This year roughly followed the seasons, with one big break.
Winter started with a monthly focus on new scripts—finally bearing down on Italics, Gothic, Copperplate, and Roman Capitals.
We bought the boy Paul Jackson’s Cut and Fold Techniques for Pop-Up Designs which I promptly commandeered. It completely changed Spring as I cut and folded through all the designs in his book.
Pop-ups are fun, but I hate photographing them, so I returned to the ruling pen in Summer, focusing on cursive. Splatters are addictive!
Then a big break September with a week in the hospital. Not fun, but I’m grateful for the wonders of modern medicine.
Autumn started with my recuperation through Inktober and then walking through the NATO alphabet. It officially became a challenge season when I dived into Callivember with the kids’ watercolor sets.
The last weeks of this year are closing out in two directions.
I’ve graduated from Crayola watercolor pans to a tube set of gouaches. OMG, I love opacity! Gouache works great on colored construction paper, and I’m now painting my hand, which pairs nicely with old hand sketches for the NATO alphabet series.
With free release of Affinity, I also started making zines. We even purchased a color printer now that I discovered the existence and efficiency of tank printers. So now I need to publish some zines to justify this purchase!
And for 2026? The good news is that I finally got traction on the 2024+2025 theme of “Catching Up”, plowing through my old blog drafts. I’m only halfway through those drafts and never got around to dormant home projects, but it’s time to move on.
“Curation” is my word for 2026. Life is packed full of interesting things and I need to make some hard cuts—”if it’s not exciting or veggies, then NO!” Even more than the past few months, I hope to embrace the cult of done (or trashed).
Aside from my “exciting” calligraphy, blog, and zine projects, I got the usual list of “veggies” that everybody else has with the new year—a never-ending list of home projects, controlling my diet (nutritional and digital), and creating a regular exercise routine.
So yeah, goodbye to 2025 and here’s to a fresh start in a couple of days, just like every morning!
A few years ago, we ended up at the ER when the girl fell off the couch and hit her head on the tile floor.
Fortunately she’s no worse for the wear. Unfortunately, we met an apathetic staff at the hospital.
Looking around the waiting room, I saw a bunch of sick kids and worried parents. I get it, nobody wants to be here, and it’s a rough gig dealing with everyone’s worst day, every day.
But still, those employees chose this life. If you can’t be happy practicing your craft, find another craft.
I often think about this as a project manager. Yes, I’m improving the facilities for the future. But all my users experience at the moments are inconveniences and a bunch of extra meetings.
At the very least, I can lead the project with joy and flair. After all, I’m the one who chose this life.
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Some Links
I’m joining your favorite organizations by asking for donations before the clock strikes midnight.
To start, Wikipedia needs no link, but if you use it as much as I do….
But have you explored the Internet Archive? I became aware of them when looking for building codes (before the code publishing houses had online websites). They also archive much, much more (such as a DOSbox web implementation of the original Civilization). On second thought, maybe don’t give these guys money.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is a non-partisan organization focused on fighting for our free speech rights, I’m proud to be a card carrying member of this organization protecting our most fundamental right.
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Bus Station, Umeå, Västerbotten, Sweden, 1930-1939
My thoughts about this despised big box chain revolves around two stories.
Two decades ago, I read an article describing the demise of the pickle giant Vlasic as Walmart’s relentless supply chain squeezed them into bankruptcy.
The second was an anecdote by a friend whose sibling works for the company. Walmart employees are not allowed to accept gifts. The rule is so strict that they pay for bottled water when visiting a vendor’s office.
Aside from the power of stories to stick in one’s memory (branding!), they highlight an interesting dichotomy I’ve seen in government.
Bureaucracy has a logic all its own. The system will demand individual uprightness while being corporately cruel. As the Owner, the trick is to find that balance. We must uphold strict standards, but we also need to execute with wisdom and judgement.
It is easier to be a coldly bureaucratic operator, but the process is so much richer when practiced with warmth.
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Some Links
For about six months, I dived into jazz. I don’t consider myself particularly knowledgeable about this obtuse genre, but here are a few standouts from those explorations, primarily courtesy of library app Hoopla.
After trying out a few of Keith Jarrett’s solo albums, I’ve settled on the Paris Concert. Like the rest of the world, I adore the Koln Concert but I prefer how the Paris Concert starts with a baroque phrase before transitioning into jazz.
