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Bon Voyage!

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I'm off to New Zealand on Sunday. I don't think the idea of international travel has really sunk in yet. We had the usual trouble with booking flight tickets this week ... first we were set to leave Sunday ... then we weren't and the flights had changed to Thursday ... then 12 hours later we were on a different Airline and it was back to Sunday. But I'm not complaining. It's tremendously exciting. I owe all this excitment to Mandy. She did so well meeting her targets at the office that every year we're treated to an International flight somewhere exotic on the house. Last year was Cape Town (a bit close to home but boy what a beautiful place). The year before Mexico. But on Tuesday I should be sipping XXX lager in Auckland, New Zealand. The City of Sails. One of the more important things on my growing itinerary list of 'Things We Must Do!' is to take a 2 hour trip south and sit down amongst the rolling hills of the Shire where Bilbo Baggins celebrated hi...
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Why "The Woodshed"?

Because everybody deserves one. Let me explain. The notion of The Woodshed was first introduced to me in John Kao's 1997 book Jamming where he discusses the art and discipline of business creativity. Something that's very close to my heart. In Chapter 5 he discusses the need for clearing a space for creativity and introduces the reader to Charlie Parker's woodshed. Or, more specifically, whenever the great sax player needed to work out new musical concepts, he would withdraw from the usual people, places and things and "go to the woodshed". This may seem an odd phrase, but if considered for a short while you will find that you've probably been to your woodshed without even knowing it. When I was 7 yrs old there was a river a block away from our house in East London. I would run to it every other afternoon and spend the day either trying to catch crabs, doing homework, building bridges or playing in the mud with my Star Wars collection. The spot at the river ...
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FlashBack Tribute # 1: Kai's PowerTools.

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Over coffee this morning, the conversation led me to recall a particular moment in my past where I was challenged to present (to my peers) what I believed was creative and inspirational. I think it was during '92 or 3. At the time I was a Mac evangelist at TBWA / Hunt Lascaris. My colleagues all had great references to Bob Dylan , Calvin and Hobbes and Nicolas Cage's intro sequence to Red Rock West . It was all very impressive and overall a great exercise. The folks called it a Creative Jumboree. I had very recently acquired a set of Photoshop filters called Kai's Power Tools. At the time there were a few Mac's in the studio but many of them lay idle whilst traditional art directors and copywriters locked themselves away in room's full of beanbags squirting water pistons at each other. Not many were converted at the time. I stood up, and behind me, on a large projector screen was the interface for KPT Texture Explorer. This, for me, completely threw the interface...
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