8r4d We’ve got some challenging pieces this year, including a couple where only half the #orchestra plays, so rehearsal has been a bit weird. Sometimes the brass plays by themselves while the #violin and string contingent waits, and sometimes it’s vice versa.

gamerdad I’m not sure how much effort goes into rebuilding an eight year old video game’s graphical assets, but the folks at Bethesda thought it was worth doing to bring Fallout 4 onto current generation consoles. The free update for those of us who owned the original version and played hundreds of hours prior to the update emerged this week and I installed it to check out the fuss. Maybe it was lucky that after a playthru a few years ago, I’d started a fresh save less than a year back and only really made it thru the first few intro missions, and so I was able to upgrade that save and keep trucking thru the wasteland with a foundation of about 5 hours under my belt. My lack of a 4K tv probably means most of the value of the upgrade is lost on me, tho. Things do seem a bit crisper I will admit and the play seems smoother too, but to be honest I tend to be fairly old school about graphics having grown up in the 8 bit era and played (and loved) games in my youth that were often just line art or CGA 4 colours. Gameplay! That’s the whole point. I appreciate the free upgrade but there’s so much more to a good game than crispy visuals.

castironguy For a change of scenery I opted to make a batch of #sourdough bagels this week instead of the usual loaves of bread. It didn’t hurt that in s batch of spices we got recently from one of those school fundraising things there was a pack of Everything Bagel seasoning. The house smells delicious!

8r4d Just a #spring day at the dog park.

pixelazy The #sky just as we finished our Thursday evening run last night.

8r4d I set out this morning to see just how long it would take to walk from my front door to #westedmontonmall on foot. That’s one heck of a long #walk. Nearly 12k and two and a half hours later, crossing the river, finding bridges across a couple major roads, climbing the Wolf Willow stairs, finding the school where I did my student teaching two decades ago and generally walking a lot, I stepped thru the doors of the mall. I think I earned a lunch out.

pixelazy I decided to go for a long #walk today instead of a long bike ride and I wound up in the valley trails where #spring is showing signs of reappearance in the form of tree buds and various insects. #insect #spider #macro

squwetchy Sometimes I run my paintings thru an AI filter to see if the algorithm and smoothing of some of the details improves it. Oddly enough there is something to be learned from this that helps me see colours and tonal elements more clearly. It’s like putting your writing thru a grammar checker so you can see where the run-on sentences are. The flaws stand out and you can see what you did wrong for next time. #flower #filter

8r4d For all of last year I didn’t even take my #bike out once. I tell you why that is other than we spent a lot of time on vacation and busy with marathon training so in the end, I barely took the bike off the rack let alone actually getting it out into the trails. Literally I did not take it out even once. So in order to remedy that in 2024 I made sure to do a nice long trail ride even before April ended and got my bike tuned up and out and about in the neighbourhood for a 17 km ride this afternoon.

squwetchy Take two: This is the second attempt, my “homework” attempt at the same #flower image as my last post from my #watercolour course night one.

pixelazy I am taking a #flower painting course this spring so this feed is destined to become a collection of flower reference photos.

squwetchy It has been almost a year since I took a #watercolour class at the local recreation centre. Last spring I took a course from a local teacher on painting Canadian landscapes in watercolours which taught me a whole bunch of new techniques and ideas for improving my personal sketching and painting. This spring, I signed up for a second course by the same teacher, but this time our focus is #flower painting in watercolour. we are encouraged to document the process each class by taking photos of the various stages of the artwork as we paint it as a group, but our instructor insisted obviously that none of those pictures that would hint or give away course materials be posted anywhere so while you will see a number of finished Paintings as a progress through the course over the next few weeks the closest I can give you to show some of the background is a picture like this of me documenting the colour I used to mix for one particular stage, which I don’t think gives much away.