Lately, I’ve been scribing old texts, but these posts are fun a reminder of last year’s explorations.
,
May 2025
I really like the contrast of the bright italic hungry on the compressed Roman capital background.
,
August 2025
The contrast between the cursive Bus and the gothicized italic Stop slammed together nicely, spiced by the ruling pen splatters.
,
May 2025
Multiple SAD‘s went well with this pop-up design of multiple cuts.
,
July 2025
I save the initial washes from my brushes and pens in containers, letting them slowly evaporate into a grey wash, which I used with a ruling pen here I enjoyed the cheeky contradiction of the words Slow Up against a rapid, sloppy cursive.
,
July 2025
spun chaos thru woven silk
This was my last 5WP of 2025, Funny how practices just slip away with a whimper, this was my last 5WP of 2025. After that, I played with big words with the ruling pen, watercolors, and gouache. Maybe I’ll come back to this format one day. Or maybe, like hard disks with spinning platters, I’ve done my last one.
,
Life and art moves fast. Cya next time!
,
PS—Rubik’s Cube
I fell into a rathole last week, finally learning the Rubik’s Cube. Years ago, I was impressed with a table of kids effortlessly solving these cubes at the Rivera food court while lunching at a convention.
Turns out that a learning the Rubik’s Cube is like acquiring any other skill in this modern world. Start with youtube. I could have gone shopping but I just found a short video and jumped in.
The first couple tries took a while, an hour for the first and then forty minutes, constantly referencing the video. The next few came much faster even while referencing J Perm’s static website for edge cases.
Even though it’s tough at first, there aren’t that many patterns to memorize, so I’m now I’m solving the cubes consistently in the 4 minute range, even less if everything lines up correctly.
Apparently the “beginner’s method” can consistently garner 2-4 minute solves, so I’ve pretty much hit max speed.
Do I practice to get as fast as possible using this method? Or do I blow it up to memorize more advanced techniques?
Like every other hobby on the internet, it’s a total rathole. Thankfully I’m not particularly competitive. I’ll most likely just teach my family how to solve the cube and be done with it.
—November 2021, and yes, I just stopped and forgot it all over the past four years.
,
PPS—Christmas Pens, Twenty Twenty-three
For Christmas, I gave myself three (six) new pens.
I bought the Enso Pilot Parallel Set, which includes four pens at 6.0mm, 3.8mm, 2.4mm, and 1.5mm.I screwed the Pilot Parallel 6.0mm nib into a Pilot Spare Sign pen body which makes for a great barrel filled setup.
I also got the Duke 551. with the with Guanyu inscription—”忠義仁勇信” (loyalty, righteousness, benevolence, bravery, trustworthiness). Just yesterday I thinking I own enough ink to last for ages, but not with these pens!
And finally, I got a Jinhao 80 with a Naginata Nib. It’s “just” a cheap Lamy 2000 knockoff but the nib is epic. It’s gonna supplant the Architect nib as my favorite variable nib.
The Parallel 6.0mm is great. Everything you’d want from a 3.8mm but more! A totally different lettering experience on the page, and my recommendation for anyone starting to learn calligraphy.
I’ve been paranoid about AI slop music, but I’ve given up when it comes to other languages. I worry that this most human art has been stolen by the box, but maybe that was lost with the first recording.
,
July 2025
slow down push yourself
I was curious why Edward Johnston devoted much of his late career exploring Gothicized Italics so I started practicing it. Pretty much throughout the second half of this year. I can’t speak for the master, but for me, it’s the points, and the deep ***spring*** points. Though it makes me awfully close to graffiti. Maybe that’s where this was heading all along.
,
July 2025
mistake mental math moose month
More playing with Gothicized Italics, with a ruling pen.
,
September 2025
The administration’s attempt to push out Jimmy Kimmel pushed me to finally donate to FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. We’ve been in some rough waters these past few years and I appreciate a group that focuses on one mission and practices in a way to earn bipartisan ire.
,
September 2025
While convelescing at home after my week at the hospital in September, I powered through the 2025 Inktober prompts. AVOCADO was a warmup word from their year long Inktober 52 challenge before I started marching through the list.
