Switching to WordPress blogging

The new header for the WordPress blog

Remember I mentioned a few days ago that I would be switching my blogging activities over to WordPress? Well, I have just started the new page and you can see it here.

Lists for Happinesss and Prosperity

Everybody seems so busy these days, flying around to this meeting or that conference, running from one appointment to the next, career-building, lining the nest, trying to make ends meet.

How many times have you heard someone close to you say with a note of rising desperation in their voice,"There aren't enough hours in the day!"?

Have you ever found yourself rushing from one task to the next, engaged in a manic race to check as many things off your to-do list for that day? Or do you even keep a list?

Hopefully you do not attempt to get through each day by the seat of your pants and operate with the assumption that you can keep a list in your head. Because if that's what you do, then you are wasting a lot of your valuable mental energy just warehousing the list and that is bound to create an additional load on your already over-loaded brain.

So don't do it!

It's a lot easier on your whole system to take a few minutes before the mad rush to sit down and write your list of the most pressing things that you really need (or want to) accomplish in the next day, next week and even next month.

Seriously.

Once you get it down on paper you can basically forget about it. More specifically, you can just concentrate on one item on your list at a time without stewing and brewing over the remaining tasks. Because really, multi-tasking is not all it's cracked up to be. When you try to do more than one thing at a time, you are risking the very real possibility that you will dilute your efforts so that nothing gets that well attended to. This will lead to dissatisfaction and a feeling that you are not accomplishing what you set out to do.

Just imagine the great feeling of putting all your energy, enthusiasm and desire into doing just one thing incredibly well. So what if a couple of things on your list fall by the way-side for that day. There's always tomorrow. You can just pick up where you left off after a good night's rest, knowing that you did your very best in the time you were given for that day. You will sleep like a baby knowing that you gave it your best shot and that tomorrow's another day.

I realize of course that this is quite elementary and almost everybody that reads this will probably think "Tell me something I don't already know!" but let me tell you, I happen to know several people off the top of my head who have not got it through their heads (and these are professional people with massive workloads...) that they can free themselves of some major stressers simply by taking the time on a religiously regular basis to put down in writing their short, medium and long-term priorities.

From my own experience as a very busy designer, artist and inventor who juggles quite a variety of tasks on a daily and weekly basis I can attest to the idea that a simple to-do list is my most powerful business and personal tool, period. Without belaboring the point, I can say this because once I have items on a list a certain feeling of personal power and calm settles into my day. I free myself to focus all of my creative energy on ONE THING at a TIME. Sounds simple enough but if you fail to do this, you will miss out on the deep satisfaction of concentration on the issue at hand as well as the knowing that your handy list will still be there once you are ready to strike off your current task and move on to the next thing.

The coolest thing about making a list is that you do not have to restrict the size or ambition of the items. You might knock two or three things off in one day, or it could take a month or more to slowly whittle away at a biggie. Just keep advancing your cause(s) and you can't go very far wrong.

Might sound trivial and obvious but not so much when you read the statistics on burn-out, job dis-satisfaction and most important of all, personal happiness.

REPOSTING Photo Montage of DIY deuce

Someone once said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's 7000 words about the DIY 'deuce'...

Remember that I am 1st and foremost an artist...a visual artist...so I am showing you these images because I think they are pretty neat just as images. The Skyaak DIY 'deuce' design is actually quite intricate and complex, considering it starts off as two sheets of flat paper.

Don't you think it has a cool sculptural look? Not to mention that this little unit glides through the air like a dream...call it 'kinetic art'.

I built a new DIY 'deuce' last night, shown above.

I used 'Canada flag' celophane tape to cover the wings and shaft with to give it extra strength. Also looks kinda cool. The good ol' patriotic look!

It glides really well, but I have found now (no big surprise really) that when I put a bit more ballast weight (along w the 3 large paper-clips) in the nose it glides quite a bit further and also tracks a much neater trajectory. I actually just stuck a stick of gum in its paper wrapper right into the front of the 3-sided shaft. Probably weighs about .05 of a gram or so.

Basically, I'd suggest as heavy a ballast as possible in the nose to maximize the performance...keep adding extra weight until just before it starts to nose-dive and you will get a much better glide.The Skyaak design really likes carrying some extra weight in its nose. A harbinger of a future power-pack?

