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Oblique Strategies

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robin

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Sep 14, 2005, 11:40:10 AM9/14/05
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The Oblique Strategies were originally a set of one-hundred cards,
each bearing a short phrase. They were devised by Brian Eno and Peter
Schmidt as ways of working through creative problems. When a blockage
occurs, draw a card, and see if it can direct you in a tangential way
that helps solve the problem.

I have created a Python implementation that includes two different
decks. Since one of these is my own, I can be sure this is an original
contribution for all of you Python coders stuck on a problem!

Surf:
http://noisetheatre.blogspot.com/2005/09/oblique-strategies.html

-----
robin
noisetheatre.blogspot.com

Tom Anderson

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Sep 15, 2005, 7:15:17 AM9/15/05
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On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, robin wrote:

> The Oblique Strategies were originally a set of one-hundred cards, each
> bearing a short phrase. They were devised by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt
> as ways of working through creative problems. When a blockage occurs,
> draw a card, and see if it can direct you in a tangential way that helps
> solve the problem.

Neat!

I can't help but feel that putting the strategies in a file and using
'fortune' to pick them would have been slightly simpler, but since i don't
actually seem to have fortune on my machine, i'm actually rather happy
that you've done this.

I don't know about coding, but i think this might be handy in the cell
biology research that constitutes my day job ...

tom

--
Also, a 'dark future where there is only war!' ... have you seen the news lately? -- applez

robin

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Sep 15, 2005, 12:33:37 PM9/15/05
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Tom Anderson <tw...@urchin.earth.li> wrote:

>On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, robin wrote:
>
>> The Oblique Strategies were originally a set of one-hundred cards, each
>> bearing a short phrase. They were devised by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt
>> as ways of working through creative problems. When a blockage occurs,
>> draw a card, and see if it can direct you in a tangential way that helps
>> solve the problem.
>
>Neat!
>
>I can't help but feel that putting the strategies in a file and using
>'fortune' to pick them would have been slightly simpler, but since i don't
>actually seem to have fortune on my machine, i'm actually rather happy
>that you've done this.

The best things about this approach are that code and data are in one
file and you don't need to be on a machine with fortune. (My machines
seem to mostly have misfortune, aka Windows.)

I'm happy how Python reduces most small problems down to the most
trivial of exercises. This is less a program than a list of text
strings.

-----
robin
noisetheatre.blogspot.com

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