Now time for our almost-nightly-but-not-quite-nightly “language study night” at the dining table. Nat is working on her Korean textbook and I’m reading Italian short stories.

If all this Reality Pro stuff is true for WWDC… I think it may be the least excited I’ve been for an upcoming WWDC in years. Still hoping whatever it is will change my mind. AR/VR is a hard sell for me, probably related to watching any screen that closely—even video games—causes my eyes to tear up.

I watched my first pro football match (soccer) yesterday—I went to my daughter’s matches but never really watched a pro match. So we watched a rerun of a Serie A match between Juventus and Milano. Thanks to some explanations from Nat, I think I enjoyed it. Now today I keep thinking about football.

New “Nat and Josh” video where we go camping at Staunton River State Park in Virginia. It’s a nice Dark Sky park set right where to rivers converge. Astrophotography when the wind is super strong just creates blurry photos 😞

youtu.be/OogZvkEO6…

I love how he portrays the software writing experience in these videos. youtu.be/cQO2XTP7Q…

I’ve been using a mix of several different tools for learning Italian. One of them, for pure vocabulary memorizing, has been a pretty good find. In the past (with German & Japanese) I used Anki but never really loved it. This time I’ve been using Mochi. Fewer features but the simplicity is nice.

Starting to wonder if I should go back to keeping Micro.blog and Mastodon accounts separate. I thought it would be fine but find myself following mostly following mastodon accounts. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just bored.

Nat bought a new textbook for studying Italian and the first unit is “Primi Contatti” (First Contacts) with a guy holding his hand up waving. Totally a missed opportunity for a Star Trek joke. 🖖

I made gelato last night with no ice cream machine using this recipe. It was surprisingly easy. Going to have to keep testing it out!

www.youtube.com/watch

HomePod Mini in Kitchen. HomePod Mini in Office. Same Apple ID. Why can’t timers I start in the kitchen also be available in the office? Sometimes the office one will hear me from the kitchen and say “there are no timers”. I’m standing here whispering to the kitchen HomePod to stop the timer 🤌.

I’ve mostly stopped sharing photos here but if you liked them I’m going to be sharing them over on pixelfed.social/jnjosh

pixelfed.social/p/jnjosh/…

I’ve been learning a lot about acquiring Italian dual citizenship—my Great Grandfather immigrated from Italy and depending on when he naturalized I could be eligible to be recognized. Finding that paperwork is hard. Yesterday, I got some paperwork from Ohio that implies he didn’t naturalize. 🤯🇮🇹🤌

My sister’s birthday is today and I looked for a photo to share with her happy birthday message. I found this photo from right after I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis so you can see the swelling in my wrists and knees. Mostly in remission now, but this summer will be 30 years!

So bummed I forgot about Micro camp! I thought I’d watch some while actually camping in the van but… forgot. 😞

Iceland’s vote was perfect. No notes. #Eurovision

I just voted for #Eurovision for the first time 🤣

I really like the little intro segments before each #Eurovision performance. A couple of them in Kyiv I’ve visited too!

I made snacks for #Eurovision!

“Renfield” is a fun movie about vampires with Nicolas Cage being his most extreme Nicolas Cage and it’s great. Here’s the thing though. The movie is a tight 90 minutes. I think I like it even more for this, more movies should be 90 minutes.

I’ve had an Apple Watch for 8 years now and… I think I just made my first call on it. Only to test that it worked.

Woah… I’ve been in Duolingo for 10 years now. Really sucks I haven’t been consistent and am now speaking like 4–5 languages!

I still can’t predictably do a trill with Italian words though. Amazingly a trill will occasionally happen and then surprise me. Like how did that happen? How can I do that intentionally?

I’ve started language learning again… this time with Italian. It’s easier than German or Japanese! Since Nat is still learning Korean we do nightly “language study” together. I’ll go through my vocab list, read a few stories in Lingq, and then watch Easy Italian on YouTube. So fun.

I’ve been diving deep into my family tree—specifically my Italian family—and have found a bunch of documents about my great-grandfather. Seeing it all together in one doc amazed me; I’ve found a lot. Now need to understand the new doc I found about him several states away. Unknown family drama?!