Tag: creativity

In which we build, ctd.

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, ParentingLeave a comment

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Something happened today that, somehow, hasn’t happened yet, despite the fact that the boy is in first grade: he woke up feeling sick, and I decided to call in myself and keep him home for the day.  By noon my plan had been shown to be less than wise; a headache so bad that it had him swaying in the morning had given way to, well, nothing, and I’m finding myself fighting off a slightly delayed case of con crud.  I think it’ll run its course today and be done tomorrow, but I’m definitely low on spoons, if you know what I mean.

We spent the morning in Minecraft again, and I added a floating cabin, complete with waterfall and a manmade lake underneath, plus the totally-made-up flaming magic rocks that help it float– the floor in the house is actually made of glass covered in carpet because glass won’t burn and nothing else I was putting down was keeping the fires from getting through.  All of this is across the river from yesterday’s efforts.

In the background there is another floating fountain made of emerald.  Yes, there’s apparently a theme in this world; much like IT, everything floats down here.

Less mangled children, though, I suppose.

I’ll try and write something that isn’t about Minecraft tomorrow.  If nothing else, I have a book review or two to write.

In which we build

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, ParentingLeave a comment

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I had plans for a post tonight, but instead the boy declared it was going to be Minecraft Night, so we each sprawled on the couch with an iPad in hand and made stuff.  I decided to go with an elemental shrine theme, building a pool with an infinite waterfall, a fire shrine, a nature garden (which was as close to “earth” as I could come up with) and a glass house in the sky only reachable by flying but providing an awesome double-slime-diving-board down to the lake below.

The boy only went with one element, shamelessly stealing my glass sky house idea, but then did it twelve thousand times as interesting as mine, so I think he wins.

So yeah.  I didn’t manage much of a post but I think I spent my evening pretty damn well.

Goddammit

On By Luther M. SilerIn life6 Comments

anigif_enhanced-27989-1443109445-7I’ve posted, what, five times in all of May so far?  Something like that, and half of them were useless?  I don’t know if I’m depressed or what but I’ve just had nothing to say lately.  Well, that’s not quite true– I have a bunch of posts I’d sort of like to write but as soon as I actually sit down in front of a computer I’d rather do anything but write.  I haven’t written a word of fiction or drawn a picture in probably over a month.  I’ve got a damn convention coming up in a few weeks.  It occurred to me the other day that I probably ought to check my stock on my books and place a restock order, and Createspace is not fast, guys, and the entire thought was just too exhausting to even seriously think about.

So, yeah, a brief list of posts I might write, if I was actually in possession of the necessary headspace to do any such thing:

  • A review of Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, which someone recommended to me, someone whose identity I can no longer recall, a book which is so terrible that it deserves to be torn to shreds here;
  • A review of the magnificent God of War for PS4, which I beat today and is easily the best game of this generation that I’ve played;
  • I came really close last night to writing a post about how I wanted to start a Patreon and a podcast and had cool ideas for both but that would require optimism and creative energy and at the moment I have neither;
  • A music post, since I’ve downloaded a lot of good albums lately;
  • A pre-review of The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, which I’m reading right now.  Actually, let’s do this right now: go buy this book and read it.  I didn’t get enough sleep last night because I couldn’t put it down.  It’s really something special.

I dunno what’s going on, but it’d be cool if I could snap the fuck out of it.

Self-improvement is exhausting

On By Luther M. SilerIn art3 Comments

1*8Ar3DCW48UrBB8YiA2J6XAI remain fully caught up on the “draw every day” project, if only because I drew two pictures tonight.  I am beginning to think that the best use of my time might be to actually find some sort of art tutorial thing rather than constantly drawing from .jpg files of animated characters.  I can whip up a Buttercup in a hot second but I’m not convinced that being able to draw Buttercup well is the same thing as being able to draw.  I remain vaguely terrified of the idea of drawing something unique for some reason.  This is, of course, not why I started this project.  Fuck fear.  But if I’m going to take this seriously I feel like I ought to try and find some sort of resource more useful than thinking of a kids’ TV show I like and Googling good images of the characters.

Speaking of creativity, I left work today after telling my boss that I was only coming back on Saturday if I’d managed to get some writing done in the next two days.  Luckily I have nothing in particular that I need to get done tomorrow or the day after, or at least nothing that I can think of (well, okay, I could use an oil change for my car, and I have to take the boy to school both days; I don’t think either of those really count) and so I won’t have any good excuse to not get something done.  Then again, I’m really good at generating excuses.

I’ll finish Fonda Lee’s Jade City tonight, so expect a glowing review in the next couple of days.  It’s an early frontrunner for my favorite book of the year, I’ll tell you that.  I’m considering spending February only reading books by black authors, so if you have anyone in particular you’d like to recommend, please feel free to chime in in comments and make some suggestions.

