The month has been passing me by! We've been mostly hunkered down keeping things quiet, but we'v e had a few adventures in the past couple weeks.

Last Sunday the 11th, Steph and I rented a car and drove out to Northport on Long Island. A work colleague of her recently retired and is moving to Bali with her husband. They've been clearing out their home, but now with the move date encroaching, they still have some things lingering around, and she encouraged us to drive out and take some of the left over art and antiques home with us.

It was a lovely and fascinating day–we had plans to maybe take a few paintings, chat for a couple hours and drive around to some antique stores the rest of the day; but we instead ended up with a carload of beautiful things from them and spent the entire day talking. They were so fun and interesting, the types of people who have lived long adventurous lives. They told us about Jack Kerouac living in the house next door, the fishing village and its history; her husband told us about teaching psychology in Australia to aboriginal prisoners, acting in Kung Fu movies in the 70's, and being in Cambodia during the take over by the Khmer Rouge. It was an unforgettable day and visit, and now we have beautiful things in our home to remember them by. They also insist that we visit them in Bali once they settle, which we are DEFINITELY going to take them up on.

Other than that, it's snowed a few times since I last wrote. I've attended an event or two, and we've had cozy evenings, impromptu brunches at diners, and days out in the city with our friends. Staying warm, staying busy.

My work projects have been coming along and I'm getting really excited about a web project I'm doing for a band as it's coming along really really well. Looking forward to sharing more when I can!

It's been really fun seeing people's old pictures with this 2016 throwback trend that's been circulating online. 2016 was a special year for Steph and I as that was the year I got home from my mission and we reconnected and became a couple. How quickly things moved! We've been laughing and having so much fun remembering those early days in our relationship. Hard to believe it's been 10 years. Steph was digging through her old hard drive looking for pics to share and found a folder of music that I gave her when we were first dating. Turns out it has my entire iPod music library from high school with KPGR's full library as well as songs I downloaded from as far back as 2012! A real live time capsule that I thought was lost forever. I might need to get an iPod again...

Happy New Year! Finally writing again after a brief break for the holidays. Not that it was intentional, I've just been bound to my computer less while we've been enjoying taking some time off, and neglecting to update this was a consequence of that.

I love the new year. I love New Year's Resolutions. The idea that we allow ourselves to collectively reflect, aspire, and turn over a new leaf every 365 days is great. I know for some, resolutions are synonymous with large bursts of energy at the beginning of the year with a slope off into ultimate failure within a few weeks, but I don't think it has to be that way. The trick to set realistic, obtainable measures for yourself. For me, I decided to make a list of things that are "in" and "out" for the year, and a few small goals within 5 categories: personal, social, health, career, and financial. I'll share a few of them!

Personal
In:

• Writing more
• Volunteering
• Speaking more clearly

• Using my phone for entertainment
• Framing thoughts negatively

• Hone my skills in narrative writing
• Join a volutneer group (Prospect Park Alliance?
• Take the Metro-North Upstate

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We had a nice holiday with friends and family. We spent our Christmas Eve making tinsel hats with Steph's cousins and Christmas day with our friends enjoying each other's company, eating hardy bowls of stew and drinking lots of egg nog.

The break we've been enjoying for Christmas has been much needed. It's been so nice to relax, spend our days doing what we want, whether that be going out shopping in the city, hanging out with our friends, or doing nothing at all.

Yesterday I went on a long walk through the park (see photos) and it was so quiet and peaceful with the recent snowfall. I leaned on a tree and watched the kids sledding for a while, they looked like water slowly pooling up on a windowpane dragging their sleds up the hill, periodically racing down one by one raindrops as soon as the coast was clear.
The trail throughout the park was narrow, carved out by feet. The thin strip of exposed cobblestones gave me the impression of walking along the back of an infinitely long snake. At one point I took a turn that I was less familiar with which extended my walk by nearly double. I walked under a bridge I had never seen before, and it was obvious not many others had done so either as the path here was very tight and slippery. I appreciate that I can still feel a sense of exploration in Prospect Park, even now having visited it dozens of times. It's one of my favorite things about living here.

I've been trying to use my phone less and less lately. Less Instagram (I removed the app for the time being), even less taking pictures where observing and absorbing matters. I want to try writing more when I like something I see and want to remember it. As always, I'm striving to improve my mind and ground myself. Maybe in the next few days I'll write up some good 2026 resolutions.

