Small Things 3

Redecorating

I spent the weekend redecorating my workspace to remove the last few reminders of my last job - do not believe the claims that white tack doesn’t mark the walls. I think the sun must have welded it on, as even after an hour of scraping, there were still pieces left. Sugar soap lightened the marks a bit, but I had to escalate to white spirit to get the last bits off, which obviously took some of the paint off with it.

I carefully masked the edges of the one wall we were not painting to protect it. This worked fine until I took the tape off and the paint came with it. Luckily, hoarder that I am, I still had the tester pots in the shed from years ago, so it was salvageable. You can’t tell that it was damaged at all, as long as you don’t look too closely. I was tempted to just put furniture in front of it, which wouldn’t be the first bodge in this room. There is only one wall that is papered, and judging by the state of the plaster behind the radiator, that’s probably all that is holding it on. Best to leave that one well alone.

Now that grey is no longer in fashion, I felt it was safe to use, and it does feel like a completely different room. After nearly eight years, it is also, finally, getting a lampshade.

Drawings

I’m going to put some of my favourite drawings up on the wall, once I can bring myself to put nails into the new paintwork. I need to pick 4 from these, which are arranged roughly in the order that I drew them. I’ve recently been inspired by looking at old etchings, so have branched out from line-art a bit. I struggle with mouths, noses, hands and shading in general, so still lean heavily on good reference images. I think I’m getting better at it as I get more confident, though there are still many pen slips - let’s call those “artistic flair”. I do draw more ‘normal’ things, but prefer keeping portraits of real people private and find I am hyper critical of them, so have mainly stuck to the more fantastical stuff. I really enjoy making these, as it is quite meditative.

Coming back online

Now that this space is properly finished, I’m ready to come back online. I’ve decided to try to tackle the spend data again. I’ve started the process of refreshing the data to bring it up to date (and am waiting for that to finish as I write this). I am going to try giving the problem of cleaning/validation to some AI agents to see what solution they come up with for parsing the very messy data. My current tangle of scripts is pretty fragile, and there is likely a better way that I am missing. It’s very early days, but I’ve also started scoping a more ambitious project that I’m excited about. I am waiting on some paperwork before I can talk more about that.