,
May 2025
I made collect in May, while practicing the pop-ups as well as Fraktur script. I have a bunch of other pop-ups that may or may not be shared. We’ll see if I ever feel like editing those photos, or if they will stay on the hard drive as I chase other pursuits.
Cya next time!
,
PS—Kahoot
My daughter had been using this online quiz app with her online distance education. The goal is to answer questions both correctly and fast, so she gets quite frustrated when her Chromebook is too slow to let her answer the question in the allotted time. She’s a competitive one, even though I remind her it’s only a game.
For the past few weeks she wanted to try making a Kahoot. We finally had a moment on Halloween so we hit the website found their free personal account. We played around a little together, and then she ran off on her own, making her own Kahoots. We asked how she knew that someone could create their own quizzes.
She didn’t know, just had a hunch.
There are lot of negatives to growing up in this online world. But maybe she’ll come out of this zeitgeist with an open-ended perspective of possibility. Not as users but as makers.
Long ago, we started a blog with the girl. Even though it’s been dormant for years, it showed that websites can be easily made by us. Or the time playing with Scratch, proving we can program games.
We made this online world, let’s make sure we shape it more than it molds us.
—November 2021
,
PPS—Wordle Algorithm
We’ve been playing quite a bit of Wordle, going through those five letters over breakfast. After a while we’ve settled on an opening algorithm.
Start with AUDIO
If there is a green letter or multiple yellow letters then start deciphering ad hoc
If only one yellow letter, then
SHARE
USHER
SHRED
SHIRE
SHORE
If there are no letters, then go with SHYER
If we have one yellow letter, we can test SHER while catching all the vowels by the second word.
And if we have no letters, we can also test almost-vowel Y.
After the second word, it’s just free play, though we tend to play on “hard mode” where we are locked in with the clues that are known. I wouldn’t enjoy playing this game by myself, but we have fun together.
—February 2022
,
PPPS—AI Art Destabilization
Surfing on Bandcamp, I stumbled across Mille Morceau which has a surreal, architectural album cover. As I stared at it, I suddenly felt destabilized. Is this AI? The ground fell out from under me. It was a physical reaction even though I was just lying in bed. I need to explore this further.
Just a simple attempt with foundational hand, albeit with the ascenders slightly short.
,
,
,
,
,
Reinhard Staupe designed this little, brilliant memory game, Sherlock: go around a circle of eight cards and name them before flipping them up. If you land on a card that you previously remembered, grab the card, refill the slot, and flip the other cards back down for the next player’s turn.
As an adult with too much on my mind, my daughter absolutely destroys me. The boy can play too. He doesn’t play well, but he understands the rules.
The joy is in watching the kids play together. They find certain cards hilarious for no obvious reason. Especially the sock, which is absolutely, gut wrenchingly funny.
Not the drawing, it’s just a green calf-length sock. The illustrator wasn’t trying to be funny. The publisher told Oliver Freudenreich to draw a sock, which he did.
But don’t tell that to the kids—that sock taps into the raw, mystical connection developed over four years of fighting, crying, and laughing.
It’s fun to have two New Years, plus my sister is in town this year!
As always, I must remind everyone about this series of schmalzy Petronas CNY ads. It’s the least that oil barons could do for the culture.
,
6/22/2025
Fish and hook. As a fan of asymmetry, offset folds are exciting.
,
6/23/2025
With my love of asymmetry, angled popups should have been an obvious progression, but I could never get them to work. At this point I also gave up on pairing the pop-up and the words as I raced through the exercises in the book.
,
6/24/2025
Not exactly pop-ups, but I had fun exploring the splashy, bendy motif, and they played great with the big text.
,
6/26/25
This stunt has an Art Deco feel to it.
,
6/28/25
thank you!
This was a thank you card for the Administrative Specialists in our division.
,
Cya next time!
,
PS—Chinese New Years
The Lunar year is bit awkward. It’s nice to have a second calendar to enjoy, especially gastronomically, but these moments don’t fit great around the American workweek.
