Feb 15 2025 - Sofas So Cute

 

Look at these cute seats/chairs or whatever we'll call them.  Aren't they creative!  These are showing up in the Pinterest feed.  My Pinterest pictures have wreaths, gardens, and water colour prints.  But weird ads show up regularly now.  I call these weird because of the ludicrously low prices. There are all kinds of pictures like this - a bed that is a grand piano with the keyboard at the foot of the bed.  A bed shaped with lotus petals, a bed shaped like a violin, even a pizza bed.   Alvanila - the site where  sofa seats like this are for sale says it is a grocery site.  And then the prices - they missing at least one zero, and possibly two zeros at the end?  Could these turn out to beminiature seats for a doll's house? There are more and more of these selling sites appearing in Pinterest  The one that got my attention previously was women's clothing with a pretty Chinese flower print.  It got my attention sufficiently that I have painted some Chinese branch watercolours.   You can find the sofa/seat images on stock photo websites and they have the heading royalty-free AI generated. How interesting things have turned out:  It used to be that I would look at gorgeous pictures of sofas and chairs in British House and Gardens or Architectural Digest, knowing they were priced far beyond my means.  Now I see gorgeous sofas and chairs priced below my means, but alas, they exist in pictures only.  I could never have guessed this would happen.

Here's one of the Chinese flower branch water colours   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 3 2024 - Work Rules

 

If I had been a business owner, I could have made the work rules.  What kind of work rules would you have insisted on?  Or did you insist on?  For example, one of mine would be no visible tattoos, another no sweat pants or leotard pants. I seem to be in the majority.  There are dozens of entries of the worst company rules on the internet.   So here are some of the common rules: Banning water breaks and cooling measures. Banning high heels for women at work. Bearded ban.  No long looks or unwanted advances. Banning headphones to avoid distractions. The following rules make me think they are jokes and fabrications:  Do not mop up the floor of the walk-in freezer. Do not climb into the rubbish compactor. If you have sex in the parking lot, please take off your vest and name tag first. ... And there were more like the last one. Then the specific companies named: At Walt Disneyworld, there is rule against pointing with one finger.  Its is considered offensive in a number of cultures. There is also a rule that employees are not allowed to say "I don't know".  And some anecdotes from the complaint type articles: "I had a restaurant manager make a rule that servers were not allowed to wear makeup unless they wore makeup every day. If you rarely wore or never wore makeup, you were not allowed to wear it because it would 'disturb' the regulars.  No employees could use a red pen because the deceased company founder had forbidden it. He was the only one who could wield a red pen. Even after his death, this rule persisted." Here's one of the watercolours from our Monday morning class.  A splish splash sort of style.

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Apr 22 2024 - Priscilla Queen of the Desert Rides Again

 

The bus in the 1994 movie "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" has begun a journey to being restored into a museum artifact.  This story hit the news in the last week - $2.2 million Australian is being raised to restore the bus and its interior for display at the National Motor Museum. Priscilla started out as a 1976 Japanese model Hino RC320. It was owned by Sydney company Boronia Tours before it was sold to a couple who leased the bus to Latent Images, the film’s production company, for the duration of the shoot in September and October 1993. Afterwards, the couple hired it out occasionally, including to the Australian band the Whitlams, who used it as a tour bus for six months in 1994. Its location was lost for all these decades, although there have been "pretenders to the throne" - for example the bus that was driven around the 2000 Olympics closing ceremony in Sydney.   "Michael Mahon said he bought the property, and unbeknownst to him the bus in the paddock, in 2016. He said the property belonged to musician Ian Ross East, whose friend brought the bus to Ewingar when she moved there. After the community told him about the bus, Mr Mahon did some research on the provenance of the bus and started making calls." Then it got complicated as it was abandoned on a deceased estate.  They had to wait a year for someone to come forward to claim it.  That completed, they got started on moving the bus to the museum and starting the restoration.  There's talk of putting the giant high heel back on the top again. I've used all the filters on this version of the Spring Magnolia around the corner.

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April 19 2024 -The Speed of Smell

 

