Business Goose Posts

The Bilt Card is Dead

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 13:30:00 GMT

Time of death: 01/14/2026 12:00 PM EST

Today was the much-anticipated release of Bilt 2.0, touted by the company as a "new era" for the fintech company that has been beloved by renters all over the country for over six years now, according to their wikipedia article. The new card tiers look quite boring if you just look at their announcement website, something like :

a free card offering 1% cashback on everything
a $95 a year card offering 3x points on dining OR groceries, 2x on travel, 1x on everything else
a nearly $500 card offering 2x points on everything, some sign up bonuses, and a bit of annual credit for travel

To anyone who's spent any time comparing credit cards before, this lineup feels pretty standard, even kind of ... bad? But then how did this credit card get so popular? And why are people on the reddit losing their shit over these new cards, and what can we learn from this rollout about how business works in America these days?

Rent Rewards

If you want to understand Bilt, you have to understand Rent Rewards. Bilt was originally sold explicitly to renters, with the promise that you can put your rent on credit card, pay no fee to do so, and earn 1% of your rental payment in points. Considering rent is people's largest expense by far, this is an incredible deal for consumers. If you pay $2000 a month in rent, you basically earn $20 a month for free just by holding the card (assuming you made five other purchases).

This was the crux of Bilt's differentiation from every other card on the market. You barely had to spend anything, and you could earn a pretty good amount of money, especially in very high cost of living areas. Basically, the more you pay for rent (up to some limit), the more you earn, and you can keep most of your other spending on a higher earning card with something like 3% cash back.

Rent Day

One other pretty neat thing about the card worth noting was something called "Rent Day", where on the first of every month, you would earn 2x points on every category, putting dining at 6% cashback for most places, and pushing stuff like Lyft up to 10%. I think some categories even reached 12% sometimes. There was also a pretty cute game show on the app where they gave away a month of free rent if you did trivia.

Financial Troubles

Sadly for the thousands of people who were getting paid for paying their rent, there is no such thing as "free money". Wells Fargo, the bank that initially backed and managed the Bilt Card, was reportedly paying over 10 million dollars per month to keep the program afloat. In July 2025, they finally had enough and announced they were going to end their relationship with Bilt, leaving the fintech company fumbling for a new bank to back them and leaving the renters who had trusted them as their primary credit card nervous about the future.

Bilt 2.0, Baby!

This leads us to the introduction of Bilt 2.0, announced on Reddit in November of last year. They made big claims about the card in the months after the announcement, calling it the "most rewarding" card on the market, and saying that in addition to points on rent, you would also be able to do earn points on mortgages. People were excited, but understandably suspicious, as the reports of Wells Fargo hemorrhaging money to keep them afloat were well-published at this point. For the entire month of December, I was constantly bombarded with teasers from Bilt in my email inbox claiming the newest greatest points cards on the market that let you earn points on rent.

Reddit Leaks

In early January, about a week before the official launch date of the new cards, someone on reddit leaked what they claimed to be the details of the new card. People immediately got angry after noting a particular point in the description. You had to use your Bilt Cash to get points on your rent. Initially, this was not super clear and people panicked saying they were going to charge a fee for paying rent, and a Bilt employee had to post a video calming everyone down and saying there was no annual fee. However, with hindsight, these leaks were largely correct.

Why People are Freaking Out

Now for the core of the problem with the new Bilt cards. You no longer technically earn points on rent. This was, for most people, the core benefit of the card, and it has been wiped away in favor of a convoluted system that has people arguing nonstop about the basic mathematics of the card. This NYT Headline even contains the phrase "you will need to do math". Fundamentally, not having to do math was one of the great draws of the card in the first place, most people just wanted a card they could put a few transactions on every month and reliably earn a bunch of money from rent. But that's been taken off the table, in favor of some extremely poorly described "Bilt Cash" system.

The way it seems to work is this:

Your actual credit card points have been slashed dramatically in the free tier of the new card.
Instead, you get 4% of your spend in "Bilt Cash"
"Bilt Cash" is not actually exchangeable for money, and the only purpose announced so far is to basically buy credit card points (which are worth real money) for your Bilt Cash once you accrue enough.
Basically, you now need to "buy" your rent points with a new made-up currency even more confusing than credit card points already are.

To add insult to injury, you can no longer actually put your rent on your credit card. This isn't something I personally wanted, since I find it stressful to be in debt all the time, but some people found value in having more precise control of their payments by "floating" a balance for rent, and that option is gone, now replaced by a normal Bank ACH Transaction (which, to their credit, has no fees).

The fundamental confusion around Bilt Cash, how it's used, and the math of converting it to points has reddit point accountant types frothing at the mouth, but overall, what was originally a very simple win-win free card for anyone who wanted to earn a bit of extra money has become a confusing multi-card multi-currency math problem that no one really wants.

The Opinion Section

Many people, myself included, have long felt like this was bound to happen in one way or another. It's hard to read that some system is losing millions of dollars a month and imagine that they can keep growing and scaling the money pit while enriching their customers. But for a fleeting moment, Bilt was a relatively unusual situation where I could confidently recommend a financial product to almost anybody without feeling like there was some crazy catch.

Every piece of technology around us these days (including financial technology), seems single-mindedly designed to rip off customers as much as possible by obfuscating information, complicating processes, and exploiting bureaucracy to make cancelling your account or comparing two credit cards as difficult as possible. In pursuit of infinite growth, we've grown accustomed to accepting tradeoffs-- we trade our privacy for convenience, trade our attention for entertainment, trade our sovereignty for a simple UI-- so for a while it was nice to see a system that (inadvertently) funneled money away from a massive bank and into the pockets of renters, of all people.

So it's no wonder people are grieving the Bilt Card, a last remnant of an era where companies were truly willing to sacrifice some amount of profit for consumer satisfaction, where every last drop of profit was not relentlessly squeezed out of the market to please investors. The death of Bilt 1.0 is both a massive administrative headache for card owners and another small loss of customer good will in a world where it seems like companies don't care about their users anymore.

Afterword

What am I doing with my Bilt card? Actually, I don't really know. It seems like just letting them transfer my card over to the no fee version would be easy and cost me nothing but a soft inquiry on my credit report, but I am considering cancelling just to help this company die more quickly. Alternatively, I've thought about the $95 annual fee card. There is a $200 (Bilt cash) signup bonus which I think would be worth something, but I'm tired of thinking about this for now, and will probably come to a decision tomorrow or the day after.

Thanks for reading, hope you have a great day.

EAT Asian Tapas

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 19:35:00 GMT

Background

EAT Asian Tapas (according to this Capitol Hill Seattle blog post that scooped me by a few hours it might be pronounced E A T instead of Eat, I failed to ask) is a new restaurant that rather quickly popped up in the space formerly occupied by Lil Pocha. Prior to Lil Pocha, they were IMO Pocha, and apparently before that they were Glo's Diner! The more you know.

Carmen and I visited Lil Pocha when they first opened last year and were impressed by their fried chicken and rabboki, we chatted with the owner for a bit and came multiple times. Unfortunately something seems to have happened as the restaurant redid their menu pricing and the food quality dropped precipitously before they suddenly closed.

When we saw EAT opening in their spot, we knew we had to try it out, and I'm glad we did!

Overview

EAT is currently staffed by a team of three people, who were all very friendly and chatted with us as we visited for dinner on the last day of their soft opening. Jiwon was our first server, who told us he is still in touch with the previous owner (a tall skinny man with Big Glasses who was very friendly and made great chicken). He asked me if I wanted to relay a message to the other guy and I froze up, but if you see this I hope you are doing well! Your chicken was delicious and the restaurant was great while you were around!! The other server we chatted with was Mina who told us that Jay is an expert at grilling meats and has worked at / owned another Korean BBQ place.

The menu here is pretty diverse but still manageable, with a variety of Korean and Japanese dishes that are sure to satisfy anybody's tastes.

My Experience

My friends and I ordered the Silk Tofu Hiyakko Cold Salad, Kimic Pancake, Skewers Dak Gang Jung, and Vegetable Skewers, along with the EAT Aperitif set, which we all shared. Also due to an unfortunate mix-up, we ended up getting the Soft Tofu Spicy Nabe, which was very very good, but not what we ordered. They still let us have the Silk Tofu salad for free though, and apologized for the mixup.

Overall, I have to say the food here was really good! They notably re-organized the restaurant from the previous ownership and I wondered if a menu this big could be good, but everything we got was absolutely delicious.

The aperitif was very pretty. The makkgeoli was sort of thick and yogurty and very smooth to drink. The yams had an interesting smooth almost gelatinous texture to them and were probably my least favorite part of the whole meal, but still pretty good! The caprese salad in the middle had a fresh tomato soaked in yuzu honey with some cheese that felt sort of like halloumi that was slightly charred with a blowtorch. The whole thing came together very nicely and tasted great, although I might have preferred a softer cheese. Finally, the melon wrapped in prosciutto was DELICIOUS, no notes, so good (also notably Salt and Straw has a melon prosciutto flavor right now, it seems to be going around ahaha).

The main dishes we got first were a fried chicken skewer (oops not pictured) and vegetable skewer, along with a kimchi pancake, and the Tofu Nabe.

To review each of these in order:

Both the chicken and vegetable skewers were sooo good. The chicken was extremely crunchy while still being juicy and well seasoned. Mina told us that Jiwon is their chicken guy, so he will suggest chicken dishes. Well, he certainly earned the title of chicken guy with these.
The tteokbokki were maybe the best I've had. They were slightly crunchy on the outside and chewy in a satisfying way, and the sauce was pretty much the exact right level of spicy where we were like OOH but not dying. Dumplings were pretty good, nothing to write home about but nice! I liked the texture.
The soup, which was the mixup in our order was a bit of a spectacle. It was served on top of a flaming bit of Butane Gel or something and everyone was kind of scared to touch it! But it was extremely tasty, all the vegetables were perfectly cooked and the meat and tofu were delicious.
The kimchi pancake was also probably the best I've ever had. I've had a lot of these where they are kind of doughy or sort of wet from the cabbage (still usually good), but there was none of that here. This kimchi pancake was admittedly 12 dollars but truly delivered, with a crunchy outside and a punchy kimchi and scallion flavor.

