Several years ago I became interested in drawing and trying to improve my artistic abilities. While I was doing this I ran across the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. I would definitely like to recommend this book for anyone who is interested in improving their drawing abilities and hasn’t had much luck with regular art classes. My review is based on the version of the book I’ve linked to, which is an older version but I suspect the same basic information applies to the later edition of the book.

The first part of the book may seem a bit boring if you want to dive immediately into improving your drawing abilities. However, I would recommend reading the first few chapters as they provide insight into why most people have problems drawing as realistically as they would like. The basis of Ms. Edwards books is that anyone can learn to draw and that drawing is a teachable skill. With that premise she provides examples and instructions in her books that walk the reader through drawing and most importantly how to see in a way that allows you to capture the item in a drawing.

As the reader goes through the examples and instructions, they are learning how to turn off the left brain and use the right brain to capture the detail they want to draw. Ms. Edwards proposes that the left brain is not interested in detail and prefer to use ready made symbols when we attempt to draw something. The exercises help the reader to learn to turn off that critical portion of the brain by essentially boring the left brain and letting the right brain pick up the exercise. The right brain likes to see the detail and provide the concentration necessary to reproduce the detail and intricacies of say a person’s face or hand and is able to support the capture of that information in a drawing.

And to build confidence in the reader several simple exercises are provided early in the book that provide quick positive feedback in the reader’s drawings. One of the exercises I remember doing what drawing a complicated sketch while it was upside down. By turning the picture upside down, the left brain becomes bored and is unable to provide symbols so the right brain takes over and allows the reader to pick up the detail and do a good copy of it. I remember seeing the drawing I did and I was amazed that I could, in fact, draw and have it look good.

Of course most people don’t just want to copy other drawings they want to draw original artwork. The exercises then proceed to drawing hands, objects and finally doing a self portrait. By using various techniques, such as looking away while warming up to draw, drawing a profile instead of a face full-on, drawing negatives spaces and other techniques the reader can see steady improvement with practice.

Myself, after a few weeks of practice once or twice a week, I was impressed with the change and I have a drawing of my toddler son that I did that I am very proud of. Unfortunately, I have not kept up with my practice over the years so I am back to using symbols and not seeing in a way that supports realistic drawing in a way that I would prefer. However, I am confident that if I took the time to sit down and follow the exercises again I could regain that ability.

And in case you don’t believe the difference the book can make I am including links to two different pictures I’ve done. One is a drawing I did for a character in a D&D game after being out of practice for so many years. The other is the drawing of my son that I did after following the examples in the book after a few weeks.

Fantasy drawing

Drawing of my son

Lately I have been reminded of a belief I hold about the lessons that occur in life and that our reaction to these lessons can help us grow or have us repeating a lesson until it takes. These aren’t just lessons taught in school, these are lessons that form our character, define our actions and eventually pronounce who we are as a person. *

I firmly believe that we each have certain goals or lessons that we want to learn in this life and that many situations that seem challenging, depressing, unpleasant or hard are really areas that we each need to focus on in order to grow. I myself have had many learning experiences, a lot of them that I didn’t enjoy at the time, but which I feel helped me grow and become a better person. I also feel that these lessons also helped me to be a better example to others and to perhaps bring a bit more light into a world that sometimes seems a bit darker than we might like.

The situation that has come up is that I know another person who I feel is stuck and needs to learn some truths about being an adult. My feeling is that the lessons are necessary for that person if they are going to find a sense of contentment with themselves. At first I didn’t think there was a lesson for me but in pondering this I am now thinking differently. I feel that I am going to need to learn how to be a set of teacher’s hands and unfortunately, the hands should not necessarily be an excessively gentle set of hands. In other words, I need to step out of my comfort zone and be a bit firmer than they way I normally act.

What is hard for me, is that I resent the possibility of acting in a negative way in order to help someone that I view as somewhat weak. And yet, isn’t that view something I need to correct? And there are other items that I find myself focusing on that perhaps I need to improve in myself before complaining about other’s actions. And aren’t there times that I should be firmer, more assertive without being aggressive and overbearing? So it seems that I too still have some things to learn as I strive to bring more light and more of the White into the world. I just hope this lesson is a bit easier than some of the ones I’ve taken in my past.

