create fifty-two

Not very exciting, this one, and even less exciting to do…

I realised at least one thing I want to do depends on collating/checking some old maths notes/calculations. And I’ve wanted to make them into electronic notes for a while anyway.

So I’ve just created a create52 cookbook wiki.  And checked and collated some old maths notes that I’m going to be needed for something else.

I never want to see another equation in my life!

Thermalite is an aerated concrete that is used as a light, insulating building material. It’s also quite good for hacking away at to form things. All you need is a wood gouge or two (buying an old used one is a good idea - it’ll get blunt anyway), and surform tools can be useful (think grater).

View the photos at flickr.

The material I worked with here has a boring grey colour (lighter coloured variants are available) but I quite like the rough texture of it, and the air bubble holes. You can always paint your creation when you’re finished, but it doesn’t always improve it - I think the swirly biscuit thing was better unpainted…

By the by: cement dust is really, really bad for your lungs and you need to wear breathing protection if you ever do this. (Also, if you wet the surface you’re working on it prevents quite a lot of dust getting in the air.)

I’ve found a fellow traveller on the create52 journey and am delighted to be hosting her own create52 efforts: http://loes.create52.com.

Quite inspiring, that somone else is doing this now…

A bit delayed, but here is the first week’s item: Soup. It’s an online database of film development times for various film types and chemicals. Much more data can be added, plus a few useful tools I have in mind. This is defo one for further development in the future.

I’m going to create a general jumping-off page for all the items sometime soon. But not yet, patience child!

I now have something put together. It’s a web based database of black and white film development data (plus hopefully a few little tools to make a few things a little easier) - but after wrestling with DaDaBik for a while, I don’t really have time to secure what I’ve made in order to safely make it public. So I’ll post it either tomorrow or Weds.

I’m going to be sticking things up on a Monday, starting tomorrow, Dec 3rd.

Been pondering on what I’m doing here, and I’ve realised that doing create52 is a Very Good Thing for me. If I don’t meet the challenge very well (bets anyone?), at least I will have tried, and have gotten some things ‘out’ in the process. Much better to have tried and have done something, rather than not try at all.

As for the things I will be putting out: they will vary, of course, in usefulness, to both me and other people. Some might be useful tools, others might just be something random I made. Caveat emptor - but for the price, who’s complaining?

Create52 is bringing me face to face with my own productive (and creative) process and how that works, and I’m loving that (so far). What is useful about the way I think? What hinders me?

Trying to produce something each week, particularly if it’s a thing that I hope to be useful to others, is going to be best served by a principle of:

usefulness and function over presentation (but never forgetting clarity)

In other words, if I make a small website tool hoping that it is useful to someone, somewhere, it won’t be prettified up to the nines: it will just do something. But I’ll try not to make it be hideously unusable, either!

Which brings me also to this: I am hoping that some of the things I make might be seeds of further development.