The Personal Pottery Challenger

[Beeme]

Hi All,

To help push myself in creating things I might not normally, I decided to create myself an 'idea generator' spreadsheet. The first option randomly creates combinations of styles, methods, decorations, handles, rims, and set times limits etc.  The second option randomly takes a word from the dictionary and the idea is you have to build a form around that word as an starting idea. Some idea combinations are pretty weird but the whole idea is that it is a starting point. I thought this might also be fun in an education setting for teachers and students.

It is an Excel spreadsheet that you can download from here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1twtxSjPNlISE71lC00IcgVryFj60umE_

To run the ideas generator you must have macros turned in Excel.

Have fun  and welcome your feedback on improvements.

Cheers,

B.

[LeeU]

Just FYI--I hit the link and there was an error message popping up saying there is a problem with the link and suggesting alternatives. Might be just fine-I'm not sophisticated enough to know-so I never click further "alternatives" for downloads with things like that.  Sounds like an interesting idea, though. Choosing a random dictionary word as a fire starter is kinda cool. Thanks.   Welcome to the forums.

[Beeme]

Thanks LeeU - was it the message shown here? If so, just click the Download button and you'll be able to open it in Microsoft Excel (when you open it in Excel, you may also be prompted to 'enable content' and then 'enable macros' depending on how your Excel is configured).

I have a feeling this message relates to Google Drive (where the file is hosted) not allowing previews of large files - it is 5MB

Cheers, B.

[Min]

Thanks for the  idea generator but we do advise people to be very careful downloading files from unknown sources. With all due respect,  as a new member,  you are an unknown source at this point in time. Is there anyway for people to access your program without downloading files?

[Beeme]

16 hours ago, Min said:

Thanks for the  idea generator but we do advise people to be very careful downloading files from unknown sources. With all due respect,  as a new member,  you are an unknown source at this point in time. Is there anyway for people to access your program without downloading files?

Hi Min, sure I understand your concern. I am actually not new here - I've had an account here since 2016 but it is associated with an old email address and I can't recover the password now. In regards to accessing the file without downloading it - unfortunately because it is an Excel file you have to download it to use it. I work in IT (hence the skills to create it in the first place) and I can guarantee it doesn't have malware etc. Below are some screenshots FYI, but they are pretty useless without the code behind it to generate the forms/words. Cheers B.

[LeeU]

So...."nonroyal" (been noodling dictionaries) seems to be a bit more than just "not a royal". Has something to do with British dukes & socioeconomic/political stuff back in the day. I can see that if taken as a personal challenge, designing pieces in clay using random words as the core could be a bit of fun.  One of my favorite artists-not a clay person-is Jenny Holzer, the mistress of word usage in art!  Good to know about the Google Drive limitation-I've seen the "mystery msg." before and just ran in the opposite direction.