Full Width [alt+shift+f] Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
51
Our third Ink & Switch Unconference, at the beautifully retro Preserve in Los Angeles
8 months ago

Improve your reading experience

Logged in users get linked directly to articles resulting in a better reading experience. Please login for free, it takes less than 1 minute.

More from Ink & Switch

Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps

The original promise of personal computing was a new kind of clay. Instead, we got appliances: built far away, sealed, unchangeable. In this essay, we envision malleable software: tools that users can reshape with minimal friction to suit their unique needs.

a month ago 12 votes
Dispatch 011: Automerge 3.0 Beta, Sketchy Calendar, and a lab website refresh

Some major updates to our open-source Automerge library, an introduction to Sketchy Calendars, and a peek at our work on collaborative game development. Also some meta content—a refreshed website, and a talk about how we work.

a month ago 22 votes
Ink Note Q1 2025: Selection Gestures

Can we create a selection system that can do both whole-stroke and sub-stroke selection, while still being simple and intuitive?

3 months ago 16 votes
Ink Note Q1 2025: Selection Gestures

Can we create a selection system that can do both whole-stroke and sub-stroke selection, while still being simple and intuitive?

3 months ago 17 votes
Ink Note Q2 2025: Sketchy Calendar

Can we have a calendar that combines the convenience of a digital calendar with the simplicity and expressivity you get from pen & paper?

3 months ago 13 votes

More in programming

Computers Are a Feeling

Exploring diagram.website, I came across The Computer is a Feeling by Tim Hwang and Omar Rizwan: the modern internet exerts a tyranny over our imagination. The internet and its commercial power has sculpted the computer-device. It's become the terrain of flat, uniform, common platforms and protocols, not eccentric, local, idiosyncratic ones. Before computers were connected together, they were primarily personal. Once connected, they became primarily social. The purpose of the computer shifted to become social over personal. The triumph of the internet has also impoverished our sense of computers as a tool for private exploration rather than public expression. The pre-network computer has no utility except as a kind of personal notebook, the post-network computer demotes this to a secondary purpose. Smartphones are indisputably the personal computer. And yet, while being so intimately personal, they’re also the largest distribution of behavior-modification devices the world has ever seen. We all willing carry around in our pockets a device whose content is largely designed to modify our behavior and extract our time and money. Making “computer” mean computer-feelings and not computer-devices shifts the boundaries of what is captured by the word. It removes a great many things – smartphones, language models, “social” “media” – from the domain of the computational. It also welcomes a great many things – notebooks, papercraft, diary, kitchen – back into the domain of the computational. I love the feeling of a personal computer, one whose purpose primarily resides in the domain of the individual and secondarily supports the social. It’s part of what I love about the some of the ideas embedded in local-first, which start from the principle of owning and prioritizing what you do on your computer first and foremost, and then secondarily syncing that to other computers for the use of others. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky

2 days ago 3 votes
New Edna feature: multiple notes

I started working on Edna several months ago and I’ve implemented lots of functionality. Edna is a note taking application with super powers. I figured I’ll make a series of posts about