benchtop, first varnish after putty

I am pleased with the general artistic effect. Difficult (for me) to photograph without excessive reflection from fresh varnish. There remain two major requirements, apart from additional coats of varnish for the varnish's sake:
[1] food safety, to close off all holes and runnels; some of this perhaps with additional putty or perhaps an epoxy clear filler, or whatever colour (blue, green, red, gold) filaments and dots of putty.
[2] kitchen tool and device-proof. This may mean  just seeking a thumbs-up for tough varnish surface, may mean putting some tiles in place as trivets.

Anyway, here is the result of this afternoon's first coat. I do not want to lose the rough-hewn texture, this to be balanced by making food-safe. You will note there is a lot of putty filling gaps. It would be nice to have had all the wood texture, but there were many crevices and large holes. Pleased to do this today after night and morning of fibromyalgic miseries from carrying the beast yesterday, dammit!

life drives art

We are currently doing projects at Helen's house and my house - which to be worth doing must be art, have beauty.

I have had to replace an oven which led me to begin the replacement of cooktop with gas in my kitchen — requiring a much larger bench-top. This I have been building from three pieces of a slab from this ancient of the forest delivered to our Bodalla bush block in last year's flood:

Full of cracks and rot and irregularity I have coloured a water based hard putty with red pigment (used otherwise in painting in house) and worked it into the various grooves and gaps. I've levelled the bench  (having made a terrible mess outside today with ground wood and red powder from hard putty) and brought the benchtop, with its angled hole for gas cooktop, back into the kitchen. The pale timber at the back, fourth slab is a piece of Paulownia.

  [photos can be seen full size by clicking; press the back button to return]

You will see from dribbles on the Paulownia that I applied varnish before the first putty treatment, to help keep the putty in cracks and avoid it seeping into timber generally. Some way to go, tidying and varnishing... and still the horror of not knowing if it will work, if it will look right, bright, exciting — or if I'll have to chuck it out and start again. I think it looks a bit better than the photo, but that may be a parent's view of a messy child. The clear gloss should darken timber and in particular bring the grind-paled putty back towards a blood colour. And look spectacular... :-)

The practicality is in having the cook not entirely facing the wall but with bench at an angle towards oven and convection microwave to the left, room under the front, outside cupboard and under bench, for an extra trolley. Lots of space now on the bench to crowd with stuff, rattle pots and pans.  The stove bench now 1800 long x 600 to 950 deep, you can see the front of the old bench in the new cooktop hole.

----

Speaking of Paulownia, I had a moment of excitement during the week with an interest in buying the three (Paulownia) panel screen that I put in an exhibition in Huskisson last year... but after a flurry of emails, the interest went away, so here the screen is, as photographed last week, available to you!  :-)

Here was the earlier life and death of the Paulownia, the first photo showing cutting of a Paulownia log smashed down by the big Eucalypt 15 months ago; second photo shows slab cutting. I have not been fit or well enough since mid-2010 to spend enough time at Bodalla working on that situation or retrieving and using lumber; very happily we have a family living in the cottage now, they got to experience the flood of March 2011, when the Tuross River downstream rose from 2 metres to 12 metres in several hours.

[1] Home from Rome [2] Regarding the recent history of cameras

It has been a bit difficult to readjust to life at home. Almost a month now. In part plagued by continuing antibiotics for something acquired in Seattle. In part having difficulty finding things put in safe places by me before departure or by houseminder or cleaner in my absence.

First preoccupation has been collapse of kitchen electrics while we were away, which means I am working on four large wood slabs to make new kitchen cook bench for new cooktop, etc. Not confident to show photos till the job is done!!

The novel remains on hold, not sure where or how to resume. No use jumping on the toothpaste tube to force it out.

Beginning to review the travel photo collection. Far too many of the photos from the Fuji S3 are marred by dust on the CCD,  dark muck on images.

Detail of one of the Naiads in the fountain at Piazza del Popolo, Rome.

See the spot above her right shoulder (left as you look), generated by dust speck on CCD,
another larger blur to the left of that.

Easily smudged away in Photoshop where the sky is so even but some images impossible to correct that way.

Never again will I take an arm-breaking DSLR on the road with me. My right arm complained a lot (personal weak-side probem). In over-compensation I've bought one of these from ebay. I have also been reviewing merits of the Fuji F810 and Minolta A2 which I already have. The F810 close to the S3 in the look of its images, the A2 a bit big for pocket, though much lighter than the S3 and producing what I now recognise to be startling images.

