Cooking. The tray of the solar cooker I use aboard Pino is damaged, the welding holding the ends to the body have begun to separate. I can no longer cook anything runny, or that is immersed in liquid, like wholegrains, legumes and beans. Avi, a friend, will try to re-weld it, in the meantime I am experimenting with ways to keep cooking. The tube itself(the most important part of the cooker) and reflectors are fine, Devine built a tray out of aluminium cans, shaping it into a sort of canoe which we've since named the "cooking canoe." I put half a cut aluminium can at the end to keep the heat inside the tube. The cooking canoe leaks, so we can only cook things which aren't too wet, like bread, cake, dry beans and seeds (for roasting).
I've been grinding legumes into powder so it is possible to keep solar-cooking them, mixing them with spices and water. I usually add a length of parchment paper underneath to help contain the mixture. My favorite mix so far is chickpea flour, garlic powder, turmeric, chili flakes, cumin, kasoori methi and water. The result is a long and tasty tube savoury cake, which I cut up into slices and throw onto a variety of meals. I've also prepared this recipe using lentil flour(ground brown lentils), and it tastes amazing. The fragrance of kasoori methi wafting in from the forward hatch when it is cooking is... very distracting.

ART. I neglected my own art and conworlds in the last few weeks. I am happy to draw for others, but I always need to take time to draw for myself and so I spent the month drawing and planning comics for Hakum. I gathered older drawings and put together the shock, and also drew all new content for tangled. I completed all illustrations for the permacomputing project, production though is running long and it won't come out until much later.
HundredRabbits also released No bears none, a book documenting our 2024 sail from Victoria, B.C, to Sitka, AK. The book includes 100 new drawings, recipes, and tons of new edited content. It's a detailed read, interspersed with silliness. If you read it, I hope you like it! If enough people like it, we'll release it as a paperpack book later this year.

READING. I read Tales from Watership Down aloud to Devine every night. The book begins with several epic stories involving El-ahrairah. The stories are lovely, but I was a bit disappointed to not hear more of the lives of the Watership Down rabbits. Thankfully, most of the second half involves them. I really enjoyed diving back into Richard Adam's rabbit world. I have now started reading The Sea Wolf by Jack London aloud. I am enjoying it so far, although the "Might is Right" attitude of the captain is a bit tiring at times. I am curious to see what's going to happen, since his views greatly clash with that of the main character, a literary critic and altruist.
I read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. What a mad fever of a book. It is a dizzying, but thankfully, quick read. It was difficult to stomach at times because of its portrayal of natives, who are frustratingly referred to as savages, and who's country is hopelessly plundered. I grow weary of reading about resource-gobbling men with a God complex, even if it is meant as a critique of colonialists. The writing though is good, and you really do feel as though you are immersed in a sweaty jungle. At least, Aldous Huxley's Island was a true balm. I think about many of its passages daily. Brave New World was a warning, and Island is an offering, a fictionalized manifesto on what the ideal utopia could look like, were it not for Murugan; Oh Murugan, you know not what you do...

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• Teaching Shakespearean Sonnets to Brain Rot 15-Year-Olds.
• The Tale of the World’s Most Unlikely School Bag, a history of the iconic Japanese randoseru (ランドセル).
• US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows, so... being anti-tech now makes you a terrorist in the eyes of the current US administration.
• True True Size of, bit of a heavy website, but fun, to help visualize the sizes of one country with another by overlapping them.
• Nobody Cares, Write Anyway.
• 50 Hours to Draw Some Lines, drawing data visualizations by hand. Incredible.

WEBSITE. I updated the {remove ai} page to include the search engine that I currently use: Startpage. I also added many more commands to my {spellbook}, as I tend to do after corrupting my computer. After a fresh install I now always refer to my own notes to fix re-curring issues, like with VLC, when installing SDCV, or when setting up SSH keys for Github and Sourcehut.

ART. I worked on a lot of commissions this month, like a set of cute dead robots for Caleb's upcoming personal website. I also illustrated a family portrait for Andrew.
I also drew this year's design for the IWP9 conference in Victoria. I am really grateful that Ori too thought it a good idea to dress up Glenda as an orca.

MOVIE. My friend Karin recently told me about Kanopy, a streaming service available to library card holders. It is possible to watch films on it for free, although there are so many "tickets" available per month. Some movies are worth zero tickets, some 2, or 4. I have discovered a lot of great movies and documentaries through it. One of my favorite watches so far has been the Hannah Arendt PBS documentary, although it is not an easy watch.

READING. I finished Maria Coffey's Sailing Back in Time, published in 1996. Maria and her partner Dag travel aboard Luna Moth, an open dory, alongside the Farrells, aboard China Cloud, to Desolation Sound. Both vessels are engineless, wooden sailboats. Thoughout the book there are mentions of what life used to be like in B.C., back when there were still steamships delivering interisland cargo, when the shores had fewer homes and docks, with no private signs to prevent passage on foot.
Despite not having experienced this version of the B.C. coast, I too bristle at affluence, loud engines and "private" signs. It really would have been awesome to order parts from Vancouver and have them arrive via steamship in Nanaimo. I highly recommend this book, it is full of stories about other boat builders on the B.C. coast, as well as early homesteaders, and other crafty and creative people.
In this book I learned about the term "Teetotaler," which refers to people, like Allen and Sharie, who abstain from drinking(teetotallism). I had never heard this term before. The "tee" refers to a capital T, to mean that those who abstain from alcohol do so, with extra emphasis, in Totality.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• The Casual Optimist, a collection of great book covers.
• Make Your Own Kinako, a tutorial to teach people how to make their own kinako.
• Baluchon's Sailing Path, follow along Yann Quenet's around-the-world sail aboard a custom 4 m sailboat.
• James Barry, "Was I not a girl I would be a Soldier!", the Wiki[edia page of Barry, a surgeon, who concealed his gender from the British Army for over 40 years.

HEALTH. I found a true squash racquet for 5$ at my local thrift store. It is way lighter than the wooden racquet I had before, better suited for a rapid-pace sport like squash. I replaced the worn grip tape, but it is otherwise immaculate. I respond a lot faster than I used to when playing, a very good sign. I am trying to get better at doing push-ups, but the most I can do currently is 3(in good form).
In sadder news, I had to say goodbye to the family dog recently, shortly after the vet diagnosed him with stomach cancer. I've always been close to him, despite living far away from my parents... in a way, he was my dog too. I went with my dad to pick him up as a puppy, we spent a lot of time together since then. I miss him terribly. Devine helped organize a short trip to Seattle to see Health Live to help distract me from the pain of his loss. It helped.

MUSIC. I am still reeling from the Health performance. It had been a while since I'd gone to see a show in person, especially one in which it was possible to thrash around in a mosh pit. I hadn't been in a mosh pit since I was teen. The crowd erupted when they played Ordinary Loss, a song that continues to bring me to tears. Music that hits hard with themes like this are exactly what I needed. Thank you Greg and Devine for making this happen. I got to ride a floatplane for the first time, this amazing experienced also helped to further brighten my mood. There was a moment while in flight where the plane was at level with the rain clouds, "I'm where the rain begins...!" I said to myself with a laugh.

ART. I'm currently working on contributions to a permacomputing book project, nothing I can share now but I will once it is released (I don't know when). I spent most of my month finishing up assets and animations for the new version of Donsol. The game will have illustrated monsters, unique face cards, etc. Devine & I are mostly finished with the game, but we still have a few finishing touches to do(soundtrack, testing, etc).
I finished the last 2 pages of sabotage study for Hakum, ending with a single illustration, I also made a first comic page for Rabbit Waves.

MOVIE. After going to Sidney to drop off Pino's backstay, I went to see Project Hail Mary at the cinema. I enjoyed it, although sometimes Weir's overdependence on humor has a way of dampening what would have been really powerful moments. Rocky's design was excellent, it was exactly how I'd pictured it.
I watched Jeunet's Delicatessen(1991) for the first time, I now count it as one of my favorite films. It is no secret that I have a penchant for black comedies, but this film also stands out because of its bold characters, decors and storyline. Silvie Laguna's character, Autore Interligator, as well as the intricately decorated sets that she found herself in, were especially striking.
I've always been a big fan of Trigun. I thought Trigun Stampede was enjoyable, while imperfect, but Stargaze was very disappointing. It is hard to explain why without spoiling it, but in all it was flavorless. Nothing had weight.

