Committee work in need of distraction

 Spend all day in my office with only two short interludes of people dropping in to talk. Have a ton of reading to do for meeting on Monday but brain is desperately looking for distractions. Found a few film loops in a can including the Halloween 2001 loop that I'd have played in my window. 

Camera from a student

 One of my students, Sepehr, says he was following me on Instagram when he lived in Germany prior to coming to study here. He's been wanting me to paint his camera, which he brought to school this week. Sone nice lines and no colour at all. 

Robot posters

 I made a dozen variations on a poster for the spring "Robots in Popular Culture". Walked around hanging them up. Saw Lee in the stairway by Science, and Layton outside of Journalism. 

Shanell Papp online workshop

Watched fabric artist Shanell Papp workshop online for a while. Her brother joined in to talk about AI images and how she has been playing with them. It got a bit tech heavy and I logged off to do a game with Allan. 
 

Filmpool anniversary

 I popped into the Filmpool to what I thought was a meet and greet sort of party for their anniversary but found that the films that I assumed would be playing in the background (two by Dianne Ouellette) were just about to start. I watched for a while but had to leave to meet up with Kevin before the cake was served. 

Last Sockvile fixes

 After the corrections overall on the interlacing, there were still a couple of sequences that showed up weird like this (above) in Premiere but looked okay in After Effects. Following Brett's advice, I did some pre-rendering of some elements and think I've fixed the remaining anomalies and exported a new version of the whole picture. Running time about 87 minutes. 

Lunch with mom

 Went as a family to the Mercury Diner. Angie Counios was there too. Mom parked in the bus stop without noticing and brought us a frozen jar of soup. The soup was in a plastic bag and, after mom left we discovered the jar to have cracked in half. Bag fortunately contained the mess. 

Nice out?

 Weather is still about 5-10 degrees below seasonal every day but cat finally willing to step out for a few minutes. 

Mooky at the MacKenzie

 Margaret was at work and William studying so I went alone to the MAG to see the talk. Lots of people with notable conversations with Sylvia, Mooky, David Dick, Fred Clipshim, and Colton Bates. 

Class photo

 Class photo today. I convinced Andrea to join in, which she is usually averse to doing, but did so as she'll be retiring this year. 

Sarte and crabs

William is casting a set of plaster crabs which will follow Sarte in his hallucination. Thought it was due today but due date moved to last week. 
 

End of winter screening

Risa invited everyone to hang around outside for a retrospective off all of the videos she ran in her window this winter. Spring, technically, starts today. Yay. 

 

Painting

 I like to paint from the cameras I own sometimes because I feel no obligation to have the painting really represent the original object. Here is one of the broken cameras I bought from Don's Photo last summer, but this time from the back with it open, looking at the mechanism. William and Margaret were both out so I had the music up loud. 

St. Patrick's Day with dad

Dad was sleeping on his couch when I visited. I couldn't get him up for a long time but when the staff came in with green cupcakes, coffee with Baileys, and green beer, he finally sat up and consumed happily. I'm becoming less certain that he remembers who I am. 
 

Recording with Katherine

 William recorded with his cousin Katherine again today. They are really strong together. Wish they could just team up and do it every week. 

Casting day

William is trying to cast as toy crab and make a set of plaster figures for his class. This will relate to Sarte's phobia of crabs since a bad trip in 1929. 
 

Pi day

 Margaret is really busy with her parents this week but still found time to make a trio of pies. Amazing. We didn't actually eat any until about midnight. 

Photo story

William used photos of his sculptures (which were based on his drawings) as a photo story in his daily comic. Turned out really well, very retro. 
 

Dilbert fall from grace

 Once it was top of the heap, but now it is no longer in print. Scott Adams has (figuratively) shot himself in the foot with his rants on his youtube channel which as resulted in newspapers and comic syndicates dropping him everywhere over the past couple weeks. I helped William to cobble together a clips episode of his radio show for this week with numerous guests talking about Dilbert comics within past episodes or in deleted moments from the recordings. https://cjtr.ca/radio/sunday-funnies/ 

Storm

 William was on campus until 3 am last night and had to face the blizzard to come home. Visibility low but predictably little traffic at that time of night. 

AGR - Memories of the Sun

 William was at school all day and night. I painted and listened to music, then went to AGR opening. Exhibition is called Memories of the Sun: and featured our friend Anne Brochu Lambert, along with Sylvia Matas. 

Romance comics

 Brought out the romance comics in film class this week. Students understood the repetitive nature of the genre much quicker this year. Forgot to talk about the value of that predictability, that the best films do not rely on the story to be great so if the story, by virtue of being with a codified genre, is not a surprise, then the form and other elements can be. 

Outdoor projection

 Nice looking swimming pov shots in Risa's window tonight. I like the textures of the splicing glue. 

Last minutes fixes

Waiting for William for much too long today. We both have class at the same time on Tuesdays and sometime after class we drive home together and then he returns for his sculpture class. Today I waited a long time but eventually went looking. Apparently he discovered that his clay sculpture that is due today has fallen apart so he was trying to put it together. I held a couple things as he applied immense amounts of hot glue to it. In the end, it was presentable (at least at his entry level). 

 

Sculpting?

 William working on his sculpture project. It requires a paper-based folio that supports or demonstrates its development. William is typing his story about his characters, which are depicted in clay with the assigned theme of "relationship". 

Sockvile interlacing problems

 Spotting more and more flaws in Sockvile due to interlacing. I've now put some de-interlacing filters onto all the footage, but the export will take a much longer time now - probably 1.5 to 2 days per half hour section. 

William sculpting clay

 William completed one of the two characters for his intro sculpting course. Clay they are given has a lot of impurities so it will never get fired. Pictured above, he is in his corner of the senior drawing studio. 

Feeding the birds?

 I can hardly believe how huge this squirrel is getting. I filled the bird feeder the other day but I think this varmint eats from it more than they do. 

Sunbeam

 Cat in heaven. A box in the sunbeam. Looking up to see if I'm come pet her as well. 

Dark screen

 Wednesday is the only day I'm regularly on campus after dark so is the only time I look in on Risa's window screening. All dark tonight. She says it was the only night it didn't get turned on. Timing.