October 7, 2025 4:36 PM
Fantastic Mr. Fox
A few weeks ago, I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox, and I found it to be the most enjoyable Wes Anderson film I've ever seen. I read Fantastic Mr. Fox when I was in second grade, and I think I enjoyed it. I mean, it was one of the first Roald Dahl books I ever read, and I ended up reading a whole bunch more after that.
But now, as an adult, I barely remember the book, so I decided to re-read it last week. And I have to say, it was delightful.
/\___/\ / \ {=.a a,=} `._ w _.' `~'
September 30, 2025 3:21 PM
Allegheny Observatory
When I was visiting my sister, she told me that she's always surprised by new things that she discovers in her city. I thought about that, and it honestly felt like nothing in Pittsburgh surprises me anymore. It feels like I just know the area.
Last week, one of the local rhythm gamers organized a meetup at the Allegheny Observatory. I had always known about this place, but I've never really been into astronomy so I never thought about checking it out myself. They were hosting free tours of the place, and I figured I'd join mainly so I could hang out with people.
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Google told me that the observatory gets pretty busy so I should arrive early to get a parking spot. So I left way earlier than I thought I needed to, but getting there was a little ridiculous. There was construction on the highway so I had to drive way past my exit and loop back around, and I ended up at the observatory with only a few minutes to spare. And parking was MADNESS. I think there might be fewer than 10 actual parking spots around the building, and it felt like there were at least 30 people in a single tour (so many rhythm gamers showed up!), so people started parking wherever they felt they could without fully blocking anyone from going around the driveway. It was extremely tight just trying to get around the building.
The tour itself was fine enough. Learning about the history of the observatory was interesting. (Pittsburgh used to literally sell time!) There were some people there that worked there, and a bunch of student volunteers who seemed very overwhelmed by the amount of people that showed up to the tour.
As part of the tour, we got to look at Saturn through an old telescope, and then we got to look at Saturn again through a much bigger and newer telescope! It looked exactly the same to me both times. Saturn was just a small speck, and if you looked closely you could see two moons, which were even smaller specks.
_ . -=(_)=- . Yup, that's what it looked like. kinda
I'm not sure if seeing Saturn was supposed to be the main feature of this tour, but for me the absolute highlight of this tour was meeting Diane Turnshek, an astronomy professor at CMU. Someone asked her what the coolest part of her job is and she said with a smile,
I'm world renowned!
I set out on a mission to make the world a darker place.
She gave a TEDx talk ten years ago about light pollution, and since then she's continued to spread awareness of it. How it affects so much more than just being able to see stars in the sky. She told us about her favorite places to look at stars and what books she's currently into. She was so freaking cool, and I felt like I could listen to her talk all day.
After the tour wrapped up, the group of us explored the building a little more and then we just talked outside for a little. Because we were the last tour group of the day, the parking situation had cleared up considerably and so there was a nice calmness to the air. The observatory is such a chill place, and we stayed there until about 12:30am.
I'm really glad that I attended this tour. I guess Pittsburgh still does surprise me sometimes.
September 27, 2025 2:37 AM
sleep
I'm standing in line at the neighborhood coffee shop, contemplating what drink to get. I want a latte, but I'm not sure if I should get it caffeinated or not. I like the taste of caffeinated coffee, but I was so uncomfortable trying to sleep last night and I don't want to have that same amount of trouble sleeping tonight. But is caffeine really the issue?
...I completely forgot to ask for decaf. Oh well. This latte is...okay. I got almond milk. It was a whole extra DOLLAR. Maybe I can try again with oat, but I'm not sure I like this latte all that much. It's like...weirdly burnt tasting. I kind of wish I got decaf. My mom talks about not eating certain things because it's a "waste of calories", and sometimes I think that certain things just aren't worth the caffeine intake.
_________________________________ | _______________________________ | || || || || || i'm trying out this tool || || called durdraw for making || || ascii art. still getting || ( || used to it, but it's pretty || ) ) || cool! || ( ( || || .-~~~~~~-. -------||_______________________________||-------:`~------~':-------- |_________________________________| : := \ ================================\ : : # \\__\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\__\\ : : # \\___\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\\____\\ : : == \\____\_\_\_\__________\\__\_____\\ :______: \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \____________========_____________\
I went to visit my dad's family a week ago, and overall it was a good time, but my sleep was all over the place. My sister and I took a redeye to get there, and I don't think I got more than two hours of sleep. I feel like I used to be able to sleep on planes, but now I'm lucky if I fall asleep during take off and stay asleep for even half an hour. My sister is dead asleep the whole flight. It took so much force just to wake her up when I needed to pee.
So we arrived at around 8am, and I may have taken one short nap during the day, but once it got to night time, I could barely keep my eyes open, and I fell asleep right after hitting the pillow and I probably slept for 10 straight hours. Honestly? It felt SO. GOOD. I don't really want to be sleep deprived, but man, sleeping feels so good when I'm sleep deprived.
