onfocus

This looks like another great day-by-day project to follow in 2019. This is my favorite year in jazz music and it's already fascinating a few days in. [via kottke] I mean look at these albums! Don't like jazz? That's jazz!

The details in Red Dead Redemption 2 are part of what makes it so fun to play. The Audubon Society sees what they've done there. I agree on the sound design—as you change environments, the sounds of the natural world change. The game simulates 178 different animals: Red Dead Redemption 2 Full Compendium and constantly catching glimpses of them makes the world feel more real. I don't spend time birding in RDR2 but it's fun to know I could if I wanted to.

I got this fun nostalgia bomb of a book as a Christmas present. It includes the visual history of iconic D&D monsters, campaign settings, and pop culture crossovers. I'm probably the target market. I grew up in the 80s playing this game and I play the latest version today. Seeing the evolution of the game over time is fascinating.

For an online equivalent, follow Old School FRP which posts art and ephemera from 80s role playing games.

Some art from 1923 is finally entering the US public domain after a 20-year extension passed by congress in 1998. In addition to a partial list of works here, check out the What Could Have Been section to feel the impact of that 1998 decision. They also have a good page about Why the Public Domain Matters.

Really looking forward to following along with Darius Kazemi's year-long dive into tech history via RFCs. He kicked things off today with his look at RFC-1 about how host servers should communicate. (Also my first look at Write.as which looks like a nice blogging platform with fediverse support.)

Fellow Corvallians, this is a nice stroll through downtown. John M. Burt points out some bits of Corvallis history that we can still see today.

Need some design inspiration? This is a great collection of comic book covers from 2018. I added quite a few to my list of comics to find. It also reminded me that I loved the disorienting Why Art? from earlier this year and I don't think I mentioned it here.

Good evening Newsletter Wednesday fans! :crickets: If you’re reading this you’re probably already familiar with kottke.org, one of the last surviving general interest weblogs (or “blogs” for short). It survives because Jason finds amazing things and describes them in ways that make us amazed with him. What you might not know is that he teamed up with frequent kottke guest-blogger Tim Carmody to produce a weekly newsletter recap called Noticing. Even though I keep up with the site in near real-time, I appreciate the way the weekly version ties posts together into themes. The newsletter has been going for a year now and it’s always a must-read.

I would like Scott Andrew to turn them all into scarols.

Dinah Sanders has some great tips for incorporating 3D terrain into D&D games. She also has some good accessory resources at the end. We’ve come a long way from graph paper.

See also: My 2016 post about Modern D&D Tools.

Nothing, to me, says end-of-the-year like a numeric list. And no one lists things like David Rees. Join him for the 10th year of rounding up the best of the year(s). Who can forget the most unforgettable things of 2018? (Not David Rees.)

I'm a habitual iPhone settings-changer and I still found settings to tweak in this article. The central premise of this article is that your phone should be a tool that helps you not a director that tells you how to spend your time and attention. It's a good companion piece to Cal Newport's Deep Work—a book-length why behind changing your relationship with your phone.