Chris Padilla.
Links
The web is made possible and most interesting thanks to the humble hyperlink! Here is a curated list of them.
Favorites
Links from around the web! A few favorites, not an exhaustive list.
Blogs & Websites
- Robin Sloan: Blog and newsletter from author & media think-piece writer. Recommended: An app can be a home-cooked meal.
- Animation Obsessive: News and articles about animation, including spotlights on international films.
- Jenn Padilla: Cool person, great last name, inspiring work. :)
- Window Swap: Look out someone else’s window. Wonderfully peaceful.
- People & Blogs: Interiews with folks who blog!
- Austin Kleon: Author of "Steal Like an Artist", a major inspiration.
- Jim Nielsen: Interesting web relighted ideas and readings.
- Chris Coyier: Mr. CSS Tricks / Codepen writings about web development, blogging, design, and folk music. Fun advocation for blogging.
- Derek Sivers: CD Baby founder, musician, and blogger turned author. Minimalist style philosophy and writing.
- Dave Rupert: Good ol' Uncle Dave!
- Maggie Appleton: Web anthropologist and designer. A great write-up on digital gardens.
- Discworld Emporium: Author sanctioned Discworld merchandise shop. Lovely editions of Terry Pratchett’s work. Checkout the reading order if you are new to the series!
- Dinosaur Comics: Ryan North makes the same dinosaurs say funny things every day.
Creative Resources
- Digital Fusion: A primer for the genre of game-inspired music.
- Texture Labs: Images free and paid for 2D artists.
- Drawing Force: Mike Mattesi’s video accompaniment to the great figure drawing books.
- ctrl+Paint: Free and paid video tutorials on digital painting. Assumes little prior knowledge, great for beginners.
- How to Think When You Draw: Microscopic tutorials on drawing in a comic style.
- Proko: Catologue of art courses. Would recommend the Figure Drawing and Drawing Basics courses.
- Draw A Box: Fundamentals of drawing focusing on perspective and form. Brutalist at times, but very beneficial!
- Marco Bucci: Courses from a very painterly artist. The Color Survival Guide is a must watch.
- School of Visual Storytelling: Illustration instruction from pro children's book artists.
- Loish: Beautiful gestural portraits. Helpful tutorials and resources.
- Louie Zong: Huge inpsiration. CGI, illustration, and music.
- Justin Guitar: Ludicrously thorough series of guitar lessons! Start here.
- 3D Resources: See my list of Blender resources.
Open Source Software
- Feedbin: RSS reader with a clean interface and great features.
- kdenlive: Video editing from the KDE.
- Blender: The now famous 3D modeling and animation software.
- Krita: Digital painting software. Excellent brush engine and animation tools.
- Net News Wire: RSS reader for MacOS.
Podcasts
- Syntax: Trendy guys talking about web development trends.
- Shop Talk Show: Front End Web Design and general web banter.
- Soft Skills Engineering: Jamison and Dave share insights on "The non-technical aspects of the technical field of software."
- Geologic Podcast: Variety podcast from professional musician George Hrab. Music, science, and news bits.
Video
- Creative Block: Interviews with artists, focusing on those in animation and webcomics.
- Adam Neely: Thoughtful video essays on music, theory, and the industry.
- Lorenzoes Cartoons: Animation madman and great pal!
- LGR: Retro tech and PCs. Love the Windows 9x era builds!
Web Crafting
- Indie Web: Movement to put the web back in the hands of individuals. Dev focused, but a great resource for anyone interested in web crafting.
- Neocities: Host for Geocities-style personal sites. Highly stylized and purpose driven!
- A Beginners Guide to HTML and CSS: A quick and dirty intro to the basic building blocks of a webpage.
- Slash Pages: Ideas for pages on a personal site.
Feed
Occasional notes and discoveries from the web. You can follow by RSS! (What's RSS?)
