Digital Garden; Lijo Jose; Resource Lists

Vol 3, Issue 2

Data, Information, and Knowledge.

Remember the data, information, knowledge, and conspiracy memes

¹

? While I remember it for the meme part, the original concept

²

makes a lot of sense. I wrote an article on how I deal with my digital data

³

, and while building the system, it was this meme that stood as my filter

⁴

.

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

My first theatre experience of 2023 turned out to be a great experience. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam

⁵

, directed by Lijo Jose Pellissery

⁶

is a pleasure to watch. The actors are amazing, and so is the storyline. Most impressive is the use of frames and background music as characters.

The entire story is told using a sequence of static shots. The frames remind Ghibli

⁷

studio movies (with a clear demarcation of the foreground and background). As the story unwinds, the frames become more dynamic, while the frame stays calm and incurious as if it’s a character, who knows what’s going to happen next.

Similarly to static-shot-dynamic-frame, background ‘noise’ is used as background music to build the geographic atmosphere and address hints about the ‘drama’ at the same time. (Mukesh Kumar’s article

⁸

has more details on this.)

The Back of the Napkin

I highly recommend Dan Roam

⁹

’s The Back of the Napkin, a 15-year-old book to anyone who is involved in ideation and brainstorming. This book offers simple structures

¹⁰

which can be used to effectively visualize solutions and can be followed by anyone, even if they lack drawing skills or find it difficult to create mental images.

GitHub Lists

There are too many (awesome and non-awesome) resource lists curated in GitHub. Mentioning some of them here :

• Open Source Tools List

  ¹¹

• Free Programming Books

  ¹²

• List of Public APIs

  ¹³

• Design patterns for Humans

  ¹⁴

• A list of All Awesome Lists

  ¹⁵

• All Digital Gardeners

  ¹⁶

• All Color Pickers

  ¹⁷

• CS Video Courses

  ¹⁸

Artworks from Algorithm

Meet Ben Kovach

¹⁹

, an artist who creates artwork through algorithms. He published a note about his latest project, Inertia

²⁰

, which left me with a brain freeze. (Matthew Ström's article on Generative Art

²¹

is a simplified article on a similar topic)

A No-text Newsletter

ReadJEPG

²²

is a no-text newsletter on contemporary culture. (With Hyperlink easter eggs). Go through the latest issue

²³

, and do subscribe!

1. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=52581

2. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIjSY05JE9Q

3. https://hiran.in/writing/digital-garden

4. https://collabfund.com/blog/how-to-read-lots-of-inputs-and-a-strong-filter/

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanpakal_Nerathu_Mayakkam

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijo_Jose_Pellissery

7. https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/09/studio-ghibli-animations/

8. https://m3dbcafe.com/article/nanpakal-nerathu-mayakkam-review

9. https://www.danroam.com/my-books

10. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEnrQqOHx3I

11. https://github.com/everestpipkin/tools-list

12. https://github.com/EbookFoundation/free-programming-books

13. https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis

14. https://github.com/kamranahmedse/design-patterns-for-humans

15. https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

16. https://github.com/MaggieAppleton/digital-gardeners

17. https://github.com/Siddharth11/Colorful

18. https://github.com/Developer-Y/cs-video-courses

19. https://bendotk.com/

20. https://bendotk.com/writing/the-making-of-inertia

21. https://matthewstrom.com/writing/generative-art-og-images/

22. https://www.readjpeg.com/

23. https://mailchi.mp/readjpeg/zip-054