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 Guy Moorhouse
convergenewsletter.com |
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| Hey, happy autumn to you. Politics and monarchic nonsense aside, it’s been a pretty good few weeks since I last messaged. Still busy plugging away at Fable and have also recently started every designer’s favourite job – redesigning my portfolio. Don’t ask.
Also realising this newsletter might need a better name at some point. Guy Moorhouse – Newsletter while technically accurate is not the most inspired. Maybe I need to see what shape it takes properly first? Either way, suggestions very welcome if you have any?
Right, on with proceedings… |
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Remarkable |
Pencil Booth Newsletter platform Like Explore in the last issue, PencilBooth looks like another example of a nice upcoming platform for creative folks. It’s is a micro-newsletter service built for artists, where you share weekly updates of four images and news of what you’ve been up to. I’ve just popped myself on the waitlist.
It’s great seeing this rising tide of new small platforms helping folks connect with their audience in smaller, more personal ways. 🔗 pencilbooth.com | |
Knotwords Game for iOS and Android I’ve been playing this game from Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger for a while now and I’m still hooked. It’s a smart sort of mash-up of crosswords and Boggle where you have to find the right words by working out where they to fit into the grid. 🔗 playknotwords.com | |
The Steve Jobs Archive Website A nice little site gathering some ideals and values that motivated Steve Jobs throughout his life. Also with the lofty ambition of “building programs, fellowships, collections, and partnerships that reflect Steve’s values and carry his sense of possibility forward.” 🔗 stevejobsarchive.com | |
Six N. Five Design studio Staggeringly good 3D / animation work from this Barcelona design studio, featuring imaginary, dream-like worlds.
Six N. Five is the studio of Ezequiel Pini, an award-winning Argentinian designer based in Barcelona. 🔗 sixnfive.com | |
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Useful |
Astro Website framework I’ve had a bit of a hiatus from building websites in recent years. This is driven in part because I don’t like the deluge of over-engineered JavaScript frameworks that push you to build sites bloated with unnecessary JS. They’re often a very enormous hammer for quite a small nail, or at least in my case.
Astro is like a breath of fresh air though and is getting me hooked again.
Taking as a first principle that there should be no more JavaScript than is entirely necessary in your site, Astro leads you to build in a considered way while also offering a lot of freedom with its ‘Island architecture’.
Very worth a play if you’re in the business of building sites. 🔗 astro.build | |
12ft.io Bypass paywalls Prepend their web address to the URL of any paywalled web page, and 12ft will do its best to remove the paywall and grant you access to the article. Without dwelling on whether this is fair or right, this has been very effective and useful for me so far. 🔗 12ft.io | |
Ruffle Flash player emulator Appreciate that this is only likely to be useful to a small minority of you as it’s a bit of a niche use case, but I still think it worth including, as it was recently a real godsend for me.
Ruffle is a Flash Player emulator written in Rust and usable in the browser, on the desktop or via the command line.
If like me you have quite a bit of Flash work from years ago that was consigned to the bin when Adobe got rid of the player, this saves the day allowing you to playback and interact with those long forgotten projects. 🔗 ruffle.rs | |
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Watch |
Everything Everywhere All At Once Film This has been on my watchlist for a few weeks and I finally got round to it. It didn’t disappoint and it’s absolutely bananas. Such a fun, energetic film with mind-bending multiverses and a magic blend of sci-fi and comedy.
I’m watching this on Amazon Prime Video. 🔗 youtu.be | |
Stewart Lee — Snowflake Stand-up comedy Stewart Lee is a bit like Marmite, but I’m definitely a lover not a hater. In this hour, he offers his usual brand of deconstructive, acerbic comedy, tackling cancel culture, free speech, identity politics, and being woke. All from the position of being a self-confessed nowflake. 🔗 bbc.co.uk | |
Welcome to Wrexham TV Series For transparency on this one, I’m not a football fan. I don’t have a team and I’m one of those people who just watches the odd World Cup game, or bits and pieces of the Euros.
But this documentary is great (so far) and gets me closer to understanding why some people care so much about the game and why in some cases, it becomes their entire life.
Welsh club Wrexham has been on its knees in Division Two for years and at the end of the 2020, Hollywood actors (!) Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds made a successful bid to buy the club, hoping to turn it around. This series documents that and what happens afterwards.
We’re watching on Disney+. 🔗 disneyplus.com | |
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Listen |
Fantasy EP I’ve loved Jacques Greene‘s stuff for a while, first picking up on it with the sublime Another Girl back in 2011. The Canadian DJ / producer’s latest EP, Fantasy came out earlier in 2022 and also does not disappoint. 🔗 open.spotify.com | |
On a loop Single Can’t get enough of this 2020 tune from German producer, Ludwig A.F.
Blissful Lie opens with a gorgeous percussive hook that’s almost but not quite DnB. It’s kind of reminiscent of some of Bicep’s stuff. Then he layers on bouncy synth melodies and vocal samples and builds an audio journey that takes a few unexpected twists and turns. Love it.
Definitely one to crank up on some decent headphones to fully appreciate. 🔗 open.spotify.com | |
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Read |
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Non-Fiction Like most folks, I’ve become really tuned into the urgency of action needed to deal with climate change. But also I feel totally numb to all the doom-mongering and negativity – it’s just too much to bear day-to-day.
Which is why I like this book – it’s pragmatic and hopeful, rather than heavy and exhausting.
Love him or loathe him, Bill Gates is extremely practical and in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster he comes from a place of positivity, outlining that we can solve the issues facing us but we need to be collectively organised and focused and base our decisions on data and sensible economics.
Basing his arguments on tangible, meaningful numbers, he sets out a compelling plan for how the world can get to zero carbon emissions in time to avoid catastrophe. 🔗 literal.club | |
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Work & Projects |
From the archives 2017 In the absence of current work and projects stuff to show this issue, I thought it could be cool to dig something out of the archives.
So here’s a selection of interactive animations I made in JavaScript a few years ago. Click one and watch it play through, or drag the slider to control the playhead.
This series of self-initiated work gave rise to what became the Creative Coding course I made for online code school, SuperHi back in 2019. 🔗 futurefabric.co | |
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| Ok that’s it for this one, hope you found something in here of interest. If you’ve got any thoughts (positive or negative) or just want to say hi, just hit reply on this message.
I’d also be super interested to hear of other positive takes on the climate crisis if you know of any — whether that’s books, films, podcasts or whatever.
Alright cheers, see you again in a few weeks (•◡•) / |
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