Blog: #links

Lincoln Michel on making your novel more like Moby-Dick. “Why shouldn’t writers follow their obsessions and interests and strange ideas? The result is almost always going to be more memorable than an unthinking devotion to plot beats and character arcs.” I like this.

Hillary Predko on surgery trainers. That first image? Not cupcakes. (Seems like a great way to learn, though.)

Precondition on home row mods. Ooh. Interesting idea.

Benjamin Breen on the open-stack library. While I understand the move away from open stacks, it still makes me so, so sad. I’ve spent many an hour perusing shelves, letting serendipity guide me. There’s something magical about walking aisles lined with books. (This from a guy who pretty much only reads ebooks nowadays.)

Monaspace, GitHub’s new coding font superfamily, with a interesting “texture healing” idea. (Not sure how I feel about that, but glad to see innovation in that space.) I’m still using Go Mono.

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Ben Werd on journaling in private with friends. I’d like this. This gave me a curious idea: an unlisted RSS feed with no web counterpart. Similar to the occasional RSS-only posts that some folks do on their blogs, but with post URLs that don’t actually go anywhere. Effectively private without having to deal with authentication. (For the paranoid, maybe each reader gets their own unique URL to make it easy to track down any leaks and give the whole thing an espionage vibe.) Maybe I’ll do this someday.

Dorian Taylor on programmable software being accessible software. In particular the bit about “no UI without API”: “Every meaningful thing you can do to the application state in the user interface should correspond to exactly one subroutine, appropriately parametrized.” Which makes me think about Blender’s Python API — whenever you do something in the UI, there’s a log that shows how to do that action via the API. (Or at least there was; I haven’t checked recently to see if it’s still there.)

Speaking of which, Blender 4.0 was released. The fractal noise on the Voronoi texture node looks yum. I’ll admit to being a smidge sad to see Inter replace the Deja Vu Sans as the UI font, but I’ll cope.

Robin Berjon’s series on reimagining parts of the web. The web tiles idea is intriguing.

Jeff Sandberg on CSS being fun again. I need to make time to get familiar with all the new dazzle in CSS land. (I’ve read about most of it, but I haven’t gotten it into my fingers yet.)

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Julian Gough on cosmological natural selection and universes, um, reproducing. Look, I have no idea whether he’s right, but regardless: what a fascinating idea.

Devine Lu Linvega on computing and sustainability and permaculture. I think about this often — smaller, simpler systems, little VMs and emulators, and preservation. Not sure yet what it means for my work, but I hope to someday do something in this space.

Nate Bargatze’s “Washington’s Dream” sketch on SNL. Too true. We’ve enjoyed watching Nate’s stand-up comedy specials.

The most spoken languages in each U.S. state besides English and Spanish. Interesting!

Nabil Maynard on the handcrafted artisanal web. It delights me to see more people return to homesteading now that the glamorous yet shoddy apartment towers of social media have begun crumbling.

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Whew, didn’t realize it’s been two months since I last posted one of these. Starting to catch up, and going light on commentary to facilitate that:

Dave Karpf on Marc Andreesen’s techno-optimist manifesto.

Dieter Rams Palette. Love this.

Chris Coyier on some new CSS functions.

Hilton F. Japyassú and Kevin N. Laland on spider cognition.

Ben Coxworth on a ten-second voice test that apparently can detect type 2 diabetes.

Roger Pimentel on patriotism and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Agreed.

Guardian writers on school lunches across Europe. This is great.

Jason Kottke on how some English birds were given people’s names. This is also great.

Benjamin Breen on the Herculaneum scroll and cash prizes for historical mysteries.

Jake Lazaroff on web components outliving JavaScript frameworks.

Joanna Thompson on how many animals have ever existed on Earth. Whew! That’s a lot!

John Gruber on the aftermath of gun violence always being the time to push for gun legislation. Yes, yes, yes, 100%.

Vasilis van Gemert on the UX of HTML.

Simon K. Jones on the story loom, an interesting idea about writing.

Roger Pimentel on Tim Ballard and Ezra Taft Benson and the Latter-day Saints’ relationship with the far right. Agreed.

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Peter Dizikes on the new “whom of which” linguistic trend. This…may be testing my descriptivist tendencies to their limits.

SFINCS, the new Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (ala SPFBO and SPSFC). Looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.

Rocumentaries, a curated list of streaming documentaries. I don’t watch many documentaries but this seemed like a decent list for when I’m in the mood.

Emily Temple on Mark Twain inventing the bra clasp.

Paul Robert Lloyd’s classnames, thematically grouped lists of words to help with naming things like HTML/CSS classes. I love lists of words. (Helping my kid study for the spelling bee was quite fun.)

iOS Safari has a limit of 500 tabs at a time. Found that out through personal experience. (Current count: 25.)

Kris Sowersby on the design of Klim’s Martina Plantijn typeface. Enjoyed this. I don’t know if I can overstate how much I love a good typeface.