Coltrane is still the truth. For the season, you can’t go wrong with My Favorite Things, and Giant Steps is every bit as giant its title.
Less famous known is Bobby Timmons. I first found him due to his excellent Holiday Soul Christmas album, but I’ve also very much enjoyed his albums Chun King and Chicken and Dumplin’s.
I walked a renovation with my Architect and the Using Agency.
It was strange to traipse through the building. Construction had started a couple of months prior, but it all felt theoretical.
As an Owner, my job is to manage budget and schedule. I’m here to make the process move smoothly; it’s all so abstract, not solving the problems in the field.
Yes, it’s less stressful than the technical day to day grind in private practice.
But we don’t get to enjoy the scenery either.
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Some Links
I’ve always been fond of for folk music, and YouTube is a treasure trove of artists.
I found Daoiri Farrell from an impromptu flight delay session, and the Creggan White Hare has been on regular repeat ever since.
Nicolas Campin anchors a haunting Mazurka, but if you’d rather have your players separated, here is a captivating Scottish à Cheillé on dining tables.
A captivating pairing of 十面埋伏 with A Change Is Gonna Come by Charles Yang. His soulful singing is a pleasant shock after playing the high pitched pipa tune on the violin.
Before wandering into the world of pop up cards, here are five last 5WP’s…until we get back into poetry again!
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3/24 Inktober 52 (2024), week 13
battling samurai with a spork
I tried a few lineweights with this Spork. The simple clean version one felt most spork-y.
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3/28 Inktober 52 (2024), week 11
japanese racoons shapeshift with nuts
A reference to the brilliant Studio Ghibli movie Pom Poko, a fun commentary on fighting our inevitable exploitation of nature. An early scene showing the development of the rural land around Tokyo is one of the sharpest satires I’ve seen on film.
I can’t remember for sure, but with the spacing so perfect, I suspect it was tweaked in the box. Nothing crazy, just a nudge here or there.
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4/3 Inktober 52 (2024), week 8
astronaut riding a space donkey
An early experiment with inverting the background and playing with colors (using the Hue-Saturation filter). One day I should start experimenting in IRL with gauche on colored paper.
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4/4 Inktober 52 (2024), week 9
always add a red balloon
The version on blank sheets was fine, but ruled binder paper felt like a relevant background for something that references a red-balloon (and as always a little extra noise can make a huge difference).
This was a reference to the architectural rendering trope adding a child with a red balloon. It gives a pop of color in the sky and a sense of playfulness to an otherwise staid image.
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3/29 Inktober 52 (2025), week 13
a flock of folded rams
With this I detoured heavily into the world of pop-up cards. We bought Paul Jackson’sCut and Fold Techniques for Pop-Up Designs for the boy’s birthday, but I stole it as soon as I saw it. There would be a few more 5WP’s, but dealing with the third dimension and the constraints of the paper sucked all my creative energy for a while.
After summer, I returned to flat paper with the ruling pen but focused on a single word at a time. I’d like to return to poetry and pop-ups (and maybe both at the same time!), but struggling with a word itself is challenge enough for now.
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As we head into this season of year end summaries, it’s interesting to think that this post covers the first half of 2025 with my “standard” 5WP format, practicing with a brushpen on ruled binder paper, and folded pop-up cards.
The second half of the year (assuming no surprises after I draft this in late October) was dominated by the ruling pen, a month off due to illness, embracing a focus on just one word at a time, and finally pushing out some old blog drafts.
I wonder what the new year will bring? All I know is that I don’t.
It’s gentle, but dang if your arms don’t get tired! And it’s easy to crank it up if you’re feeling it.
For me, it is cultural tourism, exer-dancing with a group from the exotic orient. I guess it’s not totally foreign since I’m of Chinese descent. The music is familiar, even though I don’t understand the words to the songs. While the megalopolis Asian urban setting is strange, the faces are not.
I would prefer to hang out at the local Kung Fu gym for my exercise. But that time that has passed. I don’t have time to slip out to practice with kids who are a just a few years older than my children.
Unfortunately, Tai Chi by myself gets old after a while, but partaking in the kitschy music and oddly familiar foreign group movement with the family is a nice change of pace for a day’s exercise.
—May 2021
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PPS—Rubber Balloons
My daughter wanted helium balloons for her birthday, but we ordered a bag of regular balloons from Target.
She quickly got over her disappointment after my wife inflated a couple of them. Human air doesn’t float, but gravity makes for play. They spent a couple of hours batting them around the house. Up and down the stairs, over the dividing walls, in the bedrooms.
