starless @starless@pixie.town

Girlfriend and I saw the most precious thing at como zoo today.

The man in the image told me he's a regular, and we watched Kemala carry bedding across the exhibit to come lay down next to him against the glass. The woman told me that she went to the library and checked out three different books, and that this one seems to be Kemala's favorite.

The man's sketchbook was filled with drawings of primates. Apparently, Kemala used to be interested in seeing them, but by now has seen them so much that she's pretty chill about them.

Every so often she'd look at him and move around. For a little while, she pressed some food against the glass and ate it by scraping her teeth across the slice of fruit on the window. It was very silly.

When the woman came up and sat down, Kemala saw the woman's bag and pointed to it, then pointed to the book inside. She was super interested in it.

It was really really sweet. The folks in the image were a-ok with me snapping a pic.

#softposting #aww #wholesome

@fack @vvesley

Y'all got good mugs today? Mine is cool, but kinda boring.

When it snows overnight, there is a muffling of the morning sounds. The effect is as if you've moved cities while sleeping and have woken up somewhere much calmer-- where the morning rush never quite hit, traffic noises all swallowed by the fluffy snow.

Unfortunately, this blissful calmness is often counter to what the demands of the world want: you need to get up early to clean off the car of snow and account for traffic to get to work on time, rather than sit cozy inside, bustling away at indoor work. But don't worry, I didn't need to do that today.

Have a little photo of my alley this morning.

Painted a little window scene. 3"x2" on Stonehenge heavy paper. #mastoart

Have some little watercolor doodles. I've been mostly exploring clouds lately.

Any tips on painting dramatic clouds with watercolor?

Hi uh, catarot is up and working, I guess. If you're into wireless receipt printers that look like cats printing out tarot readings.

https://git.cyberia.club/starless/catarot

I haven't done much doc work for it, and likely won't. The original branch is https://github.com/rbaron/catprinter.

@thegibson@hackers.town it was a good walk. Cold enough that the snow squeaked a little.

I was glad I had long underwear on. Thermasilk+polar fleece leggings+jeans is great. Also, Mongulai makes amazing wool socks. The gloves I wore were a bit thin, and I was only wearing a t-shirt and a flannel button down under my coat, so my elbows got a bit cold, but it was nice to get out.

Next time, I'll probably wear a long-sleeved knit shirt, too, and maybe switch to actually insulated gloves. It's starting to get cold, and it's nice to think about that. These were pretty normal temperatures for this time of year, growing up, and it feels nostalgic and comforting.

Have some pictures:

Am I still in bed? Yes. Check out how one blade of my ceiling fan just disappears into the ceiling. It's very sneaky.

I decided it looked a bit too flat

A friend helped install plastic insulation sheets over my patio doors yesterday. I paid him in a watercolor commission.

My condo is now much warmer!

Figuring out component placements. How the hell will I get stuff to stay? Who knows!

Cat ear hearing aids get one step closer to reality.~

The hearing prosthetic project continues!

Ran into some delays in getting the miniaturized board ready before a conference, so I'm building out a very big hearing rig!

I'm almost done with the skeleton: a large, wide fabric covered plastic headband and a pair of felt ears with some heavy gauge gardening wire attached. I've glued the ears to the band and am in the process of sewing them down.

It's very important to me that the ears feel like one solid object, so I want to create as stable of a base as possible.

The tympan model d sound processor will fit in one ear, and a spare battery and amplifier will fit in the other. A transducer speaker will be attached to the headband, resulting in bone conductive hearing via cat ears! (though these are big enough they could pass for bat ears)

This year, I dressed up as a magical girl demon. I tried to find a magic wand at a Halloween shop, but to no avail. I made a homemade one instead.

So uh, I think some of y'all might feel personally called out.

A while back, I'd made another version. #mtgart

#mtg

Made another marit lage token today.