Chrome Tabs : 80 → 80
Gmail Inbox : 74 → 61 Unread, 77 → 64 Total
I had my first post-pandemic indoor dining experience at one of my favorite new places, Viridian Bar in Oakland. They opened shortly before the shelter in place order in California, and they only had a few months to build a following for their take-out so they could pay the rent, etc. over the past year+. I was honestly afraid they wouldn’t survive, but here they are! I had some great to-go cocktails during the pandemic, but there’s nothing like the in-person experience (despite the bizarre “new normal” of big plastic dividers between bartenders and patrons). They’ve also expanded their menu of savory dishes (they were mostly dessert and cocktail-oriented pre-pandemic), and it’s a great balance now. Everything was pretty much excellent! Highly recommended for some unique Asian-leaning small plates (both sweet and savory) and great cocktails, if you’re in the area. (the lighting is crazy in there, so forgive the odd photo)
I probably shouldn’t say much yet, but I’ve been having some private discussions with the Anytype team about some possible collaboration! I’ve taken a pretty active role in their community, both public and private (alpha test group), since joining their alpha test back in October of last year (one of the first cohorts, I got lucky!), and apparently my enthusiasm didn’t escape notice. Curious to see if this leads anywhere…
In search of a phone that can avoid overheating while filming long videos in warm conditions, I ended up buy a gaming-oriented Android-based Nubia “Red Magic 6 Pro”. This was something I decided to test on behalf of Big Rig Travels, because I’m a little insane. It has a built-in fan, which seemed to work well, but the other feature I was interested in, “charge bybpass” (to prevent the battery heating up when running full-time off of a charger), was only available in their dedicated game mode, an annoying oversight. More importantly it didn’t seem to work with my carrier Verizon (whose tech support informed me that no Nubia or Red Magic devices are apparently supported at present). I’m still in touch with Nubia support to see if they can resolve it; according to Verizon they actually need to request support for their devices, even though they already have support for the correct radio bands in hardware.
After raising a bunch of caterpillars to their penultimate stage, I ended up with some 15+ pupae. For some reason they seemed to stop emerging as butterflies for a while, and I don’t know why. Could just be a coincidence. Anyway, after a few weeks a couple finally did so, and I managed to catch on video something that had so far eluded me: the actual emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis! They move around a lot, so it’s tough to catch them after they emerge, but the actual moment that it comes out I captured fairly well. I’ll share that soon. Unedited video below, pardon the raw audio of me making breakfast or whatever. Skip to 1m30s for the good stuff, and be sure to watch in 4k!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/zCmodTHjuhji4rji6
This coming week I’m headed off on a 10 day road trip, so I’ll be taking a vacation from journaling, but will also hopefully have some good photos on my return!