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December 15, 1998

Song II

I tend to take pictures of myself in the early morning when I'm on the bus to the city, or at the bus stop on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 42nd Street when I'm coming home from work. I should try to take more pictures of myself and the city at lunch time. That way, I don't look like I'm about to fall asleep (in the morning) or extremely exhausted (in the evening). I have the same staid expression. Give this girl an upper! Well, I certainly got an upper this morning in my mailbox. Two uppers, in fact! One was from *design diva. It's the first award that focuses on me as a designer, which I really don't consider myself. I thought to myself as I applied for the award "well, what the heck! There are a small number of sites on the ring (which I like) and if I don't get it, it's not a really big deal." Well, I got it! <iko does the butt dance at work> The second award was even more surprising. It was for GA's Gold Award! I didn't expect to get the gold. If you look at the winner's page, there is such a small number of gold winners, that I thought a silver would be more appropriate to my page. Also, looking at the quality of the sites at gold (one of which is Silver's site which I admire immensely and hope to one day win her award), I didn't expect to be in such wonderful company but he says that [woolgathering] is an excellent example of a personal website. yay! I did receive only the bronze award from "Best of the Web", although he mentioned that it would be a Silver if I could correct some of the javascript errors on my main page. I couldn't recreate the error so I will have to spend some time seeing if I can find an alternative way of referencing the images than by their image number. I will try to fix it... Oh.. regarding the title for today. This was rehearsal for the Kinderhook Holiday Chorus, Part II. Only a few people showed up to rehearsal, but I thought it would be okay since we're going to have more people today. Wrong!. We only gained one new singer, Ben Chung (Mr. Ben as Num and I call him. He's a very good programmer) and since he wasn't really familiar with singing, we gave him the melody. Rehearsal lasted only a short time but it went surprisingly well, even without the piano. I managed to put together an okay bass line for "We Wish You A Merry Christmas", something that has been bothering me for a long time. Linda had gotten branches for our "reindeer antlers" and she made noses. All I had to do was tape up the noses to elastic and the headbands to hold the antlers in. It was also my job to get Rudolph's red nose and I brought one nose home to paint red with Ella's acrylic paint. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but I find myself biting my nails over it. The question of creativity was brought up on ScribeTribe and I reflected on the question of whether or not we are all naturally creative. Here was my reply... Personally... I'm not creative in terms of coming up with *meaningful* original ideas. Creativity is not particularly strong in me (while it is very strong in my sister), atleast artistically. If you want to call coming up with interesting code as creativity, then I suppose that I can be *very* creative. <grin> But in an _artistic_ manner, no. I don't have a lot of natural creativity... and the stuff I come up with (graphics, design for website, etc) is all via the plug and chug method. Stick that image there. Move it around a little until it feels ok. Ask partner. He says it stinks worse than fetid dingos kidneys. I move it around a little more until it feels okay. Ask partner again. He says it is better but it still stinks. Ask him for help. He comes up with an arrangement that seems unnatural to me. I call my sister over to look at it. She says it looks good. I show her the first stuff I had. She says the newer one is better (rats!) I try to find a happy medium inbetween. ;) That's typically the artistic creative process for me. Once in a blue moon, I can come up with something pretty good (and I proceed to pat myself on the back for it). The front splash page for my domain [woolgathering] is an example of something I came up with that looked good the first time. I am, however, the queen of imitation. ;) Most of my site designs are strongly inspired by other websites that I've seen. When I encounter something on the web that I like, I make a mental image of it in my brain... and then I'll use that when I feel the need to come up with another site design that could fit into that style. It is the same in my a cappella music. I am *really* good at arranging pieces that sound exactly like the original except with voices instead of instruments. Now, taking a popular piece and having the group sing it in a different *style* is very difficult for me. Coming up with original pieces is unheard of for me. I am inventive in the left-brained arts (science, programming, etc) and not in the right-brained arts, I suppose. I told my creative-department coworker about me being the queen of imitation and he said, "Hey, that's what art is all about." I'm not sure if that is true but it does make me feel better. ;) Tori wrote me back something beautiful and I loved her words so much that I wanted to share them with you, Constant Reader. I would change that a little, Eileene and say you're the queen of Inspiration. Not all creativity comes out of the corner of someone's head. I am constantly inspired. Sometimes to the point of wondering 'did I really think that all myself?'..but really..people play off each other all the time... I suppose then I am the queen of inspiration. I am always inspired by wonderful designers and developers. I frequently mention favorite sites here in my journal. If you come here and notice something similar about it to your site, Constant Reader, don't think ill of me. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery in my book.

© Copyright 1998, Eileene Coscolluela
[woolgathering]