Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. – Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending A Staircase

I like to spend my winter holiday thinking about the year, and what I didn’t do enough of. Next year, I hope to:

1. Write more. Not just web fluff and links (which is fun), but more real fiction and non-fiction. I love to write, but life and complexity just keep on getting in the way.
2. Do more creative stuff. I have an artistic side, but the geek in me naturally suppresses it. I need to learn better balance.
3. Learn more healthy habits. I love good food, I grok nutrition, and I enjoy exercise. I need a bit more of each (and less of the crap).
4. Learn Ruby/Rails well. Last year I polished my C#, Javascript, and Php skills (as well as time spent with SQL, CSS/XHTML, etc.). This year I need to at least know why Rails isn’t for me. So far I’ve only spent a dozen hours with it, which isn’t nearly enough.
5. Focus. Life is noisy. Work is noisy. Learn to deal with both: I will overcome the chaos.

One thing I like to keep in mind with resolutions is that sometimes a year isn’t enough. Life is a garden, and sometimes crops fail. The key is to keep doing healthy things, and remember that growth takes time, practice, and effort.

A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data PDF (local cache) describes Google’s gargantuan distributed storage system. One of the most amazing aspects of the system’s develompent was the scale that they tested it at:

The tablet servers were configured to use 1 GB of memory and to write to a GFS cell consisting of 1786 machines with two 400 GB IDE hard drives each.

I regularly hear developers complain about how difficult it is to set up realistic tests. I think those developers are just lazy, unskilled, or working for the wrong company.

Illustrationclass.com, a howto site describing the illistration process. Includes tutorials on improving vector art skills, sketching, and going to screen/press print.

I’m forgetting my Perl already.

I’ve been burried in C++ and SQL land for a few months now, and today one of our younger developers asked me a simple Perl/Regex question. I was stumped. I misplaced my memories on the differences between regex in Perl, Php, Grep, and others (they were somehow all jumbly in my head). I happened upon an answer; it stumbled out of my mind, and only by chance was it correct. I realized that I was forgetting Perl, one of my favorite languages.

Luckily forgetting something you know isn’t at all like not knowing something you should, and with some practice my skill popped back to the surface.

Tonight I whipped up a few scripts to extract several dozen constants from some C++ sources, to generate some SQL statements. At first my Perl memories trickled back into view (I confused a few small things like C++’s continue for Perl’s next), but eventually it all came back and I was able to hack several dozen lines of useful script.

I have to remember to take time to practice with the tools I of the trade, otherwise they may start to disappear from my limiting human consciousness.

How to Cut… I’m always flabbergasted when I observe a cooking teacher with poor knife skills. Unfortunately, it’s all too common. I even occasionally observe a professional cook, even in France, with poor knife skills, although this is a less common occurrence. In my opinion, good knife skills are an essential component of being a good cook. And good knife skills are not particularly difficult for the average person to learn.

My time away from this blasted machine has been a good thing. While it has only been a few days, it reminded me that there is more to life than pointless surfing and sarcastic banter. I spent the down-time relaxing, reading, and remembering how much practice it takes to become good at anything.

Speaking of real life, I prepared several dozen linocut printing plates on the weekend. The preparation is a zen-like activity, not really a means to an end. You can buy art-grade stuff to avoid the grunt-work, but I actually enjoy the process. And, ages ago I bought a roll (3 meters) of real-live linoleum flooring at an auction, which means I’ll use it even if it kills me. The commercial art stuff, in comparison, is thicker, softer, and is backed with burlap to hold it together (read: easier to use). I prefer the less-traveled road, though, as the trip is really what it’s about.

The preparation is simple: flatten and back the linoleum with something washable. For the backing, I’ve been using old T-shirts and contact cement (three of my fingers are glued together as I type). To flatten, I prefer gravity, time, and mass (5 kilos of popcorn seeds today).

There is really nothing like preparing every aspect of something. It’s like writing your own software libraries — you get exacltly what you want — it just takes longer. The activity of preparing the groundwork provides a sense of ownership and security — and complete customization. Plus, there is much to be learned from the effort. And, learning is good.

Print-making is really my favorite form of artistic expression. It’s organic, entertaining, and something that I don’t butcher every time I attempt it. It takes long enough that I have to think out the design before committing to a plate. The process is tedious enough that I am forced to work at a zen-like speed — as there is no sense in rushing knife work. And, the effort gets more interesting in the second stage, when I can start playing with inking and printing. I spend as much time messing around in the print stage as I do carving the plates — which makes it twice the fun. It is like generic programming, where the big win is in the re-use.

I also spent some time reminding myself how watercolours work. I failed at in my first few attempts — so I resorted to practicing basic skills. It seems that I forgot that black has to be watered down many times more than most colours. Failing to remember this left my paintings with a sad, whore-like quality. I later found a few mild successes, like the foliage on the left … but I really have a long ways to go. I’ll take a few small victories when I can get them though — and will practice regularly over the next several months. Perhaps I’ll attempt painting something larger than my thumb when I know it won’t suck ;-)

I’ve been pondering what I’ll carve for my next set of plates. I was considering a multi-plate nature thing, for the colour possibilities … but my sketches were frustrating (painting them failed). I played around with a few pattern sketches instead (right) — something I fall back on when nothing real is working. The patterns hold a lot of promise actually. I might try a 2 colour set of pattern plates — and attempt some colour variations (to learn from). If nothing else, a complex pattern will be challenging to carve.

The real world is too much fun.