The problem with mini-cameras is that somewhere back around that 8 megapixel size of the A2, they reached a point where there was no value in adding more pixels because the small CCD receptor of light in the camera gets very crowded. There were increasing problems of colour fringing (chroma) and noise (luminance) at any but slowest ISO speed. Yet the market and the marketing departments continued to declare the merits of more pixels. Moreover, the digital SLR (DSLR) cameras became cheaper — and of course it looked more manly or professional to use a DSLR than a compact camera, hello Dr Freud. The DSLRs had bigger receivers, CCD or CMOS, note please that quality (lenses, general performance and ease of use) depends still on money and many who will never use the quality still will shell out as much as $2000 or more for the evidence of doing best. The DSLRs had and still have, a problem of dust particles getting in, no matter how well one went about changing lenses. This has meant development of devices and actions inside the camera to wipe the chip or shake it to get specks off; mechanical complexity only partly solving a problem and eventually prone to breakdown. The compact cameras have by definition fixed lenses, dust does not enter. Psychologically interesting, at eBay, that people wanting to sell better compact cameras are prone to list them as DSLR rather than compact, for snooty reasons.

The A2 and the other cameras mentioned in that review were a wonderful last stand by the compact manufacturers competing to solve the problem of chip limitations and standing against the onslaught of the DSLR half a decade ago. The A2 was Konica-Minolta's last stand, immensely complex and capable, but too expensive for a market preoccupied by "good enough". Do your own search for the term 'good enough technology' or get the gist here. Konica-Minolta bailed out and sold its camera technology to Sony.

For this reason the better quality technology cameras of the mid-noughties, six to eight megapixel cameras with manual controls, are now wonderful value via eBay. I'm not going to tell you which!  :-)

There are some new compact camera developments, a resurgence in the last several years. About which a blather of commentary. This, the DMC-LX3 from Panasonic, was the earliest. Re-badged by Leica with some modifications as the Leica D-Lux 4 and sold for hundreds of dollars more (the incensed Leica traditionalists shouting "but it's not a Leica!").. The graph on this page I interpret as reflecting a stampede of D-Lux 4 users to D-Lux 5. Here are Flickr photos from LX3 and LX5. There may be a majority at the top end of the pocketable camera market wanting 'good enough' but always there will be a number wanting best, and the Leica badge rather than common Panasonic captures some of them, with some finicky comparisons out there of the differences — do your own search to compare the cameras. I've just bought a second hand LX3 from eBay. I suppose this means 'good enough' for me is buying last year's best or five year's ago's best, prices discounted.

The one strikingly different recent breakthrough in chip technology is in Sigma's DP1 and DP2 producing wonderful images from a much larger chip, but with 10 seconds saving an image before you can take another. Here's a positive review.

My affection remains warmly towards Fuji, for the general Fujifilm look the digital images have. Helen, while we were away, became besotted with photography for the first time, using her E900, though on review now the default processing in the camera may include some excessive sharpening. Photoshop is sorting this reasonably well. I was on this trip trying to learn my antique S3, an impractical course on a holiday. I borrowed Helen's camera for the modest quality films at our travel blog. (The Panasonic DMC-LX3 in the mail to me produces base quality HD film: sunrise and sunset examples.) Fuji since the mid-noughties have abandoned DSLR and run with the crowd to produce long-long zoom cameras producing high definition movies - but with such monster zoom lens quality is surely compromised and for the most part fully automatic cameras (looking at the credits of movies you will see the extent of Fuji dominance of the film market, a company dedicated to colour quality, this colour sense comes through in the digital offerings, colours historically different from Kodak). Now Fuji have produced a truly swoon-worthy high-quality handsome higher pixel compact camera, the X100.  I will await their next generation, or at least price drop via ebay. The basset hounds of the market will eventually run on elsewhere and sell off their x100s - or by not selling define the X100 as worth buying new.

