Friend AJ departs California in May to move with his wife and son back to Massachusetts and away from Silicon Valley craziness. I will miss our weekly lunches, occasional San Francisco jaunts, and winter skiing. For decades, he and I would try to ski together around Lake Tahoe. If I …
Ages ago, after two post-doctoral stints—one in Austin and the following in The Netherlands—I needed to make a choice between a science career as an academic or head into industrial chemistry at a company. For better work-life balance and a shyness in my thirties to lead, I choose the company …
I dread looking at the Islamic pattern I selected for my next LED piece. I don’t want to cut plastic no more. After building last year 4 Squares, 3 Hexes, 3 Turtle Shells, 4 small Pentagons, 1 large Pentagon, 1 small Mandala, and 1 large Mandala, I’m burnt out on …
I dump another heap of phone photos, these from 2012-2019 exclusively of things I built. At its heart, all Art is a risk to engineer something new. Some of these costume pieces never got worn: a duck (!), a first attempt at an owl hat, a feather headdress. So ridiculous. …
Pandemic allows time and space for unnecessarily-long projects. I slog through Charles Dickens’s novel David Copperfield, much, much longer than anticipated. He writes somewhat well, focusing on characters at the expense of brevity and craftsmanship. The San Francisco library recalled in December my copy of Copperfield, which I renew in …
I don’t understand my body. Am I getting healthier or heading fast into neuromuscular decline? Some days, my joints hurt, especially in spots where large bones connect, like my upper back and hips, but oddly not my knees. My bones grind and grind and grind. Not having large feet and …
I thought I would finally dump most of the random photos off my phone into a more viewable and organized fashion. Unlike with a dedicated DSLR camera, these phone photos tend to be random one-off snaps. Within are pictures I took over the period of 2015-2019. You can tell a …
Here are the few phone photos I took of note from 2020. There was a ski trip to Lake Tahoe in February, some stays with Ruben in Sacramento, two trips to Ohio, some cooking, and walking the windswept Oregon beaches. Overall, quite a quiet year, as it should be in …
I’m not great at either taking professional pictures of my LED contraptions or publicizing my work. This year, I set up an Instragram account, but have not added many photos to it. Here, I dump all the phone pictures I took this year of my LED work. Some photos show …
2021 starts with renewed exhaustion. Many hoped Covid would finish up at the end of the year, discarded along with the Christmas tree kicked to the curb. Nope, it’s still here. Little has changed except a 20 turned into a 21. Winter looms long ahead. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for my …