Finally, after kind of sheepishly admitting the soup wasn't what we ordered, the team at EAT apologized and brought out the cold tofu salad. HONESTLY? I have to say this tofu salad was kind of the star of the meal. It was like nothing I've ever tasted. The tofu wasn't like your standard silken tofu where its just smooth and gelatinous, it almost had a cheese-like texture. And the toppings were wild! I was a bit hesitant to eat raw mushrooms even though I know they are edible they always scare me, but the flavors were all super balanced and the dressing on the tofu was like nothing I've ever tasted. It was rich like balsamic vinegar but also sweet, almost chocolatey in nature. It blended so well with the almonds and the mushrooms for this delicious combination of earthiness and sweetness that really blew me away, especially paired with the arugula, spinach, and other leafy greens. I know that salad is maybe not the main thing people order when they go to korean restaurants / bars, but I can't recommend trying this enough. Sadly, we didn't eat the leafy decoration on top and it seemed to just dissolve in the dressing at the bottom when we wanted to try it T-T.

Final Thoughts

All of this is to say, EAT is one of the best new restaurants I have tried in Capitol Hill in a long time!! Chatting with Jiwon, he mentioned that they will be cycling out the aperitif seasonally, and might change other parts of the menu as well. My friends and I were the only people in the restaurant so perhaps we experienced the absolute pinnacle of their service, but if they can deliver anything like this consistently over the future, I am sure that EAT will be packed for a long time to come. I almost want to gatekeep it and not tell people, because it's truly that good.

Thanks for reading, and if the team at EAT is reading this, good job. I will be back!!

Time Flies

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 14:45:00 GMT

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana

- Confucius

I remember seeing the game in a panic preview post a few months back, and it looked so exciting! So I was overjoyed to hear that they accepted my application for a free media copy of the game!

This is also a disclaimer, I got the game for free as a review copy, they haven't really told me anything I am expected to say but, worth pointing out.

Overview of the Game

In Time Flies, you play a little fly with a lifespan calculated from the average human lifespan in your country.

Pro-tip: If you are having a hard time, set your country to Japan. If you think the game is too easy, try playing with your country as Lesotho.

You start out in a small house. You are a fly with 76 seconds to live (in the USA). You fly around and try to complete tasks on a list, similar to Panic's other title Untitled Goose Game.

Unique Features

What's different from the Goose Game is the nature of the tasks you complete. Every goal hints at existential aims that are common to humans: "Die Old", "Learn to Let Go", "Start a revolution", to name a few.

The game looks at first glance like a small, simple game, but as you try over and over again to achieve the items on your bucket list, it becomes clear that this life is harder than expected. You find yourself tiring of repeatedly doing the same things and getting nowhere, and are forced to just fly around a bit and look at things. Much like in real life, little is accomplished by following the most direct and linear path.

Small flourishes and a great soundtrack by Koji Takahashi tie the game together and make for a meditative, beautiful experience full of laughs and surprises, with a morose but important undertone about appreciating every moment of every day, because life is short.

As a factual disclaimer, I must inform you that flies actually live on average closer to 10-20 days. A mayfly will only live about 24 hours, which still would be plenty of time to accomplish all your tasks in the game.

Thanks for reading. Remember that life is short and sweet,

Capitol Hill Block Party and Ghosts of My Past

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 08:56:00 GMT

Well, it's been a while. I suppose I have been mostly keeping myself busy, which is good, but if I am being honest, I have spent most of the last week decompressing from a deluge of activity starting with my trip to Philly and culminating in the Capitol Hill Block Party.

Post-Covid

Pretty much immediately after recovering from COVID (testing negative, being careful ofc), I had a bunch of volunteer obligations that I gave myself with the Seattle Go Center, along with a pottery class that I impulsively booked while I was ill and stuck at home (lol). This, in addition to my regular JCCCW volunteering meant that I suddenly had a pretty full schedule.

A Welcome Guest

My friend AJ came to sleep over two days before the block party. He still had work so we got coffee a few times and played A LOT of duck game. Mostly though, we did our own things while we waited for the main event... DUN DUN DUN

THE BLOCK PARTY

Well, okay. I don't really want to oversell it. I bought these tickets a few months in advance on a financially questionable whim after seeing Porter Robinson was performing. Maybe I was sad about my only Porter Robinson enjoying friend leaving Seattle idk.

The first day of the block party, I had a pretty busy day. I hosted the Arboretum Walk in the morning, then went home for a bit before my 5 hour volunteer shift teaching Go at the Bon Odori festival outside the Buddhist Temple. It was fun, but our table was very dubiously situated somewhat deep in the park, so we got fairly little foot traffic. I probably only taught like three people how to play and spent a lot of time sitting around.

I did get a free hot dog, though.

After Bon Odori, I headed to my friend Amy's place, near the block party, where we tried to listen in on some artists with friends that didn't have tickets. This just got me more excited to check it out, so after a bit of hanging, I got my friends who wanted to go and we all headed to the event.

Sadly once we got there, one friend named Daniel didn't have is ID so it was just me, AJ, and Noah. The first night was okay, we listened to Fcuckers (fucckkrs? fccukekcukuers? ??) and Thundercat, as well as catching some of DJ PeePee's set. The next day, we saw 100 Gecs and Porter Robinson, along with some other DJs.

My tier list for performances is as follows:

S - Porter Robinson : This was an incredible performance, the live visuals were insane, the entire band was locked in, and you could tell that they put a ton of effort into a great live show. A - Thundercat : Super prolific, great band. Hadn't heard of him before but I am a fan now. I felt like he really scared a lot of people off at the beginning with weird polyrhithmic noodling bits, which I thought was funny. B - Fcuckers : Okay performance, sort of indie-rock but started to feel largely pre-recorded as there were a lot of sounds not produced by any artist on stage. C - DJ PeePee : Okay I know Anderson Paak is like a big deal and i like his music, but to me this DJ set was not that cool? It was SUPER loud, and maybe I just am not into DJing but felt like nothing interesting was going on? The only good part was at the end where he played the trumpet. That was fun. D/F - 100 Gecs : Suuuper disappointing show. 100 Gecs is kind of like a ska band, with drums and guitars and brass, they could have been a big party and put on a great show. Instead it was just like two goblins got on stage and sort of jumped around while singing to a backing track. Basically like watching the artist do karaoke to their own song. By far the biggest letdown of the whole thing, especially as a pretty well-known artist.

Ghost of my Past

One of the craziest parts of the block party happened on Saturday, while my friends and I were watching the Thundercat show. This woman came up to me and was like "omg are you Daniel?" and I turned around and it was this person who DISAPPEARED from my life back in college without so much as a single word.

I had this crazy whirlwind like two-week relationship with her before she vanished without a trace, not just from my life, but from the entire college. At some point I found out she left to deal with family stuff or something, but it was super traumatic and weird for me. So seeing her in Seattle, I felt like I was in a nightmare! It was really really weird.

After the show, I asked my friends if they saw the whole thing to confirm I wasn't crazy and yeah seems to have been real. We talked for a bit and she said she would reach out on Signal, I apparently had my Signal settings set to not let me be findable by phone # so OOPS I guess she will remain a ghost from my past, since I purged her number from my contacts a few months back in some spring cleaning.

It is so weird to me how people you used to know just keep moving around. I think mentally, I just lock old friends in the places I saw them last and assume they will be there forever, especially since I am not on most social media and don't see them announcing their moves. Strange to think that these people, who have faded from full complex humans I knew and loved, are crystallized in my mind as flat caricatures painted on the map, locked in place as their age, job, relationship status that I remember them as.

Anyways, Pottery

I've been taking a weekly pottery class to try to improve my skills at throwing on the wheel, and to give myself something to do that isn't staying home doomscrolling! It's been a lot of fun. The first class we just kind of made and destroyed a bunch of vague cylinders, but the second class we made bowls! I am pretty proud of mine.

I also went back on Thursday to practice a bit more. I made one nice-ish bowl and one GORGEOUS STUNNING WORK OF ART that sadly I pulled too thin on the top and ripped. I wish I had a photo of it before the holes started forming, but I suppose the fact that I made a bowl that I regard as so beautiful means that I have made significant progress.

Thanks for reading! Hope you have been doing well.

Sorry, Baby

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 10:43:00 GMT

I didn't really know what I was getting into when I went to watch Sorry, Baby. This is probably a common trend for me, since I don't like knowing too much about movies before I watch them. For some reason, I was under the impression that the movie had something to do with a miscarriage, but that wasn't quite the case.

The film takes place in frustratingly undefined New-England town. Carmen guessed Maine, I was thinking maybe New Hampshire or Massachusetts (did I spell that right). Anyways, it goes through a few chapters of vignettes of this woman's life, showing both happy and sad parts of her life, and how she processes the bad parts.

The whole thing feels very simple, there's no crazy plot, no action scenes. Somehow all put together though, the movie is very neat. The acting is really good, I liked the music, and some of the filming choices were really powerful, like a section of the movie where they show a still of a house for a while.

The film's strength is not in being eye catching, or over the top in any way, but instead it is equal parts funny, sad, and moving in a restrained kind of way. The whole thing feels very relatable and life-affirming, while tinged with sadness. I would recommend watching it, one of my favorite movies of the year!

Thanks for reading.

Yikes, I Caught Covid-19

Sun, 06 Jul 2025 21:06:00 GMT

Well, it finally happened. After over five years since the "official" start of the pandemic, numerous close calls, and one extremely painful strep-throat like disease, I came down with what felt sort of like a cold or flu, with a significantly sore throat and mild chills and muscle aches for a few days. Honestly, having never gotten COVID before, the idea that this could be COVID didn't cross my mind. I have been vaccinated at least 6 times and figured surely nobody is carrying COVID around anymore. Apparently I was wrong!

This weekend, Carmen has been staying over with her parents, and apparently after she told her mom I was sick, her mom said "Mom says you have COVID". I was like... what, she SAYS I have it? So I planned to test, but honestly sort of forgot. Later that day, I was scrolling Bluesky and stumbled upon this article about a new COVID variant that causes a sore throat, and I immediately though "Oh god, I have a sore throat".

