Project updates
- Productivity – After spending too much time on Saturday getting distracted while shopping, as I often do, I’ve started experimenting with the exercise of asking myself, “Is this what I’m doing now?” to use my time more efficiently. But the shopping was worthwhile, because I bought materials to make myself a Rotating Priorities Board (from Barbara Sher’s book Refuse to Choose) to remind myself of my main projects, which for now are the code console, which will let me easily create future programming projects, and knowledge representation, which applies to a lot of my other projects, both technical and creative.
- Nostalgia box – After worrying that I wouldn’t find a short, doable, yet imaginative project, I decided to pick the simplest exercise in my Book of Surrealist Games and do some automatic writing (basically writing whatever pops into your head without trying too hard to make sense, which for me eliminates the dread of the blank page), specifically a series of fictional letters, since January’s folder contained old letters. I’ve written one, which actually gave me an interesting idea for a fantasy concept, so the project is already accomplishing its intended purpose, and I’ll write a few more this week and then close January’s folder … just in time for February’s!
- Books
- To Your Scattered Bodies Go – I started listening to this after watching The OA because from the premise it seemed to be about the afterlife, and I wondered if it could be another therapy story. It didn’t turn out anything like that, but it was interesting enough that I’ll probably return to this series, especially since the first book left large unanswered questions.
- S. – So far I’ve been reading S. casually, letting the things I didn’t understand wash over me, but that’s gotten tiresome and I’d like a better grasp on what’s going on, so I’ve started taking notes. The book comes with a bunch of loose postcards and photocopies and such inserted into the pages, and I’m joining in and adding my notes as extra inserts. Here are examples.
Adding my own inserts to Abrams and Dorst’s S. Here’s a table of contents.
A photo posted by Andy Culbertson (@thinkulum) on
- 500 Handmade Books, Vol. 2 – In addition to mystery, books seem to be my theme right now–books as artifacts and not just as containers for information the way I usually treat them. I expect several of my nostalgia box projects to be about making book-like pieces, so I picked up this one from Half Price Books that I’d seen on Amazon, a gallery of artist’s books, which are books made by artists to be works of art, so as I flip through it, I’ll be wearing goggles to protect my eyes from the explosion of creative design ideas.
- Socializing – Sunday evening I launched out on my quest to expand my circle of geeky friends, sparked by my desire to go to C2E2 with other people, by attending a game night with a local meetup group. I was somehow not nervous about going, maybe because I was basically familiar with this kind of event and I assumed the people would be friendly, and it turned out really well, even the Ultimate Werewolf game we all played toward the end that I initially resisted because I’m terrible at bluffing games. It was a fun night, and they’ll see me again!