READING. I ought to have continued to read Red Plenty, but I instead listened to the French audiobook version of Orwell's 1984. Someone had already borrowed the English version at my local library, I generally prefer to read books in their first language, but the French translation, I thought, was very good. The book is as chilling as I expected it to be. I devoured it quickly, entranced by the story, finishing it all under 3 days. I had a lot of art to clean up, permitting me to listen to an audiobook on the side. I realized after finishing that I hadn't listened to a book in over 5 years.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• The Ozempification of the Economy, an insightful read which served to flesh out a lot that I've been thinking about lately.
• Drive on Waste, designs for Edmundo Ramos' waste-powered vehicle, a design already used in Cuba in response to the US oil blockade.
• I'm OK Being Left Behind, Thanks!, Eden's thoughts in this post about the weaponization of FOMO echo my own.
• What's my JND?, a fun test. My best score was 0.0034.

HEALTH. I went climbing with Tamara, Owen & Devine at a very nice climbing gym. I really enjoyed it, but found it very challenging, I could not get past most of the overhangs. I hope to go again soon. For now, we are renting gear from the gym itself, because getting 2 pairs shoes and 2 harnesses is a bit too pricey for us currently, and both of these things are not really advisable to purchase used. It is important to buy climbing shoes that fit, and a used harness is a potential safety hazard. I was very sore after the climb, the soreness lasted for 2-3 days.
I am still playing squash, every 3-4 days, but as the weather warms I'll likely play less and spend more time outside, or doing boat projects(it's that time of the year!).

ART. I printed some punk rabbits stickers this month! Evidently, I could not print more than a selected few, I chose Bobcat, Howl, Sy, and Em (they were the most popular). They came out so nice! If you're interested, you can buy them here(100r store).

MUSIC. Pvh introduced me to Zammuto recently, I've been listening to it a lot since.

MOVIE. In the movie One Battle After Another, there is a scene in which Leo Dicaprio's character watches a movie called The Battle of Algiers. I hadn't heard of it, but decided to find it to watch it. It is an excellent film, following a group of rebels seeking to liberate their country from the French, based on actual events. The film style resembles a documentary, and much of the people featured in the film are non-actors. In this same line, I also watched Z, a fictionalized film about the rise to power of a right-wing military government in Greece following the assassination of left-wing leader. The film, like The Battle of Algiers, tells a very grim tale, about injustice, and political corruption.
While on the plane ride back from Spain, I saw Banshees of Inisherin, a black tragicomedy I really enjoyed, set in 1920's Ireland. This movie goes to some really dark and unexpected places. Colin Farrel and Brendan Gleeson play off each other so well, it was the same in Martin McDonagh's other film In Bruges(which also stars both of them). I absolutely loved it.

READING. I started reading Red Plenty by Francis Spufford, a book about 1950s USSR, weaving fiction and history to talk about the "planned economy", a system which they hoped would bring forth an abundance of good things for everyone. Devine & I re-watched Chernobyl(HBO series) and so learning about some aspects of Russian history was insightful.
I finally finished reading George Eliott's Middlemarch. What a fantastic book. I've never read an author that understands people(and how they think) as well as her. Her way of describing inner turmoil is just so vivid; their pain, their joy was mine, too. People as good as Dorothea are too few in this world. I also finished Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. I enjoyed it, but this book could have been a lot shorter. I especially enjoyed hearing about people in the US and their thirst for literature, about them going Dickens crazy, snatching his books just as they came off the boat. This was during a time when people could sit and listen to live political debates for hours on end. These debates were done with respect, of both their opponent and their audience, and with good language. The books describes the coming of telegraphy, radio, and television, and how these things have cheapened discourse, and lowered the value of the written word in favor of cheaper, shallower media. All that was said in this book is still relevant today.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• Hot Pizza, a really neat community art studio in Toronto.
• Hack This Shopping Cart
• The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis, a thought exercise in financial history from the Future.
• The Anti-Dystopians’ Guide to Generative AI
• AI is a Hype-Fuelled Dumpster Fire, a talk for Programmable 2025 by Chris Simon.
• Buckwheat Bread Recipe

HEALTH. Devine & I picked up some old wooden tennis racquets at a local thrift store to play squash with. Yes, we know that it is not the right type of racquet to play this sport and people at the gym keep telling us so, but it is difficult to find good secondhand squash rackets. Playing with them is fine, but because they are heavier we need to swing harder. I've really enjoyed playing, we try and go twice a week.
While in Ucluelet a few days ago, we met up with Tamara who has invited us to go climbing. I've always wanted to try it, but never got the chance. I look forward to it. She also suggested surfing on the west coast of Van Island, but I fear that I will lose my fingers (I have Raynauld's Syndrome).

TRAVEL. As I mentioned, I went to Ucluelet for 3 days with Devine and PVH by car. On the ride there, we stopped by Port Alberni, and in Coombs on the way back(although Goats on the Roof was closed for the season). We also stopped at a store selling dutch candy. I don't like candy much, but I do like salty licorice(salmiakki) and brought some back home. Only I will eat it because Devine hates it. While in Ucluelet, we stayed at The Black Rock Resort, a very nice hotel, courtesy of our friend Avi(thank you). We attended meetings as advisors for the conception of the upcoming Rising Tide Boatworks boatyard project. We visited the site, and went for a ride aboard a 42-foot whale watching boat that will soon be converted to electric. The project is coming along nicely, the site is much cleaner than it was, and the main hangar has been hollowed out.

ART. I completed the punk rabbits drawing series, ending it with 102 rabbits. Woohoo! I improved my hand a lot while doing this series, I may continue to draw some rabbits casually, but I won't keep count.
I made a simple image feed so I could show recent art and photos I've made, it's possible to follow updates via RSS. I've been adding goblins for Goblin Week 2026(still in progress).

SEWING. After reading Make, Sew and Mend by Bernadette Banner, Devine & I decided to take our old hats apart to use them as patterns, and to try and remake them again ourselves. We went to pick up 12oz black canvas at a local fabrics store, as well as some double-sided tape. The work went well, and I am very pleased with the result. See sewing for more photos and details.

MOVIE. I went to see One Battle After Another at the local Imax theater. I really enjoyed this film, it is rare to watch a film in which the main character, the supposed male hero, efumbles ceaselessly, and only succeeds because of the help of others(who operate in the shadows for the well-being of people, not because they want to be thanked). I look forward to seeing it again.

CALL FOR ACTION. Aleph, a good friend, is currently looking for work(looking for a full-time or contract work in SRE / DevOps / IT Operations, contact them if you know of any openings), but until they secure a job they need help to cover essential living costs for February. If you can spare a few dollars it'd be great! Another good friend, Cathos, is also looking for support, throw some love her way.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage, an article by Cory Doctorow.
• Lessons in connoisseurship from the Golden Globes, an article by Ellen McGirt
• Why I Write, a good text by George Orwell.
• Nicholas Kole, beautiful art portfolio.

HEALTH. I have been cycling a lot more this month, despite the persistent rain and cold. The city of Victoria has added many more protected cycling paths, making getting around the city safer, and easier. I really miss being obligated to cycle everyday, rain or shine. As it stands, I only cycle when I need to go get something somewhere, like a grocery run, or going to pick up a part at a faraway store. I need to create more opportunities for cycling.
I somehow hurt the thumb of my left hand recently, which happens to be my dominant hand, and it is hard to basic things, like working scissors or using my pen tablet pen. I hope that the swelling goes down soon. I can still draw, but the little thumb splint I made for myself does hinder my movement a bit.

ART. I have drawn 65 rabbits for punk rabbits. Aside from that, I have been drawing and animating sprites for Donsol. I finished drawing most of the monsters and am now working on animating the bosses. Devine is finally beginning to work on the game with me, we hope to release the game early next year.

SEWING. I am trying to get better at sewing, whether it be by hand or with my machine. I hope to better my skills to one day be able to make repairs or projects for others. I completed 2 small projects, like a protective canvas sleeve for Devine's computer, and a pouch to store a little 1980's foldable steam iron I found at the thrift store.

MOVIE. I've been watching a lot of older films lately, like Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, and, a favorite of when I was a kid, The Long Long Trailer. I've enjoyed them all.

CALL FOR ACTION. Currently, the fantastic Pattie Gonia is walking 100 miles in drag over a period of one week to raise funds forBIPOC + Queer 8 nonprofits & orgs working to make the outdoors/environmental spaces a more equitable place, and that is a really a crazy worthy cause. Support the campaign if you can.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• Mike's Woodwork, beautiful wooden creations.
• The Gruen Effect, malls the compulsion to buy, buy, buy.
• The Death of DeviantArt and the art-site shaped hole haunting the Internet, why every new art community fails.
• Walther Calculators, an online museum of Walther calculators.
• Open Source Low Tech, low tech & affordable prototypes.

HEALTH. I can do about 5 pull-ups right now, but still only 1 from a fully extended position. I can do 6 when I have a horizontal grip on the halyards setup on Pino's bow. The ropes being a 1/2 inch thick makes for good grip, I don't have this kid of grip strength from a horizontal bar, especially if I have to stand on my tippy toes to reach it.
I'd love to get into kickboxing, to find an affordable class that I can participate in for the winter, but they are expensive. I know I can train outside of that context, but I'd really like an activity that involves other people. I spent a lot of time on my own, I really need to move and to get out of my own head.

