hello friends

It has been months since I last wrote, wrapping up 2022 with nothing much new to say, and I still feel similarly a third of the way into 2023. I’m not sure if it comes with age, complacency, stagnation… I often find that I have less to say publicly. Every thought feels more repetitive, less profound. Lessons feel more private and internalized. What I want to share into the abyss feels fewer and far between. In truth, I have begun to wonder if I’ve outgrown this space on the internet. What started as a place to feel connected to people in ways I wasn’t finding in my personal life no longer feels as necessary. My Squarespace renewal date is in October, so I will try to keep things alive until then and see how I feel.

In terms of updates, 2023 has already been full of excitement in various ways. We bought a place in March and have spent many hours packing and unpacking, building a home together. While the process was stressful, it has been somewhat of a wondrous experience and one I will cherish. Despite the chaos, I’ve still been spending significant and consistent time skateboarding. What started as a desire to cruise around on pavement has developed into a somewhat obsessive goal around doing tricks and fulfilling childhood dreams. I spend an embarrassing amount of time learning physics of tricks, watching and re-watching tutorials, and figuring out my exact preferences on boards and shoes. The progress has been excruciatingly slow, as to be expected, but the little victories are worthwhile. I feel my balance improving, and the confrontation of fear and trying to do something out of my comfort zone every day, no matter how small, is surprisingly fulfilling. Our new proximity to a variety of parking lots has meant that I’ve been re-designing the electric mini velo bike into a skate-mobile. I’ve tested out some racks and I’m still working through some design challenges between carrying capacity and ergonomics, but I’m excited to iterate on what will functionally be my “car” since we’re living in closer proximity to family, grocery stores, the library, and most of what I need to access on a daily basis.

Learning Japanese, like skateboarding, has provided a sense of satisfaction at incremental improvement. I’ve been learning nearly a year now, and although I am far from even conversationally fluent, it is satisfying to be able to listen to Japanese and have a vague sense of what the conversation about. With our trip to Japan two weeks away, I am eager to put my amateur skills to use, but also nervous that I won’t be able to communicate as much as I would like. Nearly four years into COVID, I’m somewhat anxiously anticipating upcoming international travel. It seems like literally everyone is going to Japan this year, and while I am excited to visit a place I’ve wanted to go since I was a kid, it will be quite the adjustment from the quiet and solitude of WFH suburban life. It’ll be the longest time off work I’ve taken since I quit my job in Boston and VIA Rail’d across Canada in 2018. Hopefully, I will have lots of film photos to share after the trip, although they may resemble the same film photos that every #analogue photographer has taken in Japan this year. Until then.

2022 wrap up

And with that, another year is basically over. Compared with 2021, 2022 was quiet and stable. No long roadtrips up the coast, no 100 mile bike rides, no extensive adventures in other states. The adventures felt more internal, mostly executed from home — long hours at the sewing machine perfecting new sewing techniques, sunset skate sessions at the local parking lots. I spent a lot of my energy in 2022 figuring out what I actually wanted to spend my energy on.

Earlier this year, I wrote a couple of self reminders in my journal that have stuck with me.

• “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.” - Annie Dillard

• Don’t cut out passions — leads to “phantom limb pain”. Make room to pursue the things that bring you joy. Nourish the things close you yourself and your self-identity.

So with those in mind, some of the things I was very happy with this year:

• Developing a lot more confidence in my sewing ability — to take design requirements and translate them into something usable that I can make. I hope to continue pushing on those skills and develop more complex 3D patterns and more organic shapes.

• Building a complete bicycle up from the frame. It is incredibly rewarding to know exactly how each part was assembled and how. I installed the fork, cut the head tube with a hack saw, installed the bottom bracket, and installed/adjusted the derailleur—everything that used to intimidate me.

• Getting over the mental age barrier and embracing skateboarding again. My main regret is that I didn’t start back up earlier, but developing new skills and tricks has been critical to my sense of fulfillment day-to-day. In many ways, it’s can be an ideal suburb sport, where the challenge isn’t with the elevation gained or distance covered, but the physical coordination of being able to do something new.

• Putting in the time and effort to learn a new language. It’s nice to feel my brain working in a new way.

• Dedicating the time to continue to build and strengthen both old and new relationships. I was happy that I generally had the time and emotional energy to be present for those that I love and care about.

Until next year!

P.S. Book recommendations from 2022 — Pachinko (yeah, I’m a couple years late) and The Winners by Fredrik Backman.

hey we're not getting any younger

Thinking back on childhood, there's a couple of regrets I have in the things I chose to pursue. Interests I squashed because of external factors that now seem silly. In basketball, I regret allowing nerves to dominate my performance in games and not doing more to live up to the potential I knew I had, but never let come to fruition. Creatively, I regret not doing more with photography and filmmaking during the times when cinematography was really all I could think about. I was held back by a lack of community and unwillingness to take the creative risk of putting my ideas into the world for judgment. Most of all, skateboarding is a sport that has haunted me. After years of secretly pining for a cruiser board, I got my first board in 5th grade. I rode the two blocks to elementary school, and was immediately made fun of by a skater boy named Andrew. He told me that girls couldn't skate and that I would never be good. This, piled onto a year of bullying for anything I could really imagine, got the best of me, and I never rode my board to school again. I practiced half-heartedly in my driveway, but lost the motivation to learn how to ollie, which in my mind, was the beginning of the road to become a real skater.

In college, I had a couple of cruisers that I used for campus commuting. I got pretty comfortable, but never attempted to do anything more than slaloming between students to get to class. I remember spending one winter break in 2016 practicing freestyle everyday, but quickly lost that motivation to "safer" hobbies. I felt too old and a little too fragile to risk slamming my body into asphalt.

A couple of months ago, nearly 6 years after last attempting to level up on skate tricks, I decided to get back on a longboard. I was in the midst of healing from a pretty badly sprained ankle and training for a three day backpacking trip through Catalina Island, and unintentionally stumbled into r/longboards. I saw videos of longboard dancing and freestyle, which re-sparked an interest that has been pretty consistent throughout my life. While intrigued, I went down the same paths of thinking — that I'm too old now to learn something that requires so much practice and balance, too old to fall. During a late night of insomnia though, I also realized that I will never be younger than I am in this instant, and if I start thinking that I'm too old to do fun things now, I will miss out on so many potential passions for the rest of my life. The nagging feelings of wishing I did more, created more, shared more — they can only get worse. So I got myself a couple of boards, and I've been out skating pretty much every day since then. I've taken a fall, which was jarring, but nothing some preventative pads couldn't protect against. It's crazy how much joy kicking around on a 4-wheeled board can give me.

wearing things, part ii /

I’ve returned this website to dark mode. I was reading a book about sustainable web design and realized that albeit small (relatively), certain decisions can make a big difference in terms of climate impact. Inverting my website colors is a very, very tiny act in the grand scheme of things, but still matters in terms of intention.

Intention is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Intention in communication, intention in time, intention in decisions, intention in design. Intention can really be applied to anything.

The intention of my blog is a transparent space where I share my reflections on a wide variety of different topics, for whoever wants to engage with it.

As reflected in my last post, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the intention of the items that I own, how they serve my perception of myself and how I interact with the world. I’ve been on a half-year-long overhaul of my wardrobe to turn it from a random collection of individual items into something coherent.

The average woman has around 19 pairs of shoes, according to Google, which made me feel better about having 15, which I already felt like was a lot. I’ve struggled with finding comfortable shoes. Due to plantar fasciitis and flat feet, it is rare to find shoes flexible enough to not result in arch cramps but cushioned enough not to bruise my feet. I’ve gone through so many different kinds of shoes, but have finally arrived at a set of shoes that allows me to do what I enjoy, respect dress codes, and fit in with the intention of cohesion in my wardrobe.

Starter pack

These are the set of shoes that would get me through 80% of daily life. A pair of laced black chunky boots, Chuck Taylors, and Birkenstocks. It is basic AF, but I’m covered for all seasons and all casual use cases.

outdoor expansion

These are the shoes that enable me comfortably and safely take on various outdoor activities—hiking boots, basketball shoes, running shoes, and stiffer shoes for cycling. I’ve tried to minimize this before, using a single pair of cross-trainers to encompass all activities. While it satisfied the minimalist intention and they were decent all -around, they weren’t the “right” shoe for anything. I slipped on hikes, my soles would hurt after basketball and running, and they were not durable to the bike pedal pins. While I 4x’d the number of shoes to be able to fit my various use cases, I have more confidence in taking on each activity, which overall contributes quality of life.

social expansion

If I had it my way, I wouldn’t need fancy shoes, but I respect dress codes and want to look appropriately presentable in all contexts. My goal at fancy events is generally to blend in. I have a pair of loafers from my consulting days, one pair of open-toe heels, one pair of closed-toe heels, and leather sandals. These take me from business casual to semi-formal and I don’t expect to ever be invited to black-tie event.

aesthetic expansion

And finally, I have shoes that don’t serve a functional goal, but I really enjoy wearing for aesthetic and comfort purposes. I have a pair of Salomon lifestyle shoes that are very easy to take on and off and work across my wardrobe, my favorite Nike’s designed by Olivia Kim, and chunky black oxfords. I don’t “need” these shoes for anything specifically, but I wear them all the time.