*Note: My original thought for this article was a lot shorter, but I decided to write the above with a bit more explanation. However, I do want to include my summary which gets a little closer to my underlying feelings about the situation.

I realize that the universe may need me to be the hands that administer a lesson but why do I have to be the set that comes out and slaps the s**t out of someone?

I thought I would play around with this blog entry, more than usual. I was out for a walk this evening and as I came to an isolated part of the trail I had a couple of lines come into my head, sort of like I was reading a some lines from a book. I have this happen every now and again so thought I would try to capture what might be considered a ‘micro; story and try to paint a visual. Now if I could just ‘hear’ the rest of the book one of these days I could write a more complete story. 🙂

———

I looked around, attempting to take in my surroundings. I can hear traffic in the background but I don’t have a sense of where I am or what I’m doing. I almost feel like I just woke up, except I can see trees above me, grass strands waving by my side. This isn’t quite how I remember my bedroom looking when I got up this morning? Morning, yes, then I went to work and came home and Yes! I went for a walk and now I’m lying down? I don’t remember lying down, I just remember…

Walking, I was walking along the trail, looking at the hill sides, listening to the birds and just walking. Why am I lying here? I seem to remember I had just crossed the creek and I was looking around the curve and then, here I am, on my back. Maybe I passed out? I had an attack a couple of weeks ago in the heat, almost passed out then, maybe I

Ow, damn it, that hurt! What happened to me, why does my arm hurt? There, I can see it, it is getting dark, but not too dark, it is summer and it stays light longer and why does my arm hurt? Is that blood? My blood? Owww, it’s not just my arm, my legs are not overly happy right now either. And my stomach, what happened? Why don’t I remember what…

Oh man, that was a vivid dream, I hate that. Where’s my blankets, it’s cold in here, Ouch!! what the hell, why did that…was that a dream, I’m thinking it wasn’t. It’s dark but my bed is a bit more comfortable than this and I can still hear the traffic. Ohhhh, wow, my arms and legs are definitely not happy campers. And my stomach, ooohhhh, that hurts! What happened? I got hurt somehow, why hasn’t someone found me? This is the city damnit, surely nobody goes missing, especially on this trail. Always someone going by on a bike or jogging, why hasn’t someone seen me or owwww! heard me. Maybe I can sit up and see where…

It’s cold, where’s my covers, I need my covers, I’m cold. Wait, I remember, I’m out in the canyon and I’ve been hurt. I was tyring to sit up, guess that was a bad idea. Damned traffic, middle of the night, don’t these people have a home? Oooohhh, I have a home, I want to be home. Wait, I think I had my cell phone in my back pocket. Can I reach it, oww, that does not feel good to move that arm. Maybe the other arm, can I roll over. Ooohhhh, man, didn’t realize I had places on my body that could hurt like that. Can I get my arm back there, yes, I can, but I can’t reach the top of the pocket. Can I at least feel my cell phone, maybe push it out? A little further, oww, that hurts, oww, damnit! where is the blinking cell phone!! Fingers not moving, feel swollen, there! there! I can push, there it goes! Now come on, come on, bend the fingers, bend them, now bring the arm out slowly, owww. Man, that hurts, but I think I got it, just need to turn it on and it’s not doing anything. Come on, turn on you piece of junk, turn on!! Nothing, ooohhhh and I hurt, I hurt so bad, I feel like I’m going to… No, that can’t happen, I’m in the city, this can’t happen in the middle of a city, there are freaking cars a couple of hundred feet from me going by, I can’t…

Ooohhhh, I hurt and I’m cold and I’m thirsty and it’s feeling really cold out here now. Surely it’s not my time to, no, it can’t be, I have so much more to do and I’m cold. What can I do, I need to do something. Next time I need to come better equipped. I think there’ll be a next time. My husband, oh god, my husband, he’s probably worried, why hasn’t he found me? Why isn’t someone looking for me? I’m so, so cold…

