How to fit your life into 21[+] categories? Well manually, one by one… It took me about three days to assign each post [638 by now] to a category. There is no other way to do this with Movable Type, well there is, but I’m not sure if it would make a difference time wise… It’s also not easy to categorise: I find myself stuck at times thinking if I should create another category or not or just squeeze that entry into one of the existing ones without giving it much thought… It can be quite difficult, trust me!
I suspect Movable Type is much slower ever since I upgraded to 3.3.4. It takes for ever to write something to the CGI directory. I have no clue what it is but I want it to be solved asap because it starts to become utterly annoying! I had to sort out the categories so I had to do this but hopefully there will be a patch of some kind for download on their website. I need to read into this to see if I’m the only one having this problem. Might be running a faulty process in the background without realising it…
My Dutch friend IvS in Scotland called to announce that she bought the most advanced MacBook, welcome to the real world honey! I’m happy she spent the money on something decent. I will see if I can provide her with some juice since I seem to be a pusher to some of my friends when it comes to Mac related bits and pieces. She even tapped shamelessly from the source of Mac knowledge which is hidden in my brain. I don’t blame her really, I would’ve done the same. I reckon that’s the Mac Users attitude, we all seem to be helping each other out when needed.
We’ve been to Atlantis Art Materials, jeez what a great place that is! huge! and filled with all my favourite crayons, paint, ink, paper, handmade paper, canvas, brushes, glue, jars, pencils, pens and much much more. A. called it my Aladdin’s Cave, filled with treasures. I just had have a good look at all the stuff there, it’s my heaven, my paradise and so familiar, almost so Dutch… At least most of the acrylics are from the Lowlands. A. happily pointed it out to me *silly guy* I could contain myself and only bought brushes for other people… One for C. and eight for my aunt which I will send off to the Lowlands by the end of the week.
Spring also has arrived; it has been brilliant for four days already, beautiful sunny days! Just warm enough to make the endorphin run wild… finally.
Category Archives: Art and Craft
The Letter
I’ve received a really cool letter from the Lowlands yesterday! Awesome! It came from my ex colleague [Gerrit Rietveld Academy] and friend Christiaan. I can’t explain what it means to me because some of you out there reading these lines probably won’t have a clue what I’m talking about but let me give it a try and let me explain my sentiment… If you still don’t understand then leave a comment for me to answer…
I’m a graphic designer [and multimedia designer] for 18 years already. When I started to learn how to produce camera ready artwork at some advertising agency 18 years ago, there was no such thing as a computer for design, print work or digital printing etc. I had to produce each and every brochure, leaflet, business card, poster, annual report-layout [etc.] manually: spending time in the darkroom producing raster images and at the drawing board, waxing and cutting text on paper output, placing all the elements on the layout, using registration and crop marks. Office automation had only just started and I was the first to learn at that advertising agency, on one of the first Apple Macs…
Typesetting [presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium] was still a proper profession at print shops. This was all, way before desktop publishing became more popular for publishing than typesetting and the olden days things started to vanish… Anyway, the envelope that I got from Christiaan is one that he printed himself in 1976. 1976! I was still a girl drawing pictures and gazing out of windows catching a glimpse of some bug flying about. Living in my own little world not knowing what I would become later… [I actually wanted to become a nurse *I hear you think*]
So it has value to me because it’s old, it’s Christiaan’s and he designed and printed it himself, typesetting and not using some fancy CPU. Getting his fingers dirty with ink, the real deal! It’s only a vague memory to me since I found myself on the edge of transformation back then when I started my career. I have done the manual stuff but for two years or so before agencies slowly started to convert to computers. But the smell of ink and the sound of a Heidelberg is something you’ll never forget!
Thanks Christiaan for sending me something truly special!!! What a lovely surprise… 