ART. I am up to 55 drawings for punk rabbits. It is obvious now that I will not finish in time for the Hundred Rabbits studio anniversary in November — an overly-ambitious goal. I've added a few sketches of Hakazi and Dae in sketchbook(see topmost entries). I used to draw Dae as a skinny guy, but it really doesn't fit the activity level of his character. I redrew him to have the build of a climber. I haven't had a lot of time to make comics, I am sad about this and hope I find the time to complete more pages over the winter.
I am continuing work on the upcoming Playdate version of Donsol, drawing and animating sprites. Progress is good.

BOOKS. I am currently reading through classics. I read through The Outsiders, all in the same day while traveling to visit my parents. The author, Susan E. Hinton, wrote it when she was 15 year old and it was published a year later. It is a good read, with good complex characters and a lot of heart. I finished reading it with plans to continue to watch many more sunsets. I have now begun to read Madame Bovary, another classic, but it is too early to say much about it.
Aside from my solo-reading, I continue to read Middlemarch aloud to Devine.

MOVIE. Like everyone else in the English speaking world I have partaken in soda pop and was subsequently engulfed in the craze that is Kpop Demon Hunters. The premise of demons taking over the world by creating a Korean boy band is completely irresistible. I loved every bit of it. The music is well-produced, the characters are fun, the animation/expressions is just... crazy, and the story, while having a few plot holes, holds itself well. I've been listening to the soundtrack on repeat, it is addictive. I wholeheartedly believe that if demons existed and employed that same strategy to conquer us that we would all be fucked.
Been watching a lot of good horror movies lately, like The Substance, Weapons, and Together. Both The Substance and Together feature body-horror that serve the plot well(it isn't gratuitous). The Substance is horror satire, and just visually stunning, while Together is also kind of absurdist, horror/romance(a rare, but fantastic mix). Weapons features Amy Madigan(Uncle Buck), and she is just fantastic in this film. I enjoyed the format of the movie, split in parts following the same story through different characters. While being a horror film, there is a bit of humor squeezed in there which balances out the story well. It it amazing to see so many good recent horror films.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners, self-explanatory.
• How I Reversed Amazon's Kindle Web Obfuscation Because Their App Sucked, PixelMelt is fighting the good fight!
• Nine Things I Learned In Ninety Years, Edward Packard's personal reflection on what he believes is the most important in life.
• Understanding Digital Dementia and Cognitive Impact in the Current Era of the Internet: A Review, a very important read.

I have really enjoyed the past few weeks, which have been less travel-focused, and more centered around seeing friends, foraging for fruit(blackberries, plums and apples), and getting projects done. I have been making illustrations for the Victoria to Sitka Logbook project, which I hope to publish early next year. Putting books together is a fun, but very slow process. For the last few weeks we have been at a dock(for free) to watch over a friend's house while they are away, and so used this time to make repairs to our beloved vessel. The bilge pump, alternator, and anchor light all failed and needed replacing. When things on boats break, it is always in groups of 3 for some obscure reason.
Replacing these items is expensive, and I am sad to say that while purchasing one particular item I was targeted by a malicious individual. All is ok now, but untangling it all was not fun. The timing was not ideal(to be fair, it never is). Devine & I make under 29,000$CAD(not invidually, as a combined salary) every year on game sales from Itch.io, Bandcamp sales, book sales from lulu.com and monthly donations on Patreon. We are able to survive on this because we are thrifty, but keeping up with the rising costs of things, as well as the rapid devaluing of the kind of creative work that we do(hello, AI), is a challenge. We are not sure we can keep wintering in Victoria next year for this reason. We'll see how it goes, both of us are considering finding extra work.

HEALTH. Since I my last update, I can do 1 full pull-up from a fully extended position, and can continue on to do about 3 more. Progress is slow, but good. I haven't been as diligent with my resistance band training these last few weeks, mostly because being near land has allowed for daily bike rides.

ART. I drew some sunflowers for Sunflower BASIC. In this same line of thinking, I illustrated a tribute to an artwork by Moebius(a cover for Alice BASIC) for the Hundred Rabbits August newsletter, see it here.
I continue to draw entries for punk rabbits, I now have a collection of 34 rabbits! I try and draw one every 2-3 days, slowly working my way up to one hundred. Speaking of which, this coming November will be the 10th year anniversary of hundred rabbits!

BOOKS. I finished reading Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, a book several people had mentioned to me after I told them about wiktopher because the author uses she/her pronouns for every character. I enjoyed the world that Leckie built, she did a good job of characterizing the different cultures, by the way they speak, gesture, dress, etc. I had a hard time keeping up with the many political intrigues of the book, I think I will have to re-read it again.

MOVIE. Scavengers Reign is an incredible series about the survivors of the interstellar cargo vessel Demeter, stranded on an alien planet. The planet is a very beautiful but also very hostile place, with some local fauna and flora able to interact and integrate with machinery. The animation, background art, the characters, the dialogues, the story, all of it is absolutely phenomenal. It is so rare to come upon western adult animation of this quality nowadays, finding this was incredibly comforting, especially in this age of incessant generated soulless garbage. I think that it is the best thing I have watched this year, so far(with Sinners at its heels). Next on my list is Common Side Effects, another series produced by the same studio(Green Street Pictures).

CALL TO ACTION. If you can spare a few dollars support Elisabeth Potter, a reconstructive surgeon that is facing insolvency after publicly exposing the rotten work ethic of United Healthcare. Read about the whole story here.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• I Am an AI Hater, self-explanatory.
• Illusory Truth Effect, a great Wikipedia find(shared by Jes).
• David Woodard: A Disinformation Report, A Wikipedia editor discovered the single largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia’s history, spanning over a decade and covering as many as 200 accounts and even more proxy IP addresses. An incredible story.

I've managed to miss writing an update last month, I've been a bit distracted due to all of the traveling. Since leaving Texada Island we've sailed to the San Juan Islands, and then over to Ucluelet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. There are a lot of beautiful places on this coast. We were lucky to have seen plenty of orcas, and 1 very young and energetic humpback whale. I wish that we'd had less weather while in Ucluelet, but it's a really lovely place. We visited the Ukee catch-and-release aquarium, saw many beautiful anemones, sea cucumbers and several different species of fish, all native to Clayoquot and Barkley Sound.
On our return in the Gulf Islands, we dropped the hook near friends. We have been enjoying some quiet time since then, catching up on projects, going on hikes, working my way to making 5 pull-ups(SO close!).

HEALTH. I'm happy to report that since my last update, I can do about 4 pull-ups! The quality of the 4th one varies, depending on how much energy I have. I've also been training with a resistance band on the side. It was a good idea to get one for the summer, it is a good way to combat restlessness when going to shore is not possible.
We are currently moored near an island with many good trails, so we have plenty of options.

ART. I released a new Rabbit Waves page called Boatswain's Call. All the traveling has left me with little time to produce larger and more complex projects, and so I focused on making many small rabbit portraits(Punk Rabbits). I'm hoping to make 100 of these, as a personal challenge.
Dev & I also worked on a small but difficult game called Polycat(yes, based on Minbird's Polycat).

BOOKS. I read Girl's Last Tour, a manga by Tsukumizu. It is a beautiful story which tackles some very difficult and heavy topics. It is about resilience, companionship, just living one day at a time, creating all the while, doing the best that we can with the time we've got. Humanity will create to the end, even when the end is within sight. There is something both sad and remarkable about this. I was in tears when I finished it. It destroyed me. I was all but useless after that for the rest of the day. I recommend it, but maybe make sure you've got a comfy blanket or a warm body nearby to cuddle up into, you'll need it.

MOVIE. I finished watched Better Call Saul. Yes, many years after its release(it takes me a while). What a fantastic show! I love Jimmy and Kim's relationship. I love the respect that he has for her, it burns bright throughout the series and it is amazing. Kim isn't perfect, but she is accountable, and that is so, so rare, especially for someone who's actions have hurt a lot of people. It was exciting throughout, and has a well-crafted ending.
A friend had Devine & I watch Buckaroo Banzai. I still don't know what I think about it, it is the type of movie that requires a second, and maybe third watch, not because it's confusing but because it is very odd and because there are too many details to look at. It is amazing to think that someone greenlit this movie. Many lines do not make sense, the plot is full of holes, but the sets are fun, the choice of outfits is fantastic, and seeing a younger John Lithgow overacting and speaking with a bad Italian accent is very entertaining.