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I’ve been applying the same approach the rest of my wardrobe. I have a core wardrobe with different “expansions” based on outdoor activity and fancy dress codes, and items that I have that are for pure enjoyment and self-expression. Splitting the items into different groups helps provide clarity on which items I should expect to use more often than others. For example, at some point I thought about getting rid of my heels because I haven’t wore them in two years. After reflecting on it, I realized that I don’t own heels to wear them constantly, and that they’re for special events that were mostly cancelled during COVID. Likewise, I’ve made the mistake of getting rid of running shoes before because I was in a slump, and then, months later, used the lack of shoes as an excuse not to run. I try to remember now that material possessions can weigh me down mentally, but they are also what enables me to do activities that are rewarding. I’ve been socially anxious about going to events before because I didn’t have the right shoes, and while it’s easy to go overboard, I do realize now that having a intentional wardrobe is very liberating—I don’t have to panic buy a dress because I got invited to a wedding that I was unprepared for, only to never wear it again because I only bought it under time pressure.

I expect that this will mostly conclude my reflections on clothing and fashion for the year. When I started on my closet reorganization and overhaul, I did not expect it to take up so much active thought and energy (and also money). I felt guilt over the consumerist aspect while figuring it out, but ultimately, I think it was worth it to prevent the reactionary cycle of having a full closet but constantly feeling like nothing was right. It made me more susceptible to advertisement, which often preys on the feeling of a new item perfectly filling a gap (sometimes an invented gap). Anything felt like it could fit when I had no sense of what the gaps really were. Now, advertisements rarely trigger any kind of emotional response because I’m self-aware about the gaps and I know exactly what I would want to fill them. Overall, I’m eager to take the energy I’ve spent reading about fabric weight, cuts, color theory, thread count, shoe lasts, and insulation and apply it to other parts of life. But if anyone is looking for a wardrobe redesign, let me know. It was pretty fun.

wearing things, part i

I went back through the history of my blog the other day and reflected on how the contents of my blog have shifted over time. When I started my first WordPress blog in high school, it was a place for me to share unique interests (at that time, film cameras and photography) on the internet because my friends and family weren’t necessarily interested in the intricacies of what I was learning or doing. As I outgrew WordPress (literally, I hit my data limit and couldn’t post anymore), I turned to this space to continue documenting my thoughts, experiences, and interests. The value of this private-public space for me was in the openness I had in sharing myself with the possibility, but not the expectation, that someone I know would end up reading what I put out.

Over time, as it became more clear to me that people were actually reading, I began to be warier of what I shared here. I didn’t want to share thoughts or projects that weren’t “complete”, even though that’s what I had been doing for years before. I wanted to provide bulk updates on things that I was doing as if that could replace actually catching up with people. I shared more about actions and less about thought, perhaps because I thought actions and photos would be more interesting for the casual browser than thousands of words about really random trains of thought. My point is that I’m making a conscious return to treating this space where I entertain my own thoughts, formatted for the occasional friend or stranger to stumble upon and fall into if they find it interesting. Whether you’re a friend, family member, coworker, or stranger—you are free to dive in or wander away.

I’ve been thinking about clothes a lot lately, which is both strange and normal if that makes any sense. I have a very complex relationship with clothing. On one hand, I love a lot of things about clothes. As someone who is fascinated by how things are made, I love understanding and studying materials and fabrics and how small differences in manufacturing can lead to differences in end look, feel, and quality. As a photographer and designer, I can be obsessive about colors, tones, and textures. As a sewing enthusiast, the shape, cut, and drape of materials are details that I am naturally drawn towards. While all of these things are true, I’ve been dissecting a sense of shame that I feel in my admitted interest in fashion.

Why do I feel shame? A lot of people are into fashion. It’s a 3,000 billion dollar global industry. After a couple of months of thinking, I’ve broken my sense of shame down to a couple of factors.
The most immediate sense of self-disappointment probably comes from the fact that clothes are horrible for the environment. I actually wrote pretty extensively about it here. Dressing all the people on earth is a significant contributor to climate change, and as someone who experiences anxiety about climate change and actively cares about improving our global fate, it can be hard to mentally balance the interest and the known environmental cost of that interest. Yes, there are ways of reducing impact by buying second-hand or buying ethically (however you want to define that) produced goods. Not all clothes are made like disposable fast fashion, but at the end of the day, every material thing has an environmental cost.

Beyond the environmental cost, I think there is a part of me that considers interest in material things frivolous. I kind of wish I were only interested in expanding my intellect or doing good in the world as if that would somehow make me a more fulfilled or noble person. But however I may try, I cannot help that my passion for design, appreciation of detail, and aesthetic diligence make me painfully materialistic. Luckily for myself, I channel that energy towards a “quality over quantity” mindset because I also cannot stand visual clutter.

By far my hardest to dissect part of how I feel towards clothes, I’ve realized, stems from a complex journey with my relationship with gender norms in society. For as long as I can remember, I was considered a “tomboy”. I liked doing stereotypically boy things, like playing basketball and baseball, building LEGOs, rolling around in grass and dirt, and generally being quite active. I also really liked playing with stuffed animals and the color pink, but I don’t think that was often highlighted as part of my identity that others perceived. I wore my brother’s hand-me-downs and didn’t care at all. I always had my mom tie up my hair because I didn’t like it in my face. In elementary school, I was made fun of for only wearing sports sweats and hoodies. Kids said I dressed like a homeless person. By middle school, I was choosing my own clothes, which ended up just being straight-fit jeans, a white basketball camp t-shirt, a red hoodie, and white Nikes. I still remember those exact articles of clothing—I liked them because they felt substantial and high quality, and I thought they fit well. Sometime during 6th grade, a girl told me to stop getting my clothes out of the dumpster, which, in retrospect, was pretty traumatizing since I was making active decisions about what to wear. I was made fun of regularly for not having gone through puberty yet. I don’t remember ever actively trying to dress like a boy, but I have vivid memories of feeling exposed and self-conscious about my body when forced into a more “feminine” way of dressing. I hated ballet flats because they made my calves look huge (because they were! from all the hours I spent jumping for basketball!), but they were the only accepted dressy shoe for girls during the 2000s. I hated girl-specific shirts because they had a huge waist-to-hip flare, which didn’t reflect my body at the time and looked awkward and balloon-y. I hated girl’s jeans because they didn’t have real pockets and were completely impractical. I hated patterns of all kinds because it was visually overwhelming, and girls clothes had lots of floral patterns. I couldn’t express it at the time, so my preferences, in the end, were assumed to be because I wanted to dress like a boy, which wasn’t really true either, but boy clothes fitted my straight-shaped body better than whatever was happening at Forever 21, so I went with it.

As peer pressure mounted in middle school and high school, I continued to make attempts at figuring out my “style”, which was pretty much finding one article of clothing I liked and wearing it repeatedly until it fell apart. I wore my basketball team hoodie, black jeans, and Rainbow sandals for probably 3/4 of my time in high school. I honestly just tried to think about clothes as little as possible, while simultaneously recognizing that some items of clothing made me feel great, while others make me want to crawl out of my skin. Junior year, I got asked to Prom and had to figure out something to wear. After hours and hours of stressful shopping with my friends to no avail, I found this borderline inappropriately short, skin-tight red dress that I absolutely did not expect to like, but did. It was made out of a soft but substantial, silky material, and it made me feel confident when I wore it. My mom was alarmed at my dress choice (it is still the shortest, most revealing dress I have ever worn), as was most of the school when I showed up at Prom, but for some reason, it felt right to me. I would say, upon this reflection, that it was from that experience that I realized my distaste towards clothing was not about an aversion to being “feminine”, but about finding a relationship between material and form that fit my perception of myself.

