A running feed of links I've found interesting, with notes on why.
When you change the way you write to get points on a social platform, you also change the way you think. You are allowing big corporations / billionaires to control your though process. The people that own these companies don't allow their children to use their platforms because they know it's brain rot; you should take the hint.
It's amazing how cheaply you can buy a person's brain; a few thumbs up or hearts and you are just giving it away.
example I ran into today can't say gun, have to say something else or the algorithm will penalize me.
what if instead of html with javascript (allowing ads, tracking, popups) the web was just markdown files. Just think of all the people that would die inside when they couldn't have their website popup a box asking you to join their news letter, or all the marketing people that couldn't track your mouse around their website to best figure out where to place a button for maximum clickage.
This was in one of the linked posts:
I don't care for podcasts that begin with 15 minutes of giggling between the hosts who I don't know so I don't get how cute it is
--scripting.com
and that is 110% why I've never gotten into podcasts; just the banal back and forth for 20 minutes before they talk about whatever the podcast is actually about, but I guess some people just like noise in their ear so they don't really care if it's about the topic, or people just talking nonsense for 20 minutes.
These articles also touch on a new trend, of providing services people have been asking for forever to LLMS but not humans; for example at work we've always asked for documentation but no one had time to write it, but now everyone is writing documentation for the LLMS. Maybe it's because the LLMs will actually read the documentation unlike people so you feel it's actually useful now?
But back to the markdown web; we've gone full circle and are back to books.
The point of the zettelkasten is to think on paper. Using a physical zettelkasten introduces friction that slows you down and forces you review your notes and think more. I'm not sure what's up with these people that use AI to take and sort and maintain their notes; what exactly are you accomplishing there besides copying the internet to another place?
People are moving back to records, cds, ipods to add more friction to how they listen to music instead of just letting corporate fire hoses drench them in the slop of the day. Some people are enjoying the friction of carrying a real camera to take photos.
Corporations are going to use AI to remove all friction from your life so you can be like the people in Wally; fat blobs floating on chairs doing absolutely nothing, but at least 100% friction free.
(warning, looking at this guys site, it is a bunch of get rich quick by scamming other people on how to get rich quick schemes, and anti ai note taking with all ai generated images around the content, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
I don't watch 45min youtube clips, so I just had AI summarize it for me, but the summary sounded good:
The video's central message is to be intentional about how you consume and produce media online
I think the reason we are in the situation we are in now, is that people don't care about what they consume, as long as they have SOMETHING to consume; constantly. Being intentional means curating what you find interesting and blocking out all the other crap, but if your goal is to just be constantly "entertained" then you don't care what the sludge fire hose is shooting into your brain, just that it doesn't stop.
I used to read hackernews every day, until I started paying attention to what I actually found interesting on the site, and the answer was nothing. I would just click links, look at the page for 2 seconds, realize it was mostly clickbait, and then close the page and move to the next thing. I've updated my RSS reader to have a feature to rank pages as you see them so you can figure out what feeds you have that you actually don't find interesting.
One of the nice things about AI programming, is you can quickly make your own tools. This is becoming more important since the large corporations that currently supply tools to us only care about sucking us in and making us more and more brain dead. With my own RSS reader, I'm able to filter whatever I want out (or in), rank feeds for later removal, or whatever I find useful to manage the flow of information; contrast that with what you get from the major platforms of no filter, no choices, and a fire hose of sludge directly into your brain.
You don't actually need the internet to survive
I like this. Although with the internet, we've let our libraries wither and die a bit. It would be nice to go to a library and browse books, but the one in my town while it does have books, doesn't have a lot.
summary of the video:
The video opens with the concept that as AI-generated content becomes cheaper and easier to produce, the internet is increasingly being flooded with it. The creator compares this to the Library of Babel — a theoretical library containing every possible book — where, yes, the greatest art and the answer to every question technically exists within it, but you'll never find it because it's buried under an infinite sea of garbage.
Survival Strategies
The second half pivots to practical responses for both consuming and producing content online:
The video's central message is to be intentional about how you consume and produce media online. Rather than passively surfing algorithmic feeds, the creator encourages viewers to take an active, discerning role in curating what they expose themselves to, and to not be afraid to step away from platforms that no longer serve them.
i've always like the idea of thinking on paper, or offloading your thought process to another medium to increase what you are able to think about.
take messy notes, outside of any system, just collect information you find interesting. then come back and figure out how that information could connect to some permanent notes you already have and link those ideas into your zettelkasten. This process forces you to first think about your notes in your own words, figure out how they could be useful, and to review your existing notes to find a place to attach them.