GREAT FINDS OF THE MONTH

• Traditional Japanese Folk and Work Songs, self-explanatory.
• Agnes Denes, the pioneer of ecological and land art.
• Stendhal syndrome, ecstasy in the face of beauty.
• Just a Q Code, an ad and tracker free way to make QR codes, courtesy of a benevolent soul.
• LA Protest 2025, great shots of the LA protests.

It appears that I have been too busy to work on my site of late! I managed to miss a monthly update, and it is because Devine & I have left the Victoria docks and have been busy sailing northward to Texada for a haul-out. The timing with the weather was difficult, it's been very windy ever since we arrived on the water. We left on a very blustery day, and the blusteriness has not let up often. We arrived to Texada a few days ahead of the haul-out, staying ahead of strong northwesterlies. Pino became a land creature for a few days, while we repainted the bottom, changed the zincs and did other out-of-water maintenance. Now, Pino is back in their element, we are in Ballet Bay waiting for some strong weather to pass so we can head back southward.

HEALTH. Since leaving the dock, I have been working my way to making a single pull-up. It is not easy, I have long neglected my arms in favor of my legs. After a bit of practice, I am able to pull myself up when standing on a low step and heaving my body from there, but I cannot do it from a fully hanging position. To work my way to a full single pull-up, I've been doing reverse pull-ups, which involves starting from the finished position and lowering myself down slowly into a full hanging position. My arms and shoulders are tired, but I have a lot of time to practice and work my way to make one.
Devine bought an elastic so we could turn Pino into a floating gym. We get restless aboard a lot, especially when anchored in places where we cannot walk ashore, so this will help.
I feel good currently, in my head and in my body and I hope that it lasts.

ART. I finished a yet another page for Sabotage Study for Hakum, in which Hakazi and Dae sign together in silence some more, and have a friendly visit. I really like shading and drawing with pencils. I'd like to work my way to making many more full pencil illustrations like my self-appointed sensei, and pencil-shading master Hiroaki Samura. I recently completed a pencil illustration for mindbird, featuring the characters together.
Also, Bill Atkinson, who created Hypercard, and who was the creator of my favorite dithering algorithm, has passed away. RIP Bill. Your work lives on.

BOOKS. I have finally finished reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I read aloud to Devine most nights, and I very much enjoyed reading for Boris. His "flow of speech" was really quirky and fun. Although, the Goldfinch could have been 300 pages shorter. Most of the characters in this book are a bit of a mess, that is fine, but even walking alongside Theo across 800 pages wasn't long enough to warm up to him as a person. In all, I like Tartt's writing, and I enjoyed her descriptions of artwork, people and places, but this is not a book I would ever care to revisit.
Next, I read through Andy Weir's Artemis, my least favorite of his works. Weir is Mark Whatney, he is Ryland Grace, he is also Jazz Bashara... the problem with him being the hand-puppet and voice of Jazz Bashara is that she is a 26-year old Saudi Arabian woman. With his voice, she sounds like a rude pubescent boy. Once you look past Andy-Jazz, Andy-Dale and Andy-Svoboda, the world of Artemis is actually very rich and fun. Weir truly shines when describing the city, its innerworkings, and the complexities of manufacturing material and welding in space. It his evident from his writing that he spent a lot of time designing this world. Solving problems in space continues to be what he writes best.

MOVIE. I went to see the movie Sinners twice at the theater. Yes, it was that good! I saw it with Dev in Victoria, then again with another friend in Sidney. Films like this give me hope for the future, that there are still directors out there who love what they do, and collaborate to make beautiful original creative projects with their friends. The music in Sinners is excellent, I've been humming Sammy's and Remmick's songs for a few weeks now. Whack follol le-dah!
I also watched The Boy and The Beast by Mamoru Hosoda, not a new film, but I had not yet seen it. I loved the first 3/4's of the film, but was disappointed with the climax and resolution. It will be difficult to want to watch it again because of what it becomes, I felt the same way about the second half of the movie Your Name by Makoto Shinkai. In the Boy and the Beast, there was an opportunity to do something great, to talk deeply and seriously about chosen families, but Hosoda instead insisted on heart swords and dark chest vortexes. Damn it... Kumatetsu deserved better.

ARTICLES/VIDEOS I LIKED

• Canadian Alternatives to American Internet Services
• The Who Cares Era, an article on caring and continuing to make things to combat AI slop.
• Recursive Islands and Lakes, a whimsical wikipedia article about recursive lakes.
• Just Fucking Use Html, a rude, but useful, explanation showing how easy it is to use html when making websites.
• AITH for Not Cooking Fancier Meals?, A Reddit post with women going full commando to protect OP from her dick husband, with several comments that continue even now to amuse me. "Tell him random Eastern European women from across the world are angry at him."

This month, the weather is warmer and we are busy cleaning up the boat, airing out the lockers, drying off items temporarily corrupted by mould and moisture. Anything stored in the v-berth lockers suffers from extreme wetness. It is a very, very annoying fact of boat life, but there is really no way to promote good air flow in those spaces. Unfortunately, we kept a box of older backup laptops in a locker that usually does not get wet in the winter, but alas, this space was also corrupted and the laptops have all suffered damage. We had to recycle them.
To continue with tales of computer troubles, I had to nuke the OS on my main working computer due to a corrupted database(I could no longer update my system). Now, my computer is working fine again! I also managed to revive my older Macbook2010, which was also plagued by some OS/hardware issues. I put the machine to work converting and compressing movie files to save space on our external hard drives, and so that they are playable on an old Ipad2.
After installing the latest Manjaro i3 update, I found out that Xsane, the scanning software I was using, was no longer available (temporarily, supposedly), so in the meantime I had to install Simple Scan(Linux software). I updated my page on using a scanner under linux to indicate this.

HEALTH. For the past 2 months I've been immersed in medicine, and first-aid knowledge — I blame Rabbit Waves for this uptick in interest. When I shared a list of suggestions for meds and items in a first-aid kit online on Mastodon people responded enthusiastically, mentionning additional items I had not considered which encouraged me to continue pulling on that thread. I've updated our own onboard med and first-aid kits, while throwing away long-expired items. While in New Zealand in 2017 a sailing couple we knew sold their boat and gave me and Devine their extremely comprehensive, Swiss-German labelled, med kit, which was sized for a family of 4(they traveled with 2 young kids). We threw away expired epinephrine vials and other antiobiotics, but non-perishable items like suture thread and needles, surgical gloves, and scalpel blades are still good(provided that the packaging seal isn't broken).
In an unrelated event I found The Onboard Medical Guide in a used book shelf in town, written by Paul G. Gill Jr. M.D., a certified emergency medicine specialist, which manages to cover a lot of material in a concise manner. My takeaway so far is that the human body is so, so fragile, and that a boat is a dangerous playground, more reason to have a good kit aboard and the skills to deal with wounds and other likely ailments.

ART. I animated some drawings on the Rabbit Waves page for Triangular Bandages, and appended a .txt file with all of the med and first-aid reccomendations as well as their intended usage.
I finished a new page for Sabotage Study for Hakum. I am super pleased with the nighttime shading on this one, the page reads well!
I shared an extended version of a website update I wrote in 2023, called kid rek, about re-learning to love drawing for myself.

BOOKS. I am still reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, it's a very long book and I am almost all the way through it. I have some thoughts on this book, but I will wait until I have finished reading it before elaborating.
We thinned our onboard library, bringing a pile of books over to Russell Books in Victoria. This store accept used books that are in good condition, "buying" them back in return for store credit. Devine returned with many new-to-us books to read for the summer, purchased with our store credit. This is a very good system. We gave them our ancient edition of Adventure of Nils, a book that is gorgeous but that will deteriorate too quickly aboard Pino. Nothing lasts on a boat, especially time-worn books.

MOVIE, I went to see Flow, a Latvian animated film. I didn't know what to expect, I had seen images shared around but I never looked it up. A marina neighbor mentioned it was playing at the theater, and convinced Devine & I to go. What a simple, beautiful film...! It communicates such important ideas about cooperation in times of crisis, something that has been on my mind a lot of late. It is worth seeing, I highly reccommend it.

Poem Afternoon on a Hill by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I will be the gladdest thing
    Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
    And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
    With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
    And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
    Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
    And then start down!

CALL TO ACTION. After watching Carole Cadwalladr's latest TED Talk This Is What a Digital Coup Looks Like, I donated some money to WayBack Machine. If you're a heavy user, like I am, you should too. Cadwalladr has been through a lot to give this talk, give it a watch and keep up with her updates because she might need our support again soon. I really wish she used a platform other than Substack to broadcast her views, though.
I've shared C.C. O'Hanlon's call for aid here before, and I will again until both he, and his partner Given are able to buoy back to the surface and stay there. Give what you can, every donation, no matter how small, makes a big difference.

