Cool
One cool tune, one cool thing, one cool quote. Every week.
Music selections are also in this convenient Spotify Playlist.
2021
Week 1
Looking back to look forward. Pulling together a cohesive strategy for life from reviewing last year.
Don’t Stand So Close To Me by Dave Aude Remix / Sting
Week 2
Star Trek Discovery Season 3, it’s finally found itself and become great.
“We will not starve from lack of wonders, but lack of wonder.” ― G.K. Chesterton
New Cydonia by Starcadian feat HAYLEY
Week 3
Lupin Season 1, charismatic heist fun.
Sunsets by Powderfinger
Week 4
Death Stranding game. Immersive and absorbing, yet unapologetically idiosyncratic.
“No is a full sentence.” ― Elizabeth Olsen
Only Want You by Rita Ora
Week 5
Snowpack 3.0 Modern web development bundler, but so fast and simple it’s a game changer.
“Character is easier kept than recovered”
Week 6
Nier Automata game, a wildly inventive blend of gameplay mechanics.
To Me by Bulent Aris
Week 7
Resident Alien Season 1, quirky and somehow relatable. Alan Tudyk continues to be a delight.
“If the magic kingdom is fantasy made real, Epcot is reality made fantastic” ― Walt Disney
Hallelujah California by Luna Shadows
Week 8
Amiga Exec Lists and Queues Amiga system software has an elegant implementation of double linked lists that is memory efficient, thoughtfully designed. The documentation on the AmigaOS wiki site shows a surprisingly simple for loop that traverses a list, the elegance of which blew my mind.
The Son of Flynn by Daft Punk
Week 9
Miss Americana Taylor Swift documentary, unexpectedly honest and delightful story of recovering and owning your own power.
Wanderers by Cristian Sandquist
Week 10
Tron Legacy a perfect poem of a movie; kids and their fathers, life vs perfection, growth and change.
World in My Eyes by Depeche Mode (Cicada Mix from Ready Player One)
Week 11
Mac OS 9.22 elegant and simple and a delight to use. Spatial interface with a single window for each folder that remembers it’s positions, icons, colours. You can use muscle memory and visual sense to navigate the entire machine. Mind blowing.
Late Night by Odeza
Week 12
Drive to Survive Season 3, irregardless of the authenticity of the drama, it captures the fun and intensity of the sport both on and off the track.
Civilization by Justice
Week 13
CSS Zen Garden Still. Remember when the web had personality? And web design wasn’t just make it flatter/blander?
Lay all your love on me by Putin’s Bird (slowed and reverb version of the original Abba song)
Week 14
Nier Automata game, again.
Awake by Tycho
Week 15
macOS high quality audio Enabling the AAC codec in macOS to get the same high quality audio you already have on iOS devices. Why isn’t this on by default?
Stonefist by HEALTH
Week 16
Semantic Satiation The psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener.
Communication by Ace Marino
Week 17
Ted Lasso My new go-to happy place, which ironically replaces The Good Place.
Decks Dark by Radiohead
Week 18
Biological Clock Resets Discovering these are as simple as starting your morning with a walk in the sunlight.
Fall to Earth by Gramsci
Week 19
Mythic Quest Season 2
Don’t Turn Off The Lights by Enrique Englesias
Week 20
Ted Lasso again. Because I watched the entire season again.
Pretty by Marcus Mumford, Tom Howe
Week 21
Realisation that web design is a blend of imagination and engineering. Literally Imagineering.
Taste of You by Dove Cameron
Week 22
Serotonin sleep connection People need serotonin to transition from REM sleep to deep sleep. If you don’t have enough the most efficient and expedient way for your brain to generate it is to create intense nightmares. This explains a lot.
“Be proud, it’s noble to create” ― Jeff Vogel on being a game developer
Have it all (Andex Remix) by Elephante, Nevve, Anden
Week 23
WWDC It turns out making dev conferences remote makes them significantly better.
“Hobbies are our chance to create without the baggage of external requirements or external validation.”
Horizons Glow by Keep Shelly in Athens
Week 24
Twilight Midnight Sun Yes really. Until the last chapter, where Edwards lies and betrayal undermines everything that follows.
Drift Away by i_o, Lights
Week 25
Puddles Disney Spark Shorts. The delight and wonder of the moment, sharply contrasted against the displacement and disconnected of social media
Archetype by She
Week 26
Windows 11 Design The UI and UX overhaul is beautiful and thoughtful and surprisingly compelling.