I have been pretty busy this past week so I haven't had much to report. Some of the highlights:

Tuesday night Steph and I picked her cousin's daughter up from daycare as they were occupied with some health-related appointments, and it was the first time we had ever been alone together looking after a kid, let alone in the city. We had a blast entertaining her and chanting rhymes together. We were also painfully aware that we are very obviously not parents, because when she had a small tantrum or two, we both looked panicked and clueless. But we survived, had fun, and now we're remembered and talked about in their home <3

Thursday evening I walked out onto my stoop to find my elderly neighbor's car on fire. "They finally did it" I thought. "One of the neighbors finally had enough of her always starting fights over parking spots and dog shit on the sidewalk (she does)." Come to find out what I was seeing wasn't smoke at all, but steam pouring out of the storm drain under the back end of her car. This was a relief, and I left to run my errand. When I came back and went back upstairs, I glanced out the window to see the elderly neighbor in question with her daughter on the phone. Minutes later, the fire department was pulling up. They told her what I discovered for myself, that it was just steam, and there was nothing to worry about. They taped it off, and left. Fast forward to 4:00AM and I'm awoken by what sounds like a table being dragged across a wooden floor followed by pops and bangs. The source of the steam wasn't just rock salt and snowmelt, but a corroded underground wire arcing with the rock salt and snowmelt. Insanely dangerous, especially on a wet rainy night like it happened to be. 30 minutes later, I was awoken again by the fire department ringing our doorbell trying to get into the basement. I told them I couldn't help, they said they'd come back later, but they never did. In the end, ConEd spent the daßy repairing the issue (knocking our power out for a portion of it) and all is well that ends well.

The rest of the week has been spent doing Christmas shopping. We've been enjoying going out to do our shopping in person, it's what New York does best. Running around, enjoying the holiday energy, and finding unique stocking stuffers is a delight. I was sick last weekend, and now this weekend Steph was the one who was sick. But we will prevail, and we're set to both be better by Christmas day, I'm sure of it. I'll be sad when the season is over. Why don't we have more holidays to distract us from the short days and cold weather in January and February?

My 2025 Goodreads summary is here!

Pages read: 5,855
Books read: 16
Shortest book: The Communist Manifesto, 143 pages
The Longest book: The Wolves of Eternity, 800 pages
Average book length: 365 pages
My average rating for 2025: 4.4/5 stars

2025 Books ranked:

1. The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
2. The City & The City by China Miéville
3. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
4. The Wolves of Eternity by Karl Ove Knausgaard
5. Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
7. My Struggle, Book 3 by Karl Ove Knausgaard
8. The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard
9. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
10. If On A Winters Night A Traveler
11. The Stranger by Albert Camus
12. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
13. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
14. Sunset Park by Paul Auster
15. Leviathan by Paul Auster
16. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
17. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

Such an eventful weekend! As the holidays and the end of the year draw closer, we've kept ourselves busy with lots to do. Here's the recap:

Friday 12/12 Steph and I went to Chinatown for the launch party of the Are.na Annual, vol. 7 book. Are.na is a platform and company I really believe in, and it was such so great to be surrounded by interesting creative people all united by our love for art and the internet. Afterwards I headed to SOHO to catch the end of a friend's event showcasing local tech/art exhibits and installations as well as some live performances from musicians and DJs. One of my favorite parts of going to events like these is the journey home. There's something about walking the streets of New York City alone at night that I love. The sparkling tall buildings, the steam pouring from manholes, the laughter and chatter from restaurants and bars, it's so meditative.

Saturday 12/13 Steph and I went with our friends to the Upper West Side for a Christmas choir concert at the Advent Lutheran Church on the corner of 93rd St and Broadway. We don't make it to this side of the city very often and rush hour traffic and navigating the 14th St station had us rushing, but we made it just in time and were immediately put at ease by the lovely choral voices and harp. For me, listening to a choir in a beautiful church during Christmas time is the best way to get into the spirit of the season. This also reminded me that I need to see musicians in concert more often, because watching the harpist play was divine. After the show we ate dinner and popped over to midtown to see the Christmas fanfare at Radio City Hall and of course, the Rockefeller tree.

