Indoor water garden

Following up on the previous post on water gardens, I just spotted this piece on indoor water-gardens over winter!  I'm so excited...

Indoor Tabletop Water Garden from RadMegan

Zimoun - sound sculptures

Video showcasing a number of sound sculptures and installations from someone called Zimoun. Some really interesting ideas in there surrounding motors, multiples and the like. Especially nifty is the sculpture of hanging rotating wheels which give each other a big kick of energy when they collide.

Hypnotic transformations - Flux

Came across this beautiflly hyptnotic and compelling video by by Candas Sisman. Really interesting use of a completely static frame and restricted view to increase tension and confusion...

Self-contained pond

Apartment therapy have some great articles, in this case for making a water garden in a container:

Container garden by Bart Everson (licensed for use under Creative Commons)

Such a fantastic idea.

Sometimes stuff speaks to you...

Ursula Vernon, the woman I hope to be if I don't grow up, discussing the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. 

"Now, it’s not a perfect book. Lots of people would find it a snore, or annoying, or whatever. But hey, I enjoyed it, parts of it spoke to me.  There is a scene where she sits in Italy and carefully arranges the absolutely perfect lunch on a plate and feels a kind of odd happiness and I stood in my kitchen more than once, carefully laying out several kinds of interesting salad on a piece of red Fiestaware, and feeling a fragile emotion that I would hard pressed to explain fully, except that it was something like even though my life is wrecked beyond measure and I do not know how much of it I am going to be able to salvage, this meal here is perfect and the rest doesn’t matter while I am eating it."

 Yeah, made me cry.  I'm still uncertain and messed up.  Woo.

800% more beautiful

A wonderful little bit of serendipity - a song, time-stretched 800% becomes so, so beautiful, ethereal, and calm...  I listened to a snippet of the original anaemic pre-pubescent poppy warbling, just so I could hear where it was coming from - yuck.  It was ignorable, I guess, but the symphonic, mutated version conjures slow waves on alien shores against violet skies, and I love it.

If you're not friends with flash, you can download it here.

Mmmmmpipes

I'm slightly stunned by the fact that I'm really relating to something on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour...

Unfortunately the prog doesn't appear to be available to listen again, sadly. *pout*

Andrea Boyd is a Nova Scotian, and woahman, can she play the pipes:




There's loads more of her online, I highly recommend a listen, if you like that sort of thing.

This has just been the biggest huge-wet-bag-of-nostalgia-slap-in-the-face I've had for a while, and it's strong! I played the pipes (well, starting with the beginner's 'chanter', of course) from when I moved to Scotland around age 8, until quite a few years later in high school when my Mum and I had a chat, and decided that with the introduction of fees, it wasn't worth continuing to learn as the eldest in a girls-only (rather than ability-level) class.  Paying to teach others!  Where's the mileage in that?  The thoughtless sexism which caused me to quit makes me sad but I don't really regret it - it allowed me to focus more on academic and crafty pursuits.  I do miss being good at an instrument though, one that felt so natural, and I especially miss making such a massive, beautiful noise. 

I hope that one day I'll have the time and money to get my own set and learn again, though I have the far more challenging ukulele to learn first ;)