Weekender #1

Thinking of doing a weekly write up of some thoughts and odds and ends. I’m stealing this idea from @pyrmont. I hope he doesn’t mind!

• A friend of mine passed this week. I don’t have the right words to say about her just yet, but her passing has been on my mind constantly. Rest in love Leilani Young.

• January 2021 became the month of finishing projects that I had intended to complete during my short vacation time in December 2020. In 2019 I decided to make a photo book of our trips that we take to Japan each year. The 2018 Japan trip photo book was completed in in May or so of 2019. I had every intention of starting the 2019 Japan trip photo book in early 2020, but the pandemic hit and everything kinda went to hell. Making a photo book is hard work. Making a photo book of a trip that was an entire year ago while living through a pandemic is even harder! Thankfully, it’s finally done and has been sent to the printer. I’m thinking of compiling some of the photos I was posting to micro.blog and Instagram during 2019 into a book to remember 2020 since we weren’t able to travel to Japan.

• I saw so many hot takes and calls for rich people and hedge funds to burn this past week. If you’re interested in understanding the GameStop / Robinhood stocks thing, check out What happened with GameStop? which explains the entire thing in an easy to understand way.

• Over the weekend, I completed building a clone of the Roland BeeBaa fuzz effect from General Guitar Gadgets. It sounds kinda like this.

• It looks like Inio Asano’s Dead Dead Demon’s Dededededestruction Manga is coming to an end this year. One of my favorite manga and mangaka, I’m so happy that Viz decided to license this a couple years back.

• Interesting insight into how photo journalist in Japan are reconsidering the lenses they use to photograph crowds during the pandemic. They’re trying to prevent “lens compression effect” which makes people seem closer together than they actually are.

• I thought this was common knowledge, but maybe it isn’t. Yes, C3PO had a silver leg.

• My favorite iOS sampling app, Koala Sampler released a new update called Samurai which adds time-stretching, auto chop and edit sequences on a piano roll. It’s an in-app purchase, but well worth it.

• Yumiki Erino, brings me so much joy! You can’t help but smile watching her play guitar! Watch her having a good time playing a cover of BTS’s song, ‘Dynamite’.