It only makes structured decisions (yes/no) , doesn't chat, doesn't talk, doesn't try to take over the internet. And it's super cheap which means you can add it to your software as really smart if(...) {} statements, like if( this is contains political crap) { delete_message() }
All the large corporations are spending trillions on LLMS, giving use stuff that barely works amid hallucinations, and all we want is: is this call spam? drop it, is this email spam? drop it, is this SMS political crap? drop it. I'm looking forward to a web browser that has the ability to block spam, political messages, hate messages, comments; all in real time.
Software theater (like security theater but for creating software) ; companies want to move fast and add new features that customers don't want or need so they can make it look like you are getting something for that monthly subscription they are charging. Now with AI they can create these unneeded features even faster, and need even more money to pay for the AI that is creating these useless features. These software companies need to constantly patch their buggy code, that no none wanted, because they slopped it out as fast as they could to meet internal metrics the customers don't care about. What was the last "new" feature you've gotten from your software that you actually found useful ; what do you really need your document software to do besides just let you write some text in a file? Every time my os updates anymore, it's just getting worse, more and more feature I just don't want ; with macos it's usually features some designer with a huge ego is pushing out to pad his resume.
You could dedicate the time to play software theater, or just install a stable OS, and let your company do it's job.
The last version of the OS got ruined with Liquid Glass, and then they ruined this version by vibe coding and not bothering to test. This is hastening my move to linux where I hopefully don't need to deal with this trash.
Golden Gate needed a whopping 17GB more space on the M1 MacBook Air, thanks to a mandatory multi-gigabyte language model download that kicks in automatically the first time you connect a freshly restored Golden Gate Mac to the Internet.
Loop a song at 50% speed but keeping the correct tones so you can learn how to play it.
Playing a synth like a synth and not a piano.
learn to play the guitar more like Hendrix
Linux tiling window manager for Linux / Wayland that looks good. I've been getting back into Linux on the desktop after MacOS Aqua 2 turned me off to the Mac/Apple platform. The biggest thing holding me on right now is Ableton and Affinity, although after Affinity sold their soul to some AI company, I'm looking for a replacement for that; too bad, because it was really good software before they turned their back on their paying users to generate slop to sell more AI content. Currently for Ableton, I'm thinking of using https://www.bitwig.com , and not sure if there is a good Affinity product replacement on Linux (gimp/inkscape would be the closest.)
to "go" with the comic book , but there doesn't really seem to be a way to link up the music with the comic book; they speak of chapters, but there are no chapters in the comic book, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
After reading the comic book, the track names make more sense, but that requires reading the comic book once, then coming back and reading it again with the correct track names.
as far as the story goes, I'd give it a low meh/10 , I didn't care much for the art style, The music was repetitive but ok another meh/10.
The story doesn't really make sense; a large monster comes to the surface turns a guy inside out and then returns back to "hell" . That guy is someone's daddy, so she needs revenge, so her and 2 other guys decide they are going to go hunt this monster with no prep and just their pistols. They eventually make it to the monster and realize they have no way to fight it, nor know how to kill it. The two dudes get killed, the woman runs off and then thinks to go ask the people she met along the way if they know how to kill the monster. The monster's gaze can make you go blind, so the only logical thing to do is shove mirror fragments in your eyes so when he goes in for that deep gaze he'll explode. After she kills the monster, she begins her blind 100+ story climb to the surface.
Sore runner knee? try this I guess.
Add a port to your workbench/cnc table and this will apply about 400lbs of force to keep it from moving. no need for glue or anything.
Linkages can do a lot of cool things when you figure them out. This person made a clock based on linkage motion.
I got rid of my Logitech wireless mouse because of the lag of connecting was annoying, and the gigs of software you need running for a mouse is inane; also the updates they pushed out for the software broke button mapping so the mouse could have "AI" features, why a mouse needs ai features is beyond me, but I'm pretty much done with Logitech. So now I have a simple usb wired mouse from Tecknet, and needed a way to map two buttons. PtionsPlus allows me to map buttons, again why we can have trillions of dollars spent on OS features for AI, and not have the ability to map a mouse button is just insane, and comes back to my point that corporations are unable to create actual useful features, because useful features don't spy on you and make them money.
The last useful feature I can remember macos adding was airdrop. Everything else has been mostly useless garbage. (I don't use linux because DAW plugins...)
page on how author practices flex nib calligraphy. although I hate the page itself with whatever that page loading effect is; I wonder if there is a plugin that prevents pages from having weird scroll effects, or scroll hijacking, I'm not really sure what people are trying to accomplish with this tomfoolery besides making people that view their page hate it more.
how to play the simple pattern on the piano. because I wanted to know what pattern he was playing while explaining the 12 bar blues, because I was trying to figure out the embellishments in this guitar lesson because no one ever wants to explain the magic; or maybe you are just supposed to know.
