3 Examples of Creatives People Embracing The Shake

The term Embracing the Shake comes from this TED Talk, and refers to an individual embracing their limitations to make something great. Here are three examples I've stumbled upon in the last 24 hours:

The Programmer: What do you if you're a programmer who realizes that creativity is essential for the work you want to do, yet don't have the resources to pay a pro? Naturally, you write software to be creative for you:

We are incredibly pessimistic about our own creativity. Yet, games clearly need some developer creativity to feel right: graphics, music, level design, etc. We cannot justify spending research resources on creating such content through traditional means: paying artists, musicians, and designers. Thus, we will restrict ourselves to using free resources (such as Creative Commons music and art) as well as algorithmically created content.

In fact, by using algorithmically created content---in particular, level design---we can learn more about game design itself. The best way to demonstrate understanding of something is to teach it to someone. The stupider that person is, the better a job you must do. There is nothing stupider than a computer, so procedurally generated content requires a great understanding of that content.

This will also help ensure that our games are playable by us. Since we can't pay anyone else to test them and we can't rely on others to be passionate about them, we must be our own testers. But if they had static designs---like most games---we would necessarily tire of them (as video game testers often express remorsefully.) But with procedural generation, we hope they will retain their excitement indefinitely.

Look at that: more testable software out of the limitation of not being able to hire a specialist.

The Playwright: Last night I was chatting to a playwright who participated in a most unusual project to create one of her plays. The project is called the A Train Plays and it works like this:

All of the [A Train Plays] are set on the A train and created on the A train. The evening before the first performance, three librettists meet the producers at 207th Street. Picking a number between 3 and 5 to determine the number of characters, the librettists cast their show by choosing that number of headshots in a blind draw. Cast in hand, the writers hop on the A train and begin writing the books for three 15-minute musicals.

When the librettists reach the Far Rockaway stop, they randomly select, through another blind draw, their collaborative lyricists, composers and choreographers, who have been awaiting their arrival at a nearby McDonalds! Now teamed, the collaborators board the train to head back uptown.

[...more rules trimmed...]

Each team only has until show time THE NEXT DAY at 8:00 p.m. to weave these newly-minted theatrical experiences into as show to be shared, fully produced and off book, with the audience at the Neighborhood Playhouse, 24 hours later.

So there you have it, a play written and performed about 24 hours later. I couldn't believe it, but NPR says it's true, so it has to be. Talk about limitations.

The Artist: And finally the example that gave me the name for this post. This is one enlightening and fun TED talk, well worth the 10 minutes to watch it. Go ahead:

Embrace The Shake. In fact, it's among the best entrepreneurial advice I could offer.

Forth in Racket, Mind-bending and Beautiful

Jay McCarthy's efficient implementation of Forth in 85 lines of Racket is beautiful. It demonstrates how you can integrate two different programming paradigms in one environment, and it does so with some impressive macro-fu. Consider his goals:

1. We must be able to define functions in Forth that are callable from Forth, always.
2. We must be able to give functions stack effect annotations to enable them to be called from Racket.
3. We must be able to lift Racket functions to Forth so they are oblivious to the stack, like turning + into :+.
4. We must be able to lower Racket functions to Forth so they can directly affect the stack, like writing :over.
5. We must be able to enter Forth from Racket arbitrarily, such as to write testing forms like check-forth.

Meeting all those goals is an impressive feat.

As a functional tool, I'm not sure I see much of a use for it (yet). As a novel case study and series of examples, it's fantastic.

I Love NY

Today I had the pleasure of meeting one of my long time clients face to face for the first time. I did so by hopping on the Acela Express and making my way to NY.

While my trip was brief (I'm heading back now as I post this), it was an enjoyable trip.

It's always fun putting faces to names, especially after you've been working with folks for years.

NY is, well, NY. The skyline is gorgeous, the crowds overwhelming, and the pizza greasy (yum!). What's not to love?

