Category Archives: Creativity

2024 Reading List with Lots of Books about Food

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2024 was my year where I read six books about making or cooking food, and one about compost, which helps grow food.

In 2025, I need to read a few more books by Edward Carey, Silas House, creativity, and cooking.

My Yearly Plan

Each year, the plan is to read a book a week, and this year I managed two books a month. It’s not bad for thinking I was going to spend less time reading this year and more time learning on YouTube and other websites. I spent too much time watching creators to see what was going on in their lives, more than the ones teaching me things or letting me learn from them.

Again, from mid-November/Thanksgiving until the end of the year, I attempted to finish up a handful of books I was partway through, along with some shorter/more straightforward/easier-to-read books.

The short, easier-to-read ones are between 120 – 150 pages and smaller in size. So I can read them in a few days or a day, depending On how much time I have. The others are 250 – 400 pages and are more involved, and I need to pay more attention while reading them.

NOTE – I typically read a handful of books at once.

Reading more than a book at a time allows me to switch around depending on my mood. If I need light reading or have time to read through something a bit denser that needs more attention, I can.

My List of Books I Read in 2024

My list of books is in the order I read them.

  • Edith Holler – Edward Carey
  • The Hobbit – J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Steal Like an Artist – 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative – Austin Kleon (re-read)
  • Show Your Work -10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered – Austin Kleon (re-read)
  • Keep Going – 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad – Austin Kleon (re-read)
  • Start with Why – How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action – Simon Sinek
  • The Botany of Desire – A Plant’s-Eye View of the World – Michael Pollan
  • Crying in H Mart – A Memoir – Michelle Zavner
  • Persepolis – The Story of a Childhood – Marjane Satrapi
  • Persepolis 2 – The Story of a Return – Marjane Satrapi
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life – Mark Manson
  • Desert Oracle – Volume 1 – Ken Lake
  • Compost – Transform waste into new life – Charles Dowding
  • Never to Small – Creative, compact, and joyful ways to design and live – Never to Small Magazine
  • It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be. – The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden
  • Dignity – Desert Oracle Books Joshua Tree, Calif. – Ken Lake
  • Everything is F*cked – A Book about Hope – Mark Manson
  • The Bean Book – 100 Recipes for Cooking with all Kinds of Beans – Steve Sando with Julia Newberry
  • Feck Perfuction – Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life – James Victore (re-read)
  • The Crossroads of Should and Must – Find and Follow Your Passion – Elle Luna (re-read)
  • Do Breath – Calm your mind. Find focus. Get stuff done. – Michael Townsend Williams
  • Finding the Mother Tree – Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest – Suzanne Simard
  • Diet for a Small Planet (50th Anniversary Edition) – Frances Moore Lappe
  • Do Smoke – A modern guide to cooking and curing. Jen Goss and Scott Davis (NOTE – I finished the last 26 pages on the morning of January 1st and was too tired to stay up on New Year’s Eve. )

Total Books Read

I finished the year strong and managed to read 24 books.

More Learning from YouTube

Again this year I continued watching more YouTube to learn about cooking, shooting videos, storytelling, starting a YouTube channel, starting a small farm, etc., and taking a few courses I purchased about editing with DaVinci Resolve.

My Reading Plans for 2025

Here’s to reading about a book every week to two weeks in 2025.

In 2025, I plan to continue to spend more time learning how to shoot, edit, and add special effects/graphics to videos to start my YouTube channel. It didn’t turn out that way last year, but I need to put more effort into it in 2025.

Please comment if you have read any of these books, what you thought of them, and if you have any suggestions.

2023 Reading List with Lots of Neil Gaiman, Do Books, and Colson Whitehead

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2023 was my best year reading to date.

It was the first year I started reading books by Neil Gaiman, seven books, five Do Books, and three by Colson Whitehead, making them the top two authors and group of books.

My Yearly Plan

Each year, the plan is to read a book a week, and this year will be the closest I get to that goal. This year, I’m close to finishing reading a book every eight or nine days on average, even though because I read a few at a time, I finish them a day or so apart.

Typically, from mid-November/Thanksgiving until the end of the year, I attempt to finish up many books I still need to finish, along with some of the shorter/more straightforward/easier-to-read books.

NOTE – I typically read a handful of books at once.

Reading more than a book at a time allows me to switch around depending on my mood. If I need some light reading or have time to read through something a bit denser that needs more attention, I can.

My List of Books for 2023

I broke my list of books into categories in the order I read them.

