Nathan Curtis

@tshellstudio.bsky.social

259

Posts

Autistic puzzle constructor living in the Boston area; recovering composer and math teacher. I post regular variety puzzles at www.patreon.com/nathancurtis, and my latest puzzle hunt is available at verwalds-treasures.tortoiseshellstudio.com. He/him/his

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Tested negative for the first time today. If I'm negative again on Sunday I might be able to venture out of the house, a good three weeks after first testing positive.

Free Snake Charmer puzzle up on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/107550...

Free Snake Charmer | Nathan Curtiswww.patreon.com Get more from Nathan Curtis on Patreon

When @zyllable.bsky.social first got COVID I pre-emptively stopped practicing trombone. Now I'm coming up on 3 weeks of being sick myself, and a month away from the instrument. I think I'm almost done being sick, but I am reluctant to jump right back into practicing. But I miss it...

@haplo.bsky.social is a kind friend who deserves cat pics and other nice things! (I also deserve cat pics, but I am happy to receive them vicariously through their timeline)

Shopping for colorful clothes to lift my mood doesn't work so well once I have my blue-blocker shades on for the night. They were all yellow. (Not sorry)

New free Spiral puzzle up on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/105781...

Free Spiral | Nathan Curtiswww.patreon.com Get more from Nathan Curtis on Patreon

If you go to Wikipedia and look for an article that includes a map of Manhattan (say, for a neighborhood or Manhattan itself) the interactive map that pops up displays place names in Manhattan (and only Manhattan) in some Slavic language. The heck? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_E...

Lower East Side - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Dealing with an obnoxious patron has pretty much ruined my day.

Reflecting back on my bad experience with submitting the assessment this afternoon, I think it's actually kind of hilarious that I got a panic attack over a math test. I have gotten panic attacks over a great many things, but math was never one of them.

Interviewed for a teaching job. Was given a 12-page assessment to do in an hour and upload scans to their portal. Form would only upload a max of 10 files. Panic attack ensued.

It's my Patreoniversary month, and to celebrate this year I'm focusing on one of my specialties: hex puzzles. Here's a free Hex Pathfinder to start things off. www.patreon.com/posts/104014...

Is it just me, or has Google stopped showing the number of hits for a given search term? I've tried in a couple different browser in normal and private mode.

Well, that's a first. Got the police called on me for practicing the trombone.

I can't seem to get into the Pines of Rome. It's a lot of brilliant orchestration, but not much of substance. Am I missing something?

With everything going on in the word and my life, increasingly it seems I can only find peace when practicing trombone

Got my trombone back from the shop yesterday, and finally got the chance to practice some tonight. The repairs made a big difference, but I'm still getting used to the new mouthpiece. It projects more in the low register as desired but I'm struggling with articulation and intonation.

The house where we are staying has some nice infographics in the kitchen: a set of pie charts displaying the ingredients of many pies, and a diagram of various ways of preparing coffee drinks.

I have some spare time before I head out for my eclipse vacation, so here's the link to the cryptic I mentioned yesterday: www.patreon.com/posts/free-c...

I have a free variety cryptic coming out tomorrow. I am going to be heading to New Hampshire for a little eclipse-watching vacation, so I may not be around when the post drops, but I'll try to post a link after the fact.

Pivoting from my enthusiasm about planning Future Hunt to getting my regular Patreon puzzles done is going to be an ongoing struggle.

Still antsy waiting to get my trombone back from the shop. It's not just that I want it now and can't have it, but that it will also be better when I get it back. But yeah, I want it now.

One of my goals in my new puzzle hunt project is to give solvers the chance to work through unusual meta structures without turning up the difficulty dial. This will likely require a firm editorial hand.

I dropped off my bass trombone for repairs this afternoon and now I want to practice more than anything. Argh!

On the one hand, getting over a necessary hurdle in planning my next hunt and see what's ahead of me has been a huge creative boost. On the other hand, this thing might be close to Puzzle Boat size. I'm sure lots of solvers will like that, but I don't write at Foggy speed.

How distractable am I today? I tried to study a score (Alec Wilder's bass trombone sonata) while listening to an entirely unrelated playlist on shuffle in my headphones.

Looking at options for a new bass trombone case, and the product description on one website for a "Deluxe Bass Trombone Case" says "There are even two built-in compartments for miscellaneous accessories -- a feature our saxophonists love!" Oh, do they now?

Practicing bass trombone when my back was already unhappy from exercising might have been a mistake.

This month's free Patreon puzzle is a Shapeshifters: www.patreon.com/posts/free-1...

"AI" advocates comparing creatives objecting to the use of AI to horse riders objecting to automobiles do have one thing right. Cars are dangerous machines that kill thousands each year and cause environmental destruction and we made a mistake in building modern society around them.

I'm not taking part in EnigMarch this month, but I did just pot together a collection of my EnigMarch creations from 2022 on my Patreon shop: www.patreon.com/nathancurtis...