By college, I had a bit of a clothing budget from side hustles and really began searching for a particular style. I bought H&M way more than I want to admit. I gravitated towards t-shirts with interesting details, like mesh panels or atypical cuts, and lots of gray/black/maroon. I ended up with a ton of clothes, most of which I never wore. I still couldn’t put into words what I was looking for at the time, but by end of sophomore year, I had a ton of monochromatic clothes of extremely shoddy quality. After having to pack all of my belongings and move them to a storage unit with a rental car myself in the pouring rain while battling the flu, I decided I couldn’t have so many things anymore. That summer, I discovered minimalist wardrobes and decided I would only wear 3 t-shirts and 1 pair of black jeans. I bought the nicest t-shirts and jeans I could reasonably afford, and I felt great about my clothes every day. It was pretty liberating. I returned to campus and sold the majority of my clothes on Poshmark or gave them to friends. I kept a couple of hoodies and jackets but weaned myself off of fast fashion. I was searching for freedom from the “I have so many clothes and none of it makes me feel good and I don’t know why” kind of feeling, and I solved it by getting rid of most of it and sticking to a formula. It worked. I rode through college wearing the same combination of the same black jeans, 3 t-shirts, skate shoes, hoodies, flannels, and winter jackets. It really was an evolution of my 6th-grade outfit, but by this point, I stopped trying to push the boundaries of what could make me feel good and focused on what did. I did discover at some point that black overalls and Dr. Martens made me feel very comfortable and embraced that.

When the consulting lifestyle rolled around and I realized I would have to have a business wardrobe, I did the same thing. I found one pair of dressy pants that I liked and bought them in 4 colors. I found one blouse that I liked and bought it in 3 colors. The silhouette was exactly the same every time, but I felt fine in it and it worked for the purpose. I was pretty deep in minimalism on YouTube by this point in my life and was obsessed with the idea of living out of one bag and only having one high-quality item of everything I owned. It suited my 300-square-foot studio life and the subsequent world traveling I did before returning home to California. I got really into technical fabrics like merino wool, which promised the ability to stay fresh after multiple days of wear. I became aware of travel-centric brands like Western Rise, Icebreaker, Smartwool, etc. The idea of having one outfit that I could wear indefinitely without drawing attention to myself was highly appealing.

When I moved back home to California, my wardrobe became a mashup of the items I had left behind when I moved to college and everything I had brought back from Boston. It was a pretty weird mashup of items—MIT track jackets, winter coats, merino wool shirts, my consulting outfits, random sweaters and basketball shorts from high school. I bought some clothes to try to fill the gaps — lots of Topo Designs stuff as I was going hiking more often and appreciated the outdoor vibe conceptually. That was pretty much what I’ve been wearing until I started taking a more structured approach to my wardrobe this year and feeling the urge to experiment again.

I’m not quite sure where that urge came from. I thought it was from the suffocation of COVID, but I still work remotely and don’t really go out other than on the occasional weekend. Maybe I feel my mortality and I want to pursue the things that invigorate me, especially something that happens on a daily basis. Maybe after sewing some complex projects, I have an even greater appreciation of quality and the subtleties of designing soft goods. Maybe it’s how I deal with the monotony of living in the suburbs during a pandemic and working from home. Maybe I’ve just finally figured out that I don’t have to be self-conscious about my aesthetic preferences and it’s fine to be into something frivolous. Really, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I now have a much better sense of what kinds of things I like. That includes monochromatic looks, utilitarian pieces, aesthetic minimalism, and material elegance. I really enjoy natural materials like linen and silk. I don’t like loud colors or visually complex articles of clothing because I get bored of them easily. I like chunky shoes because they make everyone’s feet look big so I don’t have to worry about my feet looking particularly big. I like Asian-inspired design, and a lot of Japanese brands appeal to me in their material quality and unique manufacturing. Whenever I have too much from one noticeable brand, I start feeling like a walking advertisement and I don’t like that. I like cropped tops and high-waisted pants because they fit my body proportions well. I like yellow and pink and warm earthy colors. My wardrobe is probably 50/50 on clothes explicitly designed for men vs women. Men’s pants tend to fit me better because the inseam is longer and I don’t have wide hips. Women’s tops tend to fit me better because I have narrow shoulders. I don’t always want to wear black but black suits me because I am a clumsy person and I always spill stuff on my clothes. I like mock necks because they make my neck look shorter, and sometimes I feel like a giraffe. I’ve learned that true minimalism is not for me, because I get bored of wearing the same thing every day and I like having things for specialized purposes, as long as it’s getting used (ie. I don’t want to run in my dress pants. I want my dress pants to be nice and sweat-free and I want my running pants to be good for running). It’s okay if all of my things don’t fit in a suitcase. Ultimately, I just want to be prepared enough to go into any situation and feel confident about how I look, so I can focus on the experience ahead of me rather than fearing that I’ll be uncomfortable or out of place.

After all this talk about clothes, were you expecting photos? I thought about putting some here to visualize my point but decided I had no desire to. Even though I have put an insane amount of time into figuring out a cohesive wardrobe, I genuinely feel like I did it for myself and don’t feel a need to share it publicly. And that’s kind of the point of this wandering post—a reminder to myself that even things that were once traumatizing (like getting dressed) can eventually be an enjoyable part of every day. The key, for me, was lots of reflection and intentionality.

challenge ultra edc backpack / bag build

I finally got around to making v2 of a mini EDC rolltop backpack (essentially my backpack purse) that I first conceptualized around my birthday last year. I wanted something light, comfortable, and easy to access. I learned from v1 last year that I also wanted the back and bottom to be padded since I often carry a camera or a tablet, and that roll tops don't work that well without some structure to the fabric. The first version was made entirely from CORDURA® and Dyneema, which was incredibly light but way too floppy for daily use.

This one was made with Challenge Ultra 400 with a bit of scrap CORDURA®. the back panel and bottom were padded with 1/4 inch foam, and I used FIDLOCK SNAP and HOOK closures for quick access. The shoulder straps are just seatbelt webbing, which I find adequate for lighter loads. the inside is lined with neon yellow CHALLENGE ECOPAK™ EPLX200, and I included an HHH waterproof zipper for direct access into the main compartment. The inside also has a velcro strip to attach another mini waist-belt I made. I keep all of my essentials in the waist belt so I can quickly detach it from the main bag for shorter walks or where a backpack may not be appropriate.

It's a very simple bag overall but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I've gained more confidence in being able to develop my own patterns to achieve the end result I want, and it's pretty satisfying to have a bag with high-quality materials and hardware that’s entirely homemade! I am also a big fan of the structure and aesthetic of the Ultra 400 fabric. It has a nice technical look to it, but the subtle texture and wrinkles make it more visually interesting than a flat black. I think it contrasts well against the CORDURA side panels, the webbing, and the waterproof zippers. I’ve been using this bag every day for about a week now, and have been pleasantly surprised by how comfortable and usable it is. I expected there to be more points of improvement given that it was only my second iteration, but I’m fairly confident that the size, structure, and access are appropriate for solving my intended use case. I’m more concerned about long-term durability of the shock cord and how the FIDLOCK magnets were attached to the fabric. For the next project, I want to create an aesthetically similar waist bag using the FIDLOCK closure, and a Brompton front bag for future bike touring.

ramen cat lumbar pack / bag build

A couple of weeks ago, I made the second iteration of the Stitchback lumbar pack. While I had a Mountainsmith Tour lumbar pack that I liked, I wanted something that was even more modular, so I could use the ULA waistbelt that I already had with the Mountainsmith shoulder straps. If I could make that work, I would be able to use the base lumbar pack as a sort of camera packing cube when traveling with my ULA backpack, and then reconfigure the straps after getting to a destination for shorter day hikes.

This was my first major project using the new-to-me Juki 1541, which came with its own set of issues. The needle bar collar was dented and chipped, which meant my thread kept getting caught and unraveling. For stitches longer than 6 inches, the thread would fray and break. I ended up having to replace that part of the machine, and eventually it started working as expected.

Attaching the various additional points to adapt for a removable waist belt and shoulder straps was less difficult than I anticipated. Everything came together pretty cleanly, and I was proud to avoid a lot of the “beginner” mistakes that frustrated me in previous projects (sewing wrong sides together, seam allowance issues, uneven seams, etc). I am still working on making cleaner corners, but overall, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. It was a pretty interesting choice of colors for me since I mixed X-PAC with CORDURA and a bunch of other scrap materials. I thought including the ramen cat patch would make it more fun and a stronger departure from my usual all-black motif. After testing it out in Death Valley paired with a MODL hydration bottle, I thought it was highly functional and comfortable. I may one day make a v3 that’s designed entirely around a hydration bladder to eliminate the need for large side pockets, but for now, ramen cat stays.

the microdox bud / keyboard build

I spent the last week or so on a project that ended up being much more complex than expected, but it is now (mostly) working.

I’ve used a 40% ortholinear keyboard since early 2018. I was curious about ortholinear layouts because they were supposed to be more ergonomic, but I was also intrigued by the neat aesthetic, small size, and customizability of those boards. I had a Niu Mini for a bit, which I hauled all over Europe and Canada and loved using. However, due to its heft, I ended up selling it for a Planck EZ in 2019. I really enjoyed the Planck, eventually swapping out the Kailh Box Brown switches for Box Whites as I was seeking something more tactile. I loved using the Planck, but found it a bit fatiguing to have my hands so close together as I began typing more and more for work. I started noticing occasional wrist and shoulder pain, and began exploring options to make my work setup a little more ergonomic. The Herman Miller chair helped a lot, but I thought a split keyboard would help keep my arms further apart and my posture more upright.

