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Creativity and me

May 042006

I am not a creative person. A number of people insist to me that I am and will even cite turning my room into a cave as an example, but they fail to persuade me.

A creative person is not someone who has the occasional neat idea. A creative person is someone who takes those neat ideas and expresses that idea in some medium. The implementation doesn’t have to be good, quality of the implementation is a technical skill that can be learned by anyone. Of course, how that skill is applied will very from person to person like finger prints, but the basic skills of working in a given medium are learnable.

In playing jazz I can’t improvise. I can’t think of a story line to write. I can’t think of something to draw.

Sure, I have the occasional idea. Sometimes I put enough dots on a piece of paper that I can see a shape and put more dots in to make the shape more noticable. I have on a handful of occasions thought of fun ways to wrap gifts. I have even made a few things from chicken wire. That doesn’t make me creative though. Creative people do this realization of their ideas on a regular basis. Not that they realize all of their ideas, but their density of idea realization is quite high. When one idea is completed, there is another one waiting to get started.

I can perform “creative” tasks given directions, but I’m not the one to come up with those directions or what to make.

Evolving for comedy?

ideas, Science, Society No Responses »

Apr 192006

I’ve seen a number of studies and surveys that show women having a preference for a man who makes them laugh. I’ve also read about a study or two that showed that women tend to have a more advanced sense of humor than men. Advanced being more word based and less physical based. This leads me to think that we are selecting for humor.

I would have thought that humor was perceived as more intelligence, but a survey I read yesterday showed that the impression women had of the humorous men was that they were less intelligent. It seems that if you are doing more verbal humor which would attract the verbal humor loving female that more intelligence would be required, but I guess a sense that the male is a clown takes over and the humor is just appreciated for humor. Also, since some researchers now think that intelligence is completely determined by the woman I guess selecting for intelligence isn’t really necessary and whatever leads to humor can be the focus.

How not to do Black Friday

ideas, Society No Responses »

Nov 262005

My previous experience with black friday is generally going to stores to watch people go crazy trying to buy stuff. This year I tried out the crazy. On Thanksgiving I saw some Fry’s ads for amazing deals that would be happening on Friday so I considered going early, around 6AM. I was talking to Terry at the Thanksgiving dinner and he said that if I decided to go I should call him. When I got home I decided I would go for it.

I woke up at 5:30AM (no alarm), hopped in the shower, got ready and then called Terry. Terry said he’d be ready so I went over there and picked him up and handed him the Fry’s ads so he could prepare. When we got to the store that had cops out directing traffic. We got out of the Disneyland parking line and parked a block away.

We got to the store and saw more people there than we had ever seen before. We got a cart in case we needed it for bigger stuff and headed to the LCD monitors because there were some sweet deals there. I decided I could hold off on one so I went to get a free 80GB hard drive while Terry looked at the LCDs. Then Terry called me so he could find me (in the networking aisle (I was there mostly because it was quiet)). Terry called his brother from there to ask his advice om LCD panels and I went to look for the SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Edition so I could finally record these laserdiscs to DVD (especially the original Star Wars) when I heard an employee yelling that the line started on aisle 13. I went back for Terry and put him in line and continued my search. I found what I wanted and headed back to Terry who was now on aisle 15.

Then we waited in line and got to snake through the video game section (XBox 360 was looking nice!) before I saw that some CDs were on sale. I excused myself and picked up the new Madonna album and the new Enya album for $6.77 each. Terry was still in the video game section when I returned. We finally passed out of the video game section to the computer section where the manager’s special was getting a free printer (a nice one even) if you bought a laptop or desktop computer. The funny part is that he was standing right next to the line and YELLING the deal to everyone who passed. If someone stopped and asked a question about it he would yell the answer even if they were face to face.

We finally made it past the computer section to the A/V section. We envied the huge wall-hanging LCD panels, and continued with the line. A few employees were walking around with hand-baskets full of batteries asking people if they needed batteries. We declined each time.

We finally made it through the appliance section and could see the checkout stands. Yay! And then a few more feet and we could see that the line actually turned left and went across the front of the store and back again before being able to check out. That was a problem since I had to be home by 9AM to take Nicole to work. I relayed this to Terry and he asked “So we have to abandon everything?” I said “Yeah, unless you want to wait here while I go take Nicole to work.” He said he had nothing to do that day so we went ahead with that. I stashed my pile of stuff so I could get it later and went home.

I got home in time, took Nicole to work, and got back to Fry’s to find Terry waiting outside. We went back in to find my stuff which was still where I stashed it, and I check for any deals on the NintendoDS. There was a bundle with two games I had zero interest in, but they also had the standard Nintendogs bundle, and Nicole wanted Nintendogs so that was a good deal. I picked up Trauma Center: Under the Knife because it sounded fun. The checkout line was normal sized at that point so we checked out right away.

What did I learn in case I want to do something similar again? Go with someone else (we did that), park a block away, and get in line as soon as you enter the store. Then you can take turns shopping and be ready to check out at the end.

World Chill

boingboingboing!, ideas No Responses »

Oct 082005

I like the new take on the old Coca Cola jingle, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke,” which now starts “I’d like to teach the world to chill” performed by G. Love. It’s an ad for Coca-Cola Zero rather than regular Coke but without the visual you’d never know that.

