Pixabella

Last night I caught up with some friends for dinner, they cooked up a delicious roast with vegetables, and the most amazing chicken soup, and over dinner we were talking about some of the art they have on he walls.

I really enjoy design work, and my friends enjoy collecting art so we were talking about different artists we like and their style. I've always like Jackson Pollock, Picasso, Rembrandt, those sort of masters, but my friend likes art with a more Asian or African look, so we got talking about what makes good art.

I definitely like some of the works that she appreciates, but she isn't a big fan of the art that I like, so we had a discussion about what makes art art.

Yeah I know, I hate double words as well, but anyway we basically just had to agree that art is in the eye of the beholder, and then I got to thinking, why do I appreciate her art but she doesn't appreciate mine?

All night I kept waking up and thinking about that. In the end I think some people just are naturally artistic and others aren't, and that's why they appreciate less than I do.

With winter here a new wardrobe is probably top of the list of things to buy, so why not look for hard wearing clothes that can cope with the worst that winter can throw at you and get some Tactical outfits from LA Police Gear.

Items like the tactical jackets, undershirts, or boots are all designed to be useful, keep you protected from the elements, and are comfortable to wear, after all, police officers don't like being uncomfortable.

I love this stuff for walks in the mountains around here, or just for keeping snug in windy conditions, the clothes are rugged, easily washed, look appropriate, and can take a lot of knocks.

The King of Spain, Juan Carlos was in Ronda today, and knowing the crowds and traffic would be terrible we decided to stay away, I mean the chance of actually getting a photo of the king would be next to nil with all the crowds.

So having made the decision to stay out of town we immediately forgot all about his visit, then realized this morning that we had to go into town to do some shopping and catch up with friends for a coffee.

Silly us, imagine making a conscious decision to avoid town today, and then forgetting all about it and ending up in town after all. Worst of all we didn't see the king, but we did get caught up in the traffic.

When we finally left town to come home we got to the bottom end of town and came across several cops keeping an eye on traffic and no doubt the surrounding area, so we asked them if we'd be able to see the king on his way out of town.

Sure they said, just wait over there, ie not where they were, so we did, and were rewarded with the king's car speeding past with a police escort, unfortunately the windows of the car were all dark, so after all of that we still didn't see his highness. How disappointing.

Winter has definitely arrived in Southern Spain. The temperature has suddenly plunged, just above zero where we live, but a few kilometers up the road there is snow.

The snow is on the mountains around Ronda as you can see from this photo, which was taken at one of the supermarkets looking upto the Sierra de las Nieves, an appropriate name,the snow mountains.

The funny thing is that the mountains on the other side of Ronda are snow free, but still bitterly cold. Everyone we speak to says this is very unusual in these parts, snow in November hasn't happened for a very long time.

So of course we're expecting a cold winter, and I think we might have to go and buy more blankets to wrap around ourselves and also to put on the bed. Last winter we put a blanket on the mattress, and then the sheet over that, and it helped to stop cold air from under the bed coming up.

That's actually a serious problem with modern mattresses that have springs inside them, they have no insulation to stop cold air, I think the next bed we buy will be a solid foam mattress with a thick mattress protector on it.

Christmas is approaching, too fast it seems, and before it gets too late we need to be thinking of getting our Christmas cards written and mailed. After all, the postal service might be good, but they aren't that good.

Rather than buy cards printed in China, I always like to try my hand at making something, but if you have a long list of people you need to send a card to then a photo card can be a nice touch and it doesn't need to take a lot of time to make.

Christmas Photo Cards look great and are so easy to make. Take a photo of your family, or just the kids, or maybe even the pets, it doesn't really matter who as long as the people you send the card to will appreciate the photo.

Then upload it to Christmas Cards Direct, choose a card design or frame, add the text you want, you can choose something meaningful, or something witty, then place you order and you're away.

It's a good idea to choose photos that will look good in amongst a dozen or more cheap cards, that way it will really stand out so when loved ones show off the cards they received everyone will comment on the card you sent them.

I love Inkscape, but I have a lot of documents in .ai format from the many years when I used to use Adobe Illustrator. When I decided to convert to Mac I couldn't justify the expense of also getting Illustrator for the Mac.

The only problem is that I now need some of the artwork I did several years ago, which I never expected would happen, in fact I actually thought I'd outgrown my older artwork.

So a couple of days ago I spent the day downloading a trial version of Illustrator so that I can convert all my old .ai art to something that Inkscape can open. You see I made the mistake of thinking that Inkscape can open .ai, and it can, sort of.

I'm not sure what the reason is but it seems that some .ai files can't be opened by Iknscape, while some can. The nearest explanation I can find is that there is a setting in Illustrator where you can add more to the .ai file so it can also be opened by Photoshop.

I never did that, why would I want to open an Illustrator image in Photoshop? Well I'm paying for that mistake now but at least Adobe make a 30 day trial available for download.

This is one of our delightful little kittens, who are showing all the signs of being teenagers even though they're only a few months old. The man came running into the house the other day clutching the camera and a huge grin on his face.

"Look at this!", he was yelling and jumping up and down being so excited, and there on the camera screen was this photo, her first tree climb!

We felt like such proud parents, our kittens are starting to learn how to do things for themselves and you have to agree in this photo she is absolutely adorable.

I'd love to know what was going through her mind, she isn't even looking at the camera, probably at her brother or sister playing on the ground below, and I bet wondering how she could ambush them from the tree.