I am currently in the middle of playing Ghost of Yotei – a RPG where you follow the story of a woman seeking revenge in Japan. She is labeled an onyro – a vengeful ghost. I won’t give up too much of the story but like its predecessor, I really enjoy the scenery. Camera mode allows you to collect stills as you play!
see the screengrabs
It had been a while since I’ve been to the Garden Lights in Atlanta and we chose to go this year! We made a whole day of it starting at the Silver Skillet, an old Atlanta diner that’s been around forever. From there we went to the Georgia Tech campus to walk around.We stopped at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts before heading to Dad’s which is a really cool retro bar here. There’s a mishmash of walking around and coffee shops in there as well. I don’t even remember where I stopped but here are a few photos from our day out in Atlanta.
see our day out shots
On Sunday we decided to get out and enjoy the last warm day we have here in Atlanta. I had never been to the Center for Puppetry Arts. So we got tickets to go see the Jim Henson exhibit and I really enjoyed it! I saw so many puppets from my childhood — many from very impactful films. I saw puppets from The Dark Crystal, and Sesame Street, and of course a pivotal movie in my youth development which was Labyrinth. All the background information about how puppets are created gave me new respect for the amount of detail and material science as well as general geometry you have to be amazing at to pull this off effectively. They had a whole section on international puppets so it was cool to see some really nice ones from India, Korea, Japan, and several other Southeast Asian nations.
See the puppets
My little cousin turned 18 this week! Wild. Since it’s around Christmas, we all get together for the holidays! Sometimes I think it might be annoying to have a holiday birthday but also as I’ve gotten older — I notice many of my friends come back from their lives back to their hometown for the holidays and how nice is it that in the future Rima will see more of her longtime friends around for the holidays?
See the photos
Merriest Christmas from us to you!
We took these pictures last minute on Christmas morning with a tripod and a prayer!! I have been slacking on taking photos of life in general and moments like this but honestly it all came down to accessibility — once I had my new Mac, I feel like most of the speed bumps are gone and the joy in photography, coding and posting content is back!
I also took some photos of my cats being real cute around the tree.
see the xmas kitties
After a few years as a Windows only user, I’m back on a Mac. Specifically, I’m on a M4 Max.
I’ve had it for about three weeks now, and the difference in productivity is obvious. For software development, setting up environments is much easier thanks to the UNIX foundation. In that short time, I’ve already built a couple of new apps, put them into production, and shared them as open source.
Lightroom work is also dramatically faster. Editing feels effortless, which makes me more open to taking on photo contracts. I’m spending far less time behind the screen, especially with newer AI tools that understand my editing style after learning from years of my photos.
What really stands out is how well everything works together. Every tool I use, including the app I’m dictating this with, feels native and thoughtfully integrated into the operating system.
Part of my motivation for purchasing this Mac was to run LLMs locally and that has been so easy! I feel like it’s so great to get ahead of the curve of publicly available LLMs becoming monetized soon. Also it’s just really awesome to be able to use these LLMs whenever I feel like it, even if I don’t have any internet at all. Which is going to be really awesome when I travel with this device.
I used a Mac years ago, and coming back feels natural. My fingers still know the shortcuts. It honestly feels like coming home. The app ecosystem available for Mac has certainly evolved since I’ve been gone and I just want to record so far the apps that have been most useful so far.
| New Apps I Love | Apps That Work Better on a Mac |
|---|---|
🚀 Raycast 🎙️ Wispr Flow 🤖 Integrated ChatGPT / Claude 📷 CleanShot 🎨 DiffusionBee 🔒 Hush | 📸 Lightroom Classic & CC 💻 VS Code & Terminal 🌍 Duolingo 📚 Kindle for Mac ✉️ Mail 🐪 The Camelizer |
Integration with my iPhone – getting calls and responding to texts from my Mac is a game changer. Using my iPhone as a small secondary screen is also great.
I feel like I shouldn’t have waited so long! I am excited to take this machine with me on my next trips and edit my raws during my downtime on vacation! Also, I find myself being able to update this blog more easily thanks to orchestrating a lot of the annoying bits away. Since it is self hosted, I am able to keep an entire local version of the wordpress stack and work from there! Expect more posts, more photos, and better documentation of my interests and life!
Closing out 2025 and looking back on the year, I am so thankful and grateful to travel to more places in this beautiful world! I feel all the cheesy feelings about it.
This year we went to
🇮🇳 South India & North India
🇬🇷 Athens, Kefalonia, Santorini, Milos and Meteora
🇨🇦 Vancouver, Victoria and Pemberton
🌴 Sarasota and Naples
🌃 Chicago
I had a great time at each place making connections, seeing beautiful landscapes and urbanscapes, and having foodie adventures. I hope 2026 is full of as much adventure for us!
I got this cheap $5 tulle from the internet and it it’s really the most amazing cat toy. It makes for good photo of my cute baby. Sushi looks like a painting.
This year Atlanta had a really lovely fall! It’s always a bit of a gamble if the weather will cooperate. Many years it is very dry and the colors fade from green quickly to brown. Other years it’s rainy and stormy so if there is any color it gets swept out of the trees. This year there was the perfect blend of autumn rain and dry days giving us weeks of bold and beautiful color. Driving around town was a real pleasure!