Sunday 12/15 we awoke to a winter wonderland. Overnight it snowed some 4-5 inches and every inch of the streets, every twig on every tree, was blanketed in white. We immediately bundled up, ran to Mr Kiwi to buy a carrot for a snowman, and arranged to meet at the park with all of our friends in the neighborhood. Everything was so beautiful and the park was absolutely buzzing with excitement and kids tearing down hills on their sleds. That evening our friends came over for dinner. Of course, just as we were going to preheat the oven for some rolls and salmon, the oven decided it would stop working. Thankfully our lovely neighbors across the hall happily agreed to let us finish our meal in their oven. The food was delicious and we finished the night and weekend singing Christmas karaoke while drinking egg nog and mulled wine. It was the perfect weekend!

I'm getting sick... I hope it doesn't last long because I have an exciting and fully packed weekend ahead of me!

Tonight I made my way on the G and then the R train to Gowanus to attend the DATLAB TouchDesigner event at Zerospace. TouchDesigner isn't my primary tool of choice, but I do like it and I have a lot of connections to the people there. It was a good evening, albeit a smaller turnout than I've seen due, I'm guessing, to the bad weather. God, it's been so cold! It's been keeping me hulled up inside, which isn't great. I'd much rather be going on long walks and spending all my time outdoors. I loved the presentations, especially from the artists Wei-Feng and Karyn. I felt inspired to keep following my ideas and intuitions; to continue exploring my interests in nature, memory, history, culture, and the internet.

After the event, I hurried home to meet our friends at Nitehawk to see the new movie "Wake Up Dead Man", the third installment in the Knives Out trilogy. It was good, maybe not the best movie I've ever seen, but I had fun. It's been so cozy to walk down the street to a small theater and see movies this winter, I really love our neighborhood.

A nice weekend all around. We did our usual church thrift routine and made our way down into Dumbo stopping at the Fishes Eddy, the BK Flea, and ending at Front. Afterwards we went with friends into Manhattan to get lunch at V-Nam, a Vietnamese restaurant and we all ate some tasty Pho. It was a very nice afternoon, the type I love most. Good company, good food, good vintage shopping. This coming week is going to be a busy one for me; I have some sort of event marked on my calendar almost every day. I'm looking forward to all the holiday get togethers, art shows, enjoying people's company, and making new friends.

Ahh, such a rejuvenating weekend so far. We started the day by getting coffee at Daytime with our friends, stopping at a pop-up holiday market where we bought some vintage Christmas decorations, and then we took a walk through the park. The weather was crisp but we were warm and it was so nice to get out and look at all the beautiful birds. By the boat house we talked to an old man who was birding and he told us about a rare duck that was on the water. 10 minutes later a big bird watching group showed up to look at it. I wish I could have gotten closer to log it on Merlin! We also saw the swan family that lives in the park. We saw the goslings last on the 4th of July and they were still little. Now they're proper adolescents and are massive, spottable only by the light brown on their backs.

Tonight we went to Steph's cousins and had a paper snowflake cutting craft night. I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed it!

A busy week working on lots of freelance projects. Our friends have been busy or out of town for the holidays, and with the cold weather, it's been hard to get out of the house. I just want to be like Pepper, cuddling up with a toasty radiator. Whenever it's getting dark and we're feeling cooped up, Steph always says "wanna go to Trader Joe's?" So that's what we did tonight! It's always a good excuse to get over to a pretty neighborhood that's not too far and to load up on some good groceries and treats. We opted for walking to the 7th Street station instead of using our closer 15 St–Prospect Park stop so we could get a walk out of it as well.

Spotify Wrapped 2025

Top Artists:

1. Matthew Halsall
2. Oklou
3. Claude Debussy
4. Maurice Ravel
5. Frédéric Chopin

1. blade bird by Oklou
2. Miroirs: III. Une Barque sur l'océan by Maurice Ravel
3. 6 Pezzi, P. 44: No. 3. Notturno by Ottorino Respighi
4. Mermaid by Pearly Drops
5. Ballade slave, L. 70 by Claude Debussy

First of the month, first day of the week after a long weekend. I ran so many errands today. At 12:40pm I took the train to Carroll Gardens to get a haircut. When I got home, we realized we were out of checks, so I hopped on my bike and went to the closest Chase bank on 5th Avenue in Park Slope. On my way back, I stopped in at one of our favorite antique furniture stores Time Galleries, since it was on the way and we had heard from Summer and Jackson that they're closing soon. Sure enough, the building owner has placed a huge "FOR LEASE" sign in the window, but when I asked about it they said there's no new tenant yet and their plans as to what they're going to do next are still unknown. ( I did get to say hello to their sweetie tabby shop cat, Shakira, which is always a treat!) When I got home, it was 3pm, and I set off with our bags of dirty clothes to the laundromat on Prospect Park West. 3 more back-and-forths later to change over to the dryers and pick them up and do the grocery shopping for dinner, it was 4:30pm and my day had escaped me! That's city living for you.

