Doreen Cronin with my youngest

What’s with the noisy title in this edition? Thank you for asking. I bet that those of you with young kids may have figured it out. We met Doreen Cronin, author of Click, Clack, Moo; Thump, Quack, Moo; Duck for President and Diary of a Worm (Amazon affiliate links) — to name a handful. I think a parents enjoyment of reading a book is a good way to measure the quality of a children’s book. You can bet I laugh lots when we read Cronin’s books especially the ones with the cows and duck.

I asked her what she was working on. She said it was the sequel of a chapter book that comes out in the spring. I looked up the chapter book to see if details were available — not yet. I think it’s a great move on her part because the kids — like my youngest – who know her duck and cows book best now read chapter books and beyond. My older son could have discovered her books when he was in the picture book stage — but we didn’t meet them until later.

Dallas Children’s Theater is performing a musical version of Giggle, Giggle, Quack. We hope to catch that one.

Brain food…

• Six Ways Authors Can Promote Books on Facebook: Authors need to take marketing into their own hands and here’s one way to do it.
• 15 Inspiring Home Offices: Kind of makes me appreciate mine more. These setups rock — I like not being against the wall.
• 101 Blogs That Accept Guest Posts: Love this list because it lists the more popular sites as well as the pagerank — but remember pageranking changes and plenty of lower pagerank sites are worth the guest blog post. I also accept guest posts as long as they meet my guidelines. [Link: @txwriter]
• The Cognitive Itch — From Earworms to Déjà Vu: Dealing with can’t get song out of my head, déjà vu moments and tip-of-tongue problems. [Link: Lydia Dishman]
• Become a Book Review Ninja: 10 Steps to Mastery: I’ve been sitting on an how to article for doing book reviews for months. It need spiffying and more storytelling. Well, this is exactly what I was looking for — don’t know that I would’ve used the ninja theme, but I knew a theme would work.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 16 Eye Popping Pixel Sculptures You Have to See: Ah, I remember the days of 8-bit graphics. Who knew it could be taken to another dimension?
• 25 Cool USB Drives: I use a boring basic one. What I need isn’t a cool one but a very short one because the one I have keeps getting hit because of the way it sticks out. Wax seal one brings back memories. Yes, I had one. [Link: Jessica Strawser]
• Beautiful and Funny Illustrations by Tokyo Go Go: Something different, colorful and fun to look at. [Link: @bkkmacdaddy]
• 10 Hilarious Yet Ingenious Solutions to Everyday Problems: I could probably use the t-shirt … but it’d help to make plans to travel to another country first.
• Dream Chronicles: The Book of Air: (Big Fish Games affiliate link) I love this PC game series because of its gorgeous screens, absorbing puzzles and captivating storytelling. Right now, it’s only available as a Collector’s Edition, but this gives you time to try the original, Eternal Maze and the Chosen Child.

Tell us about a time when you met an author in person or a celebrity.

I have an old, old (2001!) useless one-line post on creativity that search engines somehow love. I feel bad for the folks who keep landing on the post only to find nothing of value. Let’s see if we can stop torturing folks by listing  ideas for creative things to do. Some take a few minutes and some take hours. Some cost nothing. Some call for something you may have at home. Some may require a little shopping.