I punched a hole in a piece of blue celluloid one day, and I was experimenting with this stuff, and I saw this made a spotlight. I took it in to the cameraman, and I said, “Why can’t we do something like this?” I argued with him, and I got him to try it under the lens, and we made a spotlight out of it [with a double exposure]. … I was always trying something, and sometimes it would backfire. That’s what kept the job interesting all those years.
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Sometimes when you experiment you will fail. Some way-out ideas may not work the way you thought they would. But that’s okay! That’s the nature of being on the edge of exciting design. You will never do anything interesting if you don’t take chances.
The second reason, and this is the underlying point I'm trying to make with this post, is that I write about my day while journaling, and in-so-doing remember it better. And since I remember these experiences it doesn't feel like time is slipping away from me. Instead it feels like time is rich and full. Yes, it's August, but I feel like it's been 2026 forever.
I'm also trying to use journaling as a way to design the day I want to live. Write into the day you want to have a little; become interesting (to yourself) to make the journal entries interesting (to yourself) Bring being interesting, and doing interesting to top of mind each day, and work to not put things off till tomorrow.
I like these videos because he just keeps pushing the problem and figuring out how to fix it.
I want an island... ya, that's it.
He is able to do whatever, because he sees the motorcycle as a system instead of a consumer product that can't be touched; know the function of each part and try to make it yourself when you are in a pinch. This has the Zen of Motorcycle maintenance vibe.
I like how she shows her prototyping steps all along the journey.
sc-im is a terminal based spreadsheet with vim like key bindings. tutorial for sc-im.
I tried using macos numbers, but after opening it, all the white space all over made me throw up a little and I instantly closed it.
The way of the future is to build interfaces with no learning curve, because that could reduce engagement with the product; thus reducing new customers, so we are just left with the dumbest possible interfaces that leave you in new user mode your entire life. We can't have products that have a higher entry but more complex features for power users, because the power user isn't a profitable group to market to; there are just more entry level people. Everything must be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator to maximize shareholder value. In the future, the computer will just be a single key you can click to release dopamine into your system; click click click click click click click (we might already be there... tik-tok with a phone)
talking about this video The True Cost of AI Coding.
from having the AI write me a bunch of software, I can feel the "It gives me everything I asked for but nothing I actually wanted"
I also like the loop he talks about where you write code, and as your write code it helps you think about the design of the system, and how this loop is gone. Now all you can do is just prompt over and over hoping for the best.
Wondering if I could get the axidraw to draw using a magnet? Finally an idea for the axidraw of something that it can do that a normal laser printer can't easily reproduce.
Course on creating motion graphics with blender from Ducky
I ~follow~followed the Yanko Design RSS feed; some interesting new designs among the stuff that is supposed to pass as new designs but is really just stuff they are trying to hawk. But the worst part is, the articles are all AI written; very much so. My problem with this, I don't like AI writing, I don't like the style it writes in which is very AI. By reading a lot of AI writing I'm worried that I'll start writing, talking, and thinking like that, which is something I don't want.
Back when twitter was a thing, I caught myself thinking in terms of "how can I phrase this thought in the form of a tweet" , so your brain definitely likes trying to work into a format if you interact with that format too much. The over explained AI prose is definitely a format I don't want to start thinking in.
Having AI write all your articles also just screams: "this is just content I don't really give a fuck about; I'm just here trying to get clicks for money, which makes you the sucker I'm trying to extract money from." I'd rather not be a sucker, so I'm moving on.
this was initially a link to https://huntingthemuse.net/library/how-to-tell-if-writing-is-ai but I couldn't stand the design of the site, the giant font and weird scroll jacking / fading. There was some hooha awhile ago about RSS stealing the experience of seeing the site the author has made; this is a great example of a site that needs it's style ripped away. Also, who is going to waste their day going to sites manually to check if there "might" be an update? That's just crazy.
you invest in a 401k, so why not invest in yourself by buying quality ingredients? (paraphrased)
This is true on so many levels. The food you put into yourself can effect how you feel, and the media you consume into your brain can effect how you feel. When you use an AI to do all your thinking, and eating garbage food, it's like withdrawing from your savings; eventually you'll be broke.
This is another case of corporations only caring about maximizing profit, so anything you get from them will be low quality trash, so you should make your own meals instead; from scratch as possible.
