Well why would it work? And some birds.
Sod's law: having decided to make the effort to post here more, I discovered that I -- and at least some of my f-list -- couldn't see the pictures I was posting, or only see them intermittently. In recent posts, I solved the problem by using LJ Scrapbook to host the pictures, but that didn't fix my earlier posts...
Cue lots of support requests to LJ, to my service provider and, since I've done something I've always said I wouldn't do -- imported my journal into Dreamwidth -- to Dreamwidth, too, because although there's no problem with the pictures there, crossposting isn't working for me. Honestly, why would it?
It turns out that LiveJournal handles images hosted anywhere that doesn't uses the https protocol via a proxy, causing all sorts of firewall and timing problems. My service provider has now whitelisted the IP addresses LJ provided, so the pictures are back -- fingers crossed! -- and they've also told me that 'you can call your images over https'. So, belt and braces! I'm going to experiment with https under the cut.
One thing I have been doing regularly is making icons for food_stillness. These were for last week's challenge:
SET 1
1
2
3
4
5
SET 2
1
2
3
4
5
They didn't win, but I was quite pleased with Set 2. And number 2.3 won Best Cropping.
...
More answers to the 100 Questions!
21. Do you kill spiders?
Oh, yes, absolutely! The moment I've calmed down and stopped screaming.
22. Have you ever made an ice pop?
I've bought ice pops and frozen them, if that's what you mean. At the moment, I have a box of Jubblies -- remember those? -- sitting in the kitchen, waiting to go in the freezer as soon as there's a bit of space.
23. Are you wearing shoes right now?
No. I'm wearing these:
I buy them from one of the tourist shops in Krakow. They are made from felt so they do get a bit smelly, but they have a good, thick sole so I can go outside in them if I'm careful.
I am probably on my seventh or eighth pair.
24. Tell me about you favourite primary school/elementary school teacher
Her name was Mrs Hamilton and she was lovely. She encouraged kids, she didn't stifle them. She taught me to write -- or, at least, she recognised that I could already write quite fluently. I was about six years old, and we had a work book for reading and writing lessons, and she told us to tell a story about a snowman, drawing pictures in the squares on the left, and writing the story in the squares on the right. When she asked to see my story, she looked at the top square on the right-hand page and saw 'man so' and, a bit annoyed, so I think it must have been a long day, she said -- I can still hear her voice! -- "'Man so'? What does that mean? 'Man so'?" And I remember showing her the previous square, where I'd written 'snow' but run out of space for 'man' so I'd put it in the next box, and then I'd connected that sentence to the next with 'so'. (We hadn't yet learned about commas). And she apologised and said it was very good!
My favourite secondary school teacher was Miss Haggas, who taught History, and encouraged me to apply to Cambridge.
25. Who was the last person you hugged?
curiouswombat, when I was leaving writerconuk!
26. Do you wear glasses?
Yes and no. Until recently, I wore contact lenses, with one eye corrected for distance and the other for close up -- the contact lens equivalent of bifocals. But my eyes aren't tolerating lenses at the moment, so I wear glasses for watching TV and driving, but I have to take them off to see well enough to do anything else!
27. Do you have a cat?
No, but my (new) next door neighbour's two cats think differently.
When I get back from work or from shopping, they watch me get out of the car and then lead me to my front door and sit on my doorstep, meowing in anticipation. I have to distract them, quickly open the door, squeeze through a tiny gap, and then close it again, quickly.
Then they sit on my back wall with obvious designs on my shed.
And one of them, despite my brother's having sealed up every gap we could find, still has a way of getting inside to mark it.
28. Do you have a favourite pair of underwear?
LOL, no! Underwear with decent elastic and no holes is enough for me. I do like things to match, so I do prefer the colour of the knickers to match the colour of the bra, and I try to wear black with black, or white with white, but if that's not possible, I just grit my teeth and get on with life.
29. What was your last tweet?
I do not tweet!
30. Do you still use facebook?
I have never used Facebook. Or Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram... Just LJ. And now, it seems, Dreamwidth.
