Hello, this is the (optional.is) quarterly newsletter. Mostly the thoughts of Brian Suda.

02023Q3 REYKJAVIK: The year is 50% over, summer is approaching and things are going into the vacation slump. Iceland only gets a few months of good weather and everyone takes their vacation at the same time. Companies close, things slow down, and anything that's still left gets rescheduled for September.

🌅🥫Solar Can

This solargraph, by Elekes Andor, exposed for one year shows the Sun's paths as seen from Budapest in 02014. CC BY-SA 4.0

Solar Can recently appeared on our radar. It is a special pinhole camera for super long exposures of the sun. The results are mesmerizing!

We plan on ordering some to test out in Iceland where we get sunlight at the two extremes. Then we remembered, Iceland gets less than 1200 hours of sunlight a year whereas the southern part of Europe gets over 2500h.

We're not sure how this will turn out, but we're willing to give it a try!

https://solarcan.co.uk/product/puck

Q2 Writing

A photo in Sweden using the IR-Filter.

We published two articles in Q2. Here they are in case you missed them:

Business Card Notebooks
https://optional.is/required/2023/05/03/business-card-notebooks/

iPhone Infrared Photography
https://optional.is/required/2023/06/27/iphone-ir-photography/

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🗓 All Weeknotes are collected together here:
https://optional.is/required/category/weeknotes

We also managed to publish fairly regular fortnightly weeknotes: Week #636-637, Week #638 & #639, Week #640 & #641, Week #642 & #643, and Week #644 & #645.

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We did well getting the ⪮ Good Morning newsletter out on a monthly basis in Q2: s02e04, s02e05, and s02e06 all are available online to read.

📰 All newsletters are also archived online. If you ever miss something, you can read about it here:
https://optional.is/newsletter/

📅 July 17th, World Emoji Day

The original UI for iCal for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

July 17th is the date that iCal for Mac was first announced at MacWorld Expo in 02002. It has since been adopted as the calendar emoji icon.

https://worldemojiday.com

🏢 🕰 Office Hours

Over the last year, we’ve made use of people’s gracious open office hours. We’ve booked sessions with people we admire and had some amazing and informative chats.

Our open office hours are:

Hopefully, we’ll be able to reconnect with more old friends, meet new folks, and have more interesting and engaging conversations.

🗓 Book a time to chat

Merch

😀📅 Emoji Calendar. This is a free app to countdown to the next holiday with simple two-glyph emojis. Available for iOS and Apple Watch.

Disney SpellStruck: A word game with a magical twist!
Available on Apple Arcade.

Triagemail: Get unread email under control. An iOS (and Mac Silicon) app to check any email account. With only 4 options, get through all your unread email fast so you never miss anything important. $1.99 on the App store.

⪮ Good Morning

We publish a second newsletter. Monthly episodes, 4 links, all interesting stuff, no self-promotion.

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