macOS Big Sur’s visual aesthetic is bizarre. I updated my operating system last night, and today I am staring at System Preferences like… what. These icons are all hideous next to each other. It looks like a desktop linux theme circa 2005. What is happening with that battery icon? Or the purple… goo… sand in Screen Time? Don’t even get me started on how the ultra-low window contrast means you cannot easily tell what window is active or backgrounded at a glance. Not a great look, as they say.
My Iron Lung(s)
I was feeling bad about myself, so, being an American, I went shopping. $1400 later I’ve got a brand new ergonomic split keyboard with LED lights that go brrr when I paw at the keys and a whole room VR setup by way of Valve Index. I almost waited for 2021, to see what HP does with the Reverb, but it’s only fucking November 19th and I have a big ‘ol Sad. Say what you want about Americans, but we know how to do retail therapy.
The worst part is it helped.
What isn’t helping is the oddly-sized split spacebar, which nobody makes third party keycaps for:
Right Ctrl and Right Shift keys are 1.75x wide (substitute a Caps Lock key) and the space bars are 3.5x wide (We are not aware of any 3rd party 3.5x space bars).
What a world. Anyway, I’ve started 3D printing my own spacebars that say “CYBER” and “DECK” based on this awesome OpenSCAD keycap customizer…
Leftoverfest
11/28 is the first ever RetroStrange Leftoverfest, a celebration of weird public domain video hand-picked by me and Noah. We hope you’ll join us for the inevitable industrial safety videos and other oddities. It’s 5:30pm PDT to question mark, let’s get weird.
I Miss Your Family, Too, But
I’m not telling anyone how to live. The pandemic hasn’t even been that bad for me. I just know that my dad died, and nobody got to even go to his fucking funeral. I haven’t seen anyone in my family for over a year. The bars and restaurants I love in the city are closing down forever and I haven’t gone to the goodbye parties. I had to orchestrate and record and edit an entire crowdfund campaign without ever meeting anyone in person. The numbers are now worse than then, in fact are worse than they have ever been.
… and some of you are “going home” for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Unless you want to hugely increase the chance you never see your family or friends again, please don’t do it. Come hang out with me in Discord instead. I’ll bake you cookies.
Total Landscaping Homesick Blues
I keep coming back to it. It’s indicative of the whole GOP vibration- an admin made up of people who didn’t do the reading and won’t follow up, a whole government made up of the people who do none of the work. With no try-hards left to coast on, they’re flailing. Turns out someone, somewhere, has to do the labor and monied elites like Don and Rudy will do everything in their power to make sure it is never them.
Milestones
This week we passed over 800 makes (3D prints) all-time of my 3D art piece, For The Love of Dog with well over 850,000 views and 280,000 downloads. You may have seen it used to demonstrate the accuracy of various 3D printers. It’s still free to download and print because I love you.
Between last newsletter and this one, I also released a new game called Chipping Challenge. It’s a relaxing “golflike,” a term I am trying to get over. Beta01 dropped yesterday. I’ve been averaging one release per day. The game is free for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android with iOS coming soon. This is a whole game designed to chill you the hell out. Please download and rate it.
The Good Links
Each week I save for you the best links. I suffer for my art.
Gumroad now offers a Patreon-like membership service
I know at least one of you will love it: SomaFM in emacs
Lose yourself in this in-depth comparison of box art from US and Japanese Nintendo releases
Sometimes you strike out, sometimes you hit the ball so hard it escapes thru a vent in the dome
Did you know: Extra Future (me) logo merch is available in time for the holidays.
Thank you. I’ll do better next time.
— Phil