It was a short post on mefi but it got my attention. The thing-a-day is simple, during the month of February:

• make one thing (eg project, sketch, exercise) a day
• document this work in anyway necessary to prove to the world that you’ve made something new: write, take pictures, videos, post things online
• entries are posted on the official page, which is a wordpress blog with multiple authors

I made a list of what I could be doing, but it ended up less creative than I intended. I tended to go back to tried and trusted “things” like cooking and photography. I tried drawing, but it really didn’t turn out well. I documented it fully though: here on the website and over at the official site. What I liked were the comments and “I like it” features on the official site. I’m not sure if the site owner(s) will publish statistics, the latest is that 1,418 people signed up and 609 started. I’d be interested to know how many completed the whole 29 days — I suppose I can scroll through the authors list and count the number of people with the required number of posts.

There were a few days when I was struggling for things to do, or more likely time to do them and post. Especially during the week when it was busy as hell at work and I was getting ready to go on vacation. Now that it’s finished I’m sure I’ll miss it, and there are several ideas I hadn’t had time to do. A short summary of what I did each day:

1. made a list of what I could be doing — it was kinda cheating but I wanted to get my thoughts together
2. chicken stock — cooking thing #1; the stock was good
3. made an ebook, and most amusingly, a video of how I made the ebook. now I know I’m nuts
4. care package for hospital visit
5. mediterranean chicken with chickpeas — cooking thing #2, for both thing-a-day and 101.1001
6. badly drawn doodle — yeah that was ugly
7. rkt completion ratio chart — long overdue so it was a good opportunity to update
8. movie poster effect — I really liked that, it turned out pretty
9. brätwurst mit rösti — cooking thing #3, the weekend means I do more cooking
10. butternut and chickpea salad with tahini — cooking thing #4, yep more cooking
11. pickled eggs — cooking thing #5
12. flash animation — it was follow the instructions which I could do, but it doesn’t mean I now know flash
13. running kit — that was kinda cheating cos I didn’t “do” anything except queue up for 2 hours to get my marathon stuff
14. sharpie doodle — it looks juvenile but I’m secretly pleased with it
15. macro shot of clock — that was the first time I consciously used the macro function on the camera, a comment on the main site was like “fantastic! at last a non-flower macro shot
16. origami paper dolls — these had been in my drawer since 1997! My version wasn’t as good as the sample but at least it passed as a final product
17. 10km run — I’m glad I went. my time was slow but what the hell, it’s not a competition
18. baked pasta with tomato & mozzarella — cooking thing #6, and the sole purpose was to use up the mozzarella ball that got delivered to me by mistake
19. grilled tuna head — cooking thing #7, almost cheating cos I merely reheated the food. that it’s part of a tuna head was interesting
20. crystal apple — man, that photo turned out to be awesome
21. bionicle robots — I wish I had more of these to construct and play with
22. travel day — there wasn’t any time that day to do anything but pack and travel. took me 25 hours door to door to get to chicago
23. pandora — god I miss pandora
24. shopping day — got lots done
25. breaded pork chop dinner — cooking thing #8. one of the things I like about visiting is that I get to hang out with Gram and help her with cooking
26. mind maps — it occurred to me that I should be mindmapping this post
27. optical illusion — that one was interesting, and I so want to be able to have the mouseover here but I can’t figure out how to use that javascript for only one post
28. fried rice — cooking thing #9, it was well received
29. a day in the life — wow, i actually completed 3 challenges in one day