This is my second trip on an Acela Express and I continue to be very impressed. Plenty of leg room, free WiFi and AC Power at every seat makes for a really productive trip. In some respects security couldn't be more laxed. Nobody checked my bags or person. On the other hand, the "see something-say something" campaign is really intensive. A pre-boarding video clip I caught was so thorough I felt like I was participating in a counter terrorism course (remember: there are no suspicious people, just suspicious behavior! Whatever that means.)

I walked away from the video feeling as though security was in my and other passengers hands, not in some central authority. It's an interesting approach, and I wonder how well it works compared to the airport model.

All in all, it was a great trip. I'm only sorry I didn't get more time to wander the streets trying to get more photos.

In Praise Of Farkle

Farkle is a game I received for my birthday (thanks Elana and Shmuel!), and has quickly turned into my goto distraction when I've got a willing partner and a few minutes (or more!) to play. Heck, I tossed it into my coat pocket when we went out to dinner a few nights ago just in case we had time to kill while waiting for a table. In my defense, I have the pocket edition which is no bigger than an old school 35mm film canister.

The game play is easy once you figure out a few basic rules. Essentially you're rolling dice, keeping score and deciding if you want to risk another roll. It kind-of-sort-of reminds me of craps, though it's much simpler to play and doesn't usually involve betting.

Farkle is easy enough to play that our 8 year old can get into, yet it's intriguing enough that adults will want to play too. Speaking of our 8 year old, the game gives an excellent opportunity to practice adding fairly large numbers (between 0 and 10,000) and has been a great hidden learning tool. You can start a game in a minute or two, pause it, and return to it later, which makes it a great kids activity when you've got only a few minutes to kill. I imagine it would make a fun party game because you can play it in a group and it doesn't require a heck of a lot of concentration to play.

You can purchase an official Farkel set, but if you can track down 6 dice you'll have exactly the same thing. I've checked, and there are numerous electronic versions of the game for Android, and surely they exist for iOS.

If you get clever about using a book and a bookmark to keep score, the game can be played without writing, which makes it Shabbat Friendly.

Will Farkle be the last game you ever buy? Of course not. But as a casual game goes, it's hard to beat.

Another Glover-Archbold Trail Encounter

I took another run along the C&O canal and the Archbold Trail this morning. I'm telling you, that trail is truly a bit of wilderness heaven nestled in fancy shmancy DC.

As I hit my turn around point on the trail I heard a sort of grunting noise. I paused trying to figure out what animal could be making that odd sound when it happened again in a different part of the forest. It took me about 5 minutes to untangle the mystery: it was two or more frogs croaking away. I didn't get any good photos, but trust me, it was a most excellent experience.

Here a few shots I took along the way.

Update: While I didn't have much luck capturing any photos of the frogs, check out this snippet of audio. You need to get about 20 seconds into it, but once you do, you an hear two frogs making a racket:

A Blooming Weed

Thankfully, people ignored this big 'ol weed along the side of the road. The result,it bloomed into something wonderful.

There's a deep thought in there, no?

Ultralight Backpacking Meets Cylcing

I do love gear lists, especially lightweight ones. Which is why discovering Ultralight Bicycle Touring was like hitting the jackpot. The site contains a series of articles that talk about how to do long distance biking with a minimum of weight:

For the impatient ones, here is a summary of my current cycling set-up.

• I have an entry-level road bike (weighing a bit less than 10 kg), which has eyelets for rear rack. Tyres are rather narrow, 25-622 to 30-622.
• I use ordinary pedals and light sport shoes (no clipless shoes/pedals nor clips&straps), no second footware.
• I don't use cooking equipment.
• I don't use panniers.
• I carry my stuff in stuff bag on the rear rack and in a little bag (a converted saddle bag) on the handlebar.
• ...

