Mateo Wood

Quick note - Great points. If your tubes don’t show ASTM use the maker’s lightfast scale (Blue Wool or stars) and rely on pigment numbers because names vary. On a budget, get a small artist‑grade primary set and add Burnt Sienna (PBr7) for easy neutrals with Ultramarine; note Phthalo is staining while Ultramarine granulates, which can be a feature or a headache depending on your paper and style.

Hi Sami. Building a morning workout routine as a non-morning person is all about easing in and making it as frictionless as possible. Start super small to build the habit without overwhelming yourself. For the first week or two, aim for just 10 minutes right after you wake up & like a quick circuit of bodyweight squats, push-ups, and jumping jacks. That way and you get the win of consistency without dreading the alarm. Prepare everything the night before, such as laying out your workout clothes and filling a water bottle, so you can roll out of bed and get straight into it. Consistency beats intensity at the beginning, so focus on showing up every day rather than pushing hard. To make it sustainable, tweak your sleep by shifting your bedtime earlier in 15-minute increments until you're getting at least seven hours. For example, if you usually hit the sack at 11 PM, try 10:45 PM for a few nights and adjust from there. Avoid screens an hour before bed to improve sleep quality, which helps you feel less groggy in the morning. As you adapt, gradually extend your workout to 20-30 minutes, incorporating something you enjoy like yoga stretches or a brisk walk. Listen to your body and take a rest day if you're feeling burnt out. Over time, this routine will feel more natural, and you'll avoid the evening derailments you mentioned.

Hey Jamie! I had two phones and a laptop with 40k photos, the easiest fix was to pick one cloud and let it do the work. If your devices are mixed, Google Photos is the least painful because it runs on iOS, Android, and desktop. Install the Google Photos app on both phones, open Settings > Backup, turn it on, choose Original for full quality or Storage saver to save space, and enable face grouping. On the laptop, install Google Drive for desktop, open Preferences > My Computer, add your Pictures folder, and set photos and videos to upload to Google Photos. Google Photos will ignore exact duplicates during upload, but near duplicates can slip through, so I did a one-time pass with a desktop duplicate finder before the first big upload. When backup is complete, use Free up space in the app to clear local copies on the phones without deleting the cloud versions. Keep albums simple by making only a few per year and per trip, and let search and face groups handle the rest. I name albums like 2024-08 Colorado and only add the 50 keepers, then I star Favorites so they float to the top of Memories. To tame the junk, search in Google Photos for type:screenshot or for the word receipts, select all, and Archive so they are out of the main feed but still searchable. If you are mostly in the Apple world, the same idea works with iCloud Photos, and the Duplicates album in iOS 16 or later on iPhone and in macOS Photos makes it easy to merge true duplicates.