Small shakeup in crypto yesterday and it was/is fascinating. I've stuck to my original gambling amount as I try my training wheels, which has been about perfect at $100. $40ish went into ADA when it was 45-50 cents, because it sounded like a good project and it was one of the currencies this dumb app lets me put in my own wallet. I have since learned it charges stupid high fees for the privilege, but that's not the point right now, the point is I am dinking around with small monies and practicing. I moved that ADA to my own daedalus wallet and staked it, so I can see what that's all about.

The remaining $50ish I have been putting into different currencies in $10 chunks (the least it will let me buy) and testing my ability to judge the info and make good moves. I guess this currency will drop to $XX and I'll buy it then, I guess this currency can rise to $XX and I'll sell it and make $1. Stuff like that. This app is pretty good to use as training wheels, but there's no way I'd trust it with long term investment of any significant amount. But as training wheels dinking around with $10 here and there, it's all right. If I had a kid I would absolutely do exactly the same thing I've done with myself - I'd give him/her $100 on the thing and use it as a teaching tool (both with crypto and how companies make money with hidden fees). I've learned good lessons from the app and I don't begrudge it the money it has made off me. I have to go fix some tedious paperwork so I can get verified at binance and move over there.

The market is overinflated and top heavy like a jenga stack mid-game. It's fun guessing what will make me $1 in the next couple days, but I dunno that I would invest anything for the long haul right this minute. Even ADA - I don't think I'd buy more to keep. Anything I have on this app I will sell and take the cash. The obvious strategy is to put aside investment monies for the opportune moment and be ready to take advantage of a significant market correction, because it's crypto and it will probably happen. Bitcoin only dropped 2% yesterday and the altcoins fell 15-20%. I love a bargain. I am practiced at stalking an amazon listing until it drops or a used item comes up, and then bragging at spouse about how much money I saved. One of the finest pleasures in life. I will wait for the right opening to start a crypto investment.

Things I have learned so far:

1) Only buy currency you genuinely like and would keep. Like a dummy I made the beginner mistake of putting $10 into something cheap and trashy on the off chance it would rocket, and then I misjudged the height of the rocket and missed the sell window. So I've been stuck for a few days waiting for it to rise again just to recoup my whole $10, and when the drop happened yesterday I dumped it and lost $2 rather than bet it would recover. But I kept the other two currencies I had through the loss, because I actually like their projects. No more buying something for no reason other than its potential to be a lotto ticket. Even for $10 funsies. (Technically I also did this with doge at the start but I still like doge. Doge is at least very funny and I still want some but not at 6 cents.)

2) Check the date and time of any crypto news article/post. I lost 50 whole cents making a move based on an article that I later realized was a day old. Too late, too late.

3) Apps/websites get overloaded. Don't rely on having manual access at the most critical moments. This dumb app won't let me set up certain advanced triggers, and yesterday it had connection problems during the market drop. If I had a lot of money in it I could have been borked, or at least lost valuable chances to buy the drop if I wanted. 3a) Have a set-and-forget strategy in place for everything, dips and rockets, somewhere advanced enough to let you do that.

4) Only put in a portion of the money you think you should put in and earmark the rest. I can't really do this now because I'm playing sugar high musical chairs with the smallest dollar amount possible, but I could see how, if I were serious, say I'd want $100 total of something, I'd really buy $50 of it and save the other $50 to put in gradually later. If it drops, I get to buy more at a bargain. If it rises then I can mark some of the earmark to a different currency or put more in. So basically, don't throw in the whole pot at once. I've read references to DCA and I guess it's basically like that, except some accountant has probably calculated the exact optimal formula.

So that's the sum of my crypto knowledge to date.

Spouse brought home flowers last night because he is a sweetheart. The Cat loves flowers. He gets so excited - he loves to smell them, and then eat them and puke. He's only got three legs but he will somehow get on the kitchen counter to get at them. He can't jump! I also got them some fancy organic catnip toys that are supposed to be the most potent. So our valentines's gifts were really for the cats, but what is better entertainment value than a couple of stoned kitties?

Spouse found some fantasy RPG computer game, so he's in his corner making his guys kill rats or goblins or something, and I'm yelling bitcoin updates at him from the couch as it crashes, and the cats are zooming up and down the hall, out of their tiny cat minds -

It was a pretty good valentine's.

I got the stuff set up to engrave spouse's mug, but I have hit a small snag. Turns out the hard part is transferring the pattern to the metal. I did a trial run with stainless steel caps for salt and pepper grinders. I engraved S and P on them, which was a test of 1) getting the design on the metal and 2) engraving. First idea was just pasting the paper laser print on the metal with a diluted white glue and engraving through it. It worked but wasn't as clean as I'd like because the fuzzy torn paper edges got in the way as I worked through. No good. Second time I used freehand hectograph paper, same as I'd use for a tattoo stencil on skin, and transferred it on there with hand sanitizer. It's fine for something simple like a large capital letter, but not crazy about doing that with a detailed hand stencil of the artwork.

I've had my art laser engraved on stuff before and engraving produces almost a negative effect on shiny surfaces. If you reproduce the same art like for a regular printing, it will look wonky. To make it look right you want to engrave the lightest parts and let the untouched material be the darks. Kind of like drawing with white charcoal on black paper, it is a mindfuck. When I did the S and P they look shinier and lighter than the rest of the cap because the light strikes them different. So to make a hand stencil you'd have to do that heavy lifting of reversing the image as you trace it, and then remember your own mental shorthand as to what's engraved and what's not, and frankly I spent 2 years learning the mental shorthand to make stencils for a very specific purpose and this will wreck me. 90% of a successful art project is just not setting yourself up to fail. So we're not doing that.

Smartypants engravers on youtube claim to be able to transfer the toner from a laserprinted copy to metal using acetone. My nail polish remover is not pure acetone and didn't work. I have to get some acetone. Then I should be able to transfer the art to the mug and get on with the process of engraving it.

Engraving the S and P went fine. I have a proxxon rotary tool (supposedly nicer than a dremel), a foot pedal control and a cheap diamond burr set. The muscle memory from tattooing kicked in and it's not so different. Listening to the machine, feeling the bite into the material, plotting out the line direction. I'm confident that if I can get this image on the mug I can turn out something quite nice. The idiot part of me now pipes up with "I could sell hand engraved mugs" in a Ralph Wiggins voice but that is foolish dumb nonsense because nobody wants to pay what hand craftsmanship costs. Like, hey, want to buy a $250 mug? No. Stupid. That's why embroidery machines and laser engravers exist. That's why I'm a tattoo artist, because it's the only handcraft people still value, because they can't get a machine to do it.

(I do kinda want to make myself a fancy water bottle. Just to be a showoff. Whenever I'm allowed to be around strangers at a coffeeshop again, I can put it on the table, and everyone will be like, wow, your water bottle has art. I'll be like, yup. I made it. I draw on people, too. This goddamn pandemic. I miss people.)

Anyway I gotta get some acetone.