Field notes

Nov 5, just before midnight

Every video is a fish

The first version lived in my lab. Every video I post became a fish, and its views picked the species: seedling fry, paper medaka, lantern goldfish, koi, moon puffer. Anything bigger was still an ink silhouette.

Depth is age, so this week’s posts swim in the shallows and older ones sink toward a mossy shrine. The light follows the time of day in Seattle.

Seedling fry

Nov 6, after midnight

A night in a submarine

Overnight the tank turned into a research submarine: smoked-glass instruments, a sonar ping, a periscope, and a depth gauge that doubled as a time ruler. Fins started to flutter, and tails beat faster when a fish swims fast.

I added a photo mode, a link for every fish, a time-lapse replay of the week, and follower milestones. At 100 followers the shrine lanterns stutter on.

The six big species got painted too: kite manta, moss turtle, starry whale shark, song whale, cloud whale, and the see-through tide spirit at a million views.

Paper medaka

Nov 6, morning

Real Seattle weather

The tank shows Seattle’s real weather now. Rain rings the surface, fog hazes the shallows, snow drifts down, and on clear nights the moon is in its real phase.

The props got painted: the paper boat, the reed nest, the cottage, the snail. And the tank learned to save battery. It stops drawing when you look away and slows down when nothing is happening.

Lantern goldfish

Nov 6, evening

Room for everyone

I wrote a plan to turn my tank into something any creator can use: type your handles, get a tank, share it. Free, public posts only, no login.

The tank moved out of my lab and into its own home, with the share cards and a first take on other people’s tanks.

What I learned. It isn’t a dashboard. No tables; the numbers live on the fish.

Koi

Nov 10

Paper and ink

I put every screen side by side and didn’t love what I saw. The tank and the share cards looked like two different products: teal sci‑fi glass on one, warm paper on the other. On a phone the instruments took so much room that the fish got about half the screen. And the words were jargon, like sonar log, probe console and specimen scan.

So I threw out the submarine look and kept every feature. Now it’s paper and ink: a title, a depth chip, a share button and a tab bar, and the rest of the screen is fish. The front page became a dive down the painted tank.

What I learned. The art is the screen. Everything else should be plain words and get out of its way.

Moon puffer

Nov 10, night

More to read

The front page felt crowded, so the extra things moved onto their own pages: how it works, these notes, and a page about me. The dive down the tank stays. That part I like.

Kite manta