Ross's Micro Blog

Argh! My son has totally ruined Greenday’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by pointing out that it sounds like they sing “I wore cologne, I wore cologne.”

😡😭😂

I came across this acoustic guitar with built in actuators that provide effects and looping today and it’s SO clever. I never knew this tech existed. I love it.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OeiaOv66tJQ

GAME COMPLETED: Dig Dig Dino (Playdate)

I got Playdate Season 2 for Christmas. Yay! Playdate games are so unique and consistently high quality.

This game was a bit of a grind at times. But very fun. The story carries it through and the graphics and sound are super cute. A very enjoyable diversion for a few hours.

One of the things that has regularly brought my light and joy this year is the newsletter of my acquaintance Dave Walker.

https://diagramclub.substack.com/

He is the essence of dry, self-deprecating British wit. His in-person gentleness, kindness and good humour shines through his writing and deceptively-clever drawings.

I’m a happy paid subscriber!

I’m getting a BluRay player today to replace my …checks notes… 20+ year old DVD player. And it’s quite exciting.

My wife asked “What’s your strategy?” And I said “Mostly, I want to OWN the movies we love to watch together as a family so that no one can take them away.”

This feels like such an important and strangely beautiful thing.

This became my default iOS browser after less than a day of use. I’m a very happy Plus subscriber. Do check it out.
https://mastodon.social/@quicheindustries/115811724863900438

There's something wonderfully ironic about feeling like you're the only person in the world that wasn't compelled by Pluribus.

Wow. This online KPop Demon Hunters art book is amazing. I’m always so impressed with how much effort goes into character and scene development.

https://theartofkpopdemonhunters.com/

This in-progress eBook about how computers work, with beautiful illustrations, is something to keep an eye on:

https://www.makingsoftware.com/

#holidayBookmarking

This JavaScript operator reference from @joshwcomeau is really helpful:

https://www.joshwcomeau.com/operator-lookup/

#holidayBookmarking

A pong clock.

It's very clever.

I don't really have anything to add about it.

https://bigjobby.com/pong/

#holidayBookmarking

This on gratitude through hand-written notes is excellent from @ericmann.

https://eric.mann.blog/gratitude/

I'm getting back into writing letters. I'm not on Facebook (I hop on to check some organisation pages every now and then) or Instagram. So I miss out on a lot of people's news. But letters are so much better anyway.

Must do more.

#holidayBookmarking

More family IT support. Today we discover that on older iPhones, when Safari hits 500 open tabs it REALLY FREAKS OUT!!! (White screen, browser crashes).

Took a while to do that one.

How does anyone without a friendly tech nerd to hand get by? It's wild how bad tech is sometimes.

These look like great books/guides (printables available) for young makers wanting to level up.

https://www.makershed.com/collections/make-books-print/products/make-skill-seeker-young-maker-edition-print

#holidayBookmarking

(Apologies for not knowing who to hat-tip for this stuff. If it was you, thanks!!)

“the autistic mind is not trapped inside consensus trance”

This is a very interesting read why autistic people may be more "collapse aware”.

But there's plenty of interesting stuff in here that's not just related to collapse-awareness.

https://adrianlambert.substack.com/p/why-some-people-see-collapse-earlier

#holidayBookmarking

I read about “Dogpile” the other day, which is a merging game with roguelike, deckbuilder mechanics and cartoon dogs.

It's really fun, and very well done.

https://dogpilegame.com/

#holidayBookmarking

More good AI takes – this time on software development – from @davidcelis

https://davidcel.is/articles/writing-code-is-fun

#holidayBookmarking

This is an excellent (IMO) analysis of the Gen AI / LLM situation from @rpm:

https://robinmonks.com/ai-is-everywhere-expensive-and-worthless/

Also I'm going to try to use “Gen AI" as a term more as there are other kinds of AI that are actually more useful (as Robin highlights when he talks about Apple's approach).

#holidayBookmarking

I am engaging in the holiday ritual of turning open tabs into bookmarks. Expect links as I share the useful stuff!

You could mute #holidayBookmarking if this gets boring.