Taller Than Average Tales: March 2014

28 March 2014

Life of Art SitRep #216 Wood Canvas and Organization

This week, I added my photographs and some designs to Wood Canvases.

Adobe Passageway: Black & White photo Wood Canvas by RocklawnArts
Find wood canvases online at zazzle.com

Downtown Kansas City Wood Canvases by RocklawnArts
See other Kansas city Wood Canvas at zazzle

Double Rainbow Barcode Wood Print by RocklawnArts
Look at more wood canvases

Purple Diamonds on White Wood Canvases by RocklawnArts
See other Purple Wood Canvas

Seeing my photos in a new format rekindled my motivation to work on my archive of digital and scanned images.

I deleted about 50 digital photos from the beginning of 2012. Distance makes these decisions easier, more obvious.

Then I renamed and added keywords and metadata to scans from 7 rolls of film. I revised my nomenclature to keep them in date order and made sure each roll had its own folder.

I was for a time distracted by puppies on creative LIVE during the Animal Photography with Rachael Hale McKenna workshop. I think she's photographing a pig on Saturday!

I also watched some more personally pertinent segments on Lightroom from Advanced Lightroom Workflow with Jared Platt and rewatched part of an older workshop I own, Ultimate Lightroom Workflow with Jared Platt, to inform some of my archive decisions.

Rocklawn Arts blogged New Wood Canvases at Rocklawn Arts!

Read Julieanne Kost’s Favorite Shortcuts for Working with Layers (in Photoshop) pdf.

Rearranged my Diamond Designs folder a bit.

How was your week?

4 years ago on TTaT: Sketchbook, page 15

24 March 2014

The Outsiders

No, not those Outsiders.

25. The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William N. Thorndike

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you want to run your own business, be a CEO, or get some ideas of what you should look for in CEOs of companies you want to invest in, you should read this book.

The eight CEOs Thorndike profiles all excelled in capital allocation, i.e., they knew what to do with the money their companies had.

Sounds simple enough, right? There's no simple template, however, as different circumstances yield different best moves.

He compares each CEO's returns to the results of his/her peers as well as the S&P 500 during their respective reigns. The CEOs all beat their peers by a wide margin and trounced the S&P 500.

Those are great skills to have and understand. This book will give you a leg up.

Oddly enough, 3 or 4 of the Outsider CEOs started as electrical engineers like my Dad did. "What gives?" I teased him, later followed by, "Why didn't you buy (and hold!) Berkshire Hathaway in 1965?"

"I know," he said with a shake of his head, but he hadn't heard of the company back then. Hindsight's grand.

So is foresight, if you can get it right.

A year ago on TTaT: Global Snaps: 500 Photographs from 7 Continents

21 March 2014

Life of Art SitRep #215 Light blue two

Continuing the light blue and black theme, I created Light Blue And Black Chevrons and Light Blue And Black Meander patterns.

Light Blue And Black Chevrons by RocklawnArts
See other iPhone 5S cases at Zazzle

Light Blue And Black Chevrons by RocklawnArts
Browse Light blue Lamp-In-A-Box Lamp

Light Blue And Black Chevrons by RocklawnArts
View more iPad accessories at zazzle.com.

Light Blue And Black Meander by RocklawnArts
Check out other Light blue Casemate Cases at zazzle.com

Light Blue And Black Meander by RocklawnArts
Create unique custom plates online at Zazzle.

Light Blue And Black Meander by RocklawnArts
View more Rickshaw messenger bags.

Rocklwan Arts blogged New Light Blue And Black Chevrons pattern, New Light Blue And Black Meander pattern, and and New Bandanas at Rocklawn Arts!

Updated links and LOA file.

Finished reading Popular Photography March 2014 issue.

How was your week?

Two years ago on TTaT: Queen & Country, Volume 1: Broken Ground

18 March 2014

That Time of Year

Most of the ground is still covered with several inches of snow, but the sun is out, the sky is blue, and the temperature hit just above 40.

Feels gorgeous.

My car needed gas so I took advantage of the beautiful day to fill it up. Made me realize just how filthy it is from all the salt, dirt, and splashes accumulated over our enduring winter. I cleaned off my windshield (twice), the rear windshield, and gave the side windows and side mirrors a quick once over. I briefly considered trying to clean off more of my car, but it seemed excessive for the little gas station sponge/squeegee.

