GRADIENTS.

 What an awful weather day. It started off near freezing and sleeting and gradually the sleet turned to rain and became torrential.....not quite but it is heavy. Strangely it doesn't seem to be washing much snow away though the roads are clear. Clear if one disregards all the giant puddles hiding craters caused by cheapo repairs. Lethal our roads are, councils and the Highways never seem to think of putting furloughed staff into patching roads. Come to think they aren't furloughed, they are sitting at home on full wages. So much for we are all in this together. 

This morning I went to the animal feed place but the stables hadn't put their order in, idle buggers. I got dog food, carried on to the horses and having got them to phone the order in reversed direction and filled up with horse breakfasts. Glad I did as I met a Weegie lass I love and hadn't seen for a while. She filled me up to the brim with all the local gossip. There is a language barrier with Beth, I have to keep asking her to speak English, she then puts on what she thinks is a posh English accent and speaks really slowly. The lad loading her truck and listening in was incapable of sensible forklift driving for laughing. The Fife accent is strong but Weegie is akin to Hottentot. There was only one bit of disturbing news. It concerned a school friend of her daughters, I thought the wee girl was ten but she is now sixteen. Time flies by when you get old. She has a friend who has been very depressed and cutting herself. I thought nutter but then thought back to the time I was that age and realised that school, rugby, horses, motorbikes and village dances were very important, I hated school but looked forward to seeing folk my own age. The village dances were a war zone but fun, taught us to discriminate between normal folk and those born three miles away. Time, when one is young is expanded as learning is easy, it depends on peer relationships and other human contact. We old folk tend to forget that a year to them is akin to ten years to retired people. 

This nonsense over flu or what used to be flu has gone on for too long. Flu kills every winter, the NHS is full to capacity every winter. Not this winter, I heard an expert on Radio 4 say that one in nine hospital's intensive care units were at full capacity. That means there's room in eight but it's how they tell them. Folk that support this nonsense should stop thinking death can't apply to them and start thinking of the young folk, it doesn't matter a jot if an individual dies, it's part and parcel of life.

I called to chat with a friend who is dying from brain cancer and it shouldn't be long now as he confuses his commode with everything from his old car to his shoes. He's still at home so that's a blessing. He's not blind in his left eye but it doesn't seem to send sensible instructions anymore, he needs a patch on it as he can't really work his feet to walk or his hands to eat. If I help him move by popping my shoulder under is left armpit he thinks my right hand is pressing on the same side. I have learnt to support him from the front and ignore the dribble.  Terrible it is but we do have some very amusing conversations. He is still lucid for two minutes at a time. It's not nice but I can't help thinking a magic mushroom would help both of us cope. 

I used to play non-stop in Photoshop but am having trouble making an image to project around the balloon. I have got this far but would like it to be sharper.

I started with this but as you can imagine when it's 3D unwrapped one gets a hard line between the blue and green.

I then did this, which is better as I cropped the image laterally to get rid of too much blue.

It will do for a balloon.

This is it mapped onto a balloon. I think a cheat is on order to feather the blue edges. I could reverse the spectrum as I think the text would look better on the blue bit and make sure that when the animation is filmed the line doesn't come into camera.

Now for something silly.

The car looking silly. It's converted to B&W then has a gradient dropped on. A bit of masking and this could look good and not stupid. 

Have fun. I notice that one or two Bloggers are discussing Bubbles. I always invent my own which I suspect they do. Am I supposed to register a Bubble with the Buzzies? Can I just swap them about between some totty I fancy and the dying that need someone? I guess so, until we have enough snitches to support the police who is going to know.

 Good luck with the vaccine, I see we are now into Myxomavaccine. Anyone taking this shit deserves to die if they are compos mentas, drug companies and their dealers are evil. It does terrible things to Rabbits does Myxomatosis.