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PlanktonPunkt Designs puzzles available in CreateJigsawPuzzles

link to order print on demand PlanktonPunkt Designs jigsaw puzzles (printed in China)

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Printify

link to order PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from the source

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Etsy

A link to order from a selection of PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from Etsy

Blog

  • July 16th, 2026

    Been busy, but managed to get some photography and short video clips, joined three together into a short silent video (standard stabilization artefacts apply), two clips of giant white poppies, probably Romneya or Matilija poppies which are native to California, and one clip of bees foraging in lavender.

    I like the floppy petals of the poppies. The lavender and bees seem to be an all year feature – when one lavender bed withers, another seems to begin to bloom somewhere else, if not immediately, then soon.

    Not all flowers are showy – here is Plantago (I don’t know the species, but it’s not Plantago major based on the narrow .leaves). I would love to process some day a photo of a Plantago flower from close up, they are quite funky to look at but difficult to photograph so as to show it.

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  • Update on the Ongoing Sale (Apology and Advertisement)

    PlanktonPunkt Designs failed the July 4th sale because of my bureaucratic error, so I’d like to apologize the inconvenience to any US person who were disappointed about the lack of access last weekend.

    My shop on Etsy is back on, with 25% sale within United States extended to July 16th as a minor compensation for the inconvenience.

    https://planktonpunktdesigns.etsy.com

    I will next be working on my pop up shop on Printify, hopefully to be restored by the end of day, with the same extension to the sales.

    https://planktonpunkt-designs.printify.me

    I dun messed up, sorry!

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  • Skipper Butterfly and Flowers, July 10th, 2026

    While walking with intention to snap photos of urban vegetation, I noticed a skipper butterfly within videoing distance. Quickly, a clip before it flies away! It did not. I took a second clip. The butterfly had slightly shifted. I waited and took three more clips in case the butterfly would do something interesting. It id not. It was mostly concentrating on florettes. Eventually, I continued my walk and left the butterfly at it.

    A bit of a slow paced video, but maybe somebody will find it ASMR despite the stabilization errors. Maybe I should invest on gimbal, but that would be one extra thing to carry for a rare moment (that will without gimbal be shaky or distorted depending on whether the original or the stabilized clips are used.)

    Sucking nectar. Occasionally shifting position.

    Some yellow flowers from July 10th, 2026, image cropped and colors adjusted brighter.

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  • Fuel Rumors.

    I’ll treat this as a rumor but where there is smoke, there could be fire. Some spot(s) in Texas are said to be running out of diesel and gasoline – this could be just a temporary and local supply chain hiccup, but in my lived experience, all sorts of hiccups are becoming the norm. Another rumor from the same report claims that New Jersey is running out of diesel and gasoline for big companies, as well as of motor oil. The motor oil issue spooked me already some months ago to buy a couple of pints extra in case I need it, when I learned that Toyota relaxed its oil specifications because there was not enough fancy oil available.

    The purported low price per barrel of crude may be due to demand destruction, or so it has been speculated. As economies crater (especially Chinese), the world oil consumption presumably goes down, and there is suddenly enough barrels after all. Problem: can official numbers of anything, including fuel supply and consumption, be trusted? And even if the numbers are real, are models correct?

    Meanwhile, I saw a video about people no longer affording fun like bowling, boating or going to movies. I think that entertainment downturn is also caused by demoralization. Nobody has time or energy for formerly fun hobbies, even if they had money. And people do still watch TV, play computer games and stream movies. They just are not consuming the new ones. I can sympathize. Call me old-fashioned, but I, too, used to watch more movies before COVID. I think that event fractured the society badly. Having said that, the last movie I saw in theater was Project Hail Mary, which I liked.

    The gasoline prices are currently lower but that may be temporary as the action in Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere intensifies.

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  • Food.

    Dead meat. And lots of it. In California, in July. Though I suspect most of the biomass stored there was not meat, more like a mix of meat, fish, ice cream, frozen fruit and vegetables, and lots and lots of TV dinners, imagine the smell of 65 million pounds of rotting food stuff. And logistics of dealing with the mess. The panel in the video behind the link tried to. In this case, I suspect flies and other scavengers like mice and ants will become a plague, but still preferable to the putrescing health hazard. Having seen the organizational abilities of California in general and LA region in particular (Palisades fires, for example), having the mess to fly away after the maggot phase might be the fastest and most efficient way of dealing with it.

    Heat dome is destroying our crops and cattle. Corn is currently silking, too much heat destroys the ears before they have formed. Soybean flowers are suffering, too. Cattle pastures are parched, meaning strain on supplemental feed supplies. Not to mention animals themselves at risk of heat strokes. And the farms are already under water stress, fighting for supplies.