What is the speed of smell?  How far can smell spread? This is prompted by a bizarre dream I had.  There we were when an alien space ship landed nearby, and then there was an overpowering acrid smell.  The smell spread around the world extremely quickly.  How could it spread so fast?  Was it a weapon or instrument of the aliens? Were we going to die from whatever made the smell?  The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second. The speed of sound is 761.2 miles per hour. If it was going the speed of light it would only take 0.13 seconds to go around the earth.  We wouldn't have time to ask the question if smell travelled as fast as light. In  comparison to light and sound there isn't a set speed to smell - the speed of smell is dependent on the odorous compounds that make up the air - we would ask how fast does air travel in the air?  Here is the article on the science behind the speed of smell. Let's jump to the fun comparison: "So then, let's use Graham's Law to compare the effusion rates of two odorous molecules, geraniol and skatole. Gerianol has a rose-like fragrance that is commonly used in perfumes, and it's naturally found in geraniums and lemons. Skatole is a somewhat toxic compound that occurs naturally in feces, and it's thought to be one of the main causes of odor in flatulence. Yes, in one of the most high-brow and intellectual thought experiments ever devised, I'm basically asking which odor, under ideal conditions, you would smell first: a rose or a fart? Gerianol is composed of ten carbon atoms, eighteen hydrogen atoms, and a single oxygen atom, which gives it a molar mass of 154.25 grams per mole. (A mole is a unit equivalent to about 6*10^23 individual molecules). Skatole, one the other hand, has nine carbon atoms, nine hydrogen atoms, and one nitrogen atom, which adds up to a molar mass of 131.17 grams per mole. Graham's Law says that the rate of gerianol effusion divided by the rate of skatole effusion will equal the square root of the molar mass of skatole divided by the molar mass of gerianol. In other words... This means that the rate of effusion of gerianol is about 92% that of the rate of effusion of skatole. In other words, the speed of smell of a fart is faster than the speed of smell of a rose. Admittedly, that's all one hell of a massive approximation, but that still seems like the sort of information that's just worth knowing" Let's ask the question:  how fast does a fart travel?  And the answer is 10 feet per second, or 6.8 miles per hour.  That's going to take a long time to get around the earth. Maybe that dream came about from this picture I took a few years ago. I was putting images through that Watercolour Filter the other day, and this delightful abstract came out. Starry sky sort of theme.

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Mar 22 2024 - What makes you stop and read the story

 

I was searching for a follow-up to time crystals soI see dozens of headlines. Some start with "the truth about" and others say "see what s/he looks like now" and others warn of "Putin..." doing something that will start a war.  This one repeated itself everywhere.  It is one of those headlines that  works.  We want to know what the story could be about -  a father and son...calling the police...about the son's homework.   Isn't that a tantalizing headline!  What could make a person "repeatedly" call 911 over homework? Is the son a shooter and about to attack a local school?  Is the son disturbed and about to do self-harm?  Has the son discovered something that can harm the world?  Is it a tragedy or a triumph? But no.  It is one of those filler stories. What a disappointment. It is a man calling the school 19 times in less than an hour saying his son was getting too much homework, and then calling the police and then 911. "According to a police report sent to TODAY.com by the Oxford Police Department in Ohio, on Feb. 29, Adam Sizemore “repeatedly” called Kramer Elementary School in Oxford “because his son gets homework which takes away from the time he has with him after school.” It must have been a slow news day - it is in headlines in news feeds all over the U.S. -  U.S. News & World Report, Reddit, Yahoo News, Kansas City Star, etc, etc.  Lesson learned.  There are worse things.  There are fake stories that gullible news outlets have picked up and published.  For example the headline :  Planet Nibiru is headed straight for Earth.  And that was followed by Hillary Clinton believes in the "Nibiru apocalypse" or that "Pope Frances endorsed President Trump" - these are all stories from 2016.    So I guess this is a minor moment in over-reporting, best left behind.   Isn't this a pleasant image.  It is a testament to good instruction - I am taking a watercolour class and we get simple exercises each week.  Everything looks great.  Who would guess I can't draw!

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Mar 15 2024 - Pi Day Yesterday

 

Yesterday was Pi Day.  What is the news of the Pi Day events?  Pizza Hut had free pies.  Pizza pies.  NASA had a Pi Day Challenge. An Ann Arbor boy can recite 1,300 Pi digits.  I wonder how long that takes?  It doesn't say, but there's a video of the boy in the corner of the news article.  But some other person who is 6 years old memorized 1200 digits and it took 8 minutes.  And how long would it take to recite all of pi?  Well, that's a silly question, as we now that pi never ends and it never repeats itself.  the first 62.8 trillion digits have been computer by computers and if one digit is said every second, it would take 2,000,000 years to recite all 62 plus trillion. There follows many people who have recited pi to various numbers of digits.  1,200 is a common choice. Here's that butterfly from yesterday with a watercolour treatment.

