Meta
Reminder: this site is an iterative experiment, so let's put on the (school of fish) janitor hat:
This week's summary
Midnight
We've (more than) doubled the ramen budget of Midnight this week! I also pushed some minor UX improvements based on user feedback.
You can buy Midnight here (if you can't pay, hit me up and I'll send you a promo code, no questions asked).
Writing
I cannot express how happy I am that people are reading this and some are even reaching out to tell me that they appreciate my work. I know this won't last forever, I'll have to move back to a regular job next year, so I just wanted to tell you:
Thank you, you're fantastic, nay, you're mathematical, please have this sock.
I've also had a bunch of fun, moving Say Hi calls this week. Expect a write-up on Say Hi early next year.
Next week
- Prepare for the Christmas break. I'll post some short, weirder notes from my backlog.
- Continue writing shorter TIL notes but don't expect an instant improvement, be patient.
Favourite project(s)
Recur Email — a no-bullshit newsletter tool created by Anton Podviaznikov. It looks so beautifully simple to use.
I was going to post a different project today and I discovered his work just a moment ago on the Future of Coding Slack channel. Anton's approach to product dev resonates with me and might resonate with many of the readers here.
Louise Belcher, rulfo CC0
Womp — Womp is a (mostly) free 3D editor using SDF. If you liked my posts on Shader Park (Shader Park is Kinda Neat, Midnight Shader, Shader Park and 2D) but don't feel like coding, give it a go! It's simple and playful.
Sans Bullshit Sans — a clone of Helvetica which replaces corpospeak with ligatures thus protecting you from LinkedIn induced brain rot. I'm considering building a Sans Bullshit Sans userscript or a browser extension. If that sounds like your cup of tea, let me know so we can synergise and #deliver_wow.
Favourite site(s)
What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2024? — my gaming projects are the main reason I'm interested in this. Tommy the Toe used to include WW2-era Christian propaganda songs (wonderfully creepy, but suitable) and the All-hands Meeting Simulator is a collaboration between yours truly and another Polish man with an interesting nose.
A quick glance at the list includes works by: Sergei Prokofiev, Francis Picabia, Virginia Wolf and the first full-length "all-talking" motion picture: Lights of New York.
Check out this link for a curated list with a commentary. Now, please continue reading with the Empress of the Blues (public domain starting January 2024):
Favourite piece of tech
"Layers of haze, composed of complex organic compounds, covering Titan" - source
Voyager 1 — we lost contact with the farthest human-made object sent into space, as well as the attached love letter (first and only interstellar mail we've sent so far).
Wigglypaint by Internet Janitor — it's a drawing plaything that makes things wiggle!
AltaVista - Web Design Museum — AltaVista, the first serious search engine, was created exactly 28 years ago.
Interesting articles
How To Become A Hacker — a classic hacker howto I spotted by complete accident. I'm attaching it because of this quote:
Boredom and drudgery are evil.
Hackers (and creative people in general) should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work, because when this happens it means they aren't doing what only they can do — solve new problems. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil.
Mixtral of experts | Mistral AI — Mistral published their new open source LLM models and Simon Willison added them to his llm CLI tool.
Cat Pianos, Sound-Houses, and Other Imaginary Musical Instruments — every millennial knows the Keyboard Cat, but have you heard about Cat Piano?
Things I wrote last week that people liked
Thanks for reading! See you on Monday!
See you next week!
