Ah the early days of the web. Animation on the web like film from the 1920s – a series of images. Making these was something I used to do regularly at work…seems so long ago. Animated gifs.
An animated gif was the first animated graphic on the web. Simple but effective loop of a few images – that you could control the size and length of each image. Back then, there was a 10 kb.
Here’s one I made recently at a class:
Mars Horodyski
Pursuit OCR Joanne Galligan’s Bar Fit class
Loop set to: forever
After many days of freezing rain, the weight of the ice pulled heavily on the branches. They were encased in ice.
The sheer weight of accumulated ice astounds me. It bent the trees under its weight and in many cases broke them, taking down hydro wires in the process. This picture show the trees two days after the ice storm:
After days of darkness, the power is back on. I am very thankful for the privilege of having access to electricity. Thank you, Ice Storm 2013, for reminding me that while I can survive without it, electricity is great to have when the temperature is -17C (that’s 1.4F for my American friends – yes, that’s one-point-four).
Thank you turmoil, for showing me what I take for granted. I’m humbled.
What’s beautiful about an ice storm?
People that help each other out, that offer their homes, that walk around seeing if people are okay. That share coffee, stories and support. That come out of their houses to help with fallen logs, smashed cars and cold. Hot chocolates were made. Warmth was shared. Smiles were felt across the city. The times that we need each other are the times we shine as a species.
Also, the ice. The ice is creating wonderful extensions of the existing plants. Incredibly beautiful and destructive. Like us.
For an unknown reason, someone left a construction pylon on the sidewalk in front of the house. On the corner, Bloor Street is under construction and has tons of these exact pylons. It was likely escorted down the street by a drunken university student, heading home from the pub.
They left it on the sidewalk – maybe the joke of it got old. It was there alone for several days until someone put a plastic chair under it. Now, there was a construction pylon sitting on a plastic chair outside out front. They were there together for a few days.
Maggie is about to turn 6 years old. It’s a milestone. That’s 42 in human years. She’s a beautiful, middle aged lady…who is now missing a tooth.
It happened in the last few weeks. There was no broken tooth. It didn’t show up anywhere, like her dog dish. Just one day, I noticed that her teeth seemed crooked. There was a little space in the front of her mouth. It wasn’t a “lost tooth” space like kids get when they loose teeth – that healing hole of toothless space. No sir. Her black gums don’t reveal that anything was even there, as though she’d never had one.
At first, I’d thought her teeth had simply moved around. They are spaced out and slightly crooked anyway. The space was so small, so I counted. There are 5 teeny little front teeth, not 6 as there ought to be.
Magoo!
How do you loose a tooth without blood, pain or fanfare? Too much tug-of-war with a rope? Chewing on petrified sticks? Demolishing the softball that someone gave you in the park?
I scoured Facebook for pictures of her to see if I could figure out when it happened. She doesn’t show her teeth much in photos, just her tongue. I found this one, with her bottom teeth showing. She had the tooth on July 25th.
As someone that has spent a lot of money on my own teeth – they have a nasty habit of needing root canals, crowns, surgery and implanted titanium posts – I feel doubly lousy. I wouldn’t want to walk around without a tooth. Perhaps this is more my crisis than hers. She seems unconcerned.
Now, I know something for sure. If I was rich, I’d buy her a new tooth. Yes, a cute little fake tooth. A gold tooth. It’d sit there right down in front and say, “hello.”
No, wait, even better, a grill! Like this lovely one:
Because I love Maggie. She’s my best friend. And she’d rock the grill.
