Last Monday was Lucy Maud Montgomery 141st birthday. She is the author of the "Anne of Green Gables" books. Anne was one of my childhood heroines, probably the one I identified the most with (getting lost in fantasy worlds and a temper).

I have read and reread the books several time as well as seen several adaptations. My favourite ones are below.

Akage no An - anime (1979)
The first anime and the first adaptation of "Anne of Green Gables" I saw. It is beautifully drawn and follows the book faithfully. Most of the narration is straight out of the book. I like it when things are not dumbed down, because they are for kids and it makes the anime enjoyable to watch even as a grown up. When I re-watched it recently I was surprised to notice a lot of subtle characterisation of Marilla, which I had missed of a kid.

TV mini series Anne of Green Gables (1985) and Anne of Avonlea (1987)
Megan follows is a wonderful Anne. The first series adopts the "Anne of Green Gables" book and the second is a mix of the books "Anne of Avonlea", "Anne of the Island" and "Anne of Windy Poplars". "Anne of Avonlea" and "Anne of Windy Poplars" are both very episodic and the series takes incidences and characters from both books and incorporates them into the Anne's character development arc from "Anne of the Island". Both series are perfect for a rainy afternoon.

Web series Green Gables Fables and Project Green Gables
Green Gables Fables is now it its second season. The first followed "Anne of Green Gables", in between seasons some stories from "Anne of Avonlea" were adopted/mentioned on the social media sites of the characters and the second season is now adopting "Anne of the Island".
Project Green Gables is currently in it's first season and adopting "Anne of Green Gables".
It is very interesting to view both series side by side. Both are very faithful to the book(s), have an excellent cast for both the main and side characters and the love for the characters and story from everyone involved shines through. In Green Gables Fables Anne's character flaws, such as her stubbornness and temper or unrealistic expectation (wanting her first published story to be in the New Yorker) and subsequent character development are emphasized (and Matthews story is heartbreakingly well adopted) while in Project Green Gables conflicts of the book are ingeniously brought to modern times, from Anne being sad about wearing clothes from the Salvation Army flea market, Ruby Gillis talking about slut shaming or Anne being a girl of colour with natural hair, giving her issues with it and the fight with Mrs Lynde and Gilbert about their comments on it a new and interesting interpretation.

My first gif!


Bonus: running past the Statue of Liberty:

During one of the many protests this spring I took a picture of our union flag. The following was the result of rainy afternoons.

Background removed

To remove the background you add an alpha layer under "layers". You can use the fuzzy select or colour to alpha / select by colour. Colour to alpha can go wrong (things with the same colour which are not in the background being removed) but here it means that the semi transparent quality of the flag fabric got preserved, which comes in handy in the last picture.

Blurs

I followed this tutorial, but instead of rendering plasma clouds and map -> displace I used a simple horizontal motion blur. I set a black background and added some flare ray gradients.

Threshholds and comics

I followed this tutorial, but used for the last layer I inverted the colours and then set white to alpha, ending up with the black areas seen in the flag. I played around with available patterns until I had the stripes I liked.

Add a sun and blue sky

Here the semi-transparency of the flag comes into play. I used a supernova effect below the flag layer, added a blue background and a radial flare gradient in the corners.

My workplace is Vifilstaðir, a house built beginning 1900s to be a tuberculosis sanatorium. Part of the structure is in disrepair, such as the old terrace, where patients used to lie for hours under thick blankets in the cold, fresh air, which was faultily believed to be beneficial. It is all very "Magic Mountain" a book I incidentally never finished to read.




Now the house is used as a temporary home for elderly who are waiting for a place in a nursing home. The house is spacy, with high ceilings and from all the rooms as well as the physiotherapy there is a great view of the surrounding landscape, which now in summer is in bloom.



From the house we can see "Gunnhildur", a hill which patients in the sanatorium climbed as a final test if they were ready to go home. There is also a trail called "Tuberculosis trail". It is connected to other trails in the area. There are many recreational areas. There are picnic areas, lava caves and Vífilstaðirlake, a lake where couples from Reykjavík meet in secret during lunch brakes, as me and my colleague found out when we decided to go for a short walk there.




In the pictures I tried to create the feeling of old photographs using Gimp. There are lots of ways to get there, but the one prefer is playing around with contrast and colour balance of the picture and then adding a layer in the hard-light mode and add a gradient in a pastel colour (yellow for daylight, violet for evening light). I feel I start getting the hang of Gimp.

This is one of my favourite shirts, given to me from a friend. Has anyone else noticed that English speakers seem to be obsessed with cookie inspired figures of speech?

• tough cookie


• smart cookie


• that's the way the cookie crumbles


• caught with the hand in the cookie jar


• website cookies


• what, do you want a cookie now? (as a sarcastic comment)


• cookie-cutter houses or other things that all look alike.


• come to the dark side: we have cookies.

The only German cookie related figure of speech i can think of is:

• Du gehst mir auf den Keks! (You are stepping on my cookie = you are annoying me)

We Germans are so much fun...