twistedanimator

Got back last night from a long long weekend away in Southwold were I became an unGodmother to Zachary :) Then spent some very pleasant days in Southwold with Zach and his 2 sisters (5, 3, nearly 2..) and his parents. Had lots of fun, visits to the beach playground etc :) which should stand me in good stead for my occasional(very very occasional for five seconds...) ooh ill never have another baby feelings :)

Whilest I was away Campbell returned to London with his friend John, to see how Jay was getting on .. who had had a party .. (bad... but not too bad only about 10 of them and house not particularly wrecked..) also coped with cat getting very ill in night with bleeding from his er penis .. (the cat NOT jay..) and got the cat to the vet in the morning (good .. shows he can be trusted!) Rudy also came over to stay and build some computer network thing he is experimenting on and then Chereese, Joss, Dan, Marcel, and Ben came back and all crashed in the living room.. (joss and dan stayed one night then went to swansea then came back last night.. weird kids.)

I walked in last night rushing to unpack car so I could pick up now much better cat from vet and went ...
aggggggggghghhhh and shouted at the first person I saw who happend to be jay :)
the house looks like a bomb site!!!

I have been organising them all to tidy up a bit .. though it seems it was everyone else's plates... and there WILL be games tonight.. however .. crash space is a bit short cos right now im expecting to have staying here.. me, cam, jay, rudy, john, chereese, ben, marcel, joss, dan and I believe charlie is turning up later...

I think ill go back to southwold ...

If you want to stay at mine at the moment.. you can't :) were full!

Now to go sort out Rudy who has camped in the Art room where I need to be working...

Yes there are games here tomorrow night :) Usual start time of 7 pm or earlier if you want to cook me dinner :) I am currently only eating fruit and salad though...

Been busy away all weekend up at the lakes celebrating my daughter's 20th birthday !!!! Will write a longer report of it some other time but right now am rushing off to go to see Star Trek hopefully with friends :)

Oh and I started tweeeting...

Sorry guys no games night on Thursday as I am going up to the lake district to help Joss celebrate her 20th birthday. My god it barely seems like yesterday she was a toddler!!!!!

Been really really busy recently as have had mad time with friends visiting after easter con and various game wekends!
Easter con was brill by the way :) thanks to all the organisers.
Now i really should start doing some paintings cos have booked hotel, have membership and am going to world con :) woot!!!!

xxx

er games will be back as normal week on thursday all welcome. come after 7pm let me know if you need crash space.

wow I had an unexpectedly nice time at Eastercon :) Unexpectedly because we weren't in the con hotel, and Campbell was sick so he missed going to the con most days and I missed him :( Nice cos we played a brilliant larp thing most of the time and lots of werewolf!!!! I would write a proper description of everything (including the fact i sold some prints and stuff...) but.. I still have house guests and have to dash off to entertain them...

So first off... games are back every thursday till the end of June when they will stop again... (world con..)

Secondly Its my birthday on Monday and Julie's birthday last week (the 10th) and she was unable to see anyone as everyone was at Eastercon and she couldnt go!!!! soo... this Saturday we having a special games day here to celebrate her and mine birthday!!! I will of course be 21 again this year (boring being the same age all the time.. ) and I think Julie will be a bit older than that :) but only looks 21 still. So anyone and everyone welcome here this Saturday afternoon from 3pm. I can't be bothered doing some big party with music, and loads of food.. so bring some food and drink :) it wont be a big party cos its games orientated .. but there will be a few tables lying around we can all play settlers, werewolf and whatever else we fancy on....

Thirdly sadly my daughter the wondergirl Joss can't make it to my birhtday cos she is making a siege tower at uni and it needs to be finished next week.. HOWEVER she can make it the following week ... so .. I am having a second games Saturday the one after!!!!!! TWO games day birthdays!!!!! WWOOT twice the presents!!!

All welcome to both or either :) but do let me know if you are coming so i can tell you off if you don't turn up!!!!

xxxxx


Lisa

This week will be the last Thursday games night till after Easter as I have got way behind in everything I am doing....

