London calling!

I will be moving down to London for work next Friday! Yay!

Yay for work, not London. London is scary! But the new job sounds amazing even though that three month trial period now looms above me like a dark shadow, or a pampoulon!

Flats in zone 4 where I will be working seem very affordable, even comparable to Edinburgh, but to be fair I haven’t seen any so can’t compare objectively, we shall see on the 7th. It’s a good thing most of my packing was done when we were moving to Meadowbank about a month ago!
Once I’ve moved I will spend a lot of free time studying and making sure I stay for longer than three months, also covering up the lack of friends, as this looks like an amazing opportunity to grow professionally, get ready for part III, become a good archimatect…

To this end I have bought a Toshiba laptop, which prompted two different companies to check on me telephonically so it must have been a good move! It should arrive in the next few days!

Wedding art

Someone I know is getting married! I will not comment on the marriage itself as I really hope it will work out for them regardless. And to be fair I think it just might…

But the most exciting thing about the wedding (obviously only for me anyway) apart from party times and interpreting (yay?) is that I got asked to design the wedding invitations / announcements!
They are meant to be elegant and in the pearly pink and creamy white. But i’m kind of thinking that something interactive would be cool! I was thinking a jigsaw puzzle, an origami thing, a pop up, a music card… eventually I thought of an idea that might be more elegant than all the others… maybe I could figure out a way to make a little tree grow on it over time.

I was thinking of pregnancy tests (that is appropriate right?) and the way the pee goes up the tube and then colours a stripe for good news and two stripes for bad. I thought it would be cool if there could be a little tree that would get coloured in this way. I would obviously try to avoid everyone having to pee on the card.
The problem is that pregnancy tests work on hormones. If the pregnancy hormone is present, it will bind to enzymes that catalyse a colour reaction or some such. I’d rather not use enzymes on the card either.

But using the capillary action seemed like a good idea. I decided to research this on the interweb and this is what I found; Oscar Diaz’s Ink Calendar:

First I thought the tree wouldn’t be visible at all, a pregnancy test tree, but really, a faint outline wouldn’t spoil anything. It might even make it more interesting. But what are the materials used? And how to put an ink cartridge on a wedding announcement card and still keep it elegant? That is a challenge I am facing now and any tips or ideas would be much appreciated.

I might go and run a few experiments now…

 

Benjamin’s Great Surprise

Just rubbing this in…

The picture of the week is really not a clue. I googled ‘Benjamin’s Great Surprise’ and clicked on images. Then I picked the one that reminded me of Benji the most. So if that confused you Benji, even for a minute, good! That was intentional.

Just a little update on your treasure hunt coming along reasonably well, with 4 present ideas for now. And here’s a clue to add to your two existing ones (one was mentioned on here, the other purely oral… giggity): ‘Germany’

Also, just a little update on everything I want to put in here but don’t quite have enough interesting material to actually do it:
Mum is coming over in September and we are going to Skye. I have planned a trip to Slovakia in October and we will go to a spa. I really need to get the brewing thing going as catnip is now a forest (maybe a post tomorrow). I’m going to look into online universities.

And so the hunt begins…

I have started applying for jobs. I am only looking at Sweden and Norway at the moment although I suspect that as the time progresses and there are no replies I will start looking everywhere.

The portfolio is now reasonably presentable, though still not completely finished. There is a company that is actually recruiting (rather than just encouraging applicants to send in CV’s) I would really like to work for. Their application deadline is on the 31st and before then I need to learn Revit, re-learn AutoCAD, write a cover letter and, worst of all, take a presentable picture of myself. Scary!

There’s also the matter of archive documents I need to start looking at again and videos of Parnica to translate and send off! Yep! I shall be pretty busy.

In other, better news, I have now bottled Diablo beer! Who would have thought putting stuff in the priming solution would actually influence the taste. I have cooked hot chillies with in the honeyed water and I was very generous with the chillies as the whole thing was going to be crazily diluted but the final beer is spicy! So spicy and diabolical! I just hope it won’t need as much maturing as Triple did. I hope it will be sort of drinkable (when chilled) when Diablo III comes out. One week to go!

And about ten days until the Return to the Wallaby Island! Weather and ospreys permitting! The preparations are being made!

