Welcome to this week’s edition of our Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.
🏃🏋️: Developer David “Underscore” Smith wrote an excellent post about why he’s chosen fitness as a core element of his lifestyle. This part in particular got me good:
Additionally, I have found it helpful to have an ‘emotional’ goal as well. Something that tugs at my heart and helps me through the challenging times in the gym. For me that is the thought of picking up my daughter (8) in my arms. Every morning, whenever she first sees me, she runs towards me and leaps into my arms. She has done this since she could first run. I want to remain fit and strong enough so that for as long as she wants to do this I will able to catch her. I never want to have to say “Oooph, sorry my love, but you’re getting too big for this.” The feelings and emotions that pierce me if I think of having to say that have gotten me through many a tough workout.
Oof. That hits close to home, with my own son being 8 and getting harder to pick up all the time.
🏢🌊: You may have seen this massive anamorphic illusion/art installation in Seoul — which looks like a giant wave of water crashing around inside the top of a building — pop up in your feeds recently. In case you haven’t though, prepared to be amazed.
📝: It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with Paul “ftrain” Ford’s entertaining writing [previously] and this recent newsletter dispatch — wherein he examines Sting’s (yes that Sting, who else?) interactive CD-ROM from the ’90s — shows that he hasn’t lost a whit of his touch.
It’s Myst, but every path leads to more Sting.
🖼: I can always do with a bit more surrealist content, couldn’t you? How about trying on “Frank Moth’s” atmospheric digital collages for size? They’re meant to evoke the feeling of nostalgic postcards if they somehow arrived by way of the distant future. Totally digging this aesthetic.
(I put quotes around “Frank Moth” because even his identity is a real-life collage made up of the work of two anonymous artists.)
😌: While I’m linking Instagrams, check out Kristen Meyer’s extremely satisfying geometric arrangements of everyday objects and foods. It’s like knolling but on another level.
✏️📲: Artist and creative director Luis Mendo published a piece about his experiences of going digital after a lifetime of drawing on paper. For him, the iPad Pro can do everything a sketchbook can and more. With the right screen protector, it can even recreate the tactile feeling of paper.
He covers all the apps and brushes he’s incorporated into his digital workflow, so there’s a lot of cool stuff to check out here.
👨📹: “Dad, How Do I?” is a new YouTube channel by Rob Kenney, who had a somewhat dysfunctional childhood and decided to start making easy-to-follow instructional videos on everyday tasks everyone should know how to do, but might struggle with if they never had a good role model around to teach them.
His videos include lessons on ironing a dress shirt, how to tie a tie, how to fix most running toilets, and more. His channel has quickly (and unexpectedly) viral over the past month, so he’s obviously resonating with a lot of people.
📚👀: Some of the best cover design work of last year took place on books you’ve never heard of.
🥘🏚😢: This week’s link list ends on a more somber note, but one worth reading about all the same. After being forced to shutter Prune, the NYC restaurant that was her life’s work for the past 20 years, chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton suddenly finds herself having to ask some very difficult questions about the eatery’s place in New York’s future.
Whatever the post-coronavirus world holds, we’ll need to more than ever support our favorite local places. In the meantime, tip your delivery people well.
Neat Stuff We’ve Published Recently
- I’m enjoying the new ‘Pale’ modern supernatural web serial by Wildbow, and maybe you will too.
- With HomeDash for iOS and Apple Watch, you can create dashboards and control your HomeKit devices conveniently via beautiful designed widgets.
- Hurricane playing cards can be played with anywhere outdoors without worry of them blowing away or getting wet.
- Hacoa’s +LUMBER tape measure features a smooth natural wood casing with a unique grain pattern.
- If you’re going to cut your own hair, put those kitchen scissors away and get these wicked sharp hair shears made from Japanese stainless steel.
- The portable Thermacell MR300 provides a 15-foot zone of effective protection against mosquitos, for hours at a time.
Got any suggestions for articles, videos, stories, photographs, and any other links you think we should be posting in our weekly Quality Linkage? Please do let us know on Twitter.