A high proportion of the people who have wanted to rape my time and (very limited) ability electronic-wise are artists and designers. Which saddens me because I consider myself first and foremost a visual arty type person. At any rate it’s how I have always earned my living until I retired last year. If you want to struggle in life and starve at times any kind of artistic design career is a good way to go.
I have tended in recent years to say to these people, who usually have seen something of mine that they want to incorporate into something of theirs and which will involve a redesign of some kind and a new PCB: “OK let’s do it, but let's make two prototypes, one for you to keep and one for me. No money changes hands. I’ll do the circuitry if you will make and give me one of whatever it is that you are making.” The above angle, which seem perfectly reasonable to me, got me total outrage from a couple of different people - how dare I say my trivial work is as important as their great artistic vision? Don’t I know what precious brainpower has gone into their wonderful oevres? Which of course they cannot do unless someone makes their idea actually work for them. Well I have a backlog of my own ideas to bring to fruition, and while I am doing those I get other ideas, so why do I want to spend the rest of my life with these people? On the other end of the spectrum, I have had to stop helping schoolchildren who want to use something of mine in a project. I have a real soft spot for helping children, but the amount of blown chips and free replacements I’ve sent out, together with giving them warnings about static and overheating, has totally fallen on deaf ears. This is a real pity and I wish I could do more, but again it is down to available time. It would be quicker to do the kids’ projects for them, but that is not what education is about and we encourage the same “Want it all now and done for me” gratification syndrome if we send kids a working module. Having a great idea is the first step, not the last. If there is a vision then the person having it should do whatever he or she needs to do to make it happen, including learning how to do it if they want to say it is their own work. A lot of not-very-good-ideas would be weeded out at this stage. "Is the result really worth the personal effort?" is a question that rapidly arises if one relies on one’s own resources? John S -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/B22EAF47-BB86-4462-8A49-6EAC71641F93%40jsdesign.co.uk. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
