August 10 - Return from the Lengthy Beach

Hard to believe it is already Monday again! My partner and I got back from Long Beach on Wednesday, and the rest of the week has been largely decompressing, unpacking, and settling back in to the little routines we call life. We had a pretty rude greeting after one of our cats pooped on the floor and it got smeared around by the robot vacuum, but I suppose that is just the price you pay for the convenience of not manually vacuuming. Lesson learned, though. I will keep the vacuum off when we are out of town.

As far of the rest of the week, it's been remarkably uneventful in hindsight, at least in terms of events in Seattle that I attended. It is kind of crazy to me that I just totally missed the Capitol Hill Block Party, living relatively close to it, had no clue it was happening other than indirect mentions from some friends. Hope whoever went had fun!

What I've Been Up To

As I mentioned, I was out of town until Wednesday, in Long Beach, California, which was pretty fun. I wandered around a new city, watched The Odyssey (not in 70mm, film enthusiasts in shambles), and went to an aquarium. On my last day there, I met up with some moots and experienced THAI CURRY PIZZA for the first time, a transformative culinary experience, for sure. It was so fun to hang out with internet friends IRL and they were so cool and fun, highly recommend!

Long Beach Waddlin

Thai Curry Pizza

Back In Seattle

The rest of the week was pretty relaxed, there were horrible wildfires in Spokane which meant for Thursday and Friday, the air quality in Seattle was pretty awful, and it was somehow even hotter than in Long Beach, so we mostly stayed indoors. I did get an email on Thursday that my Sony RX-10 V pre-order was ready, so I biked down to Glazers Camera to pick it up. I spent a bunch of time there asking probably extremely dumb noob-ish questions to the person behind the counter as I tried to find a case that I liked and choose an SD card that wasn't wildly overpriced. I thought it was quite funny how they had two sandisk ones that were like 48 and 50 dollars, and then one from some other brand that was like 99 dollars somehow for the same size.

After getting my camera, I headed to the Grand Central Bakery in Eastlake, where I picked up two tasty sandwiches and a loaf of bread. If you haven't gone here, I highly recommend! QFC and some other places resell their bread, but often at a dollar or two markup, so it's worth the trip. I wouldn't recommend the coffee there, though, it's quite middling. I still don't know a good cafe in Eastlake actually, Fram is a great bar but have some of the worst coffee I have ever had in Seattle. Incredible views though.

Once I got home, I basically spent the next day or two sitting on my balcony taking photos of the neighborhood birds and stuff on my balcony with the new camera. I mean I am sure I did something else, but my camera roll does not show it. Still trying to figure out the settings on this thing, the last camera like this I had was 10 years old and had like 1/10th the amount of settings.

Saturday I had my weekly Arboretum walk, which I have changed the rules on to only happen if we have >5 RSVPs. Despite hitting this number, the walk had precisely 1 person (besides me) who RSVPed show up. So we had a pretty quiet walk around the park. It was nice, but I have been thinking a lot about this meetup recently. It seems like for some reason, despite having largely good reviews and around 5,000 members, no one really wants to come anymore, and the event has become a bit of a chore for me. If attendance remains low like this for a few more weeks, I probably will just terminate the group.

I did bring my camera, and the small group size made me feel less bad about stopping for a few photos.

Sunday was fun, my friends @kevin.dehaan.ca and @orion.geese.blue and I took a long bike ride around West Seattle, through South Worth, and over to Bremerton, eventually biking back up to Capitol Hill via Uwajimaiya, where we stopped to get 10L of powdered Pocari Sweat. I still maintain that Seattle Is pretty unique and incredible in that you can easily take four or more ferries in a single day for fairly cheap (we took three). If you live around here and haven't spent time on our incredible ferries, I can't recommend it enough, especially the fast ferries, as the experience is quite a bit nicer without cars involved.

After going home and absolutely scarfing down some bread and an avocado, I ran out to play poker, where after briefly losing it all, I emerged victorious, claiming the title of Top Chicken once again. Shoutout to @hyl.st, who came by and absolutely sharked us all with their poker prowess, truly a force to be reckoned with.

View post on Bluesky

and @hyl.st, @nvrom.bsky.social and i closed out the week with what @kevin.dehaan.ca referred to as a "pocari swocktail"

it was disgusting, would drink again.

What's Coming Up

Believe it or now, I have bamboozled my way into a Job Interview today. It's at 2pm, so quite possibly will be right after I hit publish on this, wish me luck. (edit, the interview is now done, I think it went well but I guess we'll see)

As far as things happening in Seattle:

I'm thinking of getting tickets to Bumbershoot, happening Sept 5-6 https://bumbershoot.com/

Espresso + brunch at bad chancla this saturday!! https://www.instagram.com/p/Db1LyxyD6Mf/

Trivia Wednesday at Deluxe Bar and Grill on Broadway at 7:30pm

Music in the playfield in Madrona - Tuesday 6-8pm

Sunday in Cal Anderson Park - Capitol Hill Garage Sale!

Thursday at 5pm in Chophouse Row : Capitol Hill Art Walk

Not sure what else!! As always, I am happily accepting suggestions on things to do, send them my way.

Now time for:

I Saw The Signs

Best of the Net

Having regularly drawn a blank on these, I finally have a decent top secret method of collecting links I think are neat, so I am ready this time.

https://www.mayerowitz.io/blog/mario-meets-pareto - blog post about pareto frontiers and making good choices in a sea of options

https://mu.social/profile/milesklee.bsky.social/post/3mseieg25c22o - cooking for 800??

https://yogthos.net/posts/2026-08-03-splat-painter.html - someone made this really cool procedural painting system, works super well and no AI used to create the effect!

https://letitsimmernewsletter.substack.com/p/in-the-pocket-with-sam-cho - cool article highlighting a local barista

https://mu.social/profile/ceej.online/post/3mrx2xflgp22d - *narrows eyes* our son is also evil.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grim-reaper-wales-hospital-denbighshire-b3027735.html - insane news story about guy larping as the grim reaper on top of a hospital for some reason

https://permadeath.com/3mrbms2e7yk2p/l-quote/26_25-26_246 - Extraordinarily red article about the challenges of connecting data to the atmosphere.