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Mar 11 2024 - All the Moments you missed

 

All the moments you missed - what is the assumption?   We dozed off, went off for a while or just tuned out, and even possibly never tuned in.   It looks like there is a big highlight this year.  It turns out to be Ryan Gosling who delivered fun.  That would be compared to 2022 where there was a definite  'no fun' moment.   The subtitle is: He’s not just Ken.  "In one of those rare instances of a telegraphed event that actually lived up to the anticipation and hype, Ryan Gosling crushed his performance of “I’m Just Ken” with gusto, after a truly amusing bit that involved him riffing on the “Barbenheimer” rivalry with Emily Blunt. He might be No. 2 to Barbie, but give Gosling this year’s Oscars MVP award." Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, who composed the guitar instrumentation on the song, made a surprise appearance on stage for a "rollicking" guitar solo. "At one point, Gosling stepped out into the crowd and found his “Barbie” co-stars, America Ferrera, Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig, who all helped Gosling sing his song when he pointed the mic toward them. And as he passed by his “La La Land” co-star Emma Stone, he gave her the mic to sing a line – which she did, impressively, word-for-word." Ryan Gosling has been dancing forever.  At least since 1992. Here's a video clip of him HERE. he's in shiny purple and silver.    It ends in a video unavailable screen.  There's a string of these videos - he's an all dancing sort of actor.  There is one with him and Justin Timberlake when they were children.

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Feb 26 2024 - Anarchist Piano Lessons

 

Who would most approve of anarchist piano lessons?  Bach, Beethoven or the Beatles?  It is actually advertised as Anarchist Piano Lair - Kensington Market.  The piano lessons are rule-based and free improvisation at the piano in Kensington Market.  Go to adamgold.ca and you find the University-Rosedale Candidate for Toronto City Council.  There is a long list of topics along with piano lessons.

the annual orchid show was at the Royal Botanical Gardens yesterday - a great spring-like experience. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 8 2024 - Watercolour painting

 

Here's a pair of images showing the before and after of processing with the  Waterlogue Pro filter.  I like the results some of the time, and other times, the original image is superior.   The original image is black and white - naturally occurring as motion blur along the highway in winter.  The second version is coloured.  And it seems to have lost its beautiful diagonal lines.   Digital painting is complicated and there were quite a few versions of using various watercolour paint brushes to get an effect.   And it seems to me it doesn't match the original or do better.  I like the colour, though.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Jan 4 2024 - Untouchable Number Year

 

What is special about the number 2024? There are a lot of things if you are a mathematician.  I had no idea just how many things there are.   And I don't know the meaning of pretty well all of them.  We know what a prime number is, what a diver is, but a Cunningham number, a betrothed pair, a palindrome, and what about a polite number?  Aren't these all so curious and fascinating.   Here they are from Numbers Aplenty HERE: 2024 = 23 ⋅ 11 ⋅ 23   2024 has 16 divisors (see below), whose sum is σ = 4320. Its totient is φ = 880. The previous prime is 2017. The next prime is 2027. The reversal of 2024 is 4202. 2024 = T1 + T2 + ... + T22. 2024 = 23 + 33 + ... + 93. It is a Cunningham number, because it is equal to 452-1. 2024 is a nontrivial binomial coefficient, being equal to C(24, 3). Together with 2295 it forms a betrothed pair. It is a Harshad number since it is a multiple of its sum of digits (8). It is a plaindrome in base 9 and base 15. It is not an unprimeable number, because it can be changed into a prime (2027) by changing a digit. 2024 is an untouchable number, because it is not equal to the sum of proper divisors of any number. It is the 22-nd tetrahedral number. It is a pernicious number, because its binary representation contains a prime number (7) of ones. It is a polite number, since it can be written in 3 ways as a sum of consecutive naturals, for example, 77 + ... + 99. It is an arithmetic number, because the mean of its divisors is an integer number (270). 22024 is an apocalyptic number. It is an amenable number. It is a practical number, because each smaller number is the sum of distinct divisors of 2024, and also a Zumkeller number, because its divisors can be partitioned in two sets with the same sum (2160). 2024 is an abundant number, since it is smaller than the sum of its proper divisors (2296). It is a pseudoperfect number, because it is the sum of a subset of its proper divisors. 2024 is a wasteful number, since it uses less digits than its factorization. 2024 is an odious number, because the sum of its binary digits is odd. The sum of its prime factors is 40 (or 36 counting only the distinct ones). The product of its (nonzero) digits is 16, while the sum is 8. The square root of 2024 is about 44.9888875168. The cubic root of 2024 is about 12.6494070868. Adding to 2024 its reverse (4202), we get a palindrome (6226). It can be divided in two parts, 202 and 4, that multiplied together give a palindrome (808). The spelling of 2024 in words is "two thousand, twenty-four", and thus it is an iban number. Divisors: 1 2 4 8 11 22 23 44 46 88 92 184 253 506 1012 2024

This is a watercolour interpretation of Orchids at the Royal Botanical Orchid Show. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Koi The Living Art

Hi everyone,
I was in the conservatory at the Royal Botanical Gardens recently.  The conditions were perfect with perfect light on the Koi swimming in the pond.  The Koi there are very comfortable with people, making photography very easy.  The two images show the pond as it is with the perfect black water.  The second is an interpreted image showcasing the Koi as the Living Art.