By: Thomas James,
on 6/3/2015
If you’re a digital illustrator seeking a way to make work that looks handmade, you simply MUST check out this huge collection of digital brushes and tools from the great Nicky Laatz!
Equipped with just this pack – you will be an unstoppable watercolour design machine…without even picking up a paint brush :)
By: Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
on 4/27/2015
I recently received an Apple Watch for my birthday, which I am loving. Not because it keeps me in touch with the digital world -- in fact, I've turned off notifications for most social media and have decided NOT to check Twitter or FB via my Watch. I mainly plan to use it for fitness tracking as well as tactile reminders (it taps me on the wrist if I sit in my office chair too long) to get up and move around every once in a while.
As I hunted around for a place to put the charger, I couldn't help but think how ironic it is that the so-called paperless office often turns into a wire-laden office instead. In my case, I have lots of paper AND wires!
By: Thomas James,
on 2/19/2015
Photo by David La Spina
The talented team behind The New York Times Magazine has been hard at work for four months overhauling and redesigning the publication, and if you’re like me you love any chance to peel back the curtain on a project like that. Thankfully, there’s a great in-depth look at the relaunch, including information about new columns, typefaces, page designs in print and online, and a whole lot more.
We have used the hammer and the tongs but perhaps not the blowtorch; we sought to manufacture a magazine that would be unusual, surprising and original but not wholly unfamiliar. It would be a clear descendant of its line. This magazine is 119 years old; nearly four million people read it in print every weekend. It did not need to be dismantled, sawed into pieces or drilled full of holes. Instead, we have set out to honor the shape of the magazine as it has been, while creating something that will, we hope, strike you as a version you have never read before.
Click here to learn more about the relaunch.
By: Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
on 7/29/2014
Thanks to Andrea Skyberg for featuring my Office Cave in her Tuesday Studio Tours today.
Find out why my office looks NOTHING like the rest of the house, how my hero husband Jeff helped enhance my office, my envy of those who have appealing-sounding creative rituals, music I'm listening to (including Ookla the Mok) and a sampling of my new OfficeCrazyDanceBreak playlist, the most useful tool in my studio, and advice for those who want to make a personal space where they can be creative. Plus LOTS of photos!
Thank you, Andrea!
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 3/22/2013
Author Megan Spooner is featuring my writing space at her blog this week. Stop by to have a look and enter to win a copy of MAY B. The winner will also receive a copy of my Navigating a Debut Year mini-poster (in the turquoise frame below).
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 12/12/2012
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 8/20/2012
By: josh pincus is crying,
on 7/11/2012
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/17/2012
I'm at Erin Goodman's Behind the Blog today. Download the podcast here, and join us on Erin's Facebook page Saturday morning for a chat (8:00 am MST/ 10:00 am EST).
Here are some highlights:
1:50 -- Land of Enchantment
3:10 -- writing space
6:30 -- stranger in a strange land
7:10 -- topics I'm drawn to
9:20 -- my teaching years
11:30 -- Caroline by line
15:30 -- blogging with writing deadlines
16:45 -- meeting Mavis Betterly
17:10 -- graveyards and being nosey
19:10 -- learning disabilities in another era
20:30 -- the origins of May's name
23:00 -- when your children aren't ready for certain stories
27:20 -- wolf!
By: Debbie Ridpath Ohi,
on 10/28/2011
Originally posted in Writer Unboxed.
By: Cate Gardner,
on 9/5/2011
By: Jenny Meyerhoff,
on 7/21/2011
By: Jenny Meyerhoff,
on 7/18/2011
I was sure that it had only been a month or two since my last post, but obviously not. What can I say. I've been working on a new YA that's just been not quite right, not quite right, not quite right. But finally, finally I feel that I might be getting it to work.
I've been working on it for two years now (though I took time away to write Sami's Sleepaway Summer and to do a revision of Louie.) It's hard to leave a book mid-draft. When you come back to it, you are not the same person you were before and for me, I think that often means the story I need to tell is not the same story anymore. And that means a lot of do overs. But this time, I'm almost finished. And I really like the story I'm telling.
I especially like working in my new office.
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 5/20/2011
You've seen glimpses of my mini office and the full-fledged one. Here's my current favorite place to work.
By: Maxwell Eaton III,
on 2/1/2011
By: Maxwell Eaton III,
on 1/20/2011
By: Venetia Butterfield,
on 4/26/2010
‘You have no idea how much this article means to me. I suspect – hope – it represents the beginning of a shift in thinking.'
