Don’t make the demo look done, a reasonable argument for ways to pace design and prototyping so that normal people understand where things are at.

Are your users stuck in “P” mode? This is an essay about how many users never escape the auto mode of their tools. The thing is that I don’t think auto is bad: using a tool is far less about the petty details than it is about just using it. A good “auto” mode beats a highly programmable device any day. Just look at the iPod, it’s all about the music, not the damned settings.

You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you. — Jeff Bezos

Flickr is about pictoral art. I love how the admins and developers at Flickr have such a focus on good photography, it bleeds over into how people use it (and there’s a lot of great art there too). And it amazes me that it hasn’t degraded into a MySpace or pr0n-like Usenet. Yay passion!

I cleaned up my art cupboards this morning, something that’s always a reflective time. I found several lino plates and a whack of sketches that I forgot about, and I uncovered a mountain of unused lino.

A decade ago I bought a roll of flooring linoleum at a work auction. Flooring lino is a lot like art lino, except that the surface has a bit more texture, it’s a bit thinner, and it’s not mounted. But being the cheap bastard that I am, I saw the roll as a great opportunity, as practicing on the $20-a-sheet art-grade stuff is daunting. And in the end the floor-grade lino stands up better and produces similar results.

I left the roll sitting in various closets over the years, mostly unused. Art is one of those things that only works in the right state of mind, approached with a healthy amount of obsession. Getting motivated to work on art projects requires more habit than inspiration; I need everything ready before my muse is ready go, or my muse gets bored and buggers off. Leaving my linoleum in a roll in the back of a closet kept me at arm’s length from one of my passions for many years.

Just before I got married a good friend gave me a set of art-grade linoleum plates. It took me years before I was ready to use these supplies, mosly because I didn’t want to mess up the expensive material. These supplies became my motivation to use the cheap-bastard lino, though, as it was a way to prepare for the real thing. Over the years my wife added to my inventory of art stuff until I was eventually fully stocked. Even after having all of the right equipment it still took me years before I was carving regularly.

There are many reasons that I wandered away from inspiration and expression, but more interesing is that the journey back was mostly a matter of intent. Over the last few years I’ve started to make room for my art stuff, in places where I’ll actually use it. I make time for it now and consider it a way to recover from life and work. I also spend a lot of time looking for inspiration, reflecting, and relaxing. I have to do these things–all of them–or I find reasons not to bother expressing myself.

A few years ago before we moved from the island I took my roll of lino and split it all into smaller, more managable pieces. The roll, after having been stuffed in a closet for most of a decade, had warped badly and I assumed that most of it was ruined. I cut it and left the pieces in a pile in a cupboard for a few years, and their collective weight returned the lino to a usable state. Today I found that pile, and a few piles of never-warped pre-sized plates.

There are hundreds of plates worth of the stuff waiting to be carved up, and even a large piece of the art-grade stuff waiting for a special inspiration. Knowing that I won’t run out for a while is motivating, as it defeats the cheap-bastard-reasons for not starting another art project. It’s also cool to see that something I bought on a whim 10 years ago for a few bucks has been so much fun.

Don’t give in to feature demands!

Being Able to Write: Lessons from Other Writers, New and Well-Seasoned. Everything every writer says about writing better includes something like this:

Write a lot. If you can’t write every day, try writing several times a week.

To get better at anything it requires practice, passion, and a fanatical devotion to the pope (well, practice and passion at least).