Tweet by Omar: two reasons to program: 1. make cool unexpected things 2. feeling of mastery over the computer system

Obviously not every reason for programming, but I think about this tweet often bc it captures two of my favorites. From https://x.com/rsnous/status/1820489330839998621

Departure Mono font site

A great, free pixel font (packaged as vector). Probably too intense to use for a terminal font, but would be fun to try for some of my Linux system UI. Though at this point I have very little system UI to speak of... From https://departuremono.com/

A piece by Spacefiller from Fantasy Parameter Spaces Showing bold computational plants

Thinking about Spacefiller's work this morning. Specifically wondering how they're able to achieve such a feeling of solidity + presence for the plants. Part of it is the structure but I think a big part of it is the linework. There's no anti-aliasing and line's look like they're maybe four pixels wide (in visible world pixels, probably much higher in actual resolution).

I'm interested in creating digital spaces with a similar level of solidity. But I feel like introducing images often hurts the solidity - because the pixel pieces are too small to see. Obvious solution that I continue to experiment with is scale down the resolution and color of images, so that the pieces are more visible. That could hopefully make them feel more of a piece with a world like Spacefiller's. The dilemma is that often loses a lot of the semantic content (turns a face into a blob). This is part of why I'm interested in progressive pixelation that scales up or down in resolution depending on the content. Though my efforts there I think still lack the solid feel I'm after.

Accessing the warp zone in Super Mario.

Enjoyed an episode of the Eggplant podcast where they interviewed sylvie. A prolific maker of games including sylvie rpg. Where, if I understood correctly, they used multiples of 7 as a constraint, so the game world is 7x7 tiles and runs at 21 fps.

I really enjoyed Meeting Mr. Kid Pix by jeffrey aka Whistlegraph on Twitter. I appreciated the sincerity of both him and Craig Hickman. So nice to see people putting effort to understand + be understood.

This does touch on something I've tried to nail down before in regard to creative tools and video games.

After Dark Mowing Man From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nfQnJ9EsCw

Micro journal From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuGs6Pu1ZMg

Booting up picotron! From: https://www.lexaloffle.com/picotron.php

Adel Faure - Tools From: https://adelfaure.net/tools/

Visualizing chatgpt completion probabilities by moebio From: https://twitter.com/moebio/status/1768205926878609564

conceptual game where you try and draw something other humans can but the AI can't From: outdraw.ai

Article embedding visualization From: https://twitter.com/ocuatrecasas/status/1667717542784147456

Multiplayer cursor chaos From: https://twitter.com/genmon/status/1760320518161367182

Akira puddle reflections demo From: https://twitter.com/reallyriekeles/status/1758003357502099464

Kenta Cho’s browser games From: https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/browser.html via https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/02/10/interview-kenta-cho-indie-game-developer/

Matthew Siu thread of UI experiments From: https://twitter.com/MatthewWSiu/status/1748900000833458686

"provide computer support for the creative spirit in everyone" From: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/smalltalk.html

tree visualization of LLM outputs From: https://twitter.com/willdepue/status/1698520200524505291

Penkesu Computer From: https://penkesu.computer/