Checking out ScribeFire to cross-pollinate SEO

My buddy Fred Schechter mentioned that I ought to check out FireFox's cool feature called "Scribe-Fire". Well here I am trying it out. Just one of the many things you can do with Scribe-Fire is blog about any website that you visit and so I thought it would be interesting to try it out with the new website we are developing called "www.SpiritofManitou.ca"

So let's fire this thing up and watch the fireworks.

Spirit of Manitou Studio Trail

My design was chosen as the official logo for our new group.

Hi all! Just popping in to let you know that a group of local artists/artisans are firing up the first- ever "Spirit of Manitou Studio Trail". My site is here.

And you can see the first fold at www.SpiritofManitou.ca

It's kinda cool with Google Map installed.

My exact co-ordinates are now known to the entire planet.

Better get baking cookies to serve up to our visitors on the Studio Trail!

The Studio Trail kicks off on this coming July 12th and 13th. 2008.

DIY 'deuce' Banner Mock-up

Here’s a working draft of the banner that is coming soon, once we cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s. You can get a sneak peek at the animated version but just remember, it’s not an active link quite yet. Let us know how you like it so far...any feedback would be taken seriously.

Reader Alert

In the next little while we are changing to a Wordpress format, just ramping up as we speak. You will see a prompter here that will zing you to the new blog.

For all you archive buffs rest assured that this blog can get archived in its entirety at the Wordpress site.

We lose nothing.

Stay posted for progress reports on the DIY 'deuce'...

We are slogging away at it every spare minute we can.

Making exTREMEly rapid advances...the Dream Team is surely coming to life.

REMEMBER the contest to WIN a *FREE* Skyaak Pro Model 3 Shipped *FREE* anywhere on the planet is STILL UP and RUNNING!
Watch for the counter to tip into a new grand (ie:8001) If you land on the tip # you automatically WIN.

Copy and Paste the counter into an email and send it to mrgaudet@gmail.com to make immediate arrangements to have your Pro Model 3 rushed to you to try out!

Trying out the DIY deuce

My good buddy Dylan Cooke and his girlfriend Cassie dropped in yesterday afternoon for a visit. I've been telling Dylan about the DIY 'deuce' and he was pretty excited to see it.

We tossed it around for a while and concluded that YES it replicates the flight characteristics of the Model 3 exactly!

When you give it that last-second flick it cuts a nice clean trajectory and executes that cool spinning motion. We noticed that the nose of the little unit almost always stays up above the horizon in flight...that 'positive incidence' thing.

Dylan is heading off to Vegas next week with his company 1-800-GOTLITE? which is a custom-design LED sign company making big waves on the Saskatoon scene as well as on the national stage here in Canada. Evidently, they are breaking into the States as we speak!

This is all very good for Skyaak, because Dylan is an original enthusiast who is just as determined as ever that he will help find a way to advance the Skyaak cause as inspiration strikes.

7000 words about Skyaak

Someone once said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's 7000 words about the DIY 'deuce'...

Remember that I am 1st and foremost an artist...a visual artist...so I am showing you these images because I think they are pretty neat just as images. The Skyaak DIY 'deuce' design is actually quite intricate and complex, considering it starts off as two sheets of flat paper.

Don't you think it has a cool sculptural look? Not to mention that this little unit glides through the air like a dream...call it 'kinetic art'.

I built a new DIY 'deuce' last night, shown above.

I used 'Canada flag' celophane tape to cover the wings and shaft with to give it extra strength. Also looks kinda cool. The good ol' patriotic look!

It glides really well, but I have found now (no big surprise really) that when I put a bit more ballast weight (along w the 3 large paper-clips) in the nose it glides quite a bit further and also tracks a much neater trajectory. I actually just stuck a stick of gum in its paper wrapper right into the front of the 3-sided shaft. Probably weighs about .05 of a gram or so.

Basically, I'd suggest as heavy a ballast as possible in the nose to maximize the performance...keep adding extra weight until just before it starts to nose-dive and you will get a much better glide.The Skyaak design really likes carrying some extra weight in its nose. A harbinger of a future power-pack?