Anyways I still had some tests lying around after getting some of the last USPS free ones, so I took the test and sure enough two lines. I was pretty shocked, at this point I was feeling more or less okay, with barely the memory of a sore throat lingering as a reminder that I had been sick.

While broadly my COVID experience has not been that bad, it was a wake up call to encounter our old enemy in the wild again, after I had nearly forgotten it. Perhaps the worst part of the whole thing has been insane night sweating, I have no clue why this is, but I keep waking up in the middle of the night surrounded by sweat.

Anyways, all this is to say stay safe out there! I probably caught this on the plane back from Philly, and think generally masking at least in the airport if not also on the plane would be a good policy. I feel like I am always getting sick from air travel. And, if you get sick, test for COVID!! It's still around!

Thanks for reading.

Virtual Seattle 99

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 13:20:00 GMT

If you are anywhere near my age, you were probably still a very young child in the year 1999. The media since has shown it as a party year, full of excitement about the end of a millennium and the possibilities of the human race. Computers had started making their way into everyone's home and the world was at the tail end of an unprecedented period of peace, with world peace feeling like a very real possibility in the near future for many.

Against this electric backdrop of possibility, a small group of developers were quietly building a piece of software that I recently uncovered and have been completely obsessed with since: Virtual Seattle 99.

Background

If we are not especially close, you may have no idea who I am, or why I would be interested in some obscure old piece of Seattle-themed software. Well, if you are unaware, my name is Daniel, I live in Seattle, and I have a very complicated love-hate relationship with computers. I grew up playing games on the old off-white, floppy-eating behemoths that my parents keep stashed away in the basement, and have been pretty much been obsessed ever since. There has always been something so exciting about the idea of people crafting these exciting audiovisual experiences out of little more than some numbers electrically suspended in silicon. In recent years, though, I've found myself increasingly frustrated with the direction of technology, as it is increasingly used to extract value from people, control their lives, and keep them entrapped in an increasingly uncomfortable cyberspace.

Now that that's out of the way, you might wonder how I stumbled upon Virtual Seattle 99. Well, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been volunteering at the JCCCW on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Tuesday's at the museum and Thursdays at the gift shop. Yesterday's shift was my third museum shift, and the first where I began to understand why there were so many uncatalogued items in storage. While my first two days were full of interesting items with clear histories, I found myself just describing photos for a good chunk of the day. I felt like a chatbot, staring at these family photographs trying to eke out any possible historical understanding, but found nothing staring back but a happy looking family. After eating my lunch of rice and beans that I had cooked before, I finally finished my pass through the photos and got to some newspapers.

I found these much more interesting. Someone in this family had saved newspapers and scanned copies of articles from throughout the 90s, and it was oddly delightful to read all the mundane day-to-day news happening three decades ago. It humanizes the past to see ads for the same businesses, articles congratulating graduating classes. I read through and catalogued three other newspapers before finally, I arrived at the January 30 - February 5, 1999 issue of the Northwest Asian Weekly.

I am not sure exactly how the JCCCW feels about me sharing this, but since it was a public newspaper and there is no personal information here, I'll assume it's fine to share. Anyways, the newspaper was pretty normal. Lots of information about news within the asian community within Seattle. If I remember correctly, there was some sort of opinion section argument, and there was this pretty cool map of chinatown, written in an epic font:

As someone with no formal museum training, it's been a lot of fun to be able to look back at newspapers like this and see all these old restaurants and stores that have long since closed their doors. It's exciting to see how people were living all the way across the country from where I was still just a concept of a baby ( I grew up on the East Coast ).

Sadly, my photos of the newspaper end here, although I might go back and ask permission to take more. In the dead center of this paper, though, there was an article with a name that really caught my attention. It went something like "Chinatown International District to be Featured in Virtual Seattle 99". Virtual Seattle 99?? I had to know what that was, and some quick research brought me to this article, informing me that Virtual Seattle was a sort of "interactive screensaver" containing a full 3d rendered city of Seattle, with interactive information about the places on the map. I mean look at this screenshot!!

Sucked into the Virtual World

I needed to learn more. Today, on Google Maps, we have this

But that's 30 years later!! And arguably it doesn't look as good? The buildings all sort of blend together due to their gray coloring and the street features feel underwhelming, plus there are no cars driving around, no blimps in the sky. So how did 4i Software (which I am now realizing sounds kind of like "four eyes" an insult used for people with glasses), make all this? And could I run it? Why is there no Virtual Seattle 2024? These were the questions that were on my mind as ran home from the JCCCW yesterday.

Once I got home, I tried to set up a Windows 95 VM on my Mac, but had some issues stemming from Apple switching from x86 to M1 architecture a few years back, resulting in me not getting audio working and the graphics seeming a little broken. That being said, behold!! My first steps into Virtual Seattle!!

![virtualinstaller.jpg][./media/virtualinstaller.jpg]

As promised, they do include a decently sized area for the Chinatown International District! I was hunting around for the JCCCW but Nikkei Manor was as close as I could get.

Why Virtual Seattle Matters

Virtual Seattle, from what I can tell, was a fairly inexpensive CD you could buy to get a cool screensaver for your computer. It included a bunch of audio and video files you could play that showed you flying through the virtual skyline, and the music was composed by a local composer (TODO: FIND THEIR NAME!!). There is no commercial need for such a thing, other than as a sort of introductory tour of Seattle. It must have taken a herculean effort to build, seeing as it includes detailed 3d models of many of Seattle's most iconic buildings and somehow ran on Windows 95. I have not yet experienced the sounds outside of the easy to play WAV files on the internet archive, but online reviews claim they are pretty neat, with the cars making beeping noise and various other city sounds.

This project looks so big, and so pointless that it baffles my mind. To me, the only explanation for its existence could be that Jason Bay, Eric Chang, Fraser Thompson, Art Garcia, and Marco Lowe must have really loved Seattle, and wanted to make a way for people to cheaply experience this city they loved so much. The attention to detail and passion is evident throughout the project, almost every building has an info label on it and there are lots of cute touches, like the Kingdome you can blow up to replace with T-Mobile field ( I think ), and in Virtual Seattle 2000, a Y2K bug you can squash with the space needle. Their passion is evident right down to the registration card, which offers free stuff for just the price of a stamp.

I wonder sometimes if our nostalgia for the past is unjustified, as so many people say it is, but projects like this make me feel that it must have been better. Virtual Seattle contains no ads, no upsells, it doesn't attempt to keep you hooked with microtransactions. The website was a distinctly 90s color palette of black and green until their December, 2000 rebrand from Virtual Seattle 2000 to Virtual Seattle Millenium, which introduced the all new Seattle Web Bar, an index of the best web sites in Seattle. I think in some ways Virtual Seattle, ( and the unfortunate Virtual San Francisco) , was the ultimate Web Site, a representation of a physical place that was painstakingly built by caring developers.

Reading the where to buy Virtual Seattle page, I wonder what it would have felt like to walk ( or quite likely drive based on what I've heard about Seattles public transit history ) to one of these shops and pick up a Virtual Seattle disk, to boot up my computer with its loud ass hard drive and clicky clacky keyboard and installed this app. To have seen the place I live represented in stunning 3d, fully 8 years before Google Maps introduced Street View. I imagine it must have felt like anything was possible, to see this big beautiful virtual world on your screen. The future, I think, would have felt limitless.

Afterthoughts

I've reached out to the three people from Virtual Seattle's archived web site who had their profile pictures still working, and linked their LinkedIns above if anyone else is curious what they are up to.

I find the ingenuity and creativity of this software really exciting and hope you do too! I thought about writing some dark stuff about the current world but, I'm sure you already hear enough of that so I cut it out.

I'd love to know what you think about Virtual Seattle, if you happen to be someone who ACTUALLY USED IT back in 99/00/01, I would love to hear from you! Do you feel optimistic about technology?

Also I am very slightly considering working on a Virtual Seattle Revival project, seeing as it has been a full quarter of a century since the original came out. I have no clue how that would even work, but if it's something you would e interested in, I'd love to know.

Thanks for reading! Hope you are enjoying the start of summer.

Going Light-ish

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 13:58:00 GMT

Disclaimer

I have been avoiding talking about this thing for a while, in fact I considered returning it or selling it for a while. Upon initially purchasing the phone, it sat in my desk drawer a beautiful black monolith bereft of purpose. A strange intention to somehow be better but lacking any substance to make it worth using. It was kind of embarrassing to have pre-ordered this thing only for it to sit around. Lately, though, I have been slowly trying to work it into my life to replace my iPhone in small, subtle ways. I am hoping to fully switch over in the next few months.

The Waiting Game

I will confess, I had been watching the Light Phone subreddit pretty religiously after ordering it, I think think this is common. You spend a bunch of money hoping to make a lifestyle change and then you wait and watch other people talk about it while you change nothing. I began to see what I would consider questionable design decisions, things that the announcement of the phone didn't mention, or features that were supposed to exist that just didn't. Some of these were minor things like the fingerprint sensor not being set up (yet! or so they say). Other things were bigger and kind of weird to me, like their "Dashboard" system

The "Dashboard" is meant to be the hub of lightOS, presumably to free your mind of tedious things like sharing photos and changing apps. I think philosophically the idea of "locking" your choices of apps from another source is a good one, but began to imagine situations where I would get in trouble. I had a nightmare where this was my only phone and I was just trapped somewhere unable to get help. This is weird, and highlights how ingrained our phone anxiety is in our daily lives, I should reiterate-- this was before I received the phone!!

People complained about random bugs, and notably for me, about the lack of alternative messaging apps. I consider myself to be a privacy conscious person, and I find it difficult to stomach the idea to have to use unencrypted SMS for all my communication. Perhaps they though "eh, just don't say important things over text", which I get. I mean they were clearly not trying to design a phone for your current life, they were designing a phone for a sort of ideal life, where you move as much of your communication in person as possible and stop relying on these metal boxes for everything as much as possible. This sort of ties into something I'll touch on more later, [[##Philosophical Mismatch]]

Phone Arrival

A few weeks ago, the light phone arrived. This was a weird moment for me, one filled with a confusing sense of excitement and dread. On the one hand, I spent ¿$399? many months ago for it at the pre-pre-sale price, so it wasn't the ridiculous $699 they charge now. On the other hand, I did still spend a notable amount of money on a new phone when I already have a phone! A really good one!! What was I thinking!!?

