Conscious creation takes a lot of effort. I may be going about it inefficiently, but here’s my magical formula: walk, sleep, grow. Before I elaborate, let me share a couple of stories from my childhood:

Cops and Robbers

My cousin Pete and I used to spend summers at my grandmother’s small row house in South Philadelphia. We weren’t allowed outside after a certain time. We didn’t have to go to bed, though. Instead, we ran around the house, pretending to be various characters, acting out some wild play in which my cousin, invariably, was the director. By “running around” I mean that, as we acted out our parts, we paced a circle from the living room, hallway, dining room and back to the living room.

I was always amused that my cousin would carry out this routine, even if he were playing by himself. (This was usually the case when we had been quarreling and he didn’t want to play with me.) It was as if the physical act of walking on his make-believe stage was a requirement to create the scenes in his mind.

A Studied Pace

Years later, in my teens, I spent a lot time alone, making up games and playing them out by myself. I continued the childhood habit of walking around in a small circle, talking things out. Have you ever seen one of Robert Crumb’s walkin’ dudes? That’s the picture that comes to mind: a solitary madman thinking up stuff.

Walk Sleep Grow

I still walk around in circles. It helps me get my exercise and, since I’m not going anywhere, it frees my mind to make up stuff. The imagination is a fascinating place. I don’t care about probabilities. Everything is possible. I don’t care about details. Everything just works. Within this loose mental playground, software is magical, game ideas are playable and stories pop up without warning.

Sometimes, I might walk so long that I become tired. So I’ll take a nap. More often than not, this resting period just gives my brain more time to ferment the ideas. I’ll come back to this, later. The main idea here is that I almost always allow myself the luxury of a nap, whenever I feel sleepy.

Naturally, ideas that have time to ferment can grow into something solid and tangible. This is the third part of my magical formula. I’ve learned to put ideas down on paper as soon as they’re ready and not before. Prior to mastering this lesson, I wasted reams of paper, and time, documenting half-baked ideas that were later discarded for various reasons. One thing I may never know is what would have become of any of those ideas, had I let them bake a little longer. I can only guess that they would have met the same fate as any of my other silly ideas. The advantage would have been a savings of time and paper.

The Formula

Any alchemist knows that you have to get the formula just right, or you won’t get the gold. Not enough walking and the ideas won’t develop fully. Too much sleep and the ideas are forgotten. Growing too quickly or slowly may result in ideas that are warped, stagnant or stunted. Yet, even with the right mix of ingredients, the ideas may glitter, but be worthless.

To Your Health

It occurs to me that the process is good for your physical and mental health, regardless of the intrinsic value of any ideas you may get. So, get out and walk!

Better yet, read Steve Young’s excellent post:

Free Your Mind By Exercisng Your Body

X-ray vision glasses from the back of comic books promised pre-adolescent boys their own super-human powers. Since I was reasonably sure the ads were hyperbole, I opted to spend my allowance on joy buzzers and garlic gum. Too bad I don’t follow my instincts when it comes to the web.

Photo by Tripp Shoots People

Ideas Without Action Are Worthless

Helen Keller said that. She evidently rejected the old saw about the worth of a dozen ideas. Of course, she was right: you can’t cash a day-dream at your local bank, current financial crisis notwithstanding. You have to actually do something.

I want to bring board games and paper puzzles to the world. The idea was born when I developed a program to create random printable boards. I was inspired by my dad, who created Hilagrams, Fischer Random Chess, the modular style of Dungeons and Dragons and too many sci-fi novels to mention.

Rather than day-dream, I set to work creating Morpho Board.

No website can convey the labor that goes into its creation, nor can the realization of an idea reclaim the shed husks of prototypical iterations. I may attempt to quantify the process or record the progress but, ultimately, only I know the toll.Yet, having shed blood and cried tears of agony during the virtual birth, I quickly forgot the pain and turned my fickle attention to other ideas.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Instead of remaining focused on Morpho Board, I began a long, torturous and unprofitable journey through various money-making schemes. I shan’t recount the sordid details here. I’ll just point out that the original goal of bringing board games to the world had dropped off my radar.

Photo by hermanturnip

Ironically, blogging was the vehicle of distraction that took me from the shores of naïveté to the underbelly of the web – and back. At first, it was all about Google’s AdSense program. As that failed to produce financial freedom within a year, I turned to affiliate marketing, eBay and a host of other “ventures” that did nothing but waste my time.

