Artist: Alice Agostini

Utilities
25 Marvellous Mac Menu Bar Apps & Utilities
David Appleyard on April 26th 2011

mac, menu, menubar, toolbar
The humble menu bar is a fascinating part of the Mac OS X interface. It’s always visible, and holds a remarkably prominent position on your display – far more so than the Dock.
Some people love to keep it as empty as possible, while others have so many menu bar apps that it’s literally full to overflowing. Whichever camp you fall into, almost everyone has at least one or two apps that they feel are worthy of a place in the magical menu bar.
Today we’re going to take a close look at 25 different apps that offer really useful menu bar functionality. Each has a short description, and a example video of the app in-use.
I’m not for one moment suggesting that you download and run all of these. That would be crazy. Rather I hope that you’ll find one or two that particularly stand out for you, and become a permanent resident in the top-right corner of your display…
FuzzyClock
Often you don’t need the exact time in hours, minutes and seconds. A more human readable style like “five past ten” makes more sense. FuzzyClock is a menubar clock which displays the current time in a “fuzzy” style.
I find this to be particularly useful as it removes the temptation to worry about one minute of time here or there. It also removes the mindless “clock watching” you may find yourself falling into, just watching the minutes tick by!
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
Radium
If you’re a little tired of your iTunes music collection, Radium offers a simple way to tune in to thousands of online radio stations. The execution is wonderfully minimal, with basic search functionality and the ability to mark your favourite tracks for easy access.
We’ve reviewed Radium in the past, and I’m a big fan. Various preferences let you scrobble music to Last.fm, integrate with Growl, or even hook Radium up to subscription radio services such as Sirius, Sky.fm, and various others.
Price: $9.99
Download: Mac App Store
ExpanDrive
There’s no shortage of FTP applications on OS X, but our readers seem to be dedicated Transmit fans.
I was interested to see how few people use ExpanDrive. This is a menu bar app that’s capable of mounting an FTP volume on your local desktop, which acts in completely the same way as a physically attached USB drive. It’s a whole new way to work with FTP, and an absolute must-see.
Price: $39.95
Download: Mac App Store
Take Five
Take Five is the latest creation to come from the Iconfactory, bringing their popular iOS app to the desktop. Take Five gives you a simple way to quickly pause your music, and have it resume after a certain amount of time (five minutes, by default).
Although a simple idea, this comes in handy more often than you’d think. The interface is beautiful, and it’s a menu bar app that’s well worth giving a try.
Price: $3.99
Download: Mac App Store
RescueTime
If you’ve ever reached the end of the day and found yourself wondering where your time went, RescueTime might be just what you need. Although more of a web app than a desktop app, the menu bar agent keeps track of all the apps, documents, and websites used throughout the day.
You can then login to the RescueTime site to see a breakdown of all this information, and figure out what you need to cut out to improve productivity!
Price: From Free
Download: Developer’s Site
TinyAlarm
As the name would suggest, TinyAlarm is a quick way to set an… alarm. You can either select a time from a pre-selected list, or specify one using the OS X clock widget. When the time arrives, TinyAlarm will notify you with a message and sound.
All these are customisable in preferences, and there are plenty of different sounds to choose from – some better than others! You can also select a “snooze” interval, for when you want to delay the alarm by a few minutes.
Price: $3.99
Download: Mac App Store
Caffeine
Although it can be very handy to have a computer that automatically put itself to sleep after a certain period of inactivity, there are times when this can be a real nuisance (when listening to music, or watching a film).
Caffeine gives you an attractive menu bar icon that can quickly enable or disable your Mac’s automatic sleep functionality with a single click.
Price: Free
Download: Mac App Store
Jumpcut
Jumpcut is a simple way to store the items you copy to your clipboard for later reference. Rather than each new item overwriting the previous, you can recall them at any time with a few keystrokes.
Although many applications offer this functionality (Alfred, for one), it’s handy to have a single-serving app for the purpose of supercharging your clipboard!
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
AllBookmarks
Bookmarks and favourites are probably the most-used feature of web browsers, and I don’t need to explain how helpful they can be for heavy web users. AllBookmarks puts your browser bookmarks right in the menu bar – for all major OS X browsers.
You can navigate through your bookmark folder structure, and go to a website with a single click. From the developers of the excellent 1Password, this is a fantastic utility to have at your fingertips.
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
Fluid
Fluid is a fairly unique piece of software, designed to create a “SSB” (site specific browser) for your favourite websites and web applications. This creates a dedicated native application for a particular website that can be placed in your Dock.
An interesting feature of Fluid is the ability to create an SSB that attaches to your menu bar and displays as a small drop-down window. This works particularly well for using mobile-optimised websites, such as mobile Gmail as shown in the example above.
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
FaceTab
As if Facebook wasn’t already enough of a drain on international time and attention, FaceTab offers a way to make accessing the social networking site even easier. Just click the icon in your menu bar, and you’ll be able to navigate around the majority of what Facebook has to offer.
You can check your wall, post messages, comments, browse photos, and see any pending notifications – all without actually opening the Facebook site. It’s actually a very well-executed piece of software, but won’t help those of you with a Facebook addiction…
Price: Free
Download: Mac App Store
iStat Menus
Even if the immediate idea of a series of live statistics in your menu bar doesn’t particularly appeal, don’t write iStat Menus off. It’s far more versatile that you might expect, and can be a very useful tool for digging into system information. The interface is beautifully designed – as you’d expect from Bjango.
You don’t need to automatically display every available option, but certain pieces of information can be useful to have at your disposal. There’s a 14 day trial available that should give you a good idea of how the app works and whether it’s for you.
Price: $16
Download: Developer’s Site
SpaceControl
Although the storage capacity of hard drives seems to be ever-increasing, since installing an SSD I have begun to keep closer track of the data that’s eating up space on my drive. It feels good to be back in control, without a hard drive that’s full of scattered information.
SpaceControl gives you a really simple way to keep track of the space available on one (or several) hard drives, and receive notifications when you’re running a little low on space. Though not particularly packed with functionality – you could do the same thing with AppleScript – it’s a handy utility for a couple of dollars.
Price: $1.99
Download: Developer’s Site/Mac App Store
Isolator
Concentrating on a single application at any one time can be a frustrating problem for computer users. There are so many different distractions present – from Twitter and Facebook, to your bouncing email icon – that it’s difficult to keep focus.
Isolator aims to help this problem by, when enabled, only showing one application at a time. The rest of the screen can either be blurred, or “isolated” completed with a single colour. Although not as advanced as a solution such as Concentrate, it’s a great free option.
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
WeatherBug Alert
Although there seems to be a wealth of different weather apps available for iOS, the same isn’t really true for the Mac. Maybe it’s because dedicated weather websites offer so much information for free that it can be hard to compete.
WeatherBug Alert for Mac helps you plan your day with confidence by putting severe weather alerts and your live temperature on your desktop. It also contains links across to the full forecast at the Weatherbug.com site.
Although it would be good to have these integrated into the app, this simple menu bar widget won’t cost you a cent (and so it’s hard to complain!)
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
F.lux
If you often use your computer into the early hours of the morning, you’ll be familiar with how frustrating a bright computer screen can be with the rest of the room in relative darkness. It definitely isn’t good for your eyes!
F.lux serves the interesting purpose of adjusting your screen colour to be better suited for night-time viewing. There are various preferences to tweak how this happens, and it can be a very handy utility for nocturnally-inclined readers.
Just don’t use it if you’re planning on doing any design work that relies on colour, as you’ll stand to be shocked when returning to your computer in the morning!

Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
SMARTReporter
Although you should certainly be backing up on a regular basis, there’s no harm in also keeping an eye on the ongoing health of your hard drive. Many new models integrate SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), a technology that detects and reports on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating drive failures.
SMARTReporter sits in your menu bar as an ongoing reminder that your drive is in a good condition. If any problems occur, you’ll be notified in advance so that you can double-check your backups and look into purchasing a new drive!
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
Spirited Away
We’d all love to have a faster processor in our Mac, but what if there was a way to make better use of the processing power you already have? Spirited Away makes it easy to automatically “pause” a particular application, and stop it using any processing power if it’s been inactive for a period of time.
You can choose to exclude certain applications (for instance, you might be watching a video in your browser and would prefer it not to “pause”), and select preferences relating to the inactivity time.
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
Dejumble
“Not another to-do list”, I hear you say. There are certainly enough task managers available to completely overflow your Applications folder, but Dejumble takes a slightly simpler approach to most. It has a unique interface, differentiating itself from the usual Mac experience.
You have a task inbox, a list of projects, and simple search functionality. Although it doesn’t technically drop down from your menu bar, it feels more akin to a menu application rather than a traditional piece of software.
Price: $14.99
Download: Mac App Store
Notify
If you’re looking for a simple email client that resides in your menu bar, Notify is very likely to fit the bill. You can add multiple accounts, check, read, and reply to messages. Notify supports mutliple accounts, including Gmail/Google Apps, MobileMe, and Rackspace Email. All in a beautiful interface.
Rather than replacing your current email client (although it could, in theory), Notify is meant to be a way to stay up-to-date with new messages, filing those that don’t warrant your attention, deleting spam, and firing back simple replies.
Price: Free/$10
Download: Developer’s Site
MailCue

