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I just did a big and scary thing. The other day I submitted a draft to a publisher with a name we all know and I’ve never done anything like this before. First: I’ve never felt like I was good enough for traditional publishing ( yawn , c’mon man). Second: I’ve always felt that what interests me is so very niche or personal that it isn’t welcoming to strangers. Third: isn’t it more punk to build…
Friends! It’s been a hot minute and the last few weeks have been busy with blogging and redesigning my website and doing interviews. Let’s take a look: The redesign of my website was real fun, I like where it’s at now, and I wrote a bit about why I changed some things around . It definitely looks less serious and merging the /about page and the homepage was smart. You know when Mr Chris Coyier…
Friends! Comrades of the Eternal Gloom! Etidorhpa, or, The end of earth p. 101, John August Knapp. This week I’ve been mopey—“Off Balance” if we’re going to describe our emotions with Baldur’s Gate 3 status descriptions—and it’s been rough-going for a few reasons but we’re going to push through it all, screaming as we go, pretending that everything is okay together. But, I have to admit, things…
This week I’ve been enthralled with, of all things, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle soundtrack because it doesn’t sound like a bunch of songs you’d slap into a kids film but instead it sounds like a corporeal beast that crawled out of a sewer. It’s a mean and angry thing, grunge in all the best possible ways. As always, my biological father Trent Reznor never fails to disappoint. Okay so what else…
Friends! Book pals! Fellow worshipers of Shar! A few stressful interviews this week, two dozen hours thrown into Baldur’s Gate to recover, and I just finished the ever-so-great Dolly Parton’s America this morning. First up this week there’s a new book I have my eye on and then we take a stroll to the Book Club of California. Let’s do this thing. Keith Houston has a new book out this week called…
This week: a few quick notes on job hunting. But first, a blog update. This week I wrote about... The two types of paintings Reviving old type for TV and movies My new portfolio that still needs a lot of work, but it’s slowly getting there. Also this week I’ve been taking a lot more brooding walks up into the hills of Noe Valley where the houses are upsettingly beautiful and the weather has been…
Friends! Pals! Digital librarians! I’ve been thinking about what makes a website cool and it all started with this note from Henry : the coolness of the url is inversely proportional to the coolness of the web project. the best website you'll ever find is gonna be something like libra.v2.progrecali.edu/oct2023/dept/manifesto.html, but going to etherzone.ooo or, say, x.com will be the worst…
I have never believed in punk rock. I can’t help but roll my eyes when folks try to dissect literature or music or anything into genre-buckets like that because, to me, it’s so very limiting to think of the world in those terms. Plus, it’s so much more fun to think of everything as a single enormous bucket with everything sloshing around inside. It’s so much more creatively freeing to think of…
Friends! Mates! Pub-folk of the Westcountry! I have returned. It is I, Robin Rendle , first of his name, and this newsletter was sadly abandoned when I zipped over to the UK for a week. It’s been a while since my last e-message because I’ve been furiously walking all over Devon and Cornwall in a total and complete state of jet-lag. The plan was simple though: head back to my hometown to see my…
Friends! Sailors! Salman Rushdie was in his twenties and wrote a cracking failure of a novel; imitative of the books he loved, too much like Pynchon. He knew it was a terrible thing, unpublishable even, and so into a drawer this book went, never to be mentioned again. Thirty years later, he digs it out and confidently, with a smile, reads a snippet of the book. Now I would be devastated to have…
Friends! Blackletter fonts are back in vogue. Yesterday I made an update to my website with some big, blocky colors and wild new typographic styles; Fakir now takes center stage. I’ve been wanting to use this typeface for more than a decade since each letter looks like it was shaved out of a large block of marble and great care was taken to smooth out the decorative edges that garner each flank.…
Friends! Pals! CSS deviants! One thing I’ve always loved about CSS, besides its obvious and immediate effect on a webpage—wow this table is now red!—is that it prods, pokes, and questions you over the years. CSS never sits still, not just in terms of small properties and browser quirks that get pushed out over time, but big philosophical things about CSS too. And since I quit my job last week ,…
Friends! I’ve returned to Hyrule this week; I’m exploring caves teeming with bioluminescent fish, fusing mushrooms to every shield that I find, and mercilessly stomping on any goblins that dare get in my way. My love for this game is unexpected though because I wasn’t into Breath of the Wild at all—what with its floaty combat, mostly annoying physics, and meh story—yet I’m utterly obsessed with…
Hi hi hi. Robin here. It’s Saturday. I’m up early, dressed, eated, walked. Now: under an awning outside my favorite cafe in the city, with the rain making a racket all around me. Who cares though? I’m deep in the stack of writing and CSS-ing and there’s simply no amount of screaming kids, howling dogs, or thundering rain that can stop me. I’m invincible right now because I’m building an archive.…
Super secret literary society! (It’s so secret that you didn’t even realize you were a part of it, huh? Other secret societies can only wish they were as secret as mine.) I’m writing to you from a tiny coffee shop, click-clacking away at this essay about photography. Last night I moved all of my notes out of Keynote and into Figma because 1. my enthusiasm had stalled and 2. I hoped that just…
This weekend I’m tagging along with C to a medical conference in Hollywood, Florida. We got in late last night and I’ve been walking around town this morning alone only to discover that this is a land of beaches and hotels and cars cars cars. But, despite that, it’s extremely lovely to walk around in shorts and hop along the beach listening to music with no shoes on. Although, it’s hard not to…