A while ago, one of my good friends (who has a PhD in neuropsychology) “diagnosed” me as borderline manic.  Sometimes I feel that my brain is like a broken Star Trek transporter beaming Humpty Dumpty down from his wall – it swirls bits of information around and around my grey matter, never quite putting them back together.  OK, I know that the previous sentence makes no sense, but geniuses such as myself are not required to clarify themselves to mere mortals.  

I always take notes about virtually everything that I see and read; I record almost every idea that flies at warp speed through my brain; I never leave my house without a pen and a notepad.  

For a while I experimented with different ways of taking notes.  At first, I decided to go fancy and bought a bunch of Moleskin notebooks.  Those things are great – they look cool and there is something innately pleasant about writing in them.  Alas, Moleskins cost $16 bucks a pop, and given how much note-taking I actually do on daily basis I realized that I was spending $50/month on writing implements.  

After dropping Moleskins as my note repository, I started using my laptop.   At first, it was great.  I type much faster than I handwrite, my horrendous spelling gets corrected automatically.  Furthermore, with a laptop I could lookup up things online instantaneously and enhance my notes based on what I found.

As much as I loved taking notes on my laptop, I quickly realized how distracting having constant access to the Internet actually was.  In boring meetings or lectures I found myself checking my email, posting Facebook updates and bidding on old cameras on eBay.  As it turns out, the Internet is a giant conspiracy designed to make us stupid and with every eBay purchase I could literally feel my brain cells fizzing out, like little discarded cigarette butts carelessly thrown into puddles.

Because of all these distractions (and dying brain cells) I ended up missing important points, not to mention that it took me a lot longer to actually get stuff done (did I mention dying brain cells?).

Over the years, I’ve experimented with carrying a voice recorder, taking notes on my cell phone and a few other off-the-wall approaches.  In the end, I always came back to basics – a cheap spiral-bound notebook and a pen.  They are light, take up little room, require no power/recharging and if you decide to write down an idea that came to you at 3 o’clock in the morning, you don’t have to worry about knocking them off your bedside table (like I did 3 years ago with a $2000-dollar laptop).

I just got back to my hotel after two days at the WHARTON UICONF 2010 conference in Philadelphia (http://web.wharton.upenn.edu/uiconf2010/).  This was by far the best conference I have ever been too.  The speakers were absolutely amazing.  The conference opened with a keynote by Don Norman.  Dr. Norman is basically one of the main reasons why I went into design and development instead of medicine.  In 1997, when I was a biology/premed major at the Old Dominion University, I took an intro to engineering class that had Don Norman`s Design of Everyday Things as one of the textbooks.   It just made so much sense and also changed how I looked at the things around me.  Dr. Norman`s speech covered the topic of living with complexity, which is incidentally the title of his new book that`s coming out in September.

I also finally got to meet Dustin Curtis, whose website and blog I`ve been following for the past year or so. Dustin is an amazing UI and UX designer and, as it turns out, a pretty good public speaker.

Hey guys,  

I need a favor.  I`m doing research for my MIS independent study and I`d really appreciate if everyone could answer the following question:  

If you are looking for a new book to read, how do you research what book to buy/get from the library?  What sites do you use to do your research?  

If you could, please email your answers to dbabichenko@gmail.com

Thank you in advance,

Dmitriy

When I was 12, my best friend Eugene got a guitar for his birthday.  Of course, right away I wanted one too.  Since all of this was happening in the Soviet Union, simply wanting a guitar did not mean that you could actually get it.  The default state of store shelves was “empty” – sometimes you had to wait months or even years to find what you were looking for.

In any case, I finally got a guitar a year later, for my 13th birthday.  I was ecstatic.  I spent days in my room, practicing until my fingers literally bled.

Over the years, this guitar traveled with me all over the former Soviet Union – camping trips, summer jobs as camp counselor and even a few real gigs. 

When I immigrated to the United States, I left this guitar with my mom.  In 1996, I went back to visit my family.  By that time, I had a few much better guitars waiting for me in my Norfolk apartment.  However, since the rest of my family was getting ready to immigrate to the US, I knew that they would not be able to lug my guitar with them.  I could not bear to sell or give away my guitar, so I brought it back with me.  Let me just say that lugging a guitar on a 14-hour flight is not a lot of fun. 

A few years later, the guitar stopped holding tune; it was time to replace the tuning pegs.  Unfortunately, it was impossible to find tuning pegs that would match the holes in the head stock of my Soviet-made guitar.  A local pawn shop (where I bought my other guitars) gave me a number of a guy that they claimed to use for musical instrument repairs.  Not knowing much about guitar repair, I trusted the guy who said that he could modify the head stock by filling the old holes and press-drilling new ones to match standard American-made tuning pegs.

A few days later the “repair guy” called me and gave me a long speech about how my guitar was a cheap Soviet-made toy and that the neck was made from soft wood and that it cracked as soon as he started drilling.  I picked up my guitar from the guy’s shop and was truly shocked by what he did.