Part of the challenge is to try to recreate some pattern or behaviour with as few and as simple rules as possible. Sometimes I manage to recreate the phenomenon I set out to create, and sometimes not. More often than not I get something interesting, even if it is not always what I expected.
thought 1, if you weren't going to be the person to solve problem A, then it doesn't matter who solved problem A. I'm assuming only a few people in the entire world were even looking seriously at problem A and of those people what percentage of them were even looking at it that seriously.
thought 2, as a non mathematician, most of these problems that are being solved seem like navel gazing . About 20 of these problems have been solved in the past few months, my question, has anything in the world changed for the better? Are we now making major advancements in science now that these have been solved?
thought 3, the one downside to this, is that the people working on these type of problems might learn how to think better and this has been taken away from them; the same for all AI work these days; all possible learning opportunities are being taken away from us. On the other side of the coin, people were stuck on how to solve these problems for a long time, so maybe now they can see where their thinking was breaking down.
thought 4, if mathematicians were more multi-disciplinary (math,programming,other..) and spent more time writing programs to chip away at problems instead of using "pure math" would they have gotten further on these problem.
thought 5, is working in "pure math" holding people back. If you have a problem so solve, maybe solving it with all tools available is the way to go.
what if all the tiny humans bring to life a larger super organism? I think this claim has been made about ai agents? if millions of ai agents can bring about an higher level being through their actions.
I just really like the Arranging section since I never know what to do with the fun loop I made.
The phrase “dumbing down” has kicked around for a while, and this is reflected in the reading habits of those few who still pick up a book. Instead of losing themselves in a vast landscape of complex sentences and concepts, they are now indulging in young adult fiction and badly written ~porn~ romance.
I have a feeling that I know the answer already, because I read a lot of articles about young people rediscovering music cassettes and vinyl records and DVDs and whatnot, and I think if there was new tech to be excited about, they wouldn't get excited about the old stuff. In the 90s, tech from the 60s was dated and boring, while today tech from the 90s seems to see a revival.
One aspect of this might also be the tech industry wanting to control every aspect of tech, and watching you through the window at night like some kind of pervert. They sucked the fun out of it all. And along those lines, they only add features that can make them money, not features that are actually useful to the end user; who is going to be excited by a fridge that displays ads?
should we be excited about comcast tracking your location in your house via wifi?
jazz music + classical music + rock music
I try to sit down and sketch for about twenty minutes over my morning coffee, every day. Some days I may do more, some days less
I think that the way you start your morning steers your day; if you start off scrolling you get into that mindless consuming scrolling loop all day, but if you start your day creating, you put your brain into a more create/explore loop.
These were for MY exploration, study, practice, ideas, and notes. There are a few really good drawings in there, but also many terrible one (just this morning I drew an absolute howler, I couldn’t believe how bad it was). I think that if you are not making terrible drawings, you’re probably not challenging yourself to get better in areas that you are weak in.
exploring on paper, playing the what if game with a pencil.
There is a ring in hell for people that put press and hold in their designs, right next to the people that invented xml.
I have to go find new wireless headphones because the wireless interface on these AIAIAI into my amp has a 2 second hold to turn on (fast wireless transmitter for guitar) , and then the headphones have a 2 second hold to turn on, and that's enough to make me never want to use them.
I'm not sure if the people that replace all the physical control in a car with a tablet are going to be in the same ring of hell, or if they'll have their own ring. Maybe they could share a wing of hell with the people that thought space bar should both play/pause and full screen a video depending on some random criteria, or the team that redesigned the youtube external player to move the volume somewhere completly different than the player on the site, and making the interface stay for 10 seconds after you move your mouse off it, again unlike the youtube site.
All these companies like to claim that they are are at the forefront of design, but based on what they are releasing I very much doubt that.
idea: press to hold comic; the hero rushes to disarm the bomb with 2 seconds to spare, but to turn of the timer you'll need to press and hold for 3 seconds.
Fractal 9 was born from a humble, unexpected influence. It appeared while I was leafing through a children’s colouring book of mandalas. I found a radial figure made of squares at different scales whose order and balanced dynamism stood out. I liked it, studied it, and, by deconstructing its structure, produced the volume that became the first prototype of a piece of furniture created to make use of an space in my living room
It's nice to see where Ideas come from, and how the creator explores an idea to end up with their designed piece.
Over time I learned that when the digital-root formula is applied to the total sum of the interior angles of regular polygons, a hidden pattern emerges. This discovery led me to analyse the model with the same formula and I found the very pattern inside it.
exploring the pattern in depth, he discovered even more of the structure.
Explore things you find interesting, and then use what you learn to build out an idea with a structured design.
got me wondering, what would happen if you converted your photos to black and white, and then came back and recolored them however you wanted. (not that she does that.)
everything in reality has a bevels that reflect light , when your designs don't have a bevels they look fake and weird.
Exploring sounds to produce music, as opposed to playing notes to make music. via that has the interview with Jason.
For this record, I was recording a lot of really quick ideas, and then, over time, piecing them together to see which ones felt like they were worth developing a little further. I just try to record as much as I can of everything I do, so I have a catalog to search through. Which is very nice when you're feeling like you don't have an idea, and you can sift back through: what's this thing that I recorded three months ago, and can I develop it further? And then it could also become something totally different. I've certainly had this happen, where I start with one idea, and I have some tracks recorded, and by the end all the original ones are muted, and I've ended up with a totally different song—but they still needed to be those first ideas in order to get to the final thing.
