New artwork: Into the Wilderness.
Blog
Things on my mind #6
- Drawing with pencil or pen on paper is so much more satisfying than drawing on my iPad.
- I went dairy-free for three weeks to try to rid myself of the nasal congestion I’ve had for fourteen years. Didn’t work.
- It was kind of surreal hearing about Lahaina on fire. We visited there back in April, walked up and down Front Street. All of that’s gone now. Sad.
- Summer has ended and the kids are back in school. I miss having them home during the day.
- My dad’s headstone was finally installed, almost a year later. I’ve felt an increasing sense of sadness as we approach that first anniversary. The memories from that week of searching for him have been coming back, after lying mostly dormant for months.
- I need to play around with Blender’s geometry nodes some more.
- Tried using my iPhone 12 Mini again. Man, do I miss that form factor. So much easier on my hands than the 14. I sure hope the market’s aversion to small phones stops at some point.
Links #82
David Pierce on Keegan McNamara’s wooden computer. When I first read about this, I hoped the computer itself was actually made out of wood, but alas, it’s just the case.
Tom Simonite on Sam Zeloof building semiconductors in his parents’ garage. I’m intrigued by the idea of tinkerer-scale computing — less powerful, but perhaps more sustainable.
Lincoln Michel on magical realism vs. urban fantasy. I haven’t read much magical realism, I’m realizing. Probably should change that. Any recommendations?
Erik Hoel on the UFO craze being created by government nepotism and incompetent journalism (his words). This does seem to be one of the more reasonable and balanced takes on UAPs.
Neil Gaiman on actual magic. Yes.
New artwork: He Saw and Heard Much.
Links #81
Jim Nielsen on disability. “1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.”
MoonBit, a new Wasm-first language. Still early on, but looks quite interesting. Almost as fast as Rust, too, and I like what I see on the syntax page.
Bryan Braun on good eating habits. Wise advice here.
Ronan Farrow on Elon Musk’s shadow rule. Incredibly disturbing. “There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space.” And: “Current and former officials from NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration told me that Musk’s influence had become inescapable in their work, and several of them said that they now treat him like a sort of unelected official.”
Julia Evans on brag documents. I’ve been calling mine “work accomplishments,” but I don’t update it as often as I probably should.
New artwork: No Man Can Serve Two Masters.
Made in Blender. This also uses a displacement on a plane for the ground texture, with a little more texturing applied in post in Affinity Photo.
New artwork: Wise as Serpents, and Harmless as Doves.
This uses the Blender heightfield technique I wrote about in Prints 2.1. I made a grayscale texture — Figma for the base, Cirque + SVG filters for the circles, textures applied in Affinity Photo — and then used that as a displacement on a plane. I also exported a color map from Figma for the coloring. Little bit of fog and chromatic aberration added in as well.
It took me a while to get around to this, but I’ve finally posted the code for tabular pedigrees, family pedigrees, and family sheets (which includes ancestor line charts and family sparklines).
Links #80
Leah Spencer on reviving old typefaces for film and TV. Mmm.
The Church released a new version of the mobile Sacred Music app that basically has responsive sheet music, that idea I posted about years ago. (They call it “resize sheet music.”) I used the feature yesterday in sacrament meeting and it was so much easier to read the lyrics. Also see Sejiko’s responsive sheet music with CSS Grid.
Michal Krasnopolski’s minimalist movie posters. These are great.
Henrik Karlsson on publishing less frequently (because of spending more time on writing). “Each time I’ve given in to my impulse to ‘optimize’ a piece it has performed massively better (in terms of how much it’s been read, how many subscribers it’s generated, and, most importantly, the number of interesting people brought into my world).”
Dang, coconut crabs are freaky.
New artwork: Only One. And yes, it also looks like Froot Loops or Cheerios.