Eventually, I dug myself out of the pit of senseless contradictions and pointless blathering that punctuated much of the crap I had chosen to follow. Morpho Board was back in my sights and I would have been home free but for a little blue bird.

Bird’s Eye View

Twitter. Bah! I read about this micro-blogging fad in 2007 and signed up. Having no clue about the value of telling total strangers that I had just eaten another Pop-tart®, I promptly forgot about this turkey.

Graphic by Russ Adams

Addicted as I was to the siren song of Internet riches, it wasn’t long before I “discovered” that Twitter could help me make money in my sleep. You already know the ending – and moral – to this pathetic story, so let’s just fast-forward to last night.

Laser Recalibration

I will probably always have to keep reminding myself to stay focused. Images like this may help.

Photo by Dashu Pagla

One of the ways I reaffirm my goals and methods is through sharing my story. Sometimes, the tale is spun in another universe, where I may share a Revelation.

One in a series of 26 strangely connected posts. Peruse Alphabet Soup for more.

Frank Lee asks, “Are you Wasting Time In Social Media Marketing?”, to which I reply, “sort of. ”

X-ray vision glasses from the back of comic books promised pre-adolescent boys their own super-human powers. Since I was reasonably sure the ads were hyperbole, I opted to spend my allowance on joy buzzers and garlic gum. Too bad I don’t follow my instincts when it comes to the web.

Photo by Tripp Shoots People

Ideas Without Action Are Worthless

Helen Keller said that. She evidently rejected the old saw about the worth of a dozen ideas. Of course, she was right: you can’t cash a day-dream at your local bank, current financial crisis notwithstanding. You have to actually do something.

I want to bring board games and paper puzzles to the world. The idea was born when I developed a program to create random printable boards. I was inspired by my dad, who created Hilagrams, Fischer Random Chess, the modular style of Dungeons and Dragons and too many sci-fi novels to mention.

Rather than day-dream, I set to work creating Morpho Board.

No website can convey the labor that goes into its creation, nor can the realization of an idea reclaim the shed husks of prototypical iterations. I may attempt to quantify the process or record the progress but, ultimately, only I know the toll.Yet, having shed blood and cried tears of agony during the virtual birth, I quickly forgot the pain and turned my fickle attention to other ideas.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Instead of remaining focused on Morpho Board, I began a long, torturous and unprofitable journey through various money-making schemes. I shan’t recount the sordid details here. I’ll just point out that the original goal of bringing board games to the world had dropped off my radar.

Photo by hermanturnip

Ironically, blogging was the vehicle of distraction that took me from the shores of naïveté to the underbelly of the web – and back. At first, it was all about Google’s AdSense program. As that failed to produce financial freedom within a year, I turned to affiliate marketing, eBay and a host of other “ventures” that did nothing but waste my time.

Eventually, I dug myself out of the pit of senseless contradictions and pointless blathering that punctuated much of the crap I had chosen to follow. Morpho Board was back in my sights and I would have been home free but for a little blue bird.

Bird’s Eye View

Twitter. Bah! I read about this micro-blogging fad in 2007 and signed up. Having no clue about the value of telling total strangers that I had just eaten another Pop-tart®, I promptly forgot about this turkey.

Graphic by Russ Adams

Addicted as I was to the siren song of Internet riches, it wasn’t long before I “discovered” that Twitter could help me make money in my sleep. You already know the ending – and moral – to this pathetic story, so let’s just fast-forward to last night.

Laser Recalibration

I will probably always have to keep reminding myself to stay focused. Images like this may help.

Photo by Dashu Pagla

One of the ways I reaffirm my goals and methods is through sharing my story. Sometimes, the tale is spun in another universe, where I may share a Revelation.

One in a series of 26 strangely connected posts. Peruse Alphabet Soup for more.

Frank Lee asks, “Are you Wasting Time In Social Media Marketing?”, to which I reply, “sort of. ”

Photo by *L*u*z*a

The past two nights, I have awakened before dawn, driven from sleep by powerful dreams. The first night was awash with a harrowing hallucination of omniscient epiphany. Alas, the wispy wonders of conscious creation scattered from memory, shredded like mental cumulus as they retreated to my subconscious. Last night, however, a different cloud emerged.

Obscure Clarity

In stark contrast to that ephemeral first dream, last night’s episode was a concrete chimera. Formless yet solid, this dream anchored its presence firmly into my waking mind. Even as I write these prefatory statements, there rests a static front at the junction of my creative and analytical thoughts: ideas raining steady to the thunderous claps of jumping conclusions.

