Tag Archives | Blog

Feeling a bit low lately?

Some good folks at McGill University (Montreal) are doing research on self-esteem to bring you back up again.

First, take a look at their 3 quick self-esteem games, then dig a bit further into their site for background research to see what they’re up to.

About one of the games:

Inspired by the face-in-the-crowd paradigm, EyeSpy teaches people to look for the smiling/approving person in a crowd of frowning faces. By doing this repeatedly and as quickly as possible, this teaches people to look for acceptance and ignoring rejection. In order to successfully and accurately identify the smiling/approving face, one must get in the mind frame “Look for acceptance, and ignore rejection because it slows me down”.

Naturally, they caution, that if a person has serious self-esteem problems, he/she might see a certified psychotherapist — and there’s a link there for that too.

Otherwise, however, there are times when we feel less than fabulous, less willing to cope, or just plain ‘blah.’ This is a great reminder that it doesn’t take much to pull you out of that temporary slump. For one, stay away from people are who downers! (And you know who they are…)

Here’s one of the best explanations about Procrastination I’ve ever read.

Plus, this article, Good and Bad Procrastination, provides more of an answer to the question…why is it that people who are terrible procrastinators get so much done? Are you one of those?

The writer here, Paul Graham, has other essays on his site too…but start with this one. Or put it off until later … heh heh heh.

Net users are getting a chance to enjoy some of Mozart’s most rarely performed compositions.

A digital version of Mozart’s musical diary is being put online by the British Library to help celebrate 250 years since the composer’s birth.

From the article: BBC NEWS | Technology | Mozart’s music diary goes online.

Enjoy!

I usually don’t refer you to main-stream magazines (I figure you can find those on your own), but do make a point to see the January 16, 2006, issue of TIME magazine with the cover: How to Sharpen Your Mind.

Articles:

– The Perils of Multi-Tasking
– The Power of the Midlife Brain
– The Magic of Meditation
– Ways to Keep Alzheimer’s at Bay
– How Coffee Perks Up Your IQ

Preview: TIME.com: How to Tune Up Your Brain — Jan. 16, 2006

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Here’s a wonderful site: 50 Ways to be More Creative | PigPog. Has tips including: ways to be more creative with Art, with Craft, with Writing, with Music, with Photography, and more. Notice you can subscribe to their RSS feeds as well.

Thanks to my pal Douglas E. Welch for turning us on to this one.

Here’s another kooky one that you’ll enjoy, especially if you ever wondered what your drawings would look like if you could spin them around to take them from 2-D to 3-D.

http://www.zefrank.com/string_spin/

One Free Minute is a mobile sculpture designed to allow for instances of anonymous public speech. When you call the cellphone inside One Free Minute, you get connected for exactly
a minute to a 200 watt amplifier and speaker. The speech produced by the speaker can be
heard clearly more than 150 feet away from the sculpture.” — from the website.

In other words, you can make a toll-free call, talk for one minute about whatever you’d like, and have it go out to those who want to listen in. You can also hear what others have said…

Another wacky one, but again, it’s just for fun. Enjoy!

SwarmSketch is an ongoing online canvas that explores the possibilities of distributed design by the masses. Each week it randomly chooses a popular search term which becomes the sketch subject for the week. In this way, the collective is sketching what the collective thought was important each week. — from the website.

In other words, you can make a little design and then see what happens when other people add to it over time…

Yes, it’s a bit wacky, but enjoy!

Instructables.com is a venue for showing what you make and how others can make it.

Making things is part of being human. Whether you make bikes, kites, food, clothing, protocols for biology research, or hack consumer electronics, good instructions are critical.

Instructables is a step-by-step collaboration system that helps you record and share your projects with a mixture of images, text, ingredient lists, CAD files, and more. … from the website.

Every now and then a site comes along that I just have to pass along to you,
like this one… San Francisco in Jello. See all 6 slides.

If nothing else, you have to say, “Now, THAT’s creative!”