MailCue is another email client that sits in your menu bar, but offers a more full-featured interface and experience that Notify. This isn’t necessarily better, and it all depends upon how you’d like to interact with your new emails and messages.
Particularly welcome is the functionality to “sleep” an email account, so that you can leave email alone and get down to work when needed.
Price: $5.99
Download: Mac App Store
Ejector
Ejecting volumes has long been a frustrating process in OS X – both for virtual, software volumes and physical devices as well. To do so, you’re required to either open Finder and click eject next to the drive name, or head over to your desktop to right click > Eject.
Ejector makes the process a little bit quicker, by listing all mounted volumes in your menu bar and giving you a one-click location to eject them. Particularly handy for ejecting all volumes if you’re wanting to unplug your laptop to take with you!
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
Desktopple
Desktopple gives you a few unique and interesting ways to experiment with, clean up, and interact with your desktop. A key piece of functionality is a quick button to hide all the icons, folders, and drives on your desktop – they’re replaced with an image or wallpaper of your choosing.
It can also automatically hide windows that haven’t been used for a while (“Window Cleaning”), or dim your menu bar to further reduce distractions when working.
Desktopple is particularly handy if you regularly find yourself giving a presentation – or if you just hate desktop clutter!
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
MenuPrefs
MenuPrefs does more or less exactly what you’d expect – puts System Preferences right in your menu bar! Depending on how often you find yourself dipping into System Preferences, you may find this amazingly useful or slightly unnecessary.
It’s certainly very handy to be able to jump straight to a particular preference pane, rather than bringing up the main System Preferences window first.
Price: Free
Download: Developer’s Site
Coming Soon: Fantastical

A final application I wanted to give a quick shout-out to is the upcoming Fantastical. I’ve been beta-testing the app for a few weeks, and it seems set to be a very handy piece of software that you won’t want to miss.
Residing in the menu bar, it revolutionises the way you interact with iCal and enter new items. Get your details registered to find out more when Fantastical is released!
Register for Updates: Developer’s Site
Share Your Thoughts!
I’ve brought together a thorough collection of some of my favourite menu bar apps today, but I’m sure there are plenty more that I have missed. I’d love to hear a few more suggestions in the comments – share your favourite menu bar apps, and let me know which you couldn’t live without!
Also, I’d be interested to hear what you think of the mini-screencasts used above. Are these a helpful way to showcase the applications that we feature, and would you like to see them used more often?

Winding it down, getting ready for the 1st day of work in 2012. Best to you all…

In February of last year, video surfaced of a marijuana raid in Columbia, Mo. During the raid on Jonathan Whitworth and his family, police took down the door with a battering ram, then shot and killed one of Whitworth’s dogs within seconds of entering the home and they wounded the other. They didn’t find enough pot in the home to charge Whitworth with even a misdemeanor. (He was, however, charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia when police found a pipe.) The disturbing video went viral in May 2010, triggering outrage around the world. On Fox News, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer and Bill O’Reilly cautioned not to judge the entire drug war by the video, which they characterized as an isolated incident.

In fact, very little about the raid that was unusual. For the most part, it was carried out the same way drug warrants are served some 150 times per day in the United States. The battering ram, the execution of Whitworth’s dog, the fact that police weren’t aware Whitworth’s 7-year-old child was in the home before they riddled the place with bullets, the fact that they found only a small amount of pot, likely for personal use — all are common in drug raids. The only thing unusual was that the raid was recorded by police, then released to the public after an open records request by the Columbia Daily Tribune. It was as if much of the country was seeing for the first time the violence with which the drug war is actually fought. And they didn’t like what they saw.

That video came to mind with the outrage and public debate over the now-infamous pepper-spraying of Occupy protesters at the University of California-Davis protest earlier this month. The incident was just one of a number of high-profile uses of force amid crackdowns on Occupy protesters across the country, including one in Oakland in which the skull of Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen was fractured by a tear gas canister, and in New York, where NYPD Officer Anthony Bologna pepper-sprayed protesters who had been penned in by police fencing.

