Panda design

Helloooo! I haven't been able to post for the past couple of days (not that I've made anything to post) because we've had a computer virus. I was looking at panda pictures on Google, and suddenly a big sign came up, with a virus warning, and then Internet Explorer shut down.

It was incredibly crafty the way they did it! Immediately after Internet Explorer disappeared, the desktop icon for our regular anti-virus programme also disappeared. A window for a different anti-virus programme (the name of which escapes me) popped up, and it purportedly did a quick scan and informed me that there were lots of nasty things on my PC - would I like to register with them and pay lots of money for them to get rid of them.

Puh! As if I would fall for that! So I got rid of that window, and looked for our regular anti-virus programme, which wasn't there. I did find another icon though for a programme called Spy Hunter, so I opened that and performed a scan, and cleared away the offending viruses. At least, I thought I did.

I was then asked to restart the computer, and when Windows came back up, nothing worked! Luckily, since we know little about technical computer stuff, we have someone to call on in such emergencies, so he came out and battled with it for a couple of hours. Apparently, Spy Hunter is a legitimate anti-virus programme, but it was hijacked by someone and used as a cover for this particular virus. Everytime we restarted the computer, Spy Hunter opened automatically, and once it was open, everything else locked. Not only that, but it got faster and faster - the first time we re-started it took 30-40 seconds; by the fourth or fifth time, it opened within a couple of seconds!

It was all very gripping - I had no idea computer stuff could be so exciting. Anyway, our man in the know finally won the battle, and uninstalled Spy Hunter - or the spoof Spy Hunter. But be warned! If you get a virus warning and then Spy Hunter appears, get rid of it, quick! Better still, call someone else in to get rid of it!

Before we called in our expert, I had been sitting here at the computer thinking, come on - I should be able to sort this out. I'm sure there's an entirely logical explanation for why nothing works. In retrospect, there was nothing logical about it, and I didn't stand a chance of fixing it.

Anyway(!) As I said, I didn't have anything to post anyway.

I mentioned a while back that I was hoping to come up with some sort of leaflet, showing step-by-step photographs of the process of bear-making, just to show customers how much work goes into them. I have got one step further though: if I'm lucky (and it's looking increasingly likely that I won't be) I will have a leaflet showing the process of designing and making bears!

I have been meaning to create another panda design for some time now - ideas keep cropping up - but I've always found pandas very difficult, so I have kept putting it off. They have funny shaped faces - not just different, but difficult in that (to me, at least), they seemed to be different shaped depending on which way you look at them.

So I have started trying to put some ideas together, interrupting myself every step of the way to whip out the camera and take a photo. It is very distracting! And the really annoying thing is that, if my ideas are rubbish and it all comes to nothing, I will have my failure documented in excruciating detail! So fingers crossed.

I will be back in.... weeks(!) to show the finished bear - or just a pile of discarded pieces, if it doesn't work.