#scribesandmakers

#ScribesAndMakers Mar 12 - Our featured creator has an em dash key on his keyboard. Do you do any customization for your creativity?

I do not, beyond choosing products that I can use effectively. But it's something I'm interested in…if I can find the time for the research and learning.

#ScribesAndMakers 3/11.
Our featured creator does 3D printing. Have you ever? (Share a pic)

I bought a cheapish printer several years ago and printed everything under the sun. It's been mostly idle for a few years, always with some fixable but annoying thing that I caused by trying to upgrade it. I fix that, print a while, break it again, and a few more months go by. Maybe the coolest things I printed were for my wife at the time, who is a classicist and history teacher. This is the Gayer-Anderson cat, a Bast(et) statue found in an Egyptian graveyard, now in the British Museum. She is very nearly life-size (the original is about 31cm, I think, and this one is maybe 28 or 29). She sits on my ex's desk "to judge the students."

#3dprinting #bast #egyptology

#ScribesAndMakers Have you ever 3D printed?

I actually own a cheap little resin printer but I've never had the chance to use it and it's currently stuck in my father's house until I can get a chance to bring more stuff down to my place. I would love a bigger one though.

Very jealous of an actor friend of mine who was gifted a really cool one from a company in the Czech Republic a couple of years back.

#ScribesAndMakers Is there a country other than your own that influences your creativity?

The Czech Republic. My first professionally published story was one I wrote inspired by a cafe I liked in Prague, and even when I'm not writing specifically about CZ, like I did in Panelák, there are traces of it. Kazda is Czech, albeit future Czech born on another planet. Traces of the mythology and history creep into my fantasy stories. It's my second home and always will be.

Všude dobře, doma líp

#ScribesAndMakers
March 8th

Is there a country other than your own that influences your creativity?

That's a tricky question.
Let's say it's the people, the landscape, and the possibilities of the U.S.A. in the timeframe from 1945 to 2017 with the obvious exception of the McCarthy era.
After 2017, politics got too ridiculous, generally unsafe, and the overall reputation of the U.S. became…wonky.
Don't get me wrong, the people are still the same. Mostly, that is.
But I won't move there anymore…

#ScribesAndMakers Sign language cont.

Nowadays, I still occasionally use it when subtitling programmes that are all sign language because you need to know what they're signing to put the subtitle in the right place, but if I can ever afford it I would love to do the proper certification.

#ScribesAndMakers Are you able to communicate in sign language?

I took a course in BSL back when I worked as a guide in London, then ended up working in accessibility for TV, where my first job was preparing the autocue for the signer to do the news review. She was deaf herself and so quite often would ask questions about stuff in the script, so I got some good practice there, then I worked for Edinburgh uni on a course for teachers of the deaf, so again, a lot of exposure and practice.