A split keyboard sounded cool, but aesthetically, I didn’t really want to have multiple cables running all over my desk and around my trackpad. I also probably subconsciously wanted to make this project as difficult as possible for myself. After doing some research, I found the Nice! Nano v2 controllers that are Bluetooth enabled. This meant that I could hypothetically build a split keyboard that was fully wireless. That sounded super exciting, since wireless mechanical keyboards are uncommon, let alone split wireless mechanicals. I started looking around at different kits, like the Lily 58, the Corne, Gergoplex, and other split ergo boards. While looking around, I found the Microdox Bud kit, which was a 30% board with an aluminum case. 30% sounded a little crazy, but when I actually started mapping out the keys I used most, it began to feel more feasible. It also meant less soldering, which was definitely a win in my eyes. I ordered a kit, dusted off my soldering iron, and jumped keep into different guides and Discord servers to see how to make it all come together.

Trying to draw out different keymaps before attempting to code them up using ZMK.

Different kit parts all ready — diodes, PCB, plates, switches, case.

The through-hole diodes were pretty easy to solder. I realized at this point that I didn’t have a flush wire cutters so had to get those.

Getting the battery connected to the microcontroller was a bit of a struggle. Both of the parts are super small, and getting them well-soldered involved lots of precision. The battery is supposed to last about a week with normal use, which seems reasonable.

Hot-swap sockets allow you to change out switches easily, but also required lots of precision soldering to get a solid connection.

After everything was connected, getting the switches in the board was straightforward.

While the process itself was straightforward, a lot of things went wrong due to my lack of experience. Entire rows would stop working randomly, which I eventually realized was poor soldering of the microcontroller connections. The battery on one side completely disconnected when I assembled it because of my poor soldering. Lots of the hot swap sockets popped out when I installed the switches, again because of poor soldering. Things would work for a couple of hours, and then a connection would come loose and make the whole thing completely unusable again.

Once I got to this stage, there were more problems — I have always used Oryx or QMK to create keymaps with their GUI, and never mapped these myself. I created a Github repo for my board, and proceeded to make many changes that would fail in the build until I got what I wanted. Then, after a few minutes of testing, I would realize I actually wanted different behavior and then try to get it working all over again. The lack of keys made figuring out a workable keymap all the more challenging, although I think I have finally arrived at a working solution using some “hold-tap” keys, which means they act as one key when they’re tapped and another when they’re held. For example, my “z” and “?” keys also serve as a SHIFT key when they’re held.

So many commits to get to a functional keymap.

It is definitely more comfortable than my previous non-split keyboard. Having my trackpad between the two halves makes it really easy to work. The left side, which is the side directly connected to the computer, works pretty flawlessly most of the time. I have been experiencing period lag on the right half and it will sometimes disconnect, and I have no idea. I’m still searching to see if there is a workable solution around that. It’s not annoying enough at the moment that I won’t use the board, but it is frustrating when I’m trying to type out long paragraphs and it cuts out. Regardless, I learned a ton about how to solder properly, how to modify keyboard keymaps, and how to be a little bit more patient when working on systems with so many different factors that can go wrong.

About 3 days into trying out this new layout, I can comfortably type 110 WPM if the right half doesn’t freak out. That’s pretty solid for any normal work, and the 30% layout is really comfortable on the hand after my brain figures out how to remember how to get it to type what I want. While it’s not perfect, I did have a lot of type 2 fun on this project. I can’t say that I want to do it again, but I did learn many lessons that would make this much easier the next time around. In the future, I would probably eat the aesthetic cost and just use a wired setup. It’s more reliable.

2021 wrap up

As 2021 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking through some of the best parts of this year, which I’m sharing in a few categories below.

favorite foods

1. the original buddha bodai in nyc
   Best vegan dim sum in the world, probably. I’ve been there many times but getting to go back after uncertainty about whether they would make it through the pandemic nearly made me cry.
   
   

2. kamakura japanese cuisine in seattle
   I think we went there 7 times in 6 weeks. I wasn’t expecting much from a regular sushi place with a separate vegan menu, but it was delicious. The rice was always on point and they were so creative with their sauces and different vegan rolls. Convenient location near Gasworks / bike paths made it a staple in our Seattle experience.
   
   

3. nectar cafe in portland
   I thought this would be some hippie place with mediocre food and juices, but it really blew my mind. Both times I went, I ended up getting another order to-go to delay the sadness of not being able to eat it again for a while. Their smoothie was top notch and all the breakfast plates I tried were delicious.
   
   

4. cha cha chinese pecan sunflower seeds
   I’ve eaten way too many of these. Truly addicted.
   
   

5. sestina in culver city
   Who knew basic pizzas and pastas could be so good?
   
   

6. terms of endearment in brooklyn
   The breakfast sandwich was kind of a greasy mess by the time I ate it, but it was SO GOOD. Such fresh pastries and ingredients.

favorite objects

1. ipad mini
   I’ve had many iterations of the iPad and while all have been useful, none have matched the compact utility of the new iPad mini. It’s small enough that I have completely replaced my Kindle with it — between Goodnotes for PDFs, the integrated Books app, and the Kindle app, I can read any kind of content and be able to highlight and save notes quite easily. I use it as an occasional second monitor with Sidecar, and no longer have a dedicated external monitor for work anymore. I take notes on it for work, sketch a bit in ProCreate, watch random YouTube videos on it, and save project inspiration notes in Pinterest. I can also connect my Planck EZ directly via USB-C and type away on iA Writer or even the Squarespace app.
   
   

2. bike hex tools
   I spent a lot of time this year working on bikes, and I love the simplicity of this multi-color hex set from BikeHand. It makes identifying the right size tool much easier, and the bright colors are easy to locate. They’re also much sturdier than the random set of free hex keys I had prior, and making tightening and loosening bolts much less painful.
   
   

3. nintendo switch (w/ zelda breath of the wild, overcooked, and smash)
   I’m not an avid gamer by any means — in fact, I’ve avoided games for a lot of my life because of the guilt associated with playing them. I tried to confront that earlier this year and got a Switch because I wanted to be able to play the more recent Super Smash Bros game with Max after that became a core fun component of our 2020 quarantine. I ended up getting Breath of the Wild too, which has been an incredible visual experience and such an engaging game. Overcooked has been great as well for quick post-dinner unwinding.
   
   

4. roka glasses
   I hate wearing glasses because most glasses are poorly balanced on my uneven years and end up causing ear pain, and eventually a headache. I got a pair of Roka glasses early this year because they were advertised as being really light and non-slip, and they definitely are. They are the only glasses I’ve been able to wear multiple days in a row for multiple hours at a time without causing pain. I have the photochromatic lenses on them, and even though they look kind of stupid, they’ve been great for travel since I can go on long bike rides or hikes without having to worry about another pair of sunglasses or protecting my eyes from wind even when it’s not sunny.
   
   

5. fujifilm x-pro 3
   Thank you Max for this lovely gift. Though film will always have my heart, sometimes it’s more practical (and much cheaper) to shoot digital (say, when you’re going on a 3 month roadtrip). The sensor, film presets, and e-ink display on the X-Pro 3 make it as close to a film experience as possible without shelling out life savings on a Leica, and it’s a joy to shoot. With a classic manual focus lens on there and a nice preset in place, I almost don’t miss film.

6. converse chuck 70’s
   I haven’t purchased new casual shoes in years, but as my all-white Converse Chuck II’s have become a nice mud color, I decided to finally set them aside for biking-only and replaced them with a pair of high top black Chuck 70’s. The quality is quite nice for a fairly inexpensive shoe, and I love that they go with pretty much anything.

favorite books

1. crying in h-mart by michelle zauner

   I cried myself to sleep multiple times during the reading process of this book, and sometimes I feel like I’m still processing it. It’s a complicated story, beautifully conveyed.
   

2. the day the world stops shopping by jb mackinnon
   I really enjoyed this intellectual exercise examining consumerism and the widespread impacts it has on every corner of this planet.
   

3. pipe dreams by chelsea wald
   I wrote in my Goodreads review that I “can’t this shit out of my head” and it’s true. I think about plumbing way more than I want to after reading this, but I also find it so fascinating.
   

4. anxious people by fredrik backman
   This was one of the first books I read this year and still one of my favorites. I’m a big fan of Fredrik Backman, as you might remember from this blog (Beartown was a favorite for long time). I find his characters so human and I admire his ability to turn simple events into compelling stories.
   

5. freedom in exile by dalai lama xiv
   My love of memoirs continues.
   