Okay I like this one

On By Luther M. SilerIn art3 Comments

I’ve been kinda lethargic and sick-ish all day, and had actually been in bed for about an hour and a half before dragging myself out to draw a picture.  I’d previously figured oh to hell with it I’ll do two tomorrow and then got up anyway.  This happened; I like it enough to share it:

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Important fact: everything I’ve drawn so far has had a reference to it, either a .jpg I Googled somewhere or a photo reference or a still life object on my desk or something.  I actually grabbed this from a coloring book website.  I’ll let you know when I start doing genuinely original stuff.  🙂

(Also: added an “Art” category, the first new category I’ve added to the blog in years.)

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

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I can’t even what god NO POST TODAY CANNOT BRAIN ANYMORE

So here’s a thing I’m thinking about

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, TeachingLeave a comment

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Anybody ever heard of the Lilly Endowment’s Teacher Creativity Fellowships?  I found out about them on Facebook the other day– it’s a $10,000 grant given out to 100 teachers across the state of Indiana for the rather nebulous purpose of “creative projects that are personally renewing and intellectually revitalizing to individual Indiana teachers and education professionals.”

In other words, ten grand for writing a grant proposal about a creative way to fucking relax during the six weeks of the summer.  And they even say that if your budget for your relaxing thing doesn’t add up to ten grand you can designate the rest as a stipend.  Here’s some examples of some of the crazy nonsense that people got handed ten grand for this year.  These are all direct quotes from the website:

  • travel to Costa Rica to dive on a coral reef; study environmental conservation; learn to speak Spanish
  • “Hooked on Becoming a Nova Scotia Hooker”—attend workshops in Nova Scotia to learn wool dyeing and rug hooking; visit textile-arts museums in Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine
  • travel the country, taking lessons from master guitarists in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii; write songs and post a blog; record new songs written during the journey
  • create artwork from debris found while scuba diving and beachcombing; participate in workshops in Oregon and California that promote using trash to make artwork
  • attend workshops in Montana and Oregon to learn landscape quilting; visit and photograph four national parks; prepare quilts of national park scenes
  • visit historic sites in France, Greece and Italy; capture images of sites using high-dynamic range photography and video techniques

I swear I’m not cherry-picking the ridiculous ones, guys; the recipients are listed by alphabetical order by the city they’re from and I didn’t get through F.  That last one boils down to go to Europe and take pictures of shit, gimme ten grand.  And it got funded.  That’s insane.

I am pretty damn sure that I can come up with a way to spend someone’s ten thousand dollars this summer.  They apparently have way too much money if they’re giving it away for nonsense like this.  Which means that some of this shit is gonna be mine.

In which we try again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, TeachingLeave a comment

I’ve got the BlueTooth keyboard hooked up to the phone again; this resulted in a deleted post yesterday, so I’m probably pointlessly repeating history here, but we’ll see what happens. I’ve been in the building for about three and a half hours so far today and have succeeded in completely moving myself out of the old classroom. I’ve got some more teardown to do in there, but we’re probably talking about twenty minutes, max, and I may not even do it until I know who the new teacher in the room is going to be. For all I know he or she may want to keep some of the stuff I’ve got up.

I did break down and buy a new laser printer yesterday, but I bought a new laser printer for home, not for work, and brought the old one here. The new one is wireless and AirPrint ready, so I can print from my iPad and my wife can print from her computer and her laptop, none of which we ever figured out how to do with the older printer hardwired to my Mac. It cost more than I was planning on spending, but I think it was probably the right move. The old one, luckily, quickly paired with my work computer, which I was nervous about– the school corporation has a terrible record on pointlessly disabling useful technologies, and I was nervous that I wasn’t going to be able to use my printer on the work computer because of some nonsense over OMG VIRUZZIZ or some stupid shit like that. (“Viruses” is always, always the answer to any why-can’t-I-do-this-perfectly-reasonable-thing question, even when the activity in question is one that cannot possibly produce any sort of computer security issue– like, say, hooking a non-wireless-capable printer to a desktop computer.)

Anyway. I have another ukulele appointment in a couple of hours; constant scheduling conflicts have kept us from meeting again since the first one, so this one will be a double session. Hopefully I’ll walk out of the session feeling like I have some idea of what I’m doing. I haven’t been practicing as regularly as I should have, which probably won’t surprise anyone. I have, however, discovered that the boy is positively entranced by watching Daddy play, which will give me some motivation to keep going. The boy certainly likes music; he apparently was over the moon about watching a drummer at SerbFest last weekend. That’s worth some extra practice time.

Possibly a double post day, especially if this one actually goes through. Stay tuned.