Who knew. The world loves pancakes.

It's been a while since something I read made me spontaneously start grinning and chuckle, but this morning, reading through Google's look at what the world searched for this past year, the fact that the most searched for recipe globally was pancakes just made me smile.

Also fun: We searched for "how to kiss" more than "how to survive".

https://www.google.com/2014

Daily Writing Exercise

Today's writing exercise is a character exercise.

The steps involved in character development (at least for my creative writing exercises) are:

1. Create a character outline using the random character generator
2. Develop some facts about them
3. Create a back story
4. Give them some contradictory traits, assign them a zodiac sign
5. Develop character imagery 
6. Describe their interactions with others
7. Write something in character's voice

Character Outline:

An overbearing 47 year-old man, who comes from a poor background, lives in a city apartment and tends to tell little white lies.

Ten Truths:

1. He's tall
2. He's overweight
3. He's divorced
4. He's is fearless
5. He tells jokes that are in bad taste
6. He's generous
7. He drinks too much
8. He plays the piano
9. He is nurturing
10. He is uninhibited

Ten Lies:

1. He exercises daily
2. He loves children
3. He has a pet
4. He cooks
5. He loves outdoor activities
6. He 
7. He 
8. He
9. He
10. He

Ten Odd/Bizarre statements

1. H

Contradictory traits

• He is the life of the party, but rarely socializes
• eccentric
• helpful

Zodiac Sign: Capricorn

That is as far as I could get. Developing a character is hard! Hopefully, practice makes perfect. Or at least better.

Painting in Progress - Part 3

<< Part 1      << Part 2

Project goal - courtesy of Pinterest

I think I will call the third phase of this painting a success. Art is completely subjective, and so I don't feel even a little bit silly saying that me playing with paint to find a way that works for me to add shadows and sunlight and rolling depth to my hills is a successful evening; I am learning how to paint, and that is what it's all about - experimenting with a brush.

Good thing I'm not afraid to ruin it...

Daily Writing Exercise

Today's writing exercise, as determined by the random exercise generator I built yesterday was an Anagram Puzzle.

The game gives you 180 seconds to find as many words as possible from a set of 9 letters. I managed to find 25 out of 65 words... not really something to brag about, but the plan is to improve over time, right?

I need to point out that I am unsure of the accuracy of this game - the number 42 is the number of words I actually entered, and I'm pretty sure that "leans" was one of them... maybe I need to find a different anagram game. I'll think about it.

Anyway, Day 1, check!

Thoughts about writing

I have no intention of becoming a writer for a living, nor do I have any dreams of writing a great novel - or any novel, for that matter.

In spite of that, I have been thinking lately about how to become better at writing, and it seems to have then become a theme in several blogs I read.

One of the primary things that writers recommend is to "find your voice" if you want what you write to ring true with your readers. I am fairly certain that I have no "readers" but I do want my travel blog to read well, and be entertaining for anyone who comes across it. This blog, while public, is not one that I tell people about. If someone finds it, and wants to follow the twists and turns of my brain, that is fine, but I'm not about to actually tell people explicitly that they (the twists and turns of my brain) exist and where to find them.

I also have a secondary reason to improve my writing; I am a business analyst by trade, and a large part of what I do is write. My writing needs to be clear and easy to understand, or it is completely useless to anyone who reads it. I write for different audiences, and I need to use slightly different language for each audience, and be able to speak to each audiences viewpoint. There is a great difference between business owners, application developers, project managers, executive sponsors and application support people. As a business analyst, I need to communicate effectively with all of the above.

And so, despite my misgivings, I am going to start doing daily writing exercises. Half an hour every day, with a randomly selected exercise. I'll try this for a month, and see if I notice a difference in my writing.

Day one is tomorrow.

Google has a great sense of humour

Absolutely great. Makes me smile every time. Even if my name isn't Jim.

Painting in Progress - Part 2

<< Part 1

Part 3 >>

Project goal - courtesy of Pinterest

I have now completed the second phase of my painting. My intention was to add the second layer of under-painting to the hills, and I ran out of time before I got to the foreground.

Underpainting Phase 2 - November 3, 2014

I am moderately pleased with my progress - there is still quite a bit of work to be done on the hills; I think next week I will focus on shorter, more vertical brush strokes, instead of the sweeping waves I used this week - I want to show the shapes of the hills, and right now all the movement is horizontal, instead of adding depth, at least to my eyes.

Getting better at travel writing - Notes from Don George's blog

I read a blog entry this week by Don George that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm using this entry to record my notes from his three-part series about travel writing. I found it incredible helpful in getting me to think about how I could better write about my travel experiences.