Much of the advice matches up with with ultralight backpacking, including the suggestion that you focus on a few heavyweight items first:

A common mistake that we all make as newcomers to ultralight cycling is to start with cutting the handle of a tooth brush. The prospective ultralighter, on the contrary, should start with thinking big. There are 7 big ones (in terms of weight or volume) which you should consider first:

• bicycle,
• tent,
• sleeping bag,
• sleeping pad,
• cooking equipment,
• carriers
• and - last but definitely not least - clothes.

Definitely lots of helpful advice here. In fact, I'm surprised it's not considered more mainstream by now. But who knows, maybe it is.

Go to: Ultralight Cycling

The Hipster Whiteboard

Combine my love of whiteboards, index cards, notepads and cramming stuff in my pockets and what do you end up with? The Hipster Whiteboard:

Inspired by the Hipster PDA, and specifically this keychain version I stumbled upon today.

Making a Hipster Whiteboard couldn't be any easier: simply cover a 3x5 index card in Scotch Packing Tape and you're done.

To complete the setup, I added a tiny whiteboard marker I picked up from Target recently for $1.00.

Will it be useful? Don't know. I can imagine it would be fun for a kid to play with. And I do love my whiteboards of all sizes. So it's a resounding maybe.

Perhaps I should apply a layer of tape to my tablet, so I can use it as a whiteboard? That may be useful for sketching ideas out at my desk.

A Person-to-Person Cool Tool (or: how to talk to anyone about anything)

Difficult conversations, are well, difficult. Talking to your boss about unfair treatment at work, talking to your son's teacher about his report card, talking to your neighbor about his barking dog, talking to your wife about pretty much anything, etc. can get might tricky. You know you need to be assertive, yet flexible. Understanding, yet firm. Luckily for me, a few years back I accidentally rented Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most on tape (or was it CD?) and listened to it. To my amazement, it gave me a set of concrete tools for dealing with exactly those types of conversation. I find that I use the advice from this one book on an almost weekly basis; and it has come in handy in everything from dealing with conflicts at work to dealing with our 8 year old.

Back when I listened to the book I apparently wasn't blogging, so I don't have any notes to refer to. In fact, over time I'd even forgotten the title of the book. I just held on to a few key lessons that shaped how I viewed conversations.

And then a few weeks back at the library I was perusing the business section and the title Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most jumped out at me. Could I have really found this gem? After flipping through a few pages I confirmed that yes, this was the book that had shaped my problem solving skills so thoroughly over the years.

Naturally I rented the book and re-read it. I was especially curious to see how creative my memory had gotten; could the book really live up to the hype I'd ascribed to it?

To my pleasant surprise, it was exactly the opposite problem. Yes, many of the key principles I'd been following were right there in the book. But, there were quite a few that I'd forgotten. In fact, I found that nearly every page contained some brilliant insight, many of which had been lost to me over time. It lived up to the hype and then some.

In short, if you have interaction with other people (which you do), you need to read this book. Don't think of it as a self-help book, think of it as Cool Tool for communicating with others. It's like showing up with a pneumatic nail gun instead of a big 'ol stick. Both might technically drive nails, but one's going to make life a lot easier.

Helpful Parenting Advice from An Amazon Review

Somewhat appropriate because it's Mother's day. Here's the Lansky AX-911 - Fire Battle Axe:

There are three Amazon reviews on this item. The first talks about using the axe to clear brush. The second is from a less than pleased customer:

1.0 out of 5 stars - Horrible
By Tim

This axe was terrible at removing diapers from small children. Would avoid using it for this task. Didn't come with any warning on the packaging.

The third review, however, takes serious issue with this complaint:

5.0 out of 5 stars - this is amazing for diapers don't let others discourage you!
By adam jackson

Let us be honest here. Who really wants a baby? Another reviewer complained about it's inability to remove diapers. It's tricky but if you imagine your removing the baby from the diaper, (not the other way around) you won't even notice the collateral damage. ten outta ten.

That explains why I have so much trouble with diapering kids, I'm thinking about it the wrong way around.