Weeknotes #18: time for coffee!
Chemex Timer
Instead of making progress on Draft Jam, I ended up working a bit on the design for that’s a timer for the various phases of Chemex brewing. I think about making this little web app every time I make coffee and have to watch my stopwatch for the various timings.
I took this opportunity to finally start playing with Figma in earnest. The Image Palette plugin, which pulls a palette out of a given image, is super fun:
In other first Figma impressions: it seems weird that, unless there’s an update I haven’t found in the UI, you can’t define a custom frame size (Figma’s notion of an artboard).
I got a little impatient with the vector tools in Figma and ended up bouncing over to Illustrator to work on an app icon:
Once I got the icon in situ:
I decided that I need to re-introduce more contrast (that I had previously removed) and perhaps simplify details a bit. I’m also going to look into a dark-on-light option as well.
Right [health] habits, right time
This week I’m grateful for two health habits which hadn’t truly resonated with me in the past but, like an ultimately-beloved album, have now found me at the right time:
- Running: allow me to say that I don’t actually look forward to going for a jog, primarily because what I’d rather be doing with my solo time is sleeping or reading or working on a project. That said, I’m currently enamored with running: for me, it is the most resource-efficient exercise in terms of both money and planning. I feel accomplished and capable when I come back from a jog, no matter how “well” I ran that day. What I love most about running is the time to observe the world around me, to window-shop for houses or note who has weird stuff in their front yard. As the leaves rapidly change in Seattle—marking nearly a year of my new practice—running has become an active meditation on the passing of seasons.
- Meditation: speaking of which, I’ve tried meditation several times before, and it actually feels like it might stick this time. I still need to work on meditating daily, and my mind wanders constantly, but I’ve already noticed how a small time investment can make a big difference on processing thoughts and emotions.
Reading
We’ve been reading Tools and Weapons for a book club at work, through which I discovered TV “white spaces”, aka unused TV channels, can be used to provide broadband internet access.