Portfolio

Late again this week! But that’s ok because I have been working very hard on my portfolio! Now viewable on katarkitekt.wordpress.com!

I know wordpress isn’t the best place to host one’s portfolio but I felt like Daportfolio was even less customisable, more gangsta, and the pictures were resized too small and you could only describe every picture in 200 characters. How does one describe a Kaleidohouse in 200 characters??? The other way was Dreamweaver, but that attempt crashed and burned exactly at the same time as last time I tried to make a website back in 2006. I thought having a geek would help but then we decided I needed something much quicker than that. WordPress it is then.
I am a little bit annoyed that the blog part of my site can’t be displayed without the two slashes and a date and that I can’t get rid of the categories, and most recently the comments. Maybe I’ll try and integrate them in further though it might prove impossible. The portfolio is not completely finished but it’s getting there and is just about presentable now. Job hunt starts tomorrow for real!

Now all I need is a QR code that links to my site. It will probably appear as a picture of the week later this week.

This and That Four

So many things going on!
Job hunt, flat hunt, newly discovered archive materials, crazy brewing projects involving catnip… I haven’t even had a chance to think about the upcoming trips!

I have started on a portfolio of sorts! Any advice on which website is good for architectural portfolios would be much appreciated. So far I have Deviant Art but I don’t really like the layout. Not enough customisation. The idea is to eventually create a website of my own but I need something quick so this might have to do for the moment. I just wish the site ‘daportfolio’ didn’t make me sound so gangsta!

Another piece of news, and this might come as a surprise to some, yes Chmeli you, is that we are moving flat again. Our landlord decided to increase our rent by two hundred quid and the agency has been absolutely rubbish to deal with from the start. I’m quite looking forward to writing bad reviews once we’ve got our deposit back. If we get it back that is. We’d like to stay in Marchmont but the area is getting expensive, I personally think we might have raised the attractiveness of it and now it’s backfiring! So we are looking although I don’t even know if I’ll be in the country once the lease runs out in July. With Britain having no architectural jobs available I’m now considering Sweden or Norway. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

My mum found a website which hosts documents from back in the days of Austria Hungary, same ones as those in the archive. Unfortunately there is only one collection for Parnica (Births and Confirmations between 1839 and 1886) which is very hard to use as there is no Marriage collection to cross reference with. The moment you think you found someone, bang… you find another four people of the same name. Still it’s good to be able to view it in our own terms and actually have time to pay attention to helpful little notes on the side. I already found a few things that baffle me, for example, Jan the firstborn of Jan Micik and Katrena Haklik was born at no. 88 (the place where Zuzana Harmaniakova, the woman that was to become Jan’s wife after Katrena’s death lived) instead of their family house no. 139. Were they good friends, staying over because their own house was too crowded after they got married? Would that explain why Jan and Zuzana married later? Were her three illegitimate children Jan’s too??? We can only guess really. I did confirm though, that Zuzana Harmaniakova indeed married Adam Janci and had a child with him before he died in 1887. Jan Micik then did marry Adam Janci’s widow, the fact that confused us.
All I want to do now is go through all this properly, and the collections from my grandfather’s village too, but there’s portfolio work to be done first. *sigh*

In other news, catnip beer is underway! Well, I have planted catnip! We shall see what happens! The aroma is meant to be one of peppermint crossed with skunk!
The whole experiment is meant to provide a beer we could use for a fundraiser (or awareness raiser) for the endangered Scottish Wildcat.
I like my beers to be thematic… This is why I have made a diabolical beer for when Diablo III comes out in about three weeks time. The batch has been fermenting since this weekend so the game better take a very long time to finish!!!

A beginning…

A new era has begun!

Now, I know what most of you are thinking. You’re thinking: “Whooooah… but… but… there is normally only one post a week!
Well get over it! The second post of the week is here with breaking news! I have finally learnt how to make Google Docs surveys!

As an example of my genius, I offer a random (and the only one I’ve made up to date) survey for your pleasure! This one is about an upcoming trip to the Island of Inchconnachan!

 

Ok this didn’t work out quite like I was hoping but it’s there and doable! Yay! I might have to consult my personal geek to make it presentable as well as bloody amazing!

eBay schmeBay!

