Posted in Science!, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, creativity, inspiration, invention, Thoughts, Writers on January 10, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Ha ha ha ha, this is 110% amazing!
More info and videos on this obviously critical area of scientific research:
So if humans visit underwater environments in a submarine, are these fish driving around in a supermarine?
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, creativity, inspiration, magic, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 5, 2022| Leave a Comment »
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”
― Carl Sagan
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, #TolkienBirthdayToast, creativity, Fiction, genre fiction, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on January 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »
You never know whose life you’re going to touch. I trace a line between my own love of reading and writing to a relatively obscure (at the time) fantasy series read to us by my father, back to his department secretary, and eventually to Oxford professor and World War One veteran JRR Tolkien, born 130 years ago today.
Tolkien Birthday Toast: raise a glass to the Professor in honour of his 130th birthday
If book sales, movie earnings, popular culture and Peter Jackson’s knighthood are any indication, millions of other people also have a similar connection to an academic whose books were once dismissed as simple tales for children.
They were wrong about that.
Hobbits and hippies: Tolkien and the counterculture – BBC Culture
I’m taking this as a reminder to do my best. As a children’s author, chef, engineer, teacher or whatever else you may be, you never know what impact you may have.
For myself, I hope that impact stirs even a little of the positive impact Middle-Earth had for me.
The Professor!
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, creativity, Fiction, genre fiction, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers, writing on December 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I went to bed thinking of New Year possibilities, and woke this morning with a quote stuck in my mind. I may not have the wording quite right and don’t remember the source, but the idea has been following me all day.
“Dare anything. That is the road.”
Guess I’d better listen:)
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on December 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I wrote a thing, didn’t like it. Wrote another thing, didn’t like that either. Thought for a bit. Went off and made a mini version of this cool anti-gravity tensegriity thing. Came back and wrote a couple of new bits but nothing feels right.
Some days are just like that. Must be time for a quote and a picture.
“So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
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Posted in Likes, Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, #justaddkittens, cat herding, good people, inspiration, kittens, Thoughts, Writers on December 10, 2021| 1 Comment »
I may have mentioned our adventures in kitten trapping over the past couple of years (short version: hard but rewarding, remote cameras for the win).
Here are two organizations that were great as we tried to keep the neighborhood from being overrun by adorable, yet vulnerable, kittens:
The good people in these groups have done an amazing job even under the stresses of the pandemic, which has increased demand for pets but also restricted a lot of shelters and the vet services they need.
Fortunately, we were able to help our local cat rescue groups get a lot of kittens off the street before winter. Just as an example, take a look at two of the kittens we saved: Comet and Dasher. So cute!
If you’re in the market for an adorable fur friend, check out the adoption pages at these or your local rescue groups. We’re not ready for a new cat just yet but when we are we’ll go through a group like this.
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Posted in Likes, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, #JoniMitchell, climate change, creativity, hope, inspiration, music, Thoughts, Writers on December 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Some days you take a break from the avalanche of news and realize you’ve got Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi stuck in your head. The chorus can feel too true to remember that there are reasons to be cheerful and the world is not, in fact, on a one way trip to Ugh Town.
But other days? Like today days? With heartfelt respect to Ms. Mitchell,* you realize that the final lines of the song could be rewritten:
“They saved Paradise,
and took out the parking lot.”
And we’re just the people to do it.
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Posted in Likes, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, creativity, inspiration, procrastination, Thoughts, Writers, writing on December 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »
“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, creativity, Fiction, inspiration, murder and mayhem, Thoughts, woodturning, Writers on November 28, 2021| 2 Comments »
I’m heading into the workshop for the first time in ages. On the menu, bottle stoppers and finding the on switch for my lathe.
Later I’ll get back to reading The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman. Murder, mayhem and complicated septua- and octogenarians come together in a touching, humorous and well-written package. What’s not to love?
If you’re interested, start with book one in the series: The Thursday Murder Club.
Delightful!
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2021, #amwritingscifi, creativity, Thoughts, Writers, writing, yay on November 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »
“Read books. Care about things. Get excited. Try not to be too down on yourself. Enjoy the ever present game of knowing.”
― Hank Green
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