But America’s police departments have been moving toward more aggressive, force-first, militaristic tactics and their accompanying mindset for 30 years. It’s just that, with the exception of protests at the occasional free trade or World Bank summit, the tactics haven’t generally been used on mostly white, mostly college-educated kids armed with cellphone cameras and a media platform.

Police militarization is now an ingrained part of American culture. SWAT teams are featured in countless cop reality shows, and wrong-door raids are the subject of “The Simpsons” bits and search engine commercials. Tough-on-crime sheriffs now sport tanks and hardware more equipped for battle in a war zone than policing city streets. Seemingly benign agencies such as state alcohol control boards and the federal Department of Education can now enforce laws and regulations not with fines and clipboards, but with volatile raids by paramilitary police teams.

Outraged by the Occupy crackdowns, some pundits and political commentators who paid little heed to these issues in the past are now calling for a national discussion on the use of force. That’s a welcome development, but it’s helpful to review how we got here in order to have an honest discussion.

Part of the trend can be attributed to the broader tough-on-crime and drug war policies pushed by politicians of both parties since at least the early 1980s, but part of the problem also lies with America’s political culture. Public officials’ decisions today to use force and the amount of force are as governed by political factors as by an honest assessment of the threat a suspect or group may pose. Over the years, both liberals and conservatives have periodically raised alarms over the government’s increasing willingness to use disproportionately aggressive force. And over the years, both sides have tended to hush up when the force is applied by political allies, directed at political opponents, or is used to enforce the sorts of laws they favor.

How We Got Here

According to Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Peter Kraska, the number of SWAT raids carried out each year in America has jumped dramatically over the last generation or so, from just a few thousand in the 1980s to around 50,000 by the mid-2000s, when Kraska stopped his survey. He found that the vast majority of the increase is attributable to the drug war — namely warrant service on low-to-mid-level drug offenders. A number of federal policies have driven the trend, including offering domestic police departments military training, allowing training with military organizations, using “troops-to-cops” programs and offering surplus military equipment and weaponry to domestic police police departments for free or at major discounts. There has also been a constant barrage of martial rhetoric from politicians and policymakers.

Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a “war,” and the consequences are predictable. These policies have taken a toll. Among the victims of increasingly aggressive and militaristic police tactics: Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., whose dogs were killed when Prince George’s County police mistakenly raided his home; 92-year-old Katherine Johnston, who was gunned down by narcotics cops in Atlanta in 2006; 11-year-old Alberto Sepulveda, who was killed by Modesto, Calif., police during a drug raid in September 2000; 80-year-old Isaac Singletary, who was shot by undercover narcotics police in 2007 who were attempting to sell drugs from his yard; Jonathan Ayers, a Georgia pastor shot as he tried to flee a gang of narcotics cops who jumped him at a gas station in 2009; Clayton Helriggle, a 23-year-old college student killed during a marijuana raid in Ohio in 2002; and Alberta Spruill, who died of a heart attack after police deployed a flash grenade during a mistaken raid on her Harlem apartment in 2003. Most recently, voting rights activist Barbara Arnwine was raided by a SWAT team in Prince George’s County, Md., on Nov. 21. The police appear to have raided the wrong house.

The drug war has been the primary policy driving the trend but, since 2001, the federal government has also used the threat of terror attacks to further militarize domestic law enforcement. This includes not only finding new sources of funding for armor, weapons and gear, but also claiming new powers for the “War on Terror” that are then inevitably used in more routine law enforcement.

But paramilitary creep has also spread well beyond the drug war. In recent years, SWAT teams have been used to break up neighborhood poker games, including one at an American Legion Hall in Dallas. In 2006, Virginia optometrist Sal Culosi was killed when the Fairfax County Police Department sent a SWAT team to arrest him for gambling on football games. SWAT teams are also now used to arrest people suspected of downloading child pornography. Last year, an Austin, Texas, SWAT team broke down a man’s door because he was suspected of stealing koi fish from a botanical garden.

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How To Setup Parental Controls on iPad (OS 3.2 Edition)
Simple Steps for the iChallenged Parent
TIME magazine refers to the iPhone as “increasingly the source of forbidden fruit”, referring to ubiquitous Internet access on the device. Today, “iPhone porn” is among the top iPhone related searches on Google. Apple released enhanced parental control features for the iPhone in the OS 3.0 version in response to these concerns.