6. it’s all about the bike by robert penn
   This book inspired me to spend an absurd amount of money building my own bike. I think it’s for a particular type of materialistic nerd (ie. me) who obsesses over the most minute manufacturing details and/or bike history enthusiasts.
   

favorite memories

1. bike 100 miles (august)

   It felt amazing to be able to accomplish a goal that I thought was silly and unreachable, part 2.
   

2. making my first backpack (march)

   It felt amazing to be able to accomplish a goal that I thought was silly and unreachable, part 1.
   

3. birthday trip to culver city (may)

   It was nice to be a tourist in LA and have a mini birthday getaway. Although Shojin was a bit disappointing, Sestina was a great find.
   

4. finding a great place to live (october)

   We no longer live in a converted garage! Having 3 bedrooms seemed like it would be too much initially, but having white space in the house, being able to store things in closets, not hearing each other during separate Zoom meetings, having a dishwasher, and being able to access pools/hot tubs has been so nice.
   

5. hobbit house / outdoor shower on the oregon coast (august)

   Have you ever had a hot shower in the middle of the woods?
   

6. meeting coworkers in denver (november)

   It had been nearly 2 years since our last retreat, and although COVID risks were definitely present, it was nice to be able to connect with people I’ve been working with in real life and get to know everyone on a different level.

favorite new skills

1. a lot of new sewing skills

   I’m much more comfortable with sewing zippers, curves, and thick layers now. My edges are a lot more clean, and I’ve started working on my patterning/design skills to make things beyond the patterns I’ve found or bought.
   

2. doing things with motors
   E-bike conversion and an industrial sewing machine swap!
   

3. getting better at bike maintenance
   I can confidently fix a flat, tape drop bars, re-wire derailleur and brake cables, adjust rear derailleurs, and remove bottom brackets now.
   

4. cutting hair

   I have burgeoning clipper skills and can do a half-decent fade in less than an hour.
   

5. kind of being able to make some pottery
   Centering is hard but I can make some bowls.
   

6. notion life management
   Everything is a database now.

[california] / lots of projects

Happy December! As I’ve resettled back into life in good old Irvine, lots of time has been spent on projects and working on all the hobbies that took a backseat to summer travel.

the brown buffalo - sewing workshop

In November, I spent some time with The Brown Buffalo in Costa Mesa, taking a 4 day sewing workshop making on their signature 26L backpacks. It was my first time working with an industrial sewing machine and spending time with professional bag people! I learned a lot about bag construction and felt inspired by the expertise and vision from the people I met there. I wasn’t confident that I would be able to make something of good enough quality that I would be comfortable with someone using it on a daily basis, but it came out quite well and it’s now Max’s daily work bag! The shoulder strap system is particularly comfortable.

marker roll

After returning from my sewing workshop, I made a little pen/marker roll to hold a few COPIC markers and pens to accompany my notebook where I try to jot down on all of my random sewing (and other) project ideas.

polartec power air pullover

Continuing to ride out my inspiration from the sewing workshop, I spent an evening making a Polartec pullover from some Power Air fabric I got during the beginning of the pandemic. I used a Green Pepper pattern and modified it with an Everlane pullover silhouette that I quite like, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out! I really like the Patagonia style pullovers but find most to be a little too colorful for my liking. I like how this material is all black, but has a slight accent due to the subtle grid texture. I used 420D ROBIC nylon for the collar accent, which also provides some textural variation without getting colorful.

juki dnu-1541

After much contemplation, I decided to get an industrial sewing machine. When I started sewing again last year, I wasn’t sure how much I would actually sew beyond the few small projects I had lined up. It’s fair to say that I’ve gotten pretty addicted — I spend a lot of time thinking about new projects, sketching things out, and seeking inspiration from others. My main reservation with getting an industrial machine was weight. I bought it off Facebook Marketplace — we drove down to Escondido a few weekends ago to check it out. It came with a massive clutch motor that was probably 50 lbs on its own, plus the 60-ish lb machine. The v-belt attachment that connected the motor to the machine was way too tight, which made the handwheel difficult to turn, resulting in an ergonomic disaster. I was pretty sure I could put a new motor on it and fix the tension issues, so we hauled it home in the back of the Fit after some reasonable negotiation.

I got a new servo motor off of Amazon and replaced the clutch. It went relatively smoothly, even though I did drop the clutch motor on my hand in the process (not fun). The new motor is significantly lighter and smoother, and also allows for variable speed which makes sewing on the machine much easier. I’ve yet to do a major project with the new machine, but I’m looking forward to it and sparing my 1959 Singer from massive stacks of Cordura.

e-bike conversion

With me working from home and Max’s office just a few miles away, having two cars feels somewhat excessive, especially considering gas and maintenance costs for older cars nowadays. While researching electric commuter vehicles, we somehow decided that converting my Velo Orange Neutrino mini-velo into an e-bike would be the way to solve our transportation problems.

We used a Bafang BBS02 mid-drive kit, meaning the motor is mounted in the bottom bracket area of the bike, as opposed to other kits that might mount on the front or rear hub. The conversion went relatively smoothly. Removing the bottom bracket was adequately challenging. We ended up getting new handlebars (VO Klunker) to accommodate the various accessories we needed to add (display, throttle, bigger brake levers, phone mount, light), which meant the brake and derailleur cables became too short. I learned how to rewire derailleur and brake cables which was pretty fun, and we were pretty much off to the races. The video below shows our first ride at a 15mph top speed, but that’s now been modified to 30mph which is significantly more fun and scary. Since this was intended to be an errand bike, we added a front rando rack and a Wald basket to haul all the Sprouts groceries. We did our first successful bike grocery run this past weekend.

non-project things

That’s about it (honestly a lot, in retrospect…) for projects the last two months. I’ve been going to physical therapy for some minor knee pain. We spent some time in Idyllwild before Thanksgiving. I’m trying to include running in my exercise routine again. I’m also trying to get better at swimming. The Beats Fit Pro are way better (and cheaper) than AirPods Pros. I’m still obsessed with these sunflower seeds. That is all.

reflection question

What are your 2022 resolutions?

change / [travel wrap up + more]

Another few months have gone by, and I don’t even know how to approach summarizing everything that’s happened since August. We finished our great PNW roadtrip and then headed off to Minnesota and the east coast. After two years of planning our Boundary Waters canoe trip, unprecedented fires in Minnesota closed the BWCA and we had to cancel the trip. It was disappointing, but probably resulted in a more relaxing experience.

Highs:

• Water in Duluth tasted amazing

• Having large bodies of freshwater nearby is so therapeutic

• Visiting all of Max’s childhood places

• Hanging out with my brother and going to Boda Borg

• Seeing all the friends in Boston

• E-biking through Acadia National Park

• Vegan dim sum in NYC…and all the other good food in NYC

• Perfect weather the entire time

• Meeting coworkers in real life

Lows:

• Riding a tandem with a slightly engaged brake 40 miles in DC
  

After the whirlwind summer, I was pretty glad to be back in California to settle down a bit again. We found a real place to live in Irvine (as opposed to the garage situation in Orange), and have been spending time decorating and organizing the new place. Here’s a peak at my office. It’s been nice to have so much more space for work and hobbies, and a real office chair for the first time in my life.

I intend for the rest of the year to be relatively chill in comparison to the craziness of this summer. I’m currently recuperating from an intense but fun work retreat in Denver. I’ll be taking time off for a bagmaking workshop at The Brown Buffalo in Costa Mesa next week as a gift to myself for my work anniversary. Otherwise, I’m will be working on my 2021 reading challenge with The Making of Asian America and Civilized to Death, learning how to cook again, sourcing parts for my custom bike build, playing lots of Overcooked, gardening, trying to get back in shape, and eating hickory nut flavored sunflower seeds.

good days / [pnw roadtrip, biking a century]

Just like that, another 3 months has gone by. I spent the majority of May packing up all my belongings to put into storage for the summer, planning an insane summer road trip to Seattle, and then going on that insane road trip. We left Orange County in June, spending a weekend in Sunnyvale before hitting up Redding, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Crater Lake, Eugene, the Columbia River Gorge, McKenzie River, Bend, Portland, Sequim, Port Angeles, Olympic National Park, and finally Seattle. From Seattle, we took smaller trips to Poulsbo, North Cascades, and Mt. Rainier. I don’t even know where to start with photos, so there’s just a big dump below. I started shooting digitally again this trip, which means there’s a lot more high quality photos but the volume is overwhelming.

Highs of the trip so far:

• So many beautiful national parks!

• There have been many long and scenic bike rides through all different kinds of landscapes

• Portland food is AMAZING. Lots of great options but Nectar Cafe and Virtuous Pie were top vegan highlights

• Getting to experiment with living in different locations

• The coolest little tiny home in White Salmon, WA (see below)

• Getting hooked on Red Frontier (podcast series) and Never Have I Ever (TV show)

• Spending time with my favorite person

• Vegan sushi in Seattle

• Seeing so many friends in Seattle

• Joining an AAPI group bike ride around Lake Union

• Cherry season

• Learning pottery with the best Airbnb host ever

• Moss / lakes / rivers

• Successfully biking a century

• Peach crisp

Lows of the trip so far:

• Experiencing 116 degree weather on our last day in Portland without a place to stay in

• Experiencing all the noticeable/detrimental effects of climate change firsthand

• Forgetting to book / booking the wrong weekend for Hipcamps/Airbnbs

• Looking for air conditioning in 110 degree weather while needing to work

• Forgetting to bring 90% of my skincare routine
  

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After about 9 months of serious commitment to a seemingly absurd goal, I finished my first century last weekend. A hundred miles is insanely far, but I knew I had to do it now or it would be a long time before I had the determination to do it again. Spending so much time biking through different cities and national parks meant I was in the best cardio shape I’d probably ever been in, so it kind of felt like now or never. So it was now! I spent hours on RideWithGPS crafting the most reasonable route. I went through many iterations of loops around Lake Washington or Lake Sammamish, but in the end, wanted to do a brand new loop that wouldn’t allow for any opportunities to turn back when the riding got tough. It was also the flattest route I could find.

The ride was sweet—it was the coolest day since we’ve arrived in Seattle, and the only day where we saw any rain at all. It was so nice to bike through the mist in Maple Valley and get a little drenched. We hit a slump around mile 50-60 where we were just hungry and tired, but a little stop at Katsu Burger and we were back on it. By mile 85 I had hit such a bikers high that we ended up with our fastest 5 mile splits at for the last 15 miles. Now that I’ve reached the goal that has consumed most of my 2021 free time (other than playing Legend of Zelda), I’m brainstorming new things to work towards.

We’re headed back to California on Saturday after a (mostly) enjoyable summer in one of my places in the world. There’s another heat wave hitting in time for our departure, a great reminder as to how quickly our climate is changing in the span of several years.

quick updates

Squarespace tells me I’ve had this draft of images sitting here since March 12th, so I figured I should post them. This year is going by really quickly—I can’t believe it’s mid-May already. I turned 26 a few weeks ago, which was spent with a little vegan food tour of Los Angeles (Sestina in Culver City has the best pizza and pasta). Other life updates include:

• Heading up the coast to Seattle to stay for the summer

  • Leaving in about a month, will stop through Redding, Sacramento, Crater Lake, Columbia River Gorge, and Olympic National Park

  • Weekend trips to North Cascades National Park and hopefully Mt Rainier!

• Will be traversing the east coast by train in September after spending a week in Minnesota

  • Stops include Boston, Acadia National Park, New York, and DC

• Bought an All-City Zig Zag on Facebook Marketplace and looking forward to some beautiful rides through the PNW. I also learned how to covert to tubeless riding, which was messy but now pretty sweet

• I made my first self-patterned backpack — a Dyneema packable rolltop bag. It’s pretty floppy and I’m not sure that the Dyneema weight I had was appropriate for a backpack, but it was fun to make nonetheless

• I was a finalist for Lael Wilcox’s Alaska bike scholarship which was pretty wild

• The album cover I shot for Amber Liu last year is finally out in the world

• I’ve almost hit a 600 day Duolingo streak!

All-City Zig Zag 105

an unofficial guide to making a 40l backpack

First, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” If the goal is to save money or have a beautiful end product, turn around now. If you’re thinking, “Ah yes, I love spending a hundred dollars on fabric and ten hours stitching only to realize I’ve made many horrible mistakes that will take even more hours to fix”, then go right ahead. This is the project for you.

step 1 - cutting out the pattern

You cut out the paper pattern first, contemplating how these various shapes will fit together to form a backpack. You try to cut exactly on the lines first, but as your hands begin to cramp, the lines get more jagged. You try to keep everything nicely folded and labeled, but the awkward shapes are difficult to store neatly, and they end up sitting on your desk for a couple of weeks.

step 2 - cutting out the fabric pieces from the paper pattern

This involves laying out the paper pieces on top of the various fabrics. If you’re legit, you might have a cutting table. Or else, this involves playing Twister on the floor and using your feet to hold the large pattern pieces as you maneuver a tiny cutting mat behind your rotary cutter. It might involve cutting your fingers a few times and needing several alcohol wipes and bandaids. It might also involve forgetting to mirror the shape you are cutting, and ending up with 4 left shoulder strap pieces and 0 right should strap pieces. It’s fine.

step 2.5 (optional) - making a plastic framesheet

If you’re naively ambitious, you go to Home Depot to buy an aluminum flat bar and a sheet of HDPE plastic, thinking that an aluminum stay and plastic frame sheet will make your bag so much more comfortable. Perhaps you realize you need to sew a piece of webbing onto the plastic to hold the flat bar in the right position, so you spend two hours hand-cranking a 1959 sewing machine through plastic to get the sleeve in place. Then, you hacksaw the aluminum stay to the right length and bend it into the precise shape of your spine. You realize the sharp edges of the aluminum bar catch on the webbing, so you sand all the corners before it finally slides in.

step 3 - making padded backpack straps

This is really just forcefully stuffing padding into a sleeve and hoping it comes out like a strap.

step 4 - putting the rest together

This part is fun. You read instructions with lines like:

SS BTM edges of ​BCK BTM PANEL INT​ to ​BCK BTM PANEL EXT ​WS to WS. TO, TS, SS in SA

…and wonder why the instructions were written as a text algorithm and not as a series of photos. You will sew things inside out, upside down, and misaligned. You spend so much time ripping out wrong seams that you develop a headache from eye strain, but the sweet thought of completing a project is so enticing that you’ll keep seam ripping and putting pieces together. Eventually, it’s done. On the last step, you realize that all of your buckles were sewn on backwards. Right as you near the finish line, you have to rip out six more seams and resew them properly. And then you have a backpack! You spend the rest of your day cleaning fabric scraps and thread out of every conceivable part of your house. The satisfaction of making your own backpack just barely outweighs the memory of cuts, eyestrain, and headaches.

And that’s it! You’ll have a decently functional backpack that cost probably cost 3 times as much as one made my an actual company when you take into account the damage to your eyesight, your dignity, and your time. However, when an imaginary person comes up to you and says “Yo, sweet bag!” you can say, “Thanks, I made it myself.”

both sides now / [a month into 2020?]

Why does this year feel like it’s been six months already? I really can’t say this year started off well, but I hope it’s on the upswing now. I got this 1959 Singer 401A from Facebook Marketplace early this year, and sewing has really been a great stress relieving activity. I started off with some basic stuff sacks and zip pouches, and made two Polartec Power Air hoodies inspired by the unobtainable Melanzana hoodies which turned out way better than I expected. They have been warm and cozy during this week of true Southern California winter. I also made a giant duffel to practice working with Cordura and webbing, and realized through that process that I enjoy working on smaller projects.

Here’s the hoodie that I made!

I just said I want to work on smaller projects, but I have materials for a synthetic backpacking quilt that I plan on tackling soon too, which will either confirm or force me reconsider the types of projects I want to make. In addition to that, I’ve been working on some designs for a camera pouch based on this Artisan & Artist one that I’ve always wanted but is absurdly expensive, a smaller camera bag for the Fujifilm XF10, or a nylon jacket of some kind. I made a padded keyboard case for my Planck EZ this week which was good practicing in completely winging it and having more freedom (to mess up) rather than following a guide or pattern (really helpful, as it turns out).

Planning out all my projects here.

In other news, I completed a 30 mi ride at the beginning of this year, which is pretty exciting for me. I’ve never been a good endurance athlete so riding for a few hours straight and not feeling completely wrecked by the end is promising for my century training.

Snack breaks at mile 14.

I got off the waitlist for the UC California Naturalist Program at the Bolsa Chica Conservancy, so I started that last week. I think it would’ve been more rewarding if there wasn’t a pandemic happening and the class could be hosted in person, but it’s also more accessible right now and I’m not sure that I would’ve been able to make it out to Huntington Beach every week if it were all held IRL. I’ve learned a lot about California’s geographic history and have good motivation now to be more observant and inquisitive while spending time outdoors. I’m only two weeks in so excited to learn more as well.

Much of the day-to-day memorable-ness of life is documented by these quiet little scenes—a morning at the beach, a lunch date at the park, a sunset with a kite. I wonder how we’re supposed to process the entire year of 2020 and this year spent in quarantine. I’m sure we’ll all be traumatized by this experience in different ways, but I hope I’ll remember the serenity of these moments as well.

I finally built out a normal sized desk for myself after trying a standing setup, a sitting setup, and working full days on a stool at our bar. The top is made from two pieces of 3/4” plywood salvaged from our TV console, and the little shelf on the right is made from the remaining pieces of that console. It’s nice to have space to spread out and a table to use for the endless sewing projects, and also feels pretty good to be able to recycle furniture pieces that I made into new ones once our needs changed. And speaking of needs changing, I sold my Mamiya 6. I loved almost every image that came of out that camera, but it stressed me out knowing that if any point the electronics on that thing failed (and it’s about time they did), I would be left with an insanely expensive brick. Fujifilm 400H has also been discontinued, and medium format film and development is so pricey nowadays that I can’t really justify the cost of ownership for a few pretty landscape photos a few times a year. I sold off a few other lenses for my Leica as well, so I’m left with a little kit of the Zeiss 25mm, a new Zeiss C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8, and the Olympus XA4 to cover the 28mm focal length. This frees up some change to put into other hobbies, like materials for all of my sewing projects, biking stuff, or maybe more realistically, more vegan pizza.

reflection questions

What are you excited for in this upcoming year? In the next three years?

How has this year in isolation changed you?

hallway weather / [happy new year]

A crazy year behind us, with hopefully a little bit more hope, competency, kindness, and justice in this new year. The holiday season was filled with Super Smash Bros, long bike rides, Zoom calls, and outdoor lunches. I read Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis by Cynthia Barnett, which was a well-written overview of the water situation in the U.S.

I had high hopes for 2020, and while most things didn’t quite work out, I am grateful for making it through the year in a year where many families lost loved ones. I did successfully complete the camper bed for my car, shot a good amount of medium format film, got involved in Citizens Climate Lobby, read a good number of books (32?), and took a few local road trips. I ended up doing much more woodworking than expected and learned some basic joinery with hand tools. I got a lot more into biking than I anticipated. It was a memorable year for the quiet moments.

I don’t have grand plans for 2021 given how this year turned out, but I do have a few small goals.

• Read 30 books — I think this is a comfortable pace given all the other things I want to do and the full time job. I have primarily been reading books about history and water.

• Do a narrative photography project — I’ve been taking Alex Soth’s photographic storytelling course online, and am inspired to create a body of work that has more of a narrative journey than my photographs typically do.

• Become a certified naturalist — The UC school system offers a naturalist certification program through local organizations, and I think it would be a fun way for structured learning about the local ecology.

• Draw one thing a month — I’m not constraining this to anything in particular, but I like drawing and just need some motivation to sketch every now and then. I’ve also enjoyed following ProCreate tutorials on YouTube.

• Make some hoodies — I used to sew a lot in middle school, and I remember really enjoying the creative process of figuring out how to create something new. Hoodies were one of my favorite things to make, probably because they were one of my favorite things to wear. I want to learn how to make more technical hoodies for hiking or biking, and hopefully expand to other sewing projects from there. The “myog” (make-your-own-gear) community online inspires lots of interesting ideas.

• Bike a century — I’m planning on biking the entirety of the Santa Ana River Trail, followed by Highway 1 to Torrey Pines State Beach. 100 miles, probably 9+ hours, with many of snack breaks at vegan restaurants. Wish me luck.

That is all! Happy new year! Also, Pixar’s Soul was an excellent life contemplation film.

chinese satellites / [routines and updates]

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Election anxiety and fear, post-election disinformation, COVID spiking again, successful vaccine trial news, a new president-elect… There’s been a lot going on. But also there hasn’t been a lot going on. Most of my days (other than that lovely week in Utah) look something like this:

• 8:30am - Wake up, eat breakfast, drink some tea, start working

• 12:00pm - Eat lunch, which is usually lentil stew, sourdough toast, or a sandwich

• 3:30pm - Break from work to go for a 3-7mi bike ride, depending on how I’m feeling

• 6:00pm - Make dinner

• 9:00pm - Read and meditate

• 10:45pm - Sleep

The days blend together, which has been the common theme of COVID life. I have kind of forgotten what it’s like to go eat at a restaurant, go to a concert, or walk through a crowd. More than ever, I feel like it is the small things in life that make each day interesting. Some small wins of late:

• I can ride bike rollers without any support now. I still feel like dying after ~5 mins but that’s still progress.

• I learned of lot of interesting food/grocery facts from The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket by Benjamin Lorr. It was a was a fascinating micro-history and analysis of the current food system and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about a system that is critical to our daily lives.

• I’m really happy with the film photos from the last few months. It was my first time shooting Lomo 800 film for my personal documentary photography. I’m not as familiar with the unique characteristics of Lomo 800 compared to Fuji C200 (which has been my go-to for years now), but I thought they came out pretty well! Not as happy with my Ektar shots in the Mamiya 7, but haven’t found a medium format film that I really like (maybe Portra 800?)

• It’s no longer 90-110 degrees every day which has been the best thing ever.

• Kiss the Ground was an at-times-interesting, at-times-questionable documentary on regenerative farming. I think it could’ve gone without some of the celebrity cameos, but the concept of regenerative farms is worth spreading and it’s exciting to see more mainstream media sources providing climate solution documentaries to the public.

• Sadly, I found Ken Liu’s second collection of short stories to be pretty disappointing. There were a few that had the magic of The Paper Menagerie, but others lacked human character. It felt like he was too caught up in the technological aspects of the stories that the individual characters generally fell flat. The ones that were good, however, were lovely.

• The Orange Farmers Market has amazing giant $6 loaves of fresh sourdough and fall flavored pluots.

• Moment made a filter for pack film! Fuji FP-100c was my favorite film while it was still manufactured. I remember cars slowing down to stare at me on Memorial Drive as I held a giant Polaroid Land 250 to my face on a detour from classes. There’s a sample shot from the RTRO app at the end of the post. Pack film tends to be muddy looking and underexposed and moody but for some reason I really liked it. It’s cool that Moment made a filter for it since I didn’t think it was a particularly popular film format.

• We attached a hitch and bike rack to Gari! Took some borrowed car ramps, 3/8” socket wrenches, and a lot of time figuring out how to remove stubborn exhaust hangers and it’s still unclear if we did it properly, but here we are. Can’t wait to bike the Santa Ana River Trail.

reflection question

• What is something you want to work into your routine?

[utah recap]

This is probably my favorite photo I’ve taken in recent years (which I’ve now included for sale as a print!) , not just because it is a celebration of nature, seasons, and National Parks, but because to me, it encapsulates the the exuberance and awe of speeding through this landscape, while periodically being forced to stop and absorb the unreal-ness of it all. Zion in the autumn is a sight to behold, and I hope this gives you a piece of that peace.

Utah has been on my bucket list for years and years now—there were many failed spring break trip attempts, but in retrospect, I’m glad other trips never worked out. Being able to visit in late fall enabled us to visit some super touristy sites while avoiding the majority of crowds. Angel’s Landing was pure pain and adrenaline. The Narrows was a wet and slippery hike and I probably rolled my ankle three times, but still unlike anything I’ve ever done before.

We alternated between work days and hike days, which turned out to be a great idea for muscle soreness and mental health from election week.

Top highlights include:

• Renting e-bikes to bike through the park to the starting point for the Narrows rather than taking the shuttle. They were a bit pricey, but provided a way better experience for taking in the landscape than the shuttle.

• The view from the top of Angel’s Landing (below)

• Watching Brittany Runs a Marathon and eating homemade noodles

• Not having cell phone data to constantly check insane election updates

• Taking off the drysuit after getting back to our bikes from The Narrows

• The weather—it was around 70 the whole week and started snowing the day we headed back

• Bryce Canyon geography talks

• Having the opportunity to take landscape photos for basically the first time this year

• Forgetting half of our belongings outside of an Airbnb for a whole day until arriving at the next Airbnb, realizing we had basically nothing we needed, and having to drive another hour and a half to get our stuff back

• Local pizza joints that have vegan pizza

Other life updates coming in a different post—I have way too many film photos.

guest post by max: lifecycle of a wildfire (part 1)

Living in California this year has been filled with all of nature’s torments. I haven’t been able to see friends because of COVID-19. Up until this past weekend, I hadn't gone outside all month because of awful wildfire smoke (it’s a relief to just crack open a window). And to top it all off, I’ve finally experienced my first earthquake (actually the first two!).

And with so much time indoors, I’ve dug into the only one of those disasters that has become regular, wildfires. I’ve read countless articles about each of the latest fires: Bobcat, SCU Lightning Complex, Glass, the list goes on. But these update articles feel like getting score updates to a sport that I don’t know the rules of. What does 15% containment mean for a fire? How does CalFire know when there’s a red flag warning in an area? How dangerous is a red flag warning? How quickly will a fire spread?

