Designer Eye Orbits

Hi <<Name>>

The second edition of my fledging newsletter has me still finding my feet, but hopefully it's providing some entertainment every other Friday afternoon. I've been finding lots of great stuff, so eventually it may move to weekly, but we'll see how it goes.

If you've got any thoughts on that, other comments or words of encouragement simply reply to this email. I guarantee to read it and reply!

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If, like me, you're pretty aesthetically challenged, then I highly recommend David Kadavy's Design for Hackers. Similar principles are outlined in Tracy Osborn's post and she's running a Kickstarter campaign at the moment to create a book on the same subject. The post is a quick read with some great tips, so why not try redesigning something this weekend? I know I should!

A computer that runs on marbles anyone? Brilliantly impractical and requiring stupid levels of knowledge about Turing complete proofs to understand it, this is a machine that can technically be scaled to implement any computer program conceivable. I love this analog stuff and if you want another marble fix then have a Friday afternoon jig to this other marble machine

Yesterday I received a message to say my Radiotopia challenge coin was on the way. Don't know what a challenge coin is? Well then you should be listening the incredible 99% Invisible. They're all good but this episode on coin checks fascinated me. It's a kind of subculture that I never would have known existed otherwise.

Holy crap, Orbital are back again! Definitely a contender for the greatest band of all time (and yes I have heard of the Beatles), Orbital keep splitting up and then realising that they need a few quid for weekend beers. It was interesting to read about the family rift that they've had to get over. A new track and some festival dates announced. Now I need to work out how to be at one of them...

To finish, a game that captures a lot of what I've always enjoyed about casual gaming online. We Become What We Behold has you taking and broadcasting images of the inhabitants of a small grey world. It's a great mechanic that has a good lesson for all us media consuming drones!

That's all folks! I came across this blog post from Anton at Yoast who is attempting to learn a new technology a month. That might be a more attainable goal than my new thing a week, but I'm not as far behind with that as it might look. It turns out writing up what I've done is more time consuming than I thought. Keep an eye on the site if you're interested in hearing how things are going (especially if you've got an interest in WordPress development and Docker). Until next time.

Thanks,

Paul. (Bunkers)