| |
 Guy Moorhouse
convergenewsletter.com |
| |
| Hello! Hope all’s good with you. And a warm welcome to new subscribers. It’s great to have you here and especially nice to see some familiar faces.
I really hope you like this newsletter, but just to let you know, you can unsubscribe at the bottom at any time if you’ve changed your mind. As I’ve no new project updates to share this issue, I’ll jump straight into the things that have caught my attention recently. It’s quite a packed issue. Let’s get to it… |
| |
|
Remarkable |
Brazen Botany Homeware Absolutely love these ‘art houseplants’ by Irish designer Caroline Byrne. Perfect if you’re someone like me who inadvertently seems to end up killing many of your plants through overwatering or neglect. 🔗 brazenbotany.co.uk | |
Britain’s Carbon Forecast Exploratory prototype What if we chatted about carbon emissions like we chat about the weather?
This brilliant exploratory prototype from Matt Brown / Extraordinary Facility helps us get a step closer by giving us a daily Carbon Forecast for Britain. 🔗 extraordinaryfacility.com | |
Windosill Game This magic 2009 game from Patrick Smith / Vectorpark is now available on Nintendo Switch.
If you’ve not played it before, you really should, it’s wonderful. Guide a small toy truck through a mysterious, playful world, solving weird little puzzles as you go. Fun for all the family. 🔗 windosill.com | |
Earth.fm Natural soundscapes A free repository of immersive natural soundscapes. Listen to the sounds of calming seas, birdsong and more from all over the world in your browser and get in tune with nature wherever you are.
A very mellow experience, but also one with a serious goal — getting more folks tuned into the importance of looking after nature and the planet in general. 🔗 earth.fm | |
Rive Creative animation tools Every now and again, something comes along that you can feel is going to be a big deal for digital makers. For me, Rive is one of those moments.
The team at Rive are creating an end-to-end way to produce performant, embeddable interaction and animation for the web and native platforms.
And from what I’ve seen they’re doing an amazing job of it — I think they’re very much onto something. It’s like a more efficient, more powerful version of Lottie. 🔗 rive.app | |
Choir Audio hardware I’ve been impressed with every product teenage engineering have put out, and their latest, Choir is no exception.
It’s a set of eight, interactive and beautifully crafted beech wood characters that sing to you and perform choral classics in harmony. The wooden dolls also double as audio outputs for your own compositions. Lovely. 🔗 futurefabric.co | |
| |
|
Useful |
Mastodon Decentralised social network Mastodon is a bit odd. And kind of clumsy to get started with. There are also not that many folks using it. But in all those regards, it really reminds me of the early days of Twitter and I’ve found I kinda like it and I think I can see it sticking for me.
It’s nice seeing familiar faces pop up so frequently too. I guess many are migrating from the bird site. If you haven’t tried it, it’s worth a spin. Don’t worry too much about which instance to join. Just join one and get going to get a feel for things. You can move pretty easily later if you choose to. If you join, say hi. You can look me up, I’m @guy@futurefabric.co. 🔗 social.futurefabric.co | |
Colour & Contrast Interactive guide Colour & Contrast is a comprehensive guide for exploring and learning about the theory, science, and perception of colour and contrast.
It’s a great place to go deep on the use of colour and its impact on interfaces, featuring a ton of interesting, interactive examples. 🔗 colorandcontrast.com | |
| |
|
Watch |
The Peripheral TV Series I’m only a couple of episodes into The Peripheral and I’m already hooked. Based on William Gibson’s book of the same name (which for transparency I’ve not yet read so can’t draw comparisons to), it’s fun, fast-paced sci-fi looking at a future in which reality and virtual reality blend and are essentially one and the same.
I’m watching on Prime Video. 🔗 amazon.co.uk | |
| |
|
Listen |
Continua by Nosaj Thing Album I’ve had this on a loop since its release. It’s the fifth album from Los Angeles producer Jason W. Chung and definitely feels the warmest. Some amazing collaborations on here too, including Panda Bear and Toro y Moi. 🔗 music.apple.com | |
Alpha Zulu by Phoenix Album I haven’t listened to Phoenix for quite a long while. Then out of nowhere Apple recommended me Alpha Zulu, the French band’s seventh album. It was apparently recorded in the Louvre which is about as Phoenix as it gets. And I’m into it. As everything seems to fall apart around us, it’s great to have music as pure escape and for me that’s what this is. 🔗 music.apple.com | |
Composer Magazine Podcast Podcast NY-based host, Charles Steinberg sits down with TV and movie score composers to chat about their work and process. I listened to the Nathan Micay episode this morning and it’s great. There’s lots of chat about Micay’s amazing Industry soundtrack, his influences like Vangelis and Pink Floyd, as well as his background playing viola. Who knew? 🔗 podcasts.apple.com | |
| |
|
Read |
| 
| Livewired Non-fiction This is a great, thought-provoking read from Stanford neuroscientist, David Eagleman about the malleability and elasticity of the brain.
I was particularly captivated by the chapters on the augmentation of the body and adding new capabilities to our brains.
One experiment that stands out, is one in which a number of blind subjects mounted cameras on top of their heads for an extended period of time. As they moved about, the video signal was passed to their brains through electrodes placed on the back of their necks. As the human brain is so open to receiving new streams of information and finding patterns in them, these non-sighted subjects were able to garner a new form of ‘sight’ based on the brain’s interpretation of the camera feed. So much so, they could ‘see’ if things were in their way and avoid them.
I suppose it’s like a ‘visual’ equivalent of how cochlear implants work. Either way, it’s mind-blowing and fascinating stuff in equal measure and there’s a whole host of other incredible examples between this book’s covers. Recommended. 🔗 literal.club | |
| |
| Ok that’s it for this one, hope there was something in here of interest. And feel free to hit reply on this email if you’ve got something to share – this is my personal email and I read all the responses.
If you have an idea for something you think I should include in a future issue, you can tell me about it here.
Right, goodbye from a little less rainy Great Missenden. Have a great weekend and hopefully I’ll catch you on the next issue (•◡•) / |
|  |
| |