Interestingly these new, higher pixel compacts for the most part depart from the popular expectation that compacts have zoom lenses (some as high as 30X). The Panasonic-Leica DMC-LX3 has a 2.5 zoom lenses, very fast aperture F2 to 2.8, which gives some prospect of managing depth of field, see this film clip. Fuji x100 is fixed, ditto Sigma DP 1 and DP2. Ricoh GR-Digital 3 also has a fixed lens. There is an argument emerging that with the image quality [IQ] and acceptability of higher ISO images (less of the chroma and noise, see discussion of such in most decent reviews of cameras) the photographer can return attention to composition, using, as some describe it, the 'two-legged zoom'. The higher pixel count enables cropping of detail with better prospect of printable image - depending on lens quality. See this page with 100% crops from Leica D-LUX 4 (based on Panasonic D-Lux 3). ("100% crop" means what a small portion of a huge image looks like when brought up from the usual reduced size on a monitor or print to 100% of what the camera recorded.)

This is Wikipedia's take on the Foveon chip in the Sigma camera. See the comparison of chip size down this Amazon page. Apart from Sigma, the other high end manufacturers are working with slightly enlarged conventional smaller chips with enhanced processing.

Well, these are my thoughts on the current state of quality compact camera development.

I am driven away from DSLR both because of the practical difficulty for anyone of handling big cameras discreetly and because my right arm is troublesome.

I have endeavoured in the above to link the reader to most of the best review places (see also Steve's). You will see different styles of review on a range from those who go into the lab to measure this and that to those who may disparage that approach and go into the field to try to make good photos. Both dimensions have merit, though the latter is most important and often at variance with the lab opinions. Emotions are more evident in the field, emotions are important, see this discussion.

POSTSCRIPT:
I HAVE THE PANASONIC DMC-LX3 NOW: it is a world apart and on from those older cameras of which I have spoken fondly. But it's a bit like a classy dame.. moving up to having an LCD on the back with 440,000 pixels really is something, but what you see on the back is not the whole story in making good photos. I am thrust into a new world of some kind, new explorations... new brain stretches..

War in Libya

I have offered this comment on a New York Times editorial wondering about the new war in Libya:

Your Submitted Comment
Display Name
Dennis Argall
Location
Rome, Italy 

 Comment 

Forty-some years ago as a young Australian diplomat immersed in southeast Asia and the then preoccupation with the Vietnam war I was transferred to our Rome embassy. Surrounded by the events of Europe in 1968 and at real distance I secured new and critical perspective to our (and US) conduct of the Vietnam war. Curiously I now find myself again living in Italy for a time, retired, as a new war of alliance against wickedness breaks out in Libya. 

This discussion thread has at its most constructive been focused (appropriately) on the legality and practical feasibility of the US going to war. 

From here, I find that the greatest impression is the precipitate muddle of action.
There has been a breathtaking reaction in many places, including in the nations involved, to the very wide and imaginative interpretation of 'no-fly-zone'. This has placed at risk, perhaps permanently fractured, the massive international support for the action. And already there is reckless public bickering over what it means among leaders of the action itself, notably whether it allows decapitation of the Libyan Government. The evident value of surprise on the part of the enemy may have been overtaken by this loss of strategic coherence and support.  

The action takes place at a moment when Italy has been reoccupied by 150th anniversary celebrations and the difficult process of securing regime change from the Ten Billion Dollar Man Berlusconi. From resistance to military action Italy has been squeezed into a role, with sense of rivalry with France. Moreover, the left has now taken a vanguard position in articulation of action. Advocacy of a 'risorgimento also in the Arab world' (the 'resurgence' which brought Italy to nationhood 150 years ago, overturning Spain, Austria and the Papal States) has brought huge popular response for President Napolitano, life long member of the now defunct Communist Party. The leader of the Democratic Party, Bersani, Prime Minister-in-Waiting if egos can bring unity for change, has said that the constitution forbids military action for war, allows it for human rights... this is the leader of the party heir to the former socialist and communist parties. So with the complicity in action of the British Liberal Democrats we have a curious vanguard of 'leftish' or socially-sensitive leaders gunning for what is unmistakably a war. 

It is a very long time (65 years) since J. K Galbraith and others in the assessment of strategic bombing of Europe in WWII concluded that the strategic bombing campaign was a 'disastrous failure' that "at most... eased somewhat the task of ground troops."
The precipitate nature of western action, from which notably China, with its sense of how long history takes to happen, distances itself, reflects the infancy inculcation of our leaders with the speed of action of Sesame Street and the expectation of outcomes in computer games. 