    In general, our wheat production is the lowest in 50 years. The US wheat acreage is lowest in over a century and when weather and fertilizer effects are added, the amount of wheat to be produced is in danger.

    President has declared a national emergency over the availability of fertilizers. One reason for low wheat acreage is the unaffordability of fertilizer and if the farms do not get their fertilizer in the autumn, next year will be worse. This autumns fertilizer needs to start moving to wholesalers already to make it in time for the farmers. Next year’s crops depend on whether we can source enough now.

    The past few years have reminded me of Revelation, chapter 6, verses 5 – 6, where Famine is given orders in terms of food inflation.

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  • PlanktonPunkt Says ‘sup?’

    Hi Everyone!

    This 4th of July is 250th Anniversary for USA, so I though to set up a sale for my US customers.

    Traditional mathematics may not recognize 250% price cut, but lil’ PlanktonPunkt has a solution: 10 days x 25% sale sums to 250?

    Starting July 4th and ending July 13th, for ten days total, a sale of 25% on all items in PlanktonPunkt Designs shops in Printify pop-up shop and in Etsy, valid within United States of America.

    Happy Birthday USA!

    Click the pic to go to PlanktonPunkt Designs Printify pop-up shop.

    The link to planktonpunkt.etsy.com is here.

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  • Tree Bark, An Art Video

    Testing variations on a photo of tree bark (2026, June 2nd). I was thinking about uploading this or a shorter version to Etsy under my shop profile as an enticement for people to look at my designs. Also to Pinterest, if the video is short enough, and a higher resolution version into YouTube (as of June 28th, 2026, my previous art video about yellow flowers had had massive 7 views total – popularity eludes me.)

    Be forewarned, this video is over 2 minutes long.

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  • Experimenting with Multi-Item Listings (An Advertisement)

    Been busy with PlanktonPunkt Designs, trying to optimize my tags for Etsy (and Amazon) SEOs. That is surprisingly heavy work with uncertain results, but obviously my previous tags did not work since almost nobody visited my listings.

    While searching for words people might be interested in, I noticed eucalyptus having sufficient number of fans to show up in searches. Also, insulated coffee mugs. So I made eucalyptus art. And recycled my design onto multiple items, including insulated coffee mugs.

    While working on that, my print provider advertised a multi-item listing for themed items and of course I had to try it. Long story short, I now have a 5-item listing of desk mats (three sizes), a spiral notebook, mobile phone stand, a black ceramic mug (two sizes) and a black insulated mug, all with maximalist eclectic Summer Eucalyptus art based on a photo of an eucalyptus blooming in California summer. At least I hope it qualifies as maximalist and eclectic, but I could not define the style any better. At least I like the image, so there is that.

    I have posted the multi-item listing on Etsy, and it is now available for US customers. I don’t dare to even contemplate Amazon, and I have not yet explored the multi-item option (if any) for Printify pop-up store.

    Mockup of Summer Eucalyptus Desk mat, 16″ x 32″ version, 3mm thick neoprene

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  • Summer Solstice

    Also a Father’s Day in United States. Congratulations to all the fathers, it is, unironically, an important task.

    Since today is a celestial event, this is a good place to mention an update on K2-18b, this potentially hycean exoplanet, that may or may not harbor life (it resides in a habitable zone of a red dwarf but the spectral signs of biosignature molecules are not very reliable and the molecules may also have been formed by abiotic means.) Now, SETI had included this solar system to their radioastronomical survey for alien radio signals. They did not find any, but got plenty of data for future negative controls.

    IMHO, microbial life on exoplanets and larger moons is likely (how common is another matter), but assumption that alien civilizations would communicate via strong radio transmissions seems oddly specific. I expect that if we ever find proof of advanced material civilizations, it would be something like Dyson structures or remnants of extraterrestrial advanced materials not formed by natural processes.

    I thought to get some photos of the sunset of the longest day of the year, but gray clouds had crept over and obscured the sky. It often happens in Berkeley, days are sunny but as the evening sets, the cloud cover spreads from sea to hills. I did not get up there, but in many nights, the blanket of water which is cloud cover over the flats is fog or mist in the hillside. So, instead, here is a picture of jasmine flowers, size reduced from the original taken earlier today.

    These are either from South Berkeley or from North Oakland, the city border crosses the block where the plant grows.

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  • Midsummer Day

    Still eschewing traditional celebrations.

    Decided instead to make an art video illustrating some variations in a theme, based on a photograph of some yellow flowers (looks like they are related to agaves or aloes) taken in Berkeley, CA, June 2nd, 2026. Just as a demonstration of the types of designs I have so far usually used for PlanktonPunkt Designs.

    I am planning to make more of these, occasionally (the next one will probably be about tree bark), and post them here, Pinterest and/or YouTube.

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