1. Write a song. You could do just the lyrics, just the music or both. Go crazy.
2. Create a paper airplane you’ve never done before. Most of us have done the basic style paper airplane. Alex’s Paper Airplanes provides how tos for all kinds of planes.
3. Make origami. Sick of airplanes? Get lots of paper folding ideas from the Origami Club.
4. Write a short story. Fiction. Nonfiction. Or fiction using a nonfiction memory. Don’t worry about perfection. Just throw it up on the screen or on paper.
5. Draw a picture. Use Crayons, paint, chalk (go draw on the sidewalk!), pencil, ballpoint pens, whatever writing instrument you have. Heck, use a graphic tablet.
6. Write a poem. Try out a new poetic form if you’re sick of haikus.  Robert Lee Brewer shares many, many poetic forms. Pick one you’ve never heard of and try it!
7. Take pictures. Walk around your neighborhood. Capture something. Go to a nearby park or intriguing place. Put those photo-taking techniques you read about to work.
8. Do ONE page in a scrapbook. Do you have scrapbooking materials that you have yet to use? I bought a package and never used it. The thought of trying to do a scrapbook overwhelms me, maybe it does for you, too. So go for ONE page. Pick three pictures and go!
9. Make up a dance. Love Dancing with the Stars or So You Think You Can Dance? You’ve seen lots of dancing, now try making up your own.
10. Build a website. You don’t have to be in a business to have a website. Create one for your favorite hobby or activity.
11. Create a Facebook page or group. Maybe your favorite nonprofit organization could use one. Love a band, hobby, activity? Before creating one, search Facebook to see if another group already exists. No sense in wasting time if an active group already covers the topic. Maybe you can narrow down the popular topic to create a niche group.
12. Rearrange your home. Change up the environment. Move or swap pictures, move furniture even to a different room, remove some clutter. A little change can give you more energy.
13. Paint a room. You can leave everything the same — just changing the color can make magic.
14. Paint pottery. Go to one of those paint pottery places and make something.
15. Make candles or soaps. I remember I had this arts and crafts book and I made a candle out of an egg shell. I was proud of myself especially since I have no eye for art. Lots and lots of resources for candlemaking help and ideas. And for soap ideas.
16. Produce a video. My daughter loves to do this for school projects. She impressed me with her creativity. If you already have a video camera, you’re golden. The web has plenty of free apps and software for editing and producing videos. What to make a video about? OK, I’ll be nice and give you one idea: “What is a hero?” OK, I stole it from one of my daughter’s video projects. Heck, you can search for “video project ideas.”
17. Learn how to knit, needlepoint, quilts or some other sewing craft. These projects can range from short to long. Take your pick. I used to do latch hook kits. Loved doing them and they’re so easy. I made a big Donald Duck picture and framed it for my dad that hangs in the office in my mom’s house (Dad passed away). @BJMuntain says, “Besides writing, I cross stitch. Great for people with patience and good attention to detail, like librarians or archaeologists.” I wish I had the ability to put together a quilt made of shirts. I had someone take all my old shirts and swetashirts and turned them into an awesome, memory-filled quilt.
18. Decorate a plain picture frame. Find a fun picture and create a fun frame to go with it.
19. Play chef. Create a new recipe. Do a twist on a favorite. Make candy, cookies, cupcakes or cakes and apply a new decorating technique. Turn on a food TV channel and you’ll be inspired that you want to make something. Or make a gingerbread house or something creative and use candy to decorate it. I just saw a roller coaster candy challenge where the winner added silver to peppermint patties and used them as rivets. Brilliant.
20. Make jewelry. I’ve done the macramé thing in scouts, lanyard thing at camp and made bracelets. Go to an art supply store and you’ll find plenty of trinkets, beads and charms to motivate you.
21. Learn a new craft technique. Try stenciling, stamping or etching.
22. Make something with florals. I loved the centerpieces at a recent event. It was a small glass vase filled with clear gelatin. Put two little lights in the gelatin and then fill the vase with three short flowers. Simple yet elegant.
23. Build a bear. Sure, it costs a pretty dollar, but it’s fun and you’ll feel like a kid again.
24. Work on a book. Novel, nonfiction, whatever you desire. Don’t pressure yourself. Just do it here and there. From @KevinFenton: “Work on a novel. Craig Ferguson, who’d been working in film, called it punk rock –– you can do what you want with cheap supplies.” Love to draw? Do a children’s book with pictures.
25. Create a photo show. Why wait until a special occasion when you’ll be too busy with the event? Create a photo show now while you have the time.
26. Create or grow your garden. Plant flowers, herbs or vegetables to add color and personality to your yard.
27. Put together a model plane, car or boat. I loved doing this as a kid. I chucked Barbie for model kits and race car tracks.
28. Do a wood project. You can buy precut wood shapes, so you don’t have to start from scratch. I’ve made little signs and painted them. I made a wood napkin holder with my parents’ initial.
29. Make pillows or blankets. Not all blankets call for knitting or quilting. A friend took two large pieces of material and tied them together into a perfect blanket for my first son. My mom had a pillow made out of my dad’s old ties.
30. Organize yourself. I love building bookshelves and other organizers from kits that you get at Ikea or the Container Store. Not only you do something with your hands, but you also clean up.
31. Play designer. Watch those shows (Yes, like Trading Spaces) where designers have a very small budget and do lots of crafts projects to change up the room’s look. It’s amazing what they come up with that even I can do.
32. Design a shirt, bag, sneakers or other clothes. One of my proudest projects ever — painting a sweatshirt. That sweatshirt is on my quilt. It’s a sweatshirt of many logos from musicals. I couldn’t believe how precise many of the logos turned out. Oh, there’s a mistake in there, but I covered it up nicely.
33. Explore other people’s works. Go to Etsy, Martha Stewart and similar sites with handmade products. You’re bound to get creative ideas you want to try yourself.
34. Solve a problem. People invent things to solve problems. What annoys you? A shoelace that keeps coming untied, but you don’t want to double-knot it? A shirt tag? Bet a couple of ideas come to your mind.
35. Create geek art. Turn an old mouse into a holiday decoration. Keyboard useless? Recycle the keys into art: earrings, cuff links, necklace, etc.
36. Recycle old items. Instead of trashing useless items, turn them into something else like geek art.

