Hey everyone,

I’m still working on the second edition of Organizing Creativity.

It takes longer than expected (it is a spare time project), so, I’m putting the current draft version online.

It contains the content of the wiki I had here, so I have removed it.

Like I said, it’s a rough draft — some parts are (almost) finished, others are missing in part or completely — but to make the best of the longer work process, posting it online gives me the opportunity to ask for feedback. This is your chance to influence the final version. What do you think of the content and/or the layout? Any suggestions for improvement? I’d like to hear them. Drop me a line at danwessel@organizingcreativity.com or write a comment.

All the best

Daniel

“I wrote them down in my diary so that I wouldn’t have to remember.”
Professor Henry Jones, about why he and his son need to go into the lion’s den to save his diary, in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (1989)

I’m currently preparing a presentation for a student group about organizing an academic work (focus is on a dissertation thesis, but it can be applied to any major written work). Interestingly, there are currently a few questions about establishing academic work flow, esp. regarding storing citations. The discussion is going on in the posting about Circus Ponies Notebook for Academic Writing (e.g., Thesis Writing).

If you have ideas I’d like to hear them — how do you manage your sources?

Nearly finishing my PhD thesis (hopefully), I have started planning my post-doc phase. After some playing around with Apple’s Pages and being inspired by a Pentax Lenses Roadmap, I used InDesign to create a sheet, where I wrote down the studies I have planned, the papers I want to write, the products I want to create, etc.

InDesign works extremely well for this — I have used layers for the different aspects of the page, e.g., for Arrows, Year Text, Year Dates (the yellow highlighting), Non-Year-Results-Text, Background Text, Lines, Time Passed, Background Year, and Page Color. Locking parts of the Layers allows me to quickly change some aspects without interfering with others. Swatches are used for the colors, allowing quick color modifications. Additionally, there are paragraph styles for Studies, Journal Publications, Other Publications, Product/Material Creation, Teaching, and External Input. The terra incognita part came when I was trying to state that I cannot plan what to do in that time frame without knowing the results of the first one or two years. After all, research requires flexibility.

I like the result — it’s a best-of-all-cases-I-am-never-ill-and-always-work-100%-with-full-concentration-and-have-nothing-else-to-do (= virtually impossible), but at least I know now what I want to do.

Below is a template screenshot that has most of the entries removed and the content replaced by placeholder texts (no need to announce my plans if I do not know yet whether I can really pursue and achieve them). If you are interested in the InDesign template file, write me a comment.

Template Screenshot for 5 Research Topics, three years (1 vertical bar = 1 month), indication of time passed (black shadow on first month), non-plannable area (terra incognita), aspired results. Yellow highlighting signifies duration, entries on the three years are color coded for Studies, Journal Publication, Material Creation, External Input, etc. Red Arrows signify dependencies (origin must be reached for target of the arrows to be possible). Write me a comment (or eMail) if you want to have the InDesign template.

An important skill in being creative is sketching. But what if you cannot sketch? Or what if you are past sketching and need to see a mock-up to assess whether the planned project works out or not?

Currently I’m learning iPhone/iPod touch programming (X-code, Objective-C) and I have to design interfaces for the applications I want to program. While I could sketch them with pen and paper, the small screen and the thus rare screen real estate allows only small margins for errors. So, if I want to see whether everything fits or not I need something better than sketches. I spend a few hours on shaping my tools and used first Pages, and now InDesign, to create templates for iPhone/iPod touch designs. Read more…

I am a strong proponent of paying for the tools you use, which includes software. I love it when good software comes with a low price (e.g., Scrivener or Circus Ponies Notebook) and the buying process is handled comfortably. I also think there should be software packages of professional and normally extremely expensive software for non-commercial creative use — without castrating the functions, or including “watermarks” which spoil any effect of a creative project (shouldn’t they only be seen when you hold the printout into the light?).

Because even if you do a creative project just-for-fun, it makes a difference which tool you use. I have created books with Microsoft Word (*shudder!*), used RagTime (during the time it was/is free) and Apple’s Pages (did you know that the Quarz PDF Export is not supported by Lulu, a book on demand publisher, unless you edit it with Adobe Acrobat to “Discard All User Data” and flatten the whole thing? Neither did I … *shiver* …) — but the design process of creating books became fun when I got my hands on Adobe Creative Suite which included Adobe InDesign. It is simply the best application (for me and the way I design books). Others may enjoy LaTex, but personally I like to see what I do and play around with the layout — and there the handling, the functions (like Layers, Styles, etc.) and the accuracy of InDesign is top.