:)

This will be the last "official" games night till after Easter, if you are desperate to game, then check with Figgy cos he might have some .. or ring me just in case u can persuade me to have a small ad hoc affair.. (er i mean affair as in games not affair as in lets be lovers)

Finally finished the rather larger than normal animation was doing for someone.. NEVER again.. cos it just takes forever as I am not using a 3d rendering thingy so have to draw the different frames of stuff and cos I am bad at programming couldn't get my head round how to do fireworks and sparks generated by the various particle generators out there, they seemed to only be good for random generation or mouse interaction... anyone good with flash? the guy also now is going to add some voice over... which may well be very cool.. but not sure if I am going to add it or him and er .. I've never added sound to any of my flash cos sound on other peoples web pages tends to annoy me so much... Now i have to go and do a new painting for Easter.. this is probably impossible given my rate of work.. but hey .. who was it who suggested we try 3 impossible things everyday ? or was that something about practicing believing in impossible things..

Couldn't work out how to post it here and as its big and looks better on a dark background do check out the animation on my website which can now be reached at http://www.lisakonrad.com as well as http://www.arthouse.org... (getting posh in my old age..)

Had a great weekend starting off with a party at Brian and Carolines on Saturday in Ilford, then a meal at Alex's in Leytonstone on Sunday. Thanks to all of them for food, drink and company and a great game of Apples to Apples at Alex's!

Haven't been posting much cos I've been busy (well actually I have just realised I never post much ..)but now after mentioning it to one or two peeps on Sat I am going to post some links which I would appreciate people to visit .. not to buy anything :) but just to get my hits up higher so there search engines rate me higher.. so they show me to more people.. so I get more visitors.. so I get more sales... yes after years of having a cafepress shop I finally opened a Zazzle shop.. then read the forums and decide to actually attempt some marketing drive of trying to get visitors!! and it is slightly working ;) I have actually sold a few things!!! (mainly the dragon and babies Christmas card I did years ago..... ) I think I should have probably started all this trying to get visitors/publicty ooh maybe 2 months ago :) but .. hey maybe next year I will remember I am supposed to try and sell stuff and start off earlier....

so here goes :)

Pls visit and vote if you can for my two new squidoo lenses
http://www.squidoo.com/ArthouseDragons just an oridinary zazzle module site im trying to sell through
http://www.squidoo.com/christmasanimations I then made another lens and added some very very old Christmas animations to try and drive up visits (this seems to be getting the most visits.. and click throughs so far)
my zazzle store http://www.zazzle.co.uk/lisakonrad*

ooh and vote for some of my tshirts at

Click here to rate this shirt at DarnFineShirts.com
and
Click here to rate this shirt at DarnFineShirts.com

any other ideas for driving up visits/sales will be welcomed!!!

and games night as usual Thursday night, 7 pm onwards all welcome.. (but you have to have clicked at least one link..... cough :)

now thanks to watervole's recommendation I am either going to listen to Lois Macmaster Bujold's warriors apprentice I just got from Audible, I enjoyed the two Chalion books I got from audible by her, or a new book I have never heard of before called the Water Room by Christopher Fowler. All thanks to Loonie who is I hope, renewing my American Audible today !!! xxx I couldn't live without American Audible.. do you have any idea how many more books it has than the UK version?? Mind you I just noticed the UK has one extra Fowler book than the US so I may have to join the UK one too...

Front of card


Have just uploaded the front and inside for a new Christmas card to Zazzle and Cafepress. I have bought stuff from Cafepress and had a store there for years but have only just opened a Zazzle store, mainly as until 30th of Novemeber they have free deliveries to the UK for orders over 30 quid. This means I can actually order my own stuff and test it out far cheaper than normally :) Usually I have to get American visitors to pick up parcels from Cafepress for me so I can get my own stuff!! Trying to sell stuff on American pod sites is hard when you have to wait weeks and pay loads to get the stuff to see if its ok... (try to test it out on me first to see what needs editing and how the colours look..) Does anyone have any experience of Zazzle and their products?