I’m back again, still dark, still really cold. Except the warm spots where my blood flows out, my stomach feels a little warmer but where the blood has dried is cold. Stupid cars, why can’t someone see me? I can’t see them, they’re up the hill, driving in their warm cars, safe, listening to the radio, nobody knows I’m down here, hurt and cold. The stars are beautiful but I’d rather be home, asleep and warm, oh, my comforter and my quilt and the heater is on and I have my cup of hot chocolate and I’m warm, I’m safe, I’ll be okay…

I like to read the blog Joel on Software and he recently published an article “Martian Headsets” where he talks about the upcoming IE 8 and the decision the development team is trying to make about how to render legacy documents and not have people think a page is broken while still supporting web standards. Not a good problem to have and Microsoft will probably take heat for whatever decision they make, primarily because they are Microsoft. So now, since I love the smell of my scorched flesh from responding to flame wars like this, here’s my 2 cents for all of those two readers out there, or at least I hope I have readers.

First off, I believe the analogy that Joel is trying to use is flawed. He is comparing the API for a Martian MP3 player to the API that specifies HTML. He goes into a long description of the development of headsets and keeping backwards compatibility while adding new features and how all these vendors are causing problems.

In reality, I don’t see the problem as the headset or the player. The problem lies with the songs or in the case of the web, with the HTML pages. And making sure that an HTML document specifies a doctype at the top isn’t going to help one bit. If authors did stick only with HTML tags dealing only with text, pages from the early 90’s are going to display just as well as pages developed sometime last month. And if you go the Wayback Archives and randomly select a page from say 1997, I would guess that other than some problems with some images, you should be able to view that page and make sense of it no matter what modern browser you use.

Where the problem creeps in is with two small tags contained within HTML that can suddenly render a page useless in one browser while having it look great in another browser. The two tags are script and style. And the reason that these tags cause problems is that they are a loop hole that allow developers to do more things within a browser without having to use only boring HTML only type tags. Suddenly the world opens up and developers are given more control over what appears in the browser and they were able to make it more like a desktop application.

However, there wasn’t just one browser development team adding in features, there were two primary ones. And this is where problems developed. In order to try and gain a competitive edge, each company added in features using the script tag that weren’t going to be immediately supported in the other browser. And here’s the thing, unless they chose to follow some other standard within the script tag, there is nothing in the HTML standard that is going to prevent them from exploiting that loophole. If they choose to add in code into their browser that can render a holographic laser image singing “God Bless America” in your browser, the current standard won’t stop them.

And because developers of web pages thought the functionality was either cool, easy to implement or both, web pages got developed that worked only in one browser. Other browsers may choose to implement the same functionality, but that won’t help you as you look at the gibberish in Sanskrit that is scrolling across your screen instead of the dancing hologram while you are waiting for version Next.

Now someone comes along with an idea that specifying a tag at the front of the HTML will help in straightening out the mess and clarify what type of HTML should be displayed. The problem is that most of the HTML isn’t the problem. It’s all the dynamic interaction and the display of the data that is causing the problem. And the loophole still exists that will allow someone in the future to add dynamic capability in one browser that won’t work in the other browser. So long as a tag like script exists in HTML, there is going to be a loophole and someone is going to try and push the edge of the development. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is an annoying thing for web developers and for users.

Myself, in thinking it over, I’m glad there is a loophole. If there hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have the rich variety of pages that we do now or they would all be flash type pages or applets that weren’t necessarily changing how developers view the problem of developing for the web. And as far as the IE 8 developers at Microsoft, I’d say go ahead and put in the doctype tag but understand that it only applies to the tags themselves and not necessarily what is contained within those two tags, script and style.

I went to an interesting meeting last night, it was the monthly meeting for the San Diego Refresh group held at the offices of digital-telepathy. There was a fairly large crowd and it was encouraging to be in a group talking about web “stuff”, which I get fairly excited about myself. The focus of the discussion was about blogs and was held in an open forum method, with questions being asked by the moderators and then being answered by people in the group.

