{"id":72196,"date":"2025-11-02T15:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T23:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=72196"},"modified":"2025-11-02T15:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T23:43:13","slug":"opal-apple-keyboard-update-and-novel-month-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=72196","title":{"rendered":"Opal Apple, Keyboard Update, and Novel Month Day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I have all of my other chores basically finished for the day. For the next hour or so, I’m going to keep working on The Psychic Out of Time<\/em>. As a warm up, I thought I’d write a quick update.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve really been enjoying Chuck Wendig<\/a>‘s apple reviews. He started doing them on Twitter a long time ago. They’re funny, informative, and a reasonable introduction to his voice and writing style. Reasonable, because Chuck has a pretty broad range, and these reviews tend to highlight his humor more than his horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melissa and I have been enjoying Cosmic Crisps, but because of Chuck’s reviews, I picked up some other apples yesterday while we were at the store. We have more Cosmic Crisps, some Galas, some Envies, some Asian Pears, and a couple of Opals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s the Opal I’m trying today. Here it is untouched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Chuck does his apple reviews, he records himself eating them and gives some brief analysis in a video, posted to Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I consume apples, I make it easy on myself. I take the corer\/slicer and split my apple in one clean CHUNK. It comes out looking like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This would be a good time to note that Chuck is also a photographer, and I’m just snapping these in my kitchen, with my phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the reasons I picked the Opal is because Chuck recently did a review of one<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does my Opal compare?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s good. The flesh was a little bit softer than I expected when I cut it, but it’s firm enough with each bite that I don’t feel like I’m eating a sponge. I’m finding this apple to be more tart than anything. There is juice, but my mouth feels a little dry after eating a few pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a note in mine that I can’t identify. When I try to find the words, I come away with “yellow,” “lemon,” and “flower petals,” though none of those descriptions are quite right. It’s not lemony or sour, though there might be a hint of that underneath the tart. The fruit is obviously yellow, but “yellow” as a flavor descriptor is right, in the same way “purple” is the right word to describe certain flavors of Kool-aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a very pleasant apple. I think I like the Cosmic Crisp more, but this is good, and I’m glad we picked up more than one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On an unrelated note, I made some great progress on the woefully late WXR 2025 keyboard. I’ve got a print for the base that accepts the chip perfectly. I have some tiny screws for affixing the ESP32 to the case, but it fits so snug that it doesn’t really need them. I had to iterate several times on this, but I think I finally have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m still uncommitted on an official Novel Month thing, but I’m two days in a row showing up to write, and that’s good enough for now. We’ll see what Monday is like when I have to get back to the regular daily grind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I have all of my other chores basically finished for the day. For the next hour or so, I’m going to keep working on The Psychic Out of Time. As a warm up, I thought I’d write a quick update. I’ve really been enjoying Chuck Wendig‘s apple reviews. He started doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72201,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72196\/revisions\/72201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}