§ The solar eclipse was a serious spectacle. I’m glad I quickly learned that getting decent photos without a specialized camera rig is next to impossible. With that out of the way, I was able to enjoy it for what it was, in the moment.
It was cool to watch it in a crowd with thousands of other people but next time I would go out of my way to find somewhere secluded, out in nature, safe from the risk of anyone nearby playing Pink Floyd.
§ This whole celestial anomaly thing also meant I worked nine days in a row with a big busy three-day festival in the middle. Exhausting, but at least I won’t have to worry about it again for another 400 years.
I took Wednesday off to do not one but two of my favorite things: go to the DMV and file my taxes. Yeehaw.
§ The seeds have mostly all germinated. I want to try my hand at saving seeds from the most successful plants at the end of this year to plant again for the next growing season. This is, of course, the first step towards my ultimate goal of hybridizing plants.
§ We bought three more quails from a nearby homestead—our first time there.
Our existing four birds came from a combination of at-home incubation and getting live chicks shipped through the USPS, something our local post office apparently handles with some regularity.
The three new girls seem to be happy and healthy but we are going to keep them separated from the rest of the flock for a week as a precaution against bird flu.
§ It makes me happy to see that Charli XCX is continuing to push on the boundaries of radio pop. Her music might actually be getting More adventures over time while remaining solid club classics. I can’t wait for her new album.
§ Things are accelerating with the wedding coming up in July. I set up a website, we sent our invite design to the printers, and met with our reception venue’s event manager.
§ My office move to the third floor didn’t get past Apple Health unnoticed. I got a notification that my average daily flights of stairs climbed jumped from 42 to 77.
§ The back half of this week turned incessantly wet and windy but warm enough to take the trash out in the evening without immediately feeling chilled to my core—a sure sign of spring.
§ Links
- Daylight Saving Time is a perfect test for UI designers – Tasks that occur every six months are special. They aren’t frequent enough to warrant much prominence in an interface yet they must be intuitive enough to figure out without relying on memory (most people will forget) or a user manual (it will get lost).
- Robin Sloan: “It is physical establishments — storefronts and markets, cafes and restaurants — that make cities… worth inhabiting. Even the places you don’t frequent provide tremendous value to you, because they draw other people out, populating the sidewalks. They generate urban life in its fundamental unit, which is: the bustle.”