Books

Posted on May 6, 2012 by

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
—Kathleen Norris

 
Have you read any good books lately? I’ve been reading/listening to a lot of them. Some have been technical books on Photoshop, but mostly they’re history, biographies and memoirs. There are too many to list, but I will single one out: The Unlikely Disciple–A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.

The author, Kevin Roose, took a semester out from Brown University and attended Jerry Fawell’s Liberty University, the world’s largest evangelical Christian university. It is sometimes referred to as a “Bible Boot Camp”. It was an easy read and Roose did a great job of talking about his experiences, including making friends and even interviewing Fawell (founder of the Moral Majority) himself, seeing Fawell as a likeable person in spite of his gay bashing. Roose himself is from an untraliberal family and one of his aunts is a gay activist.

I was impressed by Roose’s fairness and willingness to see people as fellow human beings, even though he strongly disagrees with some of their beliefs. I found the book both entertaining and refreshing.

What about you? Have you read any good books lately?

Thanks to Evan, Rummuser, Max, Eduardo, bikehikebabe, tammy, Cathy, Kate and Nick for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Lifelong Learning, Living Fully | 20 Comments

Meditation

Posted on April 29, 2012 by

 

Activity-Oriented Meditation Techniques: With this type of meditation, you engage in a repetitive activity, or one where you can get ‘in the zone’ and experience ‘flow.’ Again, this quiets the mind, and allows your brain to shift. Activities like gardening, creating artwork, or practicing yoga can all be effective forms of meditation.
—From About.com

I agree with that, and I’ve been on a meditation retreat for the past few days. I didn’t have to go anywhere to do it, I just immersed myself in Photoshop and spent hours each day playing with new techniques, trying to draw a couple of pictures that came close to what I envisioned. In fact sometimes they didn’t even come close, and that was all right too. I just kept playing until I wound up with something else I liked.

Do you ever meditate? If so what form does it take?

Thanks to Evan, Rummuser, bikehikebabe, tammy, Cathy, MoSoLoCo and Nick for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Living Fully | 19 Comments

The Inner Game

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

A few weeks ago I wrote about a new adventure inspired by a drawing book:

 
The basic idea of the book was if you want to draw, then start drawing. Take an experimental approach. Be bold and try things. Notice what works and what doesn’t and have fun learning.

It reminded me of Tim Gallwey’s Inner Game approach to life and peak performance. His basic idea is our inner critical voice gets in the way of learning and performance. If we want to improve our skills we need to stop judging harshly and start paying attention to exactly what we’re doing and what the results are. It’s somewhat similar to the NeuroLinguistic Programming idea of

  1. Know what you want,
  2. Notice exactly what you’re doing,
  3. Is what you’re doing getting you closer to what you want?,
  4. If not, try something else.

Keen observation is often more helpful than blind striving.

In general I’m more mastery oriented (spending hours and hours learning new skills) instead of achievement oriented, so when I read The Inner Game of Tennis in the mid 1970’s Gallwey’s ideas resonated with me. The approach especially helped when I went back to work after ten years away from physics and computers. Whenever possible I chose challenging problems that I didn’t know the answer to, figuring I’d much rather be scared than bored. So even though there were deadlines attached, I learned to forget about results but instead to be curious about the problems themselves. It meant (1) I didn’t procrastinate to escape feelings of tension, and (2) once I immersed myself in the process and started enjoying the challenge I relaxed enough for the creative part of my brain to start working.

Anyway, that’s what works for me. What works for you?

Thanks to Evan, Mike, Rummuser, bikehikebabe, tammy, Max, dcrelief and Nick for commenting on last week’s post.

Откъде да купя икона

Posted in Lifelong Learning, Living Fully, Taking Risks | 13 Comments

Adding Drama

Posted on April 15, 2012 by


 
If you saw a button with a sign like this pointing to it, would you push the button? Neither my husband nor I would, but we’re glad someone did. Click on the picture to see the video (after a short advertisement).

Thank you, bikehikebabe and Lydia (her daughter) for the link. 😀

Thanks to Evan, Mike, Rummuser, Bazza, Cathy, Eduardo, Max, dcrelief and Saraya for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Humor | 11 Comments

Targeted Advertising

Posted on April 8, 2012 by


 
I’ve heard about targeted marketing/personalized advertising and am sure that occasionally some internet ads were directed at me, but I didn’t understand how it worked until I read this Washington Post article. Apparently the presidential candidates, especially Obama, are using targeted advertising to connect with potential supporters. They pay Google, for a specified time, to place one of their ads whenever someone searches for terms they have chosen. For instance when I typed in “immigration reform” the Obama ad appeared at the top of the list on the right side of the page:

According to the article if I had clicked on the top link taking me to barackobama.com/immigration-reform I would have been followed around the internet and seen new ads based on what they thought I was interested in. Apparently that happens all the time when we click on paid ads unless we opt out:

Even if I had clicked on the Obama ad (I didn’t because I’m not interested in political advertising) I could have blocked ads from barackobama.com or else opted out of all personalized ads. I didn’t bother to opt out because mostly I tune out the ads and don’t click on them. Google clearly distinguishes between paid ads and regular search results. I am grateful for the Washington Post article for explaining how the system works. It’s nice to know what my choices are.

What about you? How much attention do you pay to advertising?

Thanks to bikehikebabe, Evan, Mike, Rummuser, Kate and dcrelief for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Lifelong Learning | 16 Comments

A Bit Clueless

Posted on April 1, 2012 by

For larger view click on picture.

 
I cheerfully admit I’m not tuned into April Fool’s Day. Last night my husband brought me this Economist article and said, “Be sure to read the last line.” The title of the article was Just Press “Print”—It will soon be possible to design and build household animals to order. The article said a company in California was going to announce Sunday (today) that it was going to start using the developing 3D printing technology to produce made-to-order household pets. What? Even though the article carefully described the process in technical terms, and I know advances have been made in tissue engineering, this was way beyond present capabilities. So I Googled the name of the company to see if anyone else was writing about it.

