Rattlebrained

washboards, rhythm bones, drumming & the blues...

2 August 2010
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The Bluegrass festival at La Roche s/Foron

The Bluegrass festival at La Roche s/Foron is pretty cool, it’s in the center of this small town that is situated not too far south of Geneva (a beautiful area just north of the French alps), is free, it lasts four days and if the groups on stage aren’t enough for you, many of the bands can be found playing in the streets or while sitting around a table at a local café. This year the weather was sunny and warm, perfect for hanging out and getting fat on bluegrass music…

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9 July 2010
article by Rattlebrained
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Wacom Cintiq 12WX

I’ve been using an Intuos 3 8×6 for the last couple of years and really consider it the most useful tool for working at a computer so I guess it’s no surprise that I’ve been looking at the Cintiq series screen tablets with some curiosity and desire since I focused on them a few months ago. It also seemed that my mom, who is also an artist, could profile by using one. She tried a Intuos 2 way back when, but drawing on the pad while looking at the screen didn’t work for her so after some hesitation I suggested she try one… Which is why she asked me to install it on her Mac a couple of weeks ago, which I quickly tried to do (being in a bit of a hurry at that time), but wasn’t able too. Which led to it coming home with me so I could figure it out first… So here I am adapting, kind of, to a Cintiq 12WX.

Sticking it onto my Windows 7 machine worked fine and it didn’t take long to figure out that it had probably also installed perfectly on my mom’s Mac. The issue was simply that since it’s screen was set as an extension of her main screen I hadn’t realized that unless you set the “display toggle” to “pen display” and “force proportions”, when you switch between the two screens you can end up with the mouse pointer on the main screen but off to one side of it… As it was I couldn’t set anything up since whenever I toggled over to the main display the mouse pointer disappeared. So I’m like “where’s the pen? This isn’t working…” :P

Which is why “what I dislike about it” gets listed first.

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17 April 2010
article by Rattlebrained
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Les Mont de Baulmes

Last week I took a walk above the village my folks live in, with Elstir – their Shetland sheep dog – and made a couple of quick sketches. The one here on the right is of the Baulmine, a stream that has its source about 3/4 of the way up the mountain.

It has been highly canalized over the years because of the amount of water that comes down with the spring thaw as well as during big storms. The size of the rocks the water can carry during those moments is quite impressive, but its a bit late in the season for that now. I’ve drawn it off and on now for nearly 30 years watching the stream bed and its environment changing with time, tamed by man; or at least it seems…

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Café Cordi

26 July 2009
article by Rattlebrained
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A Few Sketches From Paris

I wanted to write about the Maillol museum and the Kandinsky show that was at the Centre Pompidou, but both seem to defeat my ability to align words in a meaningful way. So for the moment I’m posting a few sketches drawn here and there, mostly for no particular reason besides resting my feet…

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View of Paris

20 July 2009
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City Of Light

Last night we spent the evening with friends from SF who had rented an apartment in a building in Montmartre with a great view quickly sketched here.

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16 April 2009
article by Rattlebrained
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The Snow Burger

After a few “Spring Break” days spent with my folks, here I am back frying my brain with CTR screen radiations…

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