It’s a more noticeable now, since my in-laws celebrate these festivities more than my parents. Before the pandemic, we would celebrate on weekends (a 2/7 chance of happening) while squeezing in eating the appropriate foods on the proper day.
Just like celebrating birthdays!
For a few years, work from home alleviated the complexity. We could visit the in-laws and with our laptops. I worked during the day, the girl did her distance education in the evening, and we celebrated during the breaks.
Not ideal, as some Algerians once told me in Paris, an immigrant lives with their ass on two seats.
—February 2022
,
PPS—Wedding Greetings
Because of the pandemic, my mother-in-law did not return to China for her nephew’s wedding. Instead, we recorded a greeting for the event.
Our first attempts included the kids, but that quickly proved impossible so they were shuffled into the bedroom to watch TV. We adults then tried to look happy (but not silly) in front of an iPad as my mother-in-law wished all the best for the happy couple.
Good lord. It still took multiple takes, several of which were ruined by laughter.
Now I know why actors earn their fortunes. Pretending is a real, difficult skill. I see why traditional cultures view frown upon this vocation. If you can fake it on stage, can you be trusted at all?
Of course, being a great actor is well rewarded in today’s modern world, a nice problem for a star! But I wonder if the traditional had it right—a professional fake must pay a heavy psychic tax.
—February 2022, and congrats to the happy couple who welcomed their first kiddo last year!
,
PPPS—Dude
Tom the Dancing Bug, by Ruben Bolling
I saw this comic strip on an office door in a community college. Now that I have finally found it again, I need to put it somewhere semi-permanent.
I’m writing this on the last day of the 2025, and I hope things are going well 35 days into the new year. The week between holidays are always a bit weird, but the world spins back to life with the coming Monday and it’s off to the chaos of another twelve months.
,
5/5/25
forest pool eight stone wisps fly lumber today beyond genes fire chore smoke lake curfew
The italics looks a little rough. I normally prefer going big, but small can also highlight areas for improvement.
,
6/15/25
Cat on the balcony!
,
6/16/25
We had fun floating a few Vikings in a pan.
,
It was fun shaping the numeral one with the letters. I gave this to a friend to celebrate his kid’s first birthday.
,
6/21/25
Both figurative and architectural. Feels like this could be an entry into a real coffee shop, except that the door handle would slam into pedestrians walking past the store.
Serves the right.
,
We just made some 3-2-1 cookies. They had a ton of fun shaping these butterballs in the molds.
Washing all the stuff was a little less fun. But they were tasty.
Move over Dominion, this is my daughter’s new favorite game. Skip the buying, straight into drafting. Plus cute art!
We’ve played this two player, though I suspect it’s better with more. Coincidentally, I’ve been playing Magic The Gathering online in their Arena program. One of the main ways to play that game is also drafting.
Funny how card games are just a bundle of numbers and mechanics. Strip out the art and they all rhyme.
Daddy’s favorite game is Magic. My favorite game is SUSHI GO!!!!
—October 2021 ,
PPS—Dream Cakes, Ravensburger, 2014
When my daughter was younger, she would turn anything (non-stuffy) into cakes, so my sister gave us this game for Christmas.
At first, the girl didn’t want to play the game competitively, but she quickly realized this game is all just luck. She still gets annoyed if her baby brother does well.
Maybe this will be the gateway to teaching her to become a good loser. I’m not a competitive guy. Maybe it’s because I fear failure so much that I suppress myself. Avoiding goals sidesteps disappointment!
Then again, I have simple goals. I always prefer slow and steady strategies. I’d rather lock up 2nd place than risk everything for a win. I enjoy being part of a well played game. I applaud a competitor’s brilliance, and I chuckle when lady luck stabs me in the spleen.
There are many ways to game—maybe she’ll settle on just playing cooperative games. But the real world doesn’t always let you turn something into a “team game” when you’re behind. Sometimes you will lose, however small the stakes.
If this boardgame starts that process where she can handle losing, then its a good start.
—January 2022, Update: it turns out it was the boy who really hates competitive games. Aside from Snorta and Chess, he exclusively plays cooperative, often to the boredom of his sister.