This is why I'm not a huge fan of "small web". It's just not very interesting; a lot of meta posts just talking about how great small web is.
scroll around the sketchbook of inked in sketches.
Quality is rare, because people accept trash, and trash is easier to make than quality, so corporations keep lowering the bar, and people keep consuming it.
Eat less, exercise every day, and then a little more.
I'm always fumbling with this for some reason, great resource on how to use the 3D cursor in Blender.
Simple and healthy meals that are seasoned well and covered in sauce.
Healthy meals with variety. Lots of places to experiment, have fun, and reuse left overs.
one soup, three dishes.
with the opensource crosspoint reader fimware. I got the x4 (pro wasn't available yet) and it's a fun little reader that does one thing; let's you read a book. I'm just filling it with books from Gutenberg, and am currently enjoying everything except for the lack of backlight (which is fixed in the pro)
A curated collection of posters. I'm looking for good graphic design to study from, and it's nice to find a curated set as opposed to just archives of junk. More people should curate instead of archiving/listing things out. A list on the internet with no curation is pretty useless; no one really cares about what books you read, but they probably care if you explain why you like the books you like. The same goes for the link rolls that are just a ton of links with no descriptions of why the person found them interesting.
I found this interesting not for the hostile urban design, but because it could be explaining how most corporations develop software for their "customers" ; they design software for the maximum negative effect for you while making the most money for themselves. You'll never get actual useful features from any corporate software because useful features aren't the features that make them more money; usually useful features are the ones that lose them money.
The future we are voting for with our eyes and wallets is complete crap.
arguing is almost always pointless -- People just don’t change their minds most of the time. A lot of it is not simply stubbornness, but rather every psyche learns, stores and interprets information differently. Language has given us the illusion that communication is easy if we are capable of using the same words. There are also different dimensions of literacy, but we don’t take that into account.
some people lack original and fun ideas, so they try to hide their unoriginal boring ideas behind state of the art technology. But some people have really interesting ideas, and since the ideas are interesting, they can just be shown on cheap hardware.
Stop chasing fancy hardware, or tools, instead come up with good ideas, and then create an intentional design to bring your idea to life.
slowing down and interacting with life instead of having corporations push slop to you through their giant slop fire hoses.
Is technology making our lives easier? or is it just shoveling someone else's opinions down our minds so we don't have to think. These corporations aren't so much solving the problem of "how do I make this process easier and better" they are solving the problem of "How do I force my opinions on people and force them to buy only from me."
AI agents can generate anything you ask for in their own generic way, but they have a really hard time, and it gets really expensive when you try to make it create the vision you actually have. Some people have no ideas and are just having AIs create the same programs over and over, and these people think this is great, but I'm assuming eventually those people will realize they have no ideas, no one cares what they have Ai re-make yet again and will move on.
People that are outsourcing their "thinking" to AI are just getting back the most generic thoughts that everyone else is getting back; it's like watching an episode of Golden Girls, going into work, and telling everyone what an expert in cheesecake you are.
TLDR: can you come up with an original and interesting idea and have AI actually implement that?
Import an STL model and work with it in freecad. I've always wanted to know how to do this so you can model around existing parts you find on the internet.
Computers built for linux that come with linux, because i'm getting kind of sick of corporate OSes. but am I $2400 sick of them yet?
Hit the hotkey you assign, the app will take a screen shot of your screen, OCR it, and then allow you to quickly search for text anywhere on the screen and then click on it. It's more amazing the more you use it.
This is one of those apps, where before you know the trick behind it, you are left scratching your head asking: "how did they do that?"
I wonder if designers would be better if they studied magic, so they could learn to think like a magician building their tricks; think outside the box and then work their way back in to what is possible.
another app with magical properties until you figure out how it works.
The complete catalog of Sanzo Wada's 1933 Dictionary of Color Combinations. These were colors put together from observation of nature, not what was traditionally done with just trying to use the color wheel and science to force color combinations.
Cut perfect dado cuts without a dado blade. seems easier than the router table setup I was trying to do.
Simple insert that connects into your table saw so you can use it as a router table; might be easier than my current router table?
Daily Logic Puzzle Game; follow the clues to figure out who is innocent and who is guilty.
Some people probably think they can just not enable the internet on these devices, but as these speed runs continue, these corporations are going to start installing cellar modems to extract everything they can from you without you being able to stop it.
search for drum patterns and hear/see them with their interface.
Roast 250F for 15min (after pre-heat) can do a dozen eggs at a time.
If you make a lot of eggs, much easier than some of the other options.
