Week 7 — Wasted!
Often when I look at my to do lists and my “want to do list”, I get anxious. There is so much that I want to do — write and iOS app, start my web development and computer security consulting firm, launch a photography business, go on a food tour of Italy with my family, start a technical school — that I often don’t know where to start. Looking at my current list, I’ve got a few projects I still haven’t started and even more that are in a state best called “pending”. Too many ideas, too little time, and not enough discipline.
Then I spend time beating myself up and feeling bad; less than. Wasted all this time. I guess the question is what am I really looking for to fill my soul. Is it accomplishment? Is it fame? Or is it … just filling the desire to make something. I’m not sure. Sometimes it feels like all the above but I think I am beginning to see the truth. My truth.
I think I just want to find the zen moments that my 11 year old self found while sitting in his room taking things apart, seeing how they worked, and then creating something new — exploring what and wherever my mind took me. WHether that was experimenting with electronics building radio frequency transmitters, programming firmware, writing computer games for my friends, breeding tropical fish, cultivating my plant hybrids, …
Nothing about reviewing the security equivalent of TPS reports sounds fulfilling. The thought about doing that for the next year … I shudder to think what my mind might look like. I blame myself mostly. I blame myself for not being who I needed to be. I blame myself for not continuing to pursue what was meaningful for me. I got distracted being and doing what others thought was needed.
So my friends, if you are reading this, I need your help. I need help finding my way back to a place where I was happy. I’ve been in an angry space for a while and it’s eating me alive. Where do I go from here?
Read MorePainteresque
I recently discovered the Painteresque app while read a blog post on PhotoJojo’s iPhoneography web site. The web site had a listing of that site’s Top 3 Artistic Photo Filter apps for Android. The app had one feature; a filter then renders any image into a painting.
This filter is based on a model of the eye developed to enable an artificial intelligence to see. We asked it to show us what it sees, and this is what came out. There is nothing to tweak–just select or snap a photo for Painteresque to revisualize, and a few seconds later the resulting image is ready to save.
For my first image I chose this photo I took just this weekend at the Clinton Station Diner. Not a great photo given the limited lighting in the diner and the fact that I had already had four cups of coffee that afternoon.
Painteresque is $1.99 in the App Store and $2 in the Android Market.
Fresh Coffee brewed every 20 minutes
This is the same photo after processing in Painteresque.
This is the same photo after processing in Paintereque.
Week 6 — Skillman Park
I cochaired the Village Elementary and Lower Middle School Invention and Science Convention this year along with two energenic and commited women. The event was scheduled to start at 9:15 but we were convening at the High School at 8AM. Because it was snowing I gave myself a littl extra time to navigate the local roads.
I wanted to get capture some sort of snow scene and I drove along the roads I kept looking for a place to stop to capture the experience of the snow falling on the canopy of trees lining the roads. I was almost to the High School when I noticed the entrance for Skillman Park.
The park has a long storied historied history that you can read about on the townshop web site. The park was once the site of a psychiatric care facility which eventually fell into disrepair. The township and the county are working to restore the space to its former beauty.
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