Month: April 2014

I’ve said that I have been busy framing Helen Andersen art again, which is true, but I should add that Danica has been doing a lot of the work… and very well IMHO. She has developed a great eye for what looks good in what frame and she has been very busy sourcing frames in suitable sizes, opening them up, cleaning glass and reassembling. Obviously, this is a BIG part of the job and because of all the patient help, we have been able to complete about 15 more pieces in pretty short order.

We put these two in matching frames and double mats because the sizes and colours made a good pair.
Top: A landscape sketch by Helen Andersen, labelled Oliver, BC.
Below: An abstract composition in gouache. undated and unsigned, also by Helen.


One more, for good measure …

A loose little sketch of a cabin in the woods. Signed and dated 1981

As promised, here’s an update. Mavericks is behaving well, very well actually, on an iMac (with 6 GB RAM) and a Macbook Pro (4 GB RAM). If you have MacKeeper, get rid of it first.
The installations went smoothly, although they take time, and the OS is a free 5+ GB download. After installing Mavericks, I added free Sophos anti-virus protection and it plays well with the new OS.
Anti-virus measures were not necessary on Macs when they represented only a tiny portion of the computer population out there. Nobody seemed to bother making malware for Macs. But Apple stuff is everywhere these days, and besides, you could forward email cooties harmful to Windows friends, even if they don’t hurt you.

Ian has been selecting an e-bike to use around town this summer. Probably a good thing that the amphibious scooter never made the marketplace.

My favourite blogging software (making this blog and those of several friends) is free and now easier than ever to use.

WordPress 3 9 “Smith”
You may host your own WordPress blog, as I do, or you can have WordPress host your blog (also free) for you . If you ever feel like becoming Facebook-free, this is a pretty good way.

Pierre Poilievre is in the news for his election-rigging Bill C-23, under attack at the moment even by Conservative senators. You just know that Rick Mercer had another kind of wipe in mind, but toned it down for public broadcast.

CBC Radio picked up on a tweet asking, “Who ever sings I’m dreaming of a white Easter?”

April 15, 2014

Bad enough answering the phone to obnoxious politicians making robocalls, but hearing Rob Ford’s voice while you’re trying to eat?

I’ve been by before and looked in, but it was always too crowded to try the famous pie at Wanda’s Pie in the Sky in Kensington Market. Until today. All it took was a suggestion from Bill (who treated), plus a rainy Monday to thin the crowd.
Verdict: GREAT pie!. We tried an apple and a cherry so we could taste a bit of each. Tough narrowing the choices because there was blueberry, raspberry and bumbleberry, too. The crust is delicious, fresh and tastes homemade. Generous slices, too. Wanda makes good coffee and Bill pointed out that sandwiches and pizza slices are available if you want more than dessert.

We only had pie, because we’d already lunched at Tokyo Sushi in the Annex. I used to go there with Ben Viccari and it’s become a favourite place for a bento box. I snapped the hand drawn “Sappo…ro” sign because it is new and very funny. The chef means business with that inviting scowl, doesn’t he? I love the TRY It! command, too. All uppercase except for the “t”, for some reason. And look at the attention to detail. Three little arm hairs!

I had to take a break from framing my mother’s art but I’m back in the game again. About 5 more pieces are ready for the walls and I will continue daily until they are all done.

Here’s another one in Helen Andersen Paperclips Series. She made many variations on this idea, sometimes on colourful grids, sometimes in black and white drawings, sometimes as silkscreened cards and even as lithographed postcard prints.This one shows Helen’s willingness to use non-traditional materials. The bent paperclips are touched, appropriately enough, with metallic paint.
Below is a piece called Impressions of Toronto, made when she returned home to Vancouver Island after visiting us in the 80s. The subject matter is preety typical, but the medium isn’t. The painting is done on paper Helen made herself, using a food blender to create pulp from dried grass, leaves and old paper she picked up in her yard.

I’ve read that MacKeeper, a 3rd party utility I installed some time ago, does not play well with Apple’s current (and free) operating system, Mavericks.
I tried Mavericks a couple of months ago, but my iMac slowed to a crawl and I reverted back to my earlier system, waiting for Apple to fix things up. As it happens, there were other things that Apple needed to fix, so the hiatus was not wasted time. The slowness, though, was the real deal killer and that was not addressed.
When I finally got wind of the MacKeeper problem, I became convinced that it was time to uninstall MacKeeper and try Mavericks again.
First, I’ll run it for a while on my main iMac. So far, so good. If everything continues to work well after a few days, I’ll upgrade our other Macs to Mavericks, too. I have already removed MacKeeper from them.
If you have MacKeeper installed and want to remove it, just search the web for “uninstall MacKeeper” and you find plenty of help. I used this link.