A study In Light

by Ryan DavisonPhotographyPosted on No Comments

Sometimes I just look up and see an image that I want to make with my camera. The other morning the sun was coming through the window and shining on a mechanical desk. The desk has a hand crank that moves it up and down. I thought the shape of the crank handle was cool so I started taking some exploratory photographs at different angles.

At one angle I noticed the shadow the handle made and decided to follow that theme. I put a sketch pad down on the floor and tipped the desk over into the light. My final image is no masterpiece. But it is an interesting study in shape, light and the absence of light.

 

Speaking Better by Speaking More

by Ryan DavisonCreativityPosted on No Comments

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of speaking to a leadership class with three of my colleagues from the GIS world. We were tag team speaking since our two separate GIS systems share data and we work together from time to time on projects.

I’m not the world’s greatest speaker. It’s not that I don’t have great things to say. But when it comes to delivery, I often feel less than adequate. There’s a psychological boost that you get from speaking with a team of people though. When you’re up there by yourself you have to have all the answers but when you have someone with you, you have a fallback.

After my speaking segment I was able to sit and watch the others present. It’s beneficial to watch others speak on your same subject because it shows you that all the stumbling, bumbling and uncomfortable pauses are common among normal people who are called on to speak in public. The key to getting better and reducing those problems is to do it more.

Better Creativity Through Better Rest

by Ryan DavisonCreativityPosted on No Comments

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. It’s partly my fault since I’ve been staying up late watching pointless TV shows on Hulu. When I do go to bed I end up thinking too much. I usually come up with ideas that I feel I have to write down. So I get up and write them. Or worse, I use my note taking app on my phone. That kind of late night screen time, even a few seconds, just wakes me up too much. Unfortunately, this behavior can be a detriment to creativity. 

I used to not even bat an eye at not getting enough winks. But it’s been affecting me more lately. When I’m tired and sluggish I have little capacity for creative thinking or doing. I’m OK working on left brain analytical projects which is a lot of what I do for my job. It’s after work when I have time to write, build or edit that I find myself flagging with little motivation to do the things I really want to do.

I started thinking about this today after coming across an article on the London School of Economics and Political Science Review website (LSE). The article asserts that creativity isn’t a fixed commodity. It waxes and wanes based on several factors including rest and stress.

Stress is another big creativity killer for me. I get really nervous when preparing to speak publicly. When I’m prepping to give a talk, that’s about all I can do. Forget writing poetry or sketching something the night before an event.

After a stressful event, my mind relaxes and it more easily shifts to creative endeavors. The same thing happens when I’m more rested from adequate sleep. The key, according to the LSE article authors, is in allowing physiological recovery, primarily through sleep.

Of course this isn’t anything new. Last year I read an excellent book called Rest: Why you get more done when you work less, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. Pang makes the case for not only a good night’s sleep but resting throughout the day to allow your mind the time it needs to work on problems and ideas subconsciously. There’s a lot more to his book and I highly recommend you read it. It’s one of the rare books that I actually read all the way through.

Ultimately, the point is that we’re much more creative and productive when we aren’t running ourselves too hard. Putting in more hours to the detriment of rest and reflection will only make you less effective at what you’re doing.

Now I have to heed this advice, keep Hulu off at night and get more sleep.

It’s Always Been Broken

by Ryan DavisonProgrammingPosted on No Comments

Sometimes, when debugging an error that has just popped up in a program, the problem lies in some external parameter that has recently changed. Most of the time, however, the thing that has changed only serves to reveal how some static code had a dormant bug already. The code can work under one set of parameters but not another. Either way, it has always been broken.

Creating a Simple Hamburger Menu Icon

by Ryan DavisonWeb DevelopmentPosted on No Comments

A while back I was updating a web app that was targeted to desktop users. I wanted to make it more mobile friendly. One of the ways I did this was by changing the layout on different size screens. The app had a toolbar header that I wanted to collapse into a single icon on mobile devices.

On a lot of mobile apps this single icon takes the form of a hamburger menu. Whether you love this icon or hate it, it’s somewhat ubiquitous so I decided to use it. I wanted a simple version of the icon that when clicked would open an overlay to display the tools the header does on a desktop.

I was able to craft a very simple menu icon using a very small html skeleton and a tiny bit of CSS. Basically it’s an <a> tag with three spans inside. I used an <a> tag but you could just as easily use a <div> or any number of other elements. The spans are given height and width dimensions and a solid bottom border via CSS.

 

See the Pen Stacked Navigation Menu by Ryan Davison (@ryandavison) on CodePen.

That’s about it. If you want to play around with different approaches to your own icon you can edit this code on codepen.

Bored Person in Chair

Boredom

by Ryan DavisonPoetryPosted on No Comments

Boredom is a merciless captor
Hard to overcome
And if allowed to sit and fester
Will take hold and suppress
Desire and motivation.
But a call from a friend,
A magazine’s photo
Or an offhand remark overheard
Can be a jailer’s key
In an instant
Your sentence reversed
And freedom leads to the desire
For freedom.

 

Bored Person in Chair

Unnecessary and Inefficient

by Ryan DavisonComPostsPosted on No Comments

Sometimes I just don’t understand why some people make the decisions they do. They jump out of perfectly good airplanes, put toxic substances into their bodies and run red lights. But today I encountered the result of a past decision even more heinous than any of those.

When we moved into our current house a few months ago we discovered the previous owners had removed the dining room light. My wife has been gently prodding me to put it back up ever since. She usually does this through subtle hints like “could you do it for my Christmas present?” Or “how about for New Years?” Or “maybe Valentine’s Day?”   Thinking back I probably could have saved a lot of money on presents and flowers by just being a little proactive.

One of the reasons I put it off so long was because of the previous owner’s method of removing it in the first place. They didn’t disconnect it at the ceiling and take it down in one piece. Instead they unscrewed the bottom of the fixture, cut the wires that went to all five lights and pulled the wire out through the body and stem. Then, without even disconnecting it from the supply wires they shoved five feet of lamp wire into the junction box in the ceiling and covered it up.

I ended up having to rewire the entire thing. This wasn’t complicated but it felt so unnecessary and inefficient, like jumping out of a plane. I’m not sure why I decided to randomly tackle the project tonight. But at least now I can see what I’m typing. And my wife’s happy.

Invention 34001: Quick Release Glasses

by Ryan DavisonInventions and IdeasPosted on No Comments

I don’t mind being a glasses wearer but sometimes it’s a pain. For example, when I want to lie down on the couch and watch television. But when I do, the temple arm presses into the side of my head. It hurts.

To combat this I decided the thing to do is remove the temple from one side of the glasses. However, it would be inconvenient to take out the tiny screw holding it on every time I wanted to lie down. Then I would have to put it back in when I was finished so I wouldn’t look like an idiot – and so my glasses wouldn’t fall off.

My solution was to start designing a quick release mechanism for removing the temples. A small lever could be rotated so the arm could be pulled off. Then, it would easily be reattached by rotating the lever the other direction. Below are some quick sketches of my idea.