Write 31 Days post-mortem

Well, here we are the day after the end of the Write 31 Days challenge and I have to say I'm wiped out. Writing about a certain topic for a continual 31 days can be exhausting (not that I did it, read more below) but thinking that every day I had to try and coerce my uncooperative thoughts into a string of semi-coherent words was honestly pretty taxing. There is lots to share from my grey-matter container and to limit it to a certain topic day after day was certainly a struggle. Would I do it again? Maybe. Would I do the insanity that is the "write a novel in 30 days" challenge? Yeah, there's a pretty good chance I'd give it a shot.

Allow me to get serious for a minute: you may have noticed I bailed out of the last few days of the challenge. Without going into too much detail, our youngest child ended up in the ICU over the last weekend and to say we dropped everything like a hot rock is, well...entirely accurate. There is nothing that will rock your world like seeing a part of you in a position of extreme uncertainty when it comes to predicting their survival from hour to hour. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't wish on anyone. Ever. EVER.

For those of you who were in the loop in some way, we thank you with all our hearts for your prayers and support. She is physically doing well but will be dealing with the aftermath for quite some time.As you can understand dealing with this is job #1 for us, so a lot of stuff got dropped where it was and we will endeavor to pick them back up when real life allows. It is my full intention that the next post here will be about the exploration of the world of stringed instrument construction, repair, and restoration. Please be patient for that day to come. I appreciate your understanding and hope to "talk" to you soon.

V/r,

James

Write 31 Days- Day 27 Yes, I ditched you

I'm not proud of it, but sometimes you do what you gotta' do.

Yesterday, I decided I had to make a tutorial video for a new feature that YouTube is rolling out called End Screens. These are the links and buttons (we call them annotations) that appear at the end of a video. I didn't want to make a simple "this does this, that does that" so I decided to show the steps on how I set up the last 20 seconds of each shoot to accommodate the YouTube features.

So I had to make a sample video segment which included using Adobe Photoshop for the graphic element, audio recording software to capture the voice-over, Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the video and the YouTube End Screen editor to test and plan the video capture to follow. I then used OBS software to capture the on-screen action and an audio recorder to get the narration of me doing what I had just tested but now to show and teach the process. Finally, I had to edit me doing all of that and finally add THAT video showing you how to do what I had just done.

It took most of the day and WELL into the night.

I was creative, I just didn't share it until the day after.

So here you go:

PLANNING YOUR END SCREEN

Write 31 Days- Day 25 Late Night Television

You know who was a creative guy? Doc Severinsen. I know that some of you have no idea who I'm talking about. Let me learn you something.

Once upon a time when televisions had to warm up and and they played the national anthem when they went off the air (yes, TV stations used to stop broadcasting when most of us were sleeping) there was a phenomenon known as late night talk shows. Not the craziness and variety there is now but only a couple of selections. I don't know what the "other" choices were because I was (am) a dyed-in-the-wool Tonight Show with Johnny Carson fan. And in those days TV shows not only had theme songs (not the dramatic A-minor chord pad of today's shows) but an honest-to God orchestra. Case in point was the one playing with Johnny Carson: the Tonight Show Orchestra headed up by Doc Severinsen.

Doc was a trumpet player. That's an understatement. Doc was an amazing trumpet player. And he was funny. He started playing with the Tonight Show Orchestra in 1954 BEFORE Johhny Carson was the host and was there until Johnny retired in 1992. Thirty-eight years.He release several albums, toured like crazy and was generally regarded as one of the nicest guys in the business.

And his clothes.....oh my goodness. This is where the creativity of Doc shined brightest. Or not, depending on your personal taste. I've seen him in metallic prints, be-dazzled to put a Vegas show girl to shame and feathers. FEATHERS I tell you. Johnny and Ed joked with him and he just laughed it off. He was making a living doing what he wanted to do...who cared?

Doc Severinsen being Doc

Be bold in what you do. Life is short an no one gets out alive, so have fun.


Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 24 James is a Slacker

But, in my defense, I was medicated for a combination of bad-knee-getting-worse and kick-butt-immune-response-to-pollen. So there.

Today I'm problem solving an issue with reports that some of my videos are "stuttering" and getting out of sync. They play fine on the Godzilla-sized system I edit on and I can replicate the problem when viewing them online (sometimes) on various devices(sometimes) so I blame the Interwebs and YouTube.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to not try to fix the problem on my end if I can. So, I'm doing a little experimenting with rendering settings and the like  which is TERRIBLY exciting (said no one ever) and in the process I came across this little gem of a clip. I say gem for no particular reason other than it is one of my earliest attempts at shooting video with my Canon 7D digital camera. I've gone through as replaced the music (long story of a disagreement between my buyout music company (since taken over) YouTube, and myself. I tried to clean up the cuts as much as I could but the original files are long gone and this came out of a silly $20 editing program I bought and consequently hated.

So with that bit of dross out there in the open here's the video of a winter snow storm that hit Yokota Air Base, Japan in 2012 when we were blessed to live there. For me there's nothing better than winter weather and to experience it in a land that has you mesmerized is a bonus.

a great day to be out and about

Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 22 Creatively Uncreative...or the opposite

Today was one of those days that was necessary yet painful. They say the day you stop learning is the day you stop living (ok, I don't know if anyone really says that but it sounded good) and today I crammed in a bunch of learning from the YouTube Creator Academy.

In particular their pre-production boot camp series. It was a number of lessons about certain aspects of what happens before you record the first seconds of video in video, multiple choice and short answer questions. There were sections on story brainstorming, script writing, storyboarding as well as workflow and time management (and even some budgeting thrown in just for fun).

when my brain makes it onto paper

Now my video style doesn't lend itself to as much pre-planning as a traditional short film (the intended audience for this boot camp series) but I did learn quite a bit. And even topics that weren't directly relatable to me did trigger some thoughts as my mind wandered a rabbit trail or two and I ended up with a bunch of mad scratchings on the old Mk I mod I paper.

If you're a YT creator there's still time to sign up and plow through the material; it ends the 25th of this month (like in 2 days) so you'd better get on it.

Ya'll be creative 'n stuff.

Write 31 Days- Day 21 Creativity and the Secret Squirrel

This is kind of an odd blog entry because I spent the majority of the day (minus an exciting trip to the legal office to update our wills) creating something I'm working on that's, well....a secret.

Like many creative people I have multiple outlets for my creativity: as a maker, a video series host, as well as a writer of the more technical side of that creativity. But I'm also a writer of the purely creative variety; a world filled with situations and people that are both fantastic as well as boringly ordinary. I don't write in a genre where "anything goes" as some have the luxury of doing, but in a world bound by the reality a person of similar upbringing would easily recognize. IF situation X were to happen, a large group of people would reasonably expect A, B, and C to follow.

The rub is trying to weave those expected reactions into a story line that makes you want to turn the page. The challenge is to have the situation evolving in a way that makes you NOT want to put the book down when it's time to get the kids from school. Creativity tasked to the max. Does it hook you or not? How hard (or easy) it is for a test reader to walk away from it when you tell them supper is ready?

Try it. Come up with a tale of some sort and get it on paper. It doesn't have to be terribly long but can you get it to a point where you think "This will get them!" and hand it to that person 5 minutes before supper. Tell them they have 5 minutes (make sure you don't give them something that takes 3 minutes to read) and then see if they're late. Or if they come and start asking you questions, looking for more info you didn't feed them in those pages.

Just a thought.


Be creative folks.

Write 32 Days- Day 19 Gibberish

It feels as if I've always been on this island. Fleeting thoughts of friends, loved ones...I catch them out of the corner of my eye. I hear voices I do not recognize, smell perfume that is familiar yet strange. I know this is what happens when you're alone, but knowing doesn't make it better. It only lets you know how bad it's going to get.

