Links

I haven't actually been to most of the places on this itinerary, but it seems like a hell of a good weekend. I love Chicago. If you haven't been and are thinking of going, I'd be happy to share my own recommendations, of course.

My good buddy Vova redid his site again, and it's a delight! Go check it out!

This whole read on the lh unit is worth it, but the Floating images alignment part, in particular, is kind of mind-blowing.

The first "real" iteration of my personal site was all hand-drawn and scanned into Adobe Dreamweaver, which at the time didn't seem so insane. I've tried to keep that spirit alive, and even on this version, I've got hand-drawn icons and emoji. But entire blog posts? And the comment section? I love it!

How can I hate capitalism so much and also have so much love for old commercials like these? Bookmarking this for fun Halloween party background noise...

I watched so much Nickelodeon as a kid, and SNICK was definitely a big part of that. Those creative promotional bumpers are ingrained deep in my over-crowded brain. A big orange couch could never mean anything else.

This one hits all of the notes that I love so much about Chelsea Wolfe—dark, haunting, beautiful, and an epic finish. If she's got a new album coming, I can't wait.

CSS is still on a hot streak! Or rather, the folks workin' hard on CSS are. This is so slick!

A simple and beautiful typographic experience brought to life by super cool shaders and blended layers (I think).

This is so much fun! Not quite sure what I'm supposed to do with the json output, but it's pretty, and fun.

Two silly brothers get into birding and embark on a mission to spot the most birds in the lower 48 in a year by traveling around the country in a minivan. I don't know entertaining, but it is.

My job as a designer/developer is not to hype new tech, but to carefully protect my communities against it’s mis-use.

I absolutely adore this. I've gotten two packages from the club so far, and both have really made my day. You forget you subscribed to it, and then one day you open a package and it's full of fun, thoughtful, and beautiful THINGS designed by Chraighton / Manual, and it's an absolute delight!

Attention was already a scarce resource before AI, and it is even more so now. Keeping AI generated content clearly labeled and demonstrating human effort helps show consideration for teammates, and keeps a touch of humanity alive in our work.

A browser extension and desktop app to replace all instances of "AI" with the poop emoji. Excellent. I remember someone doing this same thing for "cloud" when everything being in the cloud was the new hype.

Nominations are open for the 2026 Tiny Awards—a lovely little annual website award highlighting creative, non-commercial websites. I love this! Go nominate your favorite personal/fun projects now!

As of right now, I'm using Last.fm to display what I'm listening to in a little widget on my homepage, and I had no idea it was owned by Paramount Skydance, so needless to say, this makes me happy!

Because it feels like for all of the fighting and all of the progress, a few bullies can rile up a mob and take it all away.

Now, more than ever, I think the best thing you can do is reach out to someone who makes content that you appreciate, and let them know about it.

Yet another wonderful, interactive, deep-dive by Josh. 

Such a fun, well-designed little type experiment.

I don't want to become my own C.P.A, exterminator, or nurse. Just as I don't want other folks to stop wanting photographers, or musicians. Even aside from the A.I. craze, I think people are hungry for human-centered, human-created things, so I do believe the crafts and niches humans have become really skilled at will go on being valued, and I want to be part of that. 

“You do not have to wait for someone to rebuild what you lost.
You are standing in it.”

Wow, what a gorgeous site!

“I’d rather have a human-to-human conversation with you, not a chat with Claude by proxy.”

I can't get enough of this performance. There's a studio version on Thundercat's new record, Distracted, but this version is just too good.

“When you optimise a step that is not the bottleneck, you don't get a faster system. You get a more broken one.”

I absolutely loved A Psalm for the Wild-Built, and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, so I figured I should check out more of her work. I did really enjoy the book. It paints the picture of a future that, in many ways, sounds idealistic compared to our present, and introduces a cast of characters I really loved spending time with. I'm not terribly interested in the setting of interstellar space travel, which I think contributed to a response that was less than amazing, but I still thought it was great overall.

An untrustworthy tech giant deploying a swarm of civilians to expand the unseen surveillance state? Yeah, screw that. A nice little site to boot.

