Hello, my name is Sandy. I'm an artist in Perth, Western Australia.

I made a hat!

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Permalink. Posted 30 January, 2011. Tagged: cats, knitting, making stuff.

Throughout my clumsy life, I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with many different types of people, and getting to know the different ways they view the world. It’s fascinating stuff for me; I love getting to know how a person ticks, as it gives me a frame of reference for figuring my own head out.

One thing that particularly stuck out with me, which I’m only starting to understand now, is expectation. Expectation of intent, agenda, postulation or some endpoint, and how it affects the way we interpret what’s going on.

For example, say a controversial issue comes up in discussion. You have no firm opinion, but another participant has clear and strong feelings about it. To you, the discussion may be a casual conversation, but to the other participant, it may be a hot debate! They may hold expectations of everyone else being for or against the issue, so everything you say, however neutral or irrelevant, gets treated as agreement or argument.

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Permalink. Posted 22 January, 2011. Tagged: happiness theory, human nature, science, thinking too much.

In an attempt to connect with my nerdy side, I decided to take my partner’s all-but-unusable HP Mini netbook and make it usable again. He’d given up on it; it was ridiculous the day he brought it home from the shop, all shiny and new with an install of Windows 7 that could barely start up.

Fine, I thought, consulting a friend on the saviour potential of Ubuntu Netbook. It was a huge step for me, installing ‘one of those weird’ operating systems. It took me 2 nights to figure out what I needed – ie. a USB stick, some boot disk creator software and the latest version of Ubuntu Netbook – another night to figure out how to make a boot disk, plus another night to discover that I needed to suss out my network drivers.

Okay, so how can I see what network adapter I’m using? Easy, just follow the steps outlined in these screenshots that look nothing like what you actually see on your screen YEAH YOU HEARD ME.

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Permalink. Posted 18 January, 2011. Tagged: nerd stuff, technology.

Before my family moved to Australia, we had dogs and cats. I wasn’t close to our dogs and even though one of our cats was ‘mine’, I wasn’t close to him either. It’s only been in the last 5 or so years that I’ve really understood what it means to keep a cat – that you don’t; the cat keeps you.

Tigger was the first cat in my responsible, grown-up era of cat company. He was a ginger Exotic Shorthair, flat-faced with a real personality about him. It was rare for him to meet a human who didn’t find him a bit special in some way. We lost him last year in a car accident; a very sad day.

Seb was a blue British Shorthair, a real momma’s boy. I never considered myself maternal in any way until Seb. We lost him when I moved to the city – he was saying with my folks and got out. It wasn’t until a few days later that I heard what happened and by then, it was too late to search for him in the area. I think he might have gone back to my old place, saw we weren’t there and found a new home. Or perhaps he died and we never found out.

Today, it’s just us and Dora, a tortie British Shorthair. Our first nine months with her were… interesting. She was petulant, responded in ways we didn’t understand. She was like a child or childish adult who hadn’t yet learned good manners. She’s now a little over a year old and quite lovely – very communicative and settled in. Really loves the company of humans.

Over the course of raising three cat children, I’ve noticed certain things they do that didn’t strike me as particularly cat-like – or at least what I thought was cat-like. I’ve been inconsolably pensive this week, what with holidays ending and many new year opportunities to worry about not fucking up; thought I’d take a time out with a cuppa tonight and think some lovely cat thoughts.

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Permalink. Posted 14 January, 2011. Tagged: cats, thinking too much.

Nothing like a week off work to start the year right. Hello, 2011, here’s what I got up to on my week (and a half) off.

1. Slept. By this I mean deliberate hardcore sleeping. I think I spent all of the 30th and half of the 31st asleep. It was good. Many strange dreams; my mind feels quite refreshed.

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Permalink. Posted 9 January, 2011. Tagged: cricket, food, football, games, hobbies, making stuff, reading, space, time off, writing.