I thought Id try the raven skull celtic cross card that was a birthday card as my new Xmas card this yeas as I put one up for show at Novacon and people actually bought it even though I hadn't really meant to sell the ones I had cos they were for my use.... but I won't be sending it to my sister again cos my bro in law jokingly asked her if I was sending death threats :) when I sent one to her for her birthday.
Inside of card

Just a reminder :) Tuesday games night is now Thursday Games night.. everything else is the same :) same place same time all welcome :)

Novacon

was brilliant :) lots of fun met loads of friends and made some new ones! had a great time :)

Dentist

I hate them :) had an hour in one today drilling into an old dead tooth to take out a post for a cap that has snapped off (some of you might have noticed my toothless gaps at Novacon..)still more hours to come in the next couple of weeks due to my having put off for about a year my visit and various holes having lost their fillings during the last couple of years...) I have also chipped my last uncrowned front tooth and now have to decide whether to fill it (cheap and on national health and recommended by my dentist cos he doesn't like shaving still good teeth to be crowned..) or having it shaved and capped in a much lighter tone than my other teeth .. having the other 3 fronts which are already capped done to match and then for the first time in my life having a smile of whitish (hey they will never be very pale,..) even teeth.. That though can't be done on the NHS as its cosmetic... or I could just stick to photoshopping all photos of me to give myself white teeth...(like many of my generation I have very yellow teeth which I believe is due to the antibiotics we were given as kids..)

I did discover that listening to an audiobook helps pass the time and drowns out the drill

Sigh... Poor C has missed (through no fault of his own...) his train back from his walking holiday in Scotland... so he wont be here in time for me to drive with him up to Novacon.. This is sad cos we have a room booked for tonight and I was kinda looking forward to it as I am missing him :) but he will be there tomorrow.. Many of you might wonder why I passed on the chance to go hill walking in November with him in the pouring rain when it gets dark at 4 pm and its freezing cold... but I will go next summer or spring .. or any resonable time of year when I can stop for a few hours and paint without getting soaked or freezing to death.. (hey I do have arthritis and theres nothing worse then being cold wet arthritic and wandering round scottish mountains in the dark ..)

So now im supposed to be finishing packing (what the hell to take to wear?) finishing off some prints to take and wrapping a few paintings.. packing games etc.. then going off without him :( sob however..!!! good news is that Joss and Chereeeseeeeeeeeee will be there tonight so I will have someone I know there (though knowing them it will be really late too when they arrive..)

I am sooooo crap at packing up to take stuff to cons though and can't stop playing mob wars on facebook .. making myself be ready to leave as soon as he arrived back in london gave me a time frame to work to ...

oh have a space in a car now heading up to Birmingham tonight.. anyone need a lift? You will have to listen to a wide range of music and help me finish packing the car :)

Forgot to post last week :) have moved games night to thursdays on a trial basis as requested by certain peoples ;)

So sorry I didn't post last week .. and of course one person from lj who isnt on a mailing list im on turned up ....

OOOPS

sorry

:)


so its thursday this week and for he forseable future.


also will be at novacon hopefully this weekend, so hope to see some of you there!

Yes .. its games night again this week :) All welcome. 7 pm onwards (er or earlier if you want.. and are prepared to make me some dinner..)

Haven't posted in a while as am currently engaged in a huge clear up of my house. The first plan of just putting things in storage so I could get rid of some of the clutter that arises from having two teenagers living here failed due to the fact that it would cost £15 per week.. which is a waste when I have tons of room if only I would chuck more stuff out.. So now am just trying really hard to bin things :) This is all taking rather longer than I thought it would and currently am unable to paint due to the fact my art room and most of the rest of my house is now under siege from boxes. Still it will all be worth it in the end. Course the problems are made worse by the fact that the dining room still has loads of boxes in it waiting for Kyara to take away again when she returns to Uni at the end of September. Meanwhile she is still away gadding round Europe :) think she is is Prague right now.. Uboroc has started his first week at his new school and therefore we are having to get up at 7 am every morning .. which is a shock to both our systems as we only had to get up at 8.30 to get him to his old school on time.. but he does seem to be enjoying the advantages of central London college life and has visited the comic shop for new Buffy comics already. Considering both my kids have never really been ones to disappear off to London on their own much he is doing well at finding his way around central London but has yet to find any new friends so consequently has no one to have lunch with.. so far the kids at his new school all smoke and he hates smoking... My offer of coming in to have lunch with him was unsurprisingly rejected :) under the oh my god mum ill never get any friends if you do that to me rule.