Many people remark on the packaging the phone comes in, and I will confess, it is really nice! They collaborated with Toyo Steel to deliver a nice metal box, with a nice braided cable. I still don't really know what to do with the box, it's sitting in my drawer holding the phone documents. The phone itself was immediately very satisfying. For a phone that is designed to make you use it less, it feels incredible to hold. I think the screen is quite nearly square, and the whole thing is just very nice and cool to the touch. The little camera focus button is very nice and the rotary encoder on the side is cool, if a bit weird to dedicate to brightness control.

Once I got it all unpacked, I connected it to WiFi and tried to set it up on their website. This kind of reinforced the ick I felt reading reddit posts about their whole "dashboard" system. I don't really distrust Light as a company, but at the same time, I don't think they have enough of a track record or customer base for me to want to pass nearly all of my personal info through them. I thought about activating the SIM card they sent me, but they charge $25 a month for 1gb of data, which seemed ridiculous, so I held off. The downside of not activating the phone is that with no SIM card, it was completely infeasible to even try to use as a main phone. I didn't bother taking it out at all, it just sat in my desk.

About a week later, I opened my desk again and there it was, staring at me. I figured that I put all that money into this phone, I might as well try to use it. Mint Mobile, the official cellular provider of Deadpool, has a plan that is just $15 a month for 5gb of data, which seemed more in line with what I was expecting. As a trial period I signed up for 3 months. The SIM card shipped in about another week, and there I was. My Light Phone all SIM'ed up and ready to face the world. And yet I felt apprehensive.

Light Phone Culture

I had just convinced a large majority of my friends to add me on Signal. This had been a long campaign of mine based on the general sense that Apple's privacy stance has been weakening over time and the desire to have an even playing field to chat with my Android using friends. Now that I had made everyone switch to using this special app, I just felt weird reaching out to say "hey I just got a new phone number, we can text normally now."

This feels more generally true of the Light Phone and the culture around it. While I broadly understand the sense that we are too reliant on apps to do basic tasks in our daily lives, I don't really think it's reasonable to now put yourself in a situation where you need to ask your friends to do stuff for you on their phones. Most people switching to these things already have perfectly good phones! I think I have a general fear about being a burden to people and so the Light Phone, as SIM'ed up as it was, remained basically a paperweight for a while. I still felt kind of ashamed to say to anyone "hey i got a worse phone, here's my bad phone number".

The Turning Point, Finding Light Phone Mods

Having this 4g-enabled chunk of metal sitting around continued to feel strange to me for a while. Why couldn't I just get over the mental hurdle and carry this phone around? Every couple of days I would check the Light Phone subreddit, wondering if anyone else was voicing similar concerns. This is when I began to notice something. From time to time, people would ask about installing other apps, or changing some feature of the phone, and they'd be pretty harshly shut down by other users of the subreddit. It was strange, a sort of self-policing community that tried to silence suggestions that the phone was anything less than perfect. Some people were open to changes, sure, but there was this pervasive sense of almost worship, of reverence for the Light Ethos.

While browsing some of these comments, I saw someone say "Hey this isn't the place for talking about other apps, post that shit on r/ModifiedLightPhones". This was an eye opener to me. I was sort of under the impression that LightOS was a bespoke operating system designed to uphold the design decisions of its founders, but checking out the ModLP community, I realized it was just basically an Android app. This was very exciting to me, and I resolved to install Signal on my LP3 as soon as I could. There was trouble in paradise though, apparently the main way of accessing the "Android Layer" of the phone was patched in a recent LightOS software update. This left a bunch of people on the subreddit confused and disappointed, since so many of us were excited to try to expand our Light Phone horizons.

About another week later, I noticed a pinned post at the top of the subreddit, a Google Doc describing how to set up the android layer of your light phone. Pretty much immediately I got to work, the workaround for the Android layer was to press WIN+N on a plugged in keyboard, which is a standard Android shortcut to open the notification shade and sure enough, it popped open. I WAS IN.

The rest of the guide was spectacularly helpful in terms of setting up a de-googled Android phone. I had used Android a long time ago, but it has changed a lot, and it's especially tricky when avoiding Google. Luckily the guide is very detailed and I had no problems setting everything up (except for in the keymapper app, where you need to set your UI scale to be as small as possible or the "record shortcut" button won't display).

Light and Unburdened

Now, I am very satisfied with my phone. The LightOS layer is there and perfectly usable with its camera's inexplicable ability to be in color while the rest of the OS is black and white. I even got the fingerprint sensor working! In general, I find the phone very fun to use now, it still is weirdly sized enough to discourage social media or excessive use, but the form factor and privacy of a De-Googled Android OS make it feel great.

I have been thinking of switching back to Android for a while now as an iPhone user of ~8 years. Given all the political turmoil, un-warranted arrests, and general technocratic vibe in the country right now, I've gotten somewhat paranoid, and Apple's privacy stances have just felt weaker and weaker over time-- their integration of AI throughout the OS has been so messy it has really weakened my confidence in the company. Google on the other hand is literally data-harvesting company so I have been wanting to try a De-Googled android phone for quite some time.

Switching between the Android and Light layer of the phone feels seamless and the Before Launcher is really nearly identical to LightOS. Its nice to be able to use mostly open-source apps for things I care about, and I've been experimenting with getting the phone working with meshtastic, though it seems like the bluetooth is kind of borked and I may have voided their warranty by getting the Android stuff working.

Philosophical Mismatch

I think there is fundamentally an idealogical tension within the idea of the Light Phone. On the one hand, people love phones, it is a technology that has changed the world, and more and more random things require them, especially after the pandemic with the proliferation of QR codes. On the other hand, people hate their phones, it often feels like something that exists to leech of of your attention, your time, to make money for big companies that provide almost nothing of value, that just suck up billions of dollars and output incremental hardware and software updates designed to increase their profit margins.

The Light Phone is a very opinionated piece of technology, which is something I generally like. I think that designing ANYTHING for EVERYBODY must result in a worse product for some people. On the other hand, taking an opinionated, if perhaps not universally understood approach leads to a product that will be loved by people who agree with the company mission. And generally, I think I can say I am aligned with Light's ethos. The most meaningful parts of your life will almost certainly not come from your phone, the time that people spend on their phones is, from what I can tell, almost universally time wasted.

That being said, I don't agree with the paternalist attitude taken by the Light company to their software. Phones are inherently a deeply personal object. People carry them pretty much all the time and everyone has different needs they expect a phone to serve. A one-size-fits-all approach to the software, the way Light has architected it, leads to the creation of more of a museum piece. Without any ability to customize the phone, the Light phone will for most people be a talking point, a display of an ingroup "Light" philosophy, but it cannot induce meaningful change in the lives of its users if it is not willing to meet people halfway and accept needs that go beyond their predefined boundaries.

My impression of LightOS as it exists right now is that it is a beautiful piece of minimalist design masquerading as a phone, and for some people that is what they want, but for most people who bought the device, it's probably not.

Closing Thoughts

I think the Light Phone is neat, and I am excited that companies like Light are still around trying to push the envelope of what it means to be a phone. I also think that it should be easier to break free from LightOS without needing to do some weird external keyboard trick. I've just transferred a VCF of my most used contacts over to the Light Phone and will be slowly trying to use it as my primary device over the coming weeks and months (at least the 3 that I've already paid for cell service).

Going forward, I'm hoping the bluetooth system gets a bit less buggy so I can get meshtastic or reticular networks paired with the phone, and generally I hope that Light as a company and community takes a less aggressive attitude towards tinkerers, we're not trying to impede on your Zen by having the option to modify the phone; in fact many great advancements in phones all around have been created by people tinkering with open source hardware and software. I also would really like some sort of wallet. I know the phone has NFC but without Google services (which I don't really want), getting a mobile wallet on here is quite challenging. I do, of course, have physical cards, but there is a real peace of mind in knowing that if you forgot a card or your wallet gets stolen / lost, you can still pay for things digitally.

Damn, this was a long post with no photos. If you have read this far, please find some way to let me know, dm me on Bluesky or message me on Signal or something. I would love to hear your thoughts on the whole "Light Phone" thing (other than the pricing, I am fully aware its bonkers), or how you view your phone usage.

Thanks for reading!

Getting Started with Meshtastic

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 15:50:00 GMT

Background

A few months ago, I saw Boris post on bluesky about a group buy for a Vancouver mesh networking club. I was interested at the time, and did a bit of research into what this "mesh network" actually was. I ended up not buying either of the two devices at the time, feeling like I didn't know enough about what was going on and wasn't sure if Boris had strong enough arms to throw these radios across the border from Vancouver to Seattle. Anyways, a few weeks later, I saw Meshtastic mentioned again somewhere again, maybe in this WIRED article? After taking a look around a bit, I got a bit curious about these mesh networks, so I found some relatively cheap, waterproof mesh radios and decided to test them out.

LoRa Overview

LoRA (short for Long range Radio), is a form of radio modulation that can be used to send messages inexpensively over relatively long distances. It is very limited in its bandwidth, so it's not well suited for sending large amounts of information. The upside is that it works well in the unlicensed Sub-GHz spectrum, meaning that pretty much anybody can develop software that uses it.

Meshtastic Overview

Meshtastic is an open-source software project first developed by Kevin Hester in 2020 as an experimental way to communicate in areas without internet access. It is a firmware designed for cheap, accessible microcontrollers to use common LoRa antennae to send and forward messages. It's been developed quite a bit since it's inception, and now has published firmware for dozens of hardware radios, as well as companion apps for most OS'es.

Getting Started

I ended up buying two of the Seed Studio T1000E radios I linked above, figuring they were inexpensive enough that it would be beneficial to have a backup should I somehow fry one in my inexperience. These seem to be some of the most popular options due to being fairly cheap, very light, and waterproof. They don't have removable antennae which might be a dealbreaker for serious Radioheads, but from what I could tell, they are pretty simple and well supported. They shipped relatively quickly from the Seed Studio website, although I think they are occasionally on sale for cheaper elsewhere.

Flashing Meshtastic Firmware

The SeedStudio T1000e comes with some goofy firmware pre-installed that literally makes you sign up with an email address to do anything. I think it's meant to function as an airtag or something but we don't want that proprietary trash, so the first step was to immediately overwrite the firmware with Meshtastic.

