birthday wish list!!!1!1
APR 20, 2026
inkhaven
My birthday's coming up! As a gift to myself, I am writing a shameless post about all the things that I want. I suppose this could be useful for you if you are birthday shopping for someone who is shaped exactly like me. (wink wink)
In early 2025, researchers at Apple made a Pixar lamp-esque robot to study expressive movements in non-anthropomorphic robots:
goodmorning!
I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. The way it nods? Come on. Also look, look — it can dance!
what a bop!
Isn't it adorable? It's a moonshot, but I really want one. Tell me if you know how to get (or build) one.
In Apiary, you play as a faction of superintelligent space bees. (Superintelligent. Space. Bees. What more could you ask for?) It's a worker placement game where you send your bees to get resources and build your hive (out of hexagons, which are the bestagons).
I used to have a copy, but it disappeared into thin air sometime a couple of years ago, and I went through all the stages of grief before finally accepting that it's gone forever. Hence the inclusion on the birthday wish list.
I am a huge Pokémon fan whose favorite game is Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This game was made for me.
look at that face. just look at it.
Folk is a system that turns your physical environment into an input device. I think it's best described visually:
isn't this cool?
It's another moonshot, but I think it'd be cool to pull some JARVIS-type stuff. I like to imagine myself doing this:
jarvis, make me tony stark
I'm moving in the near future, so I'm in need of furniture, preferably whimsical and quirky (like me!). Enter the spool table:
spool table
It's a table, but it looks like a spool of thread. And it comes with a needle the size of a small sword! I feel like it would sufficiently convey "whimsical and quirky" to anyone entering my house.
I'd also like some classy math art in their house, and I'm a fan of these posters by Nicholas Rougeux. Art based on the primes is pretty common, but I like how Rougeux incorporates the notion of digital roots — I had never seen it before.
this is obviously how measuring cups should be
To be honest, I don't understand why I can only find these measuring cups as math museum merch. It seems like this is the objectively correct way to make measuring cups? Who knows.
I've actually been meaning to get these for a while, seeing as they're often available at the MoMath booth at major math conferences. Alas, they always lose the battle for limited luggage space to the free display-copy textbooks. But that means you can get them as a birthday gift for me!
- A guitar
I want a guitar as part of my side quest to become a dorm room pop star. I've been too lazy to figure out which ones are good, but hey, if anyone wants to figure that out for me… :D
I saw the HiChord in a video once and thought "omg I want him so bad". If I ever happen obtain to this item, I will spend several hours poking at it like a toddler on a toy piano. It would be fun.
Probably you shouldn't optimize your face wash choices around what smells the best, but I love love love the grapefruit smell and can't get over it. Also, the scrubby feeling is an amazing sensory experience and I wash my face just to get it.