All the drawings in this post were drawn this year by cool people using a tool I made. That’s a really awesome Feeling.

Speaking of Frog Feels, it’s in a really good place. Some real masterpieces were made. And in a small, gentle way a new community was created on the internet.

I start most of the weekly emails with a heartfelt personal newsletter of sorts,

# Frog Feels Issue #69

Hey Frog Friends,

We missed 25 and 50, but I feel like I should write something special for our first 69.

It was weird at first, but now this is just something we do every week. I think we fit together really well.

Also, I started a comedy podcast with my good good friend Michelle! I went from knowing nothing about audio and cringing at the sound of my own voice, to learning a lot about MIDI controllers, how DAWs work (❤️ Ableton), and audio producing. The responses I’ve gotten from people IRL have been dope, my voice is alright after all.

In other news, I made a couple other not-so-successful code projects this year too. The premise of Goodgoods.biz was supposed to be that I’d draw and animate something for each episode. But I got bored of doing it, and apparently css animating too many things destroys your cpu, good for warming up your room though.

From it’s ashes I wrote pirijan.com, and it’s collaborative drawing background, which people seemed to like. I’m drawn to mysterious interfaces that intrigue and surprise, so this was a chance to do me.

I also spent 2 weeks in France 🇫🇷. I hadn’t been there since I was 8 and I had a real good time re-exploring it. If I paid more attention in my high school french class I would’ve liked it even more. Unsurprisingly, the city was beautiful, I’ve got a lot of images that’ll stay with me.

This year of Glitch was a real rollercoaster. It’s good to see that it’s really picking up, people also seem to appreciate the work I’ve put into it’s interface and style, and I’m pretty confident about it’s future success. But also it’s getting more stressful, less fun to work on as the need for features pile up on both the editor and community site applications – which I design and write most of the code for. It’s crunch time, always be crunching.

The best part of the year was the two weeks I spent in San Diego and LA. California made a real impression on me to the extent that I almost moved there. LA is where all my favorite things are now, the best planetarium, the hollywood hills, venice beach, palm trees, chill vibez.

The only thing that stopped me this time was my work VISA, but I’m sure it’s a hurdle I can get around soon. Also I like driving, but there’s a chance I might regret saying that.

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The recipe for a playful, rebellious aesthetic is pretty simple. Start with an era of optimism 🌌, add your old emo highschool blog 💔, mix in an old synth 🎹, season with a fallible human touch 💅.

(∩ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)⊃━☆ﾟ

Stir until velvety smooth, then throw it in the oven. While we’re baking, let’s chat like we used to.

The Era of Computer Optimism 🌌

In the 80s, we knew computers were going to change the world (well not me, I was in diapers). This was the era of MacOS, Kid Pix, HyperCard and Microsoft Excel. Actual humans could use computers to write book reports, do business things, compose music and draw art.

In lots of ways, my hopes for the web parallel the optimistic, egalitarian spirit of those times. The web connects us like nothing else ever has – we should use it to make even better book reports, businesses, music and art.

Web 1.0 Smelled Like Teen Spirit 💔

In the Geocities era we (still not me) told everyone that they should have a website – and a lot of us did. www.geocities.com/pketh was the Final Fantasy 6 place to be. It had all of the frames, all of the GIFs, all of the MIDIs, and I made damn sure you knew that it was best viewed in Netscape Navigator.

My friend’s secret Livejournal would burn your eyes and your soul. We’re talking about paragraphs of yellow and pink comic sans on a purple, sometimes rainbow, background. She set her mood on every post to basically sensual, and wrote exclusively about the boys she liked that week.

None of us were great at making websites, because that wasn’t the point. We made things because we felt invited to.

When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create. ― _Why The Lucky Stiff

The Tool Should Be Musical 🎹

Glitch looks like a text editor but it’s really a creativity tool, standing on the shoulders of giants like Ableton, Logic, and Audition.

There’s a reason that list is only music software. Functionally, the music workflow revolves around a loop of record something, play it back, edit it, play it back, tweak it some more, record the next part. Making music is an iterative, non-linear, often collaborative process – yup, just like software.

