Side of Sauce

It is 5:18 am and if you know me at all, you certainly know that I would never be up at such an ungodly hour, unless of course I never went to sleep. A week or so ago Sharpcast announced that it was going to have its first ever Hack Day. For those who don’t know, a hack day is a 24 hour period in which the engineers can build whatever they want, however they want to build it with no mettling from PM and other such irksome pests. The only rule of our Hack Day is that it must utilize our sync technology.

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Zen and the Art of Wheel Throwing

Wheel throwing might be one of the most frustrating activities I have ever engaged in. Like so many things in life, it looks simply effortless when you are standing there watching someone else throw a perfectly proportioned vase out of a lump of wet clay, but when you sit down at the wheel to create your own pièce de résistance, you find the clay is actually master.

I threw for several years before I actually considered myself a halfway decent potter. What began years ago as a tenuous foray into a new art form, became a full scale obsession. I found myself spending more time in the ceramic studio than in the lab – staying up late to fire the kiln before eventually falling asleep on the shiny red bench in the studio bathroom. I took graduate courses in glaze chemistry, I threw pots so big that I had to stand on a chair to make the last pull – the ceramic studio is where I found myself in college.

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A year ago, I set off into the woods to attend a 4 day meditation retreat. During my journey across the Golden Gate Bridge and all along the way to Fairfax where the retreat was situated, I couldn’t help but imagine what lay in store for me. I suppose I conjured images of myself sitting under a tree in a sort of blissfully serene state, solving all the world’s problems (or maybe just one or two of my own). I didn’t really have a clear expectation of what I would gain from the experience, but I figured I didn’t have much to lose either. I certainly didn’t imagine that meditating would be very hard, after all when you think about it you are doing…well, nothing.

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On the eve of my 30th birthday I find myself learning lessons I should have learned a long time ago.

I have a new rule. My new rule is that I do not work for friends. Working for friends is like lending your brother money or discussing politics with your extremely conservative best friend; you just don’t want to do it. Avoid the friend sand-trap snafu and you will be glad you did.

I guess this sounds pretty cynical and in truth I am really not a cynical person, it is just that I have been burned more times than I can count (or want to count for the sake of pride) on two hands.

Working for demanding clients can be difficult and frustrating at times, but by far some of the most frustrating experiences I have had as a designer is when I have agreed to do work for friends. This is a lesson I should have learned a long time ago because it has always yielded disastrous results, yet I continue to make the mistake over and over again simply because it is hard to say no. Saying “no” to a friend feels as icky as eating a steak dinner in front of a starving puppy. Never-the-less I am changing my ways (keep reading to find out why, or don’t and wonder…)

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Sharpcast announced a sister product to its already existing photos software. The new files product will do everything Sharpcast Photos does — sync across the web/PC/Mac/Mobile device and automatically back it all up.The product was nicknamed Hummingbird this weekend in a fit of creativity by Sharpcast CEO, Gibu Thomas. I had exactly an hour to bust out an icon and here is the result.

Sharpcast Desktop Organizer gets an icon make-over.

Over the past year and change I have been refining my icon creation skills. Making icons is deceptively difficult and time consuming, but there is something rewarding about drawing on a pixel level only to zoom out and see that the whole creation has depth and complexity.

Click the “Read More” link to see some recent additions to our icon library.

This past year has been a tumultuous one for me. In my struggle to get down to the heart of who I am, I have sought to become more independent. This show of independence most recently manifested itself in the form of a four day trip to the Appalachians where I enrolled myself in an Outward Bound course. I am not sure what I expected from the experience, but I will tell you one thing, it far exceeded any expectations I could have dreamed up. It was, simply put, the most terrifying, physically and mentally challenging experience I have had to-date.

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­­I am an obsessive packrat by nature. In fact, my desire to amass and accumulate is so strong, that in the past I have made a cross country move every few years in a vain attempt to encourage myself to simplify. Only then, do I seem able to extinguish the beguiling desire to keep that beat up old sweater I have had since 1994.

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I know this girl that is so lucky; it seems that everything she touches turns to gold. She isn’t rich, but she always seems to have a comfortable amount of money. She always gets her dream job and seems to continually find meaning and fulfillment in the things that she does. She is smart, charismatic, humble and interesting. It is enough to make you want to projectile vomit.

There have been times in my life where I have wished that I was as resilient as my friend. I often stand on the sidelines and watch her barreling into the unknown with abundant gusto heretofore unseen and I feel scared for her, worrying that she will get her hopes dashed. Truthfully though, I mostly feel envious.

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A hale and hearty tale of the bountiful journey west.

My husband and I both arrived at the decision to move out west as if by simultaneous revelation. After a brief interment in upstate New York, where the winter leaves much to be desired, we were both desperate to get back to some place warm and forgiving. Our decision to leave sooner, rather than later, was doubtless inspired by lackluster accommodations.

During our 5-month stay we slept on an aging, saggy bed in sleeping bags wrapped in the frosty chill air of a house with no heat. I had left the safe confines of New York City with the express purpose of skulking about and reliving the college life while simultaneously my husband took a stab at finally getting the PhD he had been savoring for the past 11 years.

Five months later, having relived the college life all over again with a
bevy of roommates all stepping on each other’s toes and fighting about whom used the last square of toilet paper and who should be forced to cough up the 1.99 to buy a new roll, I was thoroughly disillusioned. I loved college, but I have no desire to live like that again. So in the midst of undue angst about who ground flavored coffee in a coveted, ‘non-flavored-coffee-only’ coffee grinder and buried in 6 feet of snow with no end in sight, I looked at my husband and we both said “California”.

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