In addition to that, the visual ad has a www.worldchill.com url that takes you to not the greatest Flash site, but I really like the idea behind it. You can select your own “chill” level and make a thumbtack where you are with your chill level. That in turn gets averaged by localities and regions up to the world level so you get a “chill level” for the entire world. The screen saver cycles through areas showing the chill level of that area.

The makers had the idea that you could have a map like weather maps that showed changes in “chill” over time and perhaps watch trends. It’s definitely not wide-spread or well implemented enough for that. The Flash that lets you place your rating is tricky to use and doesn’t let you easily update your info. It should just be a simple applet, maybe a part of everyone’s instant messenger program. Just a slider that when changed sends the update. It has to be easy and always there.

The more minor problem is the screen saver. It starts at the top level and then steps down to a region and then to parts of the region. When a part is done it has to go back to the region level before going to another part so you end up seeing regions a lot. I understand that it is following it’s internal tree representation of the data but it can skip those things it has been to before pretty easily.

Great m&m’s idea!

ideas 1 Response »

Sep 262005

m&m/Mars should make a cheap USB printer that will let you print your own design and colors on m&m’s. They could give you further discounts on stuff by turning in wrappers or something. The technology is there with current ink-jet printers and mass-produces electronics.

I probably should have invented that instead of writing it here.

15-hour work day

ideas No Responses »

Jul 272005

It’s been awhile since I did that. I made some good fixes and helped others fix or diagnose problems. I had to call the allergy clinic and ask them to put my shots in the refrigerator for tomorrow morning and they did which is good so I don’t get charged for wasted shots.

I also took a walk to the library to look at their videos. They had an extensive collection of non-fiction VHS tapes, including a number on local history like a ten tape set on the oral history of Davenport and another 10 tapes from the discussion about rebuilding Santa Cruz after the earthquake or 1989 (still two holes in the ground (am I rambling too much here?)). Anyway, their total number of DVDs is maybe 50 tops. They didn’t have any current VHS movies either which makes me think it’s 100% donation. Maybe I should start giving them movies I don’t care for. Or since I just bought this 20 kung-fu movie collection for $15 (on 6 discs) and if I don’t really want to own them after that (but $0.75/movie is worth buying initially) I’ll hand them over and then 1/3 of their movies will be kung-fu movies.

Religion and evolution aren’t incompatible

ideas, Science, Society No Responses »

Jul 202005

Some ideas, but not complete…

Many people seem to feel that you either have to belive in evolution, or in creationism, or in intelligent design which is the newest form of creationism. However, there is room for these things to complement one another.

Let’s say life was created. From parents to children, one generation to the next, the children are combinations of traits of the parents. Like all changes, some are better than others, and in the long run and over many sets of children, the better things are going to be more well off than the things that aren’t as good. We have seen this with people immune to diseases and with bacteria becoming resistant to drugs. That is the basis for evolution, but in no way does that discount creation. You can say the system that we call evolution was created. We don’t know why, but we also don’t know why we were created in the first place. We just know we were created in God’s image. To us an image is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional scene. It’s not perfect, and obviously is not going to have all the qualities of the original. We, being in three dimensions, perhaps are limited renditions of a higher dimensional nature of God.

Science neatly sidesteps the why because they have no idea. All science is saying with evolution is that this system is in place and has been identified and that can be used to build more knowledge about the world we live in. This all fits since we were also created as curious creatures who also happen to be excellent at manipulating symbols and information. We can’t help but try to figure stuff out.

Thoughts on Lost

ideas No Responses »

Jun 122005

Now that I’ve finally seen the season finale of Lost I have some thoughts coming to me. Spoilers here…

I think Sawyer will end up dead.
Nicole pointed out to me that the craxy French lady said she heard they were coming for the boy, we didn’t think the boy was Walt though. Is this why Walt knew they had to leave the island? Because his capture was something that was going to or needed to happen?

Locke and Jack confronting each other made me see them as a pair or opposites fulfilling a similar role overall. That made me start thinking about how other pairings go on the island with the characters we know so far. Not in who likes whom, but in the parallels in their roles.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:
Jack – Locke
Kate – Sawyer
Michael – Jin
Sayid – Boone
Hurley – Walt
Charlie – Shannon
Sun – Claire

Candy bubble for the dogs

boingboingboing!, Food, ideas No Responses »

Jun 062005

We were in Marini’s and I saw a bottle of candy bubbles, red (“cherry”) flavored. I had to try them, being a fan of the spray candy.

Spray candy is liquid candy in a spray pump. The beauty is that you feel like you just had candy and it’s such a small ammount that it’s effectively zero calories.

Anyway, I tried them in the parking structure and they held together well enough and thought it would be good for the dogs. We went home and took the dogs out side and blew some bubbles. They were a little nervous at first but after some encouragement they started to go after them. After they got a taste of them they wanted more and then it was just fun watching them leap all over the place trying to get the yummy bubbles! The only problem was the wind making things difficult. Also the bubbles don’t last nearly as long as regular bubbles, but long enough for playing with dogs!

Are there any techno big bands?

ideas, Music talk No Responses »

May 122005

I’m talking about 5, 10, 15, 20 DJs on a stage each with their own set up spinning simultaneously. I’m thinking they could each have their own focus like drums or melodic or backing. Maybe have 2 DJs for each “part” so they can trade and line stuff up. Would you need a director to cue and organize such a bunch?

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