Hi there,
I was looking up a link from a previous newsletter this week and came across my last one of 2019. It’s sometimes interesting to have a little look back at the journey and boy what a comparison it makes this year. I was reflecting on how the Y2K bug scared us all 20 years ago, little did I know.
Last night I was at a BBQ with some friends and near the end of the night one of them suggested we did ‘acting out a saying’ or reciting a poem. This made me think of the few quotes and poems I learned at school and that have gradually lost bits and pieces over the years. One friend was able to recite a poem, Autumn Leaves, and there was something quite spellbinding about listening to her. Do you have a party piece for occasions like this?
On to the links...
brain food
Largest coffee cup lid collection in the world
Louise Harpman is an architect and lecturer in New York, she also collects lids from coffee cups and in this 2 min video she explains why. Makes you think about design as a whole and what problems designers are trying to solve.
You get a 100 blocks of time a day
How do we spend our time when we think about it? In this post from Tim Urban (I shared a post of his before - the weeks in 90 years one). This post is about how many blocks of time you have in a day - he reckons 100 blocks of ten minutes each. So how will you spend yours? Plus I love his little sketches - so simple but gets the message across!
clever tools
I always ‘need a visual’ to understand concepts better, so this way of seeing timezones is perfect. Handy for checking when those overseas webinars begin and when you can phone Auntie Janet in Canada. You can add and delete places/cities to make it more relevant to you.
Image Compressor that is proper good
My latest favourite image compressor. This one takes off a load of data without affecting the image quality. I've been using it for sites I build and the load times are much faster.
fun stuff
Famous descendants in old photos
The artist Drew Gardner has spent the past 15 years tracking down the descendants of famous historical figures, recreating their portraits and then placing them side by side. A really fascinating project. There is also a 2 min video here.
Interactive cartoon of your selfie face!
This is fun, you need to use the front-facing camera for this. An avatar pops up and copies your facial expressions and movements. Just think what this will be like a little further down the line!