawned the two eejits, I havenae the heart to kill them off. Oh well, let’s see what next week brings.

By the way. Not that anyone is remotely interested, but the “Wanderbury” in the first picture [the ‘bath of bras’ incident] is not Colonel Wanderbury himself, but his nephew Quantock Wanderbury –a man whose career has thus far not progressed beyond that brief walk-on part.

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!

Sixth week’s worth of scroodls This week, depending on how...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:36:00 +0000

Sixth week’s worth of scroodls

This week, depending on how charitably disposed towards me you’re feeling, I’ve either been “pushing the boundaries of what constitutes an art medium”, or “being a lazy bugger”.

However you want to dress it up, it means i’ve mainly been doing quick 10-20 minute doodles on Post-It Notes. Normal service will be resumed as soon as arse is once more in gear.

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The mighty Scroodl challenge; pick a start date and then aim to create and upload a hand-drawn piece of art, every day for the next 365 days –or a “year”, as it’s sometimes also called!