Frank Chimero · Beyond the Machine
The transcript of a very thoughtful talk by Frank.
Link tags: rum
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Cold Album Drumming - full-album drum covers by Brad Frost
This is a great new musical project from Brad:
Brad Frost plays drums to the albums he knows intimately, but has never drummed to before. Cover to cover. No warm-up. No prep. Totally cold. What could possibly go wrong?
I really enjoyed watching all of The Crane Wife and In Rainbows.
The Two Rules Of Software Creation From Which Every Problem Derives – Ask The UXer
- Humans can not accurately describe what they want out of a software system until it exists.
- Humans can not accurately predict how long any software effort will take beyond four weeks. And after 2 weeks it is already dicey.
My Challenge to the Web Performance Community — Philip Walton
I’ve noticed a trend in recent years—a trend that I’ve admittedly been part of myself—where performance-minded developers will rebuild a site and then post a screenshot of their Lighthouse score on social media to show off how fast it is.
Mea culpa! I should post my CrUX reports too.
But I’m going to respectfully decline Phil’s advice to use any of the RUM analytics providers he recommends that require me to put another script element on my site. One third-party script is one third-party script too many.
Gaming the Iron Curtain
The ZX Spectrum in a time of revolution:
Gaming the Iron Curtain offers the first book-length social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, or anywhere in the Soviet bloc. It describes how Czechoslovak hobbyists imported their computers, built DIY peripherals, and discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression.
The Lords of Midnight
I played a lot Lords of Midnight (and Doomdark’s Revenge) on my Amstrad 464 when I was a kid. Turns out there’s a dedicated labour of love to port the games to modern platforms. I just downloaded the OS X port, so there goes my weekend.
CrUX.RUN
This is so useful! Get instant results from Google’s Chrome User Experience Report without having to wait (or pay) for BigQuery.
Here’s an example of my site’s metrics over the last few months, complete with nice charts.
Frank Chimero · Redesign: Wants and Needs
Websites sit on a design spectrum. On one end are applications, with their conditional logic, states, and flows—they’re software.
On the other end of the design spectrum are documents; sweet, modest documents with their pleasing knowableness and clear edges.
For better or worse, I am a document lover.
This is the context where I fell in love with design and the web. It is a love story, but it is also a ghost story.
A better metaphor for technology - The Verge
The ideas and images that come to mind when you think of technology as an instrument are more useful than if you think of it as a tool. Instruments — I’m specifically talking about musical instruments — are a way to create culture.
You approach instruments with a set of expectations and associations that are more humane. It’s built into their very purpose. Instruments are meant to make something for other people, not making things. When you use an instrument, you have an expectation that it is going to take effort to use it well. Using an instrument takes practice. You form a relationship with that object. It becomes part of your identity that you make something with it. You tune it. You understand that there’s no such thing as a “best” guitar in the same way that there’s not necessarily a “best” phone.
Manual Aspire
If only all documentation was as great as this old manual for the ZX Spectrum that Remy uncovered:
The manual is an instruction book on how to program the Spectrum. It’s a full book, with detailed directions and information on how the machine works, how the programming language works, includes human readable sentences explaining logic and even goes so far as touching on what hex values perform which assembly functions.
When we talk about things being “inspiring”, it’s rarely in regards to computer manuals. But, damn, if this isn’t inspiring!
This book stirs a passion inside of me that tells me that I can make something new from an existing thing. It reminds me of the 80s Lego boxes: unlike today’s Lego, the back of a Lego box would include pictures of creations that you could make with your Lego set. It didn’t include any instructions to do so, but it always made me think to myself: “I can make something more with these bricks”.
Design Patterns on CodePen
This ever-growing curated collection of interface patterns on CodePen is a reliable source of inspiration.
The Last 100 Days, the Next 100 Years
Cancelling the future.
The future lives and dies by the state of the archives. To look hard at this world and honestly, diligently articulate what happened and what it was like in the present is a sort of promise to the future, a new layer to the palimpsest of history that can become someone else’s foundation.
Evaluating Tools For Building a Component Library | Chromatic
A comparison of a few different tools for generating pattern libraries.
Spoiler…
In this particular case, Fractal comes out on top:
It has the features we need, and I’m happier than I should be with how simple the directory and file structure is. The documentation has also been super helpful thus far. We’ve customized it with our client’s branding and are ready to roll.
Astrum - A lightweight pattern library for any project
One more tool for making pattern libraries. This one looks fairly simple and straightforward.
And that was it really, I knew what I wanted to do, I wanted to build websites
Jake describes the pivotal moment of his web awakening:
I explored the world wide web. I was amazed by the freedom of information, how anyone could publish, anyone could read. Then I found a little button labeled “View source”. That was the moment I fell in love with the web.
It all goes back to having a ZX Spectrum apparently. Pah! Luxury! I had a ZX81—one K of RAM …1K! Tell that to the young people today, and they wouldn’t believe you.
Anyway, this is a lovely little reminiscence by Jake, although I have no idea why he hasn’t published it on his own site.
ZX Spectrum Screenshotter Example - an album on Flickr
Over 700 screenshots of ZX Spectrum games, captured by Jason Scott. Some of these bring back memories.
N’existe Pas by Bruce Sterling on The Dissident Blog
A short story set in a science-fictional future that just happens to be our present.
Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold. - Slurtha
The best review of The Hobbit.
Make Your Own Pick Using Recycled Credit Cards » Design You Trust – Social design inspiration!
This is rather brilliant: recycle your old credit cards into plectrums.