I've gotten myself into a pickle. I under-cooked something and spent the past two day laying in my shelter trying to dehydrate myself from either end. There's no wind, so the sweat stays where it wells up from inside. I stopped sweating. That's when I knew I had to get up. Months upon months here and I have sweated every moment. When you stop sweating, you die. I don't want to die. Not here. Not like this.

I would like to die in a bed laying on crisp cotton sheets, a down duvet folded neatly at my feet. Tickled by waves of air dropping in rhythm from the ceiling fan. Droplets of water running down a glass of ice water within easy reach. A Bible on my chest, making me feel my breaths become slow and shallow. Slower and shallower. Then gone. Happy.

But I'm here. Crusted from the havoc my body has wrought because of some invisible bug in my gut. Frazzled because I don't have a razor and my skin is raw and oozing under the damned beard. My feet are raw from wading in the cove trying to find a fish to eat then they're sliced by the thorns and  shells and rocks. My gums bleed, my fingers bleed. My lips are split and chapped. It's hard to see at night and I have a headache. This ever-present headache that makes doing anything impossible and doing nothing unbearable.

I do not want to be like this. I am alive but not among the living. I have thought of a million ways to end it, to be done when I say I'm done. Not when the island beats me down to the last stinking breath.

I will not. For when I die, it will be on cool sheets, dusted by a breeze, water by my side and a Bible on my chest.

***********************

And that's what you do when you have to post on creativity and the day has been nothing but putting out fires caused by people other than yourself.

Be creative kids

Write 31 Days- Day 18 Low hanging fruit

I am totally stealing the idea for this post from my friend Michael Ann over at the OutAndBack blog. We've been friends for years going all the way back to our assignment in England where I was a Scout leader for their son and a photography teacher for their daughter. We've kept in touch over the years and she's a great writer so check her out.

Anyway, you've heard me lament about how much fun grocery shopping is. Fun like a kick in the junk. Yeah, that much. So anything I can do to get me in and out is a welcome idea and one that saves me a ton of time is a shopping list (ground-breaking eh?) with our weekly meal plan on the back. The grocery list is specific to our local grocery establishment: when we arrive in a new location (we move every 2-3 years) we make a new one, so here's how I do it.

I bring a blank sheet of paper and a trusty mechanical pencil and start the zig-zag pattern you do in the store. The first area I enter is usually produce and I write down the items we normally use during the month in the order I find them. I turn the corner, note the aisle number, and begin walking through repeating the process. No need to be super picky, but be thorough enough to get the general idea of where the items are THAT YOU USE. I then make a separate column for non-grocery items but I may cover that at a later date. One final swoop down the last aisle to the registers and I'm done. You can see our current list below:

shopping list for our family at our local store
yours will look different

   Bring your list home and put it into a landscape-oriented 4-column document. Don't get hung up on making it perfect, you'll be revising it occasionally (especially when your local shoppery decides to do a RE-SET which screws everything up. Insert a bad word of your choice <HERE>). Now, flip the page over and write MON TUE WED THR FRI SAT SUN across the top. This is where you'll do your meal planning. DON'T PANIC it isn't nearly as scary as you think. Besides, it is a great opportunity to get the family together and work on something together.

Under MON think of a meal you'd like to have on that day. Let's say spaghetti. The way I make it I need a package of thin spaghetti, a jar of sauce, 2 pounds of hamburger, a can of sliced mushrooms and Parmesan cheese to top it with. Flip the sheet over and circle the things you don't have. If you already have Parmesan then don't circle it; we're only interested in what we need to buy today. Flip the sheet back over and continue on down the line until you're done. Here's a handy tip: we designate Sunday as FFYS night meaning Fend For Your Self a.k.a. leftover night. Anything in the fridge is fair-game but you have to make it yourself. Suddenly junior wants to learn how to cook. You're helping his future wife to have a self-sufficient human so take advantage of it. She'll thank you later.

