New Logos for the Patenting for Inventors Podcast

This is me in 2016 with my friend and co-author Adam Diament.

(You should buy our book.)

Adam, who is a patent attorney, has been hosting a podcast for almost a year. It's called the Patenting for Inventors Podcast. It walks inventors through absolutely everything they need to know to apply for a patent. Despite the fact that I am not an inventor and have no intention of ever getting a patent (because I doubt I should try to patent a Twinkie Narwhal, which is pretty typical of the things I invent), I really enjoy the podcast. I love learning new things and I've always been fascinated with learning more about what other people's careers. Adam is an excellent host. 

Adam needed new podcast cover art, so I happily spent some time playing on PicMonkey until I came up with this:

I thought the magnifying glass was a great way to draw attention to the podcast title. (It's left-handed because I make everything left-handed. Adam is right-handed, one of his few faults.) I chose the colors based on Adam's website and put a lightbulb next to the web address. I sent it off to Adam and waited to hear what he thought. He loved it, so I set out to make the other sizes of graphics he needed. 

The 1920x480 banner posed some challenges. I couldn't put the magnifying glass front and center like in the square graphic. When I shrank it it down, the podcast title didn't fit in it nicely. I decided to move the web address there and stretched the title across the banner. The lightbulb became the letter O in INVENTORS. 

The 1920x1080 size created a new problem. If I kept the magnifying glass and web address on the left and the title on the right, there was an area at the bottom that looked empty. I grabbed Adam's picture from his website and did a quick flip (I had to maintain the left-handed magnifying glass, of course!). I moved the web address to the bottom and everything looked balanced.

I'd strongly recommend the early episodes of the Patenting for Inventors Podcast to pretty much anyone. A huge number of things we use every day are patented. It is fascinating to learn what can be patented and what the process is that inventors (and their attorneys) go through to get those patents. Later episodes dive deeper and are geared more for inventors, but they are still very interesting. Episode 42 is particularly interesting to me. Listen to see why! :) 

Thanks to Adam for trusting me to make his graphics. If any of you need logos made, feel free to contact me at cindy.mycreativelife@gmail.com. 

I'M AN AUTHOR!!

I am positively BURSTING with the news - I am an author! My book, called What Would Jesus Patent? 101 Ingenious Inventions for Christians, is for sale on Amazon!  

(Affiliate links here and below)

Well, OUR book, actually, as I co-wrote it with my friend, Adam Diament. It all started about eight months ago. Technically, I suppose it started in 1997 when Adam and I met as members of the Telemark Dance Troupe at UC Davis. Over the years, we danced together during a number of ballroom dance routines and became good friends. He moved 500 miles away, but we still made the effort to attend each other's weddings and to keep in touch regularly.

In 2012, Adam wrote his first book called The Top Ten Jewish... He sent me a copy which I reviewed on my blog. Last year, he wrote his second book, called Kosher Patents: 101 Ingenious Inventions to Help Jews Be Jewish. I'm credited as an editor of that book for pointing out typos in the advanced copy he gave me.

Adam and I were talking at the beginning of 2016 and he mentioned that he and his wife's coworker, who is Muslim, had discussed writing an Islamic version of his Kosher Patents book. Adam joked that he could write it himself, but that having a Muslim co-author would give him street cred and greatly improve the chances of people buying the book, as Muslims probably don't seek out Jewish authors to learn more about their faith. I told him that if he ever needed a Christian for street cred, I was all in.  

Adam dismissed the idea at first. While Judaism and Islam are based heavily on rules and regulations and rituals, Christianity isn't as much so. He wasn't sure there'd be enough patents to fill a book. I thought there would be plenty and urged him to check. Sure enough, I heard back from him later that day. A quick search had yielded many thousands of patents related in some way to Christianity. Committed to the project, we jumped in immediately.

The first task was weeding down the thousands of patents to a more reasonable number. I took on the bulk of that job, first eliminating the false positives (lots of buildings have 'cathedral' ceilings without being related to Christianity). The biggest surprise was learning that a 'Christmas tree' is a type of well commonly used with oil drilling. There are a LOT of patents covering 'Christmas tree' wells. 

Next, we eliminated everything boring. Our goal was 101 patents, which didn't leave room for anything that wasn't entertaining or informative. It was tedious work reading through thousands of patents looking for the gems, but we eventually whittled down to about 150 patents. We sorted them by categories, which would become our chapters. Then we split the chapters in half and both started writing.

It took around 4 months before we had a complete draft. We tinkered. We edited. We rearranged. Adam designed our cover (to coordinate with his Kosher Patents book). He did all the formatting. Finally, we were ready for a digital proof. We did more editing and tinkering, then bit the bullet and ordered actual print proofs. It was SO exciting when it showed up and I was FINALLY touching our book. I was home alone, so I had to take a selfie and text it to Adam immediately. 

I read it cover to cover (red pencil in hand). Steve read it, Trevor read it and my mom read it. My friend Kristen, Librarian Extraordinaire, read it. I compiled all their helpful comments and suggestions and made the revisions. At that point, it was out of my hands. Adam took care of everything related to publication, including creating a Kindle version and getting both the paperback and ebook editions on Amazon. Everything is finally ready and we're so excited to share our book with the world.

It is our hope that those who read it will find it interesting, informative, and at times, amusing. It reads well cover-to-cover, but is also suitable for flipping through randomly and discovering a nifty invention or two. While we expect that the main audience will probably be Christians, it would be equally enjoyable to those from different faiths (as well as agnostics and atheists) because ultimately it is a book about problems people have had and how inventors have sought to solve them. It would make a wonderful Christmas gift for practically anyone!

And how better to promote my new book than going on a book tour?! If you are local to me and would like to invite me to your Bible study group or a similar get-together, I'd be thrilled for the opportunity. Just let me know!

It's long been a dream of mine to be able to call myself an author. I've had job titles that included the word Writer, I've done freelance writing, and next week I'll hit 1500 blog posts - almost 300 posts a year for five years. But until now, I wasn't an author. Now I am. And it's really, really cool.

Thanks, Adam. I couldn't have had a more wonderful co-author.

Operation: Street Sign

My friend Adam Diament is the coolest person I know. Why? Because he does things like this in his spare time:

He's done similar videos for Orange County (Adventure 34!) and Ventura County (Adventure 10!). Perhaps his most impressive was San Diego County (Adventure 18!), in which he visits all 18 cities in San Diego County in a single day. And hats off to his then-pregnant wife Tiffany, who spent 12.5 hours driving around the county with him taking his picture in every city!

After I saw his videos, I was inspired to do something cool like that and scrap it. It would not be particularly impressive (or interesting) for me to visit the 7 cities in my county, but I thought it would be really fun to photograph my husband, our son, and myself each standing by a street sign with our name on it.

I did my research on Google Maps. I typed in "Cindy Street California" and wrote down each city that appeared. I did the same thing for Steve and Trevor. I went back and also checked our given names, Cynthia and Steven. I kept the list of cities by the calendar, waiting for an occasion that would take us to "our" streets. The chance to go to Cindy Way in Pleasanton came soon. On a second trip, we visited Steven Circle in Benicia and Trevor Parkway, also in Pleasanton.

This layout was so fun to put together!

I hope this inspires you to have your own adventure! Whether it's as major as Adam's or on a smaller scale like mine, an adventure like this is a lot of fun and a great topic for a layout or album.