Music: John Roberts
I have finally found the perfect music for concentration. John Roberts is a genius of the ambient, progressive, thinking music that is appreciatedly devoid of lyrics. I don't know if it's the lullingly crafted repetition of sound, the piercing and echoey piano tones, or the warm crackling effects that transport me back to a simpler time, but it does the trick. Hailing originally from Ohio but now living in Berlin (no surprise there), John Roberts creates the perfect sounds for me to play while I dig into a design problem or review a coworker's Medium article (both of which I did today). Maybe you have some deep thinking to do, too? If so, listen below:
Accomplishment:
I've got some solid sketches done for my blog, but still pretty unsure if I'm going to dig in and move the whole thing out of the blogger platform. I am really torn because I doubt much of this can be done with the html editor that Blogger provides, but I can see that they're busy redesigning some features because there have been some changes in the past week! I can't believe someone has been trying to improve the experience but I'm pretty jazzed about it. Now, nothing is particularly groundbreaking, but it makes me wonder what, if anything, is in the pipeline.
I also cleaned out Google Keep, and all my random thoughts now reside in one place. Which will also serve the purpose of displaying my extreme craziness to anyone who cares to hack into my Google account. Enjoy, hackers! For the rest of us, they'll be coming into these weekly updates as the normal stream that you've come to love.
I FINALLY got a tuner for my ukulele (couldn't be happier about that one) which means I should start learning a song soon. I don't want to set a goal this week, but perhaps more of an open-ended one to pick a song and learn it when I get a chance. Might be a nice Christmas holiday activity!
Yesterday was a special day for me, in breadth as well as depth. I woke up bright and early to get to the synagogue and start my mentorship with the cantor in terms of doing my bat mitzvah. After that, it was off to drumming practice (in our new and decidedly less accessible practice space), and then to Regent Park Aquatic Centre to check out the pool with some friends. Two showers later, I still smell like chlorine.
Goal:
Since the best thing to do in winter is to read a good book under a warm blanket, it's a good thing that's most of what I'll be doing for the next few months. Between these two books my bat mitzvah mentor has assigned me, and the lovely Hannukah present my sister gave me (pictured below), I'm going to try to make use of the various cozy corners of my apartment for extreme reading time.
I didn't do much in the way of my portfolio coding this weekend, but I plan to get some real work done tomorrow night (the personal project night of the week).
Random Thought: Weird Theme Parties
One from the archives of Google Keep: I was at a party a couple of months ago, lamenting to a stranger about how parties never have themes anymore like they did when we were in high school. Apparently this was the right stranger at which to throw my lamentation, because she told me of some rather inspired theme parties to throw. I'll share them with you (written in exactly the wording I recorded them at that party):
Tattoos
Everyone wears a white outfit (preferably bought from Value Village - you're not getting the stains out of this one), and is given a different colour Sharpie to use as their weapon. Commence drawing all sorts of things on your friends' clothes. At the end of the night, the most represented colour-wielder wins.
Costumed Team Flip Cup
Since we played an epic game of flip cup at my company's summer retreat this year, I have been obsessed with the game. Why not create teams ahead of time, costumes included, to make it a little more of a sport? I could see this going really well with a scoreboard and prizes. Not to mention the punny team names.
Wize Wizard Can Party
Tape all your empty beer cans together vertically as you finish them throughout the night. This becomes your wizard staff. The person with the tallest staff at the end of the night wins! And as a bonus, this makes cleanup a breeze.
Inspiration Tim Lampe
The tagline on Tim Lampe's portfolio website is "Let's Create Something Crazy Together," overlaid on an image of a fanny pack filled with ice cream sandwiches.
Would I lie to you?
I don't know why this guy is so obsessed with ice cream sandwiches, but they certainly have an eccentric and loveable visual appeal. Not to mention that as I look at this and the many other sandwich-related images on his website, I can taste the sweet ice milk product on my tongue. Tastes like summer.
I definitely ate it.
In a world beyond ice cream sandwiches, Lampe has also designed a series of typographic posters entailing some of the more brilliant tweets of twitter account @horse_ebooks (which spews seemingly random snippets from actual e-books on the web, and one of my favourites).
I like Tim's work because its purpose is not immediately understood, and also because the fun he has in creating it is extremely apparent. Two of my favourite things. See more here.
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