The 150th Anniversary celebration in Italy includes celebration of Garibaldi and others in enabling an infant Rome Republic against French forces invited by the Pope to hold a hill in Rome for some months in 1849 - twelve years before the 150 years ago completion of occupation of all Italy by the Kingdom of Savoy; 21 years before the actual constitutional emergence of an Italian State, over 80 years before settlement of territory and status with the Pope... And as the Times main article on Italy begins: \"Encyclopedia Britannica describes Italy as"less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting."  

It is time we began scaling and shaping military interventions, as and when conceivably appropriate, by realistic awareness of the time it takes to achieve any kind of outcome in the real world and the very different strategies we need to adopt in the real world. There is a huge element in this war decision not so much of interest in oil but pellmell response to public opinion and adoption of domestically politically advantageous postures: it is frankly bizarre for the Italian left to be advocating for war in the Arab world and Libya in particular — but for the need to get advantage over the Billion Dollar Man who had become a dollar-dealing mate of Gaddafi, resistant to war against him. 

Considering the business in Libya we might paraphrase that last quote about Italy to say that Libya is: "less a single nation than a confusion of culturally diverse points in an uncommonly challenging setting."

now in another world

early February: This note is written from the Seattle-Vancouver BC train. We have been visiting Liz and Mike in Seattle, today heading for Rome. Writing at duemesi.blogspot.com... see you there!

UPDATE: NOW IN ROME IN MARCH, AFTER A MONTH IN SOUTHERN ITALY. 
Living here for a time, not running as a tourist. 

The difference between life here and life in Australia is challenging, broadening, demanding review of what we do at home in many ways. To begin, however, creative processes seem to come to a halt as we learn openly and allow the stresses of past work etc, to filter down out of the system. 

There are nightmares (literally) - you  cannot disengage from things and be in a free space without the subconscious running in all directions for structure, it seems. 

I am somewhat unnerved to find that my Italian returns better than was 40 years ago. Treated as speaking properly in Rome (asked about it in a friendly and welcoming manner) though regarded by many, in the outpost places we have been in, as something from the imperial court or worse. 

There are political issues of great heat, as always but perhaps of greater consequence, with unconstitutional 'reforms' pressed forward by the world's wealthiest head of government concerned mainly with his own good time (an aspiration which links him to a huge spread of the population), while the opposition, so articulate on so many matters, cannot evolve itself into anything or anyone as an alternative government. 

There is an historical moment, with celebrations this week of the 150th anniversary of the conquest of the rest of Italy by the Kingdom of Savoy and establishment of a Kingdom of Italy, something that happened somewhat contrary to the wishes of many involved and still resented by many. Italy remains, as the New York Times quotes Encyclopedia Britannica: "less a single nation than a collection of culturally related points in an uncommonly pleasing setting." 

There are things of great beauty in so many places, with thousands of years of history piled on itself, the weaving together of buildings so different in age itself a matter of magic. There are disturbing things, as with the church in Naples on the Street of the Tribunes (15% of the street seeming to be churches) founded in the height of the counter-reformation, in 1600, a brass skull and cross-bones on its entry rail, an enquiry desk handled by a beautiful young woman, a church committed to saving those in purgatory, diminishing their time there, at one time with sixty masses a day... Such a fortune in churches where people have often till very recently starved and street-begging still present.  

We are also here so close to what has been happening in Tunisia and Libya. While the internet also brings close the events in Japan... This uprooting and transplantation to Rome has the same kind of effect as it had on me 40 years ago, of shifting me out of local and petty preoccupations and perspectives back in Australia. Not that there are not millions of petty and local perspectives around me here... but it is the vast difference that doubles the perspective coming here. 

the story of the end of apartheid on the south coast

I have finally mastered how to move a voice recording from my iPhone. Easy when you stumble on how to do it...

So I have moved recordings I made of Fred Moore, recounting the Aboriginal advancement movement from the 1960s, onto a little web page here. Good to have this up on Australia Day too!

bedroom mural: "Escape from Jervis Bay"

I wrote on 9 November that I had gone into a bedroom to consider what colour to paint the walls but had strangely carried with me not any colour samples or pots of colour but a piece of charcoal. I had duly reported to Helen abashedly saying here, I did this but I'll paint over it. To which she replied no you will not paint over it you will finish the job.

