Khaki Pattern

Holidays are over and I’m back at school for my troisième, l’année d’orientation. Like last year I’ve got a crap timetable, due to the long hours we spend at school: 43 hours at school and 35 hours of lessons. We take a lot of time to do little work. That’s my thoery as to why the days are so long.  To take advantage of all this time, I’ll use it to perfect my french. This year the classes have been completely mixed up; there’s quite a lot of new faces in my new class.

I’ve started a design project with Max Daidé called D¤M. If you would like to show your support, join our Facebook group. ^^

This is my latest design. The khaki pattern is unique (another word for homemade^^). To create it, I first photographed some foliage. Then in photoshop, I simplified the shapes and colours. I’m not sure how effective it would actually be as camouflage (although I think it would work pretty well), but I can say that it was derived from natural patterns:) Other details are the textures on the hat, shirt and trousers, and the stitching on the trousers.

On the 28 August, I got back from Tenerife and it was absolutely fantastic. I’ll put photos up soon…

As for the 100 Push ups Challenge, it’s coming on well. I started at 25 consecutive push ups, I’m now up to 40!

Black Gold Shirt

It’s been a while, but I’m back again. A lot has happened since my last post in April: I’ve been on holiday for over a month, I’m now 14 and I’ve cooked up some new designs.

I thought I’d try my hand in fashion design, and discovered it’s something I like doing a lot. So here’s my first design:

What do you think? I’m quite proud of it.

I then developped the idea further and created some new patterns:

This August, I’m not going to be spending much time at home. I’ve just got back from the Caners’ and soon I’m going to stay at the Hudrisiers’. Then, I’m off to Tener Rife for two weeks on the 17th of August and I’ll be staying with Simon. Something brilliant to look forward to! In the mean time I’ve decided to take the One Hundred Push-ups challenge.

Castres Design Animation

I’ve successfully completed the animation of the design I posted last time. Here it is:

Click to play

First Steps [Animation]

This is a first stage in a short animation I’m planning on making. I think it’s come out rather well so far, I’m just trying to find a way to make the strip thinner without cropping out too much. Click here for a higher definition photo

La terre est bleue comme un orange

While cycling today, I had just come out from a forest into a limestone opening, when I was struck by the beautiful view. There was a steep drop just in front of me, and the eerie beauty of the evening sunlight was behind me, with the Montagnes Noires looming in the near-distance. Very beautiful. Continuing the circuit, I thought back to the moment, and it reminded me of the line of poetry: “La terre est bleue comme un orange” Translated into English, it gives “The earth is blue like an orange”, interesting expression… I love it though, it just makes me look at things in a different way.

Last weekend, I was in Brassac for the cross-country and downhill competitions. Overall, I got 5th place, with 3rd in the XC, so that probably means about 7th in the DH. Those are rather good results in my opinion, considering that it was my first competition.

We did the XC in the morning, and predictably it ran late, so the schedule was changed and we were racing with an older category but not against them though. Still, it felt good to overtake more experienced riders. We were originally told the race was 3 laps, but actually it was later decided to be 4. I sure everyone felt the same way, but you’d just given everything to those 3 laps, only to be told it wasn’t finished. The general view was “What? Another lap? F*** off!”. But I think everyone made it though to the end.

In the afternoon, it was time for my first DH race. After being fully equipped with “body-armour”, we did a “reconnaissance” (test lap). Then we had 2 tries to get the best time. Basically it’s getting from the top of the mountain to the bottom as fast as possible. The first time I got 1’56. I was then advised to think less about speed and to perfect the technique used while taking corners. It paid off. I gained a couple of seconds and my final time was 1’54.

Overall it was a great experiance. Only thing I have to say against it is that the day is way too drawn out and there is a LOT of time spent waiting.

Showroom

School’s finally broken up for Easter, even though the actual event was weeks ago, and I’ve at last got some free time on my hands. Last Friday was La Fête des Elèves, a concert organized by my school. It started at 8.30, I left after about 3 hours, and the show had just got halfway. Slightly unfortunate, because there were 2 girls I knew who performed right at the end. But overall, it was worth leaving, because it wasn’t really that great. Maybe next year, I’ll take part myself, make the concert worthwhile seeing 🙂 There were some good performances – a girl called Lucie did a brilliant version of Alicia Keys singing I Ain’t Got You – but while someone was on stage, everyone was walking around, shouting, smoking and drinking. It was a sort of (unsuccessful) mix between a concert and a party.

Early next morning, I had a (very) Petit Concert at the Conservatoire du Tarn for the flutists. I thought I played rather well. Some of the more advanced ones played well too, but overall the standard was pretty low. Afterwards, I set out cycling towards the Salvages, only to get a flat tire. While learning how to change the inner tube, I mangled my finger, and so I’ve been out of action for these last few days. I’m recovering now, but there a nasty bruise under my nail, which will probably take a couple of weeks to go.

Last but not least, this is a short title animation I created in After Effects:

Dreaming of a white Easter…

This morning, there was a light dusting of snow covering the ground. Not what you would usually expect on Easter Monday. I had been thinking more along the lines of typical spring weather and an outdoor easter egg hunt. Instead, it’s colder than it has all winter.

As it turned out, the film we saw with school, Cria Cuervos, wasn’t great. Based on the other films we have seen with school, I could have guessed really.

Redesign

Recently, we’ve been repainting most of the rooms of our house. All the doors on the first floor landing now look fabulous, as well as the guest rooms. My sister wanted to have a pure black room, but luckily the rest of managed to persuade her that it wouldn’t look good ( at least in our house ). In the end, she decided to paint it white and spray-paint black spots on top.

I think my room would benefit from a fancy redesign too. I have yet to decide on a design, but I had the [great] idea to preview in 3D first. So I sat down at the computer and successfully recreated my room on screen ( OK… a room is basically just a cube, but i did windows, doors and stuff like cupboards and beds for more realism), and then left it to render over night. Unfortunately, I found someone had restarted the computer next morning, and I stupidly forgot to save ( a lesson well learnt…), so I don’t actually have anything to show you, but I will get round to redesigning soon. Probably toward the holidays, as I’m rather occupied with school and outside-school activities like music now the holidays are over.

Tomorrow we are off to the cinema with school to see a (Spanish?) film for the morning. Then in the afternoon we are going to have to write about it for a french test. Can’t wait… I hope the film will be an improvement on the last one we saw with school. It was called L’esquive and really was very disappointing. There was no real storyline and the filming was bad (in my opinion). Otherwise if it’s not good, I’ll just watch Minority Report on my iPod instead so as not to get too bored.

The Glorious Beginning

A simple hello from Castres, in the south of France.

The main inspiration to start this blog came from Zen Habits. No, this is not a productivity blog though. The first idea was a way to keep my English expression up to scratch, seeing as I now live in France (it’s now been 2 years). I thought it would be an effective and enjoyable way to achieve something that needs doing. But that would be a bit boring. So as I said, that’s where the inspiration came from, but it will be, in general, a blog on design, cycling and just life in Castres.

Congratulations to England for their 24-13 victory over France last night. I can go back to (french) school next week holding my head up high.