New artwork: They Who Were Converted.
Blog
New artwork: As Many as Believed. And yes, my secret goal is to get y’all to think of my art whenever you see a pepperoni pizza.
New artwork: Suddenly a Light Descended.
Links #79
Google’s Typograms, a lightweight web-based image format for describing diagrams. “Unlike libraries like Mermaid, typograms are defined typographically (WYSWYG), rather than semantically (a transformation from a high level description to graphics), which picks a different trade-off: it gives you more control over the rendering (expressivity) at the cost of making you type more (productivity).” I’ve been thinking about using something in this vein (probably more Mermaid than typograms) to outline fiction.
Josh Collinsworth on React. “React has aged, and how I don’t think most people realize how much or how poorly.” I wouldn’t mind bidding adieu to React, though that doesn’t seem particularly likely for many more years given how entrenched it is in the industry.
David Pierce on the upcoming Slack redesign.
OFRAK Tetris, which “is like the Tetris you know and love, except the blocks are assembly instructions.” It uses Unicorn Engine (which branched off QEMU, I believe) to actually execute the instructions in an emulated CPU. I don’t think quickly enough (or know enough assembly) to play it very well, but I love the idea. The aesthetic is fun, too.
Slime Mold Time Mold on vacations and weight loss. “There are lots of stories where an American goes on vacation for a few weeks, to Europe or Asia or wherever, and loses a significant amount of weight without any special effort…. There are also some stories that are exactly the opposite: someone from Europe or Asia or wherever goes on vacation to America for a few weeks, and GAINS a significant amount of weight without any changes.” Fascinating anecdotal phenomenon.
New artwork: That They May Be Light II.
Booknotes 2.8
Nonfiction
- Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen, an important and fascinating history of North America that shows how much control Indigenous peoples retained over four hundred years of European colonization. Learned a lot — so much I didn’t know. More people should read this. Also: so much bloodshed. I wish it all hadn’t happened that way.
- When the Heavens Went on Sale, by Ashlee Vance, about the new space economy. Loved it! Utterly enthralling for this (admittedly occasional) space nerd. The Planet Labs section was particularly fun to read, since I now work there, but I also really enjoyed the rest of the book. Recommended if you like reading about people building things or about space.
Fiction
- The Will of the Many, by James Islington. Oh my goodness, I loved this. A lot. One of my favorite fantasy reads in a while. Really liked the Roman-inspired setting (similar to some of K. J. Parker’s work), even if some of the faux-Latin declensions were wrong. And the twists at the very end! Very much looking forward to the future books in the series, and also to going back and reading his Licanius trilogy even if it isn’t as good. Also, when I came across scoff (in the context of scoffing down food), I totally thought it was a misspelling of scarf. Then I googled it and, well, I was wrong. Ha.
- The Black God’s Drums, by P. Djèlí Clark. Novella. Really liked the world and characters. I don’t think the ending worked as well for me — the solution didn’t feel as earned as I wanted it to — but I think I’m being overly picky here.
Links #78
Jess Zafarris on the etymology of outrage, which does not in fact come from either out or rage.
Rachel Zack on Felt’s new zoom-based styling and layer visibility. Ooh. Well done. It feels like this idea could also have application in other types of UI, though I haven’t thought about it enough to know what those might be.
Video of Naveen Kumar setting a new world record for smashing walnuts with one’s forehead. Is this a worthwhile use of a forehead? Humanity is weird sometimes.
Samuel Axon on the passing of Bram Moolenaar, the creator of Vim, at age 62. Sad.
Wikipedia’s 2023 in science so far. A fun page to peruse from time to time. For example, I didn’t know that last month they found naturally occurring graphene for the first time. The “predicted and scheduled events” section is also fun — I didn’t know Rocket Lab was sending a probe to Venus!
New artwork: On These Two Commandments II. I think this new (to me) style might end up being a good fit for this type of symbolic art.
Links #77
Michael John Goodman’s digitized edition of William Morris’s Kelmscott Chaucer. I don’t know that I agree with the “most beautiful book ever produced” bit, but it’s certainly an interesting book, and nice to see another digitized version of it. The ornamentation on the page borders has given me some inspiration, too. (More to come on that later, if anything ever comes of it.)
Doug Wilson on Tobias Frere-Jones designing the Whitney typeface. I also enjoyed the posts about designing Archer and Surveyor.
The Judd Foundation library site. Wow. That’s amazing.
Gabarito, a nice, friendly (and newly open-sourced) geometric sans typeface. Seems like it would work well on a picture book.
Maya on dark mode in the ancient world (purple parchment, etc.), and “ancient” is used loosely here. Never seen any of these before, but wow, they’re fascinating.
For the Lord God Giveth Light
I have a new piece, For the Lord God Giveth Light, that I painted for the I Lexi exhibition which opens August 18 at Writ & Vision in Provo.
The piece is a reference to 2 Nephi 31:3. “For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.” The large white circle represents God; the small yellow shapes represent God’s light; the red shapes at bottom represent us mortals in our variety.
Prints won’t be available until after the exhibition closes. (Though the framed print in the show will be available for sale.)