Trump says: With this order, I am announcing “America by Design,” a national initiative to improve experiences for Americans, starting by breathing new life into the design of sites where peopl...
Chris Coyier · chriscoyier.net [1]
Everything is becoming political these days! I hate it. I regularly hear a friend say these podcasts need to set the politics to the side, but you know what its fukin hard when the gov is upending every corner of life and rebranding it with their own new twist. The billionaire class is winning and it looks like there ain’t a thing we can do about it. Here’s another example of someone taking head of an office they have no business being in. An entire set of working class folks let go for this guy to take over. And what does he want to do, make govt services as satisfying as apple. Apple is cutting edge, it is not something that is one bit sustainable. Their launch sites are generally super heavy, hard to scroll, slow, over animated, but damn they are satisfying the first time you scroll through them, after that just let me through.
References:
[1]: https://chriscoyier.net/2025/09/02/12693/
Publishing rhythm
Home
Free online tools for people creating pixel art and other low-spec art.
Lospec · lospec.com [1]
My son introduced me to lospec.com, It has a great set of color palettes and amazing pixel art inspiration. I particularly liked royal armoury [2] and of course I’m a bit partial to hollow [3].
References:
[1]: https://lospec.com/
[2]: https://lospec.com/palette-list/royal-armoury
[3]: https://lospec.com/palette-list/hollow
Justin Searls
@searls
GPT-5 + Codex is so fast that when I expressed suspicion that a script was returning too few results (via | wc -l), Codex corrected me that I should have passed --count instead. Sure enough, t…
justin․searls․co · justin.searls.co [1]
This is hilarious, the llm shames him for not utilizing the --count flag, THAT DIDN’T EXIST WHEN HE RAN THE CLI!
References:
[1]: https://justin.searls.co/takes/2025-09-03-14h21m54s/
Vibe code is legacy code
Code that nobody understands is tech debt
blog.val.town [1]
Brilliantly said. Vibe coding [2] is legacy code. It’s code that we forget exists. Code that no one touches, you replace it. If you touch it you are more likely to break it.
The worst possible situation is to have a non-programmer vibe code a large project that they intend to maintain. This would be the equivalent of giving a credit card to a child without first explaining the concept of debt.
As you can imagine, the first phase is ecstatic. I can wave this little piece of plastic in stores and take whatever I want! …
Read more in the full post [1]
References:
[1]: https://blog.val.town/vibe-code
[2]: /vibe-coding/
Clippy No Simpy
"Clippy no Simpy" is a term coined by Louis Rossmann, when people try to stand up for companies doing scummy things like charging your for features that you...
Clippy
Clippy is a virtual office assistant from Microsoft, shipped from office 97 to office 2003. It was used to help train people how to use the software that was...
When To Vibe Code
I enjoyed this post from Theo and think it deserves re-iterated, revisited, and
to remind myself of some of these things.
https://youtu.be/6TMPWvPG5GA?si=guQem4R8dLOMBntP&t=1356 [1]
The skill/read spectrum # [2]
[3]
The first diagram describes that there has become a spectrum of agentic coding
from vibe coding [4] where you don’t ready anything, to looking at everything in
detail, across a group of people who don’t have a clue what the code says to
people who could do it way better if they took the time.
The importance spectrum # [5]
He argues here that its ok to bounce between A,B, and D, but C becomes
dangerous. I’d argue that he brought up a 3rd spectrum that is important later
on, “how critical is this”. I think the I don’t know, don’t care, didn’t read,
but the thing did its job is quite fine, but don’t know, don’t care, mission
critical is the main issue we are seeing with agentic coding, primarily in the
didn’t read but critical Zone.
The Rules # [6]
This is the list...
Rich Pixels
Neat Python library by Darren Burns adding pixel image support to the Rich terminal library, using tricks to render an image using full or half-height colored blocks. Here's the key …
Simon Willison’s Weblog · simonwillison.net [1]
I saw this post from Simon and I had to give it a go and got some pretty good results. His script is a small cli wrapper around Darren Burns’s Rich Pixels [2]. It works well even through tmux, since there is no terminal magic, just unicode blocks.
[3]
[4]
[5]
Some not so good, and needed the terminal font size cranked up.
[6]
[7]
References:
[1]: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Sep/2/rich-pixels/#atom-everything
[2]: https://github.com/darrenburns/rich-pixels
[3]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/024bf3e0-9c38-4c1e-ad5c-ed0156c9a99b.png
[4]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/4bf522eb-4207-4a23-b5d0-626cefc8bdca.png
[5]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/d061e85f-98cf-4b3c-871c-e01611022b44.png
[6]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/a532f113-185e-44ef-bcf8-30eed7e3f62a.png
[7]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/api/file/a66d4d7a-975d-4909-88a2-3761e2d3348f.png
This one is one that I’ve been using quite often, I did’t have a hotkey for it,
I just used the rm shell command.
!!rm %<TAB><CR>
When you type !! from normal mode it will automatically put you in command
mode with .! pre-filled, then you just type rm and <TAB> to
auto-complete the current file name, and <CR> to execute the command.
:.!rm %<TAB><CR>
Making it better #
The one quirk that I don’t like about this is that the buffer remains open
after deleting, and sometimes I forget to close it and end up re-creating it by
mistake when running :wall or :xall.
Create a DeleteFile command with vim command.
:command! DeleteFile execute "!rm %" | bdelete!
Create a DeleteFile command with lua.
vim.api.nvim_create_user_command(
'DeleteFile',
function()
-- Delete the current file from disk
vim.cmd('!rm %')
-- Close the buffer without saving
vim.cmd('bdelete!')
end,
{}
)
Keycap Cut Away
I was curious how/if my custom keycap design was hitting my switches. So I set
out to find out what the fitup inside of this assembly looks like, but not
theoretically, a fully sliced view into their fit up in the flesh.
The set up # [1]
To setup for this cut, I flooded the edge of a 2x4 with hot glue, and inserted
the cap such that the step was tangent with the edge. This way I could use the
edge as a guide to cut one side off and leave the stem in tact. I took a
handsaw to it and filed it smooth.
[2]
Removal was applying some isopropyl alcohol and it popped right off.
Results # [3]
Actually the results aren’t that interesting. I found that the pictures turned
out really good, but nothing was touching and it sits in the stem exactly as I
thought it did. I had a thought, what if the cap is not allowing the switch to
reach it’s full travel, and had no way to know, but now I know.
[4]
Key Up
[5]
Key Down
References:
[1]: #the-set-up
[2]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/ap...