Issue 2021 03
Hey, welcome to the newsletter. I tend to not write much at the moment and wanted to make a way to keep friends, family, and collaborators in the loop. My goal is to have this be a different pace of conversation, one that’s slower than Twitter, but faster than my typical blogging pace. The structure I want to experiment with over time but the current starting categories of thought organization will be Learnings, Conversations, Creations, and Recommendations. So here we go.
Learnings:
This last week I took a much-needed break and took the train to south Taiwan. It’s been a little over a year since I landed and this is the first real trip I have taken around the island. We went to Kaohsiung City via the Taiwan HSR. The experience of taking the high-speed rail was a nice personal reminder to me of the amazing things humans have made.
Conversations:
This month has been full of deeply personal and draining conversations. In the wake of learning of a friends passing back in November and the ongoing violence against Asian Americans, it’s been a heavy month. All that I can say is make sure you take time to check in with friends and loved ones especially given that we are currently unable to seek the in-person support we are probably used to. Call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while, and just let them know you are around and available to chat with them. Or if you want to chat feel free to give me a call.
Creations:
Address of the Color Space - For a long time I thought of color in 2 dimensions until a professor showed me how Adobe created a 3D color picker. It was so mind-blowing to me that I went down a rabbit hole of research on color picker interfaces and wrote about them.
Generative Design with RunwayMl - Machines are slowly catching up to be able to do low-level design work. I started to explore what it looks like when I collaborate with a machine to make some lovely gradients.
Recommendations:
A Promised Land - It’s uncommon for me to pick up a biography but this one was worth the time. Regardless of how you feel about how President Obama served, it’s an interesting look into how the US government works and doesn’t work.
Zero Data Apps - Recent work of mine has been largely in the Indie-web space for the last year or so. And as I have been researching more of the culture I found a nice collection of Apps focused on you owning your data by Rosano
Alex Honnold On The Responsibility of Adventure - I have really missed climbing over this past year, and found it uplifting to hear how Alex is using climbing for his philanthropic work and projects like the Olympics.