I hadn’t heard the boy laugh like this in a while. All over fifty cents of rubber.
It pained me to think of all the kids who can’t afford such a fleeting luxury. And I was reminded of a fellow father riding in the Vegas heat with a foil balloon for each of his kids.
—October 2021, soon after, they discovered the manual mattress pump. We had hours of fun inflating the balloons and letting them fly through the house.
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PPPS—Pac-Man
Our daughter is growing up fast. She was reading a book with snippets from American History and asked about “Pac-Man”.
We watched YouTube videos and played Scratch versions of this classic. I also explained the concept of “arcades” where people had to pay coins to play computer games, and how the value of a quarter has been debased over forty years.
This weekend I pulled out a “Pac-Man Connect and Play” that plugs into the TV. Even though they didn’t enjoy Pac-Man, the boy loved a driving game where you left oil spills to spin out the pursuer. She preferred a flying game shooting coins out of the air.
After TV time was up, we played Pac-Man in person, using deflated balloons for the smaller buttons and inflated balloons for the ones that made Pac-Man eat the ghosts.
Then we took another YouTube break for the The Go! Team’s Ms. Pac-Man music video. That led to watching more music videos, TV advertising, and discussed how TV used to be appointment viewing.
Basically, we covered the last half century of American culture in a weekend through a yellow lens.
Long ago, boardgaming was my primary form of entertainment.
I would read rules while riding the bus into downtown Houston for my corporate gig. I was trying to internalize the rules and visualize the game experience. Of course, great games stand out because they create complex dynamics that can’t be visualized in a steel tube crawling through city traffic. But what’s the alternative? Buy a game without thought?
Beyond the acquisition decision, this turned out to be was a powerful mental exercise. I was focusing on a complicated text in a variable environment, applying words to a future self. In mentally playing a game, I sat in each opponents’ chair, visualizing their competing interests—different goals leads to different actions, creating that elusive the gameplay dynamic.
Years later, I’m doing the same thing as with contracts tackling difficult situations. The stakes are a bit higher, but that’s all. People generally act according to the set up. So I try to empathize with their pressures to understand their motivations. How can I navigate this mix to discover an optimal outcome?
There might have been less frivolous ways to spend the commute, but reading boardgame rules turned out to be a solid choice.
~
Some Links
Our son prefers cooperative games, and Matt Leacock is the giant who designed Pandemic that popularized this genre. In simplifying his classic for a wider audience, he designed Forbidden Island with a board made out of tiles. This twist created a game where the board would disappear over time.
He developed the idea further with Forbidden Desert, where the tiles would shift and and move. I haven’t tried Forbidden Sky, but we just purchased Forbidden Jungle. Here, the players are required to shift the board around—while managing a bunch of grouchy aliens.
This series is a fun case study of a designer developing a simple game mechanic (tiled boards in a cooperative setting) over several iterations. All three are highly recommended.
One thing going from employee directly to client is the continued awareness that we are all still customers.
In private practice, I noticed that some long-time owners had a sense of entitlement over the employees because they were paying us.
Bullshit.
Yes, I owe them my full effort while I’m there. But why do I have a heavier obligation to be grateful to this business partner? I thought this was supposed to be a fair exchange.
If the boss is doing their job, they should be making a profit off my labor. So maybe they owe a debt of gratitude.
Mutual entitlement / victimhood isn’t going to take us far. We need to reframe of our partnerships as a barter. Money is valuable, but we’re buying time.
As an owner, I’m holding the cash, but I’m taking years of these architects’ careers.
That’s a BFD.
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Some Links
I don’t think anyone is reading this in Vegas, but if you will be partaking in Giving Tuesday—think local!
A couple years ago, we saw a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the local library and I’ve been hooked ever since. It’s awesome to watch the Nevada Shakespeare Festival perform these classics with an absurdist flair. Their most recent performance of Titus Andronicus was a dark hilarious affair with a brutal body count.
After joining government, I realized the importance of state and local news. Unlike the print newspapers (both owned by one company), The Nevada Independent is truly independent. If nothing else, their judicial election guides (surveying local lawyers about candidates) are worth a donation!
When I first came to town, I found the Lohan School of Shaolin. The kids came soon after so I haven’t practiced there in a long time, but they continue to be an anchor in this town.
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Window Display, from the U.S. Office of War Information, 1941-1942