He did not fill the old holes.  Instead, he used a hand-held drill or a Dremmel to widen the existing holes to accommodate larger tuning pegs.  The vibration of whatever tool he used for drilling cracked the head lengthwise.
When I came home, I broke off the cracked part of the head and re-glued the whole thing.  I did not attempt to fix the butchered holes and reattached the old broken tuning pegs back.

The guitar was unplayable, but it still carried quite a bit of sentimental value.  That is, until a few years later my sister dropped it and broke off the bottom part of the neck, right where it attaches to the guitar’s body.
For the next 10 or so years, I kept my first guitar in it’s old beat up case.

Over the past few weeks, after reading Cory Doctorow’s Makers (http://www.amazon.com/Makers-Cory-Doctorow/dp/0765312794/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265424527&sr=8-1) I decided that it would be nice to do something with my hands.  When I was a kid, my grandfather had a woodworking shop in his basement and he taught me how to do everything from woodcarving to working a lathe. 

Since for the next few weeks I have a bit of a break in my photography business, I decided to spend my evenings restoring my fist guitar. 

Hopefully, I won’t destroy it completely.

A few days ago I realized that for the past couple of months I have been in a kind of creative slump.  September and October are always my busiest months; this fall, however, they went from busy to absolutely insane.  At work my team has been running ragged trying to meet a deadline on a software project; in September I photographed 3 weddings and 2 bar mitzvahs; in October, 5 weddings and 2 bar mitzvahs.  Needless to say, I’m pretty burned out.

In the past, once the wedding season is over, I found it very helpful to step back from photography (or at least from digital photography) to gain some perspective and to get my creative juices flowing.

During the busy months I keep a list of projects that I want to do at some point in the future.  I never leave my house without a notebook; since I tend to get thousands of ideas a minute, I run through my notebooks pretty quickly.

Whenever I actually have some downtime, I go through my notebooks and make a shortlist of more interesting/promising projects.  On my desktop, I keep folders for creative projects, writing ideas and software/code projects. For every creative or software project that I think is worth doing, I create a subfolder under the respective desktop folders. 

Since I practically sleep with a laptop, it is a perfect way for me to do research and take notes/make drawings and diagrams for each project. 

For this winter, I decided that I want to build the following things:

1. A rocking horse
2. An electric guitar or mandolin
3. A tilt-shift lens
4. Printing press
5. A crossbow

My last wedding of the season is on November 24th.  After that (and after my grad school finals) I will have a few months of rest and relaxation, at least in the evenings.  As I work/complete these projects, I’ll post diagrams, drawings, research and photos of everything.  Wish me luck…

For someone who`s job involves a lot of travel or carrying a lot of gear, finding the right bag is extremely important.  My wife had always made fun of me for having a closet full of camera and messenger bags.  Luckily, I`m not the only one in the world who is obsessed with finding that holy grail of a perfect bag.  Just look at all the articles that Lifehacker has published on what`s in their geeks` bags (http://lifehacker.com/5265235/lifehacker-laptop-bags-gina-trapani-edition).

I`ve had a Timbuk2 custom medium size messenger bag for about 3 years and firmly believe that it is the best thing since the invention of penicillin.  That`s why when I found out about Timbuk2 20th anniversary "Bag Biographies Contest" I felt obligated to put in my two cents.

Here it goes...

I play many roles in my life – a professional photographer, a graphics designer, a web developer, an avid hiker, and, as of 3 weeks ago, a father.  My Timbuk2 bag has managed to fit every role of my life.

I bought my Timbuk2 custom medium messenger bag about 3 years ago, and we’ve been inseparable ever since.  My Timbuk2 bag has acted as my camera bag, laptop bag, and even as a diaper bag. 

My Timbuk2 bag also managed to save my butt on two separate occasions.  About a year and a half ago, I was photographing an engagement session in downtown Pittsburgh.  At the time, my bag contained a MacBook Pro laptop, a Canon 5D digital SLR, two lenses and a flash.  I finished the gig pretty late because the coupe wanted some photographs with the city lights in the background.  As I was walking to the parking garage where I left my car, a large man brandishing a knife blocked my path and demanded my wallet and my valuables.  I handed over my wallet and my watch, but because I looked like a student with my Timbuk2 messenger bag, he did not even bother to check what was actually inside my bag.  Had I carried my gear in a LowePro or a Tamrac bag, I would have lost about $7000.00 worth of equipment.

The second time my Timbuk2 saved me earlier this year.  I was hiking at the McConnell’s Mills about 40 minutes from Pittsburgh when I slipped on some frozen mud.  I started rolling down a steep hill, and if my messenger bag strap had not caught a tree root, I would have ended up in a frozen river.  Even though I am a pretty strong swimmer and most likely would have been able to get out of the water, hiking back to my car wet when the temperature outside was -5F would have surely landed me in the hospital with hypothermia.

Thank you Timbuk2 for making such a wonderful product.

Today I ran accross an excellent interview with Adam Savage of The Mythbusters.  The interview was great, but the video that followed it was even better.  If you have even a tiny bit of a creative streak, I highly recommend watching it.

Lifehacker Interview with Adam Savage