Farcebook

Month: January 2023

  • Zen and the art of Cross Stitch

    Zen and the art of Cross Stitch

    “What did you do in the cold dark winter of 2022/23?”
    “Oh I took up cross stitch”

    Yeah so my partner likes making crafty things, and she does cross stitch. Although it’s a certain style of it. This isn’t doilies and pretty houses with quotes and nonsense under it. This is slightly more NSFW.

    Look how happy that sloth is!

    I was idly watching her make one and curiosity got the better of me – there was very little to watch on TV – after 30 seconds of explaining I was off making an equally NSFW picture of my own…

    I thnk that crocodile needs to be a logo

    This is a bit like those arty YouTube channels where they try a new skill, fart around for a bit, then try some large project to show off. Sure, there’s a certain amusement from stitching a dainty little creature that’s shouting obscenities but once you’ve done one the fun wears off a bit.

    Then I had a thought. During Christmas I was helping out at a local Christmas activities club, and one of the distraction activities was Hama beads. Those little cylindrical pellets of plastic waste you arrange into a picture, iron and have a wonky looking thing that passes as a bad coaster.

    There’s something quite nice about having to concentrate really hard on such a simple task. Copying a design takes zero effort, but getting adult sausage fingers to manipulate tiny bits of plastic requires conscious efforts. Patiently re-starting because you sneeze and flick your design onto the floor, knowing that’s the only option is also quite relaxing.

    Makes a 100% total opposite difference to trying to think really hard about programming, or teaching kids how to program. There’s nothing to compile, nothing to debug. And unlike drawing, there’s no real skill involved so you can’t do it badly.

    It appears cross stitch is the same, just without the slightly worrying contribution to increased plastic waste. The needle goes in the hole, it doesn’t stab your finger. Maybe you stitch away for half an hour, and realise you started from the wrong hole and now have to patiently unpick it and start over without getting upset and giving up.

    I decided I’d do a loading screen from my favourite ZX Spectrum game Rick Dangerous. Here’s the screen

    If you listen hard, you can still hear the loading… or is that tinitus?

    It’s 256×192 pixels. That’s 49,152 pixels. A cross stitch cross is made from two stitches. It’s a lot of poking a needle through a hole. I’ve got this far after a month.

    Cat for scale, no bananas in the house

    I’ll finish it eventually, it’s a nice alternative to staring at social media. I dipped into Facebook the other day, nothing exciting is going on. I have a new phone, I set up the wrong account in Twitter and just uninstalled the app.

    Take up weird obscure hobbies, the complete opposite to your normal activities. It is quite refreshing.

  • New Year’s Resolutions

    The normal gag is to say “1080p” or “4k”, but I think I’ll go for a nice plain VGA. Nothing too ambitious, something I will actually manage to achieve.

    Let’s make the challenge for this year “being more healthy”. I do a lot of sitting down in front of computers, or in front of the telly. I also do a lot of eating of things that are possibly not the best for you. I should probably do less of both.

    In an attempt at making this so easy I can’t fail, I’ve gone and bought a treadmill. It’s in my house, it’s not piled with junk being a bad table. All I have to do is switch it on and be a human hamster.

    I just need something to distract me from the mind-numbing boredom of staring at the wall. I’m not quite invested enough in it yet to pay for one of those game based apps, but before Christmas I was using it while watching YouTube and that seems to work.

    I’ve found I get bored after half an hour though. I can force myself to do an hour, but it’s not fun in the slightest, it is a proper endurance thing – and not an endurance thing physically, it appears I can walk at a brisk 6k/hr with no effort. The endurance is all mental. Its. Just. So. Boring.

    I’m not running on my treadmill though, I like my knees and also it’s upstairs and I don’t want to annoy next door. Treadmills are a bit thuddy when you get going.

    As far as eating better things, I’m making an effort to eat veg at least once a day and to fill myself up on things like beans, potatoes and rice so that when I see the tasty looking chocolate bar in the cupboard I’m less likely to eat it on my way back to the living room.

    I’m not going to count how many calories go in my mouth though, that gets a bit obsessive and you end up filling your phone with apps that just want to sell you subscriptions to health plans. I’ve got a fitbit, I’ll put numbers that it tells me in here occasionally.