“Sovereignty for creators and agency for consumers” ― Windows 11 core goals
Not Girlfriend Material by Indiana
Week 27
macOS Monterey Beta Surprisingly stable, really fun. My ADHD appreciates the uncluttered visual design, however my muscle memory is struggling with the extra steps to reveal features before use. This trade off works for me, but I’m not typical...
“Keep a notebook. Keep a lot of them. Never stop doing your own work. Employers come and go, studios fold and companies go bankrupt — you have to stay true to your own observations, remaining witness to your own life. Nothing is more important than this.”
I Like Drinking by Indiana
Week 28
Wonder Boy documentary on Olivier Rousteing, the creative director of fashion house Balmain, searching for meaning in his adoptive origins.
Can’t Drive by L R D U, Mammals
Week 29
Tomorrowland movie. Optimisim and hope in the face of adversity. This will always be cool.
Giver by K.Flay
Week 30
Dune Movie Trailer Stunning. Epic. I am all in for this ride.
Fallen Stars by IVOXYGEN
Week 31
Disney Animation Website the revamped design and site is both beautiful and functional, not an easy trick to pull off.
Night in White Satin by The Moody Blues
Week 32
Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2 Indepth documentary on the creation of the Disney musical, revealing a chaotic story process as they try to figure out an ending that actually makes sense.
Low Blow by CXLOE
Week 33
Lisp I finally did a deep dive into the Lisp language. It’s both elegant and very clever with a simple scheme empowering an astonishing flexibility to build upon. The origins and thought processes behind it are just as interesting as the language itself.
“Do the next right thing” ― Elsa / Frozen II
Afrika Shox by Leftfield, Afrika Bombaataa
Week 34
Luca Pixar finally nail it again with a sweet and enchanting story of differences and acceptance.
Paradise by Bazzi
Week 35
Secret Brands A William Gibson’esque piece of distinctly Japanese culture.
Lost Maps by Marnie
Week 36
Horizon Zero Dawn technology Between Tech and Art talk on their procedural landscapes and artist tools to manipulate them in real time.
World of Promises by Mind.in.a.box
Week 37
React useRef and using it for local variables. It didn’t occur to me to use it this way and now I can’t imagine using React without it.
Walk by Kwabs
Week 38
Coding at the speed of thought. I created a library of standardised configs and utils for all my projects. My ability to switch between and to re-use code between them has increased dramatically.
1993 by Manila Killa
Week 39
Star Trek Discovery Season 3. Again. Grudge and Booker and their ship.
Hello by Martin Solveig, Dragonette
Week 40
Foundation Series 1. Beautiful and intricate and detailed and inspiring, but also a depressingly realistic portrait of our possible futures.
Desert Rose by Sting, Cheb Mami
Week 41
React Reducers are a delightfully elegant (and just as importantly, testable) solution to state and transitions between them.
Atmosphere by DJ Licious
Week 42
Dune movie. Gorgeous, detailed, intimate and yet epic. One of the rare times a movie lives up to it’s trailer. Watched it twice on opening day.
bloodline by Ariana Grande
Week 43
The WoW Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development Incredibly detailed and insightful accounting of how all the facets of a game I poured hundreds of hours into came into existence.
Plasma by Aim To Head
Week 44
Foundation Series 1. Finally really hitting it’s stride.
Alizee by Moi Lolita
Week 45
Non-pessimization philiosophy of optimization The Refterm YouTube lecture series clarified and extended my stances on code approach and optimisations in the best way.
Timebomb by Angels vs Airwaves
Week 46
Horizon Zero Dawn: Frozen Wilds The story continues, it ties in with the existing story. I am very into this.
Excess by Robots with Rayguns
Week 47
Will autobigraphy by Will Smith. Not what I expected, particularly seeing how his ADHD manifests and his approaches to handling it.
Soft Rock by CXLOE
Week 48
Self Care Accepting and embracing all that you are, and supporting that in the kindest way possible.
A Moment Apart by ODESZA
Week 49
Medication Being advised to think of medication as being akin to using prescription glasses for your vision was a life changing moment.
La neige au Sahara by Anggun
Week 50
Horizon Zero Dawn: Frozen Wilds I am still very into this.
California by Mylene Farmer
Week 51
Tarocash Not only is their product on-point and quality, their staff are friendly and next level helpful. Getting a jacket I ordered online in the wrong size swapped was a breeze. I don’t often endorse companies or products, but this is one of the few times I will.
Marlboro by Prince of Falls, Foreign Heat
Week 52
White Collar seasons 1 to 5. I never really got into this when it first aired, but I’ve become deeply invested over the Christmas holidays.
“You all have a little bit of ‘I want to save the world’ in you. I want you to know that it’s okay if you only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is you.”
SuperHuman by Black Gummy, Colleen D’agnostino
2020