Photo by wili

I fear that mere words would fail to paint the pictures of these two dreams. Lyrics without the lyre, uttered without rhythm, perceived without power. Yet, words are all I have, and sentences are all I shape. Perhaps an impression will linger …

The Secret of the Seventh Son

The Secret evokes a land of abundance, wrought by active belief. Seventh Son builds a fantasy world abstracted from historical figures and folklore. These influential books tantalize in the truest sense: holding out delectable treats just beyond my grasp. Conscious creation is at the core of both and subconscious recollection has obviously colored my dreamscape.

Photo by berlin fan

Imagine a montage depicting frantic construction of a globe. Slow down the frames until you can discern each stage of the task. Now, watch as a scrolling marquee appears beneath your field of view, captioning the steps, from beginning to end. You are experiencing what I call omniscient epiphany. Whether it holds in the waking world is irrelevant – the dream is real and the power of knowledge inebriates you until, ironically, you no longer understand what is happening. Upon awakening, you have a virtual hangover; the fantastic revelation is all but blacked out. What remains is the essence – an ester – from the tree of knowledge in a receding pool of wisdom.

The Question Behind the Question of Getting Things Done

QBQ evokes a philosophy of personal accountability, attained by active introspection. GTD presents a system of personal productivity abstracted from countless refinements to techniques for planning and organizing. These concepts are empowering: pointing out not only the tools, but also the responsible party, required for producing whatever I need.

Chiaroscuro

There is no way to imagine a shadow after its maker has passed your line of vision. Yet, an after-image of a Titan is not soon forgotten. Much like adrenaline-powered visions after a near-collision with a tractor-trailer on an icy freeway, these concrete dreams leave a prescient stamp on my waking mind.

Photo by Josef.stuefer

Concentrated Apple Juice

Sometimes, it is better to abandon one dream in order to focus on another. Indeed, it may be the case that one dream provides the goal of the other. If I can have both while pursing one, then I need never thirst.

Here, for the first time since I indulged myself with a list of posts from my very first blog, is a folder dump of folderol that seemed like a good idea at the time. Some of the ideas appear elsewhere on my blog, hopefully in a more palatable format than this junkyard collection.

The dates in parentheses indicate when I created the drivel, proving that mediocrity is a full-time job!

Happy New Year!

Mitch

1. Heard Any Trees, Lately? (1/16/2008)
2. Thursday Treasure Hunt: Volume One Issue One (2/28/2008)
3. How to Chortle Like a Champ (4/30/2008)
4. Why I Suck At Search Engine Optimization (5/29/2008)
5. Celebrating the Sardonic Boo (9/25/2008)
6. Noise in Living Color (10/6/2008)
7. The Destructio of the Fourteeth Letter (10/10/2008)
8. Sarah PayPal (10/31/08)
9. Comment Power (11/28/08)
10. Web 3.0 Ushers in the Ideation Revolution (7/26/2008)

Heard Any Trees, Lately? (1/16/2008)

If you have a lot of software to keep track of your files, you are literally missing the trees for the forest!

From email to favorites, we live in a constricted tree-view of our data.

I suspect that we bring our physical world mindset into our virtual world of bits and bytes. If we misplace a piece of paper or the car keys, we may have to tear apart the home or office to find it.

Once we do find it, we resolve to “put everything in its place” so that we don’t have to suffer through such anxious episodes in the future.

With computer files, we take one look at the tens of thousands of file names in the thousands of folders and think, “I’ll never find anything in there!”

That’s just not true.

Sadly, we while away precious hours, organizing 1′s and 0′s into pigeonholes, failing to recognize two things:

1. We’ll probably never look at 80% of this stuff again
2. We can find the other 20%, no matter where we file it.

I can only speak for myself, but I know I’ve ignored 80% of the emails I’ve read, PDFs and free software I’ve downloaded. I am not talking about important stuff. Just dumb stuff like forum comment notifications, e-books and “productivity” tools.

Thursday Treasure Hunt: Volume One Issue One (2/28/2008)

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Thursday Treasure Hunt.

In this age of information gluttony, Google hegemony and misguided advice, I wish I had a hotline to a bunch of knowledgeable and resourceful folks who could just find stuff for me.

Sure, I could post the requests in forums and other likely locations, but then I have to monitor the posts or subscribe to email alerts. I’m trying to simplify the task, not complicate it. Besides, the requests are so varied, there is no one place that I can go, other than the (blechh) search engines.

So, I decided, why not ask right here?

To make it fun, you can post your requests here, too!