I finished Sunset Park by Paul Auster the other day and as I was looking at my bookshelf to decided on my next read, I wasn't in the mood for any of my books. So today, I walked to the north end of Park Slope to Troubled Sleep. It's my favorite neighborhood in all of NYC and one of my favorite bookstores in the world, it was a nice walk. I got two books, The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (I wasn't planning on reading two of his books in a row, but here we are!) and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I'm excited about the NY Trilogy because I've been in the mood for a mystery novel and this one comes highly recommended! I was also extremely excited about the copy of The Metamorphosis that I found because it's an edition I've been searching for with cover art I like. As an added bonus, I found an old Chinese restaurant menu inside from the 70's. Finding old ephemera in used books is one of my favorite things on earth.

Later this evening Steph and I went to Lowe's to get a Christmas tree. It's pretty early from what we normally do, but it's so cute and cozy. Of course we had to take it home on the train which always feels hilarious, but nobody paid any attention to us. We decorated while watching A Muppet Christmas Carol, one of our all time favorites. The perfect end to a good day!

We had a lazy black Friday day. After such a busy thanksgiving, it felt good to take it slow. We've been saving some much needed house upgrades for black Friday and decided to trek out in the evening to Manhattan in search of a new frying pan. We've been cooking everything with just a ceramic dutch oven pot and a small yellow enamel pot ever since we moved to NYC in 9/24. The city is so alive during the holidays, it was fun to get over there and enjoy the hustle and bustle.

Thanksgiving day! Everything went off without a hitch. Steph and I spent the evening before and the start of the day cooking. We made rolls, apple pie, brussel sprouts, carrots, gravy and a cheese ball. Our friends made the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and a spinach dip. Everything was delicious, we're all passionate about good food and enjoy cooking; it may have been the best thanksgiving meal I've ever had. That evening we went to Steph's cousins to celebrate a birthday and enjoy dessert. Such a delightful day!

I trekked out to Pier 57 again tonight for CCNYC. Turnout was low with the rain, so it was a bit underwhelming. Still, it's always nice to get out of the house and out into the city for the evening. I've been feeling a rift more and more between myself and the software engineering folks I've met here. A lot of people who work in tech in NYC have totally different morals than me. I'm constantly meeting the ones building the software that ruins our society, and they don't seem bothered by it at all. They're so driven by curiosity and profit that they don't stop to think of the consequences behind the tools they're programming. It's a strange phenomenon. I love programming, but I want to make things that connect people and build communities, that inspire and inform, that make lives better.

It's Monday, coming off of the weekend. I spent some time trying to figure out my Raspberry Pi camera this weekend, perhaps longer than I should have, only to find out my camera module is cooked. It was given to me for free by a classmate a few years ago, so I can't be too upset. Still, I had an idea to make my own DIY point-and-shoot dither cam so I can take my dithered photography without needing to open my phone. I still might pursue that idea eventually when I get around to replacing the parts I need.

Thanksgiving is this Thursday and we'll be having a small dinner with our friends at our place. I'm looking forward to it, we're planning on playing lots of board games, doing a puzzle, and generally spending a cozy day in together.

A day in today. Steph has been in the office since lunchtime leaving me alone at home to get some work done on some projects. I'm currently working with some cool Utah folks on a top secret shhh project involving point cloud animations and the web right now. We've been super nervous to see how we could get it to work seeing that even the most optimized animation would be loading 15 point cloud models per second (same way a video works with images only with 3D models!) so today I whipped up a three.js sketch to start troubleshooting some solutions. After a few hours of trial and error, learning about new file types, and learning that you can convert point cloud files to binary? for them to run much faster (I guess computers really just love their 1's and 0's!), I have a working prototype that loads point clouds and and plays an INTERACTIVE animation, in browser, in real time, with short load times. It's unbelievable. I'm so happy that it works better than I could have dreamed, and it immediately gives me a whole slew of new ideas for new projects. This is why I love what I do. I'm constantly tasked with figuring out how to do something for the first time, and every time I walk away with experience and ideas.

