A collection of things
Music and movies and games, oh my!
Happy Wednesday! Yesterday was pretty hectic so I pushed the newsletter back to today, I’m sure I won’t mind. Over the last week I haven’t really dug deep into anything new in particular, which gave me time to appreciate all of the random cool things that I encounter every day. While you likely won’t learn anything from this particular newsletter I hope you come away as inspired as I am from some of these projects.
In this issue
🎶 A computer-generated song website? I think?
📼 A Netflix docuseries that we binged one night.
🕹 A new handheld gaming system I can’t wait to get.
Jazz.Computer
Everyone always thinks of apps and data scraping when they think of coding, but I find that one of the coolest aspects of coding is the creativity of side projects. One of the reasons I move so slowly when coding is because I get over-excited and try to make multiple side projects based on this one cool thing I learned. It’s fun as hell. But once you get really good you can do things like this.
It’s called jazz.computer and it uses Tone.js to play a song as you scroll down the page. It looks wild, has intuitive and easy controls, and is just such a creative use of the internet. It’s projects like this that make my mind spin thinking about other projects to build.
High on the Hog
If you love watching any kind of cooking show and drooling over what the people are making then this documentary is for you. It’s called High on the Hog and everything they showed on screen made my mouth water (it didn’t help that I was hungry) and it tells the story of how African American food helped shape the American cuisine.
There are some things that obviously come to mind when you think of black food in America like soul food from the South, but that’s just the beginning. Plus, all of that culinary deliciousness is wrapped in an inspirational story as Stephen Satterfield travels to different parts of Africa and America tracing the flavors in dishes. This is a much watch.
Playdate from Panic
One of the most hyped gaming consoles (at least in my head) is the Playdate from Panic. No lie, I want this more than a PS5. Not just because the hardware was made by Teenage Engineering (my favorite company) but also because I’m a sucker for the bright yellow that reminds me of my first Gameboy Color.
Besides that, the console comes with a crank that acts as another input for games which is a pretty clever idea. It also has a nifty cover to protect it and Bluetooth speaker dock for your desk (both sold separately of course). But the thing that has me most excited for this is the ability to make your own games with a no code web app from Panic called Pulp. It isn’t available yet, but I can’t think of a cooler side-project than making indie games for such a quirky device.
