Tuesday

Freak weather and Bad Karma,

We has a bit of a weather event yesterday - about 20 hours of Blizzard conditions. It was manageable - getting to work, but getting home was something else. The police closed the roads to vehicles and pedestrians and there was not a soul out there - just the howling, freeing wind, the snow that felt like grit in your eyes. Really wasn't expecting this weather - neither was anyone else, abandoned cars everywhere. A flatbed loaded with sand was stranded down in Ore Village this morning and was being unloaded by hand to try and lighten it - closing the main road in both directions at rush hour - and there were numerous accidents. People develop delusions of infallibility when they are in their warm little cars - and perform increasingly stupid acts of driving lunacy.

Busy day at work, as the world outside the windows became increasingly white out. At about lunch time - I had an email from the other half of someone I once taught and am still friendly with - pointing out that they had seen some work in an Italian edition of Wired magazine that was also available online - that was clearly copied from a piece of my own typographic work. At first, I just said 'Oh well, I can hardly claim to have invented the alphabet' - having been ripped off quite a few times in the past - but they responded  with "I thought you would have been more annoyed - considering who it was.. ". I hadn't realised the work was by an X student, a particularly difficult individual who had caused me quite a bit of stress and wads a rather manipulative and devious person, to say the least. At about this time I started getting emails from other people about the same work, and began to get a bit annoyed. The work is commercially sensitive - it's being used in print and retail display at the moment - and I have an exhibition coming up - I was working with a photographer yesterday who was incensed by the whole thing and put me in touch with some seniors at Condé Nast ( the publishers ) who he also works with - it took about 5 mins for the article to be pulled. Power of the Internet!. I'm glad I tackled it. What comes around etc, and the virtual world is a very small place - you can't get away with anything.

I have to build some giant cardboard models today for a photo shoot on Thursday - spent yesterday on the prototypes and drawing up the templates. Wish me luck.

Talking of luck... dog walking in snowdrifts... not fun.