I'm not sure why the bandcamp website is so ugly and hard to use, but this plugin for firefox allows you to download your music. (shift select works) I bought the Brian Bell megapack and it's 800 songs that bancamp expects you to downloaded individually, this plugin allowed me to shift select them all and download them all at once like a normal person.
the printer no corporation would ever make. the same I've been finding about all the applications I've been having ai write for me. corporations are unable to make good products, they can only make products designed to screw you over for money. crowdfunding good ideas might be the last place to find good products.
This one stands out from others because of how easy it is to pose the figures. for some reason posing must be a hard problem to solve since the other apps I've tried kind of suck at it.
I find this interesting, because I have the same thing for all my projects and ideas. And once you have all your stuff in once place you can start write fun automations around it, like maybe look for a website folder under every entry, and use that to create an entry on your website.
Create and render robots in blender. I've taken one of his other courses audio visualizer master class and it was really good.
now the entire control room is just 1 ipad that requires a $20 a month subscription to use.
I just need to make a simple cut over and over, there was probably a better way, but I bought some spacers and I'm going to use them with a sled to cut out the part I need.
How to make your own waxed canvas.
Lots of guitar soloing going on here, and he has made a LOT of songs.
It has what I want: Hotspot, bluetooth, messaging. that's about it. No constant updates, hopefully not a lot of spying for marketing reason, no liquid glass...
The Subaru crosstrek has 176 lbs of dynamic (moving) carrying capacity on the roof rack.
Good video on leather stitching that makes it easy to see what he's doing.
Video that explains how to figure out the key and chords of a song by playing scales until you figure out the key of the song, and then playing bar chords to figure out the chord progression of the song. I created a companion app here for practicing figuring out the key and chords of a song.
An interesting article would be seeing a side by side comparison of "good" photographers and everyone else. My guess is you would find that the "good" are the people that can find interesting subjects and not just background images.
The author goes through the process of blocking out a piece and then going in and adding detail. Follow along with this nifty ASCII art editor
I stopped using my apple watch for the same reason; I didn't need to be notified all day along about missing "potential spam calls" I really didn't need to be notified about anything, so now I wear an expensive Casio watch.
One other thing I hate is the experience of buying things. Back in the day you gave people money, they gave you a product and the transaction is complete. Now they want you to sign up, get constant emails, and in some cases track your physical location everywhere you go (crumble cookies does this.)
I just want to try the woodbending trick at the beginning, also the way they cut circles on the router table is neat.
Wondering if it would be easier to have the cnc cut all of the grooves, or just use a table saw sled to do it real quick.
I have a HX-Stomp "emulator" and I used Claude to read the article and then give me the settings on the HX-Stomp that are close to what he was saying. What would be super nice if I could load a music clip of someone playing the guitar and then have the Stomp just figure out all the settings automatically, but I guess some of this comes back to playing with sound, and you just need to figure out these settings by playing with them.
Some day (soon) i'll need to learn how to sharpen things correctly...
the Beatle's style, along with a bunch of different chord progressions and melodies to play with.
Crazy frog is the pinnacle of human music creation, learn how to make your own version of crazy frog songs (at the end of the video.)
Concept design, art, and other fun stuff.
stop relying on symbols and start relying on observation (don't just copy)
this head drawing class also covers the importance of seeing the head as planes/shapes.
Creating a simple custom jig to cut any size dado you want.
I believe this technique is also how mynoise plays their sounds using the same fading trick.
A nomogram or nomograph is a diagram that provides an easy, graphical way of calculating the result of a mathematical formula
python library to make them.
I was kind of hoping it would go into the thinking behind the idea more, but it was still interesting to see what goes into writing a research paper.
music is more than notes, it's playing with sound. learn how to play with sound in Ableton.
A jig for bending wire; I think I just like watching wire bending videos, especially the cnc ones that just go nuts at it.
A playlist of tutorials on how to sketch designs.
using parts of a car to make a table, which just got me wondering what other parts of a car could make for a table/lamp/chair...etc
How to render wood texture with pencil.
here is another one, that seems to be more for industrial design.
How to render different types of materials using copic markers.
Building notes that you plan to use and grow; not taking notes for the sake of taking notes.
One day, I decided to become an optimist and life became much more fun.
A monitor that can change modes, which I think goes beyond work from home or not. Just sometimes you need to use the computer and sometimes you don't, so just being able to quickly switch the monitor to a different mode to let your brain think differently is great. I also like that the second mode has a bookshelf under it to reinforce that you are in a different mode.
Collect constraints you enjoy. Unusual constraints make things more fun. You can always change them later. This is your style, after all. It’s not a life commitment, it’s just the way you do things. For now.
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I meal prep lunches every week
instead of eating random food with little value because you end up getting tired of trying to figure out what to eat, just build meals that you find healthy; your style becoming a person that eats healthy food.
Cost per use
Don't buy cheap things that don't last; buy more expensive things that last a long time (which seems to be getting harder and harder to do.)
