Internet History Turboblack

ASCII art is an art born from limitations

If you've ever written on an 80085 calculator (boobs), or drawn pixel art in a notebook, you've already joined the ranks of these digital painters. But let's start at the beginning: long before computers, people were already creating masterpieces from letters, symbols, and even
Read More →
Theory Zachary Kai

Why I email complete strangers

The first time I emailed a stranger, I swear my cursor hovered over Send for a full five minutes. I had plenty of justifiable reasons to remain hesitant. Not wanting to take up their time, feeling bothersome, worried my question was a silly one... A hundred disparate excuses leading back
Read More →
Internet History Devonne Tourre

Finding indie: Carving my path through online connections

Much like other adolescents in the 2010s, I had a hard time making friends in the “real world.” I think back to my teens and say, “Where did I make friends back then?” Sure, I had a handful of friends that I made during school, but that’s the only
Read More →
Webweaving Declan Chidlow

Rebelling against efficiency

There is a scene in the episode Who Killed 711? of the 1963 American detective television series Burke's Law in which Burke and crew pay a visit to an eccentric accountant, Harold Harold, who is the prime suspect in a murder. Entering into his hotel room, they find
Read More →
Accessibility Grubdog

Accessible personal websites are easier than you think

A lot of people in the small web space have a tendency to get intimidated by the idea of making their website accessible. This, of course, results in many websites being inaccessible for many people. But when you’re just one person, meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is
Read More →
Webweaving Greg Sarjeant

tkr: Reflecting on my first hobby software project

It was spring and I was inspired. It had been a long time since I’d felt inspired. Decades. But the creativity and joy I’d found on the personal web had roused some long-dormant impulse. I got into all this computer stuff as a hobby and used to spend
Read More →
The internet is supposed to be fun!

Gopher burrows on

I still remember that coffee machine[1]. I recall how we used to stay up in the university computer lab, often until late at night, fascinated in front of its image while immersed in the ghostly glare of some black and white Mac SE/30 screen monitors. We repeatedly refreshed
Read More

Build the web you want to see

My website, James’ Coffee Blog, is now over five years old. I seldom thought about how old my website was until recently, when I looked and realised that years had passed since the single black-and-white HTML page that comprised my site. “Hyperlinks are my friend,” I said, in a playful
Read More

Unlocking a better future with old computers

I’m sitting in front of a Power Mac “Quicksilver” model from 2000, running Mac OS 9.2.2 atop a 733 MHz G4 processor. As a certified computer junkie, I own several systems, but this one is almost certainly my favorite. The bong rings and the happy Mac face
Read More

Your work is not just content

Social media platforms provide value to independent creatives by allowing them to fully focus on creating instead of having to figure out how to share their work. Sadly, however, these same platforms reduce creative artists to content creators. When we label artwork — be it short- or long-form writing, illustration, photography,
Read More

Weaning off GreedCorp™: Building a user-owned future for computing

Our computers are faster than ever. If you’re an Apple user, you know how incredibly efficient and powerful their M‑series devices are. Computers are more capable than ever; Framework’s laptops are as customizable as building a PC from scratch. Tinkerers with 3D printers and a penchant for
Read More

Is Markdown enough?

Markdown is one of the main reasons I write today. It is what's known as an LML; a lightweight markup language, which allows you to simply write in plain text, and use simple syntax structures with symbols like asterisks (*) and brackets ([]) to represent common formatting options found in
Read More
More