,
PPPS—Cardline Animals, Info, year
This isn’t a game, just a deck of cards with great art and an interesting concept.
To be fair, publisher doesn’t pretend there is much of a game. It’s just placing animals in order of weight, length, or life expectancy. And it’s as compelling an experience as as it sounds on paper.
But we’ve played with the cards a lot, and spent one afternoon placing all the cards against a long tape measure to see the real length of these animals.
Even a 9×12 sheet can’t fit a 3″ brush without ligatures and a pile of failures.
At this point, it’s only remarkable when I’m satisfied after a few attempts.
,
,
,
,
,
Years ago, we bought a toy bird for the girl that records and repeats short snippets. The boy is now well past her age then, but two fresh batteries and it squawks again.They’re upstairs, talking, singing. and laughing at distorted tweets.
In the other ear, Mama is on the phone, searching nutrition labels for high protein, high calorie foods to stem Grandpa’s weight loss.My mind searches for anything to thread these competing conversations across electronics, but I come up empty.
Having worked in small firms, I’ve always been the young guy. Even that time I went corporate, I ended up being the junior staff member on a major project.
That’s fine. I learn more from the experienced folks.
So it was a bit odd turning Owner and suddenly becoming an old guy. In the few cases where I’m younger, it was by a year or two, not decades.
Middle age is odd. They say architects don’t blossom till they are fifty. That was forever away, now just three years out.
I’ve gone through the stereotypical “now what” moment, but I’m also comfortably confident in my skills. There’s still plenty to explore, but I have much to share with the next generation.
Maybe this OPM letter was a my way to share some notes along this journey.
~
Some Links
Over the past few years I’ve fallen hard for calligraphy. It’s why this letter took a long hiatus. You can graph with the most simple of materials, but here are some things that stand out.
The Pilot Parallel was my introduction to calligraphy. As a lefty, I had long thought it impossible, but once I got my hands on one of these pens, I just had to try (with the help of YouTube). It’s an inexpensive pen with none of the hassle of dip pens. If you’re not sure what size to get, go big with the 6.0mm.
What to graph on? Anything will do, but normal printer paper will bleed, as will binder paper. The best value I found was acid-free sulfite paper from Blicks, which is usable on both sides.
If you get deeper into the hobby, then splurge with the Brody Neuenschwander Handwritmic Ruling pen. I also enjoy the Dreaming Dogs ruling pens (especially for alternative shapes), but the Handwritmic has the best build quality with a nib that can handle a variety of scripts.
LED light tables are super cheap now. Mine is just a non-name brand from Amazon. Print out guidelines on paper and now you won’t have to rule your sheets all the time.
And finally books, books and more books.
Any edition of the Speedball Textbook is a good start (I’ve got 12, 16, and 20-25).
I’m fond of Arthur Baker’s Foundational Calligraphy Manual because he elucidates a technique of twisting the nib, which feels really weird until it’s natural. At this point I’ve picked up all of his books.
A wild card, out-of-the-box gem is Scott Kim’s mind twisting Inversions.
And no list of books would be complete without grand matron Sheila Water’s epic Foundations of Calligraphy. I find this one intimidating—high standards are great, but for a hobby, fun comes first. But when you get serious, it’s a must-have.
At this pace, I’ll be a year behind, except that this new year has come with a new habit—less socialing, more zining. After I make a few zines, maybe I’ll get into the selling and distribution business.
Or may not.
Anyways, there will be less catching up of old Substack Notes.
,
4/13/25
jump easy enter vector five galaxies between you and remembrance Georgia come back into life
In my current calligraphy practice, I’ve been focusing on the letters more than choosing words, hence my reliance on word lists.
These poetry hauls are fun opportunities to play with smaller scripts arranged on a page. I only have to pick five words to turn the given ten into a fifteen word poem.
,
4/20/25
Celebrating Easter with the most destructive beast known to mankind.
,
5/25/25
Celebrating my colleagues’ new lives. Yes, our team had babyx2 last summer!
,
5/28/25
Gemini Annie has two many
An inside joke with an online buddy who worked with a pair of cute twins at her old job.