Here are my notes from his tips:

Plotting your story before you go

1. Where do you want to go and why do you want to go there?
1. Festivals, spiritual sites, historic sites, beliefs, rituals, wildernesses, legacies, characters
• Things that stand out as potential passion points and connections
2. Skeletal itinerary
• Encompasses the history, culture and attractions that define the place
3. Frame the journey in the context of a quest
1. Going to X in search of Y
• Lends a built-in narrative arc

Finding and focusing your story on the road

1. What’s the story?
1. Essence of a place, fundamental characteristics
2. Alluring places, people and experiences – passion points
3. Focus, focus, focus
• Details that capture a taste, a person, an experience
• Use all senses: Sight, smell, hearing, touch, taste, thinking, feeling
• Write Them Down!!

Exercise: set aside half an hour per day to sit somewhere (café, museum, market, etc.) and write about the world around you. (What are you seeing, smelling, hearing, touching, tasting, thinking, and feeling?)

2. Record dialogue as it occurs
1. Rhythm, vocabulary, accent
• Can convey essential information and fill out the character of a place and its people with no explanation
3. Set aside time at the end of every day to write down the most important elements, experiences, and lessons of that day.
1. Quickly jotted notes
2. Key words
4. What am I learning?
1. What is the place and experience revealing to me?
2. What gifts are they bestowing on me?
3. How are they challenging and expanding me?

Re-creating the stepping stones of your journey

1. Write down the:
1. Most memorable experiences
2. Main lessons learned
• Pick one lesson that really inspires passion and offers layers of experience, connection and meaning
• This becomes the principal point of the story
2. How did I learn that lesson? What were the steps that led me to understand it?
1. Identify and write down the steps, tracing the journey to the lesson
2. Pick out a few essential stepping stones
• Recall as vividly as possible the experiences, details and characters involved in each

Additional Notes:

• The story is not about me, it’s about the place.
• Ruthlessly edit the experience, cutting away everything that doesn’t contribute to the reader reaching the same place, the same illumination

To read Don George's posts for the full depth of his insights, visit the following link:

The Quality Quotient: Travel Writing That Matters

Painting in Progress

Part 2 >>

Project goal - courtesy of Pinterest

I'm taking my second painting class, and up until yesterday have been feeling a little bit ambivalent about it, to be honest. Which was quite upsetting for me, since when I do something, my preference is always to enjoy it to the fullest.

And then last night, our teacher brought in some additional mediums - things you can add to acrylic paint that modify it's behavior, and ... WOW!!! So Much FUN!!!! I'm so excited to incorporate some of the various textures into my current project, I can hardly contain myself.

Which, incidentally, if anyone is wondering, is how you should feel about a hobby.

Underpainting - completed October 27, 2014

Qualities I admire

I read a blog that made me think last week from the Travelettes; a group of female travelers I just recently discovered. The post was titled 8 Qualities I Admire in a Woman and the writer expressed her desire to become a woman who travels, as opposed to the travelling girl she is currently. Her list of qualities of a Woman includes:

1. Reverence
2. Perseverance
3. Ignorance
4. Living
5. Tenderness
6. Self-belief
7. Uniqueness
8. Spunk

This, of course, led me to consider the qualities that I value highly, and would like to expand in my own life.

I immediately turned, of course, to my favorite source of information, the ever-growing internet. And the Google machine gave me lots of things to consider.

Here is the list of qualities that I both admire and would like to demonstrate:

1. Well-spoken: Kind, considerate, tactful, articulate, complimentary, respectful
2. Well-dressed: Modest, occasion-appropriate, body-flattering, well-groomed
3. Well-behaved: Civil, graceful, organized, courteous, generous, polite

And in addition, I value:

• Strength of Character
• Independence
• Integrity

...

The list could really go on, but essentially I want to be the kind of person that makes other people feel better about themselves, while gaining their respect. In any situation.

Liver, then bacon.

The art of procrastination is one I learned at an early age. In kindergarten, my teacher informed my parents that I had the capability to do well in life, but that I was prone to procrastination, and I would probably always struggle with it.

Perhaps a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I'm not claiming that I understood what procrastination meant at the age of five, but it is a characteristic that I have always been conscious of.

I am in the process now, at the age of 37, of setting up a home office. One that I intend to be brilliantly useful, and charming, and witty, and debonair, and inspiring. Quite a bit to ask of an 8 x 10 basement room with a small window and a closet, but that is what I'm aiming for, all the same.

In pursuit of the inspiring aspect, I have been trying to decide which quotes to put up on the wall. Do I want quotes to make me feel better about myself as a person? To help me choose what I do for work? Trust me, there are a lot of different quotes I could turn into wall art.

