2026-09-17 20:30:00
Back in July I broke own rule of never backing a hardware Kickstarter and backed a hardware Kickstarter for a Pen N — a pen that supports 100s of refills with a universal clamp that screws into the barrel. I paid $55 for it plus another $20 for shipping.
When it arrived I tried it with a bunch of different refills I had including zento, jetstream, Muji, and they all worked great. No wobbling, exactly as described. It came with a Zebra gel refill which is the one I've kept in it for the past week.
As a pen for grabbing quickly to jot something down, it does the trick but as a pen for writing for long periods of time it's not ideal - this pen is thick. There's no tapering towards the tip so you're just holding a heavy metal sausage[1]. I could only get through the first verse of Michelle Branch's classic "Everywhere" before I stopped filling in the page because it wasn't comfortable.
2026 being the year of pens on carabiners, I opted to pay for the Pen N leather sheath. The pen slips into the sheath, clips in at the top, then can be pulled out the bottom leaving the cap in place near the carabiner hole. Right out the packaging, this was a really tight fit and almost impossible to use but with some finessing and squeezing I was able to loosen the leather up a bit and it works nicely now. This is the spot I like the Pen N the most — as a pen I can clip to my bag and grab it when I need it.
This is a well built pen and the sheath is great but the lack of tapering on the end makes this a pretty uncomfortable pen to use for me so I suspect this is just going to live in my bag or my car for those occasions where I need a pen in a pinch.
Also the name of my Metallica cover band ⤾
2026-09-11 23:54:33
The St Jude Fundraiser passed $150k overall and we hit $6k on ours last night. We still have drawing slots available and some sticker news is coming soon. Donate here.
Stop Omarchy is a well-cited resource by Brennan explaining exactly why Omarchy is more than just a Linux distro run by a facist.
I caught some of the most recent Dennis the Menace show on TV and I can't believe they made him look like this.
This dotgrid desk mat is also a whiteboard of sorts. If I didn't always use my St Jude × Relay mat, I'd be getting one of these. via SimpleBits
I am obsessed with payphone tag a game that can only exist because all payphones are free in Australia. Go check out the map, it's amazing. via Hemispheric Views #171.
Veronica, of Veronica Explains, did a great video on setting up a podcast site using Eleventy. Definitely not linking this because I got a mention. Nope.
The Ocarina of Time remake looks pretty good but there's no way I'm buying a Switch 2 just for that. I should go back and actually finish this game, I've never made it past the water temple.
Zach came up with a really smart way to have one single opengraph entry point that does all the opengraph images for his site. Furious I didn't think of this.
This breakdown of Iron Man's opening scene is wonderful.
Juhis put up a single page webring implmentation — always worth keeping things as simple as this if you can.
2026-09-11 05:38:32
A few months ago, Brad came up with analog defaults loosely based on the Hemispheric Views app defaults. I've been meaning to write mine up but having sat on it for a while I don't think it's worth me having a dedicated page like my app defaults or /now. My personal usage is better served by my #currentlyInked tag for fountain pens and this post as a general overview.
On a Sunday evening if I have time, I sit down and pick out new pens for the week for each category I carry in my Rickshaw Filmore.
F nib.2026-09-09 21:46:28
Last night I was reading this excellent post about scanning pencil artwork and the first step the artist mentioned is setting the pallette to greyscale. This made me realise how useful that would be on Doodle Scan — the black and white mode is good but only in some circumstances where the drawing is just lines, greyscale would be much more useful for illustrations with colour or shading.
Like all the other features on Doodle Scan, it wasn't immediately obvious to me how to do this. After some digging and experimenting with changing RGB values, I realised the relative luminance value I use to check for if the colour is light or dark can be rounded with Math.round to get the value I need. So 253.123 becomes 253 and I set the RGB value of that pixel to 253,253,253.
Below are examples of the three colour modes with default settings from Doodle Scan and if you want a drawing a bit like this or anything you want really you can donate to St Jude.
2026-09-04 16:22:00
Our St Jude Fundraiser has blasted past $5k, and I had to make a an Obsidian base to keep track of all the drawings I need to do. The first one arrived yesterday and if you want one for yourself there's one slot left right now. You can donate here.
Thanks to Melanie pointing it out, I fixed a bug in Lens where it would catch SVG title elements when it shouldn't.
It’s not for me but the detail on this Wallace and Gromit set is fantastic.
Matt reviewed the Ulanzi D100H. I love buttons and knobs.
This project by Chris generates an Internet Phone Book 88x31 badge for you. I had my own version I'd made but the animated one from here is way better so I swapped it out.
There's a proposal for a .well-known URL for changing passwords which seems so obvious now I see it.
How to write a short story in five sentences — it does exactly what it says it will and nothing more.
There is nothing better than a pencil manufacturing video and this one about how Blackwings are made is great.
An art gallery using a slop poster is so stupid I can't even.
Terence Eden has a post about verifying ActivityPub signatures which was a colossal ballache when I did it previously.
Visual design rules you can safely follow every time. I love articles like this with simple and understandable actions I can take to make my sites better.
2026-09-03 18:48:36
If you missed it, Adam and I are raising money for St Jude this month and you can donate here. One of the rewards I offered this year and last is I will do a drawing of whatever the donator wants. These vary from the very simple "a horse" to the detailed like "a platypus on a unicycle in Japan at night". George ordered one with this in the notes:
Did you know, petrichor is "the smell of dirt after rain"? It's a pleasant smell that indicates that life is returning. Like Spring, but your smell. What's your petrichor?
I don't think I'd ever heard of "petrichor" but it's nice to learn things. Not only is George making me draw he's making me think which is pretty rude. After a bit of clarification I thought on this for a day or two about what smell makes me the most happy it's Marmite on crumpets, no contest.