I’m not a fan of the astrological words, certainly not in the context of making 5WP’s. But I’m in a “collect them all” mood with all of the Inktober challenges.
,
6/1/25
Vista, playing with folds inside folds.
,
I just listened to a podcast with a business professor who teaches about power. It was grating, until they had a discussion about the price of power.
In so many words Jeffrey Pfeffer acknowledged—when you got power, power got you.
I’ve seen this dynamic over the years. It’s why I’ve been fairly unambitious in my career. I do good work and this has stumbled me upwards, but I’ve never pressed for the next promotion because there is no free lunch in corporations.
Cya next time!
,
PS—Exploration Peak
We went to the park with the kids. After the playground got busy, we hiked up the trail to the picnic structures on top of the hill. When we got there, the girl noticed that the benches had initials carved all over them.
She asked why people would do this. I responded that people want to make their mark in this world, even if it means vandalizing our public property. Not particularly noble, but I get it.
While hiking down the hill I thought of Bernard Tschumi’s follies. Of course, those big red structures are another stratosphere of architectural sophistication compared to picnic canopies.
It made me nostalgic for college, with memories of famous architects. Gods in our eyes; just men making their mark in our world.
—October 2021
,
PPS—The turtle sandbox
The kids rediscovered the sandbox. A big green plastic turtle with a couple feet/stools and some toys. It’s a bittersweet object. We got it long ago, before the boy was a concept in our world.
He’s now old enough to play with himself in this box. He appreciates the company, but he keeps himself contented moving sand around. Our daughter is still young enough to enjoy the moment, but lost patience after a while.
Kids are fickle, but that means they can also come back to rediscover old joys, while we adults live at a much higher gear, too bored to watch children pushing sand. I rationally understand this is a vanishingly short moment, but my brain craves the high octane sugar buried in the telephone computer.
In twenty years, I hope that I’ll remember the evening light, the sand in my feet, and the fading Vegas summer heat before the start of fall, not this aching addiction to a glowing screen.
November and December 2025 turned into a crash course on estimating budgets and schedule.
Having gone through the crucible of three CIP seasons with the State of Nevada, I can quickly slam out numbers, but with multiple mega-projects on the horizon at the airport, I wanted to standardize our contingencies and develop a transparent process for turning a construction cost estimate into a project cost estimate.
A while ago, I had pondered the question about desired accuracy for a project estimate. With a little research, I found a professional society who studied that exact problem—the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering (AACE). In their rubric, the roughest estimates are categorized “Class 5” with an 80% confidence of landing between -30% to +50% for construction projects (AACE 56R-08, adopted in ASTM E2516).
This range worked aligned with recommendations from our planning consultant for early cost markups. More specifically, we added a 20% Design Evolution markup to the Direct Construction Cost. This marked up cost became the basis of all the other costs in the project estimate, including a 20% Construction Contingency and a 10% Owner’s Allowance (because there are always changes after bid!)
Over the course of a project, the Design Evolution would drop to 0% when issued for Bid, while Construction Contingency should drop to about 5% as conditions in the field are investigated, but holding a bit for bid risk when bids are opened. The Owner’s Allowance would stay steady at 10%, but could shift if management was unwilling to allocate so much budget for post-bid changes.
As with all rules of thumb, the estimator is still responsible to account for the specific project needs, but having suggested defaults frees me to focus on unique conditions that require special consideration.
While it might be more technically accurate to stagger the cost of escalation over the course of time, we structured the estimate to provide a subtotal of the entire project cost and then add escalation as overall markup. Hopefully this will clearly highlight the cost of waiting to approve these major projects. While fools may rush in, analysis paralysis is not free—a few percent a year adds up fast!
So how to estimate a schedule? Unlike cost estimating, I was not prepared to tackle this question because I was always shoehorning dates to fit the State’s two-year legislative cycle. But the internet is a wonderful place, now that I have the freedom to recommend schedules that best fit our project needs.
