That look

I was hanging washing on the line this afternoon

The sparrows in the yard sounded agitated, then I saw this one caught on a branch.

I took a few photos since normally one doesn't get close to these flighty birds.

Looking over them and it reminds me of Howard Arkley's Nick Cave painting in the National Portrait Gallery.

The way everything is soft except the light reflected in the eye.

It is dizzying to stand too close to Arkley's work.

If you let it fill your outlook, one's eyes try to reconcile the depth of field.

Something about that uneasiness always seemed poignant while remembering Arkley died from an overdose as his career was taking off.

Just as it now was unsettling to watch the sparrow spinning around trying to take flight.

Don't let your dreams give up on you

Collage by Austin Kleon — who doesn't credit the fourth grader that allegedly spoke these words

Although, now that I think about it, Kleon has a book called Steal Like An Artist so he's probably on brand and practicing what he preaches!

Roo Cop

By brb

Overcoming distance education hurdles

Earlier this year I got a scholarship to train as a school teacher

It's been fun to go back to uni, although I am conscious the attrition rate for distance education is higher than that for students studying education -- so the challenges must multiply!

One of my assessments for uni this semester is the aptly-named "hurdle" worth 0% that involves sitting the LANTITE test required of teachers to demonstrate literacy and numeracy.

This test uses a remote proctoring service based in the USA for regional students and was posing problems for my laptop's RAM and home broadband.

After I saw the Country Universities Centre promoted having high-speed broadband, I joined up.

(I had resisted previously because I don't need their other services and who wants to be associated with an acronym that sounds like cuck?)

So it was disappointing to discover their broadband connection in Leeton was worse than the one I have at home. 

Australian internet often leaves a lot to be desired and service providers have been criticised for promoting speeds that don't reflect the bandwidth available to users during peak times.

Anyway, I think I've found a solution for my final LANTITE attempt today for 2024.

I reduced the screen resolution from 1920 pixels to 720 and now the proctoring service's test says I could host four students on my connection!

Now I'm wondering if I should offer my caravan as a study centre? 

Halloween exam

Amused by this requirement while I attempting to log into the LANTITE exam on Halloween

Are the two sheets so that I can make a ghost costume?

Or perhaps they're going to check my Origami skills?

It seems weird that I can have two sheets of paper but nothing for making a mark!

Where did the bands go?

Rick Beato raises an interesting observation here about how few contemporary bands appear in the charts

I think one of the things he misses is that pretty much all of recorded music is available online. In the past albums would go out of print, unless they were really popular.

The other thing is that contemporary music is so much more competitive, with that many more artists and they don't get the budgets and experience available to previous generations.

(Part of me is amazed at the older stuff that my kids listen to, but another part of me ponders those two points above.)

Another factor influencing their ongoing success might be that by the 1990s many bands had stopped touring material before recording it, which means they wrote and recorded songs without performing them for audiences and missed having that opportunity to fine-tune structures or develop material beyond to be more memorable.

And, yet another idea, the demise of bands fits within a broader trend identified in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, a nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam published in the year 2000. (After all, Regurgitator sang that "Music is sport!")

Peed off

Sometimes I wonder why I always need to wee, then I remember that I use questions like this one as a prompt to make a cuppa

There really are too many questions in a day, I think.

Recently I read that teachers make an average of 1500 decisions each day and I know that for me this will be mostly deciding not to drink cuppas since I can't wee during classes.

Dear artists

Creative expression is part of my weeks, though not as daily as it used to be

I like writing to work through thoughts and making music to forget others. 

And playing drums or dancing for 10 minutes is a mood-changer.

Collaborations

Music has always been the key requirement for membership of an online colony, along with English for me

The earliest was the Ninja Tune forum that introduced so many remixing techniques, which continues in the Shinobi Cuts Remix Chain albums.

In the last month I've had a couple of collaborations with my online communities, particularly the Disquiet Junto. The prompt to compose with a 29/16 time signature arose from a conversation with Oscar about the Mother 3 video game.

That led to two tracks and the second became a soundtrack for a walk-through the Marea Bright exhibition at the Museum of the Riverina.

 

 

Naviar Records shared my senryu this week and it led me to filter the noise from a South Coast video.