I bought uofwp.com a long time ago and in a spark of inspiration decided to launch the site. There’s not much there for now.
Check it out:
Blog
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Nancy is a great reader
She read her biggest word ever today–
“Wonderful”
She sounded it out beautifully. She is becoming an amazing reader.
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Schemarama
I finally finished a working version of a Figma plugin I’ve been tweaking for years.
Figma is one of the coolest pieces of software I’ve ever used, and makes up the majority of my coursework these days.
When COVID hit, my students were forced to work from home on whatever computers they had access to. I hoped at the time that Adobe – until then the primary tool used in my classes – would release a free license for students. The monthly subscription fee was more than I felt was fair for students, especially for those who were barely able to afford the costs of higher education.
Figma was a godsend; I was able to transfer my assignments’ requirements easily enough, and students could work anywhere. And it was free.
What really attracted me to the platform, however, was the presence of a community of developers who could easily contribute plugins and other resources to be shared among all Figma users. This is something that WordPress does so well, and as someone who has contributed for as long as I have, I set out to publish on Figma’s community.
Easier said than done. While Figma plugins are based on languages I’m familiar with – HTML, CSS, and Javascript – the process was vexing. I had written a basic color picker app that worked in the browser (see https://codepen.io/empireoflight/pen/eYYgGjL) I just could not get it working in Figma’s plugin development environment. I gave up after a while, and used the project as a basic learning tool in my color theory lectures.
Enter AI. From the minute I saw the capabilities the LLEs had for generating code, I’ve been flying through old projects like Schemarama and bringing them back to life. This morning I cracked open my old Schemarama repo and rebuilt it using Cursor, and just finished submitting it to the Figma plugin review team.
Fingers are crossed that it gets through, but the learning experience is worth it no matter what the outcome.
Here’s a sneak preview:
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Stickball
We used to play this all the time growing up. I don’t see kids playing it anymore.
Other sports are easy to get pickup going. You can play one-on-one hoops. 2-hand-touch only really needs 4 players. Same with street hockey.
Baseball is so fun to play, but you never have enough kids, or equipment, or a field. That’s why stickball was invented. Heck, all you need is two kids, really. Offense and defense. One kid hits. One kid pitches and fields. Pitching, fielding, hitting; that’s baseball in a nutshell.
You don’t even need a field. You need a building, one with a nice flat wall (don’t they all have those?), with a parking lot or grassy area in front (again, don’t they all have those?)
I’ve been on a stickball obsession lately. I decided to act on it a bit today, and did a little shopping. Dick’s: various balls (they didn’t have handballs, which is what I really wanted. When I was a kid, the handball truck came around every day after school), hockey tape, orange cones. Michael’s: decent sidewalk chalk (gotta make sure it washes off). Home Depot: three different options for the bat; a dowel, a railing, and a broomstick.
Lastly, I registered stickballgame.com. Stay tuned on that one.
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Art as Anthropology part 1
I often think of Picasso’s famous quote, “Art is the sum of my destructions”. I’ve always gotten that. Whenever I make art, I feel like the second I’m close to that perfect line, shade, shape or texture, there’s all this pressure that I’m gonna fuck up.
When that happens, I imagine a little Picasso sitting on my shoulder, going “So why not fuck up royally?” And I give in. It’s easy, freeing, and I embrace the fuckup. I slash the pen, gouge the surface, rip it all up.
It never quite works, though. More often than not, I end up with a pile of mess. I chastise myself for wasting my time, paint, paper, canvas. I feel like a failure in little Picasso’s eyes. “You didn’t fuck up hard enough” I can hear him saying.
The little voice is easy to dismiss. Of course I can make something nice. Not destroy it. Nurture it, coax it along in its lousy, spineless, eager-to-please formulaic predictability. Eventually I’ll end up with something having at least a few people gazing, stoking my ego-fires.
But the best stuff I’ve always made happens when I give in. The only way to find that thing, the thing I want to leave behind, is to fuck up. Intentionally. Destroy that clean line, that perfect texture, that awesome font. Force myself to do it again, but better this time. And being aware of my doing it.
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Intellectual property
So I think our DMA grads could be better suited to pursue IP law than any other program’s grads in the country.
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Inside out learning
I’m going to be talking a lot about a concept that’s been brewing in my head lately: “Inside out learning”…stay tuned…