Stuff that sparks ideas or imagination for me.

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  • Post category:Brain Food

Jonah Lehrer, the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist (which I have) and the new book How We Decide (on my wishlist) has an interesting article on the Frontal Cortex science blog regarding Costco and how it affects our decision-making regarding pricing.
To which I contributed this in the comments:

You should study my wife – she is immune to the Costo effect & calculates everything, even there. I swear she has a terminator-like data screen across her vision that just adds up whether something is a good deal or not and rejects stuff out of hand, because she’s so quick and so good at the money.

It make shopping trips painful, though. I bring stuff with my lizard brain to the cart and say “I can has?” and she scans it and says “no, honey, this isn’t a good deal. Put it back.” and I schlep off to put it back and come back with some other shiny thing I found to repeat the process. Six hours later, she finally gets to check out with the 3 things she actually came in for.

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Homespun: Modern Handmade

I’ve mentioned INDIEana Handicraft Exchange here before; Stephanie and I were introduce to the contemporary craft fair by a friend and have attended their events twice. It’s helped inspire the two of us to plan and scheme about our own crafting projects and what we might be able to do someday as a potential vendor.

In their words: “The INDIEana Handicraft Exchange is a D.I.Y. contemporary craft fair that showcases the work of artists and crafters who use traditional crafting techniques mixed with a contemporary edge.”
Now the folks who run the Exchange — Neal and Amanda Mauer Taflinger — are opening a new venture in Indianapolis – a store for local artists to sell their work. Homespun will be opening up on east Washington Street in the Irvington neighborhood.

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Knitting and Design and Flow

It struck me on the way in to work this morning that the reason I love knitting so much is because it’s design in almost pure form. With web design, there are so many hurdles you have to jump through to get your design into a working state – css attributes to learn, scripting languages to inhale, content management systems to navigate, coding issues, browser inconsistencies, bugs, communication, frustration, office politics and ridiculousness; the pure visual design work (the part I love) is only about 15% of what I get to do, and the rest is just necessary evil.

Knitting, on the other hand, is just pure design elements: space, line, color, texture, shape, form, value – all right in your hands to sculpt at will with nothing in between you and the finished work – blissful flow.

I feel the same when with photography much of the time as well — just me and a camera and vision in my head captured.

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What motivates me

I’m not motivated by a bunch of platitudes about “finding the edge” and “exploiting your potential.” I’m not motivated by people who engage in competitive behavior with people they should be collaborating with. I’m not motivated by people who rest on their laurels and do the bare minimum to get by, or people who spend all their time protecting and polishing their egos. I’m not motivated by self-made, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrap jackasses who think they can do everything themselves, and screw what other people can contribute.

I’m motivated by people who are intoxicated by creativity, and who suck other people into their creative endeavors. I’m motivated by people who turn work into play and play into money. I’m motivated by people who collaborate, who engage, who strive to entertain. I don’t want minions. I want co-conspirators, partners in crime. Cohorts. I want to be in cahoots.

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