Until today, my favorites have been by Dr. Seuss:

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

About the news

I am on the fence about the news and media in general.

I don't trust journalists to tell the whole story, they invariably have their own opinions, the goals and views of their publishing network to consider, and the fact that if their stories don't sell, they don't get to keep their jobs, which means they need to more and more appeal to a public that is hungry for sensationalism.

I got burned by one of those sensationalized newspaper-selling stories, and to this day, I can't read a newspaper article without questioning what I'm not being told, or whose story isn't being heard.

And so, for the most part, unless I hear about some huge catastrophe, I ignore the news. And I live a happy, peaceful life.

But a niggling part of me thinks that I might be missing out on something. For instance, I didn't know there was such a thing as "herbivore men" or that it was an emerging concept in Japan. This is something I would be interested in reading.

So my question is: where do you find the good (interesting, not sensationalized) informational news about what is happening in the world today?

Do I have to go trolling through blogs until I find a writer I trust, and then further troll through the comments for people who are somehow miraculously up-to-date on the weird and wonderful things that are happening in various cultures around the world and pick up those bread crumbs?

Did I just set myself a task of reading through millions of blogs and comments to find the people who have interesting and informational thoughts? That seems like a lot of work for something that I really only notice I miss about three times a year.

Get Fuzzy

Just because I happen to be thinking about it right now (see post about Dilbert) my favorite comic of all time is this strip from Get Fuzzy.

Get Fuzzy Comic Strip, September 07, 1999 on GoComics.com

Love it. And cartoonists have very interesting minds.

I love Dilbert

Sometimes, I forget how much I love Dilbert, and then I take a few minutes to catch up on the strip.

As I type this, I am currently crying I've been laughing so hard. And I had to quit reading the first blog article I tried to read today, which was a commentary on somebody who killed somebody else by throwing a toilet at them.

Thank you, Scott Adams.



*UPDATE August 29, 2014*

I just realized this blog post was never published, and I have a couple more things to say about Dilbert and Scott Adams.

First, I have decided that while always amusing, my enjoyment of Dilbert increases as my enjoyment of my job decreases. That's all.

Secondly, after reading the latest entry in Scott Adams' blog - Easiest Diet Ever - I am a new reader.

Becoming a better business Analyst - Part 2

<< My career - What next??

It's THAT time of year again >>

In a continuation of my quest to become a better business analyst, the next question I need to answer is:

What do the skills/traits that make a good BA look like when they are performed well?

Right.

Part* of figuring that out comes from the source of the skill itself (in this case, the BABOK® Guide, Version 2.0):

I find elephants amusing...

And I'd forgotten that until I read through my last two posts (both of which mention elephants) which reminded me of the very first photo album I ever posted on Facebook...

Which didn't really have anything to do with elephants, but was a series of answers that students had given to math questions.

One of them in particular made me laugh so hard I couldn't breathe properly:

I can't even explain why I find that funny. To the point of belly-aching, wheezing laughter. Still.

Which actually brings to mind my other favorite random elephant-thing: the winner of the 2003 Darwin award.

Not much more to say about this subject, really.

My career - what next???

Becoming a better business analyst - Part 2 >>

Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.

I have built a career out of asking those questions. (Many thanks to my third grade teacher for introducing them to me...)

That is part of the beauty of being a business analyst. You don't need to know the right answer, you just need to keep asking questions and eventually, you present all the answers you get to someone else, and they make a decision about what to do next. And then you start asking questions again...

So, my current question is: How do I become a better business analyst?

And before I can get to that, what makes me a good business analyst? In fact, am I a good business analyst??

These are good questions.

In order to figure out what makes me a good business analyst, I first have to figure out what a good business analyst is.

(See what I mean by you keep asking questions?)

And right here, I run into what I like to think of as information overload.

How did we live before Google?

I ask this question in all seriousness, of course.

For instance, did you know that enough people have asked the question:

"How many calories in a plastic spoon?"

That there is an answer to the question provided by ChaCha.com, whatever that is. The answer?

Plastic spoons are not measured in calories, but in weight. Eat with a spoon! Not the actual spoon...

And I repeat: How did we survive before Google?

I wonder if anyone else has asked that question??? And, yes. They have.

**EDIT**
Partially related to the first question I asked, there is another one:

"How would you eat an elephant with a plastic spoon?"

Answer:

You would not be able to eat an elephant with a plastic spoon. The elephant would be upset if you tried. for now!

As an aside, my question has veered from "How did we survive before Google" to "How did we survive as a species??? Seriously!!!