god this trip starts in less than a week now. i still need to figure out where i'm staying and when for the last ten days of it. amtrak and allstate have both crossed me. i cut my finger with a serrated knife. i need to finish this last roll of film. i wanted tgo use the cinestill before my trip but it may make more sense to not rush it. still have to get through the souoped film, which i thought was in my camera for weeks but actually was not. annoying

the bandaid on my finger makes it annoying to type. i'm thinking of starting a different blog for the trip, but i could aslo just update this. it's not gonna be anything too crazy anyways

feeling a little sad rn. i think it has to do with the chnaging of the seasons. fall starts today. it feels like fall. my last day of class is taking place right now. truly a time for change. have a couple weeks to figure out everything i'm gonna do for the next month. never really talked to anyone in my class, at kleast not anyone i would hang out with outside of it. still have time i suppose but i know myself. gonna buy some more film. gonna try and make myself feel better. biked ~4 miles in fifteen minutes. my tires need air. waiting on donations at the art asylum. nostalgic for pennsylvania

muted my computer during my group's presentation. dont need to hear the video again..

got my new binoculars in the mail last night, took them on their inaugural birdwatching endeavor today. figured i could bike to work, take care of something there, then birdwatch after. eneded up taking a path that i knew monk parakeets lived on. saw those dudes. took a picture and posted it online. then as i was about to make it to the art asylum i noticed a few birds, one of which had caught my attention due to some red plumage. figured it was probably a red-winged blackbird, but stopped anyway. they were kind of hidden in a shrub, or short tree i don't know. the fist bird i saw was a starling, but since those don't have red feathers, i kept waiting for the other to show up. quickly realized it was probably a red-vented bul-bul, which i had heard about a few days earlier. there's a feral population here, but theyre native to south asia. i had planned to find one as soon as possible, but i wasn't expecting to find it that fast. funny enough, when i tried to bird later in the evening i saw almost nothing. so this was the last opportunity i had to see something and i saw what i was looking for

i finally tried to develop a color roll with caffenol. it didn't work. the roll had no images, but i'm not entirely convinced that was the fault of the chemicals. of course it could be, but when i was shooting it, i came across an issue. the frame counter kept going past twenty-four, which is what the film said it had. even went past thirty-six. and when i rewound i dont think i felt that tension release. so i fear thaty i never shot anything to begin with. that somehow it came off the sprocket, and every picture i thought i took never happened. so the developers had nothing to develop. and i think this may be the case because there was a color difference in where the leader of the film that is exposed to full light and the parts that would have been shot. looked as though even if there were images they would have sucked regardless. i would try again but shooting for the purpose of potentiallly losing them is tedious, ironically enough, and it is a waste of chemicals, since i would not want to reuse the stop and fix knowing they could contaminate the rest of it with c41 film stuff that theyre not made for. so probably won't do it, but the option is always there

booked all the places i need for the first half of my train trip, but i'm too embarrassed to ask ppl in ny and philly if i can crash on their couch... i shouldn't be, but still

i'm a week out from finishing my coding school thing. only ever told a few people i was doing this. i am a few weeks out from my amtrak trip. thought i came across an issue regarding how long i actually had to use my rail pass. but i biked over to the station and asked in person after not hearing back from the oniline message i left them. they said i should be fine once i take the first trip. which is what i assumed but wanted to double check in order to avoid scheduling issues

i finally modded my keyboard a bit after cocnluding that i would not be replacing it. the backlight has been giving me issues, and after accepting a refund for the backlight add-on from the manufacturer, i opened it up and put the foam sheet from the shippng packaging below the pcb. i'm not sure how much that alone helped, since i also added painters tape to the underside of the pcb. in theory, the tape reflects some of the noise, and the foam absorbs the remainder. it was empty inside, so that explained the hollow sounds. it was just bouncing around in there. it definitely feels heavier. and the sound is different. it's still not where i want it to be, but i think a lot of the remainder has to do with the switches themselves. a bit rattle-y, so lubing them would still be needed, but also feels like overkill on a sub-fifty dollar keyboard. looks like a tedious task. popular keyboard youtuber stated it takes minimum five hours...

i hate when i accidentally leave my mic on in the zoom chat. it's embarassing because i can never remember if whatever deranged thoughts crossed through my head were vocalized or stayed in my mind. like did i say the thoughts that i had? and if so, was it loud enough to be picked up? or was it like a whisper under my breath? i'm at the mercy of the forgiveness of the otheres in my call. what did they hear? i know they heard this dumb video about modding a keyboard, that's fine. kinda funny. but did they hear my thoughts on what i was looking at on twitter? i don't know.. maybe it's better that i never know.. could make it worse, the embarassment