ARTICLES/VIDEOS I LIKED

• Hamonshu: A Japanese Book of Wave and Ripple Designs, scanned excerpts of this wonderful book published in 1903.
• Creeping in: “Two AI Truths and a Lie” harmful normalization, an article on the harm in normalizing the use of AI.
• The Roganification of the Male Physique, escapism through endless self-optimization.
• What If We Made Advertising Illegal?, on eliminating manufactured personalized, reality-distorting bubbles.
• Stoop Coffee(Substack), on a clever way to connect on a personal level with your neighbors when living in a city
• A World From a Sheet of Paper, a talk by Tadashi Tokieda about geometry by way of origami.

Ah, yes, March! It's getting warmer, buds are blooming, the Trump administration is threatening Canadian Sovereignty — what a time to be alive!

POLITICS. The digital erasure of marginalized communities is on the rise, all the more reason for people to host their own content, outside of platforms(like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, X and Substack) to escape the cull. When you post content exclusively on these platforms, you build their assets, not yours, and you require their permission to reach an audience.
Whatever happens, do not stop making art, and do not stop telling stories. In a 2019 article, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda addressed the power and importance of stories in the Trumpist Age, "Art lives in the world, and we exist in the world, and we cannot create honest work about the world in which we live without reflecting it. If the work tells the truth, it will live on." So, do not stop creating, ever, and publish the work online in a way that honors your digital dignity, like on a personal website, on Pixelfed or on Mastodon.

ART. I've released 2 new pages for rabbit waves. Both pages are about first-aid, the first is about building a First-Aid Kit, and the second is about Triangular Bandages, a specific item found in every basic first-aid kit. I also updated Emergency Bag with some extra colored illustrations, to help break up the text.

HEALTH. I started to learn how to play squash at Devine's gym, taking advantage of the many guest passes that come with their membership. I played racquetsports a bit during college, but not since. I am not as terrible as I thought I would be, and everytime I play I get better. Our marina neighbor has been playing for a long time and is teaching us both. I missed doing some kind of physical activity requiring sudden explosive movements. Winter is very rainy in the Pacific Northwest, it is nice to do more indoor activities.

MOVIES. I finished re-watching Breaking Bad, I hadn't seen it since it first came out in 2008. I enjoyed getting re-acquainted with its cast and storyline, although I found hyper-masculine characters like Hank difficult to stomach(the way he treats Mary after his accident is awful, and never really talked about in the show). I found that the writers of the show were excessively abusive to Jesse, especially in the last season. Much of the violence directed toward him was unwarranted. The show is a good portrayal of what male pride can do to a desperate man, it was worth a re-watch, but I didn't enjoy the follow-up movie El Camino. El Camino, starring Jesse, suffers because it was given the 'Netflix look." The pacing is terrible, the mood is needlessly dark and dank, and the audience is given, what I'm going to call "mystery nuggets" non-stop. Mystery nuggets are small bits of information that suggest something is going to happen, meant to "keep an audience hooked," but it is wearisome. On top of it all, Jesse's character, while excellent in Breaking Bad, does not work well as a stand-alone. The writers even managed to have him act contrary to his values. Yes, "hurt people hurt people," but Jesse was never that person and I loved him for that. In all, some plot lines are better left unexplored.
I started to watch Better Call Saul, and so far I am very delighted with the series, more than I was watching Breaking Bad.

BOOKS. I have put down Middlemarch temporarily, because Devine bought The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I've been reading chapters aloud to them every night. Switching from one book to the other was a bit jarring. Eliot is an excellent psychological novelist, the same could be said of Tartt's writing, but it lacks Eliot's wit and astuteness. The thing to remember is to not follow modern novels with 19th century novels.
I've also been reading Deviant Ollam's book called Practical Lock Picking, in the interest of getting into locksport. Many years ago I bought a Southord's BPXS-12 kit for Devine has a birthday gift, so I've been tinkering with that.

MUSIC. I have been listening to old favorites a lot, like Ghostland Observatory and The Faint. I'd like to get back into the habit of listening to full albums by bands, to re-learn to stay with the content longer rather than opting to listen to songs by a number of artists all mixed in together. A lot of albums are designed to tell a story, and really, I am missing that.

COOKING. I published a recipe for a favorite onboard Pino: Za'atar Stovetop Pizza. I've also started using the pizza base just to prepare flat bread for hummus. I cut it up into small triangles, it tastes great! I've been thinking about experimenting with coffee alternatives, since, as I mentioned in my previous update, that the beans are getting very expensive. I have an old vegetarian cookbook aboard that suggests making coffee from soybeans. When the weather is nicer, I will use the solar cooker and experiment! I will report on my findings!

QUOTESI believe great art is like bypass surgery. It allows us to go around all of the psychological distancing mechanisms that turn people cold to the most vulnerable among us.Lin-Manuel Miranda

ARTICLES I LIKED

• Thoughts on Seed Oils, an article debunking that seed oils are bad.
• The Echo of Our Voices, photographer Nick Brandt and his excellent series on refugee families who fled the war in Syria, now living in Jordan.
• Disaster Capitalism, critics ask if Trump is 'intentionally crashing the economy.'
• Big Tech Wants You Trapped, the Open Web Sets You Free, an article about what digital dignity means.

On February 15th Devine & I celebrated our 9th year living aboard Pino. Winters spent battling mold and condensation isn't always easy, but it is a minor inconvenience that does little to diminish my love of living aboard a sailboat.

ART. I have begun sharing pages of a new Hakum short comic entitled sabotage study. I've been meaning to share updates to this project for some time, I had started those first 2 pages months ago, but as I am juggling ten thousand projects I've had to prioritize. I've released a new page for rabbit waves about the importance of packing an emergency bag, and made little animations to populate the Morse Code with Flags page.
I also cleaned up an old drawing I had done of black-headed gulls on a log to use as a divider for my update page (visible above). Seabirds on a log beep-bapping is a source of joy for me.

SEWING. I made a pouch for our angle grinder, and its accompanying dics out of some Sunbrella offcuts.

HOW-TO. After Devine & I worked on a zine for Rabbit Waves, I drew a guide on how to fold a zine.

HEALTH. I've long stuggled with being me. I have difficulty trusting people, and can't seem to be able to regulate my emotions. I've always assumed that I was just broken, irreparable. On an especially bad day, crushed by self-hatred, I was desperate to find news ways to cope. In my research, I read through Edward Bowlby's Attachment Theory. A lot of my issues seem to stem from having an anxious preoccupied attachment style, possibly due to the fact that one of my caregivers also suffered from this. I have an undeveloped sense of self. My self-esteem has always been dependent on the closeness and approval of others. Knowing why I feel the way that I do helps, I feel less broken, less alone. I will write a long post about it sometime, but it needs more thought...

MOVIES. I watched an English-subbed version of Das Leben der Anderen, a German film about the invasive monitoring of residents prevalent in East Berlin by the Stasi(1984). In the film, a Stasi officer is made to monitor(via bugs in the walls) a couple, a playwright and an actress, not because they are suspected of any wrongdoings, but because the Minister of Culture is romantically interested in the actress. The Stasi officer sits at a desk with headphones on all day, transcribing every uttered word, every movement. I will not spoil it further, but I really enjoyed it. Apparently, the idea for the film came as director/writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck was listening to music and remembered Maxim Gorky's saying that Lenin's favorite piece of music was Beethoven's Appassionata. Here's an excerpt of a conversation Gorky had with Lenin:

BOOKS. I am reading Middlemarch by George Eliot, a book with many older English words that are unfamiliar to me, and that I have to look up mid-read(a friend lent a physical copy of the book). Although, after reading Sherlock Holmes, some words like "pew" are now known to me, even if I have no real use for them in conversation. It's a long book, but I am enjoying it so far, George Eliot has a wonderful writing style, very precise, witty, and humorous at times.

MUSIC. I've long been a fan of TOMM¥ €A$H, and it's why I was excited to see that he was entering the 2025 Eurovision song contest for Estonia. His entry, Expresso Macchiato, is very fun and catchy, moreso because it is laced with criticism of consumerism and globalism. It is his most family-friendly song ever, in that there are zero mentions of sex or weed. I especially love that the video was inspired by an 1982 video of Andy Warhol eating a Burger King Whopper burger(filmed as part of Jorgen Leth's art film 66 Scenes from America, 1981) for four minutes and 20 seconds.
"As an immigrant, Warhol admired the idea that in America the same food and drinks are consumed by people regardless of their status – the president drinks the same Coke as him. The clash of cultures deeply influenced the subject matter of his art. A burger might as well appear as a tribute to the idea of American life."
Listening to this song, I am reminded that with the rising price of coffee, that I ought to enjoy it while I can still afford it. I buy 2.2 kg bags of whole beans at a local store, and I've had to pay 10$ more than last year. It is crazy to think that something as ubiquitous as coffee will eventually be a luxury.

