A Month With a 75% Mechanical Keyboard
A 75% keyboard keeps the function row and the arrow keys but drops the number pad and squeezes everything else…
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What “Spring” Teaches About Colour
“Spring” is a short animated film from the Blender Animation Studio, released in 2019 and shared under a Creative Commons…
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Sintel and the Long Life of Open Films
“Sintel” is a fifteen-minute fantasy film from the Blender Foundation, released in 2010. A young woman crosses a frozen, dangerous…
Travel
Packing for a Week in One Small Bag
For years I packed for the trip I was afraid of rather than the trip I was taking. The extra…
Food
Ten Minutes to a Better Salad
Most disappointing salads fail for the same few reasons: wet leaves, a dressing added too early, and nothing crunchy. All…
Technology
Backups You Will Actually Keep
Everyone agrees backups matter, and most people do not have one that works. The reason is usually not knowledge but…
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Learning an Instrument as an Adult
Children learn instruments because someone makes them. Adults learn because they want to, which is a better reason, and a few habits make it far more likely to stick.Practise a little every day rather than a lot at the weekend.…
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Big Buck Bunny, in Sixty Frames a Second
“Big Buck Bunny” is a comedy short from the Blender Institute, released in 2008. A large, gentle rabbit is bullied by three rodents, and takes an elaborate, cartoonish revenge.If you work on the web, you have probably seen it without…
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The Typeface Is the Voice
Before anyone reads a word, the typeface has already spoken. A heavy slab feels confident, a delicate serif feels considered, a rounded sans feels friendly. Choosing one is choosing a tone of voice.For long reading, comfort matters more than personality.…
Read MoreA New Picture of the Universe, Every Day
NASA publishes a new image every day, from spacecraft, telescopes and astronauts on the space station, each with a short note on what you are looking at. It is the best daily reminder that the view from here is only…
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A Short History of the Grid
Look closely at almost any well-made page, printed or on screen, and you will find an invisible grid holding it together: columns, margins and gutters that everything lines up to.Designers have used underlying structures for centuries, in the proportions of…
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Why the Sky Is Blue, and Sunsets Aren’t
Sunlight looks white, but it is a mixture of every colour. When it enters the atmosphere, it meets molecules of nitrogen and oxygen far smaller than the wavelength of the light itself, and they scatter it in every direction.They do…
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The Long Life of a Tree
Some trees alive today were already old when the oldest buildings in most cities were new. Bristlecone pines in the mountains of the western United States have been dated at more than four thousand years, and many oaks and yews…
Read MoreBeware, for I Am Fearless
Mary Shelley was eighteen when she began “Frankenstein”, and the creature’s warning is still one of the most chilling lines in English fiction. More than two centuries on, the novel is free to read, and it rewards every re-reading.
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The Quiet Work of Soil
A handful of healthy soil is one of the busiest places on Earth. A single gram can hold billions of bacteria, along with fungi, tiny animals and the roots that feed them, all working in the dark.Fungi spread thread-like networks…
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