001 - CleanPNG: Transparent PNG Art at Your Fingertips.

There are JPG files and PNG files. Both are formats of pictures or for digitally practiced images!

The nice thing about PNGs is that the background can be transparent. That means it looks like I has a plain white background but when added on top of a different background only the content of the PNG image displays.

Here is a website I go to when needing graphic elements for posters and promotional flyers.

This is a new series of posts for me to share Apps, Platforms, Tools and Services I think PCM Adventurers will find useful. Let’s start at 001. I’m think big assuming I’ll need 3 figures!

Clean PNG

https://www.cleanpng.com/

cleanpng.com has more than 3,000,000 transparent PNG images.

Unlimited Use & Free to Download

All the transparent images in cleanpng is free to download, and unlimited. You do not need register your email, do not need login with your social account. On their about page they say only this

>> Share us with your friends and like our facebook page to get the news of cleanpng. (Sadly I was unable to locate the Facebook page)

It’s great for finding social media icons too.

I used these flourishes in an invitation to a fundraiser held by theatrical charitable trust for who I’m a trustee.

https://www.cleanpng.com/png-wedding-invitation-imperial-design-hall-logo-idbh-6802691/

There are ideas and stories to share. At Christmas time I compile the 12 apps for Christmas which are taken from my iPhone and iPad. I also have web services and browser extensions I use regularly as well as downloaded software and desktop apps.

I hope you like this PNG repository.

https://www.cleanpng.com/about.html

 

Black Box - Black Book

I’m in the process of working out the capitalisation cost of my long awaited stage production I dreamed of staging for over 20 years. As technology evolved new tech has emerged and distilled in to what is becoming known as ‘immersive’ the dream of stage and live film extended space production is now possible. Motion capture is being replaced my canny valley avatars even volumetric video and photometry environment. The VR sound stages replacing green screen in film have intoxicating possibilities for live theatre.

Where will I take this immersive, extended space live theatre experience environment? To studio spaces around the country. To the black box shoe box diminutive little sibling of the hat box proscenium big street profiled kin.

Concrete box often painted black lined with black surge drapes. Close the doors and lights out to descend into velvety blackout.

Where the audience sit in raised steel decked levels to stagger the sight lines for the performances played out on the flat found level. Black vinyl dance floor immaculately joined with clear tape or black gaffa.

The sensory deprivation tank where the play is the thing. No distractions.

Posted to Facebook please share your responses in the comments.

I’m making a directory of Black Box Theatre spaces in the UK. If there is a resource you know of please link. If you know a space do share. For hire or venue programmed. Thanks.

3hrs after posting as as I write this there has been 18 responses from the Theatre Producers UK Facebook Group and 1 response from Twitter with a raft of likes and retweets.

So…
If you have done drama at school or had a drama department at school I suspect you will have seen a black box theatre

Wikipedia says this

“A black box theatre is a simple performance space, typically a square room with black walls and a flat floor. The simplicity of the space allows it to be used to create a variety of configurations of stage and audience interaction.The black box is a relatively recent innovation in theatre.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_theater

This is the venue max size I’m looking for. This is Hull Truck’s studio.

I’m on a hunt. I’ll be looking to identify 9 venues on my 100 mile radius tour.

Mull - Dervaig
100 radius tour (by the crow flies)

Stirling
Carlisle
York
Nottingham
Bury St Edmunds
Aberystwyth
Bristol
Plymouth

In particular I’m eager to locate venues in proximity to these places.

Falmouth
Nuneaton
Lutterworth
Rudgwick
Billinghurst
Bala
Llauwchilyn

Kirkwall - Orkney
Sandwick - Shetland
Stornoway - Lewis

Continued Mindfulness

My focus app of choice has I think at the close of January wk 1 got me back in the board.

My note to self is to decisively close all apps, browser windows and tab, reboot and re enter. Returning to the surface when working in digital hierarchical structures Eg Google docs, should never be overlooked.

I know all this but it demand rigorous practice. Finding new solutions while being mindful of what you have and why you return to those services, platforms and apps is vital.

The start of the year mindfulness I initiated in 2021 is a major contributor to the success of 2021. I am recognising this as I stumble into 2022 with my new word.

Aggregation of words is going to be necessary. This means my list would grow annually.

2020- Boundaries
2021 - Mindfulness
2022 - Posture

Externality is important too. I ask myself why I blog rather than privately journal.

My notebooks are chaotic and imposing upon myself structure to present prose for reading is a push into and beyond my comfort zone. I get disheartened when the view figure is low but I remind myself here at the start of the new year that it’s purpose is not for the reader but for me to share in case a someone around me is curious about how I work as I’m not very good at sharing this stuff. I welcome others to share their thoughts either in the comments or to post a link to there own voyage into mind sharing.

