TRST_Blog

What a great little business.

So gosh darn cool. It reminds me of the endless hours I poured into RPG Maker^[1] years ago. To have this power in the browser and be able to export a working game feels bananas. I know how Moore's law has progressed, how the power from behind our browsers was many multiple times more powerful than the Game Boy Advanced, but it still feels like it shouldn't be possible.

Oh the wonders of technological progress.

Edit: I got a bit ahead of myself. You can export and play your game in the browser, but you'll need to download the editor to create a game. Good news is the application is cross-platform and includes Linux for us super dorks.

A beautiful font and a government effort to boot. What a time to be alive.

Dynalist is a great cross-platform outliner in the spirit of Org Mode for Emacs users, or Omni Outliner for Apple folk. You can make lists, indent them as much as you need (to make a sub-project perhaps?), zoom in and out when you need to focus in on a few points and check off or strike out tasks as necessary. I have tried my best to keep all of my reference information and notes in one application best suited for note taking and my tasks in a task manager but for my taste, mashing everything into one tool has been a boon for my clarity. Dynalist is simple compared to the software I used previously, but it turns out I havenʼt needed those missing features.

You may have heard of Workflowy which is great software, donʼt get me wrong, but Dynalist is open about their development, is generous with their free-tier and pro plan trial and is receptive to their community of customers. I have paid for both, but Dynalist won me over through their continual efforts to improve and grow... and their extensive keyboard shortcuts. Who could forget those!

[Note: The links to Dynalist are referral links, if you sign up using one you get a free month of their pro plan and I get a little off my monthly bill. Itʼs a service I have happily been a paying customer of for months, but this being the Internet, who knows what your feelings towards referrals may be. Consider yourself warned.]

I'm not sure I buy the altogether too tidy link between people work too hard/much to people worship work but this line landed for me:

The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production.

Again, I'm not sure whether I worship my work, or the sense of what I do as good in itself. But my relationship with work has been messing me up lately, something I just attributed to a general bout of existential confusion. Now, I wonder if I haven't been caught up trying to find the fit between work as a means and work as an identity.

My parents didn't see their jobs as defining pillars of who they were, beyond a modest sense of being hardworking, and they're content. Attempting to find a deeper message in my daily toil isn't doing me any favours—beyond giving me anxiety. Add both premises and our anecdotal conclusion: ease up a bit from work and find other ways of bringing meaning into my life.

<claps until hands fall off >

A snowboarding magazine, turned into an art-house coffee table book? What's not to love? I don't think I have the willpower to keep my credit card at bay.

This conversation points out a number of great reasons why high quality, open source design tools are needed. I need to remember that although I have access to high powered devices and proprietary (read expensive) professional software, I'm not the only voice in this digital conversation.