January 2022
Inspired by “52 things I learned this year”-posts by the like of Kottke and Tom Whitwell, I’ve started making notes of stuff I pick up while reading and browsing, with a goal of learning something new every day.
MoreLink dumps
Posts
Link dump special: Signs and storefronts reference
Hitting tumblr in search of storefront reference images. Here are a few good ones:
- street signs & storefronts
- London Shop Fronts
- Liverpool Shopfronts
- Once Upon a Town is a fantastic collection of historical city photos
- Beauty and Neglect has a lot of empty scenes with decaying buildings (plenty of brutalism)
- Creative Boom feature about Ben Hassett‘s L. A. liquor store photos
Also, Colossal has featured some great illustrators drawing Korean and Japanese storefronts:
- Lee Me Kyong, part one and two
- Colorful storefronts by Angela Hao
Link dump #03
- NYT’s Aaron Krolik, famous loser, writes an article about the Slander Industry.
- The Story of the Couple Who Shagged in an MRI Machine for Science
- Spooky Geology gazes into a bunch of bottomless pits, bogs and lakes. (Spoiler: they are not very bottomless at all)
- Alan Jacobs writes a most excellent newsletter called Snakes & Ladders. Subscribed! (via Austin Kleon’s newsletter)
- Wilf Davies has life sorted out: I’ve had the same supper for 10 years. (via the aforementioned Snakes & Ladders)
- Got a kick out of these illustrations of the future as imagined in 1890
Link dump #02
- Daft Punk’s Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger covered by Scary Pockets
- Amazing 1950s photography, documenting the incredibly badass, free-diving Ama Women of the Sea (NSFW for nudity)
- The Comics Journal interviews Max Huffman. Liked his description of “the zone”:
Making comics is self-indulgent! When it’s good I feel like I’m playing with all my toys on one of those children’s rugs with the roads and buildings on them.
- Ric Tse has made these great collages of Hong Kong architecture, Tong Lau - the Colorful Building Blocks (via Present & Correct)
- Cartoonist Kayfabe takes a long look at Bone by Jeff Smith
Link dump #01
- Enjoyed 99% Invisible’s look at the history of fake books and The Real Book
- Jacob Kaplan-Moss encourages us to Embrace the Grind, how simply putting in the effort can make tedium result in magic. (See also: DHH on Effort – it’s not about working hard, it’s always about working lazy smart.)
- I’m forever fascinated by these little critters, so I loved NYTimes’ Let Us Now Praise Tiny Ants
- Learned a thing or two about Wes Anderson and planimetric composition in this video by Thomas Flight: Why Do Wes Anderson Movies Look Like That (via Kottke)
- Inkle’s ink looks like something that would have been really handy when I worked with my digital storybook. Tried writing branching conversations directly in JSON, but it was a massive headache to keep track of everything. Now I want to give it another go!