Weeknotes 30.11
Finally getting back to some bird illustration
With the darker evenings, I’m finding it easier to sit down and do some personal illustration again. This week I did this painting of a Hen Harrier flying over Otmoor at dusk in Procreate. It was inspired on a photo I saw on the Otmoor Birding blog, and I wanted to to try something looser and with a different kind of light to my normal artwork. I find this kind of low light inspiring to see and very hard to do.
Work
I’ve been in knee-deep in Statamic again this week, setting up a website for one of Resolve to Save Lives projects that currently uses Squarespace. The growth and new content of the site demands more flexibility, and Statamic is my go-to CMS for doing this.I’ve been working part time with Resolve since January, and it’s provided a welcome change. I’ve tended to do mostly do icon and identity projects in recent years, and while I still enjoy them, it’s great to be working on print and web projects again.
My part in Corbyn’s downfall
Our internet provider at the co-working studio sent us a warning email this week. An IP address at our account was being used to launch a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on Jeremy Corbyn website. It quickly became clear that my Mac Mini (that was being used as my Plex media server) had been appropriated by hackers. Needless to say, I was horrified to find out that I’ve been part of the problem with all my port forwarding fiddling.
Plex
It’s sorted now, but I need to rethink my Plex setup. I’m not keen on having to have the Mac Mini on as well as the drive where everything is stored (a Thunderbay RAID drive). It creates another layer where something can go wrong, and wonder whether I should move to a NAS drive? I also wonder whether it matters to me anymore to run a Plex server. I use it mostly for my music collection, and the ever-expanding library of family photos and videos. I don’t tend to use it so much for Movies and TV shows though - streaming services are so good these days, and it’s pain having to be a ‘server admin’. I did once try a hosted Plex server, which was a great ‘hands-off’ and reliable and fast solution, but also very expensive with a 8TB+ library. I’d love a solution that I could sync/upload to that didn’t require me to maintain a local server.
I’ve become one of THOSE
After 47 years on this planet, I left a (paper) cup of tea on the roof my car and drove off. I’d forgotten about it until I reached a roundabout and had to brake suddenly as someone cut me up. Then the tea fell off and down windscreen, leaving a a nice milky smear everywhere the wipers didn’t reach. I’m impressed that it stayed upright for half a mile though.
Rissington thing
As John eludes to in his week notes we had an interesting offer concerning the podcast, that is both scary and exciting (for us anyway). More on that in the New Year!
Music
I can’t stop playing New Hell, the album by Greet Death that I mentioned in last week’s week notes. It’s going to be in my top three of the year, without question.
Looking forward to…
Next week, I’m seeing RIDE and The Soft Cavalry play in Oxford on Tuesday!