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What did you do this week?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I did my introductory flight kicking off my journey to get my private pilot license (PPL). I got to take off (with an instructor present) in a Cessna 172 and do a lap around Mount Diablo in the SF Bay Area. It was cramped, complicated, but ultimately exhilarating as I made turns and adjustments for the route while compensating for turbulence. It was a firehose of information from start to finish and it gave me a lot of respect for the complexity and danger that entails personal aviation. From going through the pre-flight checklist to trying to decipher what ATC is relaying to the airspace to trying to take in all the instruments and learning their functionality in different scenarios, I see that I have a lot of learning to do. I probably won't start my real classes until mid-March but I foresee myself flying at least once or twice a week so that I maintain familiarity between classes. I'm terrified of the thought of doing the whole thing by myself but hopefully, in time, I will gain more confidence in my capabilities.
However, it is very exciting for me to think about the possibilities of having a PPL and being able to one day own my own plane. The freedom that comes from being able to hop into my plane and do a day trip somewhere further away or ferry me to a vacation spot makes my mind race in good ways.
This week my super-paints finally arrived, so I started work experimenting with them. So far I've only tried BLACK 3.0 which is a super black matte paint that absorbs something like 99% of light.
I have a prototype dice stand drying and this thing is wild to look at. It's so dark that it fucks with your eyes and so it creates a sort of optical illusion. When I look at it I KNOW where the indents and corners are, but I can't actually see them, it's just a void. It's like it eats the shadows that I would normally use to judge depth.
It should be dry in the morning and I'll post some pictures.
I'm really happy with how this first test is going, and eventually I want to turn this into a product line for the board game store I'm working on opening.
It was also my girlfriend (and business partner)'s birthday last Saturday, so I made this to celebrate.