Last night I finished with the colouring in of my mandala doodle at about 11:30pm. I am making slow, but steady progress and last night’s results were pleasure to see. The mandala consists of a symmetry based on eight, which shows up in the various internal sub designs. These are all circular like the mandala itself, except for eight ‘tongues’ that reach from the centre hub out to the very edge. I use the tongues to set a dominant colour selection, say brown, and let it lead my choice in the sector determined by two neighbouring tongues.

The circular sub designs take all the colours, but in a balanced way such as to be lively, yet not chaotic. This I accomplish by means of alternating blending with contrasting, depending on whether the pattern element is internal to the sub design or defining of its limit. For example, you can have the internal figures of the butterfly wings contrasting in colour choice, while containing that by choosing the wing’s rims to be the same all around.

On Friday I finished the upgrading for my audio presentation pages, except for all the handouts, which still need to be set up in a more user friendly fashion; most of those also need to be upgraded to HTML5. Then, it is on to complete the whole ‘Talks’ category redesign of the catalogue file and page. This is the page on which the user makes the selection from the available talks, now twenty seven (27) in total.

This is a list design at the present time, but it is getting too long. A table might work for a while, but selection by subcategory could also work using a role down menu.

Up to now I have been concentrating on making things work on my website, but I am reaching the stage where design starts to enter in the considerations. How user friendly are my working solutions? That has not been a prime consideration with me so far.

I am now getting into my fourth year of web work, with the first posting at around May 08, 2009. My main aim then, was and still is now, to get my content ‘published’ on the web. This has been accomplished in the various categories from Daily Entries - The Scribe - to the form, which still does not function properly. I have also managed to learn enough javaScript, PHP, Ajax and HTML5 to be able to apply that, but the design of layout and functionality has been minimal. I will have to give more attention to these two aspects as the categories grow in extend.

Continuing here after a break of about twenty (20) minutes.

I am working on the idea of a model narrative as I mentioned earlier. Such narratives can be thought of as spokes in a wheel, coming together in the hub of the supported and defined belief. The rim is the experience, where the ‘rubber meets the road’ as this colourful and powerful saying puts it.

The spokes do not need to the same or even similar, but they must be equal in length if the wheel is to be round and no spoke can protrude into the hub if the wheel is to operate properly.

Unless we use special materials, we will need three spokes and possibly more. All must act in the same way in that they should work together to support the hub at all times.

Some spokes could be threads, while others can be sticks, but in that case their arrangement around the hub will matter, because all sticks in the upper half, with all threads in the lower, will lead to the collapse of the wheel’s rim. For, you can hang on a string and lean on a stick, but not the other way around!

Extrapolating to the narratives here, we can say that the nature of the support that the narrative lends to the belief may be quite different, but still be valuable as long as we arrange them properly. Three threads alternating with three sticks would be quite effective, whereas with each grouped by type, would not.

I am now toying with this concept, asking myself which would be a stick belief and which one a thread type? The expressions ‘lean on’ and ‘hang on to’ come to mind here. I am walking with a stick for support right now and a string would be useless. However, when standing in a bus, a string type support - overhead hand loop - would give more stability then a stick. A stick gives support from below, while the string lends support from above, both providing stability and support.

You could look at these two as support from the handed down traditions - the stick -, whereas the other stabilises while moving on into the future - the thread. This seems like a satisfying metaphor to me for a belief. It is supported and informed by the known and proven traditions - such as ethics -, yet it pulled forward by new possibilities - such as globalisation.

My next talk date has been set at the twenty first of April and I have defined my topic as ‘My Belief Explored’. I want to use the wheel metaphor with the model narratives as spokes. The question now will be concerning the nature of these spokes and their model narratives.

Ethics is one, experience a second, re-incarnation a third and consciousness a forth, where the first two would be like sticks to lean on, while re-incarnation is a future type concept, with consciousness both push and pull.

There are others, such as identity, order and spirituality, but these could be added later, once the first four are explored in more detail. In general we can say we look at aspects that support us, because they are familiar and for causes to move forward adopting new ways that inspire.
<10:00am and 10:31am edited.