What other creative things can you do?

Yeah!!! Did that sound too happy? I think summer would be more valuable if we stretched out the school year and have two to three week breaks at a time. Then, older kids would miss out the opportunity of having summer jobs or doing special programs. Eh, it’ll never change.

• If Only I Had Some Advice for Writers: I get questions like Rachelle does. Sometimes writing related and sometimes something else. When it’s writing, I point to this blog entry and this one prompted by a similar question. If you’re bold, send them to LMGTFY.
• Marketing Advice for Writers with Molly O’Neill: Mine — always make marketing part of your job no matter where you are in your project or career [Link: Greg Pincus].
• 5 Questions for Those Who Don’t Have Time to Market/Promote: See previous. No excuses for not marketing!
• The Press Releases of the Damned: Love this. I rarely predict things — but I called it on Palm’s Foleo. I had a better article on the Foleo ready for print publication, but Palm killed the product before the article was to print.
• How to Drive Traffic with Repeat Tweets: I repeat-tweet on occasion and it’s not a problem. Few people keep track of all your tweets and won’t notice unless you repeat yourself too often.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Broadway’s Next to Normal Goes Viral, the Twitterized version of the musical. Follow ‘em @n2nbroadway.
• 12 Funniest Wedding Cake Toppers
• Firekites’ Autumn Story Chalk Animation Video: I like the song and the animation fit well with the mood.
• Cardboard Sculptures: (Picture me: Jaw dropped, whites of my eyes peering)
• Grammar geeks unite! [Link: @kylejameson @lydiabreakfast]

• Five Words You Can Cut: Blogged about this in the past… cut modifiers such as “really, very, much” is a good start. I use “just,” but more to add “conversation” to writing. If it’s an article or something formal, I omit it. [Link: John]
• 35 Essential Elements for a Newsworthy Release: 35 is a bit much. Useful info.
• Landing Page Tutorials and Case Studies. One resource should do the trick for your landing pages wanna knows.
• Polish Your Writing to Professionalism: Three tips to self-editing. My number one tip is to use an editor… but that’s not always possible, so these three will do.
• 5 Business Decisions You Will Be Proud Of: “Does doing all of these things guarantee anything? The answer: YES.”

And the fun stuff because you’re allowed.

• ABC book in 3D. For a moment, I wished I had this book when my kids were younger. But then I realized… they’d tear it up. This one looks too fabulous to ruin.
• Jewish Bread Toilet Seat Cover: In honor of Passover, which starts this weekend.
• 10 annoyingly brilliant office interiors: No depressing gray found here.
• The 10 Most Underrated Consoles

Happy 12th birthday to my oldest!

* Sand Fantasy has amazing videos of an artist who uses nothing but hands and sandy to create changing pictures.

* Techdirt posts funny blurbs related to tech and has current news, rumors, book reviews, and white papers.

* Web Gallery of Art isn’t a fancy site and uses frames (ick), but it has over 10,000 pictures of artwork along with commentary. An art-lovers dream.

* Lemmings was one of the few games I played when I began life after college and it was hard to stop. They’re back! You can play them online, on PSP (thank goodness I don’t have one), and create an interactive wallpaper. [ Thanks to Adverblog for addicting me again ]

* Considering U.S. President’s Day is coming up on February 20, it seemed appropriate to point to the Presidential Pet Museum.

