This is what I went and won at Dr Sketchy:

This was in recognition of 'Rouge Rum's equine connections, and is a rather fine helium balloon who has since taken up residence on my ceiling. Because she is supposed to be a murderous mare, I also won a copy of 'The World's Greatest Trials', and then noticed that this worthy volume is penned by a gentleman by the name of Tim Healey. I know Tim from another life; not only is he the son of The Rt Hon Dennis Healey, but he is also involved with The Oxford Waits, a bunch of musicians who play at early music and folk festivals. Last time I saw him we had an in-depth discussion about the perils of eating custard. It's very dangerous stuff.

The other thing I won, after my rendition of Scarlet Fever, was the following cyberman:


He's actually properly articulated like a lay figure, which is useful because when I next need to draw a cyberman, all I need do is put him in the appropriate pose, which will save me the trouble of walking the streets looking for one to pose for me.

Alex Hughes won one of these, too.

Sketchies at Dr Sketchy's

Well, yesterday featured 'X Files' at Dr Sketchy, Brummagem, so, armed with my sketchpad and Alex Hughes, off I went. Alex laughed at my sketchpad:


asked if I'd brought my crayons, and then let me try out his brush pens. One of the problems I've always had with these events is working in a style which is quick enough to get a reasonable amount of information down, but the brush pen seemed to do the trick. In fact, I won two prizes that evening, for this one of Candee Handful as 'Rouge Rum - the Murderous Mare':


I've since had a play with this image in Potatoshop, and produced:


and I also won a prize for this one of Scarlet Fever:



Alex also won a prize, so we really didn't let the PCO side down. Actually Alex is a regular at the Brum sessions, and a regular prize-winner (I think the secret's in the brush pens) and considering you have ten minutes to get all this stuff down, whilst peering past the people in front, it really is a test of how much alcohol you've consumed beforehand. Apparently the shows get more and more surreal as time goes on - and I can't tell you how much fun they are!!!

Tomorrow - or at least when I can locate the safe place wherein I've stashed my camera - I'll put up pics of the prizes!

Illustration Friday - Idle

Our Mr Hooter could never stay idle for long.

Dear Agony Auntie,

I'm on my holidays at the seaside at the moment, and was on the beach when a nice man asked if I would like an ice cream. I went for a double scoop jobbie, with strawberry syrup, crushed nuts and two flakey type things.

I looked at the man, and said 'You've got a nice body' and he said 'Yes, it is rather - have a closer look!' - and he took a corpse out of his beach bag. I was fairly shocked but I didn't show it, and arranged to meet him tomorrow, same time, same place.

How can I let him know that I don't think it's a good idea to carry dead bodies around with you, without jeopardising my chances of a second ice cream?

Yours,

Riga Mortis, FRSA

xxx

Illustration Friday - Tango

The name is misleading; Tango is not actually very good at Latin dance, nor, come to that, the Can-can.

Critters don't die, they just go somewhere else.

I was reminded of this by Chichi Parish, who pointed out that Falafel was probably causing havoc in the sky, and that if I saw a weird cloud with weird plumes - that's him! Anyway, as the above photo shows, he's not only up there, but up there with friends!

It's a cloud formation known as 'long haired sable', and is little known to meteorologists.

Lots more space to roll around in ...

Well, I've been and gone and done it, and had a new, bigger, hard drive fitted into my machine. No more room in the machine, but now I can defragment it (having more than 15% room harharhar) and put more software on it and fill it all up again and all sorts of things.

The computer person confirmed that the two little updates which appeared every time I logged on were, indeed, the ones which had been deleted every time I removed all but the last 'Restore' point. This was always necessary just so I could use the machine, but now the little blighters can do what they want and I won't care harharhar.

Who'd have thought that such a simple operation could cause such unholy glee? Thank you, Hypervox, for giving me that final nudge.

Sadly, this is the last farewell to Falafel

I went to take Flaf out for his usual runaround last night, but he didn't come out of his nest when called, and when I went to pick him up he was totally paralysed in his front limbs, and had very little movement in his rear ones. He looked totally pitiful, and when I'd finally found a vet which was open on a Sunday ... they said the kindest thing would be to let him go. I stayed with him while they did it, and brought him home to bury him. I'm going to miss him so much. I think you need to have owned one of these little critters to realise how much they get to you.

Above is a pic of him as a youngster, making friends with a tea cosy.

I'm going to bite the bullet! I've got a date ...

...when a nice man is going to put a bigger hard drive in my computer. I just pulled a name at random out of the phone book when something in my computer blew up and then the whole lot went dead, a few years ago. Well, when I say at random, he was listed as an IT specialist - rather than just someone with an appealing name in the domestic user bit, which I suppose shortened the odds a bit.

The worst case scenario at the time was that it could have been a very expensive repair. As it was, he said it could potentially be a very cheap repair, which he then proceded to repair inexpensively and charged accordingly. Being that he could have ripped me off something rotten and I wouldn't have been any the wiser, this gave me confidence.

So, having listened compassionately to my garbled account of what was happening with the computer (see previous post), he told me that I could get a much bigger hard drive than I was expecting for a lot less than I expected. He didn't put it quite like that, but this was the information gleaned by me from the conversation. I also had a vague, yet strangely persistent, feeling that he was having a bit of a chuckle.

But anyway, if all goes according to plan, after Thursday night - NO MORE RUDE MESSAGES telling me that I'm running out of space on Local Disk (C:) - for now. No more deleting all but the most recent restore point, only to have the amputations revisit the moment my back's turned ... hehehehe ... that'll learn 'em ....

I think Internet Explorer is getting its own back

A couple of years ago, I was having 'issues' (that's what you have these days, innit?) with Internet Explorer 6. It kept encountering problems and having to close, and I changed my web-surfing companion to Opera, which has all sorts of features, is mildly eccentric and made of sterner stuff. That is, it didn't throw its toys out of the pram and storm off every time there was an error. No, it remembered the dictum that 'poise is the art of gaining results by raising the eyebrows rather than raising the roof', and just got on with it.

However, the software I use to create my website, courtesy of Mr Site, doesn't like Opera, so I was obliged to resort to Internet Explorer when I wanted to do a mini-update. Ah, but then it decided IE 6 wasn't good enough any more, and I had to do an upgrade to the 7th version. At least this one doesn't keep closing itself down every three minutes or so, but now, whenever I turn the computer on, I get a message telling me that I'm running out of space on local disc 'C'. I respond defiantly by doing a cleanup and deleting all but the last restore point. Then everything seems tickety-boo and hunky-dory - until the next time I log on, when the same ominous message appears. However, I've noticed that every time I turn the computer off, it installs 'important updates' ...unless I tell it not to.

I have a nasty feeling that the 'important updates' are the self-same files which are binned when I do the thingy with the restore point.

Is there anyone out there who's good at creating houseroom who could offer an opinion on this negative situation?

Illustration Friday - Shaky

Gordon's confidence was shaky at times.