QUOTESDo not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.G.K. Chesterton

ARTICLES/VIDEOS I LIKED

• Chesterton's Fence, a reminder to look before you leap.
• U.S. Navy Signal Corps Flag Semaphore, Blinker and Morse Code Training Film, a 1943 U.S. Navy training film.
• Jackarais, the website of a great comic artist.
• Buranovskiye Babushki, the performance of a group of Udmurt women at Eurovision, with a song about making bread and waiting for their children to come home(made me cry, too damn sweet).
• European Alternatives to Digital Products, alternatives to help encourage people to move away from American-owned digital platforms and services.

WEBSITES I LIKED

• Collapsible Systems, a wiki gathering information with the goal to prepare for an era of collapses.

>It was a busy, cold month. I am doing my best to not read headlines, because the 24-hour news cycle only serves to overwhelm, and to distract. When things go to shit, art is and will always be a worthwhile refuge.

ARTICLES. I wrote a post detailing on why I stopped drinking alcohol: no alcohol.

ART. I participated in Goblin Week and drew lots and lots of goblins! My focus this month has also been into making a 1-bit version of Oquonie for Playdate, I revisited all of the assets for the project. This version of Oquonie was shipped with the soundtrack from the original iOS game! This month I also designed some very cute two-headed beasts, which I've affectionately nicknamed Tchouni and Bombafu, for Tote.

MOVIES. My sister encouraged me to watch Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, and it did not disappoint. It has pretty shit ratings online, but I thought it was a super fun, and surprisingly addictive, movie. What is more interesting is that it was written by Will Ferrel and Harper Steele, long-time friends. Both recently starred in a documentary called Will & Harper, which follows the same two aforementionned people on a road trip across the United States, a trip that Harper had done many times in the past, but now it would be her first time doing it as a woman(having recently transitioned). It was a heart-wrenching, but important movie to watch.

BOOKS. I started reading How do You Live by Genzaburo Yoshino. It was a book I had tried reading aloud to Devine a few months back, but I had trouble getting into it because we found that the writing(Bruno Navasky's translation) was not especially good. I picked it up again the other day with the goal of finishing it to try and understand why it was so important to Hayao Miyazaki(the book was the inspiration for his latest film The Boy and the Heron). A young Japanese boy named Copper(Koperu) learns, through his family and friends, about social inequality, the value of hard work, and on how everything and everyone is inextricably linked, etc. How Do You Live invites the reader to be curious, and kind. I do like how the author uses storytelling to impart values, but it has the same issues as Sophie's World, in that I wish that these lessons were better integrated so as to not feel overly preachy.

QUOTESPlato imagined a class of rulers in his ideal Republic who would not own property at all. He proposed that no system of government could be just if the leaders were primarily concerned with their own personal wealth and the future wealth of their children. How can any leader successfully work for the health and prosperity of their society if they are simultaneously trying to preserve or grow the contents of their own purse? Property, by its unequal distribution in society, made people selfish. Plato believed that this selfishness weakened the state. He believed that petty concerns over the acquisition of material things distracted the mind from the pursuit of justice.From Everyday Utopia by Kristen R. Ghodsee

ARTICLES I READ AND LIKED

• The Legend of Sacchan, a feel good video.
• Kangina, a traditional Afghan technique to preserve fresh fruit.
• We Don't Need More Cynics, we Need More Builders, an article by Joan Westenberg.
• Ahodori and Yoh's Circumnavigation, a sailor circumnavigates the world in a home-built 21-foot plywood boat.
• Philip Low's Open Letter About Musk, a must read.

ART. I illustrated some Atlantic Salmon and a Sea Louse for a presentation at MASTS's Annual Science Meeting about the effects of salmon farms on the wider ecosystem. The drawings will also appear in the accompanying paper! It is my first time contributing to a scientific paper, and that's pretty neat (I was even assigned an Erdős number).
Rabbit Waves was announced officially! I've since released two more pages, one about Morse Code and another on using flags to signal Morse Code. The project was well received, I got a lot of good comments. Devine & I put a lot of care into making the website accessible to people with screen readers (thank you Rembrand for your helpful feedback on this).

BOOKS. This month I've been reading yet another Arthur Conan Doyle book aloud to Devine, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. As always, it is a very entertaining read. I enjoy that perpetrators are not always prosecuted, sometimes people commit crimes out of desperation, or are victims of an unfortunate series of events, Holmes, despite collaborating with officials, is a very fair man(a rare quality).

TRICKS. I use YouTube often but I despise the interface, but I found a solution! I installed Untrap, a Firefox add-on. I turned off suggested videos, shorts, likes, comments, and tons of others buttons and distraction-ware on mine. My homepage is now just a blank page with a search bar — total bliss!
I stitched a pair of arm warmers for myself and for Devine to keep our hands warm. I used to wear arm warmers all the time as a teen, but never thought of making my own until now.

MENTAL HEALTH. I added a page on my site called Happynothappy, which is just a very simple way to track how I feel from day to day. It would be more beneficial to track reasons as to why I feel a certain way on certain days, but for now I just want to keep it simple, otherwise I run the risk of abandoning the whole endeavour. Rostiger made their own version of my very basic tracker, which is a thousand times superior to mine, hehe!

MOVIES. I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time ever at the Vic Theater on October 27th. Of course, having never seen the film, most of the memes were lost on me, but thankfully I had read about what to expect so it was not too shocking to receive pieces of cooked toast and rice on my head. Tim Curry is absolutely brilliant in this role! He has such an amazing command of his expressions, it is evident that he has a background in theater. Luckily, I can watch the film again and again on my own because it is available for download on archive.org.
I also watched 2 french comedies I hadn't previously seen: 3 Hommes et Un Couffin by Coline Serreau(same person who directed the amazing La Belle Verte), and Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis by Dany Boon. The storylines of both films were predictable, but still very enjoyable(more so than their English counterparts).

QUOTESIf you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology — and you don’t understand your problems.A quote by Laurie Anderson

CALL TO ACTION Trans people in the US are not likely to get support now that the orange man is back in power, and it is likely that some of the rhetoric will spill over our side of the border. There are many organizations that exist to improve queer, trans, and Two-Spirit lives in Canada. You can find organizations in your area using the Rainbow Action Hub on Egale's website. I've recently donated a binder to Qmunity in Vancouver.
If you recall, I recently shared Given and C.C.'s gofundme page, their funding target was reached and the campaign has ended, but they still need help. They will continue to share updates on Kofi, support them there if you can.

ARTICLES I READ AND LIKED

• Entomologists Get a New Call to Action in the Fight Against Disinformation
• Don't call it a Substack

GREAT WEBSITES/PROJECTS

• Guerilla Girls, the website of the anonymous artist activists & feminists known as the Guerilla Girls.
• Zine Club, sign up to receive zines and/or mystery objects, handcrafted by multimedia artist Paloma Kop, in the mail.
• RJ, a re-enactment of Hanna Weiner's flag semaphore version of Romeo and Juliet.

WEBSITE NEWS. This website now has a light mode! I should have implemented this ages ago, all of my other websites have a light/dark mode, but now it's done! If your browser preferences are set for light mode, you'll see it. The default is still the dark mode, because it's what my eyes prefer.
In other website-related news, I wrote a post called keeping teeth healthy. I was hesitant to share it publicly because I was embarrassed to admit of being bad at taking care of my teeth, but I got a lot of support from others who suffered the same problems. Body maintenance is difficult, I ought not to be embarrassed about it, I will likely continue to learn how to do things better till I die.

SAILING. Pino is back on the Victoria docks. I was looking forward to it this year, I was glad to have access to water on tap again. In the summer, water in the Salish Sea is a rare commodity, we have to use it like the precious resource that it is. This translates to not doing laundry, and by not taking quality showers aboard for 5 months. The water in our tanks is for drinking, and for cleaning dishes only(when water is especially low, I usually use a pressure sprayer and do the dishes in the cockpit). After a summer of hard sailing, Pino is a damn mess. I've already cleaned the gunk out of the quarter berth and galley, but each space needs a good exorcism.
Being back near a city also means that Dev & I can ship stickers again! I've put items in my store back online(still selling some mushroom drawings). Devine found a spirograph set for 5$ at a thrift store, we now make intricate patterns on all of the letters that we ship!

ART. I bought myself a set of coloring pencils! I got them specifically for the Rabbit Waves project, for illustrations that need a touch of color. I am creating content for it almost everyday! The project is not released yet, but it'll be out before the end of the month.
The bird in the drawing below is a long-billed murrelet, a bird that hangs around the east coast of Russia and Northern Japan. I have never seen this particular type of murrelet, but I have seen Kittlitz's murrelets while sailing in Southeast Alaska. They are such beautiful, tiny birds! They are like small compact auks, measuring about 25 cm (9.8 in). Yes, rabbit waves will have rabbits, but also plenty of seabirds.

