“My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.”
— Taylor Swift
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Posts Tagged ‘#365Ways2023’
This Is the Way
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, inspiration, she should know, Thoughts, Writers, writing on December 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Know Your Limits (In a Good Way)
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, art, creativity, fail better, failure, Thoughts, Writers, writing on December 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »
“You need to drop glass on the floor, get the burns, all those things. The real practice is in all the pieces that didn’t make it, the cliched blood, sweat and tears. You can’t know the limits of something unless you’ve failed.”
— Will Shakspeare, artisan glassblower
And you can still make something beautiful along the way.
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What Is It Like?
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, creativity, curiosity, Fiction, inspiration, Writers, writing, WritingResearch on December 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »
If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to be someone else, either because you need background for a character or because some days, daydreaming about a different life is all that’s standing between you and a very impolitic email to your boss, this podcast may interest you!
Curious what it would be like to walk in someone else’s (work) shoes? Join New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath as he explores the world of work, one profession at a time, and interviews people who love what they do. What does a couples therapist think when a friend asks for relationship advice? What happens if a welder fails to wear safety glasses? What can get a stadium beer vendor fired? If you’ve ever met someone whose work you were curious about, and you had 100 nosy questions but were too polite to ask … well, this is the show for you.
Today’s episode? What it’s like to be A Professional Santa Claus.
You know you want to know!
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Purr-fect
Posted in Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, NASA, science, space cats on December 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Oh look, NASA just sent the first Ultra-HD video through deep space using a laser communications system.
NASA’s Tech Demo Streams First Video From Deep Space via Laser
Me: Cool cool cool. It’s a test, right?
Other Me: That’s right.
Me: So this experiment marks the progress humanity has made in reaching out to the stars. I wonder which video NASA used?
Other Me: This one. I think it perfectly encapsulates the usefulness of laser technology in general, and where we are as a species right now in particular.
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Not So Serious
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, Thoughts on December 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Taking your responsibilities seriously should never stand in the way of taking your ego lightly.
— Adam Grant
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Today, Meet Tomorrow
Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, AI, art, creativity, genre fiction, Thoughts, Writers, writing on December 17, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Ken Liu is one of our modern masters of speculative fiction. The first story of his that I read was “The Paper Menagerie,” “the first piece of fiction to win three genre literary awards: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Award.”
So he’s pretty good.
He’s also been thinking about art, AI and the evolving relationship between them. Here’s his new story:
Future Science Fiction Digest – Good Stories
Clara’s favorite part of the workday is the very beginning.
She likes flipping the switches on the wall right inside the office entrance, all sixteen of them, different colors and laid out in two neat columns, like the console from an old NASA space capsule that she got to sit inside once on a school trip to DC. As she takes a sip of her latte, her right hand running up the wall, click-click-click, flipping one switch after another, she imagines herself turning on rocket engines, initiating a docking maneuver, venting some dangerous alien spores out the airlock.
The story is one of the many interesting pieces in The Digital Aesthete: Human Musings on the Intersection of Art and AI, edited by Alex Shvartsman with an impressive roster of authors.
Today’s software can only imitate art, but what about tomorrow?
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Wish Me Luck!
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, #notwriting, annoyances, broken things, problems, technology on December 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Today we are experiencing some non-minor technical difficulties. I am attempting to handle the situation with aplomb.
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
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Santa’s New Thing
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, #frostyadultbeverages, recipes on December 15, 2023| Leave a Comment »
The other day I ran across a recipe for something called English Milk Punch. Primary ingredients? Rum and curdled milk.
Say what now?
How to Make English Milk Punch
Essentially, English milk punch is made up of two distinct parts that are combined. The first part is a rum, sugar, and citrus juice mixture. Then, hot milk and spices are added and allowed to infuse until the milk curdles.
Wait a minute—did he just say something about curdled milk? Seriously? And you want me to drink it and serve it to my guests?
Now, I don’t drink a lot of alcohol but it is the warm and cozy spiced beverage season (™) and this recipe sounded just weird enough to be wonderful. I had to try it.
It took a bit of time but was, in the end, both fun and delicious.
Verdict? Worth it. And if you happened to leave a glass of this out for a certain big bearded, red-clad gentleman come Christmas Eve, I don’t think he’d mind at all.
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One Weird Trick for Happiness
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, do you have chill?, happiness, Thoughts, Writers on December 14, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Apologies for the clickbaity title, but I actually do have a weird trick. It’s simple to do but a little hard to explain.
The trick is to close my eyes and relax my focus (literal, not figurative) from “out there” back to the approximate plane of my nose. I know it’s working when I break into an involuntary grin.
It’s a small thing that only takes a second, but some days a little trick is all I need.
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Of Notes and Meteors
Posted in Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2023, space on December 13, 2023| Leave a Comment »
Did this post start out life as a path to a map of sci-fi story locations in space? It did, and then I realized that in my haste, I’d picked a draft I’d already posted before.
It happens, especially on days when one is juggling not one not two not three but four big projects, and one has absolute reams of notes in the “blog post ideas” folder.
So now I’m here with an update, still space-related but also experiential. It has to do with the Geminid meteor shower.
Bundle up and look to the sky: It’s time for one of the best meteor showers of the year
The shower will be at its peak on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, though you’ll likely see some meteors in the nights before and after…
“The meteors will seem to shoot out of the constellation Gemini (hence the name) but could streak across pretty much any part of the sky,” Wiegert said. “So if you can find a dark place, with a good view of the sky in any direction, you could get a good view of the Geminids.”
Happy hunting!
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