Wow--now THIS is a pen!

I can't decide. Is this a solution looking for a problem? Whatever it is, it is smokin' hot!

It's called Scribble--and it's a pen with a scanner on one end. You move the scanner over an object and the pen mixes hues from the five printing colors--cyan, yellow, magenta, black and white--to match the color of the scanned object perfectly.

Sixteen million shades!

You can also attach the result to a Bluetooth or micro USB and the color can be used digitally. It store 100,000 shades.

The pen is about $150 and the stylus $80. A Kickstarter campaign will be started soon. Investors get the low prices.

Go to www.getscribblepen.com.

I could see a paint brush instead of a penpoint--no more palettes! And maybe that is too mundane--what uses and adaptations come to YOUR mind?

Please--call it gestating

Vincent Walsh, professor of human brain research at University College London, said people should be allowed to take naps on the job.

We are obsessed, the reasoning goes, with sleeping only at night.

You need to give your brain downtime by having one or two "sleeps" during the day, as the Brits phrase it.

A nap can be between 30 and 90 minutes.

People need to do less to be more creative, the prof says. Hmmmm.

Also--and this might convince you--undersleeping all week and then catching up on weekends, or social jet lag, could be responsible for increased rates of cancer, dementia, and diabetes.

I know it is responsible for lots of yawning--especially when I am speaking. There must be some reason for this. We need to get to the bottom of it.

Don't forget the Muses

Press photo--Erata

Where do ideas come from? A great corporate environment with lots of beer parties on Friday afternoon? Or maybe from some half-draped, rosy figures perched on a mountain above us, drinking wine, lounging, and shooting out ideas?

Adam Haviaras, WritinginthePast.blogspot.com, reminds us that the Muses may still be around someplace. Why should the Ancient Greeks have all the luck?

Those Muses of Olympus, daughters of Zeus, apparently reached out to Hesiod and gave him "a rod of sturdy laurel, a marvelous thing, and breathed into him a divine voice to celebrate things that shall and and things that were aforetime."

So he wrote the biography of the gods called Theogeny. Ghostwriter to the gods! Cool gig.

Before that he was a shepherd.

The Muses more or less dictated, he said. In the Greek and Roman worlds, the Nine Muses were credited with most inspiration. These were, after all the offpsring of Zeus and a goddess named Mnemosyne (Memory).

Homer gave them a hat tip. They specialized in such things as lyric poetry, song and elegiac poetry, tragedy, hymns, dand, comedy, astronomy. Erata over their helped with lyric poetry.

So when you are in the Zone, satisfied with a great day of creative work, remember--the Muses may be just out of reach someplace watching over you and maybe slipping you a smokin' insight once in a while.

Ideas, ideas--get your free ideas

Ideas to Steal.Today is a website of creative leavings. These are ideas people had but didn't feel like developing--maybe you can do them one better. All brainstorms, great and small, are available for the taking. The site is not even copyrighted, no rights reserved, have at it.

The one drawback for me was it is done through Facebook. I don't Facebook. Bleh to Facebook. But I got the gist of some of the ideas at your disposal anyhow.

What I do for you people!

First, cartoon duct tape (Donald Duct Tape). Why not? Or maybe why?

There is some substance to clean undies of Skidz, which I guess is about what you would think.

There are work-related looking screen overlays you can have on while you read books at work.

There is a tweeting arrangement for your lonely, gabby hamster.

And, of course, a talking pregnancy test.

I guess I could contribute my idea--Valet Cat. Cute guys in shorts who bring kitty litter to the cars of aging cat lovers.

Cheers to creativity!

According to the New Scientist, Mar 2012, a small amount of booze can help with creative problem-solving.

Some researchers at the University of Illinois gave 40 men either vodka and cranberry or plain cran. Then they took a test.

The drinkers solved 38% more problems and faster, too. They also said the answer just came to them.

Another measure showed the vodka group's minds wandered more--which is supposed to be good for hitting on creative ideas and making connections.

Of course, we've all been to parties and bars where people's minds wandered too much. And creative people such as Hemingway and Steinbeck have been linked with booze--but is booze linked with their creativity?

Have to have a belt and think about that one.

Everything old is new again

When I was just a young sprout of a screenwriter, I was told there were seven basic plots--boy meets girl, revenge, etc. I was going to look those up for you, but now there are lists of up to 35!

Oh, well, the fact remains that creativity does not mean originality.

Recently, some filmmakers took on this subject at the Beijing Film Festival.

One producer said it was a triangle--the creator comes up with an original work, a distributor makes sure it reaches an audience, and then the audience's reaction goes back to the creator--I would say that last would be if the film made money, the H'wood people then ask for more from the creator.

Nothing wrong with pre-existing material--books, comics, popular series.

The idea is to find a fresh way to tell an old story. Remember when you first saw Keanu stroll up a wall in THE MATRIX.

Tom Cruise's producing partner Paul Wagner says there are no new ideas--it's how you put old ideas together.

I would also say you can get good results by combining genres. My project is an animated and comedic form of a serious police series.

Even the agency WME told me it was a clever idea.

Check out: http://pawandordermovie.blogspot.com.

What oldie would you like to remodel?

Pixar's Ed Catmull has a book out on wrangling creatives

It's called Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration.

I have not read it because since all my bad eye operations, I cannot read books--and this does not seem to have an audio.

But Catmull, I do know, is someone I am trying to interest in my script Paw & Order--an animated comedic version of the iconic show with a wolf and bee as the two cops.

For more on this, check out: http://pawanadordermovie.blogspot.com.

Anyway, Catmull targets fear of failure as a block to originality. I would call my effort--which I dreamed--the originality of repurposing. After 30 some years writing scripts, my biggest fear is not getting a listen (Ed never answered my email). Or that Dick Wolf will beat me up.

Catmull apparently uses a lot of his book to describe his activities in physics and then computer science. He sure sounds smart.

He also talks a lot, reviews say, about how to make the unknown safe. The unknown, he says, is too scary for most people. Aw--really?--we call it fantasy.

At Pixar, home of Toy Story, Toy Story 2 (which was supposed to be straight to video but wasn't), they have leaderless brain trusts to pull creatives through troublesome middle stages of creation (I guess where all the unk-unks--as we used to call  unknown unknowns when I was in the aerospace  industry--lie).

Early drafts, he says, are not miniatures of the beautiful adults they will become--but ugly and incomplete.

Apparently he pushes his brain trusts and creatives so hard one dad forgot to leave his son at daycare and left him in the car.

Is it me--or would Ed and I maybe not get along that well? To me, watching an idea unfold, unfold more, more...is exciting and fun. I don't need a committee to bigfoot it until they pay for it.

I want to be whispered, not wrangled.