📙 #026 - A whole lotta postcards

This week (and last week) has been all about handwriting, and for once, this is actually going to be a short newsletter, honestly, probably.

## Time management

So last year I... [insert several paragraphs about project management here] ...so instead I decided to have "[thing] weeks" where I focused on just one, well, thing. Or in this case "Handwriting Week One and Two", we're coming to the end of week two now. Next week is going to be "shop week", thrilling I know!

This is mainly because I was chipping away at various todo tasks just fine, BUT, I also wanted to send out postcards as part of the 2023 #ptpx postcard exchange, see more here: https://www.gorillasun.de/blog/gorilla-newsletter-35/#pen-and-plottery. Part of that was having them "hand written" by pen plotter.

I ran out of time for wrapping up my handwriting part of it, so I decided just to use Kitty's handwriting instead, or rather the handwriting style I've already gotten working that I've decided belongs to Kitty because it's by far the most legible. The above photos shows a stack of the final 20 postcards tucked away in envelopes. The top one is an autogenerated fake address, in fake handwriting, on some fake tiles.

So I guess I got most of the handwriting stuff done, except for encoding my own handwriting. So todo:

• Finish off writing the alphabet

• Wire Kitty up properly

• Buy more stamps

• Shoot some time-lapses

This is one of the other handwriting styles

In the end I did manage to get a "mail merge" thing going on for the postcards, where, based on a prompt, Kitty would suggest a message to write, I'd either accept it or reject (I'm looking at you Sassy Kitty) it, and once accepted Kitty would send it off to the plotter and prompt me to put the cards and envelopes in place. Repeating the whole process until all 20 postcards were done.

There was something very satisfying about having a robot writing away for me, mainly because I'm very lazy.

These are the four, also pen plotted designs, for the postcards, which is a whole separate AI story. Due to a horrid miscalculation I have about three times as many of these postcards as I need, which means I'll be popping them into orders from the shop until I run out. And next week most likely putting them into the shop in “Kitty Corner”, another, another whole separate story.

The first week of doing the handwriting is sort of vlogged here if you want to see it in action. The second week of behind the scenes will be going up tomorrow. There's also a little Shrewsbury flood action in the video.

There's more to say about this whole thing, but I'm going to save that for a proper blogpost and video. One aspect I'm interesting in is finding a way for people who love writing letters, but can no-longer write letters, to still write letters. But that's a way off for the moment.

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## Pen cleaning

Not very exciting I know, but here we are. One of the cool things about having the robot write and draw postcards for you is you can get on and do other stuff.

An awful lot of TWSBI Eco pens

And in this case the other stuff was finally getting around to cleaning out all the pens so I can start again from scratch. Basically in the studio move I'd lost track of which pens have lightfast ink in and which don't; and I don't want to risk plotting something supposedly permanent which isn't.

So that was nice!

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## Digital corner

There's this newsletter and then two more before it's my birthday (15th Feb for those keeping track, which is also a newsletter day). And I'm still planning on releasing a "drop" (as the kids say) for it.

I'm not entirely sure where it'll be, I'm thinking about highlight.xyz and Foundation because having read their documentation (and being sent several DMs) there's some interesting things that can be done, which (again) I'll make a video about at some point.

I'm still going with these designs, which are about halfway done now and I'll explain properly soon™️

Various Perspectives

Bits & Bobs: I'm waiting for the print services to come online for Alba, so I can offer FALLiNGWATER and (81-82-83-84) prints. Meanwhile I'm still tracking "Tally!" sales over on fxhash so I can do Tally-Tallys. Plus I've been working on and off on "mnml ser II" (minimal series II) for fxhash.

There's a fair bit bubbling away and a feeling it's all going to happen at once, which seems to always happen with my deadlines, but oh well.

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## THE END

2023 was pretty atrocious in some regards, lots of (not me) hospital visits and stays, throwing several spanners in the works. A lot of stuff I had planned for last year didn't happen. Some things are dead in the water, although the research into them was useful. Other may be refactored, and some more fall into the "bubbling away" pile.

After a year of putting thing on hold I kinda have the urge to push forwards with everything, everywhere, all at once. Of course the market is totally flat and this is the WORST TIME to release any work, but honestly I'm more interested in getting these things out into the world than any form of being sensible.

Happy 2024 everyone, lets make it not as terrible as 2023 😬 good luck us!

Love
Dan
❤️