I'll take it to a car wash eventually, but it's still too early. Even under the best meteorological conditions, there's a lot of melting yet to do and drying after that. By the time I got home, my windshield was already covered with a fine dirty mist.

4 years ago on TTaT: Shots from The Spring Bulb Show

15 March 2014

The Stack Has To Go

Today as I was reaching into a back corner next to one of my bookshelves with the vacuum hose, I spotted my old thesaurus hiding behind a large book of O'Keeffe paintings. I can get rid of that! I thought to myself enthusiastically.

I've recently been looking for things to weed from my shelves, and I'd forgotten I even still had that thesaurus, so it was a no brainer.

When I vacuum my room, I end up piling a bunch of stuff that lives on the floor on my bed. All too many things, I'm afraid.

Later, as I was putting them back on the floor, I stopped at the last grouping. A box of hanging folders topped by a 2" pile of pages broken into 4 sections indicated by pages sticking out at right angles from the stack.

My writing. Untouched for years. A bit dusty.

On top of the pages was my Stetson holding a ball I've used for abdominal work once.

I set the hat and ball aside and focused my attention on the pages and box of hanging folders. Both need to stop living on my floor.

Surely there is somewhere else the box can live? Maybe I can find some space on the shelves in the next room over.

But the pages. What to do with the writing?

My first thought was flip the pages over and stick them on my recycle stack for printing, but then I noticed I'd already done that on some pages at least.

Find a new home for the stack on a shelf somewhere?

Throw them in my recycling box (one of the other floor things)? Or maybe shred them. Or just tear them maybe? Who's really going to steal my writing from my recycling bin and become rich and famous with it? Most of it's on the blog anyway.

All I know is that I can't look at that stack of stuff on my floor anymore.

A year ago on TTaT: Life of Art SitRep #162 Black, White, Red

14 March 2014

Life of Art SitRep #214 Light blue!

This week, I created 4 new patterns and added 2 of them, Light Blue Diamonds on Black and Black Diamonds on Light Blue patterns, to my shop:

Light Blue Diamonds on Black by RocklawnArts
Check out more Light blue Casemate Cases at Zazzle

Light Blue Diamonds on Black Messenger Bags by RocklawnArts
View more Rickshaw messenger bags.

Light Blue Diamonds on Black return address label Return Address Labels by RocklawnArts
Make your own picture labels online at Zazzle.

Black Diamonds on Light Blue by RocklawnArts
Check out Black diamonds iPhone Cases online at zazzle

Black Diamonds on Light Blue by RocklawnArts
Find more Black diamonds Stickers at Zazzle

Black Diamonds on Light Blue by RocklawnArts
View other Black diamonds Pillows at Zazzle.com

Rocklawn Arts blogged New Acrylic Ornaments at Rocklawn Arts!, New Serving Trays at Rocklawn Arts!, New Purple Diamonds on White pattern, New Nail Art now available at Rocklawn Arts!, and New Purple Lattice on White pattern.

Watched Make Money Making Art with Ann Rea workshop on creative LIVE.

Read Sell Your Art Without Selling Out: 101 Rules by Ann Rea.

How was your week?

Two years ago on TTaT: Stars

10 March 2014

Favorite Fortune Ever

Got this fortune last night and immediately thought, "This is the best fortune ever."

I don't have high hopes it will come to pass, but it'd be totally awesome if it did.

4 years ago on TTaT: Sketchbook, page 10

09 March 2014

Thinking, Fast and Slow

20. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a dense book, and be warned: the type gets even smaller in the appendices, but a fascinating read.

Kahneman breaks down how we come to the decisions we make, for better or worse, in great detail. Roughly speaking, we're rather biased without realizing it. We often favor our automatic intuitions because our more effortful, discerning side is lazy.

As I was reading this book, I told my Dad about parts of it and kept saying, "This is why our brains are broken!"

Our brains work, it's just there's a lot of conflicting stuff going on behind the scenes and our conscious mind is not running the show as much as we would like to believe.

The book is full of real stories and examples from numerous studies that help illustrate fast and slow thinking. The concepts gets applied to all sorts of scenarios: investing, health care, how we remember versus how we experience things, assessment of life satisfaction, and more.

Highly recommended!

A year ago on TTaT: Before and After: How to Design Cool Stuff

07 March 2014

Life of Art SitRep #213 bandana!

I'm not sure why but bandana looks really strange if you capitalize the b, so I left it lowercase in the post title.

In any case, I made templates for Bandanas (see?) and then added many of my designs and photographs to them: