Crunchy Part Of The Egg

Thoughts on starting SFPC

05 September 2017

In a week I’ll be starting SFPC! It seems to me a complete 180 from my life in the software industry so far, but that’s what I’m here for. Anyone who knows me knows that I was really conflicted when thinking about joining SFPC. I was (and still am) worried that I would be “wasting time” instead of focusing on my next “career” move.

My only consolation is a deep feeling that perhaps not all learning is linear, and sometimes the things that ended up being useful are things that I played with on the side. For example, 3 years ago I started a book club reading Daniel Schiffman’s Nature of Code on the side. While I always took a cursory interest in graphics, I never imagined myself working heavily in it. However, the simple idea of polar coordinates ended up benefitting me tremendously in building iPhone applications that have slightly more involved animations. I have had similar experiences with Inigo Quilez’s shaping functions, which really taught me the power of normalizing quantities to unit length, then using a variety of functions to shape them. I would consider both required reads for any software developer.

I was really influenced by [Drawing with the Right Side Of The Brain][drawing] and thoughts put forth in Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. To me, it seems that I have only been thinking about rational, logical ways to think about problems. I want t

Fast-forward to present day, one week ahead of SFPC. Here are some of my goals for the program:

Develop an approach to thinking and expression that is not rooted entirely in an efficiency mentality by:
- Always taking the path that induces the most fear
Develop an artistic practice of expression by:
- Publishing to this blog at least once a week
- Always working on something
Give something back to the community by:
- Starting a local group that brings like minded creative-tech people together
- Creating a piece that educates and inspires

I started last week with the many readings that Lauren had suggested for class, books I never imagined I would have picked up - like Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey. I’m going through Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization by Alexander Galloway. It is a treat, and I will write up on it soon.