The album that exploded punk rock 30 years ago, re-exploded onto obscure, obsolete, and inconvenient formats.
UX Design, UI Design & Front-end Development. Technically a cyborg.
Running Game Boy ROMs on the STM32 ARM Cortex microcontroller
I spent some time playing with Astro over the weekend, and have put together a small shell script to automate converting Jekyll's filename-based post dates (yyyy-mm-dd-slug.md) to being a pubDate frontmatter property within each file.
It handles skipping file with a pubDate already specified, and skipping files with no date in the filename.
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So you want to make pixel art for an Apple II...
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Annoyed by tons of bugs? Everything takes too long to build? No time for small usability improvements? Hire. HTML. And. CSS. People.
Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font inspired by the constraints of early command-line and graphical user interfaces, the tiny pixel fonts of the late 90s/early 00s, and sci-fi concepts from film and television.
箱庭
The meaning behind Shigeru Miyamoto's 'Miniature Garden' phrase
The Pattern Library Playbook: Get set up for success
Sanding UI: Sand it, feel the grain, get a splinter, sand again, and repeat until smooth.
Mario Adventure is a ROM hack of Super Mario Bros. 3. It was developed back in 2001 and released roughly in January of 2002. At the time, Mario Adventure was one of the most extensive hacks of not just Super Mario Bros. 3, but any NES hack. It's been highly regarded as one of the best ROM hacks of all time.
A legible monospace font… the very typeface you’ve been trained to recognize since childhood.
Your boundary is at hue 174, just like the population median. You're a true neutral.
The web's clipboard, and how it stores data of different types
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⁂ is a typographical character, not an icon that needs to be inserted as an image. Unique-looking, but standardised.
Being on The Semantic Web is easy, and, frankly, well worth the bother
This is a pretty spectacular overview and explanation of how CSS named grid areas work and can be used effectively
I've a lot of nostalgia for these books. It's great reading about others' collections and experience too!
The Effect of CRTs on Pixel Art
On Cathode Ray Tubes, nostalgia and anachronisms.
[...] there's a lot more going on with both pixel art and old gaming hardware than mere CRT fuzziness
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This repository contains the instructions for building a Faux TRS-80. The model is meant to evoke the feel of a TRS-80 Model 3 or Model 4 computer, but is not an exact replica of either. It has mounting spots for a Raspberry Pi, display, and associated hardware that allow you to run a TRS-80 emulator and get the true Tandy experience.
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New episodes on https://
You might be good at TypeScript, but if you don’t know what this project does, what it needs to do next, how to build & run & test, and so much more–you can’t move it forward.
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The Apple ][ is one of the most iconic vintage computers of all time. But since Wozniak’s monster lasted all the way until 1993 (1995 if you could the IIe card, which I won’t count until I get one), it can be easy to forget that in 1977, it was a video extravaganza. The competitors– even much bigger and established companies like Commodore and Tandy– generally only had text modes, let alone pixel-addressable graphics, and they certainly didn’t have sixteen colors. (Gray and grey are different colors, right?)
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This looks like a neat little self-hosted RSS reader/news feed. I might give it a go, though these days I tend to start my mornings with https://
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Following up to my earlier post (https://
I'm now using Hammerspoon https://
I'm also now using a cheap 3-key macro pad from Aliexpress (rather than the Pimoroni RGB Keypad as I couldn't think of a good use for the rest of the keys!) that I've got bound to F12/F13/F14 keys.
This is a book about building applications using hypermedia systems. Hypermedia systems might seem like a strange phrase: how is hypermedia a system? Isn’t hypermedia just a way to link documents together?
This is great! http://
Now... what would it take to fit this inside something like the little Macintosh 128k brick set I built the other week?
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A novel use of font ligatures
Sans Bullshit Sans. The font that replaces every buzzword by a Comic Sans-styled censorship bar
Slash pages are common pages you can add to your website, usually with a standard, root-level slug like /now, /about, or /uses. They tend to describe the individual behind the site and are distinguishing characteristics of the IndieWeb.
The VR Design Paradox
Jaki Maker Pop: Personal Computer SE 1984
Enjoyed building this small model that I bought from AliExpress.
It's a very detailed facsimile of the Macintosh 128k, and can be completed in around 45 minutes.
Fiddling around with a convoluted method of setting up macro keys on Mac OS. I'm using the old faithful Pimoroni RGB Keypad with a Pico, some basic CircuitPython keyboard stuff, and these two nifty apps:
switchaudio-osx: CLI utility to switch audio source
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Anyway it's working nicely for me right now! So far I've got headphone/speaker output toggles and volume control sorted. Just 12 more keys to assign 🤔
A good explainer and diagrams of how UTF-8 works with emoji
History, data and alcohol. Super interesting!
When did people stop being drunk all the time?
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AI-Generated South Park Episodes
In this work we present our approach to generating high-quality episodic content for IP's (Intellectual Property) using large language models (LLMs), custom state-of-the art diffusion models and our multi-agent simulation for contextualization, story progression and behavioral control.
This is a really nice interactive tool for learning how SVG paths are drawn
Understanding SVG Paths
If you've ever looked at the SVG code for an icon before, you might have noticed that they're usually made up of a bunch of path elements, each with a cryptic d attribute.
Analyzing PACIFIC STATE
🧠 Cognitive Load Developer's Handbook
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Raspberry Pi Pico W now has Bluetooth support.
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Let’s look at 5 new CSS things that really matter to real-world development.
🧸 Tiny is a lightweight 2D game engine that allows developers to easily create games using the Lua programming language.
Modding Age of Empires II with a Sprite-Diffuser
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A great summary/recap of Breath of the Wild.
Should have my copy of Tears of the Kingdom before the end of the day. That's my weekend plans sorted!
Modern CSS Solutions for Old CSS Problems
Science Fiction Movie Lettering
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Hacking the original xbox controller for fun and no profit
How Video Games Lie To You
It might come as a surprise to some of you, but your favorite games [...] use some pretty clever lies to invisibly balance their gameplay experience behind the scenes.
I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!
Though actually I'm happy to see Daft Punk come up on my New Releases playlist this week.
Mo LaBorde is a reporter who has been collecting safety cards for almost ten years, and one day she started wondering how the modern safety card came about.
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Four-Byte Burger
What Color is Player 1?
DOOM maps to SVG to laser cutter
Sega 3-D Glasses: How did they work?
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That's pretty cool!
Normally, submitting an app to app stores requires a lot of work, including writing code in languages web developers may not necessarily be familiar with, creating app icons, configuring various settings, and testing the app across different devices and operating systems. PWABuilder takes care of many of these tasks automatically, reducing the amount of time and effort required to publish apps.
Espresso and open source hardware?
Making an espresso machine from (almost) scratch.
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The majority of internet users aren't developers, so outputting the HTTP error code and its name (503 Service Unavailable) isn't good enough.
System font stack CSS organized by typeface classification for every modern OS
WebGL2 from the ground up. No magic.
This is a really impressive feat, and the ultimate asymmetrical VR experience!
The process of making a multiplayer-cross-platform video game that has parts that run on everything from a tiny microcontroller to a high end VR setup
This is how the cover art of Defender of the Crown (1986) was made
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I've posted a short blog post about shutting down Dingoonity.org after 14 years https://
I've jumped on the ChatGPT bandwagon lately. Using Open AIs implementation. I can see how conversational interfaces are going to revolutionize the way we use search.
Take my example from today - I wanted to batch convert a directory of PDF files to PNG:
Me:
How can I easily convert a directory of pdf files to png
AI:
You can use an open-source command-line tool called "ImageMagick" to easily convert a directory of PDF files to PNG images. Here's how to do it:
Install ImageMagick: You can download ImageMagick from their official website and install it on your computer.
Open a command prompt or terminal: Navigate to the directory where your PDF files are located.
Run the following command:
magick mogrify -format png *.pdfThis command will convert all the PDF files in the current directory to PNG format. The converted PNG files will have the same name as the original PDF files, but with the .png extension.
If you want to convert the PDF files to a different image format, such as JPEG, you can simply replace "png" in the command with "jpg" or the desired image format.
Note that ImageMagick can also be used to convert individual PDF files to PNG images by using the "convert" command. Here's an example:
magick convert example.pdf example.pngThis will convert the file "example.pdf" to a PNG image called "example.png".
Me:
how would I set the output resolution?
AI:
To set the output resolution for the converted PNG files, you can add the -density option to the ImageMagick command. The -density option specifies the number of pixels per inch (PPI) for the output image. Here's how to set the output resolution to 300 PPI:
magick mogrify -density 300 -format png *.pdfThis command will convert all the PDF files in the current directory to PNG images with a resolution of 300 PPI. You can adjust the resolution to a different value by changing the number after the -density option.
Note that the output image size will depend on the original PDF file's dimensions and the resolution you set. If the PDF file is large, the output PNG file may also be large in size. You can also use the -resize option to resize the output image to a specific size after converting it.
Me:
How would I make the transparent areas of the converted images be white?
AI:
To make the transparent areas of the converted images be white, you can use the -background and -alpha options in the ImageMagick command. Here's an example command that sets the transparent areas to white:
magick mogrify -background white -alpha background -flatten -density 300 -format png *.pdfThis command does the following:
-background white: sets the background color of the image to white.-alpha background: tells ImageMagick to treat transparent areas as background.-flatten: merges the alpha channel with the background color to create a fully opaque image.-density 300: sets the resolution of the output image to 300 PPI.-format png: sets the output format to PNG.
Visual design rules you can safely follow every time
I finally got around to publishing a blog post about the movies I watched in 2022.
Open UI: The missing industry standard definition of UI
Will Wright on Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games
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The Mystery of the Dune Font
Putting a name to the typeface that defined the visual identity of the science fiction series and its author, Frank Herbert
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This seems like a useful tool. Lots of information that is usually a pain to compare!
Carsized: Compare car design and dimensions in a Virtual Showroom
I spent some time this evening fiddling with the UX of VR website. Pruned some dead links, de-Twittered the site, and added some multi-column goodness for wider screens.
I really wish I had the time/energy to add more content these days, but alas.
Anyway, check it out here: https://
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Create better designed games with these comprehensive guidelines that feature classic design principles combined with modern accessibility standards.
This really does seem handy!
Shopify/handy: The eastiest way to mocap your hands! We developed this tool in order to streamline the process of capturing hand movements from Meta Quest headsets and bringing them into Blender for use in animations.
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Remaking Old Computer Graphics With AI Image Generation Can AI Image generation tools make re-imagined, higher-resolution versions of old video game graphics?
How many layers of UI inconsistencies are in Windows 11?
When to hold ’em and when to fold ’em: Adding a hinge to a Game Boy that God never intended
Over 16,000 people still using their Pebble watches! I still go back to my Pebble Time from time to time 🥁
Some great points! 👍👍
Why is VR more restrictive than my 27” monitor? Doesn’t that defeat the entire point?
Being able to manipulate and configure the environment in a way that is comfortable and bespoke to a user is probably the best end goal. Once we've gotten over the novelty of the new interaction paradigms, maybe this will become the norm.
We should be looking to VR headsets as an alternative to standard displays. The default for an experience should not be a full body workout.
One of the most limiting factors for me as a healthy type-1 diabetic is having a blood sugar crash after 30 minutes of using my full body as a controller in a game.
Monocraft A programming font based on the typeface used in Minecraft
DOOM as you didn't realise you needed it!
Voxel DOOM: A mod that replaces 2d characters and props from Doom with fully 3d voxel-based models.
These are all amazing game UI/UX resources.
The best collection of the most beautiful, exceptional and inspiring video game interfaces and screenshots.
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Explore a collection of video games interfaces, screenshots, and clips. Take a look at all the fragments that make up a video game, and find inspiration for your designs.
The Game UI Database was created as a free resource for UI/UX Designers in the games industry. It was built to aid in the discovery of new inspiration, and to provide a fast and efficient way of searching for reference materials.
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Following on from the essential games user reading list; this post is an introduction to some of the fantastic video resources available online. Ranging from 101 introductions to in-depth guides, ‘day in the life’ and more – video resources are a useful for learning about UX and games user research (GUR) alongside books, articles, and classes.
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Open Source Game Clones
Open-source or source-available remakes of great old games in one place