Nathan Upchurch

Look familiar?

When Eugene of Bhagwan Incense first reached out offering samples I was hesitant to accept them; my experiences with Indian style incense at that point had been less than stellar.

Content warning: sexual assault.

It’s been a while since my last update; I wanted to finish refreshing the style of my website before writing anything.

Some time ago, I reviewed a variety of Wild Berry incense sticks and cones.

If, like me, you have ever lived in the U.S.A., and if, like me, you are of a sufficiently distinguished BMI so as to rank highly the invention of comestibles, you will agree[1] that Ranch (enPR: rāyŭnch) dressing is one of the great American inventions—r…

In response to this recent post by gary online: I am absolutely not someone who derives their worth or identity by what they do to earn a crust.

My last attempt at a sweet agarwood stick was okay but, as I noted, there was room for improvement.

In the interest of transparency: as readers may recall, I paid Dave a visit at the company’s workshop in 2024.

In case you haven’t heard, Eleventy, the excellent static site generator that I use for this very website has been acquired by Font Awesome.

Maybe this is just my algorithm, but I just can’t escape Nathan and Sons Underbrush Remineralizing Gum on Instagram.

Woo-woo incense description generator # Whether they are spiritually inclined or mere earth-bound fragrance-heads, all sorts of people are attracted to the fragrant world of incense.

I found this questionnaire on the website of my Geekring neighbor Corvidae.

Whether discussing wine, spirits, perfumes, or incense, there is much back and forth on the subject of quality.

During a Black Friday sale, I bought some cultivated agarwood “chips” [1] from Crassna Khmer.

Christmas time # Sol sneakily decorated the apartment while I was busy earlier in the month, with two wreaths they made a year or two ago with parts from a trip to Michaels, and some paper chains we made last year (?)

Flora Botanical Incense is the brainchild of Alyssa Severeid, who is also behind the Incense Explorer podcast[1].

These sticks appear to be made of a masala hand-rolled on a bamboo splint with a light dusting of wood powder.

These sticks appear to be made of masala hand-rolled onto a rather thick bamboo splint.

Not much of tremendous interest has been going on lately; I took the week off because I forget to take time during the year, and thanksgiving is as good excuse as any to cram in some PTO at the end of the year.

For my younger readers: much new music is mixed in such a way that it sounds good on tinny (and tiny) smartphone speakers, often at the expense of sound quality on better audio systems.

I occasionally talk to people facing what I can best describe as job paranoia—the fear that their boss is out to get them, see them fired, et cetera.

I’m pretty happy with the look and feel of my website but, looking around the indieweb, I see so many creative and fun websites with neat animations and interactive features.

Just a quick post to let all of you incense-heads out there know that I’ve put together a page compiling all of the resources I can find on incense and incense making.

I’m not a big perfume guy.

In a recent post, our friend Steve of Incense in The Wind described those with an aversion to perfume-dipped incense sticks as prejudiced.

Someone recently shared with me transcripts and audio recordings that have been going around of comments that are alleged to have been made by the owner of a well-regarded perfumery.

Since I started writing here in earnest, I’ve been enchanted by the idea of having a proper name for my humble blog.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about incense making; to be honest, things have slowed down a little.

In my last entry I noted that I was trying to be a little less salty this year, and I’m pleased to say that it’s paying off.

Anyone familiar with my blog will know that I like to write about incense.

Update: Boy Vienna’s 11:11 sticks have since also been reviewed on rauchfahne.de.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a fantasy RPG in which you play as Ged Gerd Gerald Geralt, a super masculine generic-white-man protagonist who grumbles everything he says like Batman.

I’m forever keeping my eyes peeled for brick-and-mortar stores in my city that sell decent incense, particularly Japanese incense.

In June of 2024, I purchased Pikake Jasmine of Yi-Xin Craft Incense’s floral Faces in Bloom collection.

Content Warning: Misogyny; Mention of sexual assault.

If you haven’t seen this going around the internet, you might be spending too little time on the indieweb!

Some time ago I as I perused the incense display of a nearby Whole Foods, hoping to see the Shoyeido sticks that once graced the shelves, I noticed a range of Indian-style sticks, their otherwise matching packaging in a variety of colors.

Looking around the internet, you could be forgiven for thinking that Scribus is dead.

You might seen my recent toot about the fancy new “How Much of a Linux Nerd are You?”

The German neue deutsche härte group Rammstein is known for many things.

Trump has been inaugurated; Elon Musk is performing Nazi salutes in public, the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the White House Spanish-language pages have been shut down, whitehouse.gov now features some sort of onanistic hyper-nationalist…

Update 2025-06-24: You can buy the final extruder, replacement nozzles, and accessories from outside of China via SuperBuy.

Smoke was the first breath of early civilization, its rising plumes a synonym for human presence.

Update 2025-10-01: See the /incense page for additional resources.

Plant resins come with varying amounts of water-soluble gum content.

I’ve been meaning to add an image gallery feature to this website for ages, and I’m happy to finally announce that I’ve done it!

For my younger readers: much new music is mixed in such a way that it sounds good on tinny (and tiny) smartphone speakers, often at the expense of sound quality on better audio systems.

Update 2025-11-21: I actually got rid of of all web components on this site because they were heavy, unnecessary, and didn’t render in folks’ RSS readers.

About a month ago I moved just up the street, so to speak.