Oftentimes I find myself feeling overwhelmed when listening to music that speaks to me. I feel vivid imagery cover the landscape in my mind's eye, as if a custom made music video was being created on the spot to accompany the sound.

I encounter a frustrating obstacle when considering how to best translate this surge of inspiration into art. I know exactly what I want to create but feel limited by a lack of experience in animation, modeling, illustration etc. and the time it would take to approximate my vision. Altogether, it becomes discouraging and the idea withers before it has a chance to blossom.

My question to the creatively-minded is this—what strategies are deployed to counteract your self-doubt before it undermines your inspiration?

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Thank you for any wisdom offered. The tildes community is special and dear to my heart ♡

after the comments in my previous topic, I proceeded to try Notesnook and Joplin after having issues with Nextcloud Notes (that I have already documented in my previous post)

Notesnook ain't bad if it's your jam. I found it easy to use and quite nice U.I. the only dings against it (obviously subjective) is that it really isn't supportive of markdown in an easy way, you have to pay for it cause there's no self-hosting option and you have to pay for the ability to have more than 5 tags.

Joplin's only ding imo is just that it has no web browser interface, but beyond that, there's nothing else fuctionality-wise I can really count against it, the U.I. is rather dated but the functionality is so stable that I am more than willing to deal with a dated UI. and I can self-host using my nextcloud instance so that's a great plus in avoiding additional charge.

So I personally recommend Joplin if you don't care about a dated UI in order to avoid having to pay a subscription if you are willing to self-host.

In other news, by the time I finally imported all my Nextcloud notes to Joplin, the nextcloud Notes App had managed to wipe 60 of my notes empty. I love nextcloud and its let me do wonderful things but the notes app they have is incredibly buggy when combined with their android app and how they are trying to implement markdown support.

So I have very little free time and have been on a gaming hiatus for the past four-ish years, but I've been wanting to bust my Switch out again and fit some time in when I can. I'm looking for recommendations for a game that can be played for less than 20 minutes daily with an easy learning curve. Any recommendations?

Hi all. I cook as often as I can and thought it might be fun to chat about any recipes you’ve tried or would like to try! I’m vegan so anything I post in this thread will be too. Maybe even share snacks or restaurants that are you’ve tried that you’ve liked!

To start is a simple sauce/stir fry recipe I make when I’m pretty tired after a long day:

Spicy salty sweet sauce:

1-2 tbsp gochugaru
1 tbsp white or black rice vinegar
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp agave or maple syrup
1 tsp corn starch

I usually put all of the ingredients together except for the corn starch and then set aside as I do the rest of the prep.

The rest of the recipe is a bit more variable as I have certain ingredients but looks like this:

1 cup cooked white rice OR hand pulled noodles

Noodle recipe:
250g all purpose flour
125 ml water
1/4-1/2 tsp salt
Canola oil

I add the flour, water, and salt to a bowl, mixing with my fingers. It starts to form pretty quickly into a mass. I knead the mass of dough into a ball until uniform. With the large, smooth dough ball I cut it into 8 pieces with a knife, roll them into a sort of prolate spheroid shape, and coat with canola oil. Put the oiled dough shapes into a bowl and cover with a damp towel. Let them rest for about an hour or so.

Heat a pot of water. Flatten the dough pieces into rectangles with a rolling pin. Use the rolling pin (if it’s a thin one, otherwise I use large chopsticks), to press the dough lengthways to create a sort of seam. Hold each end of the dough and slowly pull to stretch. Slap on counter as you pull a few times. Stretch it as long or short as you’d like. On the seam you made with the rolling pin, split the noodle apart so that the noodle is now a large loop. Put into the boiling water and wait roughly a minute /or until it’s floating. Can cook a few noodles at a time, though I usually do one or two and roll/pull while they boil.

With the noodles or rice done or going and the sauce almost ready, start to chop vegetables, maybe a cup or so of 2-3 types. I like Napa cabbage, squash, green onions, bell pepper, and carrots but really get whatever you’d like or have on hand at the time. Sauté the vegetables in a tbsp or so of oil (I use canola or olive), starting with onions/garlic and then adding others as you see fit. Once the vegetables are done to your liking, add the noodles or rice, then the sauce (adding in the corn starch to the sauce at this point) and stir.

Often I’ll actually fry a half block or block of tofu I’ve cubed before adding vegetables into the oil. I usually do this as the noodles (or if I’m doing a pot of rice, as it begins to cook) are about done resting, maybe with 15-20 mins to go, since frying tofu can take awhile.