Definitely a focus on marketing blogs and how to make money from them. The basics seem to be, come up with a good topic, update regularly, link to other blogs and build up your traffic to a point where advertising will at least for the site and possibly pay for you to make a living. There were some links provided with more information about these topics. I’ll add those on at the end of this writeup for those poor souls who stumble over this page somehow looking for ways to make money quick from your blog.

While sitting and watching the group I was struck by a couple of observations. One was that boy, I’m old to be a web developer or at least in this group I was. Another thought was how easily the people seem to take to the social websites and have built up collections of sites where they are part of a community. I have looked at social websites and I belong to a couple of them but for me I’m still trying to figure out the appeal of the massive amount of personal information sharing that make up most social sites. But as I said I was definitely one of the older people there and I did not grow up with the Internet being easily available. It kind of saddens me a little bit because I could also see that this group would see new potential applications for the web that I could never envision just because the Internet and web sites haven’t been part of my everyday existence. Very similar to my comfort level with computers compared to my grandparents, it’s something I take for granted while they might not even have imagined the idea of a box that could do word processing, financial calculations and connect so easily to other people through the Internet.

Another thing that made me think was how everyone is involved in building up an on-line persona in order to be a part of various communities. Since there isn’t any physical presence on the web, we don’t get our normal cues from other people on what they think of us, how we fit into a group, and what’s our role. We have evolved to make sense of facial expressions, hand gestures, body movements, and other physical expressions and on the web the only thing that exists right now is text and some pictures. Maybe a few moving pictures but normally not live pictures feeds of who we are talking to.

The comparison I came up with was of amoebas interacting. They are pretty spread out, there aren’t a lot of clues as to what they are thinking and it could be easy to misinterpret what they might be trying to communicate. With the advent of social websites it is as if the amoeba is now trying to build a skeleton and fit itself into that. There is structure, there are movements that can be interpreted but it isn’t quite a complete being yet.

And since it’s a skeleton it’s easy to see through it and maybe see too much of what the person is made of. Think of the stories of people losing job interviews because of beer parties posted on Facebook, or of teenagers being caught for crimes because of video they put up showing them in the midst of committing the crimes. There isn’t always the privacy that we take for granted when we operate in the real world, face to face. I find myself very curious to see what flesh eventually grows on the skeletons of interaction that are on the web right now.

Okay, for those looking to make some money on blogging, here are a few of the links that I caught. I recommend checking out the referenced websites above for more information.

Copy Blogger – Site focused on bloggers and making money on blogs.

Tech Crunch – An example of how big a blog can get and features you might include. Includes some good technical article references.

Uncovering web2 – The opposite of Tech Crunch, looking to find what is the worst part of what Tech Crunch covers and how bad the sites really are.

Web Worker Daily – Information on how to use the web to be more productive at work.

Think Vitamin – A resource for web designers, developers and entrepreneurs.

I am really in overdrive on this whole reminiscening thing lately and here is another post that may make you go Gah! Sorry about that, hopefully I will move out of this mode soon, for your sake, if not mine.

The year was 1977 and it was an exciting time in the US. We had just finished up with big celebrations the year before for our bicentennial. The first handheld calculators were making a stronger appearance and there was the start of discussions on whether school children should be permitted to use them since they might not learn enough basic mathematics if they came to depend on using a calculator.

There was this new friendlier looking guy called Jimmy Carter who was our President and the mini series Roots first ran on TV. Cable TV was around and we were able to get 26 channels, with a special box that had push buttons to select 1 of 2 modes and then the channel. The shuttle craft Enterprise went for it’s first voyage. Home computers were starting to make their first appearance, but most computers in use were by business and colleges. Teletypes could be used to interface with a college mainframe at high schools so computer courses started to be offered at the high school. The text game Adventure was popular and there was a text version of Star Trek too.

And then in May, this new movie came out, that had this really cool poster with a guy holding a funny kind of sword standing over a young lady with a foreboding image in the background. The first Star Wars movie had been released.

So what, you ask? For a teen at the time who was nerdy, it was a very big so what. Before the release of Star Wars, science fiction was definitely not mainstream and was associated with those weird kids that read big brainy books and were picked on by the more popular kids. Star Trek had been on TV and then canceled after only 3 seasons, although the reruns picked up a big fan base. There were science fiction books and some movies but either they weren’t of good quality or only watched by a few.

With Star Wars, that all changed. I remember being home that summer and watching a noon time news/talk show that talked about current events. As the summer went on, there was a segment every day that talked about this movie Star Wars and the amazing popularity of it. People were standing in line for hours to see this movie, the lines wrapped around buildings and city blocks. And people weren’t seeing this movie just once, they were seeing it 5, 10 or more times. People were flabbergasted at how this one movie was so popular and not just with nerdy, technical people but with regular types of people too.

Since I couldn’t drive and the movie house was quite a distance away, it was a couple of months before I saw the movie. And that was another amazing thing, the movie stayed in the theater for months not weeks. It was at a cinema in Denver, a round theater with this new funky surround sound system. I sat in the back row so that I could see all of the screen. I remember how amazing it was to hear shots behind me when the battle scenes were on the scene. And I had to keep turning my head from side to side in order to take in all of the screen.

And of course when the movie opens on that huge ship that just keeps going, my jaw dropped, along with many others in the theater. It looked real, not like a model hung from the ceiling with a black background, but like a ship was really flying in space. And all of those aliens in the cantina and the wookie and of course Hans Solo, . After seeing the movie, I went and bought the sound track on a vinyl record and playing it over and over again. Eventually, my interest faded and I moved on to other things, but the first Star Wars movie is still my favorite of the series.

And in looking back, to me the release of Star Wars was such a pivotal moment. It was after that movie that science fiction was viewed as something that might actually be of interest to more people. More books started to come out, more movies were produced and more television shows were produced. Nowadays, with the Internet, it’s taken for granted that science fiction is an viable subset of literature but I feel that back in 1977 was the time when it was demonstrated and when the world changed.

Warning: Following content contains text that may be considered extremely syrupy, those affected by high sugary content should move on to other topics. Also contains spoilers for young beings that have certain notions about present giving involving an individual in a red flannel suit accompanied by reindeer.

As Christmas and the holidays approached this year, as usual, I found myself wondering where the magic had gone. I remember growing up and being so anxious for THE DAY, Christmas, seeing what Santa had brought me, wondering if angels were going to sing above our house and waiting for the Christmas Miracle that was sure to happen.

And of course I got older and found out that Santa was really my parents, if angels are hovering over us, they’ve got really good camo and Christmas Miracles are well, miracles that don’t happen a lot, at least for me.

This year though, I was thinking about a family that we were friends with and how every Christmas Eve, when the children were young, their Dad performed some sleight of hand to make things ‘magical’. The family would go out to the car to go to the Christmas Eve pageant our church presented and every year their Dad would have to go back in and go to the bathroom, or get something he forgot or for some reason he would have to go back into their house. While he was in the house, he would get a baby doll and place it in the empty manager in the nativity scene so that when the family returned, baby Jesus would have magically appeared as part of the Christmas Miracle for that family.

Part of my memories involve being on this bit of artifice and thinking how dumb the younger kids must’ve been to really think that every year their Dad ALWAYS had to go back in the house to do something and not connect that event with baby Jesus appearing in the manager. Of course, as kids do, they got older and realized what was happening. And I’m sure their Dad was relieved he didn’t have to go back into the house every year.

However, this year, I was thinking, this little act was a way of bringing magic to their children. My parents did a similar thing with Santa Claus bringing our presents and other activities for holidays, such as Easter. As an adult, I see the rational actions that brought about the desired results, but how magical it was as a child to believe that Santa Claus somehow fit down our chimney, that the Easter bunny brought chocolate eggs, on Halloween, ghosts and goblins roamed about and so many other beliefs that seem a bit silly now.