Setting up the radio started off with a bit of a wild goose chase. My primary browser is Firefox, which doesn't support the WebSerial API, so I tried to install the PlatformIO extension for VSCode. The problem is that I actually use VSCodium (an open source version without Microsoft telemetry), which doesn't list PlatformIO in their extension store apparently due to a weird licensing issue. After spending a lot of time tinkering and finding this blog post, I got it installed and was immediately so intimidated by the interface that I decided to just install Chromium to use WebSerial.

Once I got Chromium installed, I headed to flasher.meshtastic.org and chose my T1000e as the firmware target. This led me to the next issue where clicking the "Enter DFU mode" button on the website seemingly did nothing. I found out that you can manually mount the T1000e as a disk by holding the button and quickly flicking the magnetic cable onto the back twice. This is a bit finicky but eventually I got the blessed T-1000E drive showing up in finder. Then it was just a matter of dropping the .u2f file they provided onto the drive, et voila! The device awkwardly ejects from MacOS and reboots with a satisfying beep.

First Impressions of the Network

Once my card had the firmware installed, configuring it involved installing the Meshtastic mobile app on my phone and pairing it with the card over BLE. Based on the info on https://pugetmesh.org/, I configured it to use LONG_FAST with frequency slot 20. I then opened up the "Channels" page in Meshtastic and noticed that there was a red unlocked symbol over the channels, so I did some research and found out that by default, Meshtastic will broadcast your location periodically (assuming you have a GPS module) over an unencrypted-ish channel. I think technically the default is to share your APPROXIMATE location within about a mile or two, but I wanted to keep track of my precise location.

After doing some research, I found out that Meshtastic will regularly broadcast information over your default channel, but not other channels. This meant that if i just created an encrypted channel, I could theoretically track my location privately, as all my location updates would be sent encrypted. With my personal channel set up and the default LongFast channel added as a secondary, I walked out into the world to see what this network was all about.

It was pretty fun! Walking around, I would get pinged on my phone regularly that my node picked up a new Node on the network. I sent a few messages over LongFast (not sure if this is bad ettiquette or not) and got one response of "Rgr". I also noticed that a bunch of people had emojis show up on their nodes so after some research, I set my short name to contain an emoji (you will never guess which one) and was excited to see it pop up on the map!!

I had a fun day of walking around looking at all the nodes, checking out the hardware everyone was using and the names they chose. At one point, I was kind of freaked out because by default the T1000e beeps for a full 60 seconds when it receives a message. This caused my little card to beep like crazy when I got that "Rgr" message. I found out that this can be disabled in the "External Notifications" section of that app, so I was less worried about my phone beeping up a storm at dinner if someone decided to say hi.

This is what my map looked like at the end of the night, which was pretty cool to look at!

Lingering Questions

After one day of pretty intensive experimentation and research, here are some of the questions I was left with and some assumptions about the answers

After seeing all these other nodes, I worry about privacy. I had been sending out lots of location pings and wanted to make sure they weren't publicly visible. I put this to the test today by setting up my second node without the encryption key and placing it near the first node. It did, in fact seem like the second node had no idea of the first node's existence / location, which is what I want. I am curious how this works with the secondary channels.
I know that the T1000e is advertised as having a roughly 2km range, I would love to test it out. I assume I can have roughly 2km of range if I stand on the roof and keep it plugged in, maybe.
Is this network a viable shadow-communications network? Could I gift all of my friends one of these little things and maintain a sort of internet-free encrypted group chat? Considering some of my friends are reluctant to even use Signal, this seems unlikely. I do wonder about the scalability of these mesh networks, though. I have heard that in some other places where there are more operators, the network can run into congestion issues or even be disrupted completely by spam / bad actors. This makes me wonder how effective it would be in something like a protest situation.
How far away can I realistically get a message to from here? The Meshtastic documentation discourages increasing your max-hops from 3, claiming it would cause unnecessary network congestion. I can't really tell how far the big relay nodes reach, but I'm guessing maybe with 3 hops I could get like 50 miles away?
Related to the previous bullet point, I have heard of a project called MeshCore. It seems like a more focused chat app built on similar technologies to Meshtastic, but with more directed routing to improve delivery range. I initially installed MeshCore on one of my T1000e's and Meshtastic on the other one. It seemed like Meshtastic had a bigger community and more support so I am focusing it on it a bit more right now, but MeshCore seems very cool, if a bit less feature-rich.
What is the deal with MQTT? I have seen that it is some sort of internet-based IOT protocol, but I am not sure how it factors into the whole Meshtastic network. Some people seem to love it, some people seem to hate it. Afaict, MQTT is used by some nodes to forward information to internet services and to relay info from internet services over the Mesh Network. It seems to bother people because it uses bandwidth for random internet stuff, but I'm not really sure how much of a premium bandwidth is really at on this network, something I'll need to investigate.

Cool Stuff at the Hoseki Bako Gift Shop

Thu, 19 Jun 2025 16:26:00 GMT

I had a pretty nice day. Slept in a bit since carmen snuck out of the house before I woke up, then quickly made some tea and headed to the JCCCW to do my volunteer shift at the gift shop.

A Pleasant Walk

On my walk there, I saw these interesting plants, which caught my eye. I am not sure if these are flowers or just pretty bracts.

The Gift Shop

I found out about a bunch of neat stuff at the gift shop today that I didn't know about. The first neat thing I found was this incense burner / teapot. We don't really know what it's intended purpose is, but it looks like a tiny teapot on a burner. Its all made of cast iron as far as I know.

Later, I was chatting with Josh and Eric in the back room and Eric mentioned a pachinko game. I was shocked to see they had a big bright Evangelion pachinko machine in the back. I threw a few balls back, not really sure how it's supposed to work but it was pretty cool.

After showing me the pachinko machine, Eric showed me to the record room and demonstrated a completely analog record player that was still working and surprisingly loud!! Especially considering there was no big amplifier horn. Apparently it was sold as a picnic accessory.

Overall, it's been a great day. I always love seeing people coming to the gift shop and being excited about all the cool stuff there. I made lots of sales too! People bought a surprising amount today.

Later, I'm planning to go to a pasta bar named Donna's for cheap pasta dinner and fancy drinks.

The Percy Food Tax

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 17:23:00 GMT

If we have never met, it may interest you to know that I have two cats. One orange cat named Percy (Persimmon) and one gray and white cat named Charli (XCX). We adopted Percy considerably after Charli, and their initial introduction was a bit rocky. Percy didn't want to stay in one room and kept clawing at the doors and after about a week of sleepless nights we just decided to let him out and risk the consequences.

Perhaps as a result of our botched introduction, or perhaps due to Charli's particularly snippy temperament (likely a combination of the two), our cats have a rocky relationship. At first I would describe it as actively bad, Percy would constantly try sniffing Charli and chasing her around. In the middle of the night we would hear hissing.

Here are two images of them for your reference throughout the rest of this post.

However since then, their relationship has taken some strange turns. Quite often when I come home now, I will find the two lying on the ground right next to each other, seemingly having been chilling in eachother's presence for quite some time. When I am home though, they tend to stay separate, their interactions still tenuous at best.

I suspect that part of this tension is with regards to food. Ever since we adopted Percy, he has been a very hungry boy. He will eat anything and everything he deems to be remotely edible including Charli's food. This has led to days where Percy would eat a good portion of Charli's meals before she even gets downstairs to eat, and I imagine this hunger makes her somewhat snippier towards her happy-go-lucky orange roommate.

Lately, however, I have noticed a strange trend. Whenever I feed the two cats, Percy will take one SINGLE bite from Charli's bowl, then move on to his own bowl, as if he doesn't want to take too much from her, but wants to make sure their food is the same. Obviously I have no clue what is motivating this behavior, but it has been very funny to see Percy take a food tax every time I feed them. Charli, for her part, doesn't seem to mind too much. I think she is used to eating a bit less, and she is much less active.

Hanayama Spiral Review

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:31:00 GMT

I was thinking, and I actually DO remember my first Hanyama puzzle. My whole family went on a trip to Prague a few years ago. My mom wanted to see it because she had a pen pal there growing up. It was a fun trip, but anyways at one point my brother and I headed to a toy / souvenir shop and I saw this NEWS puzzle. I thought it looked really interesting and my parents had given me some spending Euros(?) so I bought it. It turned out to be, in my opinion, one of their goofiest puzzles. There is sort of a trick to it, but I consider it such a lame gimmick that I think it should be ranked like a level 2 instead of level 6.

Spiral Puzzle

Anyways, with that backstory out of the way, lets get to the Spiral Puzzle! I actually think this is my favorite Hanayama Puzzle I own, as I generally judge them by a few criteria:

visual beauty - I prefer puzzles that look sort of dense and symmetrical rather than some of their twisty looking skinny puzzles.
solid feeling - I like puzzles that feel intractable when you pick them up. Like a robust metal object with no clear way to disassemble it.
exposed mechanism - This is something I have realized after playing with a bunch of their puzzles, but I am not a huge fan of puzzles like Infinity and Cylinder. Having aphantasia and trying to decode these inner mechanisms is very annoying, I try to take notes on paper and make diagrams but ultimately I find them more of a nuisance than fun.
surprise factor - Some puzzles look complicated, intricate safe-looking things, lots of pieces. These can be interesting, but for me the best puzzles have a surprise factor to them, seeming simple but concealing an impossible-seeming challenge.

Spiral puzzle gets top marks on all of these criteria in my opinion. At first glance, it looks like a jigsaw puzzle with 5 pieces, it should be trivial to solve. People who pick it up are regularly confused at how it even holds itself together. The whole thing feels solid with almost no play between the pieces, making it even more baffling how they slide around up and down without falling apart. The pieces are all visible and can be inspected while playing with the puzzle, and it honestly makes a pretty satisfying fidget toy in it's solved state.

The solution to disassembling the puzzle is sort of tricky, but I think can be done in a little while by most people with some fidgeting. The REASSEMBLY process, however was pretty brutal. As I mentioned, it just seems like a 5 piece jigsaw puzzle, so the weird idiosyncrasies of the pieces make them super annoying to distinguish and put together in order. That being said, I can now pretty confidently disassemble and reassemble it in about a minute or two, so it's definitely something that can be well understood.