So cool.

I used to make coffee for my wife using the AeroPress every day (I don't drink it myself, and now use a ceramic pour-over), and came across this site looking for the perfect cup of AeroPress coffee, and damn. It's just such a delightful site. The concept, the design, the illustration. I haven't been on it in a long time, but just thought about it for whatever reason. I reached out to the creator, Jay, a couple of years ago to just say how much I adored it, and they mentioned that it was a passion project that didn't generate any money, so it was hard to dedicate more time to. I see they have since added a $10 lifetime access, which I think is a fantastic model. Good on ya, mate!

This wonderful team of incredibly talented folks does it again! Another Typefroce, another incredible Typeforce website.

My sweet pal Vova made this very thorough tool to compare the long-term cost of buying vs renting

100%

I've worked with Jenny briefly at One Design, but I just checked out her website, and wowzers—just look at those gorgeous book covers! I'm definitely a sucker for a good cover or label. I'll buy something just because of a pretty cover or label. I'd buy all of these books! It's also just a very nice site.

“This is not your fault.”

I Love this. We internalize the failure of not beating the efforts of entire teams of experts who want to addict us to their products. Also, I know the casio watch isn't intended as the answer, but I have had one of those watches (or a very close model) since around 2014, and I love it.

Love these little, simple games that are somehow transfixing. 

Mine was 0.0039—whatever that means! Another fun color perception test.

A nice article on getting smooth transitions between your light/dark mode switcher. I immediately implemented the view transition approach! Also, what a lovely site Jon has!

Simply love it. Instantly hooked. I've been a big fan of theatrics in music since I was a kid (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Primus, Slipknot, and Buckethead were some of the most influential acts on me). Call it a gimmick if you want, but if the music is good, and the talent is there, I eat it up. Now more than ever. BE WEIRD! HAVE FUN! This is weird, and fun, and the music is so cool. 

This is so much fun! I've played around with https://cssbattle.dev/ before, which I found pretty fun, and it looks like they maybe use the same mechanism? But yeah, it's CSS. We don't have enough fun and silly things like this for such a niche area of expertise. I'll be watching the whole thing for sure. And what a fun site as well!

Such a cool tool. Not sure exactly what I'd use it for, but I love it.

this made me smile

I've linked to one of Sophie's articles before, but I just wanted to take another post to recognize what a gem her website is. It's delightful. It's personal. It's what I love to see on the internet! Go check it out, and try out every theme!

Just lovely. I love simple little single-use websites like this.

I relate so much to Cassidy's up-and-down, back-and-forth relationship with her feelings on using AI as a developer, and AI in general. 

“They are shrieking, betting ponies
folksy like the idiot winds
Blowing over frozen water
It's your neighbors they are taking in
cold, black nights
Taking in cold, black nights”

This blew my mind! Definitely a hack, not sure if I'll use it or just wait paitently for support for name media queries, but an impressively clever approach.

“Against smoke and rubber bullets 
By the dawn’s early light 
Citizens stood for justice 
Their voices ringing through the night 
And there were bloody footprints 
Where mercy should have stood 
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets”

I can’t really think of another book I’ve read that was (in part) an instructional guide on how to do a thing that I don’t really intend on doing—and I was so into it! Such a fun read, and so pretty.

Absolutely beautiful!

“Be weird. It’s a good form of virtue signaling. It’s all bullshit...
It’s all made up. None of it is real. None of it matters. It’s all about control. 
So fuck that. Do what you want. Be weird!”

“Well, I want you to visit my website. I want you to read an article from a search result, and then discover the other things I’ve written, the other people I link to, and explore the weird themes I’ve got.”

A very fun way to structure a memoir—a chronology of vignettes revolving around Tree's life with bicycles. 

I'm absolutely loving this record from this incredible trio from Chicago (which makes me love them even more). If Trent Reznor hasn't heard them yet, he needs to.

A great follow-up to the first book, still lovely, still hopeful. I want to explore this world much more.

I loved this book so much. It felt like a breath of fresh air, or a cup of warm tea. How refreshing to envision a future that isn't terrible.