And yet, I now see, the true magic was in the act itself, the selflessness of supporting that belief for a short time and creating miracles for the children. So I realized that there is still magic in Christmas, I just need to look at things a little differently and I can still have some of that awe and wonder that I remember so well from my childhood.

Well, as of Friday, 12/07/2007, I find myself unemployed from a company I’ve been associated with off and on for some 20 years now. Rather strange experience, I must say. As is normal, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions the past few days and I’m sure it will continue to be, but I feel much more prepared for this than I was 5 years ago when I was let go from Peregrine Systems.

I have been very fortunate to work with a great group of people who have helped to build me up in the workplace and in building my personal coping skills. And with some luck and lots of hard work, perhaps I will be able to continue working with that specific group at another company. It is also a fairly good job tech market here in San Diego. And I also have some personal projects I am either have ideas about or I’m actively working on that have the potential to help me out.

So for today, I’m feeling pretty positive, planning to organize a list of items I want to get done at home and in my search for new income. Right now it looks like 2008 will be an exciting year in many different ways. 🙂

I’ve recently gotten in the habit of fixing a semi light lunch for myself on the weekends, consisting of home made pita bread and butter. For me it is a light lunch compared to eating out at fast food or a restaurant and it’s quick enough that I don’t get impatient and head off for a larger meal elsewhere. If you’re interested, I include the recipe at the end of this article.

I was fixing the bread today and one of the ingredients is honey. I decided to look at the ingredient list and I was very pleased to see only one ingredient, “Honey”. No preservatives, no vitamins, no high fructose corn syrup to make it sweeter, just honey. And later on I looked at my ice cream and it had a list starting with cream, milk, sugar, eggs. Unfortunately, it then went on with corn syrup and other high techie/preservative items, but it was nice to see items I understood and that were simply listed.

Later on I took a walk in a canyon not too far from us. It was a moderately warm day with a few other people out biking, running or even walking along the trail but most of the time I walked without company. When I walked under a patch of shade, I enjoyed the cool break, watching the shadows and sun make new patterns on the ground ahead of me.

I also enjoyed feeling my legs loosen up the further I walked and other muscles loosening up as I worked off excess energy and tension from sitting so much during the week. There was a football game in town and other activities I could’ve done but I enjoyed feeling like I had time to enjoy a walk away from city sidewalks and cars and bustle.

I don’t really want to try and live like my ancestors did 50-100 years ago, I like computers, I really enjoy the Internet, being healthy, having running water and not having to do back breaking work the majority of the year. While I may reminisce about a simpler, kinder time, intellectually I know it would be a bad idea to try and use everything that our ancestors did.

It would be nice to keep some of the activities they did, like simple walks, baking food made from simple ingredients and enjoying time with family and friends. Working so many hours with so little free time just doesn’t seem like we’ve necessarily improved as much as we’d like to think we have. And does having the latest and greatest technical gadgets make us happier? I’d like to think so, since I make my living developing software, but on days like today I kind of wonder.

Recipe for Pita bread, from La Leche League, Whole Foods for the Whole Family

1/2 C. Water
1 pkg of yeast (1 Tbsp of yeast from a jar)
1 Tbsp Honey (or sugar if you don’t have honey around)
1 C. Flour

Put yeast and honey in water and stir. After yeast starts bubbling, add in flour. Mix until slightly sticky. Using flour as needed, divide dough into 6 parts and shape the dough into round and flat shapes. Placed on greased baking sheet.

Turn oven on to broil and set shelf close to broiler. Place baking sheet under broiler flame. Watch bread, when a piece turns slightly brown, flip over and bake until lightly browned. The bread should be watched all during this time unless you like testing your smoke alarms.

Once the bread is baked, it can be slice apart, opening up the pockets. Bread can be eaten with sandwich type items inserted or I like it with just butter or margarine in the middle. Fresher yeast makes for better pockets and it’s fun to watch the bread puff up in the oven as it bakes. Older yeast will lead to flatter bread with no pockets but it still tastes pretty good. And it only takes about 10-15 minutes to make so it’s a nice quick bread for a snack.