It’s with these questions in mind that I started writing this article. I always loved writing profiles when I was involved in high school journalism. Painting a portrait of a person with words, that’s how I imagined a profile. Being able to really tell a story, from start to end. That’s what I want to do with wildfires. That’s the idea, anyway. Tell the story of a wildfire, one wildfire, from start to finish.

With that goal in mind, I’ve pieced together the story of one wildfire, the Mendocino Fire Complex in 2018. I use that story to illustrate the life and death of wildfires in general. I try to answer the original questions I had, and a few more. My plan is to do it in three parts: ignition, spread, and containment. That plan may change as I find more interesting tidbits to share, but that’s the rough shape I have in mind now.

So why the Mendocino Fire? Well, up until just a couple of months ago, the Mendocino Fire Complex burned an at-the-time record 459,000 acres and lasted from July 27 to Sept 18 (53 days). The fire destroyed 257 structures, caused 257 million dollars in damages, and required 201 million dollars in fire suppression costs. While the Mendocino Fire Complex was giant for its time, it is only 35 miles away from the currently burning August Complex, also in Mendocino County, which is the newest largest California fire on record at over a million acres. It holds the infamous title of being the first and only California fire to grow larger than a million acres in recorded history.

Ignition

To set the scene, the Mendocino fire complex was actually two nearby fires, with the first one being the Ranch fire that started on July 27, 2018 at 12:05, and the second River fire starting about an hour after that. By the next morning, the two fires had already grown to nearly 10,000 acres and had destroyed two structures. The map below shows the extent of the spread.

https://wildfiretoday.com/2018/07/28/ranch-and-river-fires-burn-thousands-of-acres-in-mendocino-county/?hilite=%27mendocino%27

The two fires flanked the nearby town of Ukiah, with the Ranch fire to the north east and the River Fire to the south east. These fires were only about 8 miles away. The Mendocino County Sheriff’s office ordered mandatory evacuations pretty much immediately. The image below was the view from Ukiah the morning after the fire started.

https://www.lakeconews.com/index.php/news/57113-acreage-for-ranch-river-fires-grows-overnight

The crazy part of this looming disaster was the ignition source: the Ranch Fire started from a spark caused by a resident hammering a concrete stake into a wasp’s nest. The resident was identified by the NYT, based on public records, as Glenn Kile, a heavy equipment operator turned rancher in his mid-50s. I found the official narrative from the CalFire incident report fascinating, so here it is verbatim:

[Kile] said he was putting up a shade cloth for the above ground water tanks located up the hill from his residence. He said the shade cloth blew down sometime last year and he wanted to put it back up as a barrier from the sun. He said he was in the process of putting it up when he agitated an underground yellow jacket's nest. [Kile] said he is allergic to bees and waited for the yellow jackets to stop swarming. Once they did, he quickly hammered a 24-inch concrete stake into the ground to plug the hole. He said he used a claw hammer and drove the concrete stake 10 to 12 inches into the ground. [Kile] said he smelled smoke and saw a vegetation fire next to where he was working. [Kile] said the fire was 2 feet by 2 feet in size when he first saw it. He said the fire started in grass he estimated to be 2 to 3 feet in height. He said the vegetation fire moved quickly to the shade cloth located on the ground a few feet away. [Kile] grabbed a shovel and tried to extinguish the fire, but said the ground was so hard it was difficult to get enough dirt to be effective. [Kile] said he tried to use a black polyurethane waterline next to the water tanks to extinguish the fire, but the line kinked from the heat of the fire and restricted the waterflow. [Kile] then tried to use a 1½ inch PVC water line connected to the water tanks, but was unable to get enough water pressure to reach the fire. [Kile] said he unhooked the trailer from his four-wheeler and tried to get in front of the fire traveling uphill from the water tanks. He said in the process, he lost control of his four wheeler and had to jump off. The four-wheeler rolled downhill lodging itself between the water tanks and a cut bank. [Kile] said he ran downhill to his residence and called 911 to report the fire. He then turned on the water pump near his residence to supply the water tanks to help support the incoming fire suppression resources. At the time of the interview, [Kile] was suffering from what appeared to be smoke inhalation and heat exhaustion. [Kile] refused an ambulance and medical treatment. 

Imagine the fear of going from fighting a wasp’s nest to fighting a fire. Imagine the frenzied attempt at putting out a fire, starting with a shovel in hard, baked dirt, to furiously attempting to start a waterline, to driving, then crashing, a 4 wheeler. Ultimately, Kile was found to be not negligent, though still responsible. It’s clear that it doesn’t take much to start a fire in the California grasslands.

The Mendocino Fire’s ignition source highlights a key wildfire concept called the probability of ignition, which is how likely a spark will ignite if it lands on potential fuels, like, in this case, dry grass. The four factors in this determination are shading percentage, temperature without humidity, the percentage of moisture in the fuel, and the “fineness” of a fuel. This data is summarized in the table below.

Looking back on historical weather data, on July 27, 2018 in Potter Valley, CA (near the fire), the low was 56 degrees F and the high was a scorching 107 degree F. To add on top of that, it hadn’t rained at all the entire month of July, and the grass had been drying out in the sun all summer, classifying it as a “fine dead fuel”. These conditions certainly put the probability of ignition of Kiles’ spark from a concrete stake into a wasp’s nest in the 70% plus range.

Another metric that tries to capture this same idea of fire danger is the Fire Potential Index (FPI). The FPI is really a measure of moisture levels, accounting for how flammable different kinds of fuel are at different moisture levels, and what percent of the vegetation is dead. The FPI is a value between 1 and 100, where 100 indicates the highest chance of starting a fire (very low moisture, and a lot of dead vegetation).

Using satellites, the greenness of an area is used to estimate the moisture level. Moisture levels are measured by comparing the dead fuel moisture, the moisture of dead grass / trees, to the moisture of extinction, the moisture level needed to stop a fire from spreading. The lower this ratio, the more likely a fire can start. The moisture of extinction varies by the type of fuel: grasses tend to have the lowest moisture of extinction, at around 15 percent, while trees are generally higher, in the 25 to 30 percent range.

The great part of the FPI is that the USGS has calculated it for every square kilometer of the US since 2001. If you want to find your neighborhood’s FPI, you can go here: https://firedanger.cr.usgs.gov/viewer/index.html and enter in your home address. The screenshot below shows the FPI in the area surrounding Ukiah on the day the fire started, with the pin indicating where Ukiah is located.

Scroll up and compare this to the map of the wildfire’s spread one day after the fire started, and you’ll see that the fire started in a sea of red. Conditions could not have been more ideal for a large wildfire. The solid red block to the east of the map also explains why the fire would expand eastward, in addition to the fire fighting resources that protected Ukiah and surrounding communities.

The conditions shown here also represent large parts of California’s grasslands. Limited rain during the summer and high temperatures (which are becoming more extreme weather due to climate change) drive up the probability of ignition and the fire potential. Add to this tinderbox the expansion of communities near wildland areas, and there’s a near certainty of human-caused fires spreading throughout the state.

in too deep / [updates]

updates (since august…)

• 2020 is legitimately feeling like a bad drama—Justice RBG died and then Trump released his $750 tax returns. The nomination for the new justice became a super-spreader event. There was a “debate”. Trump knowingly attended more events after testing positive, got hospitalized with COVID, endangered all of his staff, and continued to spread misinformation while sick. He does not seem to grasp the concept of empathy and cannot acknowledge that he would likely be dead if he didn’t have top tier medical staff and treatment at his disposal. He’s now holding rallies again

• I did a shoot with Amber Liu, probably my first ever “real” portraiture project. There are more images that I’m pretty excited about but this is the only one that has been shared publicly.

• I hit a 365 day streak on Duolingo with Chinese!

• We made it to Newport Beach for the first time since the pandemic started

• I bought my dream bike of many, many years—a Wabi Classic—and have been enjoying the single speed life again. I’ve never excelled at any sort of endurance activity (literally none, making the mile time was the hardest part of staying on the basketball team in high school), but have arbitrarily decided that I want to ride a century on a single speed bike (probably the “Amtrak Century” from Irvine to San Diego) by 2021. In service of this goal, I’m trying to learn how to bike on rollers for the hot and miserable days of this endless California super-summer. I also successfully learned how to ride with clipless pedals without falling over!

• David Chang’s Eat a Peach was a really enjoyable memoir—I appreciated his reflection on Asian American culture, his family upbringing, and his attitude towards failure and constantly pushing his comfort zone
  

• Going to Zion/Bryce for a week on election week. I’ve wanted to visit Utah for years and years now to take extremely cliche nature pictures and I’m excited that it’s finally happening

• Exploring the concept of month-to-month Airbnb living in Washington State

• The hottest temperature ever recorded on earth — 130 degrees F — occurred mid-August in California, which is insane to think about

• David Attenborough’s A Life on Our Planet is well worth a watch for anyone interested in understanding how our world may change within our lifetimes