I review $40 worth of Wild Berry incense in an evening.| nathanupchurch.com
The personal website and blog of Nathan Upchurch, where I write about incense, free and open source software, design, vegan cooking, music, and all sorts of other topics that I find interesting.| nathanupchurch.com
Someone recently shared with me transcripts and audio recordings that have been going around of comments that are alleged to have been made by the owner of a well-regarded perfumery. This owner also recently published a video on the matter. I am not going to mention names, but I am sure many in the fragrance and incense community are already aware of the situation. I’m seeing a lot of anger online, as well as a number of people coming to the owners’ defense. Having seen what I have, here ...| Nathan Upchurch
Since I started writing here in earnest, I’ve been enchanted by the idea of having a proper name for my humble blog. I didn’t dare put too much thought into it until recently; the task seemed too intimidating. There’s a lot to think about after all: Do you choose something dry and professional, at risk of sounding pompous or grandiose? Something pithy, at risk of sounding too cutesy? Or something funny, at risk of not being taken seriously? Well, dear readers, by combining a five dollar...| Nathan Upchurch
New sticks, faster build development, percolating, and something coming soon?| nathanupchurch.com
Trying to make it a little less brutal to make small, frequent posts on SSGs.| nathanupchurch.com
Boy Vienna is a brand from fashion designer and multi-media artist Afaf Fi Seyam that has been receiving attention on TikTok and Instagram for its incense cigarettes. I knew I was going to have to try these sticks the minute they found their way onto my screen—it would seem that everyone else felt the same way, as when I made my way to the web store most of Boy Vienna’s incense varieties were sold out. For 35 USD, I was able to snag a box of the 11:11 variety, listed as containing a blend...| Nathan Upchurch
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a fantasy RPG in which you play as GedGerdGerald Geralt, a super masculine generic-white-man protagonist who grumbles everything he says like Batman. Hopefully you like Geribald, because you don’t get to customize him in any way. You’ll control Gabriel from a third-person perspective, awkwardly hovering over his right shoulder as he trudges around wherever it is that he lives. The map is large, so in order to spare you too much trudgery Giovanni has a horse tha...| Nathan Upchurch
Checking out some sticks from a local store selling Japanese incense.| nathanupchurch.com
A list of every post I've written tagged “{{ tag }}.”| nathanupchurch.com
A list of every post I've written tagged “{{ tag }}.”| nathanupchurch.com
Florals are a notoriously difficult incense category. Today I'm taking a look at Yi-Xin Craft Incense's Pikake Jasmine sticks.| nathanupchurch.com
Over his storied career, Till Lindemann has been given a lot of grace. Both he, as a lyricist, and the Neue Deutsche Härte powerhouse he fronts, have made some questionable decisions over the years. Many of these missteps might perhaps be chalked up to the era, such as the unfortunate fat-suits in Rammstein’s Keine Lust music video. We might also see the red-face in Amerika as ignorance rather than malice, given it was donned by a group some 5,000 miles away from the peoples being insulted...| Nathan Upchurch
Some time ago I as I perused the incense display of a nearby Whole Foods, hoping to see the Shoyeido sticks that once graced the shelves, I noticed a range of Indian-style sticks, their otherwise matching packaging in a variety of colors. Listed prominently on each package was the text: “Incense of Auroville.” This caught my attention. Auroville is an intentional community I’ve had a passing interest in since I discovered that some shampoo bars I had purchased were made there[1]. Often,...| Nathan Upchurch
Scribus has always been about substance. With 1.7.0 style, usability, and designer-focused features take the front seat.| nathanupchurch.com
You might seen my recent toot about the fancy new “How Much of a Linux Nerd are You?” quiz on my website. Some time ago, I realized that I missed taking fun internet quizzes and decided to implement a quiz system on my own site that would allow me to easily make fun quizzes to share. Here’s how I built it with Eleventy.| Nathan Upchurch
The German neue deutsche härte group Rammstein is known for many things. From their controversial lyrics (NSFW) and legally dubious stage antics (NSFW), to their over the top live performances, one thing the group is certainly not known for is conventional merchandise.| Nathan Upchurch
The good, the bad, and the ugly of manual incense stick extruders.| nathanupchurch.com