Focus Keeper was a 2020 app and I do focus more productively when running it though a day. I have an old iPad2 as a viewing screen where I keep the Focus Keeper app in sight. It’s clean and simple. It defines 12 session each session containing a 25 minute work stint and a 5 minute break after 4 sessions there is a 25 minute break. There is a sound library of clock ticks and ocean waves to underscore your concentration if music isn’t playing. I like this especially when editing video and audio.

12apps from 2020 PDF link - https://bit.ly/12apps2020

Firming up my ‘default diary’ for the coming weeks to mid February calmed my underlying anxiety welcoming Google Calendar back into my consciousness. Finally I felt the need to return to Trello. These have been my saving graces.

Embarking upon some serious multi depart planning I have added a Gantt Chart extension in Trello to map tasks and timescales against each other to optimise team, tech and travel.

It you need an anchor to your day I recommend Focus Keeper.

Business as usual, 2022 has begun.

The Creative Producing Diploma cohort led by Chris Grady are entering the second half of the course. Over Christmas we have each been tasked to develop our first comprehensive budget and investment pack for a project.

For me this is to take the founding steps for a new PCM entity PCMimmersive and it’s first physical production along with the conception manifesto for the Metaverse extension to provide the PCM audience a world to transcend presence, giving quantum purpose to access physical, digital and virtual experiences of the same singular central performance.

Attend - Watch - Observe - Participate

What does it mean to purchase a ticket where you exist with the choice of physical, digital and virtual across an engagement spectrum.

Can each augment the other?

The physical experience is geo locked, maintains a finite capacity each time.

The digital experience is home bound and satellite, maintains curiosity before and after all the time.

The virtual experience is evolution and beyond, maintains play and adventure stimulating new experiences.

The audience are central as collaborators, the company as observers, investors attend and a community emerges to support new work by creators influence by the possibility of story enhanced by technology.

Teach, Entertain, Engage

When I first really began thinking about what the next phase of PCM would give I knew it must come from a truth. A quest for a truth.

With the technology wrapper as a tour-able venue it will champion the pioneer mobile traveling theatre that began with Century Theatre and its days on the road.

The produced, commissioned and programmed work will explore neurodiverse and non binary casting. The first proof of concept production will use a script written to be ‘performed by 3 humans’.

To see this filled me with hope that alternative structures are surfacing and the future is ever nearer.

So how much is this going to cost? That is what I’m feeding into the spreadsheet the scope of which has been imparted so knowledgeably by Chris and the CGO faculty.

So guess this is part 1…

Streaming to avoid audience disappointment.

Theatre and Audience are intertwined. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around dies it make a sound?

If a curtain raises and no audience is present does the show go on?

There is nothing more depressing than the idea of performing with less audience than members of the cast.

The fourth wall is more porous than ever in the dawning light of the Metaverse. Proscenium, thrust, in the round and promenade theatrical styles have been joined and consumed in some cases by the new kid on the block, immersive.

Theatre is an immersive experience. It starts by crossing thresholds.

Where the story is received. Where the suspension of disbelief is expected. Where the participation is explored and established as a contact of exchange. Boundaries and limitations are negotiated through marketed promise and the purchase of a ticket.

Is that enough?

What are your experience of “immersive”.

Don’t hold back!

If you can give production context even better.

Is there a place for theatre that attracts an audience that doesn’t sit together? Does the audience have to sit together for the observed experience to be theatre?

Posture - #MyWord2022

General Physical and Mental Health conditioning. It’s a curiosity. Can reflection influence practice? As a creative producer it most certainly does. This is a very selfish reflection. Words for the year are soul search deep.

It starts with plain simple searches on Google. I think I know what it means but returning to dictionary definitions is very important.

So… Posture

noun: posture; plural noun: postures
1. the position in which someone holds their body when standing or sitting."I got out of the car in an alert posture"

2. a particular approach or attitude. "trade unions adopted a more militant posture in wage negotiations"

verb: posture; 3rd person present: postures; past tense: postured; past participle: postured; gerund or present participle: posturing

1. behave in a way that is intended to impress or mislead."a billionaire posturing as a hero of the working class"

ARCHAIC
place (someone) in a particular attitude or pose. "and still these two were postured motionless"

It’s dual definition is why I was attracted to the word. It encompasses Health, Condition and Fitness as well as extending my thought processes around my word from 2021, Mindfulness and my place in my own mind and in the world. Posturing and positioning of others. There proposition and intent.

I don’t always understand. I do take pride in my posture. Learning to read posture is vital. A collective capacity to interpret posture and present continued positive direction has to be governance and policy.

This year is going to be a great deal more philosophical that anticipated.

What is your word for 2022 going to be?