In May last year the New York Times published an extract from a book online. The response they received was, in their words, ‘overwhelming’. It registered 1 million page views and 400,000 visits within 48 hours, making it ‘one of the three or four most read stories we’ve ever put on line. And the comments we solicited were extraordinarily positive.’
Reading these responses, what strikes me is how emotional they are. The article inspired hope in one reader and gratitude in many. One read it with a mixture of ‘elation, admiration, envy, empathy, inadequacy’. That’s five emotions – a veritable medley. What is it here that provoked such outpourings and introspection?
The book in question was The Case for Working with Your Hands (or Why Office Work is Bad For Us and Fixing Things Feels Good) by a philosopher and motorcycle mechanic, Matthew Crawford. In it, he presents 210 pages of immaculately constructed, brilliantly persuasive argument that will convince you, if you need convincing, of the urgent need to re-evaluate our collective attitude to work, to reassess our idea of what a good working life might be and to cast aside the misguided and pernicious notion that all manual work is dirty and dumb.
Work is a hot topic these days. As Alain de Botton points out in The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, it claims ‘to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life’s meaning’. Chaplin’s Modern Times and Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen both present the worker as downtrodden machine, but recent books such as Josh Ferris’ Then We Came to The End have turned to the office as the microcosm of a more modern and all-encompassing sort of angst. Lucy Kellaway’s In Office Hours depicts with exquisite humour how someone we wouldn’t look at twice in the ‘real world’ can become an idol of lustful worship when they’re our boss. On the one hand, it’s the office that now defines us, yet the office also tends to warp us. Where did we go wrong?
Crawford describes how, over the course of the twentieth century, we replaced the skilled manual work of the workshop with, on the one hand, the abstract ‘knowledge work’ of the office and, on the other, the mindless, unskilled labour of the factory line. Thinking and doing have been separated, so neither can offer fulfilment. In this sense, Crawford’s book invites comparison with Richard Sennett’s brilliant work The Craftsman (and incidentally even Sennett describes
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By: Paula Becker,
on 3/3/2010
By: Paula Becker,
on 2/26/2010
Apparently this place is just oozing with office crushes! The fun part is letting you guys extrapolate on the viability of the relationship, etc. I appreciate the laughs!
By: Paula Becker,
on 2/25/2010
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 2/9/2010
Where do you write?
I’ve posted before about my tiny writing office, which, I must confess, currently needs a major clean up. Today, though, I’d love to hear about where you write when you’re not in your usual space.
I am actually writing this post on my laptop while waiting in my van. In a few minutes, I’ll pop into school and take my son to his eye appointment. This morning I did some revision work in this same parking lot before doing some volunteer work on campus.
…and here comes the custodian. Hi, Miss Virginia!
For years, I kept a weekly writing date at Brownstone Café in Battle Creek, Michigan. I was so particular about writing on the left side of a specific couch that when I met a friend for coffee there over Thanksgiving break, a man jumped out of “my” spot and offered it to me!
I’ll write at the hairdresser. I’ve taken my laptop to piano lessons. During Hurricane Gustav, I wrote on battery power in the dark (it was a blizzard scene in MAY B., and I can never read that section without remembering the wind, rain, and damp, dark heat of a hurricane).
What odd spaces have you used for your writing?
By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 10/15/2009
Image via Wikipedia
Have you ever thought about the odd behaviors people adopt in different situations? Here’s a short list of things I’ve been thinking about. I am sure you can add others.
How are you? Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like strange behavior but consider what happens in the office. Every time you pass someone in the hall—even if you’re half-running and obviously not about to stop and chat—your co-workers will ask “How are you?” and get surprised if you proceed to tell them. What’s more, the next time they see you, even if it’s five seconds later they will ask the same question. As if anything had changed since you last saw them. Maybe that’s why it’s a bit of a surprise to find out that my co-workers did care how I was….
May I help you? Every time I walk into the shop I get this question and a smile. The first time it’s OK but after three times when you have assured the nice salesperson that really you don’t need any help and are “just looking” it would be nice if they would take the hint and leave you alone. But they don’t. Maybe that’s part of their job description, I don’t know.
Sneezing is not Leprosy. Really. Even with the outbreak of the swine flu, a sneezing or coughing fit can be caused by all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the flu, let alone swine flu. In my case, I often get the sniffles due to air conditioning and even a fan set on the high setting makes my husband’s throat sore. In neither case is this the swine flu. And yet, I have noticed that ever since the swine flu outbreak, people have been backing away from folks who dare sneeze or cough in public. As though they’re lepers.
