This one was surprisingly easy to create. I was a bit worried about whether it would be possible to join the "start" and "end" of the loop but it was not a problem.
The massive version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Getting two 7 letter words in scrabble on the first and second move of a game. As is so often the case, I suspect that more luck than skill was involved (good letters = good words).
On reflection, this one worked our really well :)
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: That our dance performance this evening went very well. Everyone who was meant to turn up did and the audience really enjoyed it. We had fun too!
I've always maintained that recursion is a beautiful thing.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Managing to modify some of our dances so that one of our group who has a dodgy hip could still participate. Basically this meant changing the turns into straight walking so two of us walked, the rest turned and amazingly it worked out well.
When this one was created, I was supposed to be working on a Unit Plan for my Science students - but creating fractals was more fun. The basic star was made using Fractal Science Kit. The rest is a result of a lot of playing.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: That one of the members of my dance group who was not going to be able to perform had a change of plans and will be able to come after all. This is a good thing as we need all the people we can get.
Happily the curve of the fractal fit the curve of the rocking horse perfectly. Its good when that happens.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Replacement files. I'm currently working through An InDesign Book which includes downloadable files for each of the 12 chapters. Only problem was, the files for chapters 7 onwards were corrupt. Happily when I reported this to the guys at AGI Training they managed to fix it (and I did not even have to wait for the end of the weekend to happen). Needless to say I've learned heaps so far. I know the current version is CS5 but for those of us still using CS3, this book is very useful.
This one was manually tiled in PSP. A little bit of playing with the transparency settings, judicious use of the "drop shadow" effect and voila :)
Is it just me or does this one suggest the Microsoft logo? I'm not exactly a fan of Microsoft but this one is rather pretty.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Really cool *free* fireworks. I'm not sure why there was a display this evening but it was spectacular and we could see it from the comfort of our living room!
If you do not try, you will never succeed. Trying means risking failure - never trying assures it.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: That it finally stopped raining (at least for a bit) which meant being able to go walking outside for the first time in ages. Finding a $1.00 shortly after setting out even made said walk very worthwhile.
For something so simple, this one took a long time to create. Lets just say that using Illustrator to create the wallpaper did not work - which in retrospect is not a great surprise as Illustrator was not designed to cope with fractals / photos (that's what PSP / photoshop / GIMP is for).
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Managing to get to a meeting in an unfamiliar part of town without incident. It was easier than anticipated thanks to directions from google maps. The motorway had changed since I last had to go to that area making it much quicker and easier to access.
The palm photo used in this "advert" was taken by Magnus Rosendahl and placed in the public domain by him.
The huge version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Having a job interview today. It turns out that the school where I work have told me that at this point they can't renew my contract due to "contraction" in the roll. This is mostly due to current economic situation and it leaves me hunting for work. Happily, I have time (my contract ends in December) and having an interview today was a great start. Should know by the end of next week if anything will come of today's interview - but at least its a start.
The bird in this image is a takahe. To be specific, its based on a photo of "Greg", the too-tame takahe which frequents the visitor center at Tiritiri Matangi. Lets just say that Greg likes to help himself to as much human food as he can get his greedy little beak on. This is not a good thing!
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Silicon paper. Not only is it great for lining baking trays, it also came in handy when I was ironing our dance group costumes. Said costumes feature ribbon which was glued on but in some places, the ribbon was coming off and needed to be ironed back on. Placing the silicon paper on top of the *synthetic* fabric whilst ironing did the trick. It turns out that sewing on the ribbon is not a great option as the ribbon tends to buckle / bubble (and it takes forever to do).
Here's how it happened this time round. Psychedelic colours and flower implied hippies and the sixties music scene which implied John Lennon. Finding the quote was easy :)
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Getting my Driver's license renewed with a minimum of fuss. This means that I'm "good to go" for the next 10 years :)
If Tsunami's were fractals, this is what one might look like - or not.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Taking care of most of the items in my "inbox". It feels really good to get all those small little jobs out of the way.
Done as an experiment - which simply proved that trying to make a fractal which looks like a ripple is sort of possible. It took a fair bit of time and the result is not what I had hoped for. This is why its far better to create a fractal and see what it is, rather than deciding what you want and then trying to create the fractal. I try and explain this to people who want to buy my work but its difficult.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Having an easy fast. The overcast / windy weather was helpful and today went by in a flash. Getting to eat dinner was rather welcome too.
This one was fun to make. Here's wishing everyone out there well over the fast.