All, in all, this is a pretty perfect puzzle from Hanayama in my opinion!! I love handing it to friends and having them knit their brow as they slide the pieces back and forth.

Hanayama Marble Review

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:18:00 GMT

Backstory

As those of you who know me well will know, I try not to collect too many things. I find that having too much stuff around stresses me out, so when possible I avoid buying things I don't need. There is one notable exception, however, which is Hanayama Huzzles.

Ever since I was a kid, I found these little beauties absolutely captivating. I don't think I actually got a Hanayama branded one until well into my teens, but parents and family members always gave me these little metal toy puzzles which I loved but was not very good at due to my challenges with visualization.

As an adult, I bought one on a whim at Red Balloon Toys two years ago (they no longer stock them, last I checked) and was immediately hooked. I actually don't remember which puzzle it was, but there was something so satisfying about the weight of it, the precision with which the pieces locked together. I could not stop fiddling with it, but didn't make much progress for a long time, until suddenly it fell apart in my hands. This has been a bit of a pattern for me with these puzzles since. I will be completely stumped by the mechanism until I spontaneously disassemble it in a moment of inspiration / stupidity.

The marble

This puzzle is ranked on the website as a 5/6 or "expert" difficulty. Which I would say is pretty accurate considering it evaded me for months. It was the last one I bought at Red Balloon and initially I was kind of disappointed by it. It looks very robust in the box, but is very fiddly in the hands, it's hard to describe exactly what I mean but some Hanayama Puzzles (square, spiral) feel very robust in the hand, like one tightly machined unit. Marble isn't really like that, it is pretty much immediately falling apart. Getting the pieces actually apart was a bit of a challenge, but like I mentioned before, it just disassembled itself on my walk down the hill.

This led me to an annoying situation. See, I have a small collection of maybe 12 of these puzzles now, but most of them are solved or at least in a near-solved state. Not so with this marble. The slippery little middle pieces combined with the flimsy outer frame meant that I had these four pieces lying around, two of which could easily roll off a table. These were moved around my apartment for months, unassembled.

The solution

Finally, today I was doing a bit of cleaning and once again felt frustrated at the fact that I hadn't yet solved the puzzle with the annoying rolly bits. This is especially frustrating since I had disassembled it so quickly after buying it. I sat down and really focused, and managed to FINALLY put the puzzle back together after about 15 minutes of careful examination.

I'm not sure if it was my previous experience, or the fact that I had just solved the spiral puzzle after quite a bit of effort, but it seemed pretty easy, almost surprisingly so. That being said, I'm not a huge fan of this puzzle. Like I mentioned, the whole thing feels kind of flimsy when solved, and I find rotating the spherical inner components to be a bit annoying. I will say, however, that it is one of the most beautiful looking puzzles Hanayama makes. Something about the perfect sphere nestled inside the frame makes it seem so easy, so natural.

Party Day!!

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:04:00 GMT

UPDATE: Oh my god I published this with like half a sentence, I sort of forgot what I was planning to write here!!

Was supposed to get together with my friends for a little pizza party, was shocked to see Carmen prepping food all day. I guess I didn't check the group chat so I didn't realize it was going to be a potluck-style party!

It was so nice to see all of my friends in one place, and eat lots of food! Makes me want to host more big parties like this. It was a bit overwhelming to try to talk to everyone, especially because my neighbor came up to the roof to grill some stuff while we were up there!

Maybe this year, I will try to have people over more often, it's a lot of fun.

Analog Coffee

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 13:50:00 GMT

This is basically my go-to place for quick coffee or food in capitol hill so its an easy 5 star rating.

Overview

Analog coffee fills a much needed niche in the Northwestern Capitol Hill area by providing a (relatively) inexpensive option for decent, healthy food and spectacular local coffee roasters. As far as I know they do not roast their own coffee but they are a solid all around location that manages to deliver on drinks, food, and atmosphere without being extortionately expensive.

The Coffee

Analog is one of the best coffee places in the city, full stop. Their standard drinks are made with a nice medium-light roast from Herkimer, which is always good, but if you are feeling adventurous you can try their rotating single-origin for $1 more. I spring for it from time to time when I'm feeling fancy and I'm rarely disappointed. The baristas are all friendly and talented, making each drink pretty much perfect every time. Admittedly, the shop is a modern cafe serving mostly lighter roasts, so if you yearn for that old-school chocolately dark coffee, they might not be ideal.

The Food

I must confess that I am frequently bewildered by the menu decisions at the B-Side cafe. Their food is frequently excellent, but they occasionally make menu changes, either out of necessity or on some whim, that I cannot fathom. When I first started going there, the rice bowl was spectacular, a feast of roasted mushrooms and fermented vegetables with a soft egg that healed the soul. The vegetable selection rotated and changed over time until there was no longer a roasted component for many months, and in fact they added caraway seeds to the pickled cabbage which I am not personally a fan of.

That being said, they also quietly introduced some braised beans to the menu a few months ago that were absolutely, shockingly delicious. Braised in some sort of thick sauce, they were a small, unctuous delight that served as a delicious $10 meal, paired with two slices of hearty sourdough toast to mop up the excess liquid. The beans have gone through two iterations since then, switching to a green sauce and then to a cold salad. I found the green sauce tasty enough, but the cool beans were quite disappointing when I didn't expect them.

Finally, the last time I went, they switched back to roasted vegetables in the bowl!! All this confusion aside, B-Side still has excellent food most of the time, their avocado and roasted veggie toast are both pretty good, although dusted with a bit too much Za'atar for my taste.

The Atmosphere

The final element in making analog a true five star cafe is the atmosphere, the ambiance, the vibe. Living up to the name "Analog Coffee" (and B-Side Foods), they are constantly cycling through a large vinyl selection, making the cafe a popular spot for laptop vultures to perch and do their mysterious work. That being said, the space is small enough that it always feels intimate, the wooden interior along with their decision to make a large section bench seating means that you are very likely to strike up a conversation while you're there.

Final Words

Overall, I cannot recommend Analog Coffee enough, although perhaps I should not, as they have been getting more and more crowded lately. Maybe I would recommend going when I am not there? There is often a line out the door, but in my opinion it is for good reason. I look forward to going back every time!

Another nice day

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 21:15:00 GMT

Today was generally a very nice day. The meetup walk was full of interesting people and the weather was gorgeous. It's always interesting to chat with people about their lives and interests, and I love doing my little bit about the sassafrass tree. I keep waiting for it to get old, but people still seem to like it. It was an interesting turn of events that multiple people came that hadn't come in a while, it almost felt like a family reunion.

The walk fell a bit behind schedule because every group was sort of walking at their own pace, but that's fine. It's a good sign that people are so engrossed in chatting that they slow down and lose track of where they are! I sort of regret not spending more time moving backwards through the group and chatting with the newer people, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

After the walk, some friends and I went to analog coffee to get food, we ate outside on the back porch area which was nice. The cafe was super super crowded but since we pre-ordered online, we just snuck in to get our food. The guy selling Real Change on the corner was on some sort of loud anti-gay rant, which was kind of weird but oh well.

It was pretty exciting to see all the "No Kings" protesters walking to the park. Truly it was waves and waves of people, lots of kids too. I've never seen anything like it before.

After getting home, I took a long nap and worked on my website. It felt like a good day. The whole tank parade in DC was crazy though.

Materialists

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:59:00 GMT

I went into this movie more or less blind, with the only information I was given ahead of time being:

The movie is directed by the same director as Past Lives
Carmen said it was like Challengers

Synopsis

The movie follows a New York woman living a somewhat lavish life as a matchmaker for a snazzy matchmaking firm called "Adore". We see her sitting with clients and discussing what they are looking for in a partner, and hear about her successful track record in the business. We simultaneously start to see snippets of her personal love life and watch as she is torn between two potential suitors. In the end, she seems to make a decision.

My Thoughts

Disclaimer

I tried to keep the synopsis intentionally a bit vague to avoid being overly spoiler-y but this section I will be more detailed so please close the tab if you are trying to watch it!

Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable movie, the cinematography was great and it was fun to see Lucy chatting with her clients and seeing the mundane day to day life of a matchmaker. The story is sort of compelling, I understand how they thought "I bet the love life of a matchmaker would be fun movie". Pedro Pascal was, of course, excellent, although the character he played was maybe a bit incomplete.

My complaints are ultimately twofold. One– I don't really know if this was a romcom. Yes there was romance, and a sort of silly circumstance, but it was Not Funny. I think I laughed twice throughout the whole movie, and only one of the laughs was a big one. Mostly, I just felt a bit confused the whole time. This brings me to my second complaint.

She chose wrong? Like I understand that arguably the moral of the story is that "love is all that mattters" or "when you know, you know", but that feels like a reductive model of the world. Whatever the guy Chris Evans was playing was named seemed to be sort of lazy, boring, lived with a bunch of roommates. On the other hand, Pedro Pascal was rich and successful but seemed like, almost comically hollow? Perhaps rich people are like that, but his "I know how the game is played" thing just felt sort of wrong to me, unusually cynical in the same way that Chris Evans doe-eyed puppy dog poor guy act felt overly romanticized. I think if she truly didn't like the rich guy, she probably shouldn't have chose either of them.

It felt like a false choice, ultimately. Her getting back with her ex because he claims he'll change his life and love her forever is a trope so played out in romance movies, but so rooted in a weird irresponsible "I can fix him" desire. Even if Mr. Warbucks Pascal was not the one for her, it felt like the movie took an unsatisfying twist when she started hitting up her ex. This made the entire last third of the movie feel like it cheapened the whole thing, like the beginning did a great job setting up a conflict and interesting environment only for it to end on the classic "small-town boyfriend" trope.

Anyways, it was a fine movie. As a New Yorker, I love to see the city in movies, but I probably wouldn't go around recommending it to my friends.

everything sux

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 20:10:00 GMT

the world is so tiring wish it would all just please stop i am so eepy

Chill Day

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:22:00 GMT

Today, I had a lot of stuff that had built up around my apartment just generally from not cleaning for a bit and from some events I had hosted over the last few weeks. Been making a concerted effort to clean them out

I also designed this long goose badge which I am pretty proud of, will ideally make it a bit smoother eventually.

