Hey there! Back home, August always felt like the longest month of the year due to the complete lack of holidays and the unrelenting torrential rain and cold that's present this time of year. Here in Italy, it's the complete opposite: a month of sunshine, with everyone off work and empty streets.
I wasn't off work, but it was a cool month nonetheless: I turned 31, saw my first ever Solar Eclipse, got a Switch 2 and finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
On the Cool Links side of things, there's a fair amount this month! A daily mini-golf game you can play on your browser, interesting studies, ranting and reflecting about VAR in football and a very well-made thought-provoking video essay about modern digital life.
Fun
putt.day, by ell
Play a different hole of mini-golf in your browser every day. You can see other people playing as well, and share your play with friends if you're into that.
Dustin Mierau's Website, by Dustin Mierau
There's a lot of websites that mimic retro desktops nowadays (they're cool!), but this one feels truly special by having its own aesthetic, and it feels so fun to explore! I love ghow you can draw your own stamps and leave your own mark on it.
Why some people mow a lawn better than others, by The Pudding
Pretty cool study about how our brains work in finding optimal routes and how surprisingly good we are at it, even when compared to computers. Lots of visual and interactive demos inside!
Tech
I found out about this when looking at my website's analytics: this is cool! It's an aggregator of cool links from the indie web, where nobody posts anything: every link comes from RSS feeds of various sites, and users upvote the best to make them bubble up to the top. It's a great way to find new blogs and people to follow.
AI
What VAR tells us about AI, by Brian Merchant
This was posted during the World Cup while more people were paying attention to football and the VAR, but it's just as valid today. Just as AI provides an obvious benefit at first glance, its deeper effects can be seen as a net negative.
The VAR hasn't eliminated or reduced biases or corruption in football. It merely made them more hidden and institutionalized.
Deep Read
stop being an audience member of your own life, by Ottilie
Nice, cozy video reflecting on how we are often a distant audience of other people's lives instead of living our own. It's definitely that damn phone.
Dev
This is a survey for developers about everything but coding, that is accepting answers up to September 5. If you're a developer, it's worth participating! It doesn't take long to fill and can help understanding the current environment of the dev industry in such chaotic times.
prop-for-that, by Adam Argyle
This project aims to make it easy for CSS to have access to things only JS could have previously, all through CSS variables. This makes it way easier for CSS to still be responsible for the presentation layer, without having to add animations, transitions and status information through JS.
I gotta point out that the performance on that site specifically is pretty horrid. It's probably better used sparingly, but I get why the demo site would use it everywhere 😅
Healthy Websites Have Good Anatomy, by Jeff Calaway
If you've ever struggled on how to organize components in your project, then this is well worth the read. This article goes into the Atomic Design principles (+ some extensions of it) and explains all the rules that will make finding your way around a codebase much easier.
It's been 5 years since I was introduced to this way of building websites (Jeff is my coworker!) and it's a fantastic way of doing it, especially when you hop around different projects all the time. I use it both at work and on personal projects like this website.
Design
Visual design rules you can safely follow every time, by Anthony Hobday
As a non-designer that sometimes designs stuff, this is fantastic! A compilation of easy to understand rules you can follow in web design without having to worry too much about context.
Some of them I had already learned elsewhere, but it’s nice to have them all laid out together like this.
Wrapping up
Thanks for reading! Here's hoping September brings milder temperatures and sensible weather to you, wherever you are.
Did this blog post change your life? Or maybe I made a mistake that ruined your day? You can always send me an email to tell me about it.