Swine Flu Parties. Which brings me to the other weird phenomenon associated with the swine flu: swine flu parties. This is the rage in the UK apparently although British and now American health officials think it a rotten idea. People have decided that exposing themselves to what most think is still a mild form of the H1N1 virus will immunize them against the much more lethal form that is expected to hit with the school year. Kind of like getting immunized against chicken pox but without the needles. But American and British health officials warn that we really don’t yet know enough about the swine flu and that deliberately exposing oneself to the virus could thus be a deadly idea.
These are just some of the odd behaviors I have been noticing (and in the case of the swine flu parties) reading about. I am sure you can think of others. The nice thing about these eccentricities is that (in my opinion at least) they make people and thus life much more interesting.
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Image via Wikipedia
Have you ever thought about the odd behaviors people adopt in different situations? Here’s a short list of things I’ve been thinking about. I am sure you can add others.
How are you? Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like strange behavior but consider what happens in the office. Every time you pass someone in the hall—even if you’re half-running and obviously not about to stop and chat—your co-workers will ask “How are you?” and get surprised if you proceed to tell them. What’s more, the next time they see you, even if it’s five seconds later they will ask the same question. As if anything had changed since you last saw them. Maybe that’s why it’s a bit of a surprise to find out that my co-workers did care how I was….
May I help you? Every time I walk into the shop I get this question and a smile. The first time it’s OK but after three times when you have assured the nice salesperson that really you don’t need any help and are “just looking” it would be nice if they would take the hint and leave you alone. But they don’t. Maybe that’s part of their job description, I don’t know.
Sneezing is not Leprosy. Really. Even with the outbreak of the swine flu, a sneezing or coughing fit can be caused by all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the flu, let alone swine flu. In my case, I often get the sniffles due to air conditioning and even a fan set on the high setting makes my husband’s throat sore. In neither case is this the swine flu. And yet, I have noticed that ever since the swine flu outbreak, people have been backing away from folks who dare sneeze or cough in public. As though they’re lepers.
Swine Flu Parties. Which brings me to the other weird phenomenon associated with the swine flu: swine flu parties. This is the rage in the UK apparently although British and now American health officials think it a rotten idea. People have decided that exposing themselves to what most think is still a mild form of the H1N1 virus will immunize them against the much more lethal form that is expected to hit with the school year. Kind of like getting immunized against chicken pox but without the needles. But American and British health officials warn that we really don’t yet know enough about the swine flu and that deliberately exposing oneself to the virus could thus be a deadly idea.
These are just some of the odd behaviors I have been noticing (and in the case of the swine flu parties) reading about. I am sure you can think of others. The nice thing about these eccentricities is that (in my opinion at least) they make people and thus life much more interesting.
The world itself has become hectic and life a fast-forward motion picture. Wherever one goes, everything must be done speedily. This is because nowadays, almost in all families, both parents go to work, departing early and arriving late. The indoors work is thus kept pending. Beforehand, the speed of life was not so emphasized upon. Only the husband was the bread-winner and so the housewife had all the time to cook, clean and complete the household chores. Today, the parents, after a hard day’s work, must speed up and prepare something to eat for their children. People, therefore, have to follow the new trend and adjust to a new lifestyle.
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The on-the-move lifestyle includes the eating of fast food among others. But even if “fast food” as we call it, people do not have time to eat a rounder properly; they either gulp it behind the driving wheel or eat it watching the television at the same time. To speed themselves up and save time, people make use of sophisticated machines such as microwaves to cook food quickly, portable computers to complete office work…. After a speedy week, to supposedly relax themselves, people listen to music now – quick, hasty music. It is the hard rock and technos. This music is a great contrast to the old ones that were the real relaxing music.
These small factors contribute to big inventions, speeding the transport rate. Long ago, there were ox carts and slow trains as means of transport. With the evolution of science and technology and due to the speed revolution, buses, cars, motorcycles, aeroplanes as well as super-jet trains travelling at two hundred kilometres per hour were introduced. Their need of fast transport then was satisfied. As their burden of work grew heavier, the need of a quick means of communication was also felt.
Scientists and inventors put their heads together. To support the level of speed of life and promote development, they abolished the hand-over of letters on horse-backs and established the links between one place and the whole world. Speed developed the fax, email methods. Through speed, the distance between the countries of the world is now lessened and so this helps the economic development of countries.
Speed may prove to be dangerous also. The speed of a car, an aeroplane, a ship can endanger the lives of many people, if not properly controlled. Cases of accidents where people had died are numerous. For instance, the well-known ship “Titanic” sank as a result of sailing at full speed and thus inevitably crash into an iceberg. How rightly has one stated that “haste makes waste”.
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Interesting!
Reblogged this on do not drop the ball.