Chez Spud

Mmmm, takes a moment to look around and note absence of butterflies…ah….sweet moment. Finally, thanks to the brilliance of Genevieve at Lilac Creative I have a template for Chez Spud that I adore. I’m so pleased. I’m fairly sure I was a nightmare client, poor Genevieve. Hopefully she’s reclining on a sofa somewhere feasting on mince pies and making a heart felt entry in her Grudge Book…

I wrote a very detailed brief, but had no real idea what the final product might look like. To be honest I never imagined it would look like this, but then I lack any kind of creative imagination so that’s hardly surprising. Let’s just say Genevieve had some fairly, erm, ‘direct’ feedback as we went through the process. I might have to put myself in my own grudge book in fact. Oof.

I particularly love the hand-drawn vintage camera and typewriter she drew up there at the top. She even blogged about it showing her original sketches (sheesh! a brilliant designer, illustrator, coder AND a blogger…the woman is perfect and is henceforward to be known as St Genevieve).

No doubt there will be a few little ‘glitches’ so please do shout if you spot things that don’t work. And I have a couple of final adjustments to make, but they are very minor. All the photos are left aligned at the moment but that will change. I think the font for the posts is too big, and possibly too black. But just tweaks.

This was an appallingly painful process, until I found St Genevieve. I went through so many designers who either legged it with my money and didn’t deliver, couldn’t show me even half a decent portfolio, took the brief and then disappeared, didn’t bother to respond to numerous attempts for a costing etc etc. I started this project six months ago. Praise be for St Genevieve, we bow down and adore you.

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Hoorah. It snowed for real and the country came to a standstill as usual. MrSpud stayed home and we didn’t budge from the farm all day. Instead, we sledged. We staked out our run:

We sledged solo

There was quite a lot of trudging back up the hill of course

We worked in pairs (not shown…me and MrSpud sledging a deux…didn’t trust the boys with the camera, funny that)

And then some showoffs worked as a trio

Didn’t end too well though…

And then it got REALLY silly. One of our number decided to indulge in Extreme Sledging whilst videoing himself in the process. Alas I am married to this person. He’s 38 by the way. Not 8. I just thought I’d point that out…

Ah MrSpud. It’s lucky you are so devastatingly good looking (although would you GET a haircut?)  and charming and wonderful and such a good father and funny and supportive and don’t bother arguing with me too much because it isn’t worth the hassle. Otherwise I would sneer and deride you as an utter neerdy geek. Oh..wait…

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MrSpud is forcing me to listen to FOLK MUSIC as I write this. Wince. It’s right up there with him forcing me to listen to BOB DYLAN while in early labour. A kind of cruel and unusual punishment which must be against some kind of international law or other? A million years ago I knew someone who told me they couldn’t bear to listen to Brahms because it made her bottom itch. Well, yes, quite…

So it’s snowing round these parts. Rare enough in the UK anyway, but probably the last for a good while as we go in to a ‘warming phase’ of global warming. But snow is so thrilling and such fun. I remember, as a child, the excitement of listening to local radio waiting/hoping to hear my school’s name listed as a school closed due to the snow. I can’t see the same being true for the Megaboys.

Less good, we are a nation entirely unable to cope with even an inch of snow. The trains gave up tonight, so the Megaboys and I traipsed out to some remote station to collect MrSpud. A two hour round trip for what should have been, perhaps, 50 minutes. No grit on the roads, dreadful driving, blah blah. Boys don’t care, they can’t wait to get out there and play in it!

I am all ready for Christmas and it feels good. Shopping done, house decorated (some things still to make with the boys tomorrow), everything wrapped, tree up, cards sent, house smells of Christmas from the scented candles. Bring on the Baby Jesus and we’re all done.

I quite like this FOLK MUSIC. I must be ill.

The new look Chez Spud is all finished in terms of design and being coded right now. Hopefully to be revealed at the weekend. I might add some FOLK MUSIC or BOB DYLAN to it, for your listening pleasure. Queue wild laughter…

The photo has little to do with this rambling post. I took it in London yesterday while it was snowing, but not settling. But it made the Front Page of Explore on Flickr and that makes me glad [tidings of great joy].