Now back to the boxes...

am posting from my iphone. Am in Denver. Was camping at womad weekend before last. Games night is stil at my house contact jim or cam. But I am not there. Will post more when I get to a outer. It is hot.

Got this last friday and had a quick go over the weekend. Leveling seems to happen as you do the quests and I reached lvl 14 without meaning to.. (need to wait up a bit for Kyara to get on the game and maybe Ubo once his exams are finished.. )Though I might start another char.. cos although my char looks absolutely gorgeous.. (and can take off her clothes... this is an x rated game..) I would like to try out the new combat system a bit more as I am a necro at the moment and being a caster is much of a muchness whereas for the tank/ranger type classes there is quite a bit more to do in this game than the usual hit attack button. Quite like my necro though and having pets is always fun.. (mine at the moment look like skinned humanoids..) but ... damm I miss being able to change into a wolf.. or a lion or something or ANYTHING... The game feels a bit unfinished too.. but they all do on first release. Haven't grouped or anything yet .. though I am back in my old Eq1 guild from 1999 which is fun. People arent as friendly as they have been on other games so far either.. none of the chat you get in banks in eq.. a little bit of role play is always fun.. and even lotro had quite a bit of socialising .. specially as I learnt all the dances.. but it is beautiful to look at so far and I do love exploring a new world.. I have a nice cloak too .. cos i got the collectors edition :) (oops..my bad.. spending that much when im not sure how long ill play it..)

Meanwhile... eq2 has been writing to me .. saying I can have 2 free months back on eq if i log back in with my er 6 accounts.. they must be feeling the pinch :) so I might go and visit some old friends sooon...

Games night is here tonight.. but next week its going to be on Wednesday due to ubo having an exam on the Wednesday. Kyara might be back that day too for a quick visit for her friends party (kat from the convention if any of you remember .. both she and kyara are now 19!!!! gods it makes me feel oooooooollllllllldddddd...

hmm wonder if i have time to have a finish off that quest on the island before everyeone comes and i have to play board games ...

Games night as normal here on Tuesday...

Php .. found I could fix most of the things I needed to in the css.. took me sooo long though to make all the changes I needed to a very nice piece of java/and php script thing called minishowcase so it actually worked and could be added to my webpages as I wanted it to.. I am currently trying to test it on various platforms before I connect it to the rest of the site and replace the old art.hml (well i will have to make a link to it cos I dont know how to do the script to make the new page replace that as i made the new page .php so i could include the prewritten php page in it and I am not sure if tht works if its not all in the same folder...) anway the old page hadnt been updated since 2004 cos it was such a pain to put any new pics up on it .. hopefully if this works it will now just be a matter of adding new stuff to the galleries and the php showcase thing will show them automatically...

http://www.arthouse.org/art/index.php

is the link if anyone has time please check it and any suggestions and spelling errors grammer etc will be gratefully recieved!!

Thanks

Does anyone know php and can give me .. ooh a few er minutes(er maybe longer..) on msn/icay/livejournal talk?

ta thanks :)

Well I bought myself a camper van :) (mm about 2 weeks ago now..) its very nice. Its a silver colour on the outside and has a double bed, shower and toilet :) It is a fiat ducato engined panel van conversion 2.8 diesal injected thing. So far driving it has been fun though going back to a gear shift vehicle after the ease of auto has been a leetle strange. We have tried to hippyfi it a bit by putting in loads of throws :) and we took it away for yet more weekend birthday celebrations in the lakes.. :) though as we had enough rooms for adults I didn't actually get to sleep in it .. though Kyara and chereesy did and said it was very comfortable. Actually I think I've done quite a lot since I last posted.. had two birthday weekend celebrations with Kyarakins.. one here in London where we also went to see Anne Sudworth's show (her ability with pastels constantly blows me away) and met loads of peeps on the previous weekend, then this last weekend when we stayed at my sisters place in the lakes.

