Japanese Bandanas and Beautiful Mics

The month is steamrolling straight ahead and I feel like I’ve been going nonstop. Still, there were some cool things that popped up on my radar and I fell down a deep new rabbit hole all because my dog threw up in the elevator one time. It’ll all make sense later.

Housekeeping 🏡

Still using AI to generate the thumbnail images for the newsletters! This week’s prompt was “Make an image of person in the mountains wearing a bandana with Japanese art on it.” I think it nailed it, which is kind of cool and kind of scary.

in this issue

🍅 DIRT Episode 6 - Alaska

🧣 Kapital Bandanas

🎙️ Teenage Engineering CM-15 Microphone

🍅 DIRT - Alaska

One of my favorite things to ever be put on YouTube is the DIRT series by Huckberry. I don’t know when it happened, but the company decided to go the route of Patagonia, The North Face, and plenty of other outdoor brands and start making its own documentaries and docuseries. DIRT is my favorite.

The host (Josh Rosen) and his team travel to different parts of the world and meet up with local chefs. From there, they get sent on a journey to different parts of the country to source local ingredients for a giant delicious looking meal at the end of every episode. This kind of adventure-travel always makes me wish I wasn’t just clacking away on a keyboard all day and it’s great to be reminded how many different kinds of people and places there are in the world.

🧣Kapital Bandanas

Okay, so here comes the dog throw up story. A month or two ago my dog threw up in the elevator of our building. I had no paper towels or tissues or anything to clean it up with, so I took off my shoe and propped open the elevator door so that I can sneak back into my apartment and grab paper towels to clean it up. That got me thinking that I should just carry around a small bandana on our walks in case it ever happens again. Luckily, my grandmother had one that she wasn’t using and gave to me on my last visit, but that opened up my mind to the world of bandanas. I wanted more.

What I thought would be a quick purchase of a few bandanas after typing into Google “Bandanas” turned into a deep rabbit hole about the history of bandanas and the amazing art that brands are putting on them (Kapital in particular). Canoe Club has a really great brief history of the bandana that’s worth reading if you’re even a little interested in art and design. Long story less long, I now own two Kapital bandanas and bought one for my girlfriend and another for my dog Zuri. I have a feeling this is just the beginning.

🎙️ Teenage Engineering CM-15 Microphone

I’ve long been of the opinion that Teenage Engineering makes some of the most beautiful products around. Ever since the release of the original OP-1 which I briefly owned for a few years, I’ve had an eye on anything the company makes because at the very least, I know it’ll be beautiful. The latest gadget they released that I’m lusting after is the CM-15 microphone.

We got it in at work a few weeks ago and I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet, but I did hold it. And it feels amazing. As is the case with most TE products, the CM-15 is absurdly expensive at $1199 USD, but that doesn’t make me want one any less. All it means is that I’ll probably never own one. Which is fine, I’m just happy something exists that looks so damn cool.

CoPilot Impressions

The logic behind CoPilot continues to evade me. Categorizing transactions and marking recurring payments are pretty straightforward, but I find the app has such a hard time keeping up with everything. I would like to only use this app and not have to also check my bank account every time I want to purchase groceries, but it’s just never accurate. I’m still going to keep trying it because apparently it takes time to understand your purchases, but it’s really annoying because one or two out of the ordinary purchases just breaks the whole thing. This is why I usually just stick to my spreadsheet.

Long story less long: Still not a fan of CoPilot but I’m going to keep using it for the next month or two to give it a chance to really get to know me and my purchases.

What’s Next? Freeform

Like I said, still giving CoPilot a shot. So I’ll most likely double back in a few issues to wrap up my thoughts about it. In the meantime though, I’m going to give Freeform a shot. Freeform is a whiteboarding app by Apple that I want to give a try because I rarely (if ever) use endless canvas apps like this.

I’m always intrigued by Apple apps because they’re usually pretty solid. They get decent updates and features and have communities of people that tend to really like them. Plus, they come free as long as you own an Apple device. I just have a hard time justifying using these apps long term because all of my data will then be locked in my Apple ID which just isn’t how the world works.

So before I begin my journey of migrating all my notes and information to apps that let me own my data and transfer them as I please, I figured I should at least be familiar with what’s already available.

Answer to last week: A keyboard!

This week's AI riddle: 
"The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?"

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