Let me start with the trick, although you may all already know about it. I foolishly didn’t turn my car off properly recently and ran the battery down. When I recharged it, all the radio settings had disappeared and the backing camera wasn’t working. That would be okay if the instructions were in English but as they are in Japanese I really struggled to fix it.
Google came to the rescue of course. One person mentioned Google Translate
It’s a magical free app that has a camera setting where you can simply hold the camera up to the text and it will translate into any language you want. So I sat in the car with my phone and held it up to the Japanese text and managed to find camera on off/on toggle and hey presto, backing camera working again. I didn’t have quite so much success with turning the GPS off though so my car is constantly giving me instructions for driving in Osaka. I am going to need more help with this from my neighbour.
Apparently in a lot of cars there is a setting where you can change the whole caboodle to English but unfortunately I couldn’t find that. I do think there are lots of uses for the app though. A friend of mine recently visited Japan and had a doozy of a toilet with a complicated set of instructions on the wall. Sadly, they couldn’t read it so the bum flushing, warming or whatever options were not accessible. But with Google Translate, their next trip could be very different.
I couldn’t capture the camera text but you can also save the instructions and the translations as a photo so I just used it on a French poster of mine to show you.
I guess this may sound like my life is a little sad… but I love decluttering videos and have now got on to cleaning videos. I blame my friend Deirdre and her zone cleaning series. I basically enjoying watching a cleaning pro at work. Now I know I will never, ever have a system. Firstly I am too lazy and secondly I’m just not that great at it. (Mainly I’m just lazy). Also I just like watching the videos in admiration, not the actual cleaning itself.
However, I am definitely shallow and easily inspired so each time I watch Deirdre’s Vlog, I ended up doing some little thing- the cutlery drawer, the wardrobe chuck out and so on. The really scary thing is last night via Deirdre’s link, she mentioned this other vlogger’s 30 day challenge. I ended up watching a 20 minute vlog on cleaning the sink! Sophia is this slightly manic cleaner of all things domestic. I’m not sure I’ll ever watch another one but as she has 306,000 views it can’t just be me… I couldn’t find the 30 minute cleaning one but there are plenty more as an example. I prefer Deirdre’s more low key approach.
The upshot of this viewing pleasure was that at around 9:30 last night I cleaned the kitchen. ( I know I know, I can hear the sighs of admiration at this riveting piece of news).
Moving on, I also went to Phantom Thread and as The Listener gave it a rare 5 stars, I had high expectations. I did really enjoy the movie but would maybe have only given it 4 stars. “Set in 1950’s London, Reynolds Woodcock is a renowned dressmaker whose fastidious life is disrupted by a young, strong-willed woman, Alma, who becomes his muse and lover.” I found Alma quite disturbing as she leafed through the poisonous mushrooms reference book in the kitchen. Daniel Day Lewis made an interesting but entirely unsexy, in my opinion, Reynolds. I get a bit tired of the older man/younger woman thing and secretly hoped she would run off with the young doctor. Not to mention the hoards of women slaving in the sewing room using their well-honed skills to create the garments. No recognition there and I bet the pay rate was crappy too.
I wasn’t that fussed on the Elizabethan themed clothes as a rule either. although this wedding dress was quite divine if you are into that kind of thing.
I’m going to see Loving Vincent this Friday but am hoping the animation and all the swirling doesn’t give me motion sickness (no really, it’s quite hard to watch). This is how they made it, so it will be fascinating just seeing that alone.
ON LOVING VINCENT WE PAINTED 65,000 FRAMES IN OIL PAINTS.
We painted the first frame as a full painting on canvas board, and then painted over that painting for each frame until the last frame of the shot. We are then left with an oil-painting on canvas board of the last frame.
Only two artists’ works have literally stopped me in my tracks and one of them is V VG. I saw his almond blossom painting in Amsterdam, many years ago and it literally took my breath away. When you see paintings in books, it is hard to imagine the size and this was a very large painting. More recently I saw his The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890 in the Musee D’Orsay and I was mesmerised by it.
Incidentally, the other artist is John Pule. Quite a few years ago, I was wandering the streets of Wellington and stumbled across a gallery and went in. It was glorious and there were several John Pule giant canvases covering the walls. Wow it was gorgeous. There is a big one in the Auckland Art Gallery if you are interested. I found them very moving, not sure why.
I’ve since continued to admire his work and really like his tapa cloth inspired colours too. Once again you need to see them and not just a photo.
Have a good weekend, FG
Fluffy George 