So I decided to take advantage of Benji being an absolute brain and having gone to Stanford, CA, for a symposium on robotics for about 10 days and ordered stuff I badly need for the present for his upcoming birthday. By upcoming I mean ‘in December’. Ordered it last Wednesday, hoping that 1 or 2 working days was an exaggeration as I didn’t want it to get there before Benji even left. Alas, it was an exaggeration but not the good kind! The stuff still hasn’t arrived and there’s only 3 working days left before the cookie monster penguin-walks his way back!

Be that is it may, I’ve been rubbing this present in his face for a very long time now and I do worry that it will not stand up to the expectations. Especially since he already thinks nothing can beat last year’s present. Boo!
But here is a little clue for you, just so you’re more confused: dates (numbers? romance? fruit? who knows?)
I don’t know if there will be any more clues, there might, there might not!

Apart from that I have bought tickets for Ireland for 15th-18th June for me, Benj and my friend Barbora. We were thinking west coast, the best coast there is. Let’s hope it will be nice and sunny.

And that my parcel arrives soon!

Here is Philipp’s wine glass present treat: (photo to be replaced at a later point with a better one)

He often gets kicked out of Opium!!! (For being drunk, this is particularly funny because NOONE EVER gets kicked out of Opium)
Too much booze or just stealing socks? (Philipp is a notorious sock thief!)
From the long walk home Philipp understands
the life of an inner city fox. (Refers to a story of how he stayed in Glasgow with Helle’s friend Maarja, got home after  a conference, drunk once more, and told Maarja a story about how he followed a fox and was now familiar with the ‘inner life of a city fox’… where the change of word order occured I do not know…)

This and That Three

Too many things to write and not enough order in my head to put anything together about any particular topic so this will just be a general update on everything.

Treasure hunts and birthdays are coming up. One very very soon, on April 2nd, and I will be severely lacking in minions as Benji is going to Stanford this week and is back on said day. Ugh. An important flatmate one on June 5th, it will also need a wine glass to go with it. And another one in a different country on June 1st. So if anyone has any useful treasure hunt tips, gimme gimme!

The adventure season has started and my head is filled with trips I want to go on and boats I want to make for the boating competition. Well, not of actual ideas for the boat. Unfortunately my head is non stop contemplating thinking about ideas but not actually thinking about them. Gah!
I’m also looking up tickets to random holiday destinations: Ireland in June, Israel/Jordan in June/July, Slovakia in, well, whenever there’s a reasonably priced ticket. I’m also going to Prague/Nymburk with the hockey team in June, so June is going to cost me… Now we need to shove in the infamous trip to the wallaby island one of the weekends…

You may wonder about Israel, especially if you’re name is Jelena (hi there!). I cracked an invite, as a +1, to a wedding on July 1st. This is scary because it will be crazy religious, as they do in Jerusalem, and all separate men and women shenanigans. Not only this will give me enough material to make fun of Benji and his background for the rest of my life, but it also gives me an opportunity to create numerous awkward situations by saying things like: “So why is it that you guys always have to have sex through a hole in the blanket, I mean, Benji really insists on doing it that way but I feel like I have to find a loophole while I’m here because I just find it plain silly!”
I am a bit freaked out by the fact that in this tropical climate I will have to be wearing a dress that covers knees, elbows and collarbones! On the other hand, I’m really looking forward to walking on the Dead Sea, and swimming with dolphins in the Red.

In other news, I got contacted by a husband of a third cousin once removed of mine (I think), thanks to my blog which I was convinced no one read (except the two regulars). Yay! There’s an opportunity to find out more about the Parnica folk! I really need to speak to mum soon. (Hint! Hint!)

And fortunately not much going on on the writing front so this section will be short and to the point! I dont have time!

Back with more next week!

iHunt

Or should I say philippHunts?

Philipp’s birthday is on tomorrow but I am extremely upset at February for only having 28 days! I have lots of preparations to do and it also clashed with mum’s visit! Either way this week is going to be a busy week involving balloons and helium! And a little bit of master-planning!
I’m trying to fit the huntski between Philipp’s birthday breakfast and his birthday dinner so it will only be a few hours, but considering the time constraints and the amazingness of handmade presents I think that is fair enough! It is actually quite refreshing considering all those hunts that last for weeks.

Either way, at the end of this week Joe will be a warrior and Philipp will be a fairy!

I do not want to reveal much about the actual presents just yet but they will appear here next week…