Culturally, music software, and communities like Soundcloud, are where the next generation of artists replace the old guard. Music tools are pop culture cool, they’re colourful and visually striking, but also a quiet, focused place to create.

That Fallible Human Touch 💅

Have you ever bought a really fancy notebook? Maybe it was imported from Japan and the paper is hand pressed from 100 year old oaks. How do you live up to this? Am I supposed to write my shitty grocery list in this masterpiece?

Every color, element, illustration, and interaction is something I’ve killed myself over in Glitch. But I hope when you use it, you’ll treat it like scrap paper that blew into your yard. Put whatever you want in it, the rougher, the more daring, the more useless, the better.

Not everything has to be serious and not every app has to be a business. Sometimes software can just be for fun.

The aesthetic of Glitch is a fuck you to design shaming, the idea that things on the internet have to look ‘designed’, ‘polished’ and ‘professional’. We do our own thing because we hope that you will too.

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My favorite building in Toronto is the Ontario College of Art and Design (aka OCAD). I never went to design school but I owe a lot to this cool rectangle.

During a particularly long spell of unemployment, I hung out at the OCAD library almost everyday. My hot picks were volumes of ‘Illustration in Japan’ from the 80s, graphic design award compendiums and back issues of Computer Arts.

Sometimes I’d take notes, sometimes I’d try and reproduce things. I’d given up on finding a job. I only cared about getting over the painful gap between where I was and where I wanted to be.

I wonder if I would’ve been on that grind in the same way if OCAD looked like any every other school. Whether we realize it or not, ambitious things draw us in and inspire us with the personality of the people who made them.

Speaking of, this particular building was designed by a particular architect named Will Alsop.

I caught one of his talks at a local university, he seems like a cool guy, I hope I give as few fucks when I’m that old. He talked about a bar he designed and dropped a line about how the joy people get out of something is directly proportional to the joy the creators had while making it.

Years later, I still think about that line a lot.

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The scientists who designed nuclear bombs weren’t assholes. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the nuclear bomb project, was a scientist’s scientist with left-leaning liberal political views.

From what I’ve read, it sounds like working on the atomic bomb was a dope time. You had a cool boss, unlimited money, job prestige, passionate coworkers and really interesting problems to solve at the intersection of physics, chemistry, metallurgy and bomb theory. You probably also got free lunch.

And then your work ships, and you realize you’ve fucked the world.

Will the internet of the next decade be an empowering force for human progress (like nuclear power) or for crimes against society (like nuclear bombs)?

Slapping Ethics in the Face 🙋🏻

<Insert something inspiring and uplifting here>, like: as designers and engineers, we have a moral imperative to build software that doesn’t mislead, divide and abuse people and society.

Duh. Of course we do. Nobody wakes up wanting to make shitty things for garbage people.

Whether it’s fascist regimes, the NSA, Facebook, or the Kardashians, bringing out the worst in humanity will always be easy money. There’ll always be developers that corporations and governments can throw money, prestige or interesting problems at and make what they want.

These developers aren’t assholes either. Some will be new to the profession, some will want the perceived safety or legitimacy of a large corporation, some will just really need the money. I’ve been that developer, I’ve made banner ads. I’ve seen some shit.

An Alternative to Outrage 🌚

You’ve got more power than you think to build what you want to exist.

Most programming is just turning text into another kind of text. With the helpful tools and services we’ve got today, writing code is less gross than it’s ever been (maybe, possibly, even fun).

There’s still so much good software to make:

• We’re still bad at connecting diverse people, with diverse perspectives, in meaningful and respectful ways.
• We’re still bad at building quality software for professionals. Ever used Blackboard? Quickbooks? Anything made by Oracle? Pretty much every human with a job is forced to use crap software to do their jobs.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me 💰

But how do we fund the good stuff? That’s also something we’re bad at.

Ideally if you’re solving a real problem for real people they’d pay you. But that’s really hard for some industries, like education, where your users (e.g. teachers) are cash strapped, and the organizations they work for only buy through RFPs and sales teams.

What’s a little guy to do?

On Patreon, I give 1041uuu a dollar a month, they make cool art. It’s pretty simple.

What would a Patreon for small software makers look like I wonder?

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