BoingBoing offers Augmented Embroidery – patches you can sew on to whatever. Someone takes a picture of it with their smartphone and the QRcode sends them to your website. Pretty neat, and I find ‘em aesthetically pleasing. From Richard Kadrey’s Twitter, a Salon article on what readers wish writers knew. The Guardian asked writers for their...
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I spent the last hour or two reading Jamais Cascio’s series on Fast Company titled Futures Thinking. Cascio’s a futurist (among other things) and is without a doubt one of my favorite people to read. I follow both his Fast Company blog as well as his regular blog at Open The Future, and loved...
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BoingBoing: Flashlight transforms into submachine gun – not as groundbreaking as some people have taken it to be, but interesting nonetheless. Looks like it’s a conversion to house a pistol in a carbine-type stock that can fold and disguise itself as a flashlight. The carbine housing is a pretty old standby, lots of conversions...
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Warren Ellis linked a twenty five minute keynote address by Bruce Sterling on atemporality specifically geared for creative artists. It’s a fantastic talk, well worth the short time it takes to watch. I have to admit I’m kind of new to the Sterling-train and haven’t read much by him. I just added him to...
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“I don’t do this kind of work,” I told the CIA Domestic Station Chief. “I’m a journalist.” “Bullshit! It’s the same thing, except this time you’re just publishing to a more exclusive audience.” He had been sitting on my couch when I got out of the shower. Strolling naked toward the bedroom to find some...
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One of my favorite authors, Richard Kadrey, put out a few tweets about writing today that’re worth noting: Any beginning writers following me should note that several of my teachers told me to give up writing. Don’t be hurt by teachers, family or friends who don’t like your work. If you’re a writer you write....
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Had an interesting abstract run across my virtual desk today with somewhat of a parallel to my earlier post talking about Warren Ellis’ idea of the importance of letting your brain out to hunt ideas. The journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts had this to say in an article titled “Researching imaginative play...
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I have a stack of deadlines a mile high, but I think I’m also going to sit around with a bottle and just think for a while. The thinking time is essential. At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to...
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I’ve been thinking this evening (morning? why yes, it’s morning) about how my strange and varied studies inform my writing. Of course, I’m a psych student, so not only do I do mainstream readings into psychology, also dive deeply into the subject. This includes topics perhaps considered fringe or unorthodox (one of my best...
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Finished a story in one 24-hour spurt of five thousand words. Oddly enough: no zombies, no plagues, no death, no destruction. Just a short about a budding romance between an insecure bookstore owner and a columnist. Writing it was interesting. I’m obviously more of the “drop normal people into an abnormal situation” kind of...
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