Went to my first stock car race at Buxton Raceway. It reminded me of Mad Max, The Warriors and maybe Brassed Off all rolled into one. It was exciting and fascinating to peek into a subculture with it’s own niche references, in-jokes and tight range of styes.
Morris Dancing in Stockport
I went to the Joint Morris Organisation Day of Dance in Stockport the other weekend. Such a joyful, colourful, visually rich event. I couldn’t stop smiling at folk just having fun. A beautiful combination of tradition, community, pride, performance and silliness.
10/10 would look out for more morris dancing again.
Vibe coding software for one
What’s so great about vibe coding? I’ve been trying out tools like v0 and lovable, here’s my thoughts and some experiments I've made.
TL;DR Vibe coding encourages faster making and will facilitate a more creative (and weird!) digital landscape
Lowering barriers to making
These tools help reduce the gap between having an idea and making something. Without the need for extensive documentation to communicate an idea, the pure thought (minimum viable design?) can be inputted. The tool will fill in the blanks, join things up and the making process will help guide what comes next. Instead of being in a theoretical planning mode, it’s satisfying to be working in editing mode on a real thing.
Spirograph drawing app
Getting weird
I agree with something that Kevin Roose said on the hard fork podcast:
“What I think is so fun and interesting about this genre of coding project is you can really just build what I call software for one”
Vibe coding tools are making it easy to create esoteric and quirky digital experiences that can be as niche as your imagination can make them. It might be time for digital products to get weird again.
Personalised music recommender
Building experiences using the real world
These tools don’t sit in isolation on your desktop – they’re ‘alive’ in your browser and have access to all the things you think an AI should be able to see and know about. You can prototype with a wider spectrum of real inputs, APIs and devices. Do you want a website that only works on Fridays; an app that can look at you through your webcam; a tool built around open source weather data? Just ask the AI to plug it into your project and you’re prototyping with real data immediately.
Webcam waving tool
Having fun
As design has matured in recent years and found itself closer to the board room, it’s had to get more serious and naturally lost some of its silliness. Vibe coding encourages making things straight away and iterating; a side effect of that speed is that there’s a flippancy to these tools which can allow space for more fun, jokes and Easter eggs.
Design brief generator with limerick
🙏 Shout out to Mark Hale for pushing me to write things down!
Plinth Stones
I started this project a number of years ago, trying to find a purpose for stones that were unearthing themselves on the allotment. Trying to turn the annoyance of snagging my spade into something delightful. I started collecting them – of course.
Then started putting holes in them to see if I could stack them. Then made these small plinths for them to sit on. I was thinking of combining Barbara Hepworth with a bit of Tom Sachs. But considering they were languishing in a box for years I’m most pleased just to have scratched that itch and finished something (and felt the urge to blog about them).
A Good Bit of Internet
Fakes and Copies: 10,000 Year Old Facsimile Elephants —
There is a new and booming trade in ivory. Siberian tusks are being traded openly and legally – global warming is defrosting the permafrost releasing millennia old mammoth remains as it does. This unexpected new industry is cashing in on the illegal trade of elephant ivory by selling these newly available, old tusks as an ersatz equivalent.
There are ethical concerns around a trade that cultivates a market for ivory of any sort – Telegraph article here.
I'm more interested in the idea that the replacement stand-in is more interesting, rare, and desirable than the thing it's supposed to be substituting. In my mind mammoths occupy a similar territory to dragons and dinosaurs - part myth, part legend, from a time so long ago they can only exist in stories. Yet here are these tangible reminders of what used to be, now freely available on the open market. Whole glorious tusks, polished to perfection for those who can afford it (approx $15-20k), shards and offcuts for the curio hunter with less deep pockets.
I find the blatant commercial nature of the thing at once disgusting and grimly alluring. I want some mammoth tusk – but I'm also aware that the story it tells isn't about treasure lost in the tundra, it's a story with layers of sadness about peoples effect on the world and how we exploit it.
Folk Videos —
Three great videos that seem to hang together.
Secret 7" —
I was really pleased to have a record sleeve selected for this years Secret 7". More details here: Secret 7"
