Ordered a Bowtie

I ordered a bowtie on the online. No returns. Looked like a good tie and the price was right, so there I was shopping for haberdashery on the internet.

It arrived as inconspicuously as possible, but the crime was blatant and it wasn't a pretty sight. It was a pre-tied, clip-in-the-back abomination.

There oughtta be a law against that kind of false advertising.

Data Architecture for Verbal Analogues

The Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is another thing that makes me wish I had programming know-how to use my information design skills in user-interface stuff. This is a fantastic tool for anyone who is a visual learner with a thing for verbal patterns (i.e., me). Hello, creative tool.

A Long Day

It was an arduous day and creativity of any kind was omitted as will be reflected here for the most part.

Frustration with a busted radiator and a dead end job has me a little rattled but I'll make an effort to give project updates.

Ali is making a home for our co-op garden in her backyard since we didn't start early enough and I, for one, am quite excited to see what we reap. More than being ecstatic about seeing the growth and production of the work scheduled to be put forth I am bubbling over with anticipation at the thought of the dishes Ali will concoct using the yield.

Finished working out lyrics and a basic guitar structure for a new song which will be added to the original set I've been working on and really need to start and finish the recording of said songs. The completion date is still set for mid-May which means I have work to do.

A great gift in the form of a classic Schwinn has resulted in several trips to the bike shop and a nearly finished product which has already provided me with great times and enjoyable exercise. Once it has been completed I will post photographs and gloat over the luck and yet again give excessive appreciation to Ali.

I sure hope William follows this up with something worthy of attention. I would love to see some more of everybody else's work here...

From Gabe: A Tortoise Housekeeping Issue

Dear members of The Tortoise Initiative,

A continuing dilemma has arisen from the fact that this blog publishes to our individual online profiles. Click here for an example. You'll note that once our feed is published to outside sources, (no doubt a good thing) there is no way to tell which of us authored which post. The dilemma is then whether to allow the ambiguity to continue, or to manually delete posts from sites such as Google when they republish there.

But the dichotomy is false, in that it can be circumvented, as Ali has been doing, tagging her titles "From Ali." This is both a quaint and efficient way of addressing the problem, and I propose we all do the same. Title your posts with a "From," adding each your own name and a hardy subtitle set off by the punctuation-mark colon, as I have demonstrated in this post's title, from here on out. I recognize this demotes our flowery titles to subtitles of a dull series, but such is the cost of greatness, gentlemen and lady.

Just to keep this inspirational on some level, I will add that in my rather fruitless momentary attempt to look into the proper use and history of the colon, I inadvertently caused this timeline [link] to come into existence. As a communications designer and an old soul, I am instantly stopped in my tracks, a child who has found a minutely life-changing new toy. Trivia and distractions abound, branching off in thousands of directions, all neatly arranged for the eye while expansive enough for the curious mind. Enjoy.

from ali : housekeeping continues

For those of you not kicking it here in Canton (i.e. Alden and Gabe), we regionally consolidated Tortoises have committed to a scheduled output of content designed to both a) strengthen our own individual creative production and b) ensure consistent activity here. Gabe, I know you're already spread thin over multiple activities so there's no obligation to commit to timed posting, but you're welcome to as well!


Current deadlines, beginning this week and subject to change as needed:

• Taylor : Tuesday
• Ryan : Friday
• Ali : Saturday
• Conrad : Sunday

And a few notes:

• The days are not exclusive e.g. Taylor can still post on a Sunday, or Gabe on a Friday, etc. Anybody can post anytime, but everybody with a schedule will post something on their day.
• Content is up to your personal discretion as usual and there are no restrictions on what you choose to share - you can roll with a new design, a project idea, a project update, a well-turned line, a full-blown thesis, a song, an inspiration for a song, whatever. Again, the idea is to just post something.

Ideas? Criticism? Frantic preparatory scribbling mingled with thoughtful chewing of pen caps?

---

Oh yes, and loosing my fanatical white-knuckled grip on the virtual file cabinet for a moment...

• Someone (Taylor, perhaps?) had the bright idea to tag each post with the author's name in addition to its category in order to help us find our own or a particular person's posts quickly. Is everyone down with that?
• Gabe introduced the Junk Drawer tag for those miscellaneous items (like this post) which don't fall neatly into one of the three broad categories of Inspiration, Quotations or Creation. But so help me, if you people abuse it... *tightens lips*

Partially Cloudy with a Chance of Vocabulary