The same features carried over to the new iPad launched by Apple. This Knol provides updated steps and screenshots for the new device.
Contents
General Parental Control Restrictions Setup
Mobicip Safe Browser Setup
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Here is a step-by-step guide to setup parental control restrictions on the iPad with OS 3.2. This is a follow-up Knol to the hugely popular How To Setup Parental Controls on iPhone & iPod Touch (OS 3.x Edition). Though this page is long, the steps are generally intuitive and easy to follow. If you prefer video, catch the video tutorial on YouTube instead. An updated version of this Knol for iOS 4.2 is available now at How To Setup Parental Controls on iPad (iOS 4.2 Edition).
General Parental Control Restrictions Setup
From the home screen, select Settings > General.

Select Restrictions. If you haven’t done this before, select Enable Restrictions.

Enter a 4-digit passcode. Make sure you remember this passcode, in case you need to change these settings.

You will see the restrictions screen. Set Safari, YouTube, and Installing Apps to OFF on this screen.
NOTE: Some parents may choose to allow apps to be installed with age restrictions setup, but be aware that there are still issues with the age-based ratings and browsing the App Store itself.

Scroll down the screen to the Allowed Content area.

Set In-App Purchases to OFF.

Select Music & Podcasts. Set Explicit to OFF.

Select Movies. Select the rating you would like to allow.

Select TV Shows. Select the rating you would like to allow.

Select Apps. Select age-based filtering for apps you would like to allow.

Hit the Home button to return the home screen.

Mobicip Safe Browser Setup
Mobicip offers a best-selling alternate browser for Safari that enables parental controls on your child’s iPad. It is simple to setup and works anytime anywhere! The Mobicip Safe Browser is protected by a mobicip.com account setup by the parent.
From the home screen on the device, touch the App Store icon.

Touch the search tab, and search for “mobicip”

Select the Mobicip Safe Browser from the search results.

Touch the price button, it will turn into BUY NOW. Touch this button and enter your iTunes username and password.
NOTE: Please make sure you purchase the app from your iTunes account, even though your child may have a separate iTunes account to which the device is regularly synced with.

Once purchased, the app will be installed on your screen.

When installation is done, touch the Mobicip icon to launch the app.

If you don’t have a Mobicip.com account already, touch the Create New Account button.

Once the account is created, login into the app. You should see the browser open up like this.

Tap the URL bar at the top of the browser, and enter the website you wish to access.

The browser should open the website accessed.

Visit www.mobicip.com from your PC to upgrade to the Mobicip.com Premium web application. Mobicip.com Premium is a web-based parental control application that can be accessed from any browser. The Premium application allows you to setup custom Internet filtering settings and policy, and monitor Internet usage on the iPad that uses Mobicip as the primary browser.
That is it! You can be rest assured that your child will have a safe and secure Internet enabled device that he/she can use anytime anywhere!

by Suren Ramasubbu

This week marks the inauguration of the Copyright Office’s first blog [add link] , on the forthcoming digitization of copyright records.

The digitization of copyright records for music will be an enormous boon to people trying to clear music rights. But it also has huge implications for music scholarship and for everyday folks. Just ask Uncle Bennie.

My great uncle Bernard McLaughlin was a classically-trained pianist and composer based in Boston. With his brothers, Bill and my grandfather Jack, the McLaughlin Brothers played hotels and dance halls in Boston and toured throughout New England, New York City, and the Hudson River Valley. For the rest of his long life, he made his living through music and writing songs.

One day during a tour of the Copyright Office, on a lark I looked up Uncle Bennie in the card catalog. My chance visit led to the discovery of lost songs that mostly hadn’t been seen since Uncle Bennie sent them in for copyright deposit. I was astounded to find that he had registered 42 songs through 1936, most still unpublished. It’s an amazing peek into popular history: songs like “How I Love to Ride in a Rumble Seat” (1928), “What Is This Power I have Over Women” (1928), “Looking Through the Radio” (1929) [about the invention of television], “Everyone’s Economizing Now” (1931), “If Women Start Dressing Like Men” (1934), and “So Says Mussolini”(1935).

Doughboy Jack McLaughlin on banjo. Courtesy Hope O’Keeffe.
Uncle Bennie is our family’s musical success story; a couple of his songs were recorded and are still played, and he’s even represented on YouTube playing the piano. But we had no clue about the hard work and persistence behind that success. Here’s a struggling musician, during the Depression, who invests in the American dream by regularly scraping together the cash for copyright registration. The card catalog is filled with such stories. It’s an incredible resource.

