Breadcrumbs back to creativity

Over the past couple of weeks I came to realize I almost lost something very important in my life. I only realized it in the very end – probably too late. The will to be creative; the will to create stuff just for the heck of it. Only after days weeks of trying to get myself back together, I came to realize that I hadn’t lost the will to create at all. In fact I never wanted it more… However I let go a few of ‘my tools‘ that gave me the ideas and motivation to create stuff.

What follows is a (bit like a) ‘note to self‘ of what I should never ever forget again.

Let your inner child be your guide

If you have kids you’ll most definitely already know this: Kids are insanely mindblowing when they try to explain something they saw. They have the craziest visions of the world. Not because they are smarter than we are but because we are smarter than them. While they are talking about a huge television in a room, we talk about a cinema.

You know what they’re trying to say but they just see the whole world differently. That is a great thing to do/have. Make sure you keep this alive in yourself. Let yourself be amazed by flying birds and soap bubbles. It’s okay to be blown away by cool and simple stuff. It’s okay to actually enjoy life at its fullest.

Make sure you bring back that inner child in yourself. It’s fun! (and cute! Girls love it, believe you me!) It’ll make you think up the craziest stuff in the world. No reason. Just fun. And who doesn’t like fun?
Your inner child knows what you want. You don’t. The only thing you know is you want to pay your bills before it’s too late. The inner child in you wants chocolate. I suggest you give it to him. Read the rest of this entry »

Flash CS5 Error: Invalid Input SWF

I ran into this and since I didn’t find anything about this on Google, I thought I might share this with you guys.
If you have Flash CS5 installed you must have played around with the iPhone possibilities. If however you’re unlucky, you might see this a couple of seconds after starting to compile your iPhone app:

That error isn’t saying much, so if you have no idea what is going on, this might take a while to figure out… (took me about 2 weeks…).

A few months ago, I was having trouble with a JAVA applet not working correctly in my browser so I changed a few settings in the JAVA preferences. Apparently that was a bad idea. When I set everything back the way it was, the error was gone

This is how the settings look now (in case anyone was wondering).

It makes you kinda wonder…

This whole Adobe vs. Apple debacle is starting to make me doubt if I want to stay a web developer at all. The companies, that provide me with tools I use and love, are acting like 8-year old kids, saying the other one is lying.

This (web dev) was supposed to be fun and at some point enable me to make a living… Not an endless amount of arrogant crap coming from a few guys who tend to forget people are actually watching them.

In the past 2 years I’ve growing more towards video and photography anyway… I might just start thinking about a career change if this keeps on going.

Jarvis, are you there? At your service, sir.

Did you see the first Iron Man movie? Well you should have. It’s freaking great! But I’m not going to make this a write-up about that movie. I do hope you did see the trailer for the second one? If you haven’t: enlighten yourself!

But this isn’t about the next movie… Well, not directly. Marvel put up a pretty cool interactive demo of the Jarvis HUD and the Iron Man mask, in order to give you a taste of the second part of awesomeness! If you like geeky Flash stuff, you just HAVE to check this one out.

Note: Loading, installing (it requires an additional plugin) and configuration is pretty slow (and kinda buggy) but it’s really worth the effort. It’s very reactive and it just looks great! It’s a great example of augmented reality and using cool graphics. I love it! Go and check it out!

For those about to rock, we salute you

Cool title, huh? While I was writing this post I was listening to some AC/DC which reminded me of this very quote which was actually an album title. I thought it was pretty applicable for this post.

For the longest time I haven’t talked about this. I felt that it wasn’t my place to say it, but as I went on with my life I figured this is something I just have to get out of my system.

When I was 14, some grown-up told me that creativity was something reserved for the talented. Not just for everybody. Not only was this the biggest piece of bullshit a human being ever told me. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
At that point I was a dreamer: I wanted to discover the world and show everybody something they’d never seen before. Like any one of us probably did back then. However when that specific person said those words. I felt like somebody took away my dream. And I actually gave up.

Only years later, I realized how untrue all of that was. I started realizing that creativity is not a noun. Creativity is a verb (don’t you dare to correct my English horror show or I’ll come down there and spank your hairy little ass!)

Creativity is something that evolves  (and teaches you) as you do it. It isn’t so much of a coincidence that creativity contains create. The only way to be creative is to downright just create stuff. Most people tend to think that creativity starts in your head. I beg to differ.

Creativity starts with making mistakes.
Making those mistakes allows you to discover new stuff, which you hadn’t though of before. That is how the coolest ideas come to life: By just trying. Simply creating. Experimenting and discovering. Not just thinking. Leave your educated personality out of the equation and let your subconscious mind be your guide. (It works even better if you actually throw away your sanity. Who needs that anyway?)

There’s this great quote I first read on DeviantART and up to date I just can’t stop thinking of it:

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.

And with that, I salute you.