Smoke was the first breath of early civilization, its rising plumes a synonym for human presence. This byproduct of life-sustaining flame has been constant companion to our evolution as a species, changing not only human lives, but human bodies. As the ubiquity of smoke rendered transparent to our ancestors’ noses the once harsh notes of burning plant matter, there must have been a sense of magic when our forebears happened to toss a well-resinated tree branch or a fragrant herb upon the co...| Nathan Upchurch
While I like to post incense builds, I haven’t yet posted on exactly how to go about turning raw ingredients into Japanese style incense sticks. Here’s a 1,000 mile overview of the process to accompany a video I recently uploaded to my new PeerTube instance on that very topic. For more info, you can check out IncenseDragon on YouTube, read this very useful article by Irene of Rauchfahne.de, peruse incensemaking.com, and look through some posts flaired with “incense making” on the ince...| Nathan Upchurch
Plant resins come with varying amounts of water-soluble gum content. Beyond the temperature-reducing aspect innate to resins in combustible incense, these gums can further affect how much of a given resin you can include in a build. As anyone who has burned resins on charcoal can attest, with resins high in gum content, the burning gum can introduce off-notes. Gums also serve as binders in incense sticks; while a little is helpful for producing a performant dough that extrudes well and a more...| Nathan Upchurch
At last, I've gotten around to implementing image galleries.| nathanupchurch.com
Learning to appreciate extreme metal, problems in the scene, and some killer black metal tunes.| nathanupchurch.com
I've gone and built a not-so-fancy audio component for my blog.| nathanupchurch.com
Here are a few new (and not-so-new, but good to know) features I’ve built for my humble website:| Nathan Upchurch
I came across this submission to Not Always Right today, and it got me thinking about some of the attitudes towards technology I’ve seen over the years. There is a contingent of people in many workplaces who believe they can do a perfectly good job without investing the time in learning about the tech they use each day; after all, their work gets done, doesn’t it? We’ve all encountered this sort; the sort of person who’s so far removed from a basic understanding of the tools they use ...| Nathan Upchurch
I make a fresh, sweet, and green incense build reminiscent of the flavor of white tea.| nathanupchurch.com
The tale of the time I made my best effort to draw my live-modeling ex. Also some not-very-good art.| nathanupchurch.com
I finally figure out how to make myrrh work in a composition.| nathanupchurch.com
I had the pleasure of meeting Dave at The World Makes Scents studio in Bridgeport, Chicago.| nathanupchurch.com
An attempt at a lavender incense stick goes remarkably well thanks to an unusual technique.| nathanupchurch.com
Reflecting on eating, and cooking, habits in light of Pete Wells' stepping down from his role as Times restaurant critic."| nathanupchurch.com
Reviewing Kheoun’s Blend by The World Makes Scents.| nathanupchurch.com
I make a simple, three-ingredient, red cedar and frankincense batch of incense sticks.| nathanupchurch.com
My grand designs crumble as I fail to make the most delicious batch of incense ever devised.| nathanupchurch.com
Creating a Raven-like side-panel in KDE Plasma 6 that can be toggled with a click using native plasma panels and Scriptinator.| nathanupchurch.com
Tools like cooked.wiki let us strip away the cruft from online recipes. Is this necessarily a good thing?| nathanupchurch.com
My first KDE contribution! Two new high-contrast KMines themes that will arrive with Plasma 6.| nathanupchurch.com
A conversation with a colleague caused me to consider the consequences of online-only tooling.| nathanupchurch.com
Breaking down the alternative-diet restaurant experience to offer some perspective and advice to foodservice professionals and proprietors.| nathanupchurch.com
QOwnNotes is a terminally underrated native markdown note-taking app, despite the fact that you'll rarely see it mentioned on the internet.| nathanupchurch.com
Seitan is simple to make, but tough to make well. I share some hard-won lessons about making seitan that's worth eating.| nathanupchurch.com
In this tutorial, we'll learn how to make a configurable SVG graphic of a grid of circles in random colors and sizes with p5.js.| nathanupchurch.com
How to transfer files to and from a remote Server with the scp / secure copy command.| nathanupchurch.com
Tech giants aren't meeting the needs of SMEs and nonprofits. Combined with digital privacy concerns, a perfect storm is brewing for increased adoption of free and open source software for these organizations.| nathanupchurch.com
The mindset shift that produces happy users of GNU/Linux and other Free/Libre and Open Source Software.| nathanupchurch.com
