Reading Goals and Fantasy Consoles

I know we're already five days into the New Year but today feels like the actual beginning of whatever this year is going to be. So if you're planning on doing anything cool or learning any new skills now is the time to start. The last five days didn't count (that's why I ate so many snacks). Regardless, I figured a few tools to help you achieve your goals would be useful this week. I'm going to be using these three a lot this year so maybe they can help you too.

in this issue:

📚 The Storygraph

📐 delphitools

👾 PICO-8

📚 The Storygraph

One of the most common New Year goals I hear is people who want to read more books (myself included). I'm actually a fairly slow reader so you won't be getting any speed-reading tips from me, but I do consider myself an expert in random apps to help you track every little thing. That's what The Storygraph is. Think Goodreads, but without the yucky aftertaste that typically comes along with using an Amazon product. Not only can you track which books you've read/want to read, but you can also see what your friends are reading or get simple personalized recommendations.

There isn't anything specifically mind blowing about how Storygraph works. You just search for the book you're reading and add it to your "currently reading" list or your "want to read" list or whatever. What makes this app so interesting is the data visualization. It displays everything from how many pages you've read to which genres you like the most in a few simple charts.

Pro-tip: if you're thinking of giving it a try and switching over from Goodreads, make sure to only import your data once or you'll end up with duplicates that you have to manually fix. Don't ask me how I know.

📐 delphitools

You know how every time you want to convert an image or create a QR code or do basically anything online you need to log into a sketchy website riddled with ads that may or not try to charge you money once you click the "convert" button? Yeah, this tool doesn't do that. It's called delphitools and it's made by an artist who was sick of all that crap and just wanted to make a collection of useful web tools for people to use.

I'm a sucker for a good palette generator, and of course this has one. There's also a favicon generator, a Tailwind cheatsheet, and a px to rem unit conversion tool. Anyone doing any kind of design or web development will likely find something useful here. It's a great side project that I already have bookmarked. Partly because of the utility it provides and partly because this is the kind of project I love coming back to for inspiration. Creative people doing fun unique things is when the internet is at its best.

👾 PICO-8

I'm not sure how I've never written about this before but if you haven't heard of PICO-8 this is the time. It's a digital console for playing games that runs entirely on your computer. The best part is that everything is in the 8bit retro style. My favorite. There are a ton of fun games you can play and some of the programs people have uploaded aren't even games. Just little cute code experiments. But PICO-8 isn't just for playing games, it's also a tool for making them.

It has built-in editors for making music, planning out levels, making characters (or sprites), and even writing the logic for your game using Lua. Once you make your game you can then share it in a cartridge so that anyone can play. There are sooo many to try out. Fun fact: the first version of the popular platformer Celeste was originally built in four days using PICO-8. You can still play it here!

🆒 Special thanks to Cool Supply members! 🆒

Abstronautica, Taylor Cash, Ben Sorensen, Daniel Hernandez, Becca Farsace, Charles Malave, Dean D, Jacob Mitchell, Justin Oster, Jonathan Potopovich, Ali Rabbani, Airton Zanon, Ben Murphy, Tristan Onfroy, Philipp Knall, Felipe Catano, and Anita! ❤️