Newsletter #2020-04
I’ve had quite a bit of spare time lately, and along with it plenty of opportunities to browse, listen and write!
Read
Sending Out My Newsletter
Want to know how this newsletter reaches your inbox? I automated almost all of the process!
Making a Responsive Twitch Embed
This gets a shoutout for great CSS wrangling alone.
An Unfortunate Adventure Out of the Ecosystem
Nothing better than a good ol' rant!
Why We Started Putting Unpopular Assets in Memory
How can you speed up reads and improve SSD lifetime? Try reducing your writes!
Twitter Direct Message Caching and Firefox
A recent debacle, where direct messages on Twitter were stored locally for Firefox users, highlights the dangers of non-standard behaviour in web browsers.
That said, could it be worth implementing such behaviour for the sake of compatability? It’s probably best left to the working groups and vendors to decide.
Watch
YouTube’s Copyright System Isn’t Broken. The World’s Is.
In a step away from his usual <10 minute videos, Tom Scott delves into copyright law and the ramifications for YouTube and its automated systems.
If you’ve got the 45 minutes to sit down for this, it’s an insightful watch.
Language and Translation in Isle of Dogs
Wes Anderson films are funny things, often planned down to the most minute of details. You can see an example of this in Isle of Dogs, with how it employs language.
And of course, the film’s English name is a play on words (“I love dogs”) if you never knew.
What Makes a Good Leitmotif?
The Explorers series of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon has an exceptional soundtrack, and 8-bit Music Theory does a great dive into how it uses leitmotifs for thematic purposes.
Even more impressive, he managed to cover it without diving into the game’s ending - where some of the most emotional and emblematic pieces are.
How Has Pokémon’s Battle Animation Evolved?
There’s a lot of animation to be done in Pokémon games, and here we have a nice look back at how this has progressed over decades of games.
Listen
Syro - Aphex Twin
The music of Mr Richard D James can be a bit hit-or-miss for me, but I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Syro lately. Not sure why it took me so long to listen in.
There’s also a 13th track, “end E2”, that didn’t make the original release. You can hear an arrangement of it that was submitted for SiIvaGunner’s “King for Another Day” tournament.
Forgotten Myths - KOAN Sound
This is an EP I listened to a lot in high school, it’s worth mentioning here.