The huge version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Our shared lunch at school went really well. The student we were fare-welling was totally surprised (but pleased). It turns out that my tutor group are pretty awesome individuals and they did a great job of organising a card, the food and the clean-up.
In some ways, rocking horses are better than real horses. They don't eat anything, don't leave any mess and are don't bite / nip. Treated right, they'll also last a lot longer than a regular horse.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item:Cotton wool! Its cheap and can be used for really effective ear plugs. These proved to be essential at our 9th grade formal which featured our students looking great and dancing their hearts out to rather loud music.
This is a classic Apo piece that was simply begging to be rendered. As is all too often the case, I could not resist.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Finally having decent TV to walk to. Trust me when I say its been a while!
This one is dedicated to one of my students from last year who found this rock crab when we visited Tiritiri on a field trip. He held the crab and I got the reference photo. Said crab was then returned to the rocks from whence it came.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Discovering that right clicking over an image in Flickr gives you easy access to the links for making the image bigger. So convenient!
The shell reminded me of a snail - only most snails are not quite as attractive. This is probably for the best when one is aiming to avoid the notice of hungry birds.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Remembering to fill up my car before driving right past the gas station! After a busy day at work, its all to easy to be so focused on getting home that filling up with gas can be forgotten (sad but true).
This one reminded me of alien space ships - or at least, how alien space ships have been depicted in movies. From there it was a short leap to the title and quotation.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Finally getting Illustrator to co-operate. I wanted to create some "different" buttons for a new webpage I'm making. The process took far too long but progress has been made.
There was only really one great quote to go with this image (sometimes I just can't help myself).
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: I have so much to be grateful for at the moment. Not blogging for several days has been a nice but its good to be back. One of the highlights of the last few days has been getting an enhanced sale over at Shutterstock. Overall, life has been really good and the fact that I don't need to work tomorrow is icing on the cake.
The apple and honey images are courtesy of the American Department of Agriculture who have kindly put them into the public domain. The striped bass photo was taken by Tim Van Vliet and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. The Shofar image was taken by Olve Utne and is licensed is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
The other photos / graphics are mine :)
The really big version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Being home in time to blog before the holiday kicks in *just*. Things will be rather quiet for the next few days - but I'll be back :)
I've always liked this sort of fractal pattern, the only problem is that its not very original. Never mind.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: That all the students who ended up with detention from yesterday (long story) turned up to do it. Needless to say, in class today their behaviour was much improved. We did not waste the time in detention either - rather than making them write lines or do something meaningless, I found an article on a new anti-bacterial paint that is being developed and wrote some questions on it. They then got to read the article and answer the questions. I've never seen these kids quite so motivated to get a task done. The article was relevant as we are currently studying microbes so the issue of antibiotics / resistance is something that they need to know about.
Don't you wish that your music speakers looked as interesting as this?
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Finally managing to update my AVG free anti-virus. It seems like I'm on a role with software updates. Doing this meant being able to get rid of Avira which was driving me nuts (nagware is never fun).
Its always interesting to see what gets caught in fractal nets.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: That my iTunes finally updated itself! For some reason, it would not go from version 8 to version 9, so I eventually gave up. When it asked to upgrade to version 10, it seemed like a good time to give it another go. The thing finally worked which means no more annoying messages every time I open the program.
This one reminds me of peacock feathers. It helps that I have a real peacock feather on my desk for inspiration.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: That the Canterbury Earthquake hit at 4:38am. Had it struck a few hours earlier (or later), it is almost certain that there would have been far greater loss of life.
The original was a Fractal Science Kit image but it got post processed - a lot!
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: One of my clients finally managed to get enough "likes" to get a unique URL on facebook which means that I could update their site for them. It took us a while to figure our the whole facebook process and I'm glad we finally managed to do it.
This is what "lonely" looks like.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Lets just say that one word you don't want to hear in the Science lab is "fire". Happily one of my students had the presence of mind to turn off the gas tank and hand me the large bucket of sand kept in the lab for times such as this. Said fire was extinguished quickly and the only casualty was a pencil case. Hopefully this was a "once in a lifetime" event! At least no one can claim that my Science class is boring.
This is a rather old house. You can tell because of the old-style wallpaper next to it.
The wallpaper version is available at the preceding link.
Today's Gratitude Item: Being RAK'd. Today was "Random Act of Kindness" and there was chocolate in my pigeon hole at school. As always, its those little things that make a big difference.
