Monday June 15th.

— Another slow week (note). I was heads down this week on a brand / visual design sprint at Loom. I’d finish each day feeling great about where i’d got to, then look at it the following morning and wonder how it felt good the day before. Falling in and out of your love in 24 hour cycles is the true ‘double diamond’ of product design. Felt I did actually get things to an interesting spot by Thursday / Friday, and taking a glance at the files over the weekend it seems to be holding up ok.

— Finally got my bike back on the road, three weeks after thinking taking it apart to learn how to put it back together would be a good idea. Took it on a 15 mile ride around the city last night and so far it’s holding together. Which is actually giving me a felling of accomplishment.

— Enjoying the Headspace podcast, Radio Headspace. Though the app sent me three notifications in the space an hour on Saturday morning which isn’t very zen at all.

— Watched Blade of Glory for some reason

— Found a new way of making ice coffee with the Aeropress which is basically making it on top of a huge glass full of ice, this way the hot water doesn’t melt all the ice, because there’s so much of it. This is pretty much as exciting as life gets right now.

— Listened to Beck’s Odelay on Sunday morning, all the way through, for the first time in a while. My favourite track still alternates between Jackass, and Ramshackle – two of the mellower tracks on the record. But I still love how deranged and textured the whole things feels.

— Reading has slowed down. Started The Design of Everyday Things but have yet to make it through the intro. I’ve made it a few pages forward in Blue Highways which is a book i’ve been reading on and off since early 2016 when I added it to my Kindle to read on long bus journeys in Mexico. It is full of choice quotes about travel like this:

“He had gone out and come back only to find a single change: he was older.”

— Despite my slow progress through the book i’ve saved over 45 of these quotes in about 200 pages.

— Relaunched my Nice Portfolio site. Now it is just a button which opens a random portfolio from a list i’m adding to. You can also view all the designers in a list. Realised that the things I like making the most are those which tread the line between completely pointless and extremely useful.

— May go camping next weekend for Summer Solstice. A semi-tradition (i’ve only actually done once) with a couple of friends.

— It is my birthday on Wednesday. I will have been alive for 12410 days.

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Photo: Joshua Tree – where I was this time last year.