jeremyduncan.ca

Rachmaninov had Big Hands

// November 24th, 2008 // No Comments » // creativity

Heima

// October 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // creativity, random

Beautiful.

That is all.

Thoughts on Imagination

// September 29th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // church, creativity

[some thoughts from the message last weekend]

I recently read a list written by a grade 8 student about the 30 things she hoped to do before age 30. With just over 3 months left before I turn 30 I was particularly intrigued to see what she hoped to accomplish. The list was as expansive and unpractical as you might imagine a 16 year olds lost might be. Hopefully by age 30 she will have accomplished more of her list than I have of my hypothetically 14 year old list.

Of course our plans at age 16 may not well reflect the future and all of these incredible and varied things that we wanted to do with our lives have probably (or will probably if you are not yet 30) passed away because slowly over time that list became filtered by what was feasible and practical.

You may have once wondered what you would do with your life and if you asked someone older and wiser for advice they almost, guaranteed, steered you towards the most reasonable options, more than that the most economically viable options.
(more…)

RSS Tools

// July 21st, 2007 // No Comments » // creativity, podcast

I’ve been trying a couple different RSS solutions for a while now. FTR I use iTunes (with all its flaws) for podcasts. Initially I was using Sage an add-on for Firefox. But this didn’t allow me to archive any of my feeds, so I switched to Attensa. Attensa is a great idea because it works inside Outlook to show your RSS feeds in the same you you read email. Problem was it crashed all the time.

I had played with Google Reader when it was first launched but it wasn’t really a full featured product initially. Fortunately that’s not true any more. Google Reader like every Google product I have used regularly (maps, world, Picasa, gmail, talk) is improved substantially. For one the simple ability to organize feeds by category and then access all of the feeds within a specific category is a must. This is important because I have over a hundred RSS feeds I track and having the ability to read quickly read through all of the feeds in a specific category or topic is key for me. Not only that but by installing Greasemonkey in Firefox and then using this script you can access all of your RSS fees from within your gmail page. Awesome. The only thing missing was an archive system since this was all online. But Google you have come through yet again. Google Gears allows you to synchronize up to 2000 entries in an offline archive. Perfect.

BTW You can also access previews of both gmail and Google Reader from the google home page if you use the iGoogle personalized page.

Misunderstood

// July 9th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // creativity

Just watch it through to the end.

Road Trip: The Beginning

// June 6th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // church, creativity

We set off this morning (afternoon) from Calgary…

Hit Kelowna to connect with Dallas and Annie in the early evening and then on to Vancouver. Got here late. Had trouble finding a Hotel. It’s 2:30am Pacific time and I’m off to bed. See you tomorrow.

thinkerlabs podcast

// May 11th, 2007 // No Comments » // church, creativity

New podcast went up this morning. Episode 013. Joe and I discuss leadership in the first of a new two part dialogue. Hopefully the updates will come a little more regularly over the next few weeks. (ie. we recorded a bunch this morning and are now prepared to dole them out in a responsible manner)

Subscribe through iTunes here.

Also Joe will be in the west early next month. He and I are travelling from Calgary to BC stopping along the way to talk to interesting churches for thinkerlabs‘s documentary project. Expect (in)frequent updates.

Patience

// April 24th, 2007 // 1 Comment » // creativity, random

Kids it’s important to be patient

Creative Notebook

// March 20th, 2007 // 7 Comments » // creativity, podcast

In the latest thinkerlabs podcast that went online yesterday Joe and I talk about our creative process, how we catalogue ideas and make connections between them.

Generally I use a big whiteboard in my office but lately I have been going old school and using a notebook again. There is something cool about the tactile sensation of pencil on paper. I like to represent my ideas visually so mind maps work better for me than lists. There are always lots of ideas swirling in my head and I like t be able to visually see how they connect.

Here’s an image from a page in the notebook I take with me everywhere.

Click the image for higher resolution

thinkerlabs

// January 5th, 2007 // No Comments » // church, creativity

If you are in ministry or have anything to do with ministry and haven’t checked out thinkerlabs yet you need to go do it right now. Seriously stop reading and click this link. Joe and I started the site about a year ago as a means to share our ideas and resources with others. Throughout the past year it has faded in and out of our focus but with the New Year inspiring us to make all kinds of irresponsible resolutions we have recommitted ourselves to the idea. We’ve got some new contributers, new artwork, videos and ideas and even a brand spanking new podcast. Remember those? They were really cool about 7 months ago, which makes this the perfect time for us to launch one. Go check it out.