Dave Cramer on how Hachette makes books with HTML and CSS, from 2017. I knew Hachette had been using web tech for a while but didn’t know they were using Prince (with its TeX justification algorithm, which makes sense). If only the open source alternatives like Paged.js also had the TeX algorithm. (Maybe they do; I haven’t checked lately.)

Alice Ching on how the implementation of Figma draws inspiration from the gaming world. A fun read.

Fabien Sanglard on the core concepts associated with the creation of an executable (via C/C++).

Fully Stacked on the View Transitions API and the Navigation API, re: SPAs and MPAs.

Medieval murder maps for London, York, and Oxford.

Becky Ferreira on a new study reporting that people experience heightened consciousness when dying. I don’t think this necessarily proves anything about the afterlife, but it does show that interesting things happen in the transition out of this life.

Jim Nielsen on building great software by repeatedly encountering it. 100%. I feel like this made a huge difference when I was a designer at the BYU library, where I was using our apps all the time for my own use (checking out loads of books, mainly). This is also why I like making my own tools.

Molly Templeton on reading habits. Also see Tracy Durnell.

Utah’s flag status page. I recently discovered this and found it to be helpful when seeing flags around town at half-mast and not knowing why.

David Heaney on Meta’s new photorealistic VR avatars. These might be coming out the other side of the uncanny valley, much as it surprises me to say it.

Brennan doing “Sauron but it’s Donald Trump” on Game Changer. This is so amazing.

Adam Mastroianni on why scientific discoveries sometimes take so long to happen.

Jason Kottke on Erik Wernquist’s One Revolution per Minute video. That’s a pretty fast rotation, subjectively.

Morgan Housel’s thoughts on writings. I don’t particularly like venture capitalists these days, but there was some interesting food for thought here.

Orion, a “a [free] small, fun app that helps you use your iPad as an external HDMI display for any camera, video game console, or even VHS.”

Tantek Çelik on more thoughtful reading and writing on the web. Loved this. I think this is probably why I like blogging so much. It’s more quiet.

Josh Collinsworth with a message from the captain of the S.S. Layoff. Ha. Most of this is too true (in my experience, anyway).

Marc on software that fits in your backpack. Small tools, basically. I like it.

Nolen’s Flappy Dird, a Flappy Bird clone implemented in the macOS Finder (of all places).

ABA Games on the joys of small game development. I really liked this — these types of games feel like a fun size to work on. Especially liked the one-button page, not because I care much about one-button games (I don’t) but because it was so fun to see all the GIFs of the small games. Inspiring.

The Delta Wasp 2040, a 3D printer that can do clay and other ceramic materials.

Evan Ackerman on Disney’s new robot. Fun to see animators brought into the loop.

Jason Kottke on the unbearable slowness of light, from 2015. Puts things into perspective.

Bryan Braun’s new Let’s Get Creative page, a collection of high-quality, free, online creativity tools. Fun!

Sherry Ning on technology and craftsmanship. I don’t know that I fully agree with the premise here, but I still really like articles about craftsmanship. Recommended.

On the first Vesuvius Challenge winner. Excited to see where all of this leads.

Charles Q. Choi on using incoherent holography to change focus after a photo is taken.

Ramsey Nasser’s قلب, a programming language where code is written entirely in Arabic. Love this.

Richard Rutter on the sad state of break-after: avoid browser support. Yep.

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Xavi Ruiz showing where people in Europe live in apartments vs. houses.

Sarah C. P. Williams on a new inverse vaccine that could treat multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune diseases. Oh, I hope this works out.

Benj Edwards on AI-generated spiral village. Cool. And trippy.

Abbey Interrante on a coronal mass ejection recorded by the Parker Solar Probe. The video is fascinating.

The Tree Projects, photographing super tall trees.

Max Read’s literary history of fake texts in Apple’s marketing materials. Ha.

TypeScript Origins: The Documentary. I still haven’t watched any of these, though I’ve been meaning to. (Video isn’t really my thing.)

University of Liverpool archaeologists have discovered a manmade wooden structure dating from 476,000 years ago. “Expert analysis of stone tool cut-marks on the wood show that these early humans shaped and joined two large logs to make a structure, probably the foundation of a platform or part of a dwelling.”

Carson Gross on view source. Yep.

The Linotype Book Project, “documenting the journey of Doug Wilson while he researches, writes, and documents the history of the Linotype and its outsized impact on printing, journalism, and society.” Looks interesting.

The State of HTML survey is now open. By the same people who do the State of JS and State of CSS surveys.

Imba, a full-stack web programming language. I don’t think I’d use it, but it’s an interesting idea.

Thomas Kole’s renderings of Tenochtitlan, a 3D reconstruction of the city as it might have looked in 1500. Cool.

Mike Crittenden on farming your gut, so to speak. From a quote in the post: “Consider your gut microbiome as a farm and your microbiota as your own personal farm animals, then decide what to feed them to optimize their diversity, stability, and health, and optimize production of beneficial signaling molecules that affect our brains.”

Jason Kottke on Nikola Faller’s artistic leaf raking. Cool.