FONT. I fixed a few issues with the font for Hakum. Had bad kerning between n & l (the word only comes up a lot). I also moved the apostrophe, hyphen, and the plus sign higher. The font is still not 100% perfect, I fix it when I find the time. I'd also really like to add glyphs for french(é è ê) at some point. See Making a Font. I didn't have time to work on Hakum at all this month, I am sad about this, but I'm prioritizing rabbit waves at the moment.

BOOKS. I finished reading Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. I did not expect to like this book so much, the Martian was ok, but this book isn't only about solving problems in a hostile environment(space), it's also about camaraderie. It is difficult to explain why I loved the book without spoiling it, but I will say that the main character's encounter with Rocky really makes this book shine.

MOVIES. I learned that Boots Riley, the director/screenwriter of Sorry to Bother You, a film that I loved, had also recently directed the series I'm a Virgo. I finally got around to watching it, and holy crap...it is very, very good! The characters were well-crafted, the world was fun and created with purpose(to talk about corporatocracy, oppression and exploitation). Then there's Parking Tickets, a fictional animated TV show within the I’m a Virgo universe. Parking Tickets is dark, it grips you and doesn't let go. I enjoyed reading about the show within a show in this article.
I watched Yintah, a CBC documentary following indigenous land defenders in a decade-long fight to keep fossil fuel companies from building pipelines on their traditional lands. Watching this I was completely disgusted at the hypocrisy and barrage of lies coming out of the mouths of Canadian Government officials, pipeline workers and the police/RCMP. Their eyes are set on resource extraction and nothing will keep them from achieving their goals, Indigenous people know that better than anyone.
Reconciliation is a word that is thrown around to appease voters, it's an illusion, behind the curtain the Canadian Government is still using century-old tactics to remove Indigenous people from their lands.

"I want to buy your horse," an American settler says to an indigenous man. "No, I want to keep my horse," the indigenous man says. Dissatisfied with this response, hellbent on getting the man's horse, the settler goes to another indigenous man, "I want to buy that horse," he says, asking permission from someone who doesn't have the authority to give that horse away.

This short skit illustrates well how land was seized in the past, and what is still done today when governments want something from Indigenous people. A few weeks ago, I finished reading I Will Fight No More Forever by Merrill D. Beal, documenting how the American settlers displaced the Nez Perces from their lands. Back in 1877, Chief Joseph too was suffering the lies of government officials: "It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises." Good words do not last long unless they amount to something.

QUOTESI have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I learned then that we were but few while the white men were many, and that we could not hold our own with them. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had a small country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not; and would change the mountains and rivers if they did not suit them.A quote by Chief Joseph

MUSIC. I am head over heels for the techno mix BEHEĀDER - LA FORZA. I have a strange relationship with music, songs affect me deeply, beautiful voices and arrangements have the power to bring me to tears. Devine sent me an article called Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music, which sets out to explain how certain individuals have strong emotional reactions to music.

CALL TO ACTION. Given and C.C., two bright stars are struggling to stay afloat. Circumstances have compelled them to live nomadically. They lack a legal residence anywhere and have neither pensions nor access to banking, social support or medical services. They make due with meagre finances and fend off the increasing pressures of age (C.C. turns 70 this year) and chronic illness. I have donated to their cause many times, but support from many more people would help them ensure that they can continue to get prescription medicines, medical care, as well as the basic requirements of keeping an old boat — their home — afloat for a longer chunk of time, which in turn will help alleviate some stress. Give what you can.

ARTICLES I READ AND LIKED

• Handwriting Your Own RSS Feed
• The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
  
• Hurricane Helene and the ‘Fuck It’ Era of AI-Generated Slop
• A Soft Manifesto
• Boots Riley Talks About a Socialist Alternative for Society
• The Web Isn't Forever

GREAT WEBSITES

• Alt-text selfies, a website documenting selfies but in the form of unique and beautifully-written alt-text
• Removed Across SE Asia, a photo series by Eric Pickersgill showing people with their phones digitally removed.
• The Museum of Retro Technology, a website documenting cool retro tech, like heliographs and optical telegraphs.

SAILING. Where's Pino now? We are anchored on Galiano Island, comfortably nested in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. We spent time in Melanie Cove earlier this month too. We wanted a taste of summer weather, we got it. Some days were very warm, too warm to hike. Pino will be returning to the Victoria docks in the fall, I look forward to it. I really miss using our sewing machine, I have many projects in mind!

I started to transcribe the entries of the Victoria to Sitka logbook digitally, I've already published the first two weeks. As promised, the log features many silly doodles. Silly doodles are my lifeblood. People who have already read through the log told me how much they liked the black-headed gull syndicate, I am glad of it, it was a recurring joke on that trip. Gulls on logs were a common, and welcome sight. I have many more weeks to transcribe, it will take a long while to go through it all!

ART. I've been doodling one of my older ocs Shane "Shock" Evans a lot. I used Shane when roleplaying with a friend in the pokemon universe. I'd love to "recycle" this character into another story, albeit with some improvements, because his current personality requires some considerable finessing. I tend to become very attached to my characters. I always end up reusing them in other projects, although sometimes they're so different that it is impossible to know who they stemmed from. Lupen, from my story Wiktopher, actually shares Shane's haircut (although Shane wore it first), but they're nothing alike.

BOOKS. Earlier this month, I finished reading Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I really enjoyed it, while being familiar with the character — I think most of the English speaking world is — it was my first time reading any of his stories. I love Watson’s constant amazement of Holmes’s observation and deducting skills. “My dear Holmes!” He’d often say, awestruck, after hearing Holmes detail the life a client he’d just met with great accuracy. I recommend it, although the fact that he casually takes cocaine was a bit jarring. Taking cocaine was a "hip" thing to do in 19th century England, but mostly because it wasn't well understood. When the dangers of cocaine became known, Arthur C. D. adapted the story, with Watson helping to wean Holmes off the drug. I love that he didn't double down on his character's use of the drug. The author used words that were at times surprising, like saying "he ejaculated" after a character speaks in a sudden manner. The definition of the word when used with speech reads like this: "To throw out, as an exclamation; to utter by a brief and sudden impulse; as, to ejaculate a prayer." Using it to illustrate something said swifty and suddenly is brilliant, I love the image that it summons in my mind(not the one you're thinking of, you silly rabbit). Unfortunately, its use for anything other than "ejecting semen" will forever be strange in modern times.

I am still reading through Don Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things. I've become more observant, and critical, of the objects around me. It is a wonder that so many terrible products end up in people's hands. I learned about The Toyota Way, which is a set of principles that focuses on reducing waste, increasing productivity, and maintaining a high-quality standard, such as Muda (無駄) and jidoka (自働化). I created a page on my website named good enough arithmetics, coined by Don, to remind myself that precision isn't always necessary. When I shared my notes on Mastodon, someone linked an amazing blog post on how to use your hand as a measuring device to take approximate measurements. I LOVE that idea! I included some fun ASCII art in the documentation to break the monotony. Drawing hands in ASCII was not easy, but it was fun to try! The book is dry at times, but the lessons are invaluable.

As a last mention of books, I will say that I've been reading Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary aloud to Devine every night. The casual format makes it difficult to stop, we are enjoying it so far, although Ryland Grace, the main character, sounds and behaves exactly like the star of Weir's other book Mark Watney (The Martian). I suspect that he injects a lot of himself into his characters.

RABBITS. I've got rabbits on the brain. Last August we went walking on a trail on Cortes Island with our friends Rik & Kay, they sent me photos from that walk, which of course, ended up becoming part of the wunderland rabbits project. I am especially pleased with this one. Rabbits in the ferns!

What I am most happy about is that I found another way to do the dithering. I used to have a local copy of Dither-it, and used the Atskinson algorithm to get the look I wanted, but when I switched from Vincent to Obi I forgot to clone the repository, when I was working on this picture I didn't have good enough cell coverage to download it. I ended up toying with Krita, and found an option under Filter>Artistic named Index Colors, which does EXACTLY what I want! I can change the colors under Ramps, and the results are just as good as those produced when using Dither-it. Of course, Dither-it is a really neat tool and I will continue to recommend it, but it is neat that Krita can produce similar results(I haven't found an equivalent in Gimp).

Also, maybe it is a bit too early to announce it, but in rabbit-related news I registered a new domain named RabbitWaves for a very special project. The site doesn't have much on it yet, it will soon!

