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Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’

Yippee for Yaupon

Posted in Food and..., Likes, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 28, 2021| 1 Comment »

I have found a source of caffeine that I can actually drink and I am suuuuperhappyaboutthat!

Ahem.

I gave up coffee voluntarily in grad school (because school was stressful enough and also when you need a giant pot to get through the day that’s your body telling you something) and then had to give up tea a few years later for digestive reasons. So I’ve been living a mostly caffeine free life for too long.

Recently, through a confluence of conversational touch points, I found myself telling my mother about yaupon, the only (known) caffeinated plant native to North America. 

Luteus, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Yaupon (pronounced yō-pon) is a branch of the holly family. The scientific name is terrible (Ilex vomitoria, um, no thanks?) but the plant and tea have nothing to do with regurgitation (ok, that’s fine then!). 

Native to the southeastern US, it was used by natives for thousands of years, and traded across North America and the Atlantic.

Yaupon: The rebirth of America’s forgotten tea – BBC Travel

When picked, roasted and boiled, the leaves yield a yellow to dark-orange elixir with a fruity and earthy aroma and a smooth flavour with malty tones. As if orchestrated specifically for the mind and body, yaupon leaves’ perfect ratio of stimulating xanthines such as caffeine, theobromine and theophylline release slowly into the body, providing a jitter-free mental clarity and an ease to the stomach.

* * *

Why am I going on about this tea? Because it’s native, sustainable, and it deserves to be thought of as more than a “pesky weed.” It’s tannin free, so unlike traditional tea from Camellia sinensis, you can steep it multiple times without that unfun bitter, astringent aftertaste.

Also, because I happen to have a bag from one of the more prominent yaupon companies, CatSpring in Texas, and I’m drinking a delicious cup with maple syrup right now. 

This caffeine stuff works, y’all;)

* * *

Speaking of, let’s just take a brief moment to appreciate the role of caffeine, “the most widely used psychoactive drug on Earth,” in human history.

Beer built the pyramids, but caffeine powered the Enlightenment. 

Whatever your beverage of choice, may your eyes remain bright and your synapses active!

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Photo by Godisable Jacob on Pexels.com

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Grandma, Smiling Down

Posted in Other, tagged , , , on August 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »

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No Shame in Shortcuts

Posted in Likes, Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 26, 2021| 2 Comments »

So long as you go about it ethically, I don’t see any shame in shortcuts. On a general note, most of what has given us as a species an edge could reasonably be categorized as such. And personally, I am particularly in favor of techniques, tools and strategies that help me fill in gaps of time or talent.

I’ve mentioned drawing, and how I can’t. Oh sure, I used to be able to draw an almost perfect circle freehand and once drew the world’s most beautiful eye while I was supposed to be studying verb conjugations in high school French class, but that’s about the extent of my talents in that department.

That doesn’t stop me from wanting to do more. If only my fellow monkeys had developed some tools that could help me make up for such deficiencies!

Cue computer drawing programs, yes, but then what? There’s still the difference between what I see in my mind and what comes out on the page or screen.

I came across this tool the other day: the Da Vinci Sketch Addon for Photoshop. 

* * *

Ooh, I said to the cat (who paid as much attention as usual, which is to say none), that is exactly the sort of art I like, part beauty, part craft, part epistolary exploration. Too bad I had to move away from Photoshop. Now what?

First, despair! Cue gnashing of teeth and rending of garments (just kidding, that’s wasteful and I really hate to shop).

Then it was time to get to work.

I decided to see if I could replicate some version of this technique in Affinity Photo. After forum diving, video watching, and a visit to The notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, I produced this:

The Venus de Milo by Alexandros of Antioch, sculpted c. 150BC. Original photo by tabitha turner on Unsplash, text and doodles by Leonardo da Vinci. I don’t read Italian, much less Renaissance mirror writing, but I would love it if this was Leo’s to do or shopping list. “Note: buy looser robes with draping like this, because I like a healthy breeze around my private parts.”

* * *

Not bad, aside from the fact that it took forever and could use some real hatching and more dramatic outlines and the shading crashed the program about a dozen times. Still, it was progress I felt ok about.

Working through that puzzle also gave me time to think, and in that time I realized a couple of important things:

  • my computer is not the only computer in this house, and while the desktop upstairs has had the tech equivalent of a stroke and can’t be trusted with anything not backed up, I did manage to rebuild it into a functional system and it is now running a deprecated OS,
  • six bucks is not a lot of money, and
  • don’t I still have the disks for CS5, which includes Photoshop, kicking around somewhere?

True, true, and yes, yes I do.

Cue exciting graphic adventures!

* * *

I may have also sprung for a couple more tools from the same developer. Still affordable, and still worth it. This is what the Da Vinci Photoshop action produced, plus several other versions:

Da Vinci action
vintage sketch action
architecture sketch action

* * *

Have I been having fun? Yes, and here’s my absolute favorite so far:

When Leo met 3PO. Original Image by Gerhard Janson from Pixabay 

Shortcuts can be terrific so long as they don’t impede learning. In this case, I got the mental workout of deconstructing and rebuilding an effect, plus the practicality of pre-built actions.

Also C-3PO:)

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Projects In Progress

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on August 23, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“Just because things hadn’t gone the way I had planned didn’t necessarily mean they had gone wrong.”