  • I try. I Fail. I learn. – Hiut Denim (Do Lectures)
  • Delicious Beans from Rancho Gordo – Every Pot a Victory – A Guide to Happy Beans Every Day – Rancho Gordo
  • Arbitrary Stupid Goal – Tamara Shopsin
  • Cooked – A Natural History of Transformation – Michell Pollan
  • Shop Class as SoulCraft – Matthew B. Crawford
  • Lark Ascending – A Novel – Silas House
  • Dave Grohl – The Storyteller – Taste of Life and Music – Dave Grohl
  • Four Thousand Weeks – Time Management for Mortals – Oliver Burkman
  • The War of Art – Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles – Steven Pressfield
  • Rebel without a Crew – Or How a 23-year-old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player – Robert Rodriguez
  • No. 4 – On the Writing Process – John McPhee
  • I Will Teach You to Be Rich – No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works (2nd Edition) – Ramit Sethi
  • Salt Fat Acid Heat – Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking – Samin Nosrat and Art by Wendy MacNaughton
  • Eat That Frog! – Get More of the Important Things Done Today – Brain Tracy
  • Scrap Steading – Prosperous Homesteading on Any Budget – Billy Bond and Matt Hundley
  • The One Thing – The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results – Gary Keller with Jay Papasan
  • Toby Dog of Gold Shaw Farm – Morgan Gold
  • Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – A Year of Food Life – Barabra Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
  • In the Blink of an Eye – A Perspective on Film Editing – 2nd Edition – Walter Murch
  • The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees – The Ash in Human culture and History – Robert Penn
  • Man’s Search for Meaning – Revised and Updated – Viktor E. Frankl (Reread)

Books by Neil Gaiman

  • Coraline
  • Good Omens – The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter. Witch – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
  • The Graveyard Book
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane
  • American Gods – A Novel
  • Neverwhere – A Novel
  • Stardust – A Novel

Do Books

  • Do Earth – Healing Strategies for Humankind – Tamsin Omond
  • Do Make – The Power of You Own Two Hands. – James Otter (Re-read)
  • The Book of Do – A manual for living
  • Do Interesting – Notice. Collect. Share. – Russell Davies
  • Do Sourdough – Slow bread for busy lives. – Andrew Whitley

Books by Colson Whitehead

  • The Nickel Boys – A Novel
  • Harlem Shuffle
  • Crook Manifesto – A Novel

Homesteading/Farming Book Club

  • The Living Soil Handbook – The No Till Grower’s Guide to Ecological Market Gardening – Jesse Frost
  • The Art of Fermentation – An In-depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World – Sandor Ellix Katz

Apartment Building Book Club

  • The Maid – A Novel – Nita Prose
  • Perfume – The Story of a Murder – Patrick Suskind

Remote JavaScript Book Club

  • Cracking the Coding Interview – 189 Programming Questions and Solutions – Gayle Laakmann McDowell (The group did not finish it.)

Total Books Read

I finished the year strong and managed to read 41 books.

I’m Learning More Through YouTube

I continued watching more YouTube to learn about cooking, shooting videos, storytelling, starting a YouTube channel, starting a small farm, etc., and taking a few courses I purchased about editing with DaVinci Resolve.

Less Reading in 2024

Here’s to less reading in 2024 than in 2023.

In 2024, I plan to spend more time learning how to shoot, edit, and add special effects/graphics to videos to start my YouTube channel.

Please comment if you have read any of these books, what you thought of them, and if you have any suggestions.

2022 Reading List for the Most Part

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2022 started well, reading-wise until I was notified mid-March that I would need to move because the landlord’s children were selling the house after their parents passed away. So with the need to quickly move after 19.5 years in my place, I had to stop reading for a month and a half or two.

That’s a whole other story for a different blog post about the need to move.

My book list is missing a few books I read before the move since I hadn’t written them down. I had placed the books in a separate pile but have yet to find them since they are likely still in a box I have not unpacked.

Total Books Read

I finished the year strong in December and managed to read 21 books.

The list includes a few digital JavaScript books I read with my remote JavaScript book club.

My Yearly Plan

Each year I typically hope to read a book a week and tend to get close by finishing the year strong, starting around Thanksgiving. So again, this year, the plan is to read a book every week as in previous years, but it will likely be a book every two weeks on average.

NOTE – I’m typically reading a half dozen or more books at any one time. Sometimes I get what I need out of a book after only reading the first part, or I realize the book’s not for me, so I stop, or there is another book I’m more interested to read/finishing at the time.

Reading more than a book at a time allows me to switch around depending on my mood, if I need some light reading, or if I have time to read through something a bit denser that needs more of my attention.

