This is literally one of the “materials” listed in the Kitchenaid Mixer!?!
Welcome to my creative outlet. A place to share ephemera I’ve collected online and offline,
along with some writing.
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Another fall means another grape harvest, and another attempt at making wine.
This is the 3rd (or 4th?) year now, and although I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, I think I have less of no idea now 🙃
This year I kept the vines pruned back, and thinned the grapes in an attempt to get better fruit. This worked, resulting in much more even and ripe grapes, but … way less of them. My red only yielded 2 bottles, so they better be good.
Give it a year and we’ll see how it is – at least the colour is nice.
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I promised my boys we would “do art” today. We decided to make a Zine.
Making a Zine is a fun project that only requires a sheet of paper and some creativity. You can write a short story, or just do a bunch of random drawings – having it in a book format is way cooler.
For my story, I started with the title and simply wrote as I went. For non-nerds, a cron job is a scheduled tasks that a computer runs (or is supposed to). It’s a bizarre story, but our modern world can be too.
Without further ado, introducing my first short story: Alfred the AI Alligator. It is hopefully not my last nor my best 🙂
1 / 5
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What do you do when there is no diving board? Get thrown in the pool of course!
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If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed.
Corrie Ten Boom
If you look within, you’ll be depressed.
If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.
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Recently a flower was cut from our garden before blooming (not blaming any child) so I stuck it in a jar to see if it would open. At first nothing happened. Then, for a few weeks, roots began to grow longer and deeper. Finally, the flower grew and opened within a day or two.
Our lives are like this too. For us to bear good fruit, or anything useful or beautiful, it requires nourishment and deep roots. But roots take time, and you don’t see them growing because it’s all happening under the soil of our lives. Yet, if you have patience, and remain in a place of nourishment (Jesus called it abiding) – there will be fruit in abundance.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
Jeremiah 17:7-8 ESV
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:5 ESV
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I’m taking some time offline to enjoy screen free activities. In the meantime, wishing you a very Merry Christmas!
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A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.
Dorothy SayersThis feels like a fitting quote for Black Friday weekend.
I’ve posted Dorothy Sayers before, but her writing contains much wisdom on work and life. Check out her essay Why Work? for more.
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I always laugh when I see the sign for this business. Perhaps they named it before every single business or transaction was rated out of 5 stars. Hopefully, it isn’t four out of ten!
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Living on the Pacific Northwest, we get a lot of rain (it is a temperate rainforest), especially in late fall. But if you put on your rain gear and get away from the city, it is always so beautiful and peaceful in the woods.
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I was reviewing a bin of my old school work and found this gem. It was an acrostic poem based on my name, may not be the most elegant, but it is true 🙂
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I’ve always loved electronic music, sadly now renamed EDM and often much worse (or I’m just old). A few years ago my son and I started playing around with Garage Band and made some fun beats – including this dancey one.
Since then I picked up a PO-33 micro sampler and have played around here and there, but not enough to feel competent. Hopefully I’ll be posting some more music in the future. 🕺
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Spotted in Washington, it was too good to pass up the photo opportunity.
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A Sabbath haiku.
I love to sleep in
Me
Especially on Sunday
Oh no, late for church
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Go to the creative gym every day
Jean JullienI’ve recently read a few books by artists including Jean Jullien and one thing that stood out is the emphasis each of them placed on practice.
Drawing has always been something I enjoy, but I haven’t
hadmade the time to practice enough to improve or form a meaningful habit. This means the friction to get started was way too high.Finally a few weeks ago I broke the pattern and have started sketching almost daily. As a bonus, I find that when I draw, my boys are more inspired to draw too. I’m also finding that as I try drawing things I find harder (animals and people) I’m improving – though I still manage to make faces look weird 🙃
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I’m not one to be easily bested by a problem. In this case a friend was having a little summer hang out and asked if I could bring my fire pit. I was planning to bike, so this was the solution …
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like a blind dog in a meat market
- Going wild, out of control
I don’t recall where I read this phrase, but it immediately stuck because of its strong visual description. I will use it to (somewhat accurately) describe my boys at times.
I did some digging and it seems like it was in use for well over a century, but the origin is unknown.
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When walking (or driving), I’m always on the lookout for interesting or funny signs. This one made me laugh, it’s like they didn’t want to offend anyone who was going to pee on their window – so Canadian 😂
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…before there can be art there must be memories and before there can be memories there must be experience.
Herbert ReadAll art starts with inspiration. It may be a difficult conversation, an overwhelming emotion, a beautiful sunset, or events we don’t even consciously remember. And if done well, the art invites the viewer or reader or listener in, evoking remembrances of places and people and feelings.
But this isn’t easy, and the output we see is often only a small part of the effort. Tolkien spending over a decade on The Lord of the Rings, including appendices. Frank Herbert spent five years travelling and exploring a wide range of ideas before starting his epic novel Dune. J.K. Rowling went through years of difficulty between the idea for Harry Potter and publishing the first book.
Not only that, as participants, we long to know the story behind the art. Who was the love song for? What inspired the book? Why did they choose that movie ending?
I remember the days of buying an album, struggling to remove the plastic wrap, placing the CD in the player and then poring over the booklet. My favorite albums often had pictures, lyrics, and stories from the artist that enhanced the listening experience.
But now we have AI art, and it sucks. Not because it is obviously AI (though often it is) but because it was not created by a human. There was no inspiration, no experiences, no memories behind the work; just trillions of tokens of data with some hallucinations and boom, a song or story or video ready for you. I realize that AI generated art is inevitable, but I will do all I can to avoid it, and I hope you will too.
P.S. Here’s a cartoonist, The Oatmeal, describing their take on AI art (warning, some swears)
