Radio Free Meredith – Six Misconceptions About Orphaned Works answers a bunch of questions about copyright you might have had. Even if you didn’t, it’s worth the read. These days, with so many of us having blogs and the like, we’re all copyright creators, so this is important stuff.
I wonder how long it’ll be before this becomes required education in high schools.
I had a great time out at lunch with two friends who are black belts (one’s a m\Master) in Tang Soo Do today. One of the great benefits of this new activity is that I now have a point of connection with incredible people I might have otherwise lost touch with. That by itself is worth the price of admission.
I’ve also learned through a clothing shopping trip yesterday that my fluffy body has already started to reorganize. I haven’t lost any weight, but certain pockets of fat are starting to disappear. Benefits: less fat. Consequences: now I don’t wear the same style of pants I did 3 months ago and had to move to a different rack at the fat girls’ store. Can’t say that’s a bad thing.
And finally, here’s a skill I didn’t think would be involved in martial arts: sewing. I bought a sewing machine this week because my fat ass takes a size 6 do bokh (uniform) and that’s the same size that my friend the six-foot-four Master wears. Or to put it another way, I had to hem almost 8 inches of fabric off the bottom.
I just might make my fortune by commissioning someone to create Tang Soo Do do bokhs in patterns designed for women. That is, after I do the other eight hundred things I was going to do to conquer the world.
Unrelated aside:
The awesome folks at the Apple Store managed to take apart the monolith, clean her up, and call me to pick her up already by this afternoon. So we’re back on the iMac and life is good. I’m a happy camper.
I’m posting this from the Mac store in King of Prussia. There’s some weird dirt under the screen of The Monolith – my lovely and happy iMac – and I’ve finally gotten fed up with it. Didn’t get a chance to post to give y’all a warning this week. Anyway, since I still have the Dread Pirate Roberts (fastest iBook -hah- in the fleet, which never takes prisoners) I’ll still be posting until we find out the fate of The Monolith, but I can’t say for sure that comics will be on time.
A project is a thunderstorm.
The pressure is barely noticable at the beginnings. You don’t recognize the pain under your eyes but the core design problems are cranking up the barometer and taking up residence in your sinuses.
How do users view this control? Do they understand it? How far do you push the mantra that users never read? If I make this sentence literally the only one in the content field on the page am I really supposed to believe they won’t see it? It grows. If management wants A and user design wants B and they can’t agree, can I get them to agree to C which makes sense to me, if I justify it well enough? Even if we’ve never done anything like it before? Even if there’s no data?
Then you’re hooked and you know you’re in for the long haul on a project that was suppoed to pass by with a few whispy clouds. You love the problem but the headache is worse and you want to hate the process. Just how many questions do we think we can cram into that 15 minute usability session anyway? If the user’s brain explodes all over the camera I’m not cleaning it up. What do you mean I have three days to draft 4 deliverables, polish one, and oversee two more and the content strategist who is supposed to write section 9 for the big one is at a conference for a week and a half?
The pressure rises, the storm grows and even though it’s not raining you start to wish for the release. You dream about it. You have nightmares. You explain it five times, ten, sixteen, each time gathering feedback and tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, until you think it’s almost good enough and solid enough to stand on its own.
By now dinner time has no meaning, sleep is filled with the problems, and the people, and the puzzles. And your head is pounding and you’re praying for rain, begging for it, screaming curses into the wind.
And then even though you could see it coming you’re surprised by the first clap of thunder and the first fork of hot white light in the sky and you smile.
This storm, this violent shaking of the leaves on the trees and the clap of charge rubbing against charge until something must release, is music in your soul. Every rumble is your heart and mind singing. You did it. You solved the problems in ways that made sense. You compromised and brow beat and found that tiny solution that was hiding in the back of your brain. The pressure is gone. The rain will fall. The thunder can begin.
For the first time in two months you can think without the pressure and you realize how much you need the pressure, because without the puzzle and the problem there is no storm, no violent beauty to wash clean your soul.
The first storm of spring was late in coming this year, and even now as I lay in bed watching the lightning and listening to far-away sirens, exhausted to the core, I’ve never felt anything so bright and clean.
Best Game Ever at Improv Everywhere or: How to turn a little league game into an MLB-style extravaganza.