But. As anyone who's ever studied German, the language of love itself, knew well, there were always exceptions and even the exceptions had their own exceptions. Now it was time to throw a new ProjectSubjectException("There's a hammer hiding inside any tool") and log that event on the info level.
Life's what you make of it
For a good bunch of years I've maintained a habit of reading on the way to work/home. This book I attacked on a late May morning with the assumption of reading something that was 100% concentrated on the Making that Adam has been well-known for.I hadn't gotten further than halfway through the introduction when the urge to jump out on the next station and take the first metro back home so I could continue working on the Lambda-class shuttle was almost unbearably strong. Spoiler: I went to work like a good boy.
The intro already had many very quotable and relatable phrases, one of which struck home immediately and that has been tried and true, proved for example this silly blog right here. "Give a maker the chance to tell you about the thing they're putting their time into, and good luck getting them to stop!"
Also a lot later Adam was talking for a chapterful about sharing, that on my own part was pretty well aligned via the 'Mumblings, even though my ramblings could always be heavily improved on. But the thought counts, right?
The second very essential line in the intro was related to some dude who meekly had said that he wasn't a maker for "nah, I just write code, man" - because programming is Making. Just a very different kind of Making, but still.
Not an autobio
For some reason I had read that the general, initial idea was that this was some sort of an autobiography. I was and still am in disagreement: it was about Making, developing and growing was an essential part of the learning process, so naturally there were scattered examples of "this sort of stupidities I did when I was young" and a long story on "this is how my own workshop has evolved over the course of decades".I wasn't surely the only one who's seen and heard in their mind mr Savage excitedly explaining, waving hands and showing his doings while reading the book. His general attitude and clear passion to all this shined clearly through the book. Funnily enough many things I've somehow implemented myself has apparently been done similarly by many other folks. Maybe that just proved that all my good ideas had all been invented before.
About the content
Lists
At home we've been always doing todo- and other lists for just about everything, because they've worked well and they do minimize the forgetting something essential in a rush. A good deal of the lists have also been nested lists, because that's natural, I think: few work queues end up being one-dimentional lists, but typically have one more layer for clarity.The 'Mumblings lists have not ended shared in the blog, for example, but have been opened up as text instead, and rarely more than to describe the next step or two. I also haven't written them anywhere to be shared, because my lists would typically be just slightly modified versions of the basic template.
Checkboxes
These were a neat improvement to the lists that I hadn't thought of, for the fun of it I took these into use at work and over the last six months I've liked the approach. In the book Savage tells the checkbox process he learned from a colleague at ILM:[_] If the task wasn't started or it hadn't progerssed noticeably, the box was left empty
[/_] When the task was about halfway done or so, the box was filled diagonally halfway
[_] When the task was finished, the box was filled up
The same of course could be applied to nested lists. What was the most fantastic thing in this approach was that one could tell with a quick glace what was the state of everything. In a typical "strike through the done things" approach it could be very difficult to read later what had actually been accomplished earlier.
More coolant
Patience has not been a huge issue in my projects, because something like a 24-hour wait has not bothered me - usually. Of course sometimes I've just wanted to get something finished in order to move on and that has made me get sloppy, with a pretty predictable set of results: fixing up my stupidities has eaten more time than what calmness would've originally cost.While reading I noticed that Adam's been much worse (not to mention immensely more experienced and active) than me in this sense, but still: some of his comments woke up some "ooops..." recollections from my older doings.
Deadlines
This chapter had been a big issue for me, especially in the hobby mindset. Because I've always been working on these just for my own amusement and entertainment, there has simply never been any real schedule pressure. With the Lambda-class shuttle I had been near-delirious about getting it "done this month" a few times but every single time the real life had had other plans and the model was always the one to end up waiting.Then again, what was the hurry if I was building for myself only? It'd been very different had I ever done something for someone else or a specific event. There was practically zero risk of the first ever happening and the latter I had done twice.
Drawing
Explaining or clarifying something by the way of drawing has been something I've tried to do at work (as well) with varying degrees of success. I mean, I couldn't draw to save my life, but luckily I've been long working on a field where abstract descriptions and "that box has an arrow going to that cloud and..." has been the way to document things, so my lack of drawing ability has not been a hindrance. But whoo-boy, if I ever tried to actually draw a part of a model or a part of one I've been working on to someone...
Increasing tolerances
This chapter started by a declaration of how whenever you tinker around you'll make constant mistakes. True. I guess this was one of the reasons I've preferred earthbound vehicles over flying ones, for (at least in my opinion) the fliers require a much higher degree of perfection than the mudslingers. Over time I've learned to accept to both accept and even enjoy the imperfections in the end results - as long as it made sense in the universe of the object, of course. I would not have accepted just anything vomited together rapidly.Sharing
One very supportable chapter in Adam's book and in his vids for example has been "share what you know and/or come up with". At least I've learned a bunch of handy tricks and whatnot jsut by listening to the One Day Builds series with half an ear or with the full sensor array of mine. In some twisted way I've implemented this sharing theme with this bloglike thing, but in all honesty without a grand plan or benevolent idea.Sweep up after yourself every day
Perhaps luckily I've had to follow this guideline for years, for practical reasons, as I haven't had a dedicated space to leave everything lying around. So after each assembling or painting session I've set my doings into one place and cleaned up the mess I've made. Always I haven't put things out of the way completely, but into one stack to facilitate rapid relocating when needed.The point of this was that if and when you had cleaned up after the working session you'd begin the next time from where you wanted to or felt like, instead of being forced by your past self to clean up first.
Feelings
This exceptional post to the Project Mumblings was to be finished with a quote from the book. Again, that one was a fitting one."I have a prediction: you are going to mess up a lot. I mean A LOT. [...] There will be moments when, if you are not losing interest in a project, you are losing your mind about it. It will be confusing, dispiriting, and infuriating.
About this prediction, I have three words for you: WELCOME TO MAKING!"
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