Now you have your week planned out for shopping. Leave the list on a counter and let everyone know that if there's something they need to get it on the list by Sunday night at bed time (I shop on Monday mornings). If it isn't on the list...I'm not buying it. This is when the kids' cereal appears or if they're out of school snacks for their lunches. Then I make a sweep of the fridge/pantry to see what else we'll need to make it through the week: bread, lunch meat, cheese, etc.

Now when you go shopping, you have a list of what you need to make it through the week. No more lollygagging  and looking at the well-engineered and enticing packages trying to sneak their way into your cart. If there's nothing in aisle 6 you need just cruise through without stopping. In and out, easy-peasy.

After shopping you put the weekly meal plan on the fridge and when someone asks what's for supper you point to it. You do this enough times and they'll stop bugging you and go to the list first. If someone wants something out of order, I might agree to change it but only if they help.

This is not rocket science (which is why I can do it) BUT between this shopping list and paying for our groceries in cash (you know, the green stuff) our weekly grocery bill has drastically decreased. Paying with cash is painful. Watching a big pile of $20s disappear before your very eyes hurts, but that's another topic for another day.

So that's my creativity in-action today. Try it for a week then revise your list. Before too long you'll have it settled down and you'll be a shopping master like me. My record is groceries for a family of four from store entrance to store exit in 27 minutes. And I've got a gimpy knee.

If you have a way to make grocery shopping go quicker please let us know below. Life is too short to spend all freaking day at the grocery store. I've got crap to do!

Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 17 Maker stuff

Today I did some creating. I have solicited opinions from the subscribers to the YouTube channel on how best to go about restoring the SUPERTONE LONE RANGER guitar and more specifically how to best repair and replace the bridge and bridge area that has been damaged by the passage of time. Dang, that was a long sentence. And in usual fashion they have come through with the best collection of wisdom I could ever hope to have personally.

This afternoon I trotted over to the big box store to pick me out some 1/4" by 1" aluminum bar stock to make a pair of cauls (devices to protect the work piece and to evenly distribute pressure during clamping) the size of the bridge. I had to make a pair of the because I will heat them both up in boiling water and then clamp them on either side of the damaged area and give it a good squeeze. The heat and moisture will help loosen the lignin in the wood and relax the wood so the pressure of the clamp can help smooth out the wavy nature of the damage (the bottom is bowed up and the top has a hump in it).

clamping caul made just for the
SUPERTONE LONE RANGER 3/4-scale guitar

top caul goes on the bottom of the soundboard
aligned with screws into the outside holes of the top caul

Was it an engineering feat of monumental significance? Nope.It was impressive for an untrained woodworker venturing into the land of metalworking, that's for sure.The next one will be better. We may see more of these before the month's out.

Be creative ya'll.

Write 31 Days- Day 16 Me time

Sunday is fun day, baby! I say that because when you look back at a day when you had problem after problem and you saw people just lean into it and gets stuff done it's fun.

OK, that's a lie.

Not fun, but you do giggle a bit when all is said and done. And Sunday and giggle don't rhyme. At least on Earth. But I did manage a single creative moment trying to get artsy. Operative word is trying.

screens and a nifty clock I covet
for my shop at home

The me time came afterwards when I carved out some time to work on a book project. No details for you yet, but is nothing at all like my previous book project. In a previous slice o' time I did nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe aviation photography. I went to some neat places, I saw some neat things and I decided to share what I learned with the world.

words and pictures
lots and lots of color pictures

With and luck tomorrow will be a busy day in the shop. And will someone PLEASE tell Ohio it is October and it should not be EIGHTY FREAKING DEGREES!!!!!!!!!!!!

Be creative folks.

Write 31 Days- Day 15 Creativity in the mundane

Sometimes creativity is disguised in the mundane. Mind-numbingly mundane at times.

Take editing video for example. While I am known to some as having a wit about myself and a sporadically humorous presence, having to look at my face-made-for-radio can, at times, become a bit tedious. So it becomes a challenge (read as problem solving) to pare my rambling as I discuss fixing instruments or  the finer points of utilizing light and equipment (a little side project called the Content Creator Series).

