August 2013 – ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

Another one bites the dust — or not

2013-08-31

A scare story from my youth and a tale of a broken hard-disk serve as reminder that even experts must check the basics.
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MOOC Participants vs. Regular University Students

2013-08-30

MOOCs are not university classes. Participants demand more -- and they are not afraid to demand it. So lecturer's and university administrators: take care. But what might sound negative actually has one very big advantage ...
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Downloading Coursera Lectures (or other material)

2013-08-30

You can quickly download all Coursera videos with a simple and free tool. Also works for the lecture material and anything else. Extremely useful app.
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Scientific Misconduct: Truth and Power (& Stupidity)

2013-08-27

Scientific misconduct does not happen here. Really? You're in good company then ... Some comments about a typical replay to scientific misconduct. Also: A serial killer.
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Recommendation: Georgia Tech Welcome Speech

2013-08-23

A good course should start with a bang, a good semester ... perhaps with this speech.
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Recommendation – Tim Minchin – If I Didn’t Have You

2013-08-22

Tim Minchin is not only a great comedian-musician, he also chose this profession as his niche.
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The PhD’s New Clothes, or: Anonymous Information regarding Plagiarism

2013-08-22

Are anonymous informants about plagiarism like informers in a totalitarian state? Or aren't they acting in the same way science operates, by looking at the evidence and coming to conclusions? Some suggestions.
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Thin Paper

2013-08-21

On scanning very thin paper, DRM, and oh, Neil Gaiman.
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Turn your Home Art into an Exhibition Piece

2013-08-17

I recently did the label design of a small art exhibition of a student conference. It's based on an artist statement of an Coursera course and turned out to be nicely. It might be something for your home, actually ...
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Bento/Food Box Poster

2013-08-11

After playing around with Bento Boxes for a while I came up with this poster. Larger image and link inside the article.
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This is a private blog showing my opinions. If you have an issue with what I write here, either don’t read it or talk to me directly. Don’t waste your time — or mine — dragging my employer into matters where they hold no authority.

The institution I work for, or rather the people officially representing it, have already distanced themselves from this blog. I find this unnecessary, as I’ve clearly stated in the «About this Blog» section that this is a personal blog.

Frankly, I have nothing but contempt for those who lack the backbone to address their concerns directly and instead resort to passive-aggressive tattling to others. Such behavior strikes me as not only cowardly, but also spineless, gutless, and wholly unprincipled. Moreover, these efforts are as pathetic as they are futile.

That said, I might listen if you present compelling arguments and evidence, as constructive feedback is always welcome. Who knows? We might even both gain something valuable from the interaction.

A comment for those seeking to use this site for personal gain: Given the increase in requests, let me be clear. I write on this blog because I want to. It’s my hobby, my playground. Sometimes people point me to interesting products/services and I write about them. But any request regarding ads or sponsored placements ends up the trash without a reply. And if you think something would be of interest, differentiate yourself from the spammers by referring to a posting — in an intelligent way. (I get enough auto-generated mails to identify them immediately.)

BTW, posts can get updated after I published them if I spot spelling errors (not a native speaker) or think a different wording might improve precision and clarity.

This blog is not focused on a single topic, or method. As long as it is relevant to improving creativity (or allowing it in the first place), it's fair game.
Some postings on this blog deal with freedom, as I think that we need freedom of thought, of speech, of association, etc. pp. to solve mankind's problems. Thus, some postings may seem a bit remote when it comes to organizing creativity. Freedom is, however, the bedrock of creativity.
The heterogeneity of the postings can make reading this blog a bit cumbersome, at least if you are only interested in one topic. You can either use the search function (above), or use the categories or the tags to narrow down the postings you see.

ORGANIZING CREATIVITY

How to generate, capture, and collect ideas to realize creative projects.

Month: August 2013