There was 16 of us.. oh my god.. me and Ky and J and Cam and my first ex husband and Gavin and Tai and Alex and Kat and her boyfriend and then a car with 4 others from Ky's uni... and my dog and the Gynn's dog Bertie... All good fun..(but have you ever tried to organise food for that many including a load of uni students .. ) even when Tai and Alex and Jay and Bertie capsized in one of the Canadian canoes in the middle of Windermere it was all good though we were worried about Bertie as being a dog he didn't have a life jacket.. but they got rescued so all was good. I even put on a wet suit and went for a swim in the lake :) Though it was bloody freeeeeezing.. We played settlers at night (Kyara won.. bah .. ) and some people we went for long walks..... I would have but the first walk they went on was dead early in the morning and I didn't get there till 3am the first night.. it was a long long drive starting out from London on a Friday night at 8 pm .. but as I said the van drove wonderfully... Gavin reckons I shouldnt drive it at 80 mph but all the other vans were going that fast... I also managed quite a long reverse in it at one point when me and Cam had gone to a small car park in the woods somewhere and the turn in was down a steep hill and very severe.. going out i decicde would be best to reverse back past the turn and then go no up (this of course will make no sense to anyone who hasn't seen the turn.... the place or my fiat ducati panel van.. ooh baby i love you ..) but we managed it fine and I even took the hard hill start at the lights in Ambleside with no problems::::) I am thinking though of getting one of those auto shift things .. apparently the cost about a grand but my knee is getting a liite sore from the clutch as its a bloody long stretch .. so for long term use and long long drives its either that or some sort of block on the gear lever..

Now to nxt Tuesday games night.. I have to cancel it here as J has a exams that Tuesday and the Next Wednesday so I want to keep it a little quiet here that night ;) Normal service will be resumed the following week.
Actually I only really meant to post that games was cancelled then got verbal garbage overload :)

I will probably post pictures of my beautiful camper van sometime :) ooh cant wait for stonehenge!! and womad!!!

Wow!!!

Went last night the Hackney Empire for an Ellen Kent production of Madam Butterfly. I am not a big opera buff and basically only really know the music and story to Carmen (the only other opera I've seen in the UK) and I had no prior knowledge of the story or the music.. (hey apparantly everyone else knows the story of Madam Butterfly.. but I didn't)

The singer (Elena Dee) who was Madam Butterfly was absolutely wonderful. She sang every note perfectly with strength and feeling and I ended up crying at the end .. plus Pinkerton got booed :) (amongst the claps for his performance) I wont go into details of the story in case anyone else doesn't know it..

Anyway was apparently Elena Dee's first premiere opera role and she was stunning... plus the Hackney Empire is a gorgeous building though afterwards had a few problems with my mum and the beggars on the street.. Me half the time I'll give people a bit of change.. a ciggy .. my mum.. who is 80 this year decided they were all drug addicts and started to tell them to go away and get treatment in a strident voice.. whilst me and my sister tried to shush her. (this at 11 pm in a street in Hackney..) not a good time or place to discuss with very very out of it looking people whether its their individual fault for the state they are in or whether its a predicament caused in most part by the malfunction of proper state care :)

Its a pity it was only on for one night as I would recommend this production with this singer as a must see!!

Just a quick thank you to everyone who came to my birthday party. I had a really really great time :) There are some fantastic photos posted by dfloorandmine up (how do i link?)in which he has managed to make everyone look good :) and I will post some of my own soon on facebook...

I finally went to bed on the Sat night at about 5.30 am after the last game of werewolf then woke next morning to give house guests breakfast at about 11 am.. Sms and Eira and the Dutch (Martijn, Oscar, Edgar and Kirsti) all left at about 1 pm but then Martin and Mel and Julie and Figgy and Jo all came back and I spent a very pleasant afternoon playing icognito and settlers, eating the remainder of the food from the previous night (we found a load my mum hadn't noticed so we had plenty ..) plus the teens went to oriental city and brought back roti chani and sattay chicken. some teens left for a while for a train (i say teens when actually many of them are 20 but look about 15...) but missed the train so again there were 3 young women and one mike sleeping in my daughters bedroom (what a lucky boy..) Jo and Rudy also stayed the night and we chilled for a while in the tent/gazebo having "interesting conversations" about penis sizes untill the early hours...