Oh, and FutureLearn, which is a great place to make friends, and discuss what you're learning, and never get flamed or trolled (unless you get into a tussle with one of the 'Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford' idiots people). I'm starting Introduction to Forensic Science on Monday :-)
31. Do you like birds?
My first pet was a budgie. (I'd really wanted a dog, but a budgie was better than nothing). Her name was Snowy, because she was white -- though not albino -- and I loved her to bits. She looked like these:
Picture from Google.
I also helped my dad build an aviary. I think he must have bought a wooden shed as a kit, and I remember assembling it with him. My parents had absolutely no sense that children might be fragile or anything, so it would be my job to hold things in place whilst he sawed or hammered them.
Once the shed was complete, we fitted it out as an aviary. I can't remember its layout exactly, but I know that the far end, from floor to ceiling, was sealed off with chicken wire to form a large 'flight', and I think there was another much smaller flight on the right-hand wall, because I remember there was a little opening, with a sliding door, which led to an outside flight, shaped like a bay window, which we'd built on the side of the shed. It had a tiled floor, and a piece of tree branch wedged inside for the budgies to perch on.
Inside the aviary, there were some smaller cages, on the left-hand wall, for finches, and some breeding cages for the budgies, and, sadly, a little hospital cage, which was temperature controlled, and had a carrying handle so that it could be brought indoors.
Of course, it soon became my job to clean the flights, because I was small enough to crawl into them!
But I still like birds, and here are some bird pictures from this year's trip to Vancouver. They were taken with my iPad, which doesn't seem to lend itself to careful framing, so I've cropped carrier bags and people's bottoms out of some of them ;-)
The first two were taken through my hotel bedroom window. (I was in a different hotel from usual. I'll post pictures of the amazing views, especially at night, another time).
The rest were taken in the Bloedel Conservatory.
A little brown bird -- not sure what he is:
Two macaws:
Some zebra finches and a pretty canary:
We had zebra finches in the aviary.
A Lady Amherst pheasant and his budgie friend:
A touraco:
A cockatoo with impeccable table manners:
And a little mouse:
Apparently, the mice snuck in when some of the glass was broken :-)
Cue lots of support requests to LJ, to my service provider and, since I've done something I've always said I wouldn't do -- imported my journal into Dreamwidth -- to Dreamwidth, too, because although there's no problem with the pictures there, crossposting isn't working for me. Honestly, why would it?
It turns out that LiveJournal handles images hosted anywhere that doesn't uses the https protocol via a proxy, causing all sorts of firewall and timing problems. My service provider has now whitelisted the IP addresses LJ provided, so the pictures are back -- fingers crossed! -- and they've also told me that 'you can call your images over https'. So, belt and braces! I'm going to experiment with https under the cut.
One thing I have been doing regularly is making icons for food_stillness. These were for last week's challenge:
SET 1
1
2
3
4
5
SET 2
1
2
3
4
5
They didn't win, but I was quite pleased with Set 2. And number 2.3 won Best Cropping.
...
More answers to the 100 Questions!
21. Do you kill spiders?
Oh, yes, absolutely! The moment I've calmed down and stopped screaming.
22. Have you ever made an ice pop?
I've bought ice pops and frozen them, if that's what you mean. At the moment, I have a box of Jubblies -- remember those? -- sitting in the kitchen, waiting to go in the freezer as soon as there's a bit of space.
23. Are you wearing shoes right now?
No. I'm wearing these:
I buy them from one of the tourist shops in Krakow. They are made from felt so they do get a bit smelly, but they have a good, thick sole so I can go outside in them if I'm careful.
I am probably on my seventh or eighth pair.
