Monthly Archives: February 2017

The art of craft and design

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I was recently in the British Museum for the first time in a long while. After the customary stop to see the ever popular Rosetta Stone I had a look in the room on the opposite side of the main courtyard – the King’s Library.

As well as books in the bookcases that lined the walls there were a number of crafted pieces from across the globe and through the ages. I didn’t have a camera with me – which proved to be a good thing. It allowed me to really look at the pieces rather than check them off as seen – as so often happens when taking a photo.

When you look deeply you realise that these pieces probably took an individual a significant amount of time to create – either in learning the craft, creating the piece or both. As such each piece represents a dedication to the processes that led to its construction.

In the present day many of these pieces would be easy to create using modern tools and modern machinery. As such the same pieces from today do not necessarily carry the same weight of dedication.

Instead that dedication typically goes into the understanding and creation of processes and techniques that can craft things at a mass consumer level. The end piece may not look as visually stunning, but if you look closely you may be able to envision the dedication of time that has gone into its design and the design of its fabrication technologies.

An example may be tucked in your pocket right now, waiting for the next call.

Playlist

Call me maybe / Carly Rae Jepsen

Arcing back to the start

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I have been working more on the structure of my planned novel. Two places jump out as important to focus on – the start and the end.

For the start – character, scene, world and scenario introductions can happen in isolation to the rest of the story. This is the first time that the reader will be encountering anything about the world represented in the novel. As such the need for it to follow on from the rest of the story does not exist.  Of course if something at the start is to be used later in the novel then it needs to be presented in a consistent manner.

The end is different.

The end is encountered by the reader after they have read through the whole of the novel (hopefully.) It is also responsible for delivering the reader a satisfying and fulfilling conclusion to the novel. As such it needs to build on material delivered through the rest of the novel.

The technique I have decided to use is to have the ending of the novel as the culmination / resolution of an arc that will be revealed through the rest of the story. I have identified what I think that resolving action should be and from that the subject of the arc that leads to it.

I am also working on other arcs that feed into the construction of this ending-providing arc. As such these additional arcs and situations are worked back from the end of the novel – rather than created by plotting from the beginning of the novel.

Hopefully this will deliver a rich and rewarding experience to the reader.

Playlist

Time / Pink Floyd

I ai mianbao

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I am progressing through the HelloChinese app picking up more Mandarin.  I dip into it a few times a day – doing a lesson or two which each take about five to ten minutes.

The hardest part to learn by far is the Chinese script. I do not think I can yet recall any of the characters that I have so far covered in my lessons. Although I am starting to build a mental model of the stroke ordering to expect for any given character. An unconscious cognition as cognitive scientists might call it.

Pinyin – the romanization of Chinese script – helps a lot, although remembering the tonality to apply adds a layer of complexity.  My favourite word so far is mianbao (excuse the lack of tone marks) which mean bread – and is just nice to say.

But don’t let the complexity of Chinese script put you off learning Mandarin. Learning by listening and talking along with pinyin simplify the challenge a lot.  Also the lack of conjugation more than makes up for the complexity of script.

Playlist

Talking to you / Izzy Bizu

Start it anyway

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I have found that the removal of pressing future time demands has an interesting psychological impact. Things that previously remained undone for a protracted period of time are now easier to start and complete.

A characteristic of these activities is that they have an unknown effort or time requirement before starting them. For example finding the power cable of a music keyboard or refactoring a particularly gnarly class. It seems to be this unknown (and before the event unknowable) commitment that leads to their continual postponement.

A part of this, for me at least, is the desire to determine what is the best use of time. What things should I commit to and what things are not worthwhile to commit to. Because an activity may have an unknown duration beforehand, the benefit received for time committed cannot be accurately calculated. This fuzziness puts in into the delay basket even though a probabilistic calculation of return may indicate that it is more valuable than an activity that has a know time requirement.

With the removal of future time demands the calculation changes. Because time is no longer a scare resource, activities with unknown requirements can just be started. If during performing these activities I think they are taking too long, or not delivering the benefit expected I can just stop. When I do bail out of an activity my retrospective analysis of time spent no longer leads to regret at starting it.

And yes, I did find the power cable. It took about ten minutes.

Playlist

Get ready for this / 2 Unlimited