Whimsical Data and Keyblades

I'm a little late this week but I have a reason! It reached damn near 80 degrees here in New York for the first time so I spent yesterday morning at the park throwing the ball around with my dog Zuri when I should have been writing this issue. Highly recommend putting off your responsibilities to hang out at the park with a dog. This week I have an old game that I love, a new watch that I already bought, and a cool internet tool that I can't wait to use for something.

in this issue:

🦾 Hodinkee x Timex Ironman

🗝️ Kingdom Hearts

📦 Barkod Studio

🦾 Hodinkee x Timex Ironman

It seems to me that the Timex Ironman is making the rounds lately. A few months ago Timex teamed up with Huckberry to release a gorgeous sand and orange color of the Flix model, and now the Ironman 8-Lap is getting the LE treatment with Hodinkee. This time it's back to basics in the minimal gray color way save for a transparent resin case. The best part is the price, which is not something I usually get to say when it comes to limited edition releases from Hodinkee. At $135 this is cheaper than reissues of the original I found at some online shops or even on eBay. Aside from the aesthetics, the 8-lap is significant because it has (you guessed it) enough memory for 8 laps which is helpful when running.

I fall in and out of love with smartwatches for various reasons but I've always had one on my wrist when it comes to exercise. GPS, heart-rate tracking, and (most importantly) being able to control my songs has always made me strap one on. But I forgot to charge my watch a few weeks ago and shockingly, I still had a great workout! Who knew! Now I'm questioning everything. Will I run the marathon with a Timex Ironman? Probably not. But I will definitely be giving this more wrist time during my summer runs.

🗝️ Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX

Kingdom Hearts first came out in 2002, and I remember being obsessed with it. I loved (and still love) the Disney movies, so give me a game about a protagonist that travels through different Disney movies, beating the bad guy, and I'm all in. Long story less long, it's like if Final Fantasy and every '90s Disney movie got mashed up into one game where you play as a boy named Sora looking for his friends. I spent hours playing this game, but I don't think I ever finished it. The same thing happened with the second and third games too. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it it's just that it was a difficult game, and I was eleven. My motor skills hadn't fully developed yet. I had many years of games ahead of me.

Thankfully, you can now just download the games on the PlayStation Store and I have been diving in. Now that I'm an adult with fully developed motor skills...I still suck. It's a hard game! But it's so fun. And there's so much more to this story than I remember! I'm slowly working my way through them, and seeing as Kingdom Hearts 4 might never come out (even though the trailer was announced four years ago) I have plenty of time to beat this game.

📦 Barkod Studio

I have a soft spot for any tool that gets a job done while simultaneously providing a little whimsy in my life. I think that's why I tend to gravitate towards Google's Material Design language over Apple's Liquid Glass. It just feels fun. Like this barcode generator tool that came across my timeline that turns boring barcodes into fun designs like a palm tree, horse, a car, or even poop.

Just enter the numbers of the barcode, pick a design and color, and you're done! You can download the design right then and there, or you can copy the SVG. What I found clever is that the main barcode section remains untouched at the bottom of every design so that the scanner can still read it. The design just extends upward into something more recognizable. They say on the website that this is a passion project to prove that data can be art, and I think they nailed it.