Again, there is no need to re-invent the wheel—the Navy dealt with this problem in the 1950’s, creating the “Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)”, where an estimator develops three schedules resulting in an Expected schedule. Since I’m intimately familiar with each step of the process, it’s easy to develop an Optimistic Schedule. My estimating spreadsheet combines these small steps into larger phases (design, permitting, construction, etc.) which makes it simple to take some broad guesses to develop the the Most-Likely and Pessimistic Schedules.
The spreadsheet then averages the estimated schedules to calculate an Expected Schedule. This schedule is considered to be a 50% confidence level estimate—half of projects will be delivered after the completion date. To bring the schedule back up to an 80% confidence level, the spreadsheet does some simple statistics to calculate a Schedule Contingency, which is shown as a final line item to determine the opening date.
As such, the schedule sheet is structured similar to the cost estimate (with the esclation added at the end). The Expected Schedule keeps the project team held to a tight process, while the additional contingency gives management a date they can confidently share with the public. This is similar to the US Army Corps of Engineer’s guidance that Congress is typically presented with an 80% confidence schedule while internal schedules are presented at 50% Confidence (USACE CSRA).
With a schedule in hand, we can now calculate escalation to the midpoint of construction. Since the cost estimate targets an 80% confidence level, we include the entire schedule contingency before the midpoint of construction.
How much annual inflation should to assume? The US Federal Reserve targets 2%, but the 2020’s have been rough, seeing 7-8% annual jumps. Things have settled down, but given recent experience, we are still assuming 4% annually. Call me in 2036 to see if that was anywhere near correct.
With that, the cost and schedule has been estimated. If you wanted to be fancy, you could build some s-curve spending projections. However, for the scale of my projects, I’ve only been asked for annual estimates, so I just use the even linear spending tracker calculated in Microsoft Project.
(Microsoft Project is a whole other thing I learned these past two months. It’s too much to cover but a few concepts that some figuring were task dependencies, hammock tasks, assigning costs to the tasks, and using flags to add color to the Gantt chart. YouTube is a great tutor, as well as AI—LLM’s are only semi-reliable, but used carefully, it was critical in working through both big picture questions and navigating software quirks.)
With this information, we can hold a jury to vet the project. Since the Construction and Design Division will be tasked with delivering the approved budget and schedule, we owe them an opportunity to critique the estimate. We also invite key operational staff for extra eyes to challenge assumptions and catch what’s missing.
And with that, we can finish the estimate with a cover letter to memorialize the basis of estimate to provide context around numbers:
Project Description (what will this do; where is it?)
Project Justification (why is this needed; who is served?)
Key Assumptions (when (schedule) and how the project will be delivered)
Base Documents (percentage of design complete, and often referencing a 3rd party estimate)
Confirmation (or not) that an internal jury vetted the project.
List of attachments (additional diagram, cost estimate backup, etc.)
After a couple initial tests, this template is working well. I can smash out a draft estimate in half a day, though I’d prefer a few days to do it right. Beyond half a week, I suspect that extra effort would be minimally helpful—I’ve often claimed that I can spend three hours or three weeks to end up equally wrong.
With that, I’m happy that I was given the time to develop a project estimate template that shares the work, from the basis of estimate to the final budget and schedule. Critically, this a transparent document, showing the assumptions with a clean line of logic so that decision makers can evaluate the staff’s technical opinion on the proposed project.
And with that, it’s on them.
~
Some Links
For some reason I don’t have much patience for live action films, but I gladly watch animation all the time with the kids. Here are three standouts from the last three years.
Puss in Boots: the Last Wish is the stunning sequel to the lackluster spinoff from the Shrek franchise. It was shockingly great with a tight, rich story paired with gorgeous animation. I guess DreamWorks was impressed by Sony Animation’s revolutionary Spiderverse and upped its game!
Robot Dreams is a cute, yearning story of a dog and his robot, lovingly set in in 1980’s New York City. We just watched the movie, so it might be recency bias, but it should have won the 2023 Oscar over Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron.
Flow was the worthy Oscar winner for 2024, a surreal tale of a cat weathering a sudden flood in the valley. As a wordless film, I was worried that the kids wouldn’t dig it, but they both loved it. Gints Zilbalodis is an auteur who has the courage to finish what Pixar started in that epic that first half of Wall-E. Zilbalodis’ 2019 full length film Away (included in the Criterion Collection DVD) was also well worth the watch.
