@burdock I always got my best bokeh at max zoom, min focus length, regardless of aperture :) had some fun with a 200mm telezoom, taking a photo of a bumblebee 10 ft away, and getting it in focus by leaning forward and back.

@cleonyc @prehensile

Ooh! the combination lock magic is something I ran across years ago. Let me dig it up...

https://woodgears.ca/combolock/

This woodworker built a single dial combination lock mechanism out of wood, oversized, and with exposed mechanism to show how it works. The page and photos show how turning the dial only in a certain way unlocks the lock.

@cinebox @rinidisc ahhh, might explain why I haven't seen it. My mac is almost 13 years old now and can't run anywhere close to the latest version.

What's happening over there?

#caturday

@rinidisc moooof. Well I haven't looked for the dogcow is a long time. Didn't know it made the transition to OSX.

@presandberg @anxiousrage earth regenerators sounds interesting!

...Then I poked around their website and saw their post about how their fund accepts cryptocurrency. Which is... Um. I mean, that post was from late 2021 so maybe that was initial naive enthusiasm, but the page hadn't been updated since then...

Last two days of my vacation, then I have to go back to work.

I have done a whole bunch of writing, and even a couple of days of drawing! Haven't drawn anything in ages, so I'm glad to get that pencil moving again.

Spent the majority of my vacation on the couch and it was *awesome*. Although my cats might be confused when I go back to work Monday, they like having my legs to pile onto for warmth when it was naptime.

"Libraries aren't just a place to obtain books for free. They're one of the few public spaces left in our society where you're allowed to exist without the expectation of spending money."

@coldwave hehe yeah, ultimately a course won't help if you don't actually write a bunch.

Silly prompts can get the words flowing, for some people, with a low stakes feel to help bypass the inner critic. I used to do weekly prompts with a group, that always started with a list of 5 random words, 10 minutes, go!

Figuring out how to string together a coherent and cohesive story doesn't necessarily have to mean long form. I mean you can dive right in and write a novel for your first try, but that's a much slower learning and iteration cycle.

I found nanowrimo helped a lot when it came to exercising the long form muscles, because it was only a one month commitment and there was no expectation that the story would be good at the end of it.

My main recommendation is to have fun and accept that the first tries are going to leave you feeling like you could do better. Because you will, it's called learning! :blobcatreading:

This is a fascinating article on #Ajami, a system of using a modified Arabic script to write various languages from West #Africa including "Wolof, Hausa, Fula, Mandinka, Swahili, Amharic, Tigrigna, and Berber." https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/fallou-ngom-discovers-ajami-african-writing-system/

Anthropologist Fallou Ngom and other African scholars introduced Ajani, a writing of trade, medicine, poetry, science, and anticolonial resistance, to Western academia, disproving the colonialist lie that Black communities south of the Sahara had no writing systems of their own.

@packbat @library_squirrel huh odd, I've never had an error from doing that.