DEC.14.2024 - #03

Hi all 👋, thank you so much for reading and supporting me in the early days of this newsletter, it means so much to me to watch this little thing I started grow. It pushes me to keep going and continue this journey when I see new people following along every day. Special acknowledgments to hiro.report and Ross Wintle for shouting out the newsletter this week, go check them out!!

Continuing right where we left off last week, following The Browser Company’s announcement and some drama, I’ve been trying to move all my browser related activity to Zen. It’s an open-source, Firefox-based, independent browser that draws a lot of inspiration, features, and functionality from Arc! It’s fast, runs on Windows, Mac, AND Linux, and I’ve been loving the transition so far (will update as I discover/use this browser more). In other browser-related news, I’ve been testing out Quiche Browser for iPad and totally loving it! Additionally, after all the releases last week, my gaming backlog has grown tenfold with new games including Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Path of Exile 2 early access, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and many others. Not sure if I’ll ever get around to playing these as I am already playing a lot of Marvel Rivals (oh this guy’s talking about Marvel Rivals again, what else is new) and loving the chaos of it all. I’ve also been doing some reading recently, browsing through the apps that earned the “best of the year” title from both Apple and MacStories, and learning about Google’s new quantum chip, Willow (quantum computing is very confusing but Dr. Scott Aaronson has some great opinions and info/resources on his blog). On that note, let's dive right into this week’s clicks and clacks!!

clicks 🔗

• ”A Linkless Internet”

  

  → Starting off this week is a long read by Collin Jennings, all about the importance of hyperlinks and sharing your thoughts on the internet. I particularly love this article because this idea is one of the primary reasons I started this newsletter—to share with anyone who will listen, encourage reading & thoughtful consumption, and to make the internet just a little bit more fun. To fight back against AI summaries, soulless search engines, and social media platforms that don’t promote links or sharing anymore. As this article presents, without links, our exploration and thought processes themselves would be flattened and reduced to mindless consumption without critical analysis. Additionally, I admire the effort and detail put into this article to help explain the complicated history of hyperlinks and the PageRank algorithm, including their links to philosophies of thought and how the human mind moves from idea to idea. One particular quote I love is below:

  
  

  “When we navigate the web via links, we are traveling through the series of connections made by someone else”

  
  I love to think of this newsletter as a way for readers to follow along with my own personal exploration of the internet and travel along the web of connections, open tabs, saved bookmarks and wikipedia rabbit-holes I discover and share with you all. I know this one is a bit of a long read, but I highly recommend you carve out some time (about 25 mins) to give this incredible article a read.

• Controlling your internet consumption 

  

  → Apologies in advance for this click being a Substack link—I hope you can read this article without being bombarded with pop-ups to sign up to their platform. There are many reasons and articles which influenced me to choose Beehiiv over Substack to host this newsletter, and I heavily disagree and dislike some of Substack’s actions and the general direction they are taking their platform. Regardless, some exceptional content by great people is still hosted there (like this link), and I needed to declare that before I begin. This blog post by Chris V. Nicholson outlines how to take back control over the content you consume on the internet every day. It outlines a theme I have been seeing over and over and over recently—people are recognizing the toll, loss of productivity, and lack of creativity that comes with mindless consumption. I have personally dealt with this issue for a long time, and my “internet diet” consisted of limiting YouTube watch-times, deleting X (FKA Twitter) & TikTok, turning off (almost all) notifications, following more mindful creators, having all my sources/outlets in one place (I use Reeder), having those apps (Reeder, Instagram, Bluesky, etc.) on time-limits, and of course creating this newsletter. Just like the previous click above, my hope is that this newsletter encourages you to take a mindful look at your own internet/information consumption habits and maybe (using this article), make a positive change.

• Joi - Daily Planner app 

  

  → Here is a nifty new application launched by Alexey Sekachov, which originally started off as a viral tweet, and eventually grew into a full-fledged app! Joi is a daily planner which combines your events, habits, and tasks together with the added bonus of numerous Apple integrations (Apple Health, Reminders, Calendar). It’s been in TestFlight beta access for a while now, and I’ve had my eye on this one, so it’s exciting to see it finally released. Not sure yet if it’s going to replace how I use my main Calendar and Task apps, but for now, it is super useful to congregate/view my info for the day and has definitely earned a place on my home screen.

clacks ⌨️

• Connected over cables

  

  → First up in our list of clacks this week is a featured article on kbd.news written by David Gregory, AKA Kool Keys. In this article, David provides some great insight into the nuances of running a small business (Kool Keys) and the complexity of making custom keyboard cables, including the color matching science behind it. As I have mentioned before, I personally love hearing brilliant creators geek out about the technical/behind-the-scenes side of their process(es). Even though I don’t come close to understanding all the technical jargon David writes about, it’s one of my favorite parts of the article. Another interesting anecdote from this article is about the focus and attention that premium keyboards get. Often that same attention is lacking for cables, relegated to being overlooked or forgotten about as people look for cheaper options. So if you're in then market for an awesome, handmade, premium cable for your equally awesome keyboard, definitely check out Kool Keys.

• Where does the computer go?

  

  → Next up is the Raspberry Pi 500, a computer where all the inner components are encased inside a keyboard! All you need to use this little guy as your next personal computer is a mouse and a monitor. I used to fiddle around with Raspberry Pi machines all the time in my schooling, and I think they are a fantastic learning and development tool for everyone, whether you're an expert or an amateur just starting out. I found out about this machine from Jeff Geerling, and I highly recommend you check out their video on the Pi 500.

• Quality German engineering 

  

  → Last up in this week's list of clacks are these beautiful artisan keycaps from Geistmaschine. This company, located in Berlin, makes beautiful products such as the Studio | ASP keyboard, the BW | Desktop series organizer, and a nifty little online typing tool. You may see these keycaps and think why in the heck are they so expensive? Caps like these can get expensive pretty quickly and are, in my opinion, one of the priciest parts of the hobby (of course, they are completely optional). Nonetheless, I love to admire the craftsmanship of these pieces and maybe one day I’ll come close to being able to afford them (after I sell a kidney or two).

That’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed it, and now it’s time to hear from YOU 🫵. I want to know your opinion—what you liked, what you loved, what you didn’t like, what you skipped. Reach out at mail.clicksnclacks.com (or reply to this email!) and have a great weekend!!