busybee fluffy rambles

I’ve mentioned before how I used to self-medicate my undiagnosed ADHD with a trickle of caffeine until I started getting anxiety problems from it. I’ve also mentioned how post-diagnosis I’ve had trouble finding a medication which has worked for me, and I’ve tried slowly reacclimating myself to caffeine during periods between medications.

At my new job we have a pretty decent automatic espresso-drink maker, and out of curiosity I’ve tried slowly consuming one coffee drink over the course of each morning, and so far that’s actually working pretty well for me. Inasmuch as it’s not giving me a panic attack. It hasn’t really helped me with my focus, but maybe this is a sign I can try having more and maybe it won’t make me feel like I’m going to die!

I’m not about to start slamming the energy drinks or anything, but still, I’m glad that I’ve at least been able to get back a thing that’s been missing for the past decade.

Remember the AR startup? I’m still involved enough to be happy that our latest app, powAR, is out, and ready to possibly educate and entertain you about hydroelectric dams.

This was a fun project to work on. My main contributions were animating and educating the fish. And editing some drone footage. That was fun too.

Unlike our other AR apps, it does require an ARKit or ARCore-compatible device, so on iOS it needs iOS 12 and at least an A9 CPU (so at least an iPhone 6S, iPad Pro, 5th-gen/2019 iPad mini, or 7th-gen/mid-2019 iPod Touch), and on Android it needs… whatever the confusing device matrix works out to be there.

Anyway. I won’t be as involved with WORKSHOP 3D going forward (at least, I’m hoping my new job does well for me!), but I’ll still be around to give them advice from time to time and I am looking forward to seeing what else they make.

I finally got around to making a better store page. It’s still not great but it’s better than just linking to either my Threadless or Storenvy or whatever, and I’ll be able to backfill a bunch more of my items into it eventually.

There’s a lot of stuff I’d like to change of course, but this at least gives me a hook to setting up my own PayPal/Stripe/etc. cart as well.

Anyway I’m glad that Publ is in a state where it’s gotten easier and easier for me to make new sites from scratch with it. And I also released a new version of Publ with some shiny new features.

I finally got around to trying out the OBi WiFi adapter today, and while I had great difficulty getting it to connect to the network, once I did, it worked like a charm.

Then out of curiosity I tried connecting it back to my regular landline and… it was able to work just fine, and it saw no backfeed at all. Meaning it was probably just having trouble due to moisture from all the rain or something, and the OBi WiFi wasn’t necessary after all.

So, I tried out the HT502, and that was also able to work just fine, and was able to make an outgoing call via pulse dialing!

Incoming calls still don’t ring quite right because as far as I can tell there’s no way to configure it with a 30Hz ring, but setting it to 25Hz gets the clapper to vibrate enough that I could theoretically tune the bells to work well enough (just more quietly). That’ll have to wait until sometime tomorrow when I’m not likely to wake up neighbors with the sound, though.

Of course if I could get the HT502 to ring at 30Hz that would be even better… I did finally find someone selling what purports to be a standard AE90 ringer and I’ve asked them for more information (like a specific part number) to see if that’d work for me. I’m not holding my breath for a response but it’d be really cool if that ends up working.

Update: The seller got back to me and confirmed that it is an AE90 ringer at the standard 20Hz. So I’ve ordered it. Another $40 spent on this silly project, oh well! It’s fun.

I used to get a pretty steady stream of offers for “featured guest posts” on my website, but then that tapered off, and I figured it was just because those spammers found something better to do for their SEO. But that was also around when I stopped posting to my own site regularly and was mostly blogging on Tumblr or posting to Twitter.

But ever since I moved back to this site as my primary posting destination, the emails have started to come back, which makes me think they never really left – they just stopped asking me.

It’s weirdly validating, in a way.

I mean, I’m still not going to accept any of their offers (this is my site, not some random free-for-all, dangit!) but it’s nice to be wanted all the same.

(That said I do post guest art, so if you want to get something featured on this site, draw a picture of one of my characters. I’m pretty easy to please in that regard.)

So, on the plus side, Adderall XR has been helping me quite a lot with my focus and executive functioning.

On the minus side, I’m having several of the unpleasant side effects: greatly increased blood pressure, numb toes, migraines/nausea (starting yesterday or so), and constipation.

I was really hoping I finally found something that works for me. Maybe I should stop taking it for a couple days and see how I feel. Because right now I just feel bad.