This documentary profiles internationally-renowned architect and engineer, Frei Otto. Half a century ago, Otto became world famous as a pioneer in the design of tensile structures made from metal armatures and lightweight membranes. Otto’s work includes the Mannheim Multihalle, the Munich Zoo Aviary, the 1967 Montreal World Expo German Pavilion and co-design of the 1972 Munich Olympics Stadium.
the works of Antoni Gaudí
The natural world is a library of solved problems. A tree trunk thickens at its base and its roots spread wide to resist wind and carry its own weight. A skeleton uses hollow bones to achieve maximum strength with minimum material. A seashell grows in a logarithmic spiral, a pattern of expansion that maintains its proportions at every scale. For Gaudi, these were not just beautiful shapes to be copied for decoration. They were demonstrations of profound structural intelligence, blueprints for how to build with efficiency and elegance.
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Think with Your Hands, Not Just a Pen
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Traditional architecture has long been a discipline of two-dimensional representation. Buildings begin as plans, sections, and elevations, flat drawings that are later translated into a three-dimensional reality. Gaudi worked in the opposite direction. He was a sculptor of space who thought and designed in three dimensions from the very beginning. His workshop was filled not with blueprints, but with plaster, clay, and wire models. He believed that some problems of form, light, and structure could only be solved physically.
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Super simple (but functional?) desk that just leans on a wall. might make for a fun drafting table?
Basic introduction to freecad. Hopefully as I learn to use it better it gets less finicky.
This link wasn't what I found interesting, but I want to make something like this that has the Radar & Satellite Images on it, so you can see the storms rolling in.
I think I need to pair it with this trash can project to light up which days I need to put out which trashcans.
He added a little "send me a quick message" widget to the bottom of each of his pages using https://ntfy.sh/ to send the message to his phone. Seems like a neat idea.
there is also TownSquare which adds a little town square to the bottom of your website.
A periodic periodical that takes a look into interesting opensource projects and applications.
Issue 4 has an article about the freecad Detesselate workbench which allows you to work on STL files, which is something I've always wanted a cad program to do well. I haven't tested it, but sounds like a good idea if it works.
Paged Out! is a free experimental (one article == one page) technical magazine about programming (especially programming tricks!), hacking, security hacking, retro computers, modern computers, electronics, demoscene, and other similar topics.
My favorite part about this magazine is the one article == one page. I wish everyone would adopt this style of writing; instead of meandering with no point what-so-ever to fill page after page with gibberish nonsense, you are required to actually have an interesting idea, and present it in one page. I feel like a lot of articles on the internet don't actually have an idea, and try to cover that up by ~~turning up the radio~~ just writing a lot and hoping the reader don't notice.
I like the pre-computer rendering techniques used to make these.
The overgrown ruins is also nice.
Cycloid Drawing Machines . I used to Claude to build out a simple virtual version of one of these, and now I'm trying to find an interesting way for the axidraw to render the output in a way that just a laser printer couldn't just do.
Class on how to do master studies to learn how to pen and ink better from Chloe Gendron who's youtube channel has a lot of these master studies already. I'm hoping to get a better understanding of how to do master studies so I can transfer that to other places like learning music better or just the drawing of dynamic shapes.
One of the first references that I liked was the art of Mark Silvestri, and she already had a breakdown of his style
Create Broken tv effects, might be interesting to add to a project to add texture.
Interactive page to show how all the parts of a mechanical watch works.
I've always been interested in converting spring power into something else, guess I should just get a spring and play with it to see if I can make something: spring steel or just get a pre-rolled spring, or toy windup spring
the mechanism is a cylindrical cam it's cut at an angle or in a curved/zig-zag path around the cylinder. As the cylinder rotates, the angled groove pushes the follower up and down, converting rotary motion into reciprocating linear motion.
for $0.50 in Claude, i was able to get an openscad script that is able to generate a cylindrical cam of any size, i'll need to design the housing to see how it works, and then post it on my site.
Extensions are optional add-on tools that run alongside Live and can be accessed with a right-click from anywhere in your Set. They can read and edit the structure of your Set – including tracks, clips, parameters, automation and more.
Control Albeton Live via javascript. going to have to play with this to see what ideas I come up with.
The initial concept is kind of interesting, take a smart light bulb and make it a web server that hosts banned books, but then at the end he has a more interesting idea; take smart lightbulbs and have them become a mesh network.
Another question would be, how hard is it to hook in an SD card or any other type of storage to remove the small space constraints. Maybe it's time for me to go buy some light bulbs.
Seems like people have already had the mesh idea
I really like the petal mechanism, how each compartment is able to open without blocking the others.
I like stickers. The site is like all stickers! Fun reference for when you don't know what to doodle in your sketchbook.
I ask this question every few months, so I'm just saving this link here.