And when I'm just blabbing away (like I usually do) I tend to say "um" quite a bit or have the occasional "what was I going to do?" senior moment. Those aren't very exciting so I try to edit those out.

a typical production train wreck in the process of being
tamed for public consumption 

Throw in an additional camera and now I have to choose which view of my face-for-radio you get to see. Music also plays a part in many segments as it helps convey my confidence, terror, or ambivalence at the situation at hand. It isn't something I often consciously think of as creative because I do it so much and I get into a groove, but sitting down and having to write about it makes me see it for what it is.

Creativity in the guitar shop (or the editing room).

Write 31 Days- Day 14 Creative replacement?

Today my task was to re-create a broken bridge from the old guitar I'm working on. I wasn't trying to improve the part, just replace it. Any creativity I had would be trying to do the math to plot where the bridge pin holes would go on the new piece. But, it's problem solving so we get to use power tools to come up with a solution.

But my cat Reptar had his creative thing going on. Not sure what he was dreaming about but it radiated out of him like crazy and made for a mildly interesting photograph.

Reptar exuding good vibes in his sleep

As far as the bridge went it was pretty simple. I traced the old bridge as well as I could to get the general shape and location of the bridge pin holes and saddle notch. Then I did math to figure out the diameter of the holes and the spacing between them and transferred the results to the new piece of rosewood. A little work on the band saw, a little work on the sander and a bit of drilling and presto: one roughed-out bridge. Final saddle notch placement will happen when we're closer to being done but at least this part is done and out of the way.

broken bridge to paper to roughed-out bridge

BE creative folks.

Write 31 Days- Day 13 The anticlimactic day

I woke up. Did my morning biz and then called the manufacturer's technical support line for my 14-month old acre-and-a-half sized television (we had a weak moment). It has been fixed once already. Now, it is out of warranty (by less than 60 days) and they're like "here's a repair place, we're sorry, good luck".

Insert descriptive and rude words <HERE>.

Not getting the result I felt I deserved I warmed up my creative thinking brain cell and......did nothing. Until my second cup of coffee and then I thought I'd harness the power of the Interwebs. So I posted a calm, informative yet "I am not the happy camper" note to my Facebook page. Then I posted it to THEIR Facebook website. I gt a reply they had located my case record and would be in touch with me soon. We'll see.

That was about the most exciting thing that happened today. Well, not exactly. I was able to take down a couple of video cameras that didn't suit our needs at church and replace them with brand new cameras. Yeah, I know. The exciting life of a technical services team member. I'd say there's a line to get into this type of volunteering but there isn't; we're spread a little thin. If you're in the Dayton, OH area and looking to learn about video production, camera work, set design and construction and lighting we could learn you a thing or two. Drop me a line. We have hot coffee and Bill's doughnuts.

Did I forget to mention I took my daughter to the dentist. She needs braces. I already have a daughter in braces. I asked if we could just hand them down. They were not amused.

Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 12 When there's nothing to give

Today was about as much fun as a kick in the face. And not a cute little "baby on the bed learning to roll over" kick but more like a "teenager trying to get the goal to make the state finals and oh I'm sorry was that your face on my foot" kick.

OK, that may be over exaggerating it a bit (known to us Irish folk as being creative). But I did have to spend most of the morning in a meeting with our financial adviser. Let me assure you, it was not a place that inspired creativity. None. Zip. Zilch. But the day wasn't a total loss.

I made tuna salad.

Now my Mom makes the best tuna salad on the planet. Period. But I make it my way. And in nearly 50 years on the plant no two of those ways have been the same. Dill? Smoked paprika? White vs. black pepper? The possibilities of what you can do with those little glass jars of leaves and twigs (spices) means I never have to have the "same" tuna salad. And yes, it also means I don't necessarily get GOOD tuna salad every time, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. Keep me away from Vegas kids, 'cause I'm a high roller I tell you.

