Day 8 - Meditation and Tinkering

January is absoloutely ripping by...

I'm just trying to keep up

---

Last night had myself and @caitycat participating in the 8th day of the Yoga Journey w/ YouTube yogi Adriene.

The focus / theme of day 8 was "meditation" which was really quite nice:

Welcome to your Dedicate Day 8 practice! One week in the books!
It’s day 8 and today’s gentle moving meditation yoga practice is a real treat. A comforting hug.
An opportunity to stretch, release, calm, rejuvenate and restore. Bring a pillow and a towel or blanket if you have one. Enjoy!

This session had a focus on a smaller number of postures -- but they generally had a longer, and deeper stretch associated with them. Holding the posture for close to 10 breaths at a time -- or something like that -- it felt long at the very least. With a focus on not pushing in to each individual posture, but letting yourself fall / ease into it as you breathe in and out. The style and pace definitely felt a bit more like some of the Yin Yoga classes I've been to. While the postures were a bit varied (doesn't need to be the same thing each time, I suppose. I likes to keeps it fresh, yo!), the mentality was definitely similar, and it made me regret that I didn't light any candles.

With each posture, trying to find what feels good to you individually. Tight legs? Bend the knees a bit. Tight hips? Grab a yoga block or a pillow for under that ass. Generally, this session has us doing a few long-duration forward folds (over one leg, or two), some side bends and a few seated sun saluation-y sorta things. Lovely, gentle practice -- and a great refresher after going 7 days in a row with yoga for the first time in a while. Definitely appreciate it, because I'm actually a little bit tight from running yesterday (despite being a short distance) and have to make it out for squash later tonight (plus more yoga!).

---

Tinkering and Gadgetry

Enough about that mindfulness and inward reflection bull-plot (despite the fact that I enjoy it a great deal). I've been slowly putting pieces together to turn my '99 AstroVan into the sickest campervan that I can possibly manage. We've more or less built out the functional inside guts of the van, and it's fully useable. We got sidetracked with enjoying it for the 2nd half of last year, but now we're starting to think about the next steps while the weather is a bit crummy. So with that in mind - I got new toys!

I originally planned on just buying some kind of dongle that would let me have a computer hooked up to the van -- but with some exceedingly long shipping delays (plus, in hindsight, it was way more expensive) and escalating costs, I've decided to just build it myself.

The Toys:

• A Shiny new RaspberryPi 3B+;
• The official 7" rPi Touch Screen;
• A rad lego-adaptable case;
• A spare rPi camera;
• An OBD2 Bluetooth Dongle to get data from the vans computer system;

Introducing the soon-to-be AdVANture dash-cam / navigation / media center

I still need to write a quick python app that will let me launch various programs (Navit for maps, Kodi for movies/music, RetroArch for games, front camera for dash-cam/time-lapse/vlogs, rear camera for back-up purposes, etc...), but it's another piece that is about 50% slapped together and almost functional.

Considering we just got the van out of the shop to get the brakes re-done and a 4-wheel alignment (no longer feels like the steering is loose and the front brakes are likely to explode) -- I'm fired up to do some testing.

Pretty certain I'm going camping next weekend!

(Now that I can tether my phone to this rad little screen -- I can do yoga in the forest, I'm pretty sure!)