Why I use a Coworking space

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Victoria

Get Out Of the Damn House Already

About a month ago, I made a connection with the folks over at Hive4a, a local coworking space.  They’ve got reasonable monthly rates (cheaper than going to a coffeeshop!) and a pretty cool space and I get to get out of the house.

If you are a solo entrepreneur and you haven’t heard about coworking, I suggest you check it out.  If you are a regular working monkey that travels and sometimes needs an office to work out of while you’re on the road, I suggest you check out coworking, too.

In general, they’ll offer you a desk and all the internet you can use, without worrying about whether someone’s going to walk off with your laptop while you go to the bathroom or someone’s going to accidentally spill coffee in your lap.  Many places also offer general office  services, like coffee, copying, faxes, and some even offer receptionist services.

To find a coworking space near you (or your destination) check out DeskWanted and LooseCubes.

Side Benefits May Include Humor

Hive4a has a Keurig for its coffee service.  I’m not crazy about Keurigs – I primarily drink tea, and the water always ends up tasting a smidge of coffee.  Also, folks forget to refill the water and, most annoyingly, leave their old K-cup in the machine for someone else to take out.

To combat this, I put up a sign earlier this week.  Then I didn’t come in for a couple days (while buying a car).  Today, I came back to see that someone had modified the sign.

This is one of the reasons I really wanted to connect with a coworking space … you just can’t get this kind of interaction when you work alone in your house:

Modified sign at my coworking space

AWWW TINY WATER TANK

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One of these things is not like the others

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Victoria

Hoot! Hoot!

My big news this week is that I bought a car.  Finally, after about three weeks since I knew my previous one was totaled.

Unfortunately, it took a bit more money than I’d hoped, so if you’re feeling at all like you might could use new funny shirts or mugs or something, you might consider checking out my Zazzle shops (or this one).  If, for example, you realllllly want a tree-sketch on something, let me know which one and I’ll see what I can do.

In other news …

I drew you all a tree.  This one is a smidge different from some of the others if you examine it closely. :)

Owl in a Tree

There's something a little different about this one ...

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Silver on the tree

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Victoria
A sparse tree with a few silver leaves

Experimenting with the silver pen - not sure it's successful

Fridays are for … foliage?

In any case, this tree is an experiment with the silver pen I picked up recently – adding leaves and multicolor tree action.

It’s sparse, but I think that works for it …. if there were much more in the way of branches, the leaves wouldn’t show up or fit right.

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Interwoven trees

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Victoria
Two trees next to each other, branches making a heart, swirls for leaves

Two trees, growing together in love.

I adore trees.  I know, it’s not a surprise at all, but I do want to make that really clear.

With that on the record, I have an admission to make.

I do from time to time consider the ways in which I can make my beloved trees … marketable.

So, in one of those cold-blooded, “somewhere someone will find this adorable and buy it on everything” moments, I came up with the idea of drawing two trees next to each other, with crossing branches forming a heart.

I started the drawing and it was, indeed, adorkable.  I sent a phone pic of it to my partner, who told me to stop there or it would be too much.

I didn’t listen and kept adding, putting in the little swirls that I love about my older tree doodles.  I am now wondering … is it too much?

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Step one: research!

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Victoria

In which I pretend to be a scientist

Before the post a few weeks ago about research on sexist humor, it simply hadn’t occurred to me that there might be people out there in the world who got paid to study humor scientifically.  I think this is awesome, and in retrospect should’ve suspected as much.

Now that I know, however, I’ve started doing one of those things that scientists do – check out what everyone else has already done. :)

I am somewhat hampered in this by two things: I don’t have easy access to a library that has serious academic journal subscriptions; “humor theory” searches also get you theories about blood, phlegm, and two kinds of bile.  I do have the internet, though, which will at least get me started.

One of the many theories: Pattern Recognition

One of the modern theories about humor that caught my eye (for possibly obvious reasons) is called the Pattern Recognition Theory of Humor.  It was first proposed in 2008 by Alastair Clarke, and clarified in 2009.

In short, this theory proposes that humor arises from the patterns we see around us in everything and things that either match or don’t match those patterns.  That’s one reason why it is appealing – it doesn’t rely on any single cultural or historical context – your humor is based on the patterns you expect.

Which sounds like just the thing to explain the popularity of “memes”, snowclones, and other popular forms of humor … except that in his clarification, Clarke makes it really clear that it’s about the repetition, not about any deviation or variance.  I’m relatively unconvinced by this –  simple repetition of the same thing over and over is … well, not very funny.

Take Monty Python’s “I Like Traffic Lights” song.  Funny once. Maybe.

I suppose that one could consider the sorts of frameworks that make up snowclones and “memes” to be the basis for the repetition, but without the variation, they wouldn’t actually be amusing.

I’ve only seen a little bit on what’s out there for this so far – anyone have better/more interesting/more useful links?

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