Now, before the digitization of the Copyright Office’s records, obtaining lost music like Uncle Bennie’s was a hard slog. I had to go to the Copyright Office, hand-copy the cataloging information by pencil (pens are banned around the card catalog), carry it down to the Performing Arts Reading Room, wait for the songs to arrive from off-site storage, and then bring them home to plunk at on my piano to bring this music back to life for the first time in over 70 years. Now, sometime within a decade or so, at least the first step will be just a few keystrokes away.

Nero – Me & You . This is the track playing during the Dre throwing paint Headphone commercial. I dig.

6 Thoughts That Harm Creativity by Michelle, November 18th, 2011, In Inspiration and Tips

Artists have a lot on their plate. Not only are we frequently on the hunt for ways to bring something new and special to our work, we are constantly seeking out happiness, optimism, and motivation in our struggles for recognition. On our mission to stay positive we often neglect to acknowledge the things that keep us from feeling the way we want to about our outlooks for the future.

It’s likely that a handful of the deadly sins of creative thinking have entered your mental workspace at some point or another. By becoming aware of what freezes your creative process, you’ll be better equipped to banish negative thoughts next time they come around.

1. Believing you are not a creative person

Buying into the common idea that creativity only belongs to certain people will keep you far away from it. Everyone has some level of creativity, albeit some more than others. If you find yourself drawn to creative activities, there is no reason why you can’t be as good as a professional if you work hard enough at it.

2. Fear of failure

Many people prefer achieving nothing over trying and failing because they equate failure with being worthless. A bad piece of art will not define your career if you go on to produce better art. Failure is an ingredient in success.

3. Failure to act

James Cameron, director of Avatar and Titanic said:

“There are many talented people who haven’t fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.”

Thoughts do not translate into action. You are solely responsible for producing a tangible artistic product. Your first foray into a craft doesn’t have to be an instant hit. Understand that learning from your mistakes applies to creative work just as much as the rest of your life.

4. Failing to produce ideas

The fastest way to stop tearing apart the creative works of others is to try it yourself. Sitting down to write a song is a fast wake-up call to how complex it can be – Leonard Cohen said it took him two years to write his signature song “Hallelujah.” J.K. Rowling outlined the plot for five years before she drafted the first Harry Potter book. Producing good work is hard.

It will also open your eyes to how much time you waste in being a critic. Being a critic is an entire career path in itself. Unless you plan on becoming a critic, channel your energy into your own work and use your time to come up with fresh ideas. The media may try to convince you that overnight success is a commonality, but most artists will tell you this is not true. Everyone needs to elect a starting point for themselves.

Once you’ve brainstormed and come up with your own ideas, don’t give your inner critic the free rein to come up with reasons why your ideas can’t be executed. Just proceed with them and let the artistic journey unfold on its own.

5. Not looking at things in different ways

Not every problem you face will have mutually exclusive answers. Seeking out answers that may not follow your usual line of logic can lead you to conclusions you did not think possible at first. Do not close off alternative lines of thought when immediately presented with a problem. Instead, consider a new or unfamiliar approach.

6. Failure to accept personal responsibility

Most people seek to blame unwanted circumstances on their current situations rather than consider how their actions have affected an outcome. If you work at it, you can change your attitude and approach to important creative tasks. Every vice has its remedy, be it procrastination, negativity, or a lack of discipline. Life does allow U-turns; and the old adage that it’s never too late exists for a reason.

Below is some priceless and honest advice from radio personality and producer Ira Glass of This American Life. Graphic courtesy of My Modern Met.

About The Author

Michelle

A native of Silicon Valley, Hollywood’s nerdy alter-ego, she’s an excellent source of useless information. Likes: a good power ballad, Pop Rocks, and Tyler Durden.
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Ugly Shyla is a self-taught producer of hand-crafted, sub-cultured fine-art dolls that have been showcased in museums and galleries, as well as on websites and print.Some of her print credits as a artist include SPIN magazine,Lollipop and Bizarre.Not only were her dolls used as props in the book Dream, by the master of dark photography, John Santerineross, but Ugly also participated in some of the elaborate photos as a model. In addition, Ugly’s impressive roster of talents include painting,sewing,performance art and modeling, which she participates in primarily for the promotion of her doll making. Resume credits include: Lithium Picnic, Steven Diet Goedde, Superbitch magazine, AMF Corsets and St. Elizabeths Doll Museum. The androgynous alternative beauty hails from Southern Louisiana, where she resides with her gaggle of cats,pugs,a gimpy handed squirrel,tarantulas and dolls.