I think that there is currently a gap in programs for creative amateurs — non-professional creatives can handle programs that are made for experts — but often they cannot afford them. At least good and expensive programs offer trial versions to test a program, and there other ways to access good software for free (e.g., using it at work), but unless you (legally) own it you risk locking yourself out of your projects when that access ceases to work. Luckily, for many software programs there are also student versions — and some are available even for non-university students who have simply visited a course at an adult education center.

This said, given that I have to earn the money I pay for the software and I cannot spend the same cent (or rather: the same few hundred Euros) twice (e.g., for the creative project itself), I get seriously angry when it becomes more difficult to use a legal version than (what I have heard about getting) a cracked one. I recently bought the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium Student Edition, only to receive a serial number that is rejected as invalid by the program.

Well, at least I can use the trial period of the software — the most most expensive trial version I have ever ‘owned’ — until Adobe Support tells me what {I did | they did | went} wrong. Trying to fix the problem myself by searching with Google did not turn up any useful links — for legal usage — although there were many references for keygens (yup, the Internet sometimes just rubs salt into the open wound).

I guess this wouldn’t have happened with Pirate Bay …

Update: Strike 2!

Adobe just sent me a new serial number … its got 3 numbers more, looks complete, but does not get accepted by the program either. So, I wrote a second support request — and every time I search the web to find hints how to fix the issue myself all I find are BitTorrents and Keygens. I’m feeling a little … strange … today.

Update: The third time is the charm.

No, not the third serial number, but the third message Adobe send me. After confirming that the serial number was valid they asked me to reinstall the whole suite, something I did not want to do (due to 10 GB of data and about an hour of work). Reinstalling showed two things: First the serial number really is valid, and second the source of the problem — or rather, the way the problem emerged:

1. The first serial number Adobe send me was invalid, three numbers were missing. It was no possible to enter the number, so I did choose the trial version to get the software working for 30 days while Adobe fixes the problem they have caused.
2. Choosing the trial version gave me the opportunity to select the install language. I live in Germany, am German, but I prefer to work with programs in English. The language is concise and if I search information on the web, most of the information is in English anyway. This selection would not have been possible if the serial number would have worked in the first place and had a nice consequence: The whole suite now only accepted serial numbers for the English version. I though I would simply choose the language of the program, something where you normally have the choice, and which the Apple OS does for you globally in the settings, but no, it was placing the whole suite into another license model.
3. When Adobe send me a valid serial number for the German version, this number was not accepted as valid because the suite was now under an English license model (see 2.).
4. Deinstalling the software and then reinstalling it offered me the option to enter the serial number first, which now was accepted (it was a valid serial number for a German language version). This now fixed the Installation Language to German and showed the problem of the first installation. The problem could not happen again.

Taking 1. to 4. together the problem would not have happened if …

• The first serial number would have been valid (thanks, Adobe! Seriously, they were very helpful and it was not totally their fault, but paying a lot of money and then getting a non-functioning serial number makes me angry).
• If the DVDs would not allow the installation in a language you have not purchased.
• If there would have been a salient sign that choosing another installation language would move the suite to another licensing model.
• If I had read the read me file providing they did mention it there.
• (Looking at the package would not have helped — it is partly English and partly German and you can install the English and the German “version” from the same DVDs.)

Looking back, I think it’s the typical 80:20 problem — for the majority of users this problem does not occur. But for those who live in Germany but want to use an English version (even if their English is not perfect), there is something to get tangled in.

So, now I finally have what I have paid for — only I am not happy about it. Having the Mac OS in English, CS4 is now in German, oh, wait, partly in German. Acrobat is English, InDesign is German and I don’t know yet what the rest of the family are. Seem’s like I’m going to work in Denglish, but I’m doing that anyway, although with the content I handle with the apps.

Honestly, why is the language fixed in a (normally) few thousand dollars program? Every good program for Mac offers at least a few options or at least an English language version. I love my Mac, but my impression of Adobe is that of an alien intelligence — highly intelligent and strangely beautiful but hard to understand. My impression of Mac? An extension of me, of my brain, my will, my mind, it’s part of me. Hmm, reminds me of a quote from Sid Meier’s “Alpha Centauri”:

#Neural Grafting, #TECH52
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine, just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams, the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness: dark, rigid, cold, alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.
Commissioner Pravin Lal, “Man and Machine”
Sid Meier’s “Alpha Centauri”