What happened to Evernote?

I noticed the changes taking place over the years. The Plus tier was withdrawn in April 2018. There are a few platforms for which I discover ‘grandfathering’ has taken place.

Evernote tells me I have been a ‘member’ / held an account since Feb 1st 2010.

I pay a subscription which I recently discovered is a deprecated tier, Evernote Plus. I pay £19.99 a year.

The current subscription tiers are (link to compare features)

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005157-Compare-Evernote-subscription-plans

Evernote Free
Evernote Personal - £5.99 p/month
Evernote Professional - £7.49 p/month
Evernote Teams - £10.99 p/month

Despite being a subscribed member and perhaps as a result of spam filtering I have never to my knowledge been informed about the changes. I know they will have been circulated but they didn’t reach my inbox for active consideration.

The legacy of my £19.99 a year is that I can synchronise my account across all my devises. On the free the capacity to synchronise devises is just two.

There are plenty of digital notebook options. Microsoft’s OneNote, Google’s KeepIt, Apple’s Notes and other stand alone apps Nebo, NoteShelf being two I use synchronise with Evernote for backup.

I use the Chrome browser clipping tool rather than in browser based bookmarking and Skitch, the tool I use for screen grabs syncs to Evernote also.

I used Evernote for some time and established Notebooks for projects and clients but recently adopted folksonomic tagging resulting in notes being dumped in one central notebook. Google Drive is my central admin hub with documents and folders serving a stronger more solid purpose that notebooks and notes.

Once upon a time there was an app that let you create digital notebooks. Each notebook contains related notes. A screen displayed the notebooks and multiple notebooks could be grouped together in stacks. So for so conceptually analogue. Evernote lost this feel and consequently I stopped turning to Evernote.

Notes, Notebooks and Stacks.
Viewed in a list or as tiles. Side by side square reorientations of each note, notebook or stack.

So what happened?

Evernote aligned with the major player in aesthetic terms and for interface. Evernote being the middle ground between OneNote and Apple Note.

The emailing to Evernote is still unique to the platform as far as I can tell.

It’s Evernote add on apps and extending services are a nice feature making Evernote a hybrid of data storage, back up, input interface and content management. Postachio for blogging, Skitch for screen grab and annotation being 2 active Evernote extenders I have in my toolset.

So will I upgrade to the Personal subscription. As far as I can see the only advantage would be to enable interface customisation. Not right now.

What notebook apps do you use?

What’s the best blogging platform?

What’s the best blogging platform? I’m asked that question with genuine expectation of revealing the holy grail. Some times it’s for reassurance that they have the right one it seems, for others what they really mean is ‘What platform will write my blog for me?’

There are options I tell them.

There is of course the blogging facility built into your existing website’s CMS (content management system) Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix and Weebly for example.

There are article posting platforms where the facility to post long form enables friends, followers, connections or in newsletter and blog terms, subscribers provide tools and distribution within a closed ecosphere. LinkedIn and Facebook for example.

Where are your audience I will inevitably enquire.

There are article posting platforms with audiences of their own. Medium and YouTube are examples. Blogging doesn’t necessarily have to be text based.

And there is the dedicated blog with RSS subscription which loops back round to the first option, the existing CMS. In this category I also place platforms that extend to enable a blog presence.

The two I’m favouring right now at the dawn of 2022, Typepad and Postach.io fall into this category. I’m always looking for the path of least resistance. Mapping, observing and following cyberspace desire lines. Both platforms have the post by email facility.

These paths of least resistance out in the world are delightfully named Desire Lines. If you haven’t come across the notion they are the worn routes in the grass that rebel against the fixed outlined path of an authority or architect’s intent.

I want to write, post, proof and publish with the least fuss and constraint.

In 2021 I used Typepad as the platform, composing my posts in Apple Note before sending the final draft with an image by email to Typepad, set to draft where I proof read, tagged, added an extract, published and distributed sporadically to Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn or Meduim.

I also intermittently posted to Postach.io

Postach.io is platform extender that uses Evernote as its CMS. If you are an Evernote fan you will adore Postach.io

It’s free. On sign up it will ask you to assign an Evernote Notebook to contain your posts. A note tagged ‘published’ will post to your postach.io presence. There are some simple mark up instructions to enhance formatting if required but at its most basic it provides an independent presence online for you. I have a domain name it points to www.socialmediawomble.co.uk and connects to Google analytics to monitor activity. It also generates a RSS feed.

The default url is pcmcreative.pistachio.io

Being able to compose posts away from my desk and easily publish from my mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop is important for my workflow.

For me Apple Note is accessible on all my devises and provides a place to build up a repository of blog post ideas and progressive drafts. I title notes with a month and day date for notes I’ll consider for blog posts. This year I’m prefixing with 22 for 2022 and a number to count the posts published. Last year I didn’t have an identification on ideas posted to separate from posts waiting to be written.