So I have finished Escape from Jervis Bay in charcoal and 'natural paint'. Taken some courage, actually. The theatre-screen-ish drapes are from a Lebanese home via eBay, the accompanying drop curtains have gone to charity shop. Interesting to find that the heavily-flower-patterned Moygashel Irish linen main curtains work very well with the strength of this painted wall. It's not just been a need for courage to put the figures so boldly onto the wall, but also the challenge of the strength of this paint job relative to the rest of the room. Interestingly with this strong treatment of two walls a large nude photo of Margaret from 1977 looks now very isolated on the opposite wall. Must add to that wall, photos not mural. (I have accumulated dozens of picture frames from charity shops and the A3 colour laser machine is producing lovely images.

Art by the Sea

I have four paintings and the three panelled screen in the Art by the Sea group show at the Lady Denman Museum in Huskisson, 18 December-16 January. In a note hung with the screen, I said I had put a catalogue of other work at aplaceof.info - So I've done an artist's statement with some works for sale, here.

There is a great variety of work in the exhibition, wonderfully arranged on the walls at the Denman art space by Judy and John Brown. This a smudgy iphone photo from the opening by Helen Nugent.

This photo taken at home shows how the screen is set up in boudoir mode...

Liz - short work

Click to see at Daily Science Fiction!

Begins thus:

Dear Ms. Moon

by Liz Argall

Dear Mr. Moon Man or Ms. Moon Lady,

I would like very much for gravity to continue to suck or pull or whatever it does, but if you could do so with just a bit more nuance I would be very grateful. 

Writing - Wikileaks

I was pleased to see the New York Times selected a quick little comment of mine as the highlight among 892 comments first day or so of publication by them of extracts from the Wikileaks revealed US diplomatic cables. 


In case that link goes astray, here is my comment (I have corrected spelling of Harlod to Harold here):

HIGHLIGHT (what's this?)

Dennis Argall

Australia

November 29th, 2010

5:31 pm

As a former Australian foreign service officer, accustomed in the past to working closely with US foreign service officers, often sharing each other's cables, I have enjoyed reading cables you released on 28 November. While my government has been doing the obligatory tut-tut, as a private citizen now I believe that the exposure of these texts in this way will redound to US benefit.

It will not hurt those mentioned to hear what is thought of them, especially when State is not guilty of saying it publicly. It will not hurt others to know your officials are hard to fool.

It will be to the general good for the public, including journalists and academics, to see the quality and insight of diplomatic traffic. There is a serious problem in academic as well as media discussion in that so much of it is divined and theorised from inadequate peripheral information. Now it is possible to see how officials build policy and strategy layer by layer, in dialogue with their own government and officials of others.

Do be conscious, in reading it all, though, of the observation of the late Sir Harold Nicholson, doyen of the UK foreign service and writer on diplomacy, that in all the foreign ministry documents in all the world that he had seen, he had never seen a record of conversation in which the person taking the record did not win.

Be open at the Times to fresh perspectives on US power - you suggest the US has lined up Arab states on Iran but it is possible also to see a USA being played like a trout by very powerful and smart Arabs.

If this information elevates debate on the issues, if there is any increased respect for the business of diplomacy, that will be good, for the US and the rest of us. The role of the US in the world is not being 'challenged' so much as being changed and reduced, quite rapidly. More than ever before, it is not possible for the US to say 'this is my role' any more than it is possible to retreat to isolation and indignation. There are real jobs to be done, which cannot be done by people drunk on tea.

three panel wood screen

I have carved relief images on one side of three panels and fitted the panels together with brass hinges. The other side without images, still rough-sawn with some sanding and polishing. My own sense at this moment is taken up entirely by the difficulty of working the Paulownia, which is a bit like carving the inside of a pineapple skin, with some cheddar on the sides. Sort of, not entirely but... Anyway, not time yet to judge whether the screen is merchantable, it should do for hanging photos at the December-January exhibition at the Denman.

If placed as an item for sale, I will put an oval gilt mirror on the centre panel of the blank side (see third photo), also offer a photo shoot and framed photo portrait to decorate it.

Here are two photos of relief-carved side of panels, one of the plain side. Yes, there is a small brassy decoration on that hand, a string of beady things on a top corner. Note that the sides of the heavier, higher central panel have been trimmed straight and vertical, while the side panels (legs on the left, Labrador on right) have not been trimmed at all, the hinges are slightly away from the margin.