Creativity is pretty much at a standstill in the shop/office as well. The Supertone Lone Ranger guitar is still in "intensive moisturizing" mode and I'm still trying to get a handle on Trello and Evernote. And finally I enjoyed a panel discussion hosted by Tim Schmoyer on his Video Creators channel about when and how to utilize a team approach to making your YouTube channel run. Not a lot of need for that at the moment but I did learn quite a few things. I did "create" a couple of witty comments but I dare say they weren't some of my highest prose. Maybe next time.

Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 11 Is my Creativity Moist?

I know already I've lost a few readers just because I used the word MOIST and well, that's OK. If that word creeps you out then it'd be tough to hang around the shop with me for any length of time. But it actually pertains to today's post.

The morning was a total loss as I had a visit to the local stomper-on-of-nerves known as the dentist. Ugh.

The rest of the day was spent working on a contraption to help re-hydrate the Supertone Lone Ranger guitar I'm working on. Since its inception in 1937-38 it has had ample chance to dry out beyond a useful level allowing the wood to be ready to split given half a chance. And I gave it that chance by removing the bridge plate which was holding it together. CRACK.

split along the grain line on a 1937-38 Lone Ranger guitar

Insert grumbling and gnashing of teeth <HERE>.

So here comes the reason for the title: I needed to get an acceptable level of moisture back into that wood which would cause it to "plump up" and shrink the crack enough that I could reinforce it with what's called a cleat (a small piece of wood glued across the crack to hold the two in close proximity. And I had to do it on the typical Rattlecan budget allowance; nothing.

I found an old-school humidifier I had purchased for $2-3 bucks somewhere and set it close (but not blowing directly onto) to the guitar hoping to get some moisture around the outside. For the inside I used two small plastic cups with rolled up socks in them soaked in water to sit inside it and covered the top of the guitar with plastic to hold the moisture in. I've been moistening it up for a couple of days and the crack has closed up quite a bit. Hopefully a couple more days of this and we'll be ready to glue it back together.

Rattlecan humidification setup

I keep telling you, it isn't exciting but it is an endeavor where you can exercise your creativity much more often than you'd have thought.

Be creative kids.

Write 31 Days- Day 8 Creativity with heat

I greatly enjoy working on old instruments. There's is something magical about opening up an instrument that has only had a small round window to the world since it was sealed up in a factory in the 1930s. It is exciting to see small stamps and production scribbles likely never seen by two or three people at the factory (and likely only understood by them).

And in the modern day where instruments are often assembled with epoxy or urethane and dang near impossible to dis-assemble the instruments of old were, in large part, held together with old fashioned hide glue. As its name suggests, hide glue is obtained for processing animal hides (mostly) to get the collagen proteins removed. It hardens at room temperature and is often supplied in cans of granules. If kept dry it can last almost indefinitely and a properly glued joint can hold for a very long time. Think hundreds of years as in old antique furniture.

Instruments constructed with hide glue have a nifty little ability to be un-glued by the addition of heat. Once the glue reaches a critical temperature of 140-160F it will release and your part is now free. Old hide glue will stick to new hide glue as well (newer glues won't do that usually).

So what has this got to do with creativity?

Well let me tell you- knowing that at a certain temperature hide glue will release is one thing, getting a particular segment of hide glue to reach that temperature can be quite another. Case in point is this 1937-38 Supertone Lone ranger 3/4-scale guitar I have. It is in need of love and affection of the restorative manner so I pulled the back off of it (its a kid's guitar and I can't get my meaty man-hand into the sound hole) and needed to remove the mis-positioned lower braces. Coming from the heyday of hide glue construction meant I should just lay some heat onto it and they would pop right off. In theory.

Supertone Lone Range guitar with the back removed and
needing the two braces on the (R) removed

To help things along I placed a heating pad underneath the guitar to drive some heat into the bottom of the glue joint through the sound board. It wouldn't be enough to release the joint but it would mean I would be 30-40F closer to that magic number. Now I'm sure I'm not the first guy to come up with the heating pad idea, but it was a new thought to me as I pondered how to get to the glue to release. Creative in the eyes of the world? Probably not. Creative in my small part of the planet? You bet.There were other ways I though to get heat into that joint: spatulas heated in boiling water, hot air from hair dryers and others. Again, I know there are better, more efficient and less time-consuming ways to do this. Actually, I think there are but I don't know. I have a simple fact (hide glue releases with heat) and my brain tries to come up with ways to get heat into that glue joint to release.

Creativity in the guitar shop.

Write 31 Days- Day 7 mechanical creativity

A short while ago a friend of mine told me that he knows that I'm still passionate about photography no matter what I'm working on at the time. I pressed him on the statement and he said it didn't matter what I was doing i.e. guitar building, organizing tools, on vacation my passion for photography showed in my images of even the most mundane subject. He was referencing a photo I had taken of my tools that had been picked up by Craftsman to put in their Instagram feed.

my tools on the Craftsman Instagram feed

It took me a minute to get what he meant. Often I don't even think about how I subconsciously look for a "better" angle or the "right" light for pictures of everyday this I want to document. Sometimes I put some conscious thought into it but mostly I am in "auto mode" and just get it done.

another subconscious "snapshot" from the phone

You can see where television camera operators can go from thinking in a pure technical more in the field to thinking artistically, especially if they're trying to get what's called B-roll or footage that will support a story or be used later on as background scenery. Just today, while watching coverage of Hurricane Matthew I saw one scene where there was some sea grass positioned in the lower-right intersection of the thirds** while the wave action against the pier was in the upper-left third. Nice to see them being able to flex their creative muscle every once and awhile.

Perhaps one can feel they're not creative because it has become normal or routine. If that's you, take a moment and think of the things you have been creative with in the past and see if you're doing them on "cruise control" in your everyday life without even realizing it.Realizing that may be what you  (or I) need to spark a more active participation on the creative process and to go to places you may not have even explored.



**for a simple explanation visit this website

Write 31 Days- Day 6 Don't get wrapped around an axle

This is somewhat a continuation of yesterday's ramble through the mire of my mind about simultaneous creativity or original creativity.

If we go back to the definition of creativity that we used on day 1, it gets one to thinking. Well, it gets ME to thinking as I'm waiting on a video to render; not sure how your days is going in that regards.

Creativity- having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas

 Without waxing poetically or wandering into the metaphysical realm, what does the word "new" mean in this definition. New as to the planet or new to just myself? What about trying something to validate if it works thus becoming a "new" skill you now have that you didn't before?

Case in point is me making my own rosettes and head stock overlays for my guitars. The rosette is the round design that goes around the sound hole and the head stock overlay is up by the tuners and traditionally where the logo goes for the manufacturer. I first saw a spalted** rosette in a book on classical guitar making by Bogdanovich and thought it was the neatest thing since athletic shoes with pockets (dating myself I imagine). I ordered a 6"x6" piece of spalted maple and made one for a 12-string guitar I was restoring that was found in a brush pile. Some time later I'm making another guitar for a friend and am in need of a rosette when I find some spalted wood in my son's firewood pile. I think to myself it might be neat to bookmatch^ that wood and make a rosette with a symetrical pattern to it.

Spalted book matched headstock overlay

So I did. I sliced the wood into 1/4" slices, evened-up the edges I was going to join and made a single piece of mirrored wood. I eventually installed it into the guitar top.So here's the $64,000 question:

Was it new? Did it fit the definition of creative?

I know that spalted rosettes have been made as I've seen Bogdanovich and others use them. I haven't seen anyone using a bookmatched spalted rosette or head stock, but I have to imagine it has been done before. So the question begs to be asked did I do anything creative as per our definition.

Now before we get too hung up on this realize that this is purely an academic exercise. Away from this blog entry I really don't care if what I do fits a definition of, well...anything. I enjoy greatly having a problem (I need a rosette) and finding a solution to that problem (make my own from firewood) especially if it impacts the budget in a minimal fashion. Don't get hung up on what labels may/may not get stuck to you.

And as I sign off, please say a prayer for everyone getting hammered by Hurricane Matthew. I have relatives that fled their homes on the Georgia coast today and folks in Haiti and other Caribbean locations are having a tough go of things.



**spalting is a process where colonies of fungus invade a piece of dead wood and turn it different colors. It is a natural decay process that can create very stunning patterns.

^bookmatching is where you slice thin pieces of wood and open the cuts like pages in a book, the resulting pattern can be very symmetrical and appealing

Write 31 Days- day 5 Can you Reinvent the Wheel?

So today was a total bust (productivity-wise) but while I was searching furiously for 2 pieces of equipment I had an abundance of time to ponder a thing or two in my tender little man-heart.

Mostly, I grumbled about why my little container of hangar bolts wasn't in the assigned spot. What had become of them? Were they scared of being used for their intended purpose? Were they in that "rebellious" stage of their existence? Had they run off with the *gasp* slotted screw driver? The mind boggles at the shame that could be brought upon the shop if that got out.

I also got in some quality thinking time about creativity. Spanning the distances of time and geography how many people have been creative about the same thing? Surely the incidence of the creation of a particular idea or good is not really "new" given the totality of mankind. A good example is the era of early aviation when so much was being discovered and doubtless there were more than a few A-HAs happening concurrently and someone was simply in a better place at a better time to be seen as "the guy" to think it up.

Stepping outside the world of patents and lawyers, if both ideas were developed apart from the "other guy" does the creativity become diminished because of one or the other being a better publicist? A better filler-out of forms? A better salesman? I have to tell you, all other things being equal,  I don't think so.

From a point-of-view of pure creativity the mind wrestles with the problem at hand. "How do I get wind moving over the wing to create lift?" plagues both camps and the experience of each leads to a unique solution, good or bad. Some jump off a cliff, some built a catapult. Some succeed, some fail. But to assign a "more" or "less" tag to the expenditure of creative energy?

Keep creating. Keep working the problem, searching for the solution. Put your head down and push on. Because eventually you might find....hey, my hangar bolts!

Write 31 Days- day 3 James, the creative slug

OK, it wasn't really THAT bad but Mondays are notorious for being a "things I need to do to stay alive" kind of day: one child to school early for Jazz band then to the grocery store (and shopping at 0745 is sooooo easy) then put them away and next thing you know you've blown a handful of hours doing not much creative.

I really, really, really wish I had a way to shop creatively. I don't. In fact, right now getting groceries is an act of madness as they are renovating my local huckster and there's always one aisle that gets re-located down between the stink bait and the perfume aisle that smells like I imagine the house on Jersey Shore stinks like. And I shop as if my list is one giant check-box: it is either done or it isn't. don't block my aisle, stop chit-chatting about which tuna has dropped $0.03 since last week or how satisfying your "morning constitutional" was. Thus my enjoyment of the 0745 shopping time frame. So if you have an idea how creativity can be oozed into WITHOUT slowing me down...I'm all ears.

I did the "morning biz" part of my day checking e-mail and various presences on the Interwebs and started on re-locating a small "set" I have for shooting upper torso videos. There was problem solving but honestly, no real creativity. I moved furniture and wires and lights but nothing innovative that I felt the need to share with the world.

The afternoon though...that was a different story. Today I did the primary taping of a video tentatively titled "Five Ways to Make a Crappy DIY Video" and dear-o-dear....the snark is strong on this one. Video editing took the remainder of the afternoon and some of the evening. Tomorrow I'll shoot the B-roll, final edit, render and upload.If you are a subscriber to the RGR YouTube channel you'll likely see it next week.

*sigh*

One minute late, so I guess technically I'll do two posts tomorrow.

Have a good one folks.