Bonus! We just re-watched Ernst and Celestine now that they’re now old enough to enjoy the sweet tale and gorgeous watercolor animation. It might come from a children’s book series, but it’s absolutely enjoyable for adults as well.
~
General Store, Moundville, Alabama, 1936, Walker Evans
Starting the New Year marching through pieces from eight months ago, then again, it’s fun to explore the (recent) past.
,
4/1/2025
Looking back, I should made a lot more of these backlit photos on the light tablet. I remember when light tables were big pieces of furniture. Now they are thin cheap LED’s powered by a USB-C cable.
After making this piece, I realized that this prompt was likely inspired by the TV show Severance. So I made a popup based on that logo as well.
,
4/5/2025
state dinner droned past six rain lust through parged age never duplicate time flowing away
I spent a month playing with fractur script. Normally I use a 6.0mm nib, so it’s fun to drop down to the 2.4mm and fit more than a few words on a page.
,
4/7
A simple slice, with the sliver tucked into its original cut.
,
4/10/2025
A literal take on the Lego form as I was studying the 3+1 (above) versus 2+2 (below) folds.
,
4/18/2025
Tigers hunt in the tall grass.
,
I’ve been on a good run of working ahead, so it’s been weird to write in the present tense when it isn’t Thanksgiving yet. Moving forward, I might drop this pretense until I’m back to being behind “schedule”.
Cya next time!
,
PS—Journey to the West, CCTV, 1986
After I recounted the story of the jade rabbit from chapter 95, my daughter wanted to watch the story. The episode adapted the novel well, hitting the key points while abridging and eliding non-critical aspects. The producers spun the story with a moral exhorting Piggy to behave, but otherwise followed the original.
Indeed, they followed the spirit perfectly. The novel is itself an artful collection of folk tales, so this was a figuratively faithful translation into a new medium.
Unfortunately, the production shows its age. The pacing is a little stilted and the budget is much less than one expects with modern fare. I imagine two audiences for this show—rewatching for nostalgia and for nerds to analyze how the novel was adapted to the television medium.
I would fit the latter group, but having no fondness for live action TV, this series isn’t for me, definitely not for a 30 hour commitment.
After completing the novel, I watched the final episode of the show. I love how they stayed faithful to the original story while closing it in its campy, endearing way. I see why this show has been replayed on TV every since year since its original broadcast. I watched a trailer of a 2011 take on the novel and the old practical effects of the original are vastly more appealing than cheap, outdated CGI.
—October 2021
,
PPS—Cowboy Bebop, Netflix, 2021
I don’t know how to remake a classic, except that this ain’t it. The production is of decent quality, though imperfect. John Cho is a little old. None of the actors hits their notes dead on.
This adaptation is trapped in the uncanny valley of recreating the past (episode 1) and creating its own identity (episode 2). The first episode missed the mark (a damn near impossible task), and the second episode proved it was going in a direction that I wasn’t interested in.
Vicious and Julia are barely characters in the original. He was (as the name implies) is a cruel force of nature. She’s mute lost object of desire. Making them human reduces their essence and costs us time in revisiting the main characters.
To be fair, I might have given this series one more episode but after disliking the second I crawled the internet, found mixed removed and moved on. Why spend 8 hours on a mediocre echo when I could just revisit the original masterpiece again?
—November 2021
,
PPPS—World’s Most Extraordinary homes, Netflix, 2017-2018
My kids make little tent structures around the house so we thought they would enjoy checking out all these cool houses around the world.
Yup, it was pretty awesome!
Admittedly, when the revolution comes, these folks will be the first to fight the mob at their gates (unless their private security forces pushes the rabble towards easier targets).
Class envy aside, the rapport between the hosts was fun and the houses were luxurious. Unsurprisingly, we preferred the smaller (often architect owned) structures. Financial constraints made for tighter designs that just felt right.
The first season was sorted by geography (mountain, coast, etc.), while the second was by nation. Both were fun to watch and it’s a shame there aren’t any more seasons.