My List of Books for 2022

  • Stay Curious – How We Created a World Class Event in a Cowshed – The Do Lectures the First 10 Years – Do Lectures
  • Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early): How Far Would You Go for Financial Freedom? – Scott Rieckens
  • The Side Project Report – Observation and Enquiry – Do Lectures
  • The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do (A No F*cks Given Guide) – Sarah Knight
  • This Book Will Teach You How to Write Better – This Book is: Short, Effective, and Sort of Offensive. but You Will Write Better after Reading It. – Neville Medhora
  • Omnivore’s Dilemma – A Natural History of Four Meals – Michael Pollan
  • A Million Miles in a Thousand Years – How I Learned to Live a Better Story – Donald Miller
  • Let’s Make Ramen! – A Comic Book Cookbook – Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan
  • Let’s Make Dumplings! – A Comic Book Cookbook – Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan
  • Cook Korean – A Comic Book with Recipes – Robin Ha
  • The Creative Habit – Learn It and Use It for Life – Twyla Tharp
  • A Year in Tokyo – an Illustrated Guide and Memoir of 13 Magical Months Spent Exploring the City of Ginkgo Leaves – Christy Anne Jones
  • In Defense of Food – An Eater’s Manifesto – Michael Pollan
  • What Did You Get Me? Puzzling out a Present on a Walk through the Park – Matthew Oliphant
  • The Independent Farmstead – Growing Soil, Biodiversity, and Nutrient-Dense Food with Grassfed Animals and Intensive Pasture Management – Shawn and Beth Dougherty
  • The Richest Man in Babylon – George S. Clason
  • Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill

Homesteading/Farming Book Club

  • The Rooted Life: Cultivating Health and Wholeness Through Growing Your Own Food – Justin Rhodes
  •  Polyface Micro: Success with Livestock on a Homestead Scale – Joel Salatin

Remote JavaScript Book Club

  • Eloquent JavaScript, 3rd Edition: A Modern Introduction to Programming – Marijn Haverbeke
  • Mostly Adequate Guide to Functional Guide

NOTE – I had planned to put them in the order I read them, but with the move, I’m still missing a few.

I’m Learning More Through YouTube

I continued watching more YouTube to learn about cooking, starting a small farm, shooting videos, storytelling, starting a YouTube channel, etc.

More Reading in 2023

Here to more reading in 2023 than in 2022.

Please comment if you read any of these books and what you thought of them, along with any suggestions.

Drawing Faces

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After a friend’s child saw me doing a digital drawing on my iPad we started drawing faces. Since they showed interest in drawing, I purchased them a copy of Ed Emberley’s “Drawing Book of Faces”. So we could both draw all the faces in the book over time.

I had purchased “Drawing Book of Faces” book and a few others of Mr. Emberley’s after Austin Kleon mentioned using them. He suggested they were great to get children or adults drawing. I thought it would be a great way to do something creative. Along with learning how to draw faces better, even if most of them were more cartoonish.

Sent Book to Friends Child

I sent the book to my friend’s child. We started by drawing only one face a day, which worked well since there are six to a row on each page. That way, if we missed a day, we could still get them done in a week.

We checked in the first week and shared a few of our drawings.

Drawing on Phone with My Finger

I found drawing faces on my phone with my finger was challenging to do. They were having issues too. So I suggested we move to paper instead. They agreed that would be better.

I kept at it on my phone and still have even after finishing the 295+ faces in the book. In some of my pages, I put more than one related face. So there are probably, closer to 325 or more paces in the book.

At some point, my friend’s child got tired of drawing and stopped. Recently, I heard they got an iPad and have been using another digital drawing application to draw instead of their phone. Here’s hoping using the iPad will keep them drawing and improving in the process.

Moved on to Next Drawing Book

Once done with the faces book, I moved on to Mr. Emberley’s “Drawing book Make a World.” This book has planes, trains, cars, buildings, ships, animals, etc., to draw.

More Creativity in My Day

I find it’s a subtle way to do some creative drawing in about 10 or 15 minutes. It can be done while watching or listening to something on my computer in the evening to unwind. You don’t need a lot of skill as I have proven to be able to do these drawings,

So here’s to more drawing/creativity in my day and yours.

Test HTML and CSS Based Organizational Charts

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I was playing around a few months go create the best way to build an organizational chart that are accessible and thought it was time to publish this blog post. So I created what I’m hoping is an accessible organizational charts page. The charts are text based, and I hope they make sense visually as well to assistive technology users like screen readers.

The first chart is built using nested definition lists (DL), which are styled with CSS to show visually which groups or people fall under other groups or people. The second example organizational chart is built using structured headings. These were indented by adding CSS classes to make them easier to read and understand the organizational hierarchy visually.

I’m hoping creating organizational charts one of these ways work. I’m thinking by making organizational charts this way might not work out well if you have a large organization, but could be useful to smaller teams or companies.

If you use assistive technology can you please tell me if these organizational charts are helpful in conveying an organization’s structure.