Music is the Motivator
Doing what you gotta do takes a lot of work. No brainer, right? Doing what you gotta do is an intellectual, emotional, and physical activity. It can at times drain you and at times inspire you. It happens at work, it happens at home, it happens when you’re with family and friends. What’s the thing that helps you get it done? What’s the thing that helps to keep things moving?
For me, music is the motivator. Music helps me get stuff done around the house, write and edit and debug code, travel long distances, run more than two miles, or erase whatever negativity is hanging around in my brain.
Continue Reading →
Wrong Tool, Right Reasons
What would make a person ride a retro cruiser with one gear from the HUB on Penn State’s main campus to their home in Boalsburg in 81 degree weather with 65% humidity? Why would you do it in jeans? There are several reasons and it all makes sense when you think of the human race and our ability to push boundaries and use tools in innovative ways.
The first reason that I rode a bike with one gear "around the mountain" is because I could ride a bike with one gear and a set of handlebars made for cruising from work to my home. I could do it and I wanted to do it. It’s just that simple.
My Favorite New Tool
My favorite new tool is an automatic pencil sharpener. Yup that’s right, a pencil sharpener. It’s really not even new, as an invention or in terms of model, but it’s new to me. It’s vintage with a faux wood grain around the barrel that holds the mechanisms and batteries with a beautiful guilloches pattern on the top. The top is clear plastic and holds the shavings and houses the blade. Around the top part that spins and sharpens your pencil are the words,”Press Gently.” Words of wisdom both for the act of sharpening and for sketching.
An Open Letter to Technology
Dear technology,
I think that I don’t love you so much right now or more accurately for a while now. You see it’s my job to make things work and quite honestly a lot of you just don’t play that well together. You don’t. Admit it. People expect web-type things to work consistently on everything that they use. And they don’t care what it takes behind the scenes to actually make it happen. They want their web-type thing to work on a Mac, a PC, a tablet (not the Babylonian kind), a cell phone or smart phone, a notebook (not the paper kind), or whatever else that you create and send to the market that has the ability to access the Internet(s). I’m tired of all of the work-arounds and quirks.
Wishing for that Analog Feeling on a Graphics Tablet
First let me just say that I absolutely love using my graphics tablet for work and play. Using the digital pen instead of a mouse is absolutely ideal for the type of work that I do and because of my background in art it’s a "natural" fit. I have it mapped so that there is a one-to-one relationship between where I point the pen on the graphics tablet and where my cursor is on the screen. It is superior to the frustrating scrubbing that is so common with using a mouse.
One Burger Heads to the Boneyard
I‘m sure that I’m not the only one that has a whole digital box full of illustrations, graphics, mock-ups, ideas, etc. that just didn’t reach their full potential. Whether the idea itself was left to die in a cruel game of the majority rules or the shift of a project changed focus, we as design people go through a lot of iterations and create a lot of digital assets. I’ve had various versions of a blog and my intent was to allow those things to live on and/or be memorialized in the digital universe. So it is my intent here to let this burger live. It may not have the meltiest cheese or the correct arrangement or shaped sesame seeds, but it’s my rendition of a double quarter pounder with cheese.
God speed my tasty, vectorized burger.
What is a Multimedia Specialist?
It’s funny when I think about my job title, Multimedia Specialist, because when I look back on my career being a generalist has been my greatest strength. My job title is a sweeping generalization and the actual job description varies from job-to-job. It’s almost as if the idea of specialization carries with it an expiration date with the fast pace of technology and the expectations derived from the business economy. And I think that it’s a shame.
Drawing and How it Relates to (My) Life
I experienced a good liberal arts education in the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State. Up until recently my grades were good enough to be president and even though my GPA doesn’t reflect it, I did learn quite a bit. I have benefited greatly from the mixture of social and earth sciences, math…cough…math, english, art, and other courses. In my pursuit from film/graphic design to ceramics to multimedia specialist, one thing stands out as an absolute fundamental skill – drawing.
Thoughts on Copyright and Delivering Education Online
So the issues surrounding copyright should be a no-brainer right? If something isn’t yours, a direct result of doing work and creating something, you can’t steal it and then use it like you own it. Errrr…um…sort of. We’ll skip copyright and the arts and derivatives or satire or parody. I’m after copyrighted material used in education delivered via the internet(s). More specifically copyrighted material that aids the facilitation of inquiry in an online learning environment.
So what gives? I’m not going to claim that I own it in any way and will credit the source. I’m just looking to include examples that reinforce concepts from the modules and lessons. I think that it comes down to two things:
I Just Want to Make Sh*t.
Seriously. I just want to make sh*t. I don’t want to spend most of my time working in word documents or reading documentation for things that I may or may not use. I just want to make sh*t. Let’s jot some ideas down and say,”Go.”
Yes preparation, analysis, and discussion are important things. I am usually the one to request such things, but my experience with designing and developing things for the web has led me to wanting to develop assets in the digital flesh faster and more often than on digital paper. We could go through months of planning, wire frames, deliverables in documentation before something hits the intended user only to find out that it needs to be tweaked or reworked entirely. I just want to make sh*t; albeit useful and enjoyable sh*t.
Thanks for listening.