blast from the past-scanned

When I was in the height of my Magic playing days, I saw a piece of art someone had made from cutting multiple copies of cards and gluing them together to make a mini-shadow box diorama. I did the same with some magic cards and some cards from the Milestone series of comics.

I took one of the Magic ones to the Comic convention in Philly when I saw that the artist was going to be there. He enjoyed it and signed it for me.

Barcode

An article in a magazine pointed out the obvious, one that I had already dabbled in but forgotten, that the scanner can be a fun toy to make art.

The decorative grasses that emerge at the corner of the house near the garbage cans create a small island of emerald and cream contrast. While I must do battle with this probably invasive and aggressive species, I do admire the plant's beauty. When lined up on the scanner, I could almost read the leaves at a grocery store checkout.

What would my work be without the requisite spiral. I lightly dampened this shell before putting an old, faded piece of construction paper over it.
I tried some still life compositions with materials found in the yard. I like them, but I will certainly have to spend some time with the medium before I achieve the look and feel I want. I do love ferns, and this is their season!
Lastly, I created a high-resolution close-up of one of the purple flowers. I cropped to what seemed to me to create an other-worldly image. Imagine a yellow rocket launching from a purple landscape.

Probably my scanner is unhappy with plant residues, but I like this promising start of a new hobby.

Cards baseball

Thanks to Sarah and her family, I was indoctrinated early into fandom for the Cardinals. Living out of market, I have in the past received only a few telecasts a year when they were playing on national tv at a time when I could watch. Last year, I purchased the cable extrainnings package. It was disappointing to say the least. Most broadcasts were the away team, and many games were just not broadcast at all. This year, I switched to trying mlb.tv because more games would be available, and with the premium package, I could choose the broadcast I wanted to watch. Initially, I have had to watch it on the web interface either through the mac mini connected to our tv or on my computer. The feed is choppy and very unsatisfactory. Today, I updated the roku player upstairs and the version of Boxee on the mac mini downstairs. Now they both play mlb.tv and do so much better than the web interface. yay!