I populate Google Maps. Fill in business names, opening hours, take photos etc. At the start, I was vociferous about it, putting thousands of photos on there. These days, just about everything is there and I only correct stuff and add/remove businesses as they come and go. Oh, and food/menu photos.
Some of my photos have tens of millions of views. Which means people have to see them many times I think. Otherwise every single Australian would have seen the most popular ones, which doesn’t make sense.
I’m used to Google just trusting me and immediately doing what I say. But I really had to convince them that Toys R Us really were closing down. That one took three attempts. The more prominent a place, the higher the rank you need to do major edits to it.
Please, discover OpenStreetMap.org and stop being an unpaid Google employee, and make your work truly public and free.
Would you consider contributing to OpenStreetMap?
I did the same of you. I reached a high level as a google guide, was invited to google map meetings and everything.
And then I suddenly realized all my efforts were just helping this company get bigger and achieve more monopoly. The terms of use of google maps state that everything you add becomes property of google.
And then I Found OpenStreetMap.org a lovely community in which you really are building a community effort in which there is no company monopolizing and all data is open. Sadly, you can’t import all the work you’ve done on google maps, because now it is copyright protected by Google. So we have to start again, but it is worth it.
OSM is the future if we are to hope for a fair future in online maps.
I’ve contributed plenty to OSM, but not so much as a creative thing. I rarely upload photos to it. The question was about creative things we do.
While I agree my contributions help Google, I don’t do it for them. I do it for the community. And frankly, they’re mostly using Google maps.
They’re only using Google maps because volunteers like you keep it up to date. Slack on Google and only help out OSM, an eventually the people will come.
I agree. You are helping in the short term, but in the long term, you are not. In the long term, you are empowering a monopoly that steals their freedom.
Creating memes…
Make skirts!
Cool. Want to share a pic?
I cook for the family. It’s not the cooking that’s creativity for me, most of the time, it’s the menu planning that is the hardest to think through.
Omg! I complain about this all the time! Deciding what to make is by fast the hardest part!
I bake for my families and friends, and i sometime do wood working too.
Cook, bake, crochet, cross-stitch, oil paint, watercolor, party planning etc I hoard hobbies but don’t do any of them professionally since I already have a job. They are all hobbies I enjoy
DM/GM from time to time.
Do you have a game of choice? I’ve just finished running a Dresden files accelerated game which was a lot of fun.
D&D and Pathfinder are the main ones, and Genesys sometimes when I can convince my players to give it a try. Currently trying to maybe get something going with Cyberpunk Red.
Music. I’ve played guitar for 30 years, can play drums, bass, piano, etc… never earned a dime. Played shows but I’m still in the hole as far as acquired shit.
I thought I didn’t have much to tell, but turns out, I could have said the same. I did earn a tiny bit at one point when playing local venues and recording demos for local bands back then, but it was basically just gas money for the band most of the time lol
I enjoy photgraphy, mostly buildings and infrastructure, I have a gallery on a personal webhost, and never really share the link to it except to friends and family, but I have tyeblink to it on my CV.
I crochet little animals for friends and family.
Unasked, most of the time :)Make Gameboy games. Make music. Cook
Do you make Gameboy music though? I used to really be into LSDJ. I know nothing about programming actual games though
I made a track for my game, yeah, but using UGEtracker which is built into GB Studio. It’s not the easiest to use tbh so it wasn’t that fun.
LSDJ sounds very cool, have you checked out the DirtyWave M8? I ran the cheap version (Anbernic console with a dongle) but I couldn’t get over the learning curve. Now I have a Polyend Tracker Mini which I really like
BTW I’m not really a programmer either, GB Studio simplifies things a lot and it’s free if you want to check it out
I haven’t kept up with anything chiptune related in prob 10 years or so, so no I am not too familar with any new tools for the GB. I did enjoy making music on it though. It fun to work creatively when there are a bunch of limitations!
I do calligraphy!
This is visually beautiful but makes me long for a few days ago when the weekend was ahead of me.
I create Starfield graphic novels.
I’m a huge fan of the game, and there is this podcast called “Starfield with Normal People”, which has a Discord server, and they organise a weekly “Starfield Adventure Club”. Every week, one planet is selected, and we all go there and take screenshots and create a story.
People are very creative, some publish a captains log, for my part, I ended up creating a graphic novel.
For my part, it’s a mix of pure screenshots using the photo mode, some generative AI for the covers, and plain old montage using Figma.
I’m having a lot of fun and I’m not tired of it yet, I’ve been doing this since February. I discovered I had a talent for storytelling and… Air scripting I guess?
2023 has been a monstrosity of a year in all aspects of my life. This comic is self-care for me.
If you want to read a few episodes, you can find them on my Facebook page, as well as on my DeviantArt page.
Enjoy!
Performance art is a passion project. There’s absolutely no money in it. I’m lucky to get $100 a gig. I also absolutely HATE that I have to use Instagram while constantly facing an uphill battle of PG-13 censors.
What I do get is a shit ton of really cool photos, skills, and props, as well as a loving community
I used to write Wikipedia articles and blog posts about music if that counts.
