paloma's journal

back to work today. we worked on paintings and then started preparing to build a storage shed behind the studio where i work.

it was nice to work outside in the sun. it was warm out but there was a cool breeze.

after work i went to a grocery store in a small town near where i work. the way back home from there was a series of small, windy roads through the woods. i drove with the windows down with music playing.

andrei is at the makerspace doing their volunteer hours. when i got back home, i spent some time reading in the hammock in my backyard, but as soon as the sun set, it instantly got cold.

spent the morning reading and catching up on my RSS feeds. i hadn't looked at them much over the past week so i had a lot of articles and blog posts and such saved up. now i'm back at "rss zero."

had a nice coffee chat with shenai from recurse center. we talked about personal websites and our approaches to updating them, organizing, curating, discovering, etc. online and in life in general. shenai has a really cool page called secret where they put small thoughts, and it also displays recent pins from their are.na channel, which is nifty. also, today i learned that are.na channels have RSS feeds.

i did a lot of chores and cooking for the week and now i'm tired!

today was saturday, so i didn't have to work. it was supposed to rain, but the weather has actually been pretty nice.

after some tea and reading, i dove into some coding to improve this journal. here is what i did:

• add ability to have multiple images for each post
• added a lightbox image viewer
• added opengraph image and description
• increased file size limits
• made stuff look nice
• set up automatic backups and unattended-upgrades
• updated the readme

i like the idea of being able to share more images on here. for example, i took five photos that i liked on yesterday's hike, so i was disappointed that i could only put up one before. now i've gone back and added the rest!

i watered my plants and repotted one of my ornamental-leafed begonias, did some housework, talked to my dad on the phone.

andrei made falafels for dinner. then we watched a fairly ridiculous hong kong movie.

the weather was nicer today, and i had a good day at work. i did some fabrication work and some 3D modeling for a building project.

while i was working, and andrei was home, apparently some kid was shooting an air gun in the backyards in the center of our block, and one of the small round metal bb pellets hit our window and punched a hole right through it. luckily, the window is double paned and the bb only punched through one layer, but it will be fun to try to convince our landlords that this was not our fault.

in the evening we hiked up west rock ridge. the view up there is pretty good and we could see the graveyard next to our house and, farther out, the long island sound.

we also saw a copperhead snake!

today was the first day of my new job as an artist / fabrication assistant. it is only 8 miles from my house, but it's far enough out of this small city that it almost feels rural. i worked with the two artists to learn some of their processes for making paintings (they have some unusual and highly technical methods, hence the need for assistance). we also discussed plans for building a storage shed and then i coated a bunch of panels with gel acrylic medium.

my plans to head to the yoga studio after work were foiled by my car deciding to make a strange noise on the way there. it seems fine now but i was too late to make it there in time to work the desk (i do work trade there) so i just went home, took a nap, and made some stir fry.

last night i set up a raspberry pi plugged into an ethernet jack, which i want to set up to host this journal online. for now, i'm just running it locally, but it seems to be working well and i'm already enjoying the process of writing in it.

i worked on the code for this journal a bunch earlier today. i think i will be able to put it on the "public internet" soon!

we got groceries and then andrei made a very good soup. brenna and birch (who we saw play yesterday at the noise show) came over for dinner and we hung out for a while. it was nice to have guests over and chill for a bit.

we returned home to new haven, and in the evening we went to a show.

one of the bands playing was MSHR, who are on tour currently, and who we are performing at a show with in brooklyn next week. their performance was really cool, full of glowing, sculptural custom-built controllers and sensors, which created an alien multi-sensory experience.

other performers included austin and matt, who performed with modified sirens, a computer, and flutes, plus another duo who performed with contact mics and motors.

we are house sitting for andrei's sister. they live next to a lake. it's been a bit cold and gray but the weather cleared up just before sundown.

• designed and ordered new business cards
• wrote about and organized my personal goals
• read a bit (i'm currently reading city of blades by robert jackson bennett)
• made my first post on this journal! (still a work in progress but it will be easier to test if i have some real posts on here)