― Ann Patchett

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Photo by Daniel Angele on Unsplash

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Books Neverending

Posted in Entertainment, Likes, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 21, 2021| 1 Comment »

In my roles as a writer and as a person, I read a lot. Some books I purchase, but many I access through my local library. How great is that?*

So I just spent a non-zero amount of time writing a little AppleScript to automagically run a search in any of the four area library systems that share e-book resources. 

Was it necessary? No. I could click through my library portal and into each separate library system for every book I want to check, one stodgy button at a time. Ho hum.

Does this script save time and my wrists and open up new worlds of possibilities?

Yes.

Was it fun to make?

Also yes:)

* * *

I know, it’s a store, not a library. But she’s having so much fun! Photo by Ying Ge on Unsplash

* I love books, and I’m lucky enough to live in a society that supports public libraries. In fact, I made a modest donation to my local library the other day, and hope it helps bring just a little more literacy and knowledge and enjoyment to my city.

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The Devil’s Crutch

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

My father is going through old boxes of photographs and other memorabilia and sent me a story, one of my first, called “The Devil’s Crutch.” I couldn’t write or (as you’ll see) grasp the intricacies of grammar, geography, or complete sentences, but I dictated it to my mother. 

First we have the story from when I was, what, maybe three years old? I‘ve changed since then (I can even hold a pen all by myself!), but I tried to understand at least a little of what might have been going through my head that day. Then for fun, I turned it into a drabble.

(My father seemed particularly taken by the word “smitchey.” I no longer know what it means but I kept it.)

* * *

The Devil’s Crutch

Once upon a time there was a old, old house up in the south pole. There in the house there is a little room in the playroom and in the room there was a lot of dust. In the room there was a lot of dolls. The dolls didn’t have dust on them because a little smitchey girl had been playing with them. The house was haunted. And this couple moved in the haunted house and every night a ghost came out at twelve o’clock and every night when the ghost came out the couple woke up and saw the ghost and the ghost disappeared whenever the couple saw the ghost. The ghost disappeared. One night the father and the mother was sleeping on the sofa and the devil’s came instead of the ghost. And the owner of the crutch came to the house with the crutch and the owner of the crutch was the devil.

The End

* * *

Once there was a haunted old house way up in the South Pole. It had a playroom of dusty dolls, a grandfather clock and a crutch like bleached bone. 

A family with a smitchey little girl arrived. Every midnight the towering clock cried out. Even when the mother stopped the pendulum, and the father hid the key.

The girl saw a little ghost waving from inside the clock.

She slept huddled under the playroom table. The dolls said it was safer that way.

One night the clock stayed silent and the ghost hid.

And the owner came for his crutch. 

* * *

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

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How to Win in Twelve Parsecs or Less

Posted in Entertainment, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2021| 1 Comment »

Does everything have to be perfect in order for a story to work? Nope. 

Here’s the script and breakdown for Star Wars:

Star Wars: A New Hope Script — Screenplay Analysis and PDF Download

par·sec| ˈpärsek | (abbreviation pc) noun

a unit of distance used in astronomy, equal to about 3.26 light years (3.086 × 1013 kilometers). One parsec corresponds to the distance at which the mean radius of the earth’s orbit subtends an angle of one second of arc.

A parsec is a measurement of distance, not time. Twelve of those do not a winning Kessel Run make, but, as millions of fans (and yes, dollars) attest, no one cares. The story works.

These are the things I think about when I’m stuck on a plot point, or deep in historical or technical weeds.

Just keep going.

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Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash

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Monarch Joe

Posted in Likes, tagged , , , , , , , on August 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

The Joe Pye Weed is in full bloom and buzzing with big bees, small bees and not-bees, and look who stopped by!

I only wish we had the space and sun for a dozen more of these plants, plus scads of milkweed for this monarch and all of its friends. Until then, I’ll do what I can with what I have.

Cliché? Yes, but still a pretty good motto!

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On Action

Posted in Other, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

“When we feel powerful, it leads us to act. When we feel powerless, we don’t act.”

— Amy Cuddy

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Photo by John Fowler on Unsplash

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It’s Not Over Yet

Posted in Other, tagged , , , , , on August 10, 2021| 2 Comments »

I’ve been trying to work up a positive post for today, but the recent IPCC climate report keeps popping into my head, and that’s anything but positive. So let’s take a moment to review.

If you want a summary (or two), to read the report, or to test out the interactive atlas outlining what we can expect by region (here’s the info for North and Central America), you can. 

tl;dr: “Worst choose your own adventure book ever.”

* * *

Or check out this cartoon:

It should not come as a surprise that climate change is worse than we thought and also getting worser

Because bad news goes down easier from cute penguins. 

That said, it isn’t all bad. We’re at the bottom of the final inning, yes, but the game isn’t over yet.

* * *

Also. Humans are a lot of things, but we aren’t quitters.

We must not delude ourselves about the immense challenges the world faces, but we can’t let anxiety overwhelm and paralyse us. The world isn’t doomed quite yet – there is still a window of opportunity to change things.

— Yes, the climate crisis is terrifying. But I refuse to abandon hope

And if I learned anything from the Terminator franchise (aside from the many uses of a shotgun), it’s that there is no fate but what we make.

* * *

Photo by Damir Babacic on Unsplash

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