I am not sure if it will load properly, only time will tell.

In addition to cleaning, I

Made a pretty banging latte in the morning.
Installed both iOS 26 (bad) and macOS 26 (good?)
Am making chicken broth

My whole house smells like chicken, I probably have poultry in my pores.

First Working Day at the JCCCW

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:20:00 GMT

Today was my first real day of volunteering at the JCCCW after my preliminary visit mentioned here. It was sort of mundane in many ways, but also felt really nice after years of isolation from a Pandemic, followed by a WFH tech job, followed by a few months of unemployment. I met many wonderful people at the center / remet people whose names I could not keep in my tiny walnut brain for even one single week.

Breakdown of the day

After arriving at around 11:30 instead of 11 due to bus issues (and admittedly a bit of personal laziness), I walked in and re-introduced myself to Atsuko, who manages the library there. I then headed up to the main office where I was given a tour of the museum and some history of the place that I didn't get my first time visiting. I might eventually need to write a longer blog post about them, they have a really interesting history starting off as a Japanese language school, then temporarily being used as a group housing center after Japanese people returned to Seattle from the Internment Camps at the end of WWII.

My actual work started in the museum file room where I was shown a bunch of boxes, many with labels, many without and told to take my pick. Apparently a previous president of the museum accepted a large number of donations without really filing them, so they were trying to get a better inventory of what they have.

My first task was very repetitive but still interesting in its own right. I was given a box full of documents that had been filed in Past Perfect (a truly dinosaur-esque piece of software), but not yet labelled as being in this box. This seemed like a comical oversight on my part, imagine going through all the work to painstakingly describe the size, shape, state, and history of each item in a box but not to mention which box it was in?

Nonetheless, it was my first task so I went at it, figuring it would be a great way to learn the interface and maybe come up with some hacks to make things quicker. I got pretty adept at the keyboard shortcuts but there were lots of papers so I probably took about two hours to get through the whole box.

There is something really interesting about doing museum work like this. On the one hand it is deeply mundane, but on the other hand, each picture and record described a family that lived a long time ago, that had a full, rich life. There were pictures of people in front of their churches, photos of what looked like business meetings, letters written in both Japanese and English. Every artifact felt precious and interesting, one of the last remnants of lives that no longer persist on this world. The office chatter was calming and pleasant--I felt oddly at peace.

Once I finished with the box, I asked if there was a functioning microwave; I had brought my own lunch and felt awkward eating at my desk. They led me to the kitchen where I plopped my leftover Avgolemono and waited. Atsuko came by and introduced me to Hideko, who also worked there, though I forgot what exactly she did. Atsuko stayed around and we talked about tea, I told her one of my favorite teas was Kabusecha, a type of Japanese green tea that is grown in the shade. She said she had never heard of it, showed me this Yamamoto Strawberry Sencha they had a box of in the kitchen. It was pretty good!

While I was awkwardly eating my lunch alone in the conference room, two visitors came in and apologized for disturbing my lunch. I felt a bit strange because the room is sort of part of the museum, but I hadn't expected any visitors. The one of the visitors turned out to be on the board of the JCCCW, and was giving her friend, who was visiting from the Smithsonian, a tour of the place. I tried to eat my soup quietly so as not to disturb them.

Once I finished eating, I headed back upstairs to see if there was anything else I could help with. One of the other paid museum workers took me to the file room and gave me a heavy box, then walked me through what is expected when categorizing new items in Past Perfect. I found this work much more interesting, it forces you to really look closely at these items. However, in a funny turn of events, this box was mostly heavy because it contained a metal desk clock. In fact there were only two items in the box, a brass clock and a massive Imperial Japanese Rising Sun flag. Maddy took a picture of me and Eric holding it. I must admit it was pretty cool, especially because the intake paperwork said it was an American flag.

After finishing this box, I had worked about four hours and been at the JCCCW for about four and a half, so I headed home. It was a really interesting day and I am looking forward to going back! I probably will eat in the office like everyone else, though.

My only photo from the entire day was this photo I took of the white gloves they gave me. I feel like a real museum worker!

New York Times Avgolemono Review

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 20:30:00 GMT

Background

About a week ago, Carmen and I headed to the Greek festival in Capitol Hill. There was lots of tasty food and it was generally a lot of fun, but one of the dishes stood out to me as particularly interesting.

There was a soup called Avgolemono, which was about $5 for a cup. It was a very thick soup that seemed to be a porridge made up of rice, lemons, and eggs. It was pretty thick and sludgy, but the taste was spectacular, I wondered how it was made.

The Recipe

I was shocked later that day when I was scrolling through Bluesky to see a recipe on the NYT Cooking website called Avgolemono Chicken Soup with Gnocchi. It sort of felt like fate being so close to the greek festival, so I immediately saved it to Crouton(an excellent recipe app, highly recommend). Fast forward to today, I was getting groceries and decided to get some of the ingredients and try to make it.

The Process

Making the soup was somewhat more involved than I expected, but not too bad. I was lazy and minced the garlic instead of grating it which led to some awkwardly large chunks of garlic. As I learned afterwards, the essence of Avgolemono is basically a lemon sauce where you whisk broth into a mixture of lemon juice and eggs (sometimes cornstarch). This whisking was pretty annoying for the recipe, since I was doing it in a measuring cup and had very little room to whisk it. I think I would probably recommend doing it in a bowl and with a smaller whisk.

I was surprised to have a nice thick soup at the end though, without any cornstarch. It was very different from the soup at the Greek festival, having gnocchi instead of rice was sort of interesting, I do think I'd like to try a rice version though. Carmen says it is good but the rotisserie chicken ends up sort of bland in the soup; I'm not sure the QFC chicken was that flavorful to begin with.

Closing Thoughts

The soup turned out pretty nice! Would definitely try to make again, and actually grate the garlic this time. I am not sure I need all that chicken though, I think its a really nice flavor base to try with some other stuff.

The picture I took of the soup came out pretty whacky, something I've been noticing lately with the not boring camera app. I am not sure if the HDR process gives goofy lighting when exported (seems very likely) or if there is some other bug with the app. That being said, I've also taken some crazy nice photos and I love the feel of the app so I'll probably keep using it.

Anyways, thanks for reading! Let me know if you try the soup or have had Avgolemono soup before.

Bean Espresso

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:07:00 GMT

Background

Nestled between the Spin Cycle Records and Chase Bank on Broadway, there is a hidden spot hat has been the source of significant contention over the years. For much of my time living in Seattle, I thought little of it, as it was just a sort of boarded up hole in the wall I walked by every time I hung out with my friends.

I was quite surprised, then, when I saw fuel coffee setting up a huge neon sign there about a year and a half ago. Talking to some people at the cafes, I found out that Fuel had bought this spot that was abandoned by Espresso Vivace, another Capitol Hill cafe chain. I visited the espresso window maybe twice before as suddenly as it had appeared, it disappeared, leaving a huge sign and a lot of questions.

When I asked around at the cafes they told me they didn't really know why the coffee bar was closing, a barista I knew who worked there said it was kind of brutal to work at, getting very hot in the summer and with frequent incidents with people on the street. I remained puzzled about its disappearance, and the history of the previous tenant there, for a while before forgetting about the shop altogether. Eventually it went back to being another boarded up hole in the wall on Broadway...

Bean Espresso

... until about three days ago! I was walking on Broadway to get some groceries or something and I was shocked to see another shop had opened in the spot Fuel and Vivace had abandoned. There were some little chairs and tables laid nicely nearby, but otherwise very sparse signage. No giant neon sign this time, no folding display telling you how badly you need coffee right now or advertising seasonal drinks. It just appeared.

I asked the baristas there when they opened, and they confirmed it had been open less than a week. I was flabbergasted, but I was also in a bit of a rush, so I mentally tabled the issue and figured I would come back later.

This morning, I had some errands to run on Broadway so I figured it would be as good at time as any to investigate this new coffee shop. One thing that stood out to me immediately was the near complete lack of branding.

There is a cute little ESPRESSO OPEN sign and it says BEAN ESRESSO, but the name is so generic I am not completely sure that it's permanent. Behind the bar, I saw two people the first time I walked by, but this time there was just one middle aged asian woman. I asked her if she knew the owner and she said she was the owner, so I decided to do a bit of investigative work while I waited for my 8oz latte.

My informal interview didn't go quite according to plan, however, as her English was not quite fluent, so I had a hard time understanding details. When I asked her why she opened the shop, she told me she came from Canada and figured it was close by and so it would be fun. She said they opened eight days ago, which would have put their first day at June first or second. I asked her why she chose this particular spot and she said it seemed like it had a lot of foot traffic (it really does), but she mentioned being nervous because it seems like there are so many other cafes in the area. I asked her if she thought the spot might be cursed given the fate of Fuel and Vivace and she laughed uncomfortably before handing me my drink. It was probably a dumb question.

After I got my drink, I wished her good luck in the new spot and headed on my way.

The coffee

I would describe the coffee here as solidly acceptable. Its a bit interesting, actually, since it is definitely on the darker end of coffee you get around here in Seattle. It was nothing spectacular, and I felt like there was a strangely large amount of foam on top, but pretty good all around. I am definitely curious who their roaster is, though. Compared to most other cafes that proudly associate themselves with a roaster, displaying their name on bags they sell at the counter, Bean Espresso keeps their secrets close to their chest, with the beans only visible in the hopper of a large red coffee grinder. They look dark and a bit oily, certainly not the pale fruity beans I tend to expect in cafes these days.

I am excited to see how this new business fares in the tricky spot on Broadway where other, much more established cafes have struggled before. I think as a grab and go spot, they have great potential, although they might benefit from dialing their roast level back a bit and foaming the milk a bit less.

Side story about the photo

I took this photo after I had already finished my coffee and was done with my little errand. It occurred to me that this blog post would be more compelling with some pictures so I headed back. As I was taking the first photo, some guy on a bike yelled at me "Are you taking a picture of me?" to which I of course yelled back "NO SIR." When I got back to the cafe, I was surprised to see a man with a big serious looking camera taking what I can only imagine to be much better photos of the cafe. He told me he works for the Capitol Hill Seattle blog, which is huge and probably my favorite source of news. He had really awesome tattoos. I am wondering if I will get this blog post out before they do-- I find it funny that we are both maybe talking about the same thing.

