This is not strictly DEVON-related, but in keeping with my general trend of staying as unproductive as possible, I decided to make a very simple AppleScript version of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, which ostensibly help the inquisitive user to break deadlocks.
This is an ugly script, but very simple. It has a list of the cards (no, I didn’t put anything in to handle the different editions) and returns a random one of them. Might be nice.
set theStrategies to {"(Organic) machinery", "A line has two sides", "A very small object -Its centre", "Abandon desire", "Abandon normal instructions", "Abandon normal instruments", "Accept advice", "Accretion", "Adding on", "Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a structure)", "Always first steps", "Always give yourself credit for having more than personality", "Always the first steps", "Are there sections? Consider transitions", "Ask people to work against their better judgement", "Ask your body", "Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group", "Assemble some of the instruments in a group and treat the group", "Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle", "Be dirty", "Be extravagant", "Be less critical more often", "Be less critical", "Breathe more deeply", "Bridges -build -burn", "Cascades", "Change ambiguities to specifics", "Change instrument roles", "Change nothing and continue consistently", "Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency", "Change specifics to ambiguities", "Children -speaking -singing", "Children's voices -speaking -singing", "Cluster analysis", "Consider different fading systems", "Consider transitions", "Consult other sources -promising -unpromising", "Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element", "Courage!", "Cut a vital connection", "Decorate, decorate", "Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor", "Destroy -nothing -the most important thing", "Destroy nothing Destroy the most important thing", "Discard an axiom", "Disciplined self-indulgence", "Disconnect from desire", "Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them", "Discover your formulas and abandon them", "Display your talent", "Distort time", "Distorting time", "Do nothing for as long as possible", "Do something boring", "Do something sudden, destructive and unpredictable", "Do the last thing first", "Do the washing up", "Do the words need changing?", "Do we need holes?", "Don't avoid what is easy", "Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do", "Don't be frightened of cliches", "Don't be frightened to display your talents", "Don't break the silence", "Don't stress *one* thing more than another (sic)", "Don't stress one thing more than another", "Emphasize differences", "Emphasize repetitions", "Emphasize the flaws", "Faced with a choice, do both", "Feed the recording back out of the medium", "Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation", "Fill every beat with something", "Find a safe part and use it as an anchor", "From nothing to more than nothing", "Get your neck massaged", "Ghost echoes", "Give the game away", "Give way to your worst impulse", "Go outside. Shut the door", "Go outside. Shut the door.", "Go slowly all the way round the outside", "Go to an extreme, come part way back", "Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place", "Honor thy error as a hidden intention", "How would someone else do it?", "How would you have done it?", "Humanize something free of error", "Idiot glee (?)", "Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar", "Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events", "Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events", "In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly", "Infinitesimal gradations", "Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of", "Intentions -nobility of -humility of -credibility of", "Into the impossible", "Is it finished?", "Is something missing?", "Is the intonation correct?", "Is the style right?", "Is the tuning appropriate?", "Is the tuning intonation correct?", "Is there something missing?", "It is quite possible (after all)", "It is simply a matter of work", "Just carry on", "Left channel, right channel, centre channel", "Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly", "Listen to the quiet voice", "Look at a very small object, look at its centre", "Look at the order in which you do things", "Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them", "Lost in useless territory", "Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff", "Lowest common denominator", "Magnify the most difficult details", "Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame", "Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action incorporate", "Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list", "Make it more sensual", "Make what's perfect more human", "Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic", "Move towards the unimportant", "Mute and continue", "Not building a wall but making a brick", "Not building a wall making a brick", "Once the search has begun, something will be found", "Once the search is in progress, something will be found", "Only a part, not the whole", "Only one element of each kind", "Openly resist change", "Overtly resist change", "Pae White's non-blank graphic metacard [This is not an aphorism]", "Put in earplugs", "Question the heroic approach", "Question the heroic", "Remember quiet evenings", "Remember. Those quiet evenings", "Remove a restriction", "Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics", "Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities", "Repetition is a form of change", "Retrace your steps", "Revaluation (a warm feeling)", "Reverse", "Short circuit (eg: a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)", "Shut the door and listen from outside", "Simple Subtraction", "Simply a matter of work", "Slow preparation, fast execution", "Spectrum analysis", "State the problem as clearly as possible", "State the problem in words as clearly as possible", "State the problem in words as simply as possible", "Take a break", "Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance", "Take away the important parts", "Tape your mouth", "The inconsistency principle", "The most easily forgotten thing is the most important", "The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten", "The tape is now the music", "Think -inside the work -outside the work", "Think of the radio", "Tidy up", "Towards the insignificant", "Trust in the you of now", "Try faking it", "Turn it upside down", "Twist the spine ", "Use 'unqualified' people", "Use an old idea", "Use an unacceptable color", "Use cliches", "Use fewer notes", "Use filters", "Use something nearby as a model", "Use your own ideas", "Voice your suspicions", "Water", "What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving", "What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate", "What are you really thinking about just now?", "What context would look right?", "What is the reality of the situation?", "What is the simplest solution?", "What mistakes did you make last time?", "What to increase? What to reduce? What to maintain?", "What were you really thinking about just now?", "What would your closest friend do?", "What wouldn't you do?", "When is it for?", "Where is the edge?", "Which parts can be grouped?", "Work at a different speed", "Would anybody want it?", "Would anyone want it?", "You are an engineer", "You can only make one dot at a time", "You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas", "Your mistake was a hidden intention"}
display dialog (text item (random number from 1 to (the count of theStrategies)) of theStrategies) buttons {"OK"}