Pocket Printers and Flight Simulators
Plus, behind the scenes of Connections by NYT.
I thought that the days getting longer meant that I would have more time to relax, but instead it seems like everything is happening all at once and there's no way to stop it. The Knicks won, the World Cup is proving to be one of my favorites ever, and my marathon training is officially in full swing. It's going to be a top tier summer.
in this issue:
🖨️ Canon Selphy QX20
📶 Connections with Hank Green
🌍 Google Earth Flight Simulator
🖨️ Canon Selphy QX20
I'm really bad at shooting film. It's not that I can't take good pictures (though that's questionable as well), but more that I can never stay on top of getting my rolls developed. So instead of getting one or two rolls done at a time, I end up doing them in one big batch every other year that costs me way too much. Still, I love shooting film because it means that I get physical pictures I can hold.
The Canon Selphy QX20 scratches the same itch that film does for me. It's a small, portable printer that lets me print anything in my camera roll instantly and is the next best thing to having a Polaroid. Like any printer, this one is expensive and finicky and will sometimes just randomly fail without warning, but even with all that I've been really enjoying being able to print any pictures I want to while still lying in bed. If you're looking for a way to make your photos a little more meaningful, try printing them! It doesn't have to be with this specific one but printing pictures at home is such a life hack.
📶 Connections with Hank Green
I have never been one for crossword puzzles or quirky word games. Despite spending years writing for the internet at my previous job (and now writing this newsletter) the English language has never been my strong suit. I find these kinds of games more frustrating than satisfying. Even when I successfully complete one, my overwhelming emotion is annoyance at having been put through such brain torture. Still, listening to this conversation that Hank Green had on his new podcast, Humans, with the editor of Connections at The New York Times, Wyna Liu, was fascinating.
Not only is it great to hear Hank Green nerd out about..well, anything. But this episode inspired me to try playing Connections myself. Mainly because they framed it less as a puzzle and more as a conversation between Wyna Liu and the audience. They learn her little tricks and she learns what they expect, which enables her to come up with more. Whether you're a fan of word puzzles or not, I find conversations like this refreshing with everything going on nowadays.
🌍 Google Earth Flight Simulator
Google Earth is one of those things that I know exists and that I sometimes open to look up obscure places, but for the most part I never use it. It's nothing short of amazing but if you want me to care, you need to gamify it. That's basically what the Google Earth team has done by adding a flight simulator mode so that you can fly around the world carefree.
Apparently, this was already built into the desktop app so it's not really a new feature, but who actually has the Google Earth desktop app? Now you can play it right in your browser which I did for way too long while I was supposed to be writing this. Will I use this feature every day? No. But as someone who's always been interested in Microsoft Flight Simulator, this will scratch that itch and prevent from spending way too much money on a Flight Simulator setup.
