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jenn schiffer's live laugh blog

weekly retro #30: live laugh cup

i just got home, full of veggie burger, from one of our favorite spots to go with a couple of local pals. the weather is fantastic, my edible is about to hit, here's a gif of a cup that took me an hour to convert from .mov last night:

animated gif of a paper cup spining on a small usb-powered turn table. the cup says phrases about loving hot drinks like "i heart hot cocoa" "i dream in chocolate" "keep calm and make coffee"

this cup is a souvenir from when i spoke at brooklyn web workers on monday. it's very live laugh love but about competing hot beverages, it's insane. my talk went well, it was a great crowd to speak at, and i think justin put together something really cool and important. my talk wasn't recorded, but since some folks have reached out asking for video i think i'll either do a public version of the talk on a livestream soon.

mirror selfie in the elevator alcove of Index. i'm dressed in all black and it's nighttime outside

then on tuesday, jamie and i presented robot karaoke at chinatown.js. this crowd was great too - a bit of overlap with the night before it turned out! one of the hosts sent a clip of the post-talk group sing which i added to this youtube short.

photo of me holding up my kobo e-book reader and it's got ina garten's "be ready when the luck happens" cover on it

after a couple days of writing, talks and community to and from the city, it was hard not to rot the next 48 hours. i kept things physically and mentally chill by organizing my space - and i found my freaking e-book reader that went missing in like 2018. the last book i read on it was bad blood lol. i charged it up and while smelling fragrance oils on stream the chat affirmed that i may be able to get library books on it. and i did! i'm like a third of the way in ina garten's memoir. i love libraries and technology!

screenshot of a candle science livestream that shows my chat saying 'have you blended every FO to see what notes you can identify the most lol'

i joined my first every candle science livestream and had a fun time demanding a true cavendish banana scent, evangelizing petrichor, and asking important questions to the very awesome experts at candle science. i don't know, though, if i sold fragrance oils i would absolutely mix them all together - at least for content!

photo of my table that has two plates full of my pixel-art inspired egg tealight candles (and one little sample tomato candle) near salt and pepper grinders and a FRESH NEW bottle of cholula

as far as my own candles go, i sold out of the first round of my first collection! this was exciting and affirming, and i celebrated by buying a ton of fragrance oils (that's why i was organizing them on my livestream). i did finish curing a fresh batch of nice tomato and next week i'll have more eggs in stock.scroll to the bottom of bugsrock.online to see how to sign up for the store newsletter and find out first about launches.

photo of my candle-making desk where I have a few hand dipped birthday candles that are “lilac” (purple) colored on the table, and there are some flower molds filled with the same purple wax and one of the candles I have stuck on a tin lid and it’s lit

i'm currently working on prototypes for the next collection, which is going to be a ~spooky~ version of the first one. i got to play around with beeswax for the first time since i was a teenager, and even back then it was just rolling sheets. this time, i was doing another first: hand-dipping candles to make birthday candles for an important friend having an important birthday. my first favorite part of candle-making is the experimentation and learning something new, and my second favorite is gifting what i make to cool people.

things i enjoyed this week

i need to remember that i'm getting bloodwork on tuesday morning and i feel like i am more likely to remember it by typing it out here and maybe some of you will remind me hehehe.

xoxo jenn

this was published August 31, 2025 under living working tech weekly-retro talks meetups movies concerts music candle-making bugs-rock suppliers candle-science beeswax robot-karaoke

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