I am sure their photos will be much better, though.

Fuel Coffee

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 14:50:00 GMT

Context

I have been going to the various fuel coffee shops for a long time now, almost since I first moved here. When I started hosting the Arboretum Walk until very recently, I would go to the Fuel coffee near the arboretum, and I took a bunch of "coffee classes" at their 19th Ave location back when the former Director of Coffee Christopher was still there.

Overview

I was a big fan of them for a while but over time, I think they grew too big for themselves, they opened and closed a coffee cart on Broadway over the course of like six months, the barista turnover is huge (which is pretty common, but sucks), the prices have gotten EXTREMELY HIGH (rising faster than all the other cafes by a decent amount), and to top it all off, their coffee has never been thaaaaat good.

I go there from time to time if i am nearby and have nothing else to do, but it seems like after Ada's acquired them, this has been a coffee chain in slow decline.

Bad Chancla Seattle

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 23:02:00 GMT

Carmen and I walked by Bad Chancla pretty much every day since it was announced, waiting for them to finally open their doors. Once they finally did, we were super excited to try out the clever street food concept by Jose Garzon, popular Seattle chef.

Having gone there a few times, I always feel like family and the food is excellent, I always regret not going more often. The prices are a bit steep, but that is pretty much a given in Seattle.

Here is a very questionable photo of their ropa vieja bowl, which is pretty much my go to after visiting a bunch of times.

Tea Meetup Notes

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 16:24:00 GMT

Had a fun tea meetup with some friends and strangers, I try to do it every two months but it has literally been over 6 months since the last one. Oops. Here are their notes verbatim in alphabetical name order.

Amy

Fave: Ginger peach Least: Noah

3/5 Hibiscus Green - Nice smell, sour, would be good cold-brew
4/5 Sticky Riced puerh - :)
4/5 Ginger peach - ginger candy
4/5 hojicha - good smell, VERY toasty
3/5 sencha - nice color, kind of bitter
3/5 kashmiri - bitter but spice smell good
4/5 caramel - good smell + taste
3/5 noah skunk - SOUR hibiscus

Cole

Hibiscus - too sweet
Sticky rice - hella good
Kashmiri - to strong imo
Noah skunk - good but strong

Crystal

Hibiscus green tea- tart taste the hibiscus
Sticky rice pu'er - toasted, light
Hojicha (sugimoto) - toasted
Orange Ginger Puerh - light ginger, smell some orange/ginger
Sencha asanoka - light, good flavor, reminds of matcha
Kashmiri Kahioa - Strong spiced
Vanilla caramel - light caramel
Skunk tea - hibiscus cinnamon

Daniel (thats me!)

Hibiscus green ( crystal ) - v sour!! - 6
Sticky rice puerh ( amy ) - malty, rich a bit astringent - 8
Houjicha (me) - roasty and nice - 9
Ginger peach (cole) - 7
I oversteeped the asanoka
Vanilla tea (??)

Jack

Hibiscus green tea - Nice red color but a bit too subtle (weak) tasting.
Sticky rice tea - Full bodied <- FAVORITE
Roasted tea - nice smell
Ginger peach- good taste.

Meer

Hibiscus: flavorful, warming
sticky rice : pleasing * (looks like a star of david, probably means favorite)
hojicha : subtle, light
ginger peach : refreshing
green tea : vegetables

Noah

Hibiscus Tea : good color, a bright red-pink. teaste is not bitter, but more flavorful
Sticky riceh puerh : color is okay, deeper oragne, more bitter. imo, not as great
Kashmiri tea : milder spicy smell, taste is meh
Hojicha(?) : color is yellow- orange smell is <ins>meh</ins>. taste is <ins>way</ins> too bitter. rip.
ginger peach puerh: smell is ginger! color is deep orange. smell is good. taste is kinda daILLLEGIBLE
Green Tea: :skull-emoji:

Sally

Hibiscus green tea : A bit tart. I would have put honey in it. Liked the color.
Sticky rice fermented black : Very nice, has a toasted taste.
Orange ginger peach - delightful smell
Hojicha Roasted green tea - I enjoy the toasted teas. Very nice
Sauc I mora -
Kashmiri Kahwa - Medicinal, yet unique
Sencha - very earthy. Nice
Vanilla bigelow - pleasant
? ( mystery tea ) - Lovely floral bouquet smell.

I would say the meetup was a smashing success!! Except perhaps for Noah, we will need to find him teas that are more pleasing to his challenging palate.

June 7 2025 Photo dump

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 23:11:00 GMT

It was a good day. I took some photos with the not boring camera.

The Phoenician Scheme

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 22:30:00 GMT

Background

Today after a long day of working on my website, I had scheduled to watch The Phoenician Scheme, a movie about which I knew very little other than the director. Carmen and I had watched "Asteroid City" on one of our first dates, so I was excited to watch another movie by mister Wesley himself, if perhaps a little trepidatious.

Overview

The movie was excellent! It had a star-studded cast, which always helps, but I felt that each character got to play a role sort of unusual to the actor, which kept it from feeling too much like a red carpet party. The plot of the movie was interesting and constantly surprising, and the visuals and effects were as to be expected in a Wes Anderson movie, spectacular.

The beginning of the movie takes place in an opulent palace the likes of which I have never seen. The marble bathtub was truly spectacular. Also the guy getting literally blown up right near the start of the movie was quite a surprise.

I think overall the movie is an exciting, and unusual riches-to-rags story, and its exciting to watch this man struggle to get his finances together for the entire movie and contemplate whether you are really rooting for his success or failure.

Lingering Questions

What was the deal with all those flashbacks? What did they symbolize, why did they happen when they did?
Would his daughter have been happier staying a nun?
Is this movie a subtle nod to the rise of the oligarchy's control over our society?

web design is so EEEEE

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Oh my god AAA its driving me crazy!! The rectangles!!! The scaling!!

EVERYTHING I DO, RUINED BY THE HUBRIS OF SOMEONE HAVING A DIFFERENT SCREEN SIZE!!

It is MADDENING

not boring camera

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Some Background

If you haven't heard of not boring, they are worth looking into, I have spent a long time experimenting with their apps, for a while I used their weather app, and I messed with their calculator app, too.

Ultimately those sort of felt like toys to me-- fun, but not really capable of replacing the tools I use regularly. Plus, to be honest I almost never need a calculator due to my immense genius brain.

The camera app

Unlike their other apps, I think this camera app is truly spectacular, it just released a few days ago and already I am obsessed. Now, I have historically been prone to silly obsessions that only last a few days, but I think this is the real deal. It has a certain tactile feeling thats hard to describe, but isn't so overdone to feel like a toy.

The selection of LUTs is a lot of fun and you can use the app easily from the lockscreen, making it a simple drop in replacement for the main camera app most of the time.

Here are some photos with the "Wes" lut, which gives stuff a colorful look:

I find that focusing and composing shots in this camera is a lot of fun, and like the grainy non-ai looking output. It feels nostalgic but still high quality in a way that very few cameras do, similar to Halide's Process Zero.

I look forward to taking more shots with this camera, and hope you check it out if you think it's cool. In the meantime here are a couple more photos.

Thank you for reading this blog post if you made it this far!

Cheeky Cafe

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 22:13:00 GMT

I have been a huge fan of Cheeky Cafe since I used to live in the central district. It's a cute little spot that has good food for reasonable prices in a fairly quiet area near the CID.

I've had lots of their food over the years, all their different pancakes and sweets and most of their savory dishes. Today I tried their Fried Rice! It was really tasty with 2 types of sausage that complemented eachother really well.

oh no

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:35:00 GMT

AAAAAAAAA, well this has been fun, but I actually have stuff to do tomorrow.

Capitale Pizza

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 05:38:28 GMT

Had dinner here tonight with some friends. The pizza was pretty okay, but like most neapolitan style pizza, feels overpriced for what you get. In addition, the huge chunks of meat were a bit awkward.

something is hiding on this website

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I like easter eggs, I think websites should be full of them. What is the point of the web if it is too simple, too accessible. What happened to the joy of arcane knowledge, of digging through the depths of the source code, clicking around.

Anyways, no hints, but this is the first of many easter eggs. I will probably not post about the future ones, so I hope people enjoy looking around, digging for clues. This website will become a living entity of sorts, so more strange things will undoubtedly appear.

visiting the jcccw

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Saw an ad in the newspaper saying the JCCW needs volunteers, gonna head over and see how I can help!

UPDATE: it was fun, looking forward to starting soon!

Caprese Sandwiches

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have long been obsessed with the Caprese sandwich. Something about the simple mix of good bread, tomato, basil, and mozzarella has always been deeply comforting to me, and it tends to be a nice cheap option for food when you are out and about.

After years of being a noted Caprese enjoyer, I finally decided to try making the sandwich my self recently. I gathered all the ingredients and got to work, making my first sandwich which was, in my opinion, pretty bomb.

The bread was a bit lame though, I bought it at the store and felt somewhat disappointed. So I MADE MY OWN!!

It turned out pretty well! Was a huge pain to make though, arguably worse than regular sourdough loaves but I attribute that pain mostly to inexperience. Anyways, here is the final sandwich:

I'm not sure I would make bread like this again, I would need to compare with the original sandwich, but I actually think the bread was a bit worse. Tastier on its own, but since it's less soft, the sandwich doesn't keep together as well... Oh well, lessons learned.

Bonito Cafe y Mercadito

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Backed them on kickstarter before they opened, they are one of my favorite cafes. The owners are super friendly and they have a great selection of drinks / snacks.

City Bakery NYC ( RIP )

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

The city bakery was a great place. I miss it every day.

Look at this hot chocolate, look at this marshmallow, it was an art form. Beautiful, stunning. I need to go to Tokyo to visit the last remaining locations.

Sencha Asanoka

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Miro describes this tea as having "incense aroma", which I am not so sure about, but it is a delightful tea, with a great umami flavor that is deep and satisfying in a way that not all sencha is.

REVIEW TITLE

Sun, 17 Jan 1999 17:36:00 GMT

BLOGPOST TITLE

Fri, 01 Jan 1999 17:36:00 GMT