Bit bored of politics?

Then why not

THIS VERY SUNDAY

more deets and what have you : here>>

Sunglasses, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

Felix, Sophie and Jaygo on the morning of Sophie’s 4th birthday. A HUGE influx of pink things for our little pink person. She’s a very happy Pi.

FIRE : May2, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

We’re chucking another log on the FIRE. A Bank Holiday special. 2nd May, Rehab, Harrogate (pictured here).

We went to a friends birthday bash yesterday. All very lovely. It’s been a similar format for the past n years, but every year there seems to be a lot more kids! Sun was shining, meat on the barby, kids spent hours playing with a big empty cardboard box.

After a the recent sad departure of Fiona, Sid and Lemon Bun Just got a couple of new pet fish. We’ve called this Lion Head ‘Goggles’ and we got another fish – a baby Panda Oranda – currently about 2cm long. We’ve got a Fish called Panda.

These are possibly the greenest words ever written on dragondrop. They are written on a device that is using 100% solar power. Arguably all devices are 100% solar powered really but this particular gadget is currently exclusively powered using energy from the sun collected using a solar panel which has fed a ‘desktop’ phone battery charger.

Here is the kit – guarded by Misty (a cat). The solar panel (eBay, £25 -a bit like this one) comes in a case that can be free standing, stuck to a window or clipped to a backpack and attached to a charger or gadget (eg MP3 player) via a USB cable. I’ve got a rotation of 3 phone batteries –  in good sunlight it charges a dead battery to full in a day – so I can carry on blogging, geocaching, photogro-faffing and generally digitally documenting whilst listening to music etc or using a BlendTec Blender®. even when I’m away from a mains power source – ie camping or a festival or other such deep adventure ops.

Well – after the unmitigated pain in the harris that google caused by ceasing to support FTP, my hitherto unyielding loyalty has been re aligned and I’ve plumped for a wordpress solution to run dragondrop.org. Very early, yet hopefully in the right direction tentative step, as this, the first official post using wordpress instead of blogger.

Another Place, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

Yesterday, on a bit of a whim we headed out to the coast to see a./ the sun and b./ Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’. (My photo set : here | Google Map : here)

The sun was an utterly luxurious commodity yesterday – the first proper T-Shirt day of the year – we were lucky enough to take full advantage by heading out early to the coast.

Crosby is a funny place. Shameless on Sea. I felt quite overdressed in my jeans as the order of the day there seemed to be either Liverpool or Everton football strips (in pristine condition) OR branded tracksuit / shell suits. Who would have thought that is was harbouring one of the largest art installations in the world?

100 lifesize figures, cast in iron, spread out over a 3x1km stretch of beach. Each figure has its own bracelet with a unique number. Some are right next to the steps onto the beach, some are 1 km out. Depending on when you visit, you may see none at all, as the tide can completely submerge them all. Looking out through the haze I could see figures way out – tiny dots near the horizon yet others I could walk up to and touch. It was quite fascinating watching groups of people in isolation go to an individual figure and explore it.

I found it reminiscent of the artists fantastic 90s piece entitled ‘Field of Dreams’ (which I was lucky enough to catch at Tate Liverpool, where Gormely displayed 40,000 mini figures with eyes all staring at the viewer). ‘Another Place’ again used repetition of form and invites an immersion into multiple perspective viewpoints.

Its affirmed the notion that I really like the type that I can experience. I got a lot out of experiencing something in a space where I could have my own time with it, rather than jostling for space in a stuffy gallery. Bravo to Gormley.

On Monday after a stint of 7 years, Anima Mundi completed the last ever annual “Newby Hall Easter Fun Day”. The event set in the estate of Newby Hall focussed on family entertainment through arts of all shapes and sizes. It has been a DragonDrop calendar entry for most of the 7 years (we’ve done 6 I think).

DragonDrop.org is working again – still a whole bunch of pics missing thanks to a server meltdown but the text is there and I can do what I want with it again. I’ve used the blogger engine to stick the blog bits back in again. Bit of a pain the way google (who own blogger) decided to only support a hosted solution – you can’t park the site on your own server. I’m thinking about converting the whole lot to wordpress, which I’ve been using a while for some work related sites and to be honest, love it to bits. The new flavour of blogger has some wordpressy type bits in but it’s still a bit of a pain that it has to be hosted by google. I’ve had 3 large ish sites to convert – some users have had hundreds.

Anyway – must press on with my day!

Newby2010, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

We’re up at Newby Hall today. I’ve made a bit of a studio thing and am taking photos and printing them onto postcards for passers by. Backdrop painted by Loren, Tea by Eirene, biscuits by Jammy Dodgers.