By monday i was exhausted.. but just about found the energy to drive up to Befordshire to look at a campervan .. but more about that if I actually manage to buy it..fingers crossed!!!

thanks again all for making my birthday very very memorable.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Just a reminder.. party at my house this coming Saturday, 19th of April. There is some crash space on the floor, so bring a sleeping bag if you need to crash somewhere (and cushion if you have one :) as there maybe quite a few people staying over ...

Party starts at 6pm (so early comers can help put out the food and then get a quick game of settlers in before the music gets too loud..) and am planning on having an open house until 6 pm the following day. There will be werewolf and drinking and dancing...

If you need directions, address, mail me at party@arthouse.org ...

I would appreciate some indication of who may be coming so I can organise things numbers/food wise :)

eek.. er better go tidy up a bit now....

Had a really great time at Eastercon at the weekend, though only actually made I think 3 panel items... (discussion of Tanith Lee's drinking saphire wine, people being kicked out of a balloon one with Frank Wu and Briony, and of course the FANTASTIC talk by Phil and Jill on Urban Exploring .. I wanna go with you soon!!!)
Thanks to the Gaspodes, Chris and Judith and all others for a really good con!!! my daughters all had a great time too:)

Many people have mentioned the after con blues.. I find the best cure for this is to have loads of dutch people staying over straight after the con.. then it kinda peters out not suddenly finishing :) So Tuesday night we had an impromptu games night as usual here .. with Jo, Figgy, Cam, Looney, Oscar, Kirsti, Edgar, Nessa, Julie, Pat, Joss, Cherese etc. and this coming Saturday we have games here again for Jo's birthday (though some of the dutch have left and Cherese has gone to Switzerland and Joss.. is on a beach in Langkawi for a couple of days... I think i should have gone to look after her... (not to sit on the beach and wander round the temples and forests aroung Taiping where her grandparents live at all.. noooh.. damm I miss Malaysia!)

I also have Lunatic staying, which is always great cos he forces me to go out... (for those who don't know me well I do have a tendancy to stay home far to much and just to have lots of parties and friends staying.. instead of getting out there and having fun..) Last night we went to see "into the hood" a hip hop musical in central London. He couldnt get the greatest seats cos it was a gala opening or something but there were photographers outside the door though they didnt actually seem very interested in us :) and I didn't actually recognise any of the "famous" people they were photographing. Anyway .. it was great, I happen to love r&b and hip hop music and young lithe men breakdancing so for me it was purrrrrrfect... though due to my current infatuation with the So you think you can dance Australia and American programmes I was a little more critical of their popping and breaking than I would normally have been... For instance non of them breaked with the the stunning moves of Hawk (drop dead gorgeous Chinese guy from Hong Kong/Uk who is in the current series of So you think you can dance US) but the dancers were all excellent :) and it was a terrific atmosphere .. noisy and fun and a complete change from the last musical I saw, Carmen at the National Opera which I also loved but where people frowned at every little noise.. Next thing I am planning on seeing is Madame Butterfly so I will have to see how that measures up to it. I am very familiar with the music of Carmen and also recognised most of the songs in in the hood which included Ludacris, Chemical Brothers, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, and gods know what else but I had heard most of them before ;) wheras I don't know ANY of the songs from Madame Butterfly ..

So .. this week straight after the con.. lots of peeps staying on Tuesday, Wednesday getting Joss and her dad to the airport on time .. Thursday ... Into the Hood, Friday .. Betty Ford, Sat .. Games here (all invited as usual btw) Sunday .. i have to go to Liverpool for a funeral, Tuesday ... Anne Sudworth's opening, reckon the post con blues will hit sometime next week..

Then of course 19t of April the big Birthday Party for me Gaspode and .. a late edition, Joss's boyfriend who also has a birthday that day :) (well we all on the 20th actually but its a sunday..)

Wow what a lot of writing for me!!! course its all stream of conciousness with no editing .. spell checking or re reading or I would never bother...