Since I've been inside most of the day, I thought I'd share some photos from the neighborhood for those who haven't visited Steph and I yet.

Tonight i trekked out to Manhattan to go to Pier 57, near Chelsea Market, like I so often do on Tuesday nights for Creative Coding NYC. I can never guess how the meetups will go. Sometimes there's so many people, we hardly have room for them all. Other times only a handful. Tonight was somewhere in the middle, maybe 20 or so folks came. I'm always impressed by the amount of newcomers, very few are regular attendees, and I guess that makes me one of them. Tonight I met some new folks and when the inevitable "what are you working on?" questions starting to come, I had fresh ears and eyes to share the Restroom Archive with. It's always fun to see their reactions, usually at first they're confused, then they think I'm crazy. By the end (at least I hope!), they see the vision. I stand by it–the restroom is a work of art.

Anyways, Pier 57 is such a cursed place. It's riddled with VC corporate tech people all wearing the same black puffer jackets having boring conversations. Chelsea Market in general is kind of bad vibes. The people there feel like tech transplants who would never live in the city if it weren't for their start-up jobs. Netflix Love Is Blind contestant phenotypes. I would avoid that corner of NYC completely if it wasn't for the CCNYC meetups. Still, Pier 57 is spacious and free to book, so I see why we keep going back there. Gotta make it work.

Here's some pictures from my journey there and back!

I had a lovely evening at Secret Riso Club attending the second Eyebeam "Urgent Inquiries" panel, this time featuring Xin Xin and Bahareh Khoshooee. The conversation was extremely pertinent to me, much of which revolved around how the internet is used as both a tool of oppression by the ruling class and a tool for liberation by the people. My favorite take away was that a lot of our problems come down to distance created by technology–and the response is to close that gap. How that might look is up for interpretation, but I feel an urgent need to make more things that connect people locally, that facilitate collaboration and community. As Bahareh said "to keep making cracks" in the current system.

I left feeling very inspired. Afterwards I was listening to "Another Day In Paradise" by Phil Collins while taking photos around me in Bushwick using my sunset dither cam. I feel so inspired by the images I make with it, it's been helping change how I see everything around me. Here are some of the photos I took while I was out. Bushwick is so different from where I live in Windsor Terrace, it has a grittiness that I think photographs particularly well.

Steph and I had a nice Sunday walking around Brookyln Heights and Dumbo today. Every week we have this super secret church thrift that we like to gatekeep because we have such good luck there. It's only open for 4 hours every Sunday, and either Steph or I have found super cheap, high quality clothes there. It's such a treat to visit every weekend! After the church thrift we walked a couple blocks to the pier to look at the Manhattan skyline, and then we made our way over to Dumbo to stop at the Brooklyn Flea under the bridge and Front General Store. Both were fun, but too expensive. Still, we love going to Front because their selection is such high quality. You might pay a lot, but you're going to find vintage clothes that are in pristine condition and would be hard to find anywhere else.

I've started using this mobile tool that I built to dither my images. Takes an extra step out and makes it more fun and creative!

The weather here in NYC has taken a bitter turn. 39ºF, feels like 29ºF with wind chill, gusts up to 38 mph. It's going to take everything in me to get out of the house, but this evening at 5pm I'm going to brave the cold and venture out to Bushwick to Secret Riso Club for Eyebeam's "Urgent Inquiries" program. I'm extremely interested in the topics they plan to discuss regarding our differing digital realities, technofeudalism and state surrveilance, and the internet as a place for creating digital commons. Right up my alley! I might make another post about it with my thoughts (or even a full write-up on by.jakewel.ch tomorrow?) Stay tuned...

I just got back from the event–it was so good! Throughout the presentations, there was a strong theme of using the tools used to exploit us to explore the systems they exist in. Challenging AI to reveal biases it was trained on, using surveillance tech for activism, etc. I had so many ideas for projects by the end, and had new questions to explore. An invigorating evening!

Today I updated my personal website using Kevin Chen's file-gallery repository. I think it's fun that the entire site is populated from files and in a folder on my Desktop and that the positions are relative to where the file is literally placed inside that folder. It's so whacky and creative, and yet simple and effective. My hope is that this format will encourage me to build and share here more often. Pictured are a screenshot of my site inside the folder (note their positions relative to the homepage), and Pepper who was keeping me company and leeching warmth from my laptop.