James Zhan in real life.

Weeknotes #3, August 3–9

What brought me joy

  1. New coffees!!

Coffees from Propeller Coffee

Got some new medium-dark roast coffee for espresso and my first ever bag of decaf beans, both from Propeller Coffee in Toronto! Sometimes, in the evening, I crave the act of brewing coffee and so I thought, why not give decaf a try? I’ll have to learn how to brew decaf beans as they’re different than regular ones. Propeller Coffee has a special place in my heart because I bought my first bag of coffee beans from them when I got into specialty coffee back in 2021. They don’t do the trendy light roast, but their beans are just consistently good and reasonably priced in my experience.

  1. New keyswitches for my mechanical keyboard

Keyswitches

I own 2 Keychron Q12 Max mechanical keyboards, one at home, equipped with Gateron Jupiter Brown switches, and one at work, equipped with Gateron Jupiter Banana switches (yes that’s how much I love this keyboard). I’d found the Banana switches to have too much “thock” and to require a bit too much force to press, so I switched them to the Outemu Silent Lemon V3. While these switches were practically silent during typing (didn’t know that was possible with mechanical keyboards), they were way too mushy; I really didn’t enjoy typing on them. So I ended up swapping them out for the Gateron Browns and almost immediately, I was like oh my god this is SO much better. For the rest of the week at work, I felt joy every time I typed on them.

  1. My wife had been looking forward to the V1.0 release of the farming game, Fields of Mistria, for years. It was finally here on Wednesday and I decided to watch her play the first couple of hours of the game. She’s been spending a lot of time playing the game on the couch in my studio with her Steam Deck and I’ve been enjoying listening to the sound effects and background music as I do stuff on my computer. It just made me happy to see her having so much fun.
  2. Our kitchen faucet had been leaking for many months and we finally got it replaced! You know you’re getting old when you’re excited about a new kitchen faucet.
  3. This week, I got to spend quite some time creating animation in Apple Motion (to illustrate some engineering concepts for work). Coming from After Effects, I absolutely adore Apple Motion. I really enjoy working in the app, but I just hadn’t had much opportunity to create custom animation for work in the last couple of years, so it was nice to get neck-deep in it again.
    • I did run into an obstacle and the Apple Motion mastermind Dylan Bates from the incredible Final Cut Bro channel and Apple Motion Masterclass was kind enough to help me out! With his permission, I plan to make a tutorial video and post it on my Apple Motion channel so others can benefit from it as well.
Apple Motion
An animation of viscous damper that I was working on
  1. After getting the OutIn LattoGo milk frother, I’ve been trying to learn to create latte art, and I finally had my first success!

latte art

  1. Due to my broken toe, my wife and I hadn’t dined out in a restaurant for almost 2 months. We finally went out for a dinner date at a local Korean restaurant this Saturday!

IMG_2668

Piano

Another good week of piano practice! This week marks the fourth week since I started the resolution to play the piano at least 3 times a week, and I’m happy to report that I’ve been able to consistently meet my goal. Starting the Piano Journal was a great idea as it holds me accountable and gives me a place to log practice notes. I mentioned in the last weeknotes that I’d started recording my practice sessions; it was a great decision as I’m getting less and less nervous about being recorded.

Other stuff

Upcoming week

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#coffee #weeknotes