Over the next couple years...design!

... if the economy continues to tank, I swear I am going to try at least half the projects listed in Geeks Getting By: Zero-Cost Gadget Upgrades for the Next Great Depression.

Combined with the fabulousness of Ponoko and the Sketchup-Inkscape pipeline plugin from FlightsOfIdeas.com, this could keep me busy for a long, long time. 

Once I get some projects up on Ponoko I'll post links here. I've got a couple halfway completed so far, to the detriment of the hours I'm working, my efforts to read War & Peace, and the amount of sleep I'm getting - the only reason they're not already up is that they don't currently fill Ponoko's full sheets of material, and to keep shipping & materials costs down, I want to change that. So I'm waiting to order till I get a few more pieces going.  

The only downside to all this is that the name I dreamed up for my design-making alter ego is already taken: Marq Design (or DesignMarq), RIP. Back to the brainstorming table. 

Back to school

Last week, on a whim, I signed up for a class on Tolstoy's War & Peace. Last night I showed up at Stanford, 10 minutes late, having missed the first class, and behind on the reading. 

Sounds like college, right? But the feeling's totally different: there's no negative or positive externality that can result from anything about my involvement in this class. If I never show up again, the only impact is that I don't hear the lectures. If I show up every time, do all the reading, and learn the history, the only reward is that I did it. 

I'm not sure if this is more weird or more cool.