24. Tell me about you favourite primary school/elementary school teacher
Her name was Mrs Hamilton and she was lovely. She encouraged kids, she didn't stifle them. She taught me to write -- or, at least, she recognised that I could already write quite fluently. I was about six years old, and we had a work book for reading and writing lessons, and she told us to tell a story about a snowman, drawing pictures in the squares on the left, and writing the story in the squares on the right. When she asked to see my story, she looked at the top square on the right-hand page and saw 'man so' and, a bit annoyed, so I think it must have been a long day, she said -- I can still hear her voice! -- "'Man so'? What does that mean? 'Man so'?" And I remember showing her the previous square, where I'd written 'snow' but run out of space for 'man' so I'd put it in the next box, and then I'd connected that sentence to the next with 'so'. (We hadn't yet learned about commas). And she apologised and said it was very good!
My favourite secondary school teacher was Miss Haggas, who taught History, and encouraged me to apply to Cambridge.
25. Who was the last person you hugged?
curiouswombat, when I was leaving writerconuk!
26. Do you wear glasses?
Yes and no. Until recently, I wore contact lenses, with one eye corrected for distance and the other for close up -- the contact lens equivalent of bifocals. But my eyes aren't tolerating lenses at the moment, so I wear glasses for watching TV and driving, but I have to take them off to see well enough to do anything else!
27. Do you have a cat?
No, but my (new) next door neighbour's two cats think differently.
When I get back from work or from shopping, they watch me get out of the car and then lead me to my front door and sit on my doorstep, meowing in anticipation. I have to distract them, quickly open the door, squeeze through a tiny gap, and then close it again, quickly.
Then they sit on my back wall with obvious designs on my shed.
And one of them, despite my brother's having sealed up every gap we could find, still has a way of getting inside to mark it.
28. Do you have a favourite pair of underwear?
LOL, no! Underwear with decent elastic and no holes is enough for me. I do like things to match, so I do prefer the colour of the knickers to match the colour of the bra, and I try to wear black with black, or white with white, but if that's not possible, I just grit my teeth and get on with life.
29. What was your last tweet?
I do not tweet!
30. Do you still use facebook?
I have never used Facebook. Or Twitter, Tumblr, or Instagram... Just LJ. And now, it seems, Dreamwidth.
Oh, and FutureLearn, which is a great place to make friends, and discuss what you're learning, and never get flamed or trolled (unless you get into a tussle with one of the 'Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford' idiots people). I'm starting Introduction to Forensic Science on Monday :-)
31. Do you like birds?
My first pet was a budgie. (I'd really wanted a dog, but a budgie was better than nothing). Her name was Snowy, because she was white -- though not albino -- and I loved her to bits. She looked like these:
Picture from Google.
I also helped my dad build an aviary. I think he must have bought a wooden shed as a kit, and I remember assembling it with him. My parents had absolutely no sense that children might be fragile or anything, so it would be my job to hold things in place whilst he sawed or hammered them.
Once the shed was complete, we fitted it out as an aviary. I can't remember its layout exactly, but I know that the far end, from floor to ceiling, was sealed off with chicken wire to form a large 'flight', and I think there was another much smaller flight on the right-hand wall, because I remember there was a little opening, with a sliding door, which led to an outside flight, shaped like a bay window, which we'd built on the side of the shed. It had a tiled floor, and a piece of tree branch wedged inside for the budgies to perch on.
Inside the aviary, there were some smaller cages, on the left-hand wall, for finches, and some breeding cages for the budgies, and, sadly, a little hospital cage, which was temperature controlled, and had a carrying handle so that it could be brought indoors.
Of course, it soon became my job to clean the flights, because I was small enough to crawl into them!
But I still like birds, and here are some bird pictures from this year's trip to Vancouver. They were taken with my iPad, which doesn't seem to lend itself to careful framing, so I've cropped carrier bags and people's bottoms out of some of them ;-)
The first two were taken through my hotel bedroom window. (I was in a different hotel from usual. I'll post pictures of the amazing views, especially at night, another time).
The rest were taken in the Bloedel Conservatory.
A little brown bird -- not sure what he is:
Two macaws:
Some zebra finches and a pretty canary:
We had zebra finches in the aviary.
A Lady Amherst pheasant and his budgie friend:
A touraco:
A cockatoo with impeccable table manners:
And a little mouse:
Apparently, the mice snuck in when some of the glass was broken :-)