30 Days of Creativity - #7

Progress has slowed. However, I have done a few things in preparation for upcoming projects. One problem I have to deal with is the fact I will be traveling to a conference soon and will have to have some sort of portable project(s) to keep the creativity plan going for several days away from home.

Soma Cube Project

Today I put on two coats of clear acrylic as a final finish (Figure 1). They came out pretty well. Nice and shiny. And red. To top it off I solved the puzzle (Figure 2). It took me about three minutes. Maybe I just got lucky.

Figure 2. Finished pieces of the Soma Cube

Figure 2. Assembled Soma Cube

Blogging

On a related note (sort of) I have figured out how to add captions to images in Blogger (see Figures 1 and 2!). There is a lot of information about how to do this on the web. Some ideas work, and some don't so I figure it might be helpful to write a clear explanation of a couple of ways to do it that definitely work. That will be written up elsewhere.

30 Days of Creativity - #6

The Soma Cube Project

It's almost done! Today I put two more coats of red paint on the pieces. Tomorrow I will put on a couple of coats of clear acrylic and it should be ready to solve!

Blogging

Today was the day I got the right sidebars on this blog set up pretty close to the way I want them.

Not much else. It still counts!

30 Days of Creativity - #5

The school year is over and I should have more time to do fun stuff now!

The Soma Cube Project

Okay the primer is on. It's oil based light gray paint from a spray can. That stuff is amazing because it has been on the shelf for at least five years and it's still good. However, the topcoat red is not oil based. I do not think that will be a problem so long as I let the primer dry well before applying the finish coats.

I put on two coats so the graininess of some of the wood surfaces would not be so obvious. The paint also tends to fill some of the gaps between the cubes as well. Dang I forgot to take a photo of the primed pieces!

Technical Writing

Writing is also a creative process, even it it is non-fiction writing. I recently became a feature writer at Suite101.com for the science/tech books section. That means I have an obligation to post four articles a month that somehow relate to science/technical books. So far so good. I wrote up a review of Quantum Leaps by Jeremy Bernstein. Overall, I liked it.

As a Feature Writer, I also get a blog there as well. If you've got blogs use 'em I say. I wrote a piece on a pretty good technical book series called What Every Engineer Should Know. Good stuff in that series. In blogs you get to be quite a bit more creative in your writing style than you do when writing a book review to conform to site style. Does this count as part of 30 Days of Creativity? You bet!

Sixty Days in a Library

Here is a long-term personal learning project that I started today. It involves lots of reading and research, but the creative part for the purposes of 30 Days of Creativity is that I wrote a blog post about it. In Sixty Days in a Library I outline my plan to become skilled in the art and science of information theory with application to problems in biology. You should try something like this too!

30 Days of Creativity - #4

And it continues on Day 4...

The Soma Cube Project

Today I tried to paint the seven pieces of the Soma Cube. It's been awhile since I pained anything. Which explains why it did not turn out very good. The purple base color is too hard to cover with the red spray paint I chose. It's going to need a coat of primer. Duh!

Too late in the evening to do anything on that now. I'll let the crummy red coat dry overnight and then put on the primer tomorrow.

I Made This Blog

Today was also the day I set up this blog to start looking like I wanted. This involved editing a PSD file in the header to get the blog title to say "Sci-Tech Stuff" and then I had to upload it to a server and then figure out where in the template to reference it since the instructions at the place where I got the template were clearly wrong. No biggie. Still some work to do in the sidebar, but it's a start.

Day #5 is next.