- How to Increase Video Volume via CLI: Thanks terryb on the Apple Discussions forum!tags: video, cli
- June 6, 2025 - Episodes in Oceanography – Chypho: A while back I listened to a fair amount of albums from the 80's Japanese ambient music movement. (By Takashi Kokubo and Hiroshi Yoshimura namely.) Chypho has captured that magic here in a way that feels both true to the original style and also an organic growth from it.tags: music, ambient, environmental, album
- June 6, 2025 - 3 thoughts while pushing a wheelbarrow – Austin Kleon: "The computer used to mean the world to me. The computer was a portal to the world I wished to be in. Times change, and I no longer wish to be in contact with much of the world that’s in my computer. Yard work is a wonderful distraction."tags: articles, computers, writing
- June 5, 2025 - Castle City — Wave Race OST: Very Takanaka in my mind.tags: music, video games
- June 5, 2025 - Pages CMS: Rach Smith shares her workflow for micro-blog sized posts. Pretty easy setup by the looks of it!tags: webcrafting, blogging, cms
- June 5, 2025 - occasional strange dream: Piano music for this rainy evening.tags: music, piano
- June 4, 2025 - On the pleasure of reading private notebooks: Henrik Karlsson on reading the organic sprawl of private notes. "Browsing through private notes feels more like participating in a happening than reading a piece of literature: this is what happened, more or less in real time, inside another human. Their beauty has more in common with the beauty of nature than the beauty of art. It is sprawling, strange, tangled, and confusing—but the overall work has a deep structure to it that art can’t imitate." Digital Gardeners rejoice: the more organic, the better!tags: digital gardening, writing, notes
- June 2, 2025 - Culture, Digested: The Creation Plot: On the origin and proliferation of the cultural narrative around "being creative" as a hero's journey. "Unlike stories about artistic creation of the past... the goal of the contemporary story of creators is not to create something good but to achieve success..." And then later: "...And all of this would be true if any of these products were art. But they’re not. They’re hagiography. They are devoted to turning the author into a sainted artist, toiling away for the good of mankind"tags: creativity, article
- June 1, 2025 - The unseen history of Myst | VGHF Library Highlights: Overview of a stunning amount of archived footage found across the development of the Myst series! View the archive here. Seeing high-resolution recordings of original interviews is simply amazing!tags: video games, myst
- May 28, 2025 - Cool Tools: CLI Edition: Cool write up by Mykal Machon on CLI tools that are full blown applications!tags: development, tools, cli
- May 26, 2025 - Anand Wilder – Appointment in Samarra: Mr. Yeasayer making delicious use of sitar, saxophone, and synth winds.tags: music, indie, song
- May 24, 2025 - dream OS: Spacey frutiger aero album. Bells for days. Favorite track: digital ocean.tags: music, frutiger aero, album
- May 23, 2025 - Academy of St. Martin in the Fields – Bach Brandonburg Concertos / The Orchestral Suites: No. 3 is where it's at!tags: music, classical, album
- May 22, 2025 - LGR Tech Tales - Y2K: The Year 2000 Problem: This link is Y2K compliant!tags: vintage tech
- May 21, 2025 - Cameron's World: Delightful art piece dedicated to Geocities era websites. Be sure to click around!tags: early internet, websites
- May 21, 2025 - The Apple II Age Reading: Very excited to read Laine Nooney's book. Very compelling introduction read by the author. As someone who admittedly wears rose-colored glasses when looking at older tech, I'm excited for the multiple perspectives unearthed by Nooney's book. Cool to see the Internet Archive cited as a major source for an academic book, as well!tags: vintage tech, books
- May 21, 2025 - 7 Essential Beginner Math Rock / Midwest Emo Riffs by Let's Talk About Math Rock: Been working my way through this. Great curation.tags: guitar, midwest emo, math rock
- May 21, 2025 - Disney's A Goofy Movie: Production Model Sheets: Miranda and I watched Not Just a Goof, the Goofy Movie documentary. I dug around to see if there were any art books out there. Searching dug up the Goofy Movie model sheets here.tags: animation, art
- May 21, 2025 - A Brief History of... Myst: Overview of Cyan and the Myst franchise beyond the first title. "A strange fate for what was once the best-selling, most popular game of all time."tags: video games
- May 21, 2025 - Louie's Drawing Fun Times - Episode 1: A quick peak behind the digital painting curtain. My workflow is largely similar, given that he's an inspiration!tags: artresources, digital painting
- May 21, 2025 - Zonelets: "Making text appear online is both utterly basic and infinitely powerful. If you write something down, and someone else reads it from afar... that's it! That's the whole thing! You've done it!" Agreed, simple yet powerful and fun!tags: websites, webcrafting
- May 21, 2025 - Melon King: A wildly creative site bringing the best of the old web to the new.tags: websites, webcrafting
- May 21, 2025