weekly retro #28: pivoting to video
welcome to my weekly retro, the 28th one. get a load of this hibiscus flower:
this is a light mode version of the hibiscus i shared a couple weeks ago. i'm being for real right now when i say that i had no idea what a hibiscus looked like until a month ago. every day my world gets a little bigger. you're probably wondering "what's that gray watch you're wearing?" and that's a great question.
in the last retro i said i gave up "wearables" and it's been going great, no one has been harmed directly by me not generating personal health data for the corporate cloud THAT I KNOW OF. anyway, my new rinky-dink watch arrived with a manual so small that andy thought i was just casually reading a chick tract. then my pal phil (gpg) came over and we went to jerseyscript, which is now at pet shop - try the tacos!
on the topic of technology, i published a list of non-ai image websites for when you want to add an image to your blog or newsletter and don't want to cheapen the shit out of it with ai slop. someone on some social platform responded to this with something along the lines of "here's a website: go outside and take a photo" and i was going to reply "love that energy! also outside is not a website" but i opted to not waste both our time. i am always outside taking a photo.
i'm also always inside taking a photo. everyone say "hi, pumagreg."
i finished the html and javascript for my art page gallery on stream after writing 3 books worth of alt text behind the scenes. you can go through all the pages of my book projects now on jennschiffer.com/art. i did a rare night stream to go through the tiny award nominees. i just paused writing this to cast my vote!
i did a lot of work to actually finish what my vision was for the initial bugs rock shop homepage. i've really been enjoying making videos and taking product photos to fill out the site, which is funny because when working in tech i hated having to do anything with regards to visuals lol. i also added a listing for free baby tomato samples in case you're curious as to what a tomato candle smells, but not ready to go all in on a whole "nice tomato"
i've even gotten into setting up nice staging for other people's candles and taking videos of them melting, just for fun. i'm basically selling candles so i can afford to buy everyone elses candles.
and probably the biggest win of the week: the four warm zeppoles i wolfed down this afternoon in the 90 degree shadeless heat, wearing all black powdered sugar.
things i enjoyed this week
- my favorite rock band king gizzard and the lizard wizard (i should use "mfrbkglw" going forward, but i won't) played a 3-day festival in colorado and streamed it on their youtube. i really enjoyed their sets, as well as spellling (another one of my faves) and king stingray.
- can you tell that 90% of the content i consume are videos of live concerts? anyway, doja cat's outside lands performance outfit was so good, so was her set.
- i started using kagi as my default search engine. i'm not paying yet or using whatever their ai summary tool is, but in just the couple of days i've been using it i've had a much better experience than i have been having with duckduckgo. i'll let you know how this new search engine journey goes!
- also in tech, i was able to help a friend who was doing json-like coding out by recommending notepad++ which was my go-to text/code editor when i used windows primarily about 20 years ago. it's open source, still around, and i miss it as an apple user!
all my aerial instructors this past week got together and decided i was going to do a lot of planking, so i am sure you can tell from reading this retro that my shoulders have gotten very strong. let's hope this coming week is productive and we all stay hydrated and well-stretched!
xoxo jenn