Heya
This week in BizarroDevs: Watching the internet in real-time; an extreme alarm clock for iOS; learn about React hooks.
I also found some sweet animations of vintage books covers; a massive guide for site optimization; two important articles on Gutenberg for WordPress.
Psst: It will be here in 2 weeks.
Enjoy,
Chris
Bizarro Devs
🕸️ The Cool Side of the Web
Live it's Pingdom's state of the internet.
A live map full of internet data and blinking lights. You will feel like its an 80s movie as you watch websites go down, monitor common error messages, nod knowingly at fluctuations in the top 5 browsers.
All in real-time.
Human Terrain visualizes the world's population. Now in 3D!
It's a little embarrassing to admit this but...I looked at Australia and waited way too long for the image to "render".
pudding.cool
scribble.audio is an online synthesizer that builds music from doodles 🎶
Kyle Stetz is amazing; he also made Typedrummer that makes drum loops from written text.
scribble.audio
⚒️ Tools and Resources
A very easy way to perform a site audit from your terminal 📋
It will generate audits for pagespeed, lighthouse, a11y.
github.com
Want to improve your end of day ritual? There's an app for that.
Inspired by the ritual shut down processes from Deep Work.
Do. Not. Open. Slack.
Dropshare Apps will allow you to drag and upload anything to your favorite storage provider.
It's not free, but the idea makes it one of the best tools I have seen this year.
dropshare.app
The Kiwake alarm clock helps you build a morning routine. Includes 85% sass. ⏰
The snooze function is the worst good invention. Now, you can now stop it on your iPhone.
Or, have a kid...Ain't no snooze on those.
The Weekr is a weekly productivity tracking app.
Includes graphs for easier tracking and easy to create to-do lists with subtasks.
theweekr.com
🕷️ Design & Development Arena
Web Performance 101: JS, CSS, HTTP, images & fonts.
Learn how to optimize JS, CSS, HTTP, images, and fonts with a variety of tools. A very big guide with enough info for web performance 102-110.
3perf.com
A simple intro to React Hooks. ↩️
A detailed look at the new React feature and why you shouldn't worry if you love classes.
daveceddia.com
Future Fonts is where you can download the fonts of tomorrow; today!
It's actually a community of designers working on experiments and providing support. There are a few sneaky discounts on offer too.
But you have to pay in credits because that's how they pay for everything in the future.
🥇 World of WordPress
Gutenberg for newbies: How to handle the upcoming WordPress 5.0 update.
Just under two weeks before the biggest update since WordPress was forked. Get ready.
themeisle.com
😱 Slightly Terrifying
We're all living in a Philip K Dick story. um. Yay!
An essay that looks at how society-technology-culture are all evolving into the kind of dystopia PKD would churn out in a week. Great fictions. Bad realities.
bostonreview.net
A giant space laser on Earth could blast messages at alien planets 👽
Meanwhile, in the lab
Scientist #1 "Hey Steve, did we get an answer to the message we blasted?"
Scientist #2 "It was weird, Lamar. I heard a million voices cry out, and then suddenly they were silent"
Scientist #1 "Maybe we should recalibrate the emission from Blast to Send"
How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever 🔢
Exactly what your great-great-great-grandchildren will want; advice from a 21st century Earthperson who never even augmented themselves physically.
technologyreview.com
🤔 Articles of interest
Meet the ‘superhumans’: more human than you might think.
Australian here, and I confirm that anyone playing rugby in New Zealand is probably a superhuman. Not a guarantee, but a bloody good place to start the search.
nationalgeographic.com
🙃 Backwards talking dreams - Fun stuff
When did the golden age of The Simpsons end?
I have been a passionate advocate that peak Simpsons was around 1998 now I can back my arguments with science rather than violence.
There are also great data backed articles on why the golden age ended and the best/most quotable episode.
What I learned from making hot sauce at scale 🛸
I came for the sauce, but I shared for the insights into building something big.
medium.com
Analyzing Lego Porn, the fetish that will ruin your childhood....huh?
The headline checks out; I'm very ruined now.
vice.com
Outro
I'm not sure what to say...I guess 'sorry' should be in there somewhere.
Which digital technology best suits your personality:
- Alexa/Siri style bot?
- Text-based chatbot?
- 3D avatar in a VR environment?
If you have strong thoughts on how your digital self should be immortalised, then tweet them at me.
As always, feel free to forward this to your nearest & dearest.
If you're seeing this for the first time, and you're not the Terminator, then sign-ups are held here. Every day.
I'm off to perform an eye-bleaching;
Have a great week,
Chris