Then my husband came in, saw that I wasn’t laughing and said, “You didn’t read the last line, did you?” Well, yes. He said, “You skimmed it instead of read it, didn’t you?” Well, yes.

So I carefully reread the last paragraph and line (italics mine):

There are still a few technical difficulties to overcome, of course, but Dr Fril plans to start taking orders soon. And he is already looking forward to the firm’s next product, custom-printed boyfriends and girlfriends for those who cannot find the right partner by conventional means—a surprisingly large proportion of the population. If all goes well, these will be available by St Valentine’s day. If not, customers will probably have to wait until April 1st of next year.

😀 Are you tuned into April Fool’s jokes? Do you know anyone else as clueless as I am?

Thanks to bikehikebabe, tammy, Evan, Mike, Rummuser, Cathy, and Max for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Humor | 10 Comments

Worried Bear

Posted on March 25, 2012 by


 
It was a good but uneventful week. I did do some sketching and spent time on my Wii Fit everyday. And Andy and I did the federal income tax. We each do it independently–he uses TurboTax and I do it in Excel. Then we compare our results and correct the mistakes we find.

So what does that have to do with the picture of the worried bear above? Nothing, in fact. I’ve just been waiting for a time when nothing much is happening to use it. I drew it in Photoshop last month after I read about a new smart bullet developed by two hunters working at one of our national laboratories. They think it’s great and when it goes to market will be used by our military, law enforcement officers and by “recreational shooters.” I can think of a lot more groups who might be interested in the weapon, and I also wonder just how much of a sport hunting can be with a bullet like that. What do you think?

Thanks to bikehikebabe, Kate, Evan, Mike, Rummuser and Cathy for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Lifelong Learning | 18 Comments

A Fun, Adventuresome Week

Posted on March 18, 2012 by

cheerfulmonk. Creative Commons license.

 
And it helps to have a guide:
 

 
I bought Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered years ago, and just looking through it always tickled my funny bone and lifted my spirits. Someday I too wanted to learn to sketch whimsical figures. But until this week I had only done a couple of pages of the exercises. Then I made the commitment and finished every single assignment.

I took the authors’ words to heart:

…you will find yourself frequently unsatisfied with your efforts. Our recommendation? So what. Take a fearless experimental approach. Wield your pen or pencil with spirit and take bold chances. Your successes will shine all the brighter and the rest—nothing but necessary steps to greatness….

Around here we honor mistakes and botched details. Please make many.

Well, yeah. I can do that. 🙂 So I did.

Two of my favorite exercises were The 3-Headed Red Spotted Gorff and the pigs:
 

 
(The authors provided the legs and body, we filled in the necks and heads.)

The pigs:

 
Not worrying about polishing the finished product was liberating–just go for the general spirit of the subject and move on. I’m hoping to do some quick sketches regularly, and to keep me motivated I’ve gotten more books by Quentin Blake, the illustrator of Drawing for…. Again the idea is to draw boldly and quickly rather than looking for a polished product. I will let you know how it turns out. This week, at least, was a great adventure.

What was your week like? Have you had any adventures lately?

Thanks to bikehikebabe, Rummuser and Cathy for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Humor, Living Fully, Taking Risks | 11 Comments

Beautiful Oops!

Posted on March 11, 2012 by


 
Beautiful Oops! is an interactive book for ages 3 and up. So I bought it for myself this week. I love its philosophy–don’t be upset when you make mistakes or things don’t go the way you expect. Instead be creative.

Andy and I have had plenty of practice doing that this year, of course, and I had another chance just yesterday. I was playing around with some new techniques in Photoshop and decided I would try them out on a picture of our shed. I had spent hours and hours organizing the pictures of the land into well-named folders and subfolders and knew exactly where I could find the picture. Oops! All the folders and subfolders were there, but the pictures were gone. What??

Time to trot out the magic words: “What’s the opportunity here? What can I learn from this?” So I went off and did some chores while I pondered the matter. I had checked some of my backups– the files had disappeared weeks ago. It eventually dawned on me I had installed a new photo managing program a few months ago. So I checked the receipt– I had bought it January 9th. Sure enough, the files had disappeared between the backups of January 7th and January 16th. Mystery solved. The program had moved the files to a folder of its own choosing, and since I knew the names of the individual files it was easy enough to track down where that folder was.

For now I’m just going to rebuild my own folder system and put it on an external hard drive so it will be safe. In the future I’ll take the time to understand the new photo management program and see if it’s worth it. Andy loved it when he was using it on the PC and was putting off managing his new pictures until the program was available on the Mac. I bought it for him when the Mac version came out early last year, but he hasn’t gotten back to looking at his pictures yet. At least he’s been warned that his new version doesn’t work exactly the way his old one did. 😉

I wouldn’t exactly call this a beautiful oops!, but it was definitely educational. If nothing else it reinforced the importance of keeping centered and being patient. Any oops! in your life lately?

Thanks to tammy, Evan, Rummuser and Cathy for commenting on last week’s post.

Художник

Posted in Lifelong Learning, Living Fully | 9 Comments

Learning from Dogs

Posted on February 26, 2012 by


 
I’ve been reading a lot of books and blogs about dogs lately…we can learn a lot from them, and from the people who love them. The little girl in this video (thanks, bikehikebabe!) could have saved herself some trouble if she had paid more attention. 😀

Whom have you been learning from lately?

Thanks to tammy, bikehikebabe, Maria, Rummuser and Kate for commenting on last week’s post.
Posted in Lifelong Learning | 8 Comments