The next night I couldn't sleep again. And I wasn't alone. As I was restlessly lying in bed, I could hear so many noises. People walking around, getting up to pee. I saw the glow of my aunt's phone in the middle of the night as she was looking at it. Is this how it normally is here? How do they stand it?
My uncle told me he has trouble sleeping too. He's thinking about everything he can think about and it keeps him up. He gave me some advice: count sheep. Man, I tried it. Maybe I'm bad at counting. I don't think I hit 100, but I also didn't fall asleep because counting seemed worse than just thinking about other things at night.
Luckily I was able to sleep better the third night. I guess that sleep deprivation was kicking in again.
As for right now, I'm sipping my apparently caffeinated latte. I have a little headache and my eyes feel tired. Maybe something changed in me once COVID started because the sleep problems always seem to come back. But at least being in the cafe is nice.
_ /( ) , |/ __! `=====' That's me with my laptop on my lap
July 1, 2025 7:57 PM
Pigeon and Elephant and Piggie, oh my!
I remember when one of my little cousins was very young and just learning to read, that he had the book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems. I was probably in high school at the time, and after reading the book, I enjoyed it so much that I looked for every other Mo Willems book in the library and read them as well. I just love the art style and how much emotion that pigeon has. Even today, when I go into a bookstore or a library, I like to see if there are more pigeon books that I haven't read yet.
__ .' `. / .--. \ _' / (@\ : <._| \ __ / ! <.\ / `-.__,-' |___| |___| | | | | | |____________________ ' / ` \ `-_ / ' `. .' / `. `~~----~~' .' `-.___________.' | | | | | | /|\ /|\
Many years later, I was sitting in one of the rooms in my aunt's house and my 5 year old niece came in because she wanted to play. There happened to be a copy of There Is a Bird on Your Head! sitting on the dresser. I have no idea whose book this was, but I picked it up and started reading it to her. She spends a lot of time staring at her Kindle or a phone, but that night, somehow, I got her attention with a book. And mine as well! It's a pretty great book.
.-. ( * )=> `-' I thought about drawing an elephant, .--'' \ but that was way too hard. So here is `-..____) a tiny bird instead. LL
To this day, it's still my most cherished memory with her.
January 30, 2025 5:52 PM
Orion and the Dark
Last year while I was visiting my family and we were flipping through different movies on Netflix, my six year old niece chimed in and said "I like this movie!" It was Orion and the Dark, and the rest of us had never seen it before so we decided to watch it.
The movie started off really strong, with Orion talking about his anxiety and his fears in a really creative way. He illustrates his fears in a journal and the movie does a great job animating his drawings. His biggest fear is the dark, and Orion meets a character that represents the dark itself.
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Dark is actually a pretty cool character. The movie gives him a real personality, and he just wants to be understood. Later we also meet the "night entities", which kind of felt like Inside Out-lite to me. It turns into your typical adventure of overcoming fear and gaining a new friendship, but then at the end the movie gets kind of zany and there's a flying turtle and even time travel?!
We paused the movie at one point and saw that it was written by Charlie Kaufman, and we were like "of course".
Overall, I liked the movie. I thought that it spent way too much time on the night entities (I'm also not really a fan of Inside Out), and I got a little bored in the middle, but I thought the wackiness at the end was great.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After I watched the movie, I googled it, and I stumbled upon a copy of Kaufman's first draft of the script. I was curious how this compared to the final movie, so I read the whole thing.
I definitely laughed a lot more while reading this than when I watched the movie. Here, Orion is a huge movie buff and there are a lot of movie references. (I can totally see why that was mostly cut out of the final script though)
The night entities have a completely different vibe too. They're kind of weird, and they're a lot more interesting than how the movie portrays them. It felt like Kaufman's original vision for the entities was lost in the final script, which is a little disappointing.
The endings were also very different, but in this case, I actually prefer the way the movie ended. They are both a little zany, but the movie really honed in on Orion and Dark's friendship, while the original script was much more focused just on Orion at the end.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
But this wasn't an original story by Kaufman. His script is actually based on a picture book with the same name. And I love picture books, so I had to read it.
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And it is such a well crafted picture book. There really isn't much to the story itself (no night entities, just the dark!) But the book absolutely shines with its illustrations and the way that the words are laid out. There is so much detail, and I made sure to pause and really look at all the parts of each page.
I also really like the way that color is used. Sometimes I just like looking at the pages with different shades of the night sky.
.-~--. .' `. . . . * * . . ) .., . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' ' . . ' .-*-. ' . ._.' .'.-~-.`.' ,. . : ^_^ ;(_,' . __ , '.___.'// | | | . /, \ | | | . //( *** / C___.' C___/ ^ lm lm
While the movie is enjoyable enough, if I'm going to recommend anything in this post, I'd say that you should read the book. I think it would make a great bedtime story.
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