I like to serve in bowls, topping with a dash of sesame oil, black sesame seeds, and fresh green onion.

I’ll post more recipes in the thread as I make them but this is probably the most frequent thing I make in a given week. Feel free to share your own!

Special Ed. Teacher here.

This year I've been assigned a tough caseload. But my most challenging student is easily the student with Reactive Attachment Disorder and possibly autism. I'll call him Jake.

Edit: He's in middle school, btw.

To protect his privacy and my own, I can't give many specifics. This student is chronically online and I wouldn't put it past him to Google situations he's caused in my class.

Some vague descriptions of the things he's done this year:

-Repeatedly jokes about pedophilia and teachers who have been arrested for it. It makes me uncomfortable that he does this, obviously. The only saving grace here is that he has thrown it around so many times, including calling multiple teachers pedophiles last year, that everyone knows he is just being rude and it's not a serious accusation. Thoroughly documented and I'm not really concerned about actually being accused. Fyi, I have informed his adoptive parents and they have informed his counselor. They are taking it seriously and have started investigating whether or not this is just shocking humor or a more serious part of the Jake's history before adoption.

-Waits for the perfect time to drop rude or shocking comments to inflict maximum damage. When he wants to say something awful to me or in general, he will hold off until he has an audience and the room is relatively quiet.

-Constantly mocks and shit talks certain students. We have dealt with it. He isn't just getting away with it. But even after consequences, separation from the students, and punishments at home, he doesn't stop. He's hung up on hating a couple of kids in particular but will generally be rude to whoever if he wants to. One of these kids is a scrappy kid from a rough school and I could totally see it ending in punches if we don't manage this.

-Absolutely refuses to share any serious thoughts. Even when asked what kind of support he needs, what kind of rewards would motivate him, or what's bothering him, he just gives ridiculous answers in a high-pitched voice or walks away. This kid wants no part in coming up with solutions and won't even engage in a conversation about his behavior or even the behavior of others.

-Speaking of his high pitched voice, this is the voice he always uses to say rude things. He has his normal speaking voice and then he uses this higher pitched voice when he says things that are rude or shocking. Like he has two different brains and one wants to be mean.

-Last year, he kept a list of times he felt students and teachers had broken the code of conduct.

-absolutely hates special Ed. Hates me for being a special ed. teacher. Reminds the other kids in my class that they're "special" constantly.

For the record, all of these things have been addressed many times. The school has been supportive, the parents have been supportive, and everyone knows that this behavior, if continued for much longer, will likely result in a change of programming for this student. He would be placed in a more restrictive setting.

This is kind of my last ditch effort to see if anyone has ideas, because this student is on the verge of leaving my classroom. If there is anything I can do to make it work with this kid, I would do it immediately. He's smart, witty, and unfortunately very funny in a South Park kind of a way. But he's raising hell every day and he's the first student I've had where it feels like I can't connect with him at all. And not for lack of trying.

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

Does anyone here have any advice on repairing a book spine? I have a hard back that an excited puppy chewed off the outer part of the spine. Now that said puppy is well out of her "chewing on random stuff" stage I'm trying to figure out how to repair/reinforce the binding since it's otherwise a brand new book. I'm a crafty person so I'm trying to embrace the accident and treat it as a book with a bit more character.

Most of the glue is intact, so my current thought is to add additional glue (book binding glue I'd assume?) and then use a tape or fabric to reinforce the spine.

I'm not expecting a repair that looks like new. I'm looking for something functional and durable that will keep the book from falling apart with use. If there's a good tape for this application that would probably be sufficient. Just soliciting some additional feedback in case someone has done something similar before I take a stab at the project.

Here's some pictures of the book and of course puppy tax: https://postimg.cc/gallery/wyskQn1

I'm a recent college grad in the Chicago area and was planning to join a book club (preferably classic literature) to meet like-minded people my age. Unfortunately, this wound up being a much more difficult task than I expected. Practically all the book clubs I could find online were inactive or had a much older age demographic. Anyone familiar with city have any tips for finding what I'm looking for (a book club or something similar)?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I’m looking for some new king size sheets, and likely a new duvet cover as one of the ties inside is ripped. My wife is intrigued by Brooklinen and other brands marketed on social media, but I’ve read that those are terrible. Do any of you have brand recommendations that aren’t thousands of dollars?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

It's that time of year again: October, spooky month! The perfect time to share creepy/spooky/unexplainable stories! I asked last year and we got some neat stories, so figured I'd ask again. Anything goes from creepy experiences with creepy people, to hauntings, to weird memories you just can't explain.