From the sponsor: Since the Academy Awards are coming soon, you can bet many entertainers are having Los Angeles cosmetic surgery. Here’s a Facial Plastic Surgery blog and its February 3 entry happens to mention the Oscars.

Painting the Digital River takes a view of art by comparing digital art and classic art. Author James Faure Walker makes many points as he gives value to both art forms, discarding neither as less legitimate than the other. Himself an artist, Walker knows that many artists are confused as to what it means to be an artist and expert at what they do. He says that artists must know about painting, its past and its present, and possess some knowledge of the digital form.

Walker discusses the classical way of learning to draw and paint, and then looks at the tools available for artists today. Just as canvas, brush and pigment all come in many qualities; the digital world offers a variety of hardware and software to enhance the finished product of the artist’s vision.

[ Read more ... ]

From the sponsor:
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold movie is coming to theaters on February 10.

Painting the Digital River takes a view of art by comparing digital art and classic art. Author James Faure Walker makes many points as he gives value to both art forms, discarding neither as less legitimate than the other. Himself an artist, Walker knows that many artists are confused as to what it means to be an artist and expert at what they do. He says that artists must know about painting, its past and its present, and possess some knowledge of the digital form.

Walker discusses the classical way of learning to draw and paint, and then looks at the tools available for artists today. Just as canvas, brush and pigment all come in many qualities; the digital world offers a variety of hardware and software to enhance the finished product of the artist’s vision.

He describes a variety of activities illustrating different forms of digital art and tries to answer many of the questions faced by artists of today, lovers of art, and the museums and galleries that display the new art forms. The author covers some of the work — both classical and modern that he has viewed — finding some of it a waste of time and others breathtaking.

Where the author finally reconciles the different forms of art is in the mind of the painter, the inspiration, the idea from which his work flows. Whether with brush on canvas or printmaking using computer graphics, the painter’s talent most affects the quality of the art. Still, he adds, “that for all its faults, digital art has a life of its own.”

This book starts and ends with the metaphor of the river (Walker works overlooking the Thames); the river changes, it flows this way and that. Painting, like the river, follows a winding course and has quirky ways.

This book is timely as many people are confused by all of the digital art and are trying to put it in perspective — is it art? Is it the only art (from now on)? The author tries to sort out and help understand what painting is and that there is good and bad art in the new digital world just as there always has been with ink and paint. He does a good job reviewing art history and providing technical insight. Painters, art historians, those who appreciate what they see, as well as those interested in the technology that produces digital paintings should find the book worth exploring.

Title: Painting the Digital River
Author: James Faure Walker
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
ISBN: 0131739026
Date: January 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Cover Price: USD: $24.99 Amazon: $16.49

Art books are reaching new heights and Pictoplasma is one of the first I’ve seen. The others are Designer Shock’s DSOS1 : The User’s Manual and Anime. All three books are published by German publisher, Die Gestalten Verlag, and they’re onto something here.

The book is a showcase of contemporary art created by international graphic designers, animators, artists, and production companies. Thaler states in the book’s foreword, “Character design is the most universal of graphic languages. Characters work independent of cultural context and narrative structure. They are entirely self-referential, defined by clearly distinctive characteristics and have a life of their own.”

Thaler is absolutely correct when saying the characters have taken on a life of their own. Furthermore, the art attempts to convey the artist’s message emotionally while reaching out to its viewer in the hopes of bonding.

The entire book is pure eye candy in every free hand drawing, pixel, vector graphic, 3-D objects, and an encyclopedia of resurfacing motifs. Even non-Internet surfers will recognize many of the colorful and creative designs because they are found other media including television, books, and video games.

The index lists all the titles of the art, contributors’ names along with their email and Web addresses. As a confessed non-artist, I’m in awe as I flip through pages of expressive and colorfully rendered art. The book can be much more than just another art book, it can be an inspiration for those in the process of creating. This is the coffee table book for geeks and Web designers and it’ll go just fine with the books containing the Monets, Picassos, and Renoirs.

The book has a companion Web site and you can view pages at the publisher’s Web site.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Pictoplasma
AUTHORS: Peter Thaler (Editor), Michael Mischler (Editor), Hendrik Hellige (Editor)
PUBLISHER: Die Gestalten Verlag
PUBLICATION DATE: November 2001
ISBN: 3931126587
FORMAT: Hardcover
PAGES: 224
PRICE: US$50