Illustrations

I really like it when I see blog posts that have an accompanying image. It adds a nice personality to the post. Just that little bit extra splash of color and visuals for the imagination to the reader. Images also foreshadow part of or the whole message of the post. Like a little teaser.

I started drawing in Biology class. Our assignments and tests were prose-style questions and we had to draw the accompanying illustration of the topic we were answering. I used to be pretty good at those drawings.

Then came engineering drawings -- isometric and orthographic projections, plan and elevation views of complex machinery -- and I really liked those. We used a mini-drafter, A3 paper and a 0.5mm mechanical pencil. I was good at it.

All these illustrations and drawing requirements vanished once I got a J.O.B. I do CAD layouts with my projects, but those are not tricky. And none require the use of a pen and a paper. It is all mouse clicks, snap to grids and so on.

So I am going to give this drawing thing a shot again. I drew the watercolor pallete thats in the header image. I drew it on my iPad mini using the Pencil and Paper app by Fifty Three. I am really bad at it... I know.

My ambitious plan is to write a blog post in the evening as time permits. Then find something to draw about it. My skills are severely limited, so I have to be creative before I even pick up the stylus.

It will be fun!

P.S. I am going back and adding images to older posts.

Blogging Daily

I discovered C.J. Chivers when I was having my second stab at trying photography. My camera: a shiny new iPhone 4s. Mr. Chivers wrote about being a lesser photographer which resonated with me. The photography world was filled with high speced DSLRs with expensive lenses and Mr. Chivers' words were a relief.

C.J. Chivers stopped posting on Lesser Photographer a little while ago. He started blogging daily on his personal page. This really got me thinking about blogging daily. Especially since I dusted off my old RSS feeds on Feedly, I was able to recently read his post about blogging daily

"It's a great practice as a writer, photographer or creator in general to read intelligent content outside the walls of social media and create your own. It's an exercise in mental health more than promotion." -- C.J. Chivers

He quotes Seth Godin who is a daily blogging pioneer.

"Everyone should write a blog, every day, even if no one reads it. There’s countless reasons why it’s a good idea and I can’t think of one reason it’s a bad idea. If you know you have to write a blog post tomorrow, something in writing, something that will be around 6 months from now, about something in the world, you will start looking for something in the world to to write about. You will seek to notice something interesting and to say something creative about it. Well, isn’t that all we’re looking for? The best practice of generously sharing what you notice about the world is exactly the antidote for your fear." -- Seth Godin

These are my two points of inspiration for blogging daily. I am trying to post this piece in the last fifteen minutes before my wind down time (9:30 PM) when all electronic devices get put away...which means I am serious about both, the wind-down time and the blogging daily.

I think I know why I want to blog daily but I want to distill that thought a bit more before I write about it here.

Hello World!

The urge to write an I wish song style blog post here is strong, this being my first post on this website. I shall resist, however.

I have been fond of blogs since I discovered the magic of RSS. Then came the platforms of Instagram and Facebook which turned RSS on its head. After being lambasted for years with clickbait memes on Facebook, I found myself thinking of the days when I would be exposed to new ideas in the format of blogs. I had a good system going with Google Reader till it was killed.

The creative part of me wants to explore ideas. The social media wasteland seems cluttered with Buzzfeed style shit content. I am looking for ideas that have a shelf life of more than 10 seconds. I am forcing myself to dust off the old RSS reader subscriptions which have been chugging away loyally. Great people are still typing, producing beautiful words.

I have been primarily exploring ideas through my new hobbies, namely woodworking and youtubing. I still want to continue doing those. But woodworking and youtubing are activities that are a result of ideas, not platforms where ideas are formed and distilled. I need to distill and condense the jumble of thoughts that run through my brain -- and form consice ideas that I can then project into my hobbies. This is where this blog comes in. Let's see where it takes me.