It’s important to have a method in your workflow. When you drop the routine (I daily blogged in 2021 to the end of April) it makes it so much easier to start again. This mindset process, workflow and containment encompassing prep to post to publication arose from a desire to blog but a hurdle that not doing it frustrated me. The notorious condition I have heard references as ‘Bloggers Guilt’.

So here are my tips to get you blogging.

Top 5 tips to start you blogging in 2022

1. Its all about the workflow
2. Path of least resistance
3. Log your ideas
4. Your place, your space
5. Understand your cycle

As a social technology consultant and mentor I offer 30 min free video call sessions. Give me a call, I’m pcmcreative on Twitter.

Uncredited found photo in header - source

https://historyundusted.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/lines-of-desire/

https://stephaniehuesler.com/

Digital Declutter or Death to the Facebook Algorithm.

How do you access the internet? What devises do you use? Where?

For me it’s Desktop and Mobile, work and not work, studio office and elsewhere.

When ‘in the office’, browser access tab by tab I tend to check notifications but not general feeds and update. On mobile however I find myself mindlessly opening social media apps in oblivious rotation scrolling between Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This time last year (the start of 2021) the compulsion was disturbing and distracting. Delete the apps. It’s quite liberating as a small step of self control. Waking in the morning my thought processes did not immediately turn to mindless scrolling. Habitual energies are not always reinforced positive pathways.

I challenge you to delete those apps that you know are facilitating mindless scrolling.

From my mobile today I deleted Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.

Pausing, taking deep breaths while looking up at the ceiling is ok. Be present. It’s surprisingly rare with the ever ubiquitous wifi and internet enabled to hand devises.

This has been a peculiar post to write. People become quite defensive about having their capacity to manage their scrolling habits challenged.

I highly recommend the holding of an icon, get the jiggle, action the options menu and select delete from devise. Yes you can re install at any time. It’s a modern life lesson that needs to be more that a theory.

Do it!

There will be a momentum, As with last year I eventually returned them to my routine but with reflection and mediated internal dialogue.

I have more liminal cognition to explore. Duolingo at the very least forwards my aspiration to comprehend a second language.

I’m tempted to remove news apps as an exercise. Recently the Facebook current affairs news feed has fed my news scrolling. I’ve seen the Social Dilemma and Removing Facebook was deliberated because I found the news received was dare I say it well balanced between hard news and magazine fluff. It had to go! It’s Facebook for fuck sake. Bubble inducing, oblivion prescribed cul-de-sac for my mind, body and soul. The coming together of those 3 components is not best realised through Facebook.

Death to the algorithm. It is not my friend.

If this resonated with you. Delete just one app. Let me know in the comments. If you feel it’s an unnecessary exercise, all power to you. Only you really know the truth.

Wow that’s a whole new train of thought!

Thanks for reading.

PS. The irony is not lost on me that this post is shared to Facebook and Twitter. This is about mindless freedom. Closing a door while keeping the windows open!

Recycle & Reuse - old diaries and calendars.

Where were you in 2011, 2005, 1994, 1983, 1977, 1966, 1955 or 1949?

If you were born in these years the diary from your year of birth lines up with 2022. Did you know you could dust it off, Recycle & Reuse - old diaries and calendars?

Have you ever found an old unused calendar, mournfully flicked it through its pages while contemplating the waste, contemplating its usefulness as a notebook?

Ask instead, when can I reuse this calendar?
whencanireusethiscalendar?

In 2022, you can re-use calendars from these years:
2011, 2005, 1994, 1983, 1977, 1966, 1955, 1949, 1938, and 1927.

https://www.whencanireusethiscalendar.com/?y=2022

Yep there is website that answers that question!

What do you mean I can re-use calendars? This one ended December 31, 2015. As it turns out, the annual calendar cycle is pretty predictable and the days of the week repeat every few years. This means that all of the days of the week match up, including possible leap days. Many if not most holidays will match up, too

I have, and will dig though other boxes.

1999 I cam use in 2027
2004 I can use in 2032
2014 I can use in 2025

Certain events like daylight saving changeover and lunar events may not match the current year.

So FYI…

Your 2022 calendar is reusable in:
2033, 2039, 2050, 2061, 2067, 2078, 2089, 2095, 2101, 2107, and 2118.

To reflect on my life in this this 50th year since my birth I’LL be looking to find photos from 2011, 2005, 1994, 1983, 1977.

Now there’s a self imposed challenge.
What’s this space. #WCIRTC2022 coz I love a random obscure yet deliciously trackable hashtag!

I wonder what the world will look like in 2033?