There are no rules, just the usual caveat: “Remember, my kids read this blog!”

Here is the first week’s Treasure Hunt item list:

1. Flat Earth File Theory: any web document that gives serious thought to pruning the ubiquitous tree structure for file management. Right now, I’m into naming files with prefixes that suggest subfolders. I used to abhor that, until the subfolders became so numerous that I could remember where to place new files! Really, what’s so wrong with 2008 02 28 Post – Thursday Treasure Hunt? Don’t answer that, I already know. I just need answers. Actually, deep down inside, I want a mind map for file management.
2. Proof that multi-vitamins are a waste of money.
3. A BS Hype-o-Meter: Imagine a reverse Alexa. Or an anti-StumbleUpon. If I created it, I would call it DumpUpon. I’ll settle for an aggregator site that pulls in posts from scam.com, snopes.com, 419eater.com, ripoffreport.com, etc.
4. A nifty logo for the Thursday Treasure Hunt. If I use yours, you’ll get a groovy link back to the website of your choice!

The Flat Earth File Theory has really become an obsession with me. Google Desktop represents a step in the direction I wish to travel. However, it doesn’t index everything. Besides, it is more helpful when you don’t know where you stored something.

I take a multi-vitamin every day. I feel great as a result of what? Overdosing on the RDA? Skipping breakfast? Placebo effect? What? Help!

The good thing about spam is that it is so blatant. Guru-generated hype, bolstered by hypnotic writing and slick copywriting, can trip up the best of us. Problem is, not everyone who gets burned will speak out. In Unleashing the Ideavirus , Seth Godin praised PlanetFeedBack.com as a word-of-mouth aggregator. The barrier is too high for instant gratification, though. I want to right-click on a sales letter and flag that puppy!

How to Chortle Like a Champ (4/30/2008)

Today, dear reader, come with me to explore the fine art of laughing through your nose.

Why I Suck At Search Engine Optimization (5/29/2008)

“The beginner who thinks he can play a game of chess after learning how the men move is like a soldier who believes he can lead an army after learning how to shoot.”
-Edward Lasker, in the introduction to Modern Chess Strategy

Celebrating the Sardonic Boo (9/25/2008)

Here is a bouts-rimés for your enjoyment
Front verse Mulan
[something about Ghengis Khan]

Noise in Living Color (10/6/2008)

I want to know why my brain insists on throwing up a purple haze whenever I think of the word chartreuse.
Did some well-meaning but uninformed adult define that word to me when I was a child? Did I somehow associate the word with the wrong color, due to the context in which I first encountered it? Did I fail third-grade Art? Over the past few years, I’ve made some discoveries that may answer this question:

• Neurobics
• Synthaesia
• Stroop Effect

The Destructio of the Fourteeth Letter (10/10/2008)

I sent a silly email to my friend,
Sharon Hurley Hall:

Hi Sharo,

I saw your commet o your blog ad o twitter.

I kew that you could ot have forgotte or, more correctly, mistyped those two words.

It struck me as slightly amusig. As a matter of fact, I immediately created the idea for a post:

The Destruction of the Fourteenth Letter

…

Sarah PayPal (10/31/08)

No, I’m not going on a political tirade.

I had an interesting experience with the 21st century equivalent of the famous ELIZA program.

Mitchell Allen

Thank you for chatting with Sarah! Here’s the copy of the transcript you requested

Transcript:

Sarah – PayPal :

Hello, I’m Sarah and I’m here to answer your questions about PayPal. Even though I’d like to be a real person, I’m not. I’m programmed to answer your questions. How can I help you?

You :

I want to instantly transfer funds from my PayPal account to my checking account

Sarah – PayPal :

Do you mean:

• How long does it take to add funds from my bank account?
• How do I sign up for a PayPal account?
• How can I make my transactions proceed faster?
• How do I withdraw money from my PayPal account?
• What are my funding options?

You :

How can I make my transactions proceed faster?

Sarah – PayPal :

PayPal’s Instant Transfer feature allows you to send money from your bank account instantly.

You will not need to pre-fund your PayPal account or wait for an electronic transfer. Use Instant Transfer to pay as much as you want, when you want, using funds from your confirmed bank account.

To use Instant Transfer, you must have both a credit card and a confirmed bank account registered with PayPal, and will need to choose a Back-up Funding Source. Once you confirm your bank account and add a credit card, Instant Transfer is the default method of payment.

Did I answer your question?

Yes

No

You :

No

Sarah – PayPal :

I may not have understood your question. Can you rephrase it? Anything else I can do to help you?

You :

instant transfer FROM PayPal TO checking

Sarah – PayPal :

I’m about to give you information I’ve already given you. Perhaps you need a more specific answer. Then is there anything else I can do for you?

You :

Evidently not. Thanks for trying

Sarah – PayPal :

You’re welcome. If you think of anything else I can help you with, I’d be happy to assist you.

Comment Power (11/28/08)

Snippet from cnyapse.com blog:

In a small survey that we did with a few of our customers,

80% of them believed that between 30% to 40% of their entire digital knowledge lies in the comments, 60% of them agreed that the number of comments in their cyn.in system is growing faster than the number of content objects being uploaded / created.

The worst of the worst is truly bad stuff. Road kill stench bad.

“Plan 9 from Outer Space” was better than this!
In order to appreciate how bad it is, you have to understand that I had felt the need to create some kind of framework for the ideas presented in Marxist Internet Propaganda. Without such a crutch, I was too chicken to post that “paper” as a main blog entry. Indeed, it currently lives as a page in the Fiction category.

Web 3.0 Ushers in the Ideation Revolution (7/26/2008)

Putting the Wide in World Wide Web


What a tacky title!
Headlines are so Web 1.0 – required to attract attention of eyeballs and search engines.
Would you have clicked on this?

The Higgins Project is Short-sighted

Well now that you’re here, I have less than three web 2.0 seconds to convince you to read this fantastical chronicle of the

“People know what they want when they search for stuff on the web.
Today’s search engines are laughable, because they assume the opposite.
Even the ones that pretend to be ‘semantic’ can only guess at the searcher’s intent and, frankly, that wastes everyone’s time, including the engineers’, because they have to keep rewriting the code!
I watched my five-year daughter, Betsy, go to our bookshelf and grab her bedtime storybook in two seconds.
There are at least a dozen red, thin hard-cover books up there, yet she went straight to hers.
I remember lying in bed that night thinking, ‘What if folks could grab what they wanted right off the web?’

4 April, 20__
Ganda Research Unveils Hobble.com

At the annual conference of the Association of Influential Information Purveyors, Ganda Research demonstrated it’s new “Resource Locator” and the new website, www.hobble.com”
Once the implications of the Hextable Bookbinder Algorithm became clear, Ganda Research expedited the development of its latent semantic indexing engine. Expanding on the affectionately termed “Ignorance Function”, engineers threw out all keyword value indexes and focused solely on such attributes as previous search queries, geographical location of the client and server, and 57 other properties.
When pressed to disclose more details, the official Ganda Research spokesbot would only suggest that the attendees “do their own [expletive deleted] research.”

During the demonstration, the server crashed. However, before the connection failed, the presenter managed to find a pair of rare petrified wood bookends from TheEarthsTreasure.com, simply by clicking on an image of a tree.
Apparently, the search engine (we just can’t get used to writing ‘resource locator’) made a connection between the tree and the fact that the requesting computer belonged to Ganda Research, which is the leading company studying the Bookbinder Theory (get it?)

6 May, 20__
Ganda Research Suspends Work on LSI, Fires Engineer

The official Ganda Research spokesbot announced that the much-hyped Resource Locator was seriously flawed and further work would be suspended until “somebody figures out what the [expletive deleted] ‘tangential transformative taxonomical pattern matching’ even means!”
In an unrelated matter, Gerald Boxtopfield IV, senior project leader for Subliminal Studies, was fired after he tricked a secretary into behaving inappropriately with a pair of rare petrified wood bookends.

7 May, 20__
Jimmy Throckswattle Publishes Questionable Term Paper

James Throckswattle, son of the millionaire owner of the Daubers Paint-by-Numbers empire, was placed on probation, after he turned in a very sophisticated term paper in his twelfth grade Social Studies class.
His teacher, Imagene Splicer, had this to say:

“The little twerp never read a book in his life. Coming up in here with some Marxist propaganda, disguised as a term paper about the future of the Internet.
If you ask me, he’s just rebelling against his old man. Well, I’m happy to help him along by expelling his narrow, cheating behind!”

A copy of the term paper has been obtained by doing a search for marxist internet propaganda.

Web 3.0 will be an example of nervous consumption.

Connections to the WWW will be increasingly decentralized, with Local Information Brokers providing point-to-point data service.

The validation of the Bookbinder Theory provides the foundation for the implementation of a feasible semantic web.

No longer controlled by search engines, the WWW will feed off innovations in semantic engineering, which enable viewers to instantly retrieve requested content.