MUSIC. Voidxwitch released their new single The Beast of the Black Hill and it is excellent! This song is dominating my life, I cannot persuade it to leave my head. Give it a listen!
Falling in Reverse's Prequel is also highly addictive. As on the commenters on YouTube so rightly said, "Falling In Reverse is no longer a band, they are an experience."

TRICKS N THINGS. I learned that it was possible to use the terminal as a calculator this month. I really wish I had learned this before! I am constantly doing conversions, being able to do it via the command line simplifies thing! Of course, one cannot just type equations in the terminal, it is necessary to summon bc first. BC was already installed on Manjaro, handy!

CALL TO ACTION. As you may have heard, Paul Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, was arrested by Danish police. "Danish authorities claim that the arrest was made due to an international arrest warrant issued by Japan, related to his anti-whaling campaigns in the Antarctic more than a decade ago. Paul faces the possibility of extradition to Japan, where he could spend the rest of his life in prison." Protection nature ought not to be a crime. If you can spare some time, sign this petition.

Also, if you can, buy prints/or commmission a human artist that you like. With the use of AI becoming ubiquitous, they need your support right now, more than ever.

ARTICLES I READ AND LIKED

• Challenging the myths of generative AI
• Inequality on the Cut
  

QUOTEThe productivity myth suggests that anything we spend time on is up for automation — that any time we spend can and should be freed up for the sake of having even more time for other activities or pursuits — which can also be automated. The importance and value of thinking about our work and why we do it is waved away as a distraction. The goal of writing, this myth suggests, is filling a page rather than the process of thought that a completed page represents.

Sourced from Challenging the myths of generative AI. I thought this was worth sharing, especially considering what has happened with Nanowrimo last month.

GREAT WEBSITES

• Marcus the Visual, and his well-crafted The Last Airbender fan fiction The Legend of Abioye.
• Anna's Archive, since most mirrors of libgen are now down, Anna's Archive is fighting to keep the lights on.

My mind has been occupied with weather and currents of late, now that we are still, I have room in my head to tackle some difficult problems.

I finished a new comic sequence for Hakum named Smile.

I drew the cast of {Hakum}, when they're a bit younger, and then older with some new members. I also completed a very short vignette comic named Shoes, Dae spends all his time in the forest, never wears shoes, and never rode a bike before.

Otherwise, Devine & I have resumed work on {Markl}. We hope to publish it on the Playdate along with {Oquonie}. The Playdate has been a good source of entertainment for me while at anchor, I especially enjoyed the game Saturday Edition by Chris Makris.

We've traveled many miles, we completed a loop through Southeast Alaska, passing close to the mainland through Wrangell, Petersburg, and then through Frederick Sound to Sitka, then down down down on the outside waters of Baranof and Dall Island, through Dixon Entrance and into port at Prince Rupert. Sailing in outer waters was lovely, especially on the first day, the sea was smooth, as was the wind, I saw a ton of wildlife. I saw black-footed albatrosses, the last time I saw them was on our Japan to Canada sail in 2020, they are large brown birds with dramatic markings around their eyes, locking their expression into one of constant mourning. As Pino sailed by the Hazy Islands, I saw my first puffin! The Hazy Islands are far offshore, away from traffic and human encroachment, boats can't land there, neither can planes, it's a perfect place for birds, they have a world of their own out there.

The second offshore leg was not as lovely, with big waves at our stern, strong winds, too. "Don't take me again," I said to the sea, "please don't." I kept one hand on the tiller, the other gripped the frame of our roll cage, ready in case the waves decided to misbehave. Further into Dixon Entrance the waves diminished along with any threat of being taken, I was relieved.

I write in my logbook everyday, I don't have creative energy for anything else right now. I draw once in a while, not as often as I'd like. Hopefully, once we get nearer to Vancouver Island, we can find a place to stay put for a few weeks. Yes, weeks, a place with good hiking nearby, a quiet place for deep thinking.

This trip has challenged my strength. I am a human windlass, a haphazard diesel engine mechanic, a nervous wreck at times... but like our strong little ship I too can weather storms.

May and June are good months to spend in SE Alaska. It's been very rainy and windy since we've arrived, I'm not sure what nice looks like in these parts... I look forward to it, though. We find cell reception here and there, permitting for updates like this. We'll explore the area, and start making our way back down late July.

I won't be updating this site much in the meantime, maybe just small improvements or notes here and there. Like today, as we are waiting for bad weather to pass in Ketchikan, I worked on the {finic} language. I've got plans for another {Wiktopher} book, so I'm just jotting down ideas. Because I am away, my store is closed, I will put the {Vancouver Island Mushrooms} series back for sale when I return in October. See you then!

I released a new Wunderland Rabbits image. Spring is here on the West Coast of Canada, camas plants are in full bloom. We are getting ready to depart for northern waters, filling the boat with food, gathering e-books, etc.

Because I am learning Modern Standard Arabic on the side, I've started keeping notes! I will append to this page as I go.

I am still working on the new comic sequence for Hakum. Unlike previous releases, where I would publish pages as I finished them, I will publish them all at once. Here is a sneak peek.

A few months ago I bought some mochigome(sticky Japanese rice) with the goal of learning how to make mochi. It took me a long time to try because I wasn't sure it was possible to do by hand on the boat. Most tutorials require the use of powered appliances. I've seen Japanese do it by hand by rapidly beating the dough with a mallet, I knew I couldn't do exactly that, but I had a pestle. I cooked the rice, transferred the rice to a bowl, crushed the rice with a potato masher, then went to work beating the dough using my pestle. It's hard work, it took me around 15 minutes of constant beating to get it to a sticky, cohesive mass. Then, I used plenty of cornstarch to separate the dough into 10 balls. Devine & I later cooked the balls with roasted sesame oil in a pan. The result was rice cakes that were crunchy on the outside, and soft and sticky on the inside. We'll make mochi again for sure, maybe next time we'll try to stuff the sticky dough with sweet red beans(anko). See the result.

I made another small rope mat for Pino earlier this month. The little black mat was even featured in the latest hundred rabbits newsletter(without the flemish coil). If you're wondering what Little Ninj is doing in the image, he is trying to flatten the mat. When a new mat is finished it won't be comfortable to step on because the ropes are still round, but if the mat is set on the floor, time and the passing of feet will flatten it out. Stamping on a mat repeatedly is a quick way to flatten it, it's also possible to use a rubber mallet. Generally, we tolerate the initial discomfort and wait for the material to settle on its own.

In the interest of conserving useful articles about boating/sailing, I mirrored two articles on my website: defensive boating and gunwale and hull cushioning.

I improved the look of the Hakum page, adding small graphics and trying to space out the content better to make it more pleasant to read (I have a tendency to pack a lot of text in a single page *sweats*). I started a new comic sequence but progress is slow because Dev & I are preparing for a big sailing trip this summer. We hope to make it to Northern B.C., near the Alaskan border. I spend my days studying guide books and charts, trying to understand how the wind and current behaves. This coast is not easy to sail, but we want to get better acquainted with it, even if it means getting uncomfortable for a short while.

I completed Ruler of the Taiga. It is annoying how even if I just completed Night Terror, I already dislike a lot of the art. My hand and my eye keeps improving, it's a good thing but it makes it difficult to appreciate work now that I was proud of at the time of completion. The spell wears off so quickly. I am glad I am improving, but I hate being this inconsistent. I've always assumed that once I learned to draw that I could only get better at it, that regressing was not possible, but if there are too many long lulls between drawing sessions(months, years...) I realized that it is possible to lose it. The skill isn't lost entirely, but the work can appear stiff. Drawing will always make me happy, but I hope that my work eventually stabilizes. Note that this 'regression' is only true when drawing characters with realistic proportions (projects like Hakum, and Circa), errors are more apparent in designs like this than with a project with a cartoon style like mindbird.

I did a few sprite commissions, see Alex P., Benji and family(1), and Benji(2).

I made some modifications to rope mats, so that intructions are clearer. I made a tiny mat out of red paracord for a friend this month for v-day, I missed making mats, I plan to make more this month.

I did a few sprite commissions this month, see Alex, Squid, and Sofia.

I added a bunch of new(old) production art to uno and wiktopher. I'm trying to gather all of my art on this website, even the really old stuff (see old art). I logged into DeviantArt the other day and saw how they had fully intergrated AI into their platform, which makes me so, so sad. As HelveticaBlanc said so well in a recent toot(Mastodon): "I don't wanna see AI in any form, even as a joke. It's a nightmare for labor and the environment, an insult to the spirit of art, and I'm fully on the side of the Butlerian Jihad." Yes, me too. AI art is hollow, it is a grotesque parody of what it is to be human.

I've had two accounts parked on DA for the longest time (@esserawks and @mintenko), I kept them for memory's sake, but after seeing what DA has become I've decided to deactivate them. All of my art lives on this page now.