Aku Aku

1 of 52: The Straight and Narrows

For part one of my 52 things project, I present to you my new comic strip, The Straight and Narrows.

It's hard being funny on a deadline, but I'm glad I've put these guys out. I hope I can develop the idea better over time.

I used Comic Life on my Mac, photos taken from my balcony and Photoshop to create these. It took about two hours.

Which candidate represents you?

This is an interesting exercise. WQAD has posted a short (11 questions) online quiz on several of the major campaign issues for the 2008 presidential elections. After entering your opinions they show you how each candidate matches your view points. It didn't come up in the order I expected.

I was torn on the Line-Item Veto question. I'm not really sure where I stand on this, although I think it is very important. What I would like to see is a way to stop "riders" abuse (this is where an unpopular and unwanted provision is snuck onto a popular bill), and perhaps line-item veto is good for that? I don't really know. What I would like to see is simply that every item is voted on separately throughout the legislative process.

Which_candidate

52 things.

In recent months I've been feeling a lack of artistic creativity. With some consideration I can see a steady decline since my university days nearly two decades ago. It's a weird feeling. I remember what is what like to be more creative. The memory of how effortless it seemed at one time stands in harsh contrast with how much effort I've made lately on a specific project and come up with nothing.

A friend of mine, Thomas, started an amazing project 26 weeks ago that I didn't bother to look at until this past Sunday. Thomas reminded me of his project after I was lamenting to him my lack of creativity. The project is called 52 Things. In a nutshell, he made a public oath to post a new creative work to his website by bedtime Sunday every week for a year, be it good, bad or ugly.

His results are inspiring. Also inspiring is an excellent short video he points to by Ze Frank entitled Brain Crack. This addresses another problem I've always had: even for the fairly good ideas, I rarely produce them. I hold onto them, waiting for the time to work on them uninterrupted, or some more polishing of the idea. In the end they still exist mostly just in my mind.

I've been telling anyone who asks my age since February that I am 40 years old. In fact, I'm 39. Two of my friends also turned 40 this year, so in a show of comradeship we decided to all tackle the new age together on the first of our birthdays and just claim we rolled over into the new decade of life. The true date is a couple of weeks away for me. Perhaps this is why I've decided it is time to take action.

I'm going to embark on my own 52 Things voyage. Good, bad or ugly, I'm going to post something every week. Software, music, video, story, photograph, sculpture, painting. Whatever. Something.

I've decided to post these items to my longtime blog AkuAku despite the fact that I've been posting more often to my vox blog lately. It gives me more flexibility since I control the server.

I hope to accomplish good things, but I will take whatever comes and try to build on my failures and successes. I must go now, it's Thursday already and I need to figure out a project for this week.

52 Things.

In recent months I've been feeling a lack of artistic creativity. With some consideration I can see a steady decline since my university days nearly two decades ago. It's a weird feeling. I remember what is was like to be more creative. The memory of how effortless it seemed at one time stands in harsh contrast with how much effort I've made lately on a specific project and come up with nothing.

A friend of mine, Thomas, started an amazing project 26 weeks ago that I didn't bother to look at until this past Sunday. Thomas reminded me of his project after I was lamenting to him my lack of creativity. The project is called 52 Things. In a nutshell, he made a public oath to post a new creative work to his website by bedtime Sunday every week for a year, be it good, bad or ugly.

His results are inspiring. Also inspiring is an excellent short video he points to by Ze Frank entitled Brain Crack. This addresses another problem I've always had: even for the fairly good ideas, I rarely produce them. I hold onto them, waiting for the time to work on them uninterrupted, or some more polishing of the idea. In the end they still exist mostly just in my mind.

I've been telling anyone who asks my age since February that I am 40 years old. In fact, I'm 39. Two of my friends also turned 40 this year, so in a show of comradeship we decided to all tackle the new age together on the first of our birthdays and just claim we rolled over into the new decade of life. The true date is a couple of weeks away for me. Perhaps this is why I've decided it is time to take action.

I'm going to embark on my own 52 Things voyage. Good, bad or ugly, I'm going to post something every week. Software, music, video, story, photograph, sculpture, painting. Whatever. Something.

I've decided to post these items to my longtime blog AkuAku despite the fact that I've been posting more often to my vox blog lately. It gives me more flexibility since I control the server.

I hope to accomplish good things, but I will take whatever comes and try to build on my failures and successes. I must go now, it's Thursday already and I need to figure out a project for this week.