work continues on fatui, but not enough to justify another devlog, yet. b/rb is in a similar state, though i'm once again taking some time away from it. so instead, here's a list of the random things i've been enjoying in the past couple weeks!

taking up my time

corru.observer is – and i cannot stress enough that i am completely serious here – the single coolest use of web technology i have ever seen. it's a web game, which there are plenty of, but unlike basically everything else, it doesn't use a single <canvas>. it's purely html elements, with css transforms to render them like 2.5d sprites. it's also a fun narrative game playing with some really cool concepts, sure, but it's genuinely just an astounding piece of tech.

lifeprint online courses for asl. almost the polar opposite, this is extremely rudimentary web tech to deliver the best online asl learning resource i've found so far. i like learning languages, and asl has been on my list for a while, and while there are other options, they tend to be primarily dictionaries and don't really talk about important concepts like indexing, or directionality, e.g. how the sign for "meeting you" is just the sign for "meet" aimed at the "you".

music

ash astral has published a lot of music i like a lot, but specifically i've been distracted by everything. other bangers include everything she's ever published but i'm a particularly big fan of become astral. plus, one of their blogposts reintroduced me to–

porter robinson, and i am slightly taking the piss here, because like everyone else who enjoys any music with synths i already knew porter robinson. but i completely forgot about him when i went on a tangent into metal and ash abruptly reminded me that he's released like two entire albums since i last listened, which then got me back into his older music, so, yeah, now i'm listening to "look at the sky" on repeat.

bite-ish-sized reading

nikhil suresh writes a lot of (foul-mouthed) blogposts on tech, most famously a piece about ai, but even that is only the third post of a sort of series, and there are more cerebral items and even helpful tips and tricks. while i haven't precisely tried to emulate his style, i have been aiming for a similar vibe of tech writing: visceral hatred of bad tech and an intense desire to make it better.

cory doctorow is (quoting him here) a "crank", and specifically a crank about tech freedom. if you're reading this blog i assume you care about tech, and so does doctorow – he coined "enshittification", and specifically inspired my link-dumps. he has a penchant for writing scifi that is pointedly predictive without being preachy, too, but those aren't even approximately bite-sized, so i won't mention them here.

soatok hasn't written in the last few weeks, so strictly speaking he hasn't really been distracting me, but his writing is still worth shouting out. he talks about tech, and furries, and – the topic that i started reading his work for – cryptography. his writing is approachable and in-depth, and his fursona is really cute, and worked frequently into posts.

low←tech magazine publishes a lot of writing about, well, being low-tech. they inspired some of the design of this site, like how the 'logo' is just css-animated text rather than a bulky image. admittedly: i love my fonts too much to use preinstalled ones like they do. but for warmth last winter i just draped blankets over my desk, and i've deliberately chosen not to upgrade much of my tech. as i start to bike more i appreciate articles about them, and wow, hey, interoperability cropping up outside of digital tech. what a "funny" "coincidence".

zine is a new, uhh, zine, web-native, with an interesting variety of reading material in issue 1: several poems, a political essay by alyaza birze, and even a little comic!

anyway

i'm spending less time coding than i used to. this is mostly because a lot of my time is just being wasted on stuff that's enjoyable in the moment but provides zero lasting satisfaction. (fun challenge: try recalling any 5 of the last 10 tiktoks/reels/shorts/w/e you watched without planning ahead of time to do so.) part of the reason i'm doing my first linkdump is today i started making a deliberate effort to cull my media intake so i can be more focused on things i enjoy having spent time on.

and partially, i have been spending time on things i enjoy! things like learning asl, or biking around my local area, or just sitting back and actually listening to music. and that's something i intend to keep doing, even as it takes time away from coding and writing.

that said, i'm hopeful: i think a lot more time than i consciously realize is being eaten by "content" /derogatory. i think cutting it out is going to help me have time for everything. if my next post is a fatuilog, well, you'll know how it turned out!

oh – but i do have a bunch of other cool posts in the pipeline, too! one about a concept i'm calling "repeatability", which i've already had to explain at work so i figure it deserves a writeup here, once i figure out if it's an existing concept or not. another is about a cool feature of rust, std::thread::park. and then a bunch of sequel posts to things i've talked about before. plus some much more unique stuff, and some fiction, and some other miscellany. lots of fun stuff and i think it'll all be out this year!