Tilman

Josh W. Comeau just released a new version of his blog at www.joshwcomeau.com^*. The new graphic and interactive header is such a playful and surprising delight! It unfolds in several steps:

1. A colourful rainbow brightens up the space behind Josh’s CGI-generated toy-like avatar. Nice!
2. Once you move the mouse cursor closer, the segments of the rainbow align with it. It feels a bit like stroking fur. Not that we would not have seen anything like it before, but what a surprise to see it integrated in a blog header!
3. A cog icon is fading in. Clicking on it opens the ”Rainbow configurator"! What the heck?! You can change the parameters of the rainbow graphic, the density, length and width of the segments, etc. Feels great!
4. Sometimes the parameters change on their own. What’s happening?! The small info texts explains: The changes are applied to all users of the site, instantaneously! What you see are live users changing the parameters, right now.

The best part: Nothing of this serves any purpose. It’s interactive art that delights users and feels great. That’s all! (The blog posts are also worth your time.)

Music-related poster graphics by Floating Bstrd (Marko Vuleta-Djukanov) from Serbia. Bold colors and sharp lines with a retro feel, heavily influenced by '80s and '90s design.

fawwgallery.co.uk/collections/floating-bstrd^*

Brent Simmons, the author of NetNewsWire (my feed reader for many years), writes about Mastodon support in his application. The interesting part is: How can Mastodon (or any other ActivityPub source) be integrated into traditional "feed reading" apps? There are some significant differences. I chewed on this a lot last year while tweaking the microsub parts of Knot. No substantial solutions, so far, but this might be where possible futures are negotiated.

inessential.com/2023/12/17/on_mastodon_support_in_netnewswire^*

Adam Stoddard’s website surprised me with random background graphics completing the clean typography: aaadaaam.com^* The color theme picker is also a nice touch.

Simon recreated one of my Geometry Dailies as an animated shader. 60 frames per second!

www.shadertoy.com/view/dtdfDf^*