Creativity and Electrolites

I want to make something, but I don't know what. It's why I got into computer science, why I love Lego bricks, and why I have a blog. The problem with wanting to make something is that either you have to have someone else give you set of plans, in which case you're basically a glorified factory worker (not that there's anything wrong with factory workers, it's just not what I want to do), or you have to have some amount of creativity.

I used to have some creativity. I think that I used up most of it that year we had a haunted house in my grandpa's attic. Jury-rigging ghosts to the door so the room came alive (or un-dead, perhaps) as the door opened, I still think that the thought and engineering that went into that was fairly creative. But I fear I used up all of my creativity when I was young.

Anymore, I get halfway through writing a story and can't figure out where to go from there. 'Sure, he fell off a cliff to certain doom as the lightning crashed around and his body cascaded toward the piercing rocks below. But what happens /next/?' It's such a pain to try to figure out where to go from there. Obviously I could have the magical albatross swoop in and save the day, but really, how believable is that? Everyone knows that magical albatrosses gallop, not swoop.

So I find that I'm stuck, without a speck of creativity left. Unsure of what to do, but still filled with a huge desire to create. A need to build. A thirst for anti-entropy.

Which honestly would make a pretty darn good sports drink. Anti-Entropy, with added specks of creativity. Now in fruity lime!

Conservation of Energy

It's getting hot out. Not that that should really surprize me, but somehow I suppose that it does. So it's getting hot out, and I'm not really sure what I should do about it. I could try walking around with a refridgerator strapped to my back, but I don't think I'd manage to get very far. And even if I did, I'm not sure that would really end up helping the heat any, unless I also hauled around a power supply. But that'd probably have to be gas-generated, since batteries are really heavy. And gas is so expensive now that it's probably worth living with the heat instead of hauling around a gas-generated refridgerator's power supply around with the refridgerator simply so I can get a glass of cold water whenever it's a bit on the "too warm" side of the scale.

I guess then that I just have to live with the heat and try to head for cooler areas when it starts to warm up even more in a month or so. But still, with all this heat, there's got to be something that can be done. And given that I've apparently decided that I can't really keep myself cool, I'll simply have to remember that for the back half of the year, it's going to start to get too cold. Much too cold, and the apartment enjoys leaking like a screen door on a submarine. But at least it makes a lot more sense. So maybe I can simply attempt to conserve the heat until a rainy, cold day.

It's much too hot out right now, but as soon as I perfect my heat-bottle, that won't be a problem any longer. I can then capture the heat, protect the heat, and use it to warm up my home when it's twenty-seven below outside. If the bottle's big enough, perhaps I can even keep it from being twenty-seven below outside.

But then I'll probably be outlawed in some congressman's attempt to win votes by stamping out global warming. Outlawed and stepped on with a really big boot. Or at least smacked with a really big rubber smiley-face stamp. All because of the heat. But at least then I'd have other things to occupy my mind.

How /do/ you remove that much ink, anyway?

*thunk* Is it Dead? Is it Dead?

Windows (of the glass, not computer, variety), sliding glass doors, stained-glass and glazed, there are degrees of goodness for these. There isn't much nicer than a nice breeze, and when that breeze is through a slightly-too-warm apartment, it's even better. Opening windows and doors on either end allowing the wind a way through is hard to beat.

These are very good windows.

Seeing out the front of a car, watching rain find its way down a window on a spring day, huge fishtanks in an aquarium (and smaller fishtanks in peoples' houses). There are all wonderful uses of glass, great places for windows to exist. But these aren't generally as good of windows as those above. Well, maybe the front window in a car, something to keep the bugs out of your teeth. But these windows are closed--you can't reach through and /feel/ the rain, you can't pet the fish. You're being held behind a pane of glass, unable to interact with things on the other side.

All day long, I sit in front of a closed window. All day long I can only imagine the feeling of wind in my face, the sound of the rain or the smell of freshly-cut grass. All day long the window mocks me as I am forced to stay inside on such a lovely day. While I do get sunlight, I still long to be able to open the windows.

And then, when a bird runs into our window, I realize I'm not the only one that wishes they weren't there.