But don’t spend your life waiting for permission. Start the thing
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What you pay attention to shapes what you think about. What you think about shapes what you do. What you do shapes who you become. So be careful.
Anytime you need to do something more than twice, spend the minimal time possible asking Copilot CLI to automate it. Don't write out a spec or give details or provide examples. Let it try to figure it out. Maybe it will fail, oh well, it is only a tiny bit of time spent, and then you can check where it failed and ask it to correct it.
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Through this process, I also learned that automation allowed me to change how I worked, not just speed up my work.
I've been finding this out a lot lately, when you lean into AI, you find new ways of working; instead of thinking about how to implement, you just start focusing on the ideas you had. Instead of thinking, that'll be too much work to change, or procrastinating implementing a feature to test out and idea, you just use AI and do it, and start using the new feature.
"Copilot, read my Copilot session logs from the last 7 days and propose opportunities for automation. Draft a reusable skill for each."
I've always wanted something to watch my terminal session and do this for me. How can I vim better? how can I shell better? what tools are out there I don't know about that'll speed up my workflows. This would be a great (maybe a tad creepy) AI app. It just watches you work and then suggests ways you could improve your workflows.
What I’ve come to understand - and never really articulated to myself before - is that research creates its own momentum. The more time I invest in a decision, the more I start to feel like I should buy something, if only to justify all the effort I’ve already put into researching it.
I feel this way about ideas, you scribble down an idea, draw something in your sketchbook, and then you brain is like "YOU MUST NOW MAKE THIS THING". Calm down brain, I'm just exploring ideas here. Sometimes I don't explore ideas because of this; feeling like I have to build something if I spend the time researching/designing it.
Back to the actual article. My other problem with buying new things is Enshittification. I just don't want to deal with the lower quality version they made this year. I don't like buying stuff anymore, it usually just turns into work, frustration, and disappointment. The last time I found shoes I liked I bought 4 pairs, because I realized each year they would make these shoes cheaper and cheaper. At least Enshittification makes it easier to save money.
All I need is for the screen to pop up when I'm backing up for the backup camera, and then go away until I backup again.
I'm not sure if this is the message the article was trying to convey, but it seems to come off as: Vibe Coders are the people that have ideas, they build up their ideas with prototypes and experiments built via AI agents, while the Software Engineer is not the idea person, they are just there to implement code in a clean way. An analogy would be the architect that designs a beautiful building as opposed to the workers that take that design and then follow building codes to frame the house, or wire the electrical.
At the end of the article they do say the same person should be able to switch back and forth, being both the prototype person and then implementer, and maybe going forward that is the skill set you want to have to stay relevant.
A Library of video game / Chiptune music with a built in player for the web browser.
a cartulary was a medieval collection of important documents, charters, letters, and records that institutions preserved for future generations. A historical record.
Maybe all of these robots they are building to clean your house and answer your door can be repurposed to scan in documents; I can hand the robot my sketchbook, and it'll page through scanning and tagging each page in a digital format somewhere; a glorified scanner.
At first look, this table seems kind of pretentious, but then when you think about it, the idea is pretty ingenious. I think the image at the brewery was the selling point for me, since when you are in a place like that you are standing and there isn't a lot of places to put your drink or food, so if the brewery gave you trays that clip on, and your drinks sit in the middle part, you have a great way to hold your food without having to try and juggle it standing.
These might be kind of nice outside of food trucks, or at outdoor events.
Another Idea I had, was using something like this to make toolboxes that can be converted quickly into work spaces. the toolbox contains the materials and tools, and then you attach legs (standing or sitting), and connect multiple boxes together for longer surfaces. Create tables and trays that can connect on to the boxes so you can mix and match what you need and quickly setup a work environment for a specific task.
"Radical simplicity is at the heart of our approach," Frascella says. "We achieve clarity by reducing everything to the essential. We live in a world that is often shrill, fast-paced, and overloaded. Almost everything is overdone. The danger of losing your way is greater than ever. Our responsibility is to be better and do what really matters. And the outcome always has to be an emotion."
I like the Idea of Radical simplicity in car design. I remember back when I was a kid, cars had no screens in them; that was nice, I kind of wish we could get back to that kind of radical simplicity.
I think my main problem with displays in cars are they are slow to start, and are just used to advertise crap; why am I forced to have a Pandora icon on my display, are they even still in business? Maybe a Radically simply display in a car is one with only the features you have, and goes away or turns off when not in use.
A post about prototyping out functionality as opposed to just trying to build something from ideas / consensus / meetings... etc. Just build something and use it and see where that goes; make it easy to fix and change; add and remove as you find use cases through the use of the product.
When building something I always want to jump to the pretty end state, but really the best way to design a product it to build a janky prototype and use it every day; adding and removing features with actual use, not just ideas that something might or might not be good.
This article shows how the push went from just a pile of parts, to the final product you see today.