Josh Collinsworth on Tailwind. I wouldn’t mind never having to work with Tailwind again, honestly. I like real CSS.

Ed Nawotka on Bookshop.org’s plans to expand into ebooks. Ooh. This is very intriguing.

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Danilo Campos on how it’s easier than ever to build hardware these days.

Jennifer Champoux in BYU Studies on the Book of Mormon Art Catalog. I was particularly interested in the section on production patterns over time.

Ted Bushman & Kristin Perkins in The Season on weird Latter-day Saint art. I’ve thought about going in this direction, but I don’t know, I don’t think it’s me. (But I’m fine making non-religious weird art and hope to do more of that soon.)

Steph Ango on files over apps. “File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.” Agreed.

Robin Sloan on what a wizard would read. “I believe it is time, instead, for creative investigations of decency, virtue, and goodness. If that sounds boring: yes! That’s why the project is needed! Let’s learn how to render complex and compelling the characters who are trying their best to live correctly — and sometimes, gasp, even succeeding.”

Font Bakery, a command-line tool for validating font quality. Nice.

Cindy Blanco on words shared in all languages.

Steven Johnson on the return of the progress city along with Victor Gruen and Walt Disney. Interesting. This reminded me that I need to read Jane Jacobs.

NOAA on an unidentified specimen found on the bottom of the ocean. “While we were able to collect the ‘golden orb’ and bring it onto the ship, we still are not able to identify it beyond the fact that it is biological in origin.”

Bun 1.0 has been released. I haven’t actually used it on anything yet, but whenever I next work on a command-line JavaScript project, I plan to.

Sonia Fernandez on reading large letters through walls via Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi has a surprising amount of other uses.

Jennifer Ouellette on scientists figuring out how to write in water, using micron-scale pens.

Matthew Inman on creativity. Vulgar as always with The Oatmeal, but some good points.

Roger Pimentel on the plan of salvation. Food for thought. This is part three of three.

Lincoln Michel on writing for your best readers. I need to remember this.

Maxime Heckel on raymarching.

VÉgA Vocabulary of Ancient Egyptian site. This is really well done. Highly recommended if you’re studying Middle Egyptian. (Though the orthography of the name is admittedly a little awkward.)

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Matt Stevens on old-looking book covers for movies. Love these. So good.

Paul Butler interviews Bastien Dolla about Rayon, the collaborative architecture design tool. Found this interesting.

Matt Bell on training your weaknesses and lessons from running that apply to writing. “I’ve given dozens of craft talks about novel writing since Refuse to Be Done came out, and one of the most reliably reassuring things I tell people in those talks is that the task on any given day of writing a novel is never to write a novel. A day’s work might be a scene or a chapter; it might be a paragraph or a sentence; it might be outlining or research.”

Tiny News Collective. “We support the voices historically excluded from media and media ownership by providing tools, resources and community of learning to help people build sustainable news organizations that reflect and serve their communities.” This is great.

EmNudge’s Watlings, educational exercises for learning WAT (WebAssembly Text Format), similar to Rustlings and Ziglings. Looking forward to working through these.

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2023 State of CSS results. I mostly check this for the features section, to see what I haven’t yet heard about (like line-clamp).

Matthias Ott on reading with your fingers. I do this sometimes when I want to read faster. Works fairly well.

Siderea on issues with the HTML ordered list element. “I start with a single HTML tag and end with the downfall of civilization. Not joking.” Some really good points here.

Jason Kottke on Adeline Harris’s 19th-century autograph quilt. Fun.

Spectrolite, a macOS app “for making colorful risograph prints and zines and books more easily.” I don’t have a risograph, but the posterization UI is cool and the imposition functionality looks helpful for booklet/zine printing.

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The Flux manifesto. “We founded Flux to make atoms as malleable as bits. We want to take the hard out of hardware, to make it as easy for a teenager to build an iPhone as a website. We want to unleash the latent human potential held back by the high barriers to creating breakthrough physical products. We want to accelerate technological progress by making it possible for anyone, regardless of background or resources, to bring their best ideas to life in physical form.” It’s a corporate manifesto so take with a huge grain of salt, but the idea is interesting. Democratizing hardware creation is intriguing.

Eliot Peper on how to become a better conversationalist. “But sometimes when someone asks you a question, they don’t really care about the answer. What they actually want is for you to tell them something interesting.” A take I haven’t heard before.

Open house begins for Bangkok Thailand Temple. Lovely to see this. It feels like it hasn’t been that long since I was on my mission hoping Thailand would get a temple, and now here we are.

Anton Howes on making historical sources available. “Just as in the sciences it is considered good practice to make one’s data available, in history it should perhaps be a requirement to upload to some public repository the photographs or transcriptions of any cited archival sources that are not otherwise freely accessible online.” 100%.

Statecraft, a newsletter by Santi Ruiz and Jake Leffew about how successful government initiatives happened. “We think these interviews can serve as roadmaps for readers trying to get big hairy things done in the public sector, and illuminate the inner workings of government for the policy-curious. We also think they’re tremendous stories.”

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