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He’s currently residing Chez Spud. Bit grumpy and not that bothered about saving the world to be honest…mostly interested in licking off his face paint.

They didn’t put that in the movie did they?

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Just when you thought competitive parenting had reached its pinnacle…enter stage left ‘manger chic’.  According to UK retailer Debenhams, parents are spending up to £150 to kit out their offspring for the nativity play as part of a trend they have dubbed ‘manger chic’. Begone teatowel on the head with a bit of rope! Away with thee tinsel garlands! Don’t darken our doors pyjamas and angel outfits fashioned from a sheet! These days you’re a nobody unless you’re wearing a pashmina (Virgin Mary…tush, doesn’t she know they went out with the ark?), a jewelled turban ([Not so] Wise Man], white bridesmaid dress and imitation jewellry (angel), grey duffle coat (donkey), white fur stole (sheep) etc etc.

It’s really come to something when a retailer goes on the record and criticises this new ‘manger chic’ as “silly”, encouraging its customers to go back to basics and shun designer clobber for the nativity in favour of more basic items. Presumably Debenhams are generally delighted when their customers have more money than sense, so this is quite a sensational move on their part and it attracted a huge amount of press interest.

Apparently the worst offenders are parents of children with minor roles who feel they have to compensate by dressing them up to the nines. Worse, it also seems to be being driven by some misplaced belief that a cracking performance in the Nativity is imperative for getting a place at a good school.

“Parents have told our personal shopping teams that they feel they have to teach their children to excel at everything from a very young age,” explained Watson [spokesperson for Debenhams].

“They have to possess an exemplary CV – including, it seems, a star role in the school nativity play – if they want to gain a place at a coveted primary or secondary school”.

What planet are these people on?  I’m fairly sure the Lord is having a quiet giggle at the irony of all this…little children celebrating and recreating his birth in the most humble of surroundings, bedecked with bling and designer gear as part of some astonishing display of one upmanship. How very Christian.

It was Bertie’s nursery Nativity play last week. I’d love to share some photos, but it’s not fair to show pictures of other people’s children so publically. Take it from me…they all looked adorable and it was very sweet. No sign of designer wear, imitation jewellry etc etc, but very little sign of homemade costumes either. Joseph was a notable exception, in a very authentic calico type outfit and walking stick, all cobbled together the night before and held together with staples and safety pins. There was one angel looking very retro in something possibly made from a sheet and tinsel. Otherwise it was a full house of stuff from Tesco, M&S, Ebay etc etc. Bertie’s was from Ebay as I am incapable of making anything other than a mess.

But next year I’d like to take a shot at it, as part of a pledge to learn how to sew a bit. One of my earliest memories is standing on the coffee table for what seemed like hours as my mother pinned a skirt she was making for me, ready to hem. She was always making me clothes when I was a child, out of financial necessity for the most part. I feel like such a failure for continually throwing money at things like this. I’d like to make something for my boys myself, made with love and not delivered by Postman Andy in a jiffy bag.

The photo has nothing to do with this post. I didn’t send Diggy to the play naked but for a towel. I just thought it was a bit Nativity like…Diggy as the Baby Jesus with MrSpud as Mary. In drag.

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Haven’t done one of these for a while, and I thought it was time. In the last Camera Club meeting I mentioned shooting in RAW in passing and then thought it might be worth more than a casual nod in its general direction.

I suspect this is one of ‘those’ topics where everyone is going to have their personal views on what is ‘best’. So I’m going to dive in immediately and say there is no ‘best’, only what works for you.  I started off with my Big Girl’s Camera by shooting in JPEG +FINE (i.e getting the camera to record the image, process it as a JPEG at its highest quality and saving it as such). When I started to use Lightroom/Photoshop to process my images, I switched to shooting exclusively in RAW (as this means I can manipulate the image with as much flexibility as possible without losing data, see below). That said, I often wonder if I’m being overly precious by shooting in RAW all the time as there are downsides (see below), and I think I could get over myself and shoot in JPEG + FINE on many an occasion. The trouble is, I’m addicted to RAW. Because nothing on the planet allows you to rescue a ‘ruined’ shot as much as RAW. It’s hard to walk away from that.

I considered writing a whole big blurb on this topic but decided to let Eliza Claire do the talking as she explained it very clearly on a discussion on Flickr. In her own words:

You always have to process RAW files. They’re basically the image exactly as the camera sees it. JPEGS are compressed and edited in camera.

RAW files are, by their nature, flat and lacking contrast. You have to process to get the contrast back.

The advantage of RAW is that you’re using the full file, every single piece of information that the camera records.

When you shoot in RAW  and, assuming your camera records 12 bits of data, your camera records 4096 shades of red, 4096 shades of blue and 4096 shades of green. If it’s 100% red, 100% blue and 100% green, it’s white. If it’s 0% of all it’s black. If you have a fancier camera which records 14 bits of data, then it will record 16,384 shades of each colour.

When you shoot in JPEG, your camera processes to give 256 shades of each colour. The camera is deciding what shades are most important to you (based on the light in Japan, funnily enough, as the processors are Japanese)

So… if you are shooting in RAW and want to adjust the colour, or the white balance, or pull the exposure up or down, you have far more shades available to play with – so you end up with much less noisy images. When you edit, you’re asking the computer to guess, based on what’s there, what you want the image to look like. With more information there, it makes a better guess.

It’s easy to do a basic edit of a raw file. I edit all my files in RAW then PSD (psd is lossless compression, so keeping all those 16,384 tones of each colour). When fully edited, I then convert to JPEG. At this point, it does take the quality away, but the human eye wouldn’t detect this, at this final stage, because I’ve got the result I want and I’m not going to be tweaking any further.

(more…)

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Bertie, aged 4 going on genius, today resolved world peace. I just thought I’d blog it in case anyone missed it? He slipped it in to a quiet moment between hysterics over absolutely nothing, hitting his brother, telling tales on his brother and generally Not Listening and engaging in Naughty Behaviour. Luckily MrSpud was tuned in to his brilliance as I was too busy seething and muttering curses.

So it went like this:

Bertie: “I’ve been thinking about it. If everybody listened to everything that everyone said…then no one would have to get angry…or hit or push…and everything would go back to the way it was. I’ve sorted it all out.”

Today, world peace. Tomorrow, climate change. Actually scrap that, tomorrow he’s going on a nursery trip to the zoo to see Father Christmas. But he’s free for climate change resolution and other world issues on Tuesday.

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Hello…the Grudge Book (TM) has competition. Look at this, a fabulous late birthday present…a most splendid notebook called ‘Fuck you and your blog’ where those passive aggressives amongst us are encouraged to write down their venting ‘n’ ranting rather than vent their spleen on the internodes. ‘Comments on this post are now closed’ is printed along the bottom of each page. It’s beautifully designed and printed, I love it. Designed by Ray Fenwick and published by Chronicle Books.

Thanks for all the comments on yesterday’s Christmas card post. The winner of the giveaway (who will also immediately be entering the Grudge Book for adding to my pile of Christmas wrapping, grrr and snarl) is RXBambi, with this memorable response to the question “What is your worst Christmas chore?”

“My worst chore is all the damn blow jobs I have to give to get the damn DIAMONDS!!!!!”

Um, right. OK…whatever tickles your fancy. Or MrRXBambi’s, as the case may be….your present is a bucket of cold water by the way…

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…etc etc etc. I’m writing my Christmas cards. A task so mind numbingly boring that scooping out my own eyeball with a spoon and eating it would be more fun. I’m alleviating the worst of the tedium and the taste of the envelopes (MOO are you listening? Yuck to your gum…pity the fool who has 100 cards to write) with wine. What else?

I’m feeling the love though and would like to add some of you lovely bloggy pals to the list. So leave a comment and tell me your WORST Christmas chore and what you do to make it more tolerable.  The first 10 to leave a comment will get a Christmas card from me (email me your addy!) and, bonus, a little Christmas present for the funniest response (doesn’t have to be in the first 10).

Come on, make me laugh. I hate this chore. Only one thing for it…down the hatch and bottoms up, chin chin.

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