Summer is waning
Soho dinners in close heat
Folding
Cutting
Posting
Nights drawing quickly in
Summer is Waning
The summer is waning, you can feel it in the mornings, the dog days are over, and it’s getting noticeably darker earlier in the evenings than just a month ago. Leaves are starting to fall in the streets outside.
It was amidst this stretched out summer heat and sunshine, that I had a bit of a topsy turvy week this week. Sprints of intensity, calls deadlines, meetings etc, immediately followed by fallow afternoons of noting. Just noodling on my own creative projects, feeling guilty I wasn’t actually sitting down and grinding. But its been so hot so i’ll let myself off!
We booked our xmas holiday this week though so thats something to work/look forward to. Also exciting, but to a much lesser extent that booking a holiday, my Cardyhedron arrived!
Cardyhedron Dice features a card-shaped design, matching the size of a standard credit card and measuring just 5mm thick. It consists of six spinning wheels for d4, d6, d8, d10/00, d12, and d20, each embedded with micro ball bearings to ensure a smooth and long-lasting spin. At the center of each wheel, precision markers clearly indicate the result, making it easy to use in any setting.
I’m really excited to take it out with me and play some SoloRPG journaling games in a notebook in the coffee shop, or on the train etc. Such a cool little thing. A must for anyone that plays a lot of RPGs I think!
The main news this week is that I printed, cut, folded, and posted Issue #14 of my zine!
On The Blog:
Start Select Reset Zine #014 | You Can Just Do Things
Issue #014 of SSRZ is about my firm belief that ‘you can just do things’.
The essay reflects on the end of the conclusion of 301 and who it’s taught me that the distance between ‘idea’ and ‘upload’ should be as short as possible.
I also talk about the difference between knowing and capital-K (K)nowing. and that you really don’t need to ask anyones permission to create something and share something online.
The ‘the dream’ and ‘the doing’ of creative work are for you. The ‘done’ is for everyone else.
This whole ‘sending people things in the post, instead of sending people more email’ thing, is really starting to work out I think. I’m very grateful to people who have subscribed since I concluded 301 recenty! It’s been such a clear gesture from people who, want to see and support what is coming next in my creative life.
If 17 year old me back in 2002 knew he was gonna have a per-zine that after was going to have this sort of print run, and a radio show (podcast) with the audience I have, I don’t think I would have believe it. Nevertheless here we are. Printing, cutting, folding, writing addresses on envelopes, sticking stamps on, and stamping my return address on the back is *a whole operation* now. And I couldn’t be more thrilled. Every single issue over the last 3.5 years has had a bigger print run than the previous one. And this issue has been no exception. A real boost in confidence that more closely tying the zine to the show a little closer is the way to go in the age of post social media and newsletter saturation.
Clippy: A Little History of Little Guys
Got my second ‘little history of little guys’ post out this week. Matt was kind enough to include the piece in webcrious this week too!
There are very few bits of software that have achieved such lasting cultural immortality as Clippy.
To examine its status as an OG “little guy,” we must consider three separate things: his vision, execution, and location. All three still have downstream effects on AI Agent design today.
This post contains also this unhinged graph, which I’m quite please with!
Subscribing to SSRZ supports my online work and creative projects.
As a thank you, I send you my zine four times a year, just like it’s 1994.
No spam. No email. Cancel at any time.
Photo 365
The Ministry Of My Own Labour
- ZINE PRINTED AND SENT!!
- Sent some more experience.computer emails
- Recorded Neomania pod with YIB Robotson, out soon.
- Locked in the date/time to go back on wolf pod with Eddie, we are going to be talking about 301 permanently moved as a ‘completed’ creative project.
- As I said above, I finished my post on CLIPPY. And more importantly defined the 2×2 in it.
- Still slowly trying to ‘Degoogle’ my life. Ran into a bit of a road block using a local whisper model rather than Pixels voice note recorder app for transcriptions.
- I added about 3k words to the Interactive fiction i’m working on.
- Lots of meetings at work, before I take a break for a bit.
- Finished the reports at work too.
Terminal Access
Tracy Durnell just posted the 7th entry in her ongoing ‘Mindset of more‘ series. This newest entry is a fantastic long read on managing ones media diet, taste and curiosity, and reading with purpose. So good!
Reading towards questions gives purpose to my curiosity. Curiosity comes in two styles: receptive and directed. Receptive curiosity is openness to learning; directed curiosity is more active, and invites you deeper. Allen Pike observes that the internet primarily serves our receptive curiosity:
By occasionally picking things to go deep on, you balance out the otherwise broad information diet we all get by default by being on the internet, consuming media, and just kind of being a modern human.
My big questions coalesced out of my receptive curiosity reading; I identified my first big questions in 2023 by reflecting on what I’d been thinking and writing about and looking for overarching themes. I first listed off a bunch of smaller questions within that theme, then worked backwards to find a bigger question uniting them all. Defining these questions made me enunciate for myself exactly what it was I was wondering, a process I found helpful in itself.
Dipping the Stacks
BYD distracted the world while Chinese EV peers staged a coup
Chinese automakers now control 70% of global EV production. Their average vehicle age is just 1.6 years, compared with 5.4 years for foreign brands. Product development cycles have compressed to as little as 18 months, while Western automakers still operate on traditional four-to-five-year timelines.
AI Slop Might Finally Cure Our Internet Addiction
Tech companies may assume that the public is so habituated—or even addicted—to doing everything online that people will put up with any amount of risk or unpleasantness to continue to transact business and amuse themselves on the internet. But there is a limit to what at least some of us will take.
Spontaneous mind wandering linked to heavier social smartphone use
New research published in Psychological Reports indicates that people who frequently experience spontaneous mind wandering also tend to be more preoccupied with the online world and use their smartphones more for social purposes.
We didn’t run out of money, sell the company off to private equity, or shut down in bankruptcy. Instead, Medium has been profitable since August ‘24.
Last Laugh | No Mercy / No Malice
Podcasts are TV … just more efficient.
Reading
I’m still reading The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe by Richard Rohr and Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing Pain by John E. Sarno. Both are really good. Though its a bit of a weird axis to turn on jumping backwards and forwards between the two!
I finished No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz. Absolutely fantastic book. Can’t recommend it enough. I sort of feel that psycho-threaputic healthcare is going to be totally transformed by Jungianism 2.0 inside of my life time.
Music
Computer – Zero EP
Forgive the pun but there appears to be ‘Zero’ information about the band Computer online. The band’s Bandcamp only says that they are from New York. Regardless of geographic provenance, Computer play mid-west emocore and do it very very well.
Remember Kids:
When a reader shares a weblogger’s general worldview, he can rely on her to point to articles and websites that will interest him.
The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood
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