I can’t believe it took me so long to do this, but I finally got a second monitor. I bought a Samsung 245T, which has a nice IPS panel in it, which has good color and wide viewing angle. It goes nicely with my old Samsung 910T. I’m enjoying it so far!

So I’ve set up bridge to show me the thumbnails on the left, and the full-size preview on the right. Right now, I have to manually set this up every time I launch Bridge. Does anyone know how to make Bridge remember my window set-up so it just launches automatically like this? That would be handy.

This is kind of cool. You click on photos to indicate your preferences for different things, and it comes up with a personality profile. I think this profile describes me pretty accurately. Let me know how yours turned out.

Here’s an interesting speech by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. She brings up some interesting points about creativity and how western society’s attitudes towards it have changed in the last few thousand years. She contemplates the difficulty that arises when we realize that it’s possible that our best creative moments are behind us.

I do appreciate some of the concepts she brings out, because I have sometimes felt, both in photography and in improv, that there was something else speaking through me that allowed me to rise to new levels. Sometimes it feels as though I’m just channeling something, because afterward, I wonder, “Where did that come from?” At the same time, it runs against the grain of my natural tendency to insist on full accountability for everything we do. I think that both things can be reconciled though. She insists that we have to keep “showing up for work” in order to catch the inspiration as it is handed to us. And in the same way that I accept that I can not control the weather, I can accept this too.

In any case, watch the video. She’s a wonderful speaker, and her ideas are worth your consideration. Laura sent this out to her mailing list on the weekend, and I’ve seen it a few times since then, so I think it’s catching on…

I’ve been having fun with Twitter lately, using it to post the tiny things that don’t warrant an entire blog entry, but I still feel like saying. I was wondering about other uses of Twitter that would suit my life, and I was inspired by my friend Karen’s account called shortpress. She was writing story fragments, none of them really interlinked, but each of them beautiful and meaningful in some way. I decided I would try it. So, I created the account microprose.

It turns out this type of writing really suits me. Since each entry is limited to 140 characters, it enforces a type of concentrated and disciplined writing that I really enjoy. How much meaning can I distill into one entry? How succinctly and clearly can I express myself? How strongly can I make someone feel something? After having done a few of these, I now see that I write them exactly the same way I take photos. I try to use the 140 character limit the same way I might use a limit in shooting conditions, focal length, available light, etc. I always want to push the limits. It’s fun to me to see that in some ways, the more I change, the more I’m the same.

I feel like I’ve reached a new level in my improv lately. The past two Big in Japan shows have been great, and I’ve been feeling really good about them. The difference has been that I’ve been working on my emotional commitment to scenes. Teaching the 401 class for the ITC has helped me with this. I’ve been encouraging my students to let go of their inhibitions and self-consciousness, and just give in to the moment of the scene. I have been calling them out if I see that they’re pulling back or judging themselves from the outside. I can see it in their eyes when they think that they look silly. Consequently, I’m forced to practice what I preach. So, for two weeks in a row I’ve been completely letting go of emotional self-control in scenes. The resulting torrent of emotion has been very satisfying. It is fun to be and to watch someone being a complete emotional disaster on stage. Although it is exhausting, I end the set feeling like I couldn’t have possibly given more. That’s a good feeling.