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Why Splicer can’t create

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2011 has so far been an almost com­plete­ly unpro­duc­tive year. That’s a ter­ri­fy­ing thing to admit about the last five months of my life. I haven’t been on sab­bat­i­cal or fam­i­ly leave or vaca­tion; instead I’ve been sit­ting at my desk in front of my com­put­er accom­plish­ing noth­ing. I’ve been accom­plish­ing noth­ing and won­der­ing why.

I’ve tried a myr­i­ad of solu­tions to address and cor­rect this sit­u­a­tion: spo­radic attempts at phys­i­cal exer­cise, hyp­no­sis, bin­au­r­al beats, read­ing moti­va­tion­al arti­cles, prayer, medi­a­tion, jour­nal­ing, … Read the rest

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Dr Tyson, again

I have a lit­tle bit of expe­ri­ence with run­ning with legs that haven’t run in a month. It’s almost all I’ve done in the last ten months. One of the pat­terns I’ve seen is that after get­ting psy­ched up to start run­ning again I’ve come back from that first run and had severe­ly sore calves the next day. My calves have been so sore and tight actu­al­ly that I’ve had dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing two days after the run. I’ve con­sid­ered try­ing … Read the rest

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Listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson on the run

There is some dis­agree­ment among run­ners whether it is good to have music on head­phones while run­ning. The purists say that it takes away from the total expe­ri­ence, every­one else just likes their music. I gen­er­al­ly fall into the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, but I run both with and with­out music. As a rule, I nev­er run a race with head­phones. Many races have course reg­u­la­tions pro­hibit­ing the use of head­phones, though those rules are rou­tine­ly ignored. Even if there were no … Read the rest

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Mission Creek at low tide

I can’t say with any cer­tain­ty that it was low tide when I ran past, but it sure smelled like low tide.

It’s a gor­geous day here in San Fran­cis­co. A bit on the breezy side but that’s not a prob­lem. Even at my lop­ing pace the body gen­er­ates enough heat that cool­ing air is refresh­ing, as a rule.

Today’s run alter­nat­ed between the feel­ing that I could keep going all day and the feel­ing that I had to stop right away. … Read the rest

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Studio setup underway

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It’s been an inter­est­ing cou­ple of weeks. I’ve moved out of my stu­dio at the Third Street Art Explo­sion and I have been rear­rang­ing my cot­tage to ded­i­cate the down­stairs to my new stu­dio. In addi­tion to mov­ing every­thing from the stu­dio here, I’ve had to move pret­ty much every piece of fur­ni­ture I own either from down­stairs to upstairs or from upstairs to down. Let me tell you: mov­ing fur­ni­ture by myself ain’t easy.

It’s not easy but it’s gone … Read the rest

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Picadilly notebooks: sometimes you get what you pay for.

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Pos­si­bly the biggest dis­ap­point­ment in my review of note­books over the last cou­ple years has been the Pic­cadil­ly Essen­tial Note­book. Pic­cadil­ly’s Essen­tial line of note­books is almost indis­tin­guish­able from the Mole­sk­ine, but at a third to one-half the price. When I say indis­tin­guish­able, I mean in near­ly every detail. The oil­skin cov­er looks like the Mole­sk­ine, the paper is the same cream col­or with the same 6mm rul­ing, there’s an elas­tic enclo­sure and a pock­et in the back. … Read the rest

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Gallery Leather: a little too much plus a little too little

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I was excit­ed to see Gallery Leather’s entry into the journal/notebook realm for a cou­ple rea­sons. First, it’s a hand­some note­book of a rea­son­able size for car­ry­ing, and sec­ond, Gallery Leather does a lot of busi­ness cre­at­ing and cus­tomiz­ing hand­craft­ed prod­ucts direct­ly from Maine. In oth­er words, I was hop­ing to find some good old fash­ioned Amer­i­can craftsmanship.

The note­book’s cov­er is indeed well-craft­ed and the paper is of excel­lent qual­i­ty (more on this in a moment) but the … Read the rest

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Posted onSunday Papers

Canteo: a lovely, if delicate, Swiss notebook

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First my apolo­gies for a late post. It’s already Mon­day on the East Coast and it would­n’t take much more delay for this to become The Mon­day Papers even here in California.

This week’s note­book is the Can­teo, from Swiss mak­er Biel­la. The Swiss have spared no expense in putting togeth­er an ele­gant and full-fea­tured note­book, and for those who keep their note­books at their desks the Can­teo may be ide­al. If you want a note­book that is portable and … Read the rest

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Moleskine: the one to beat

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Of all the note­books on the mar­ket, none is so cel­e­brat­ed or debat­ed as the Mole­sk­ine. Loved by many, there are at least a half dozen web­sites devot­ed sole­ly to the icon­ic note­book, and a Google search on the key­word «mole­sk­ine» pro­duces (at this writ­ing) over four and a half mil­lion results. No oth­er brand of note­book has achieved the same lev­el of repute or notoriety.

I’m not here to say that Mole­sk­ines are the best note­books, but they are … Read the rest

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What if your grail leaked?

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Reg­u­lar read­ers of Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look may recall men­tion of the Water­man Edson Dia­mond Black foun­tain pen. It was the pen I want­ed dear­ly but thought I would nev­er own because it was indeed too dear. At a MSRP of an even thou­sand dol­lars, its love­ly plat­inum trim and inset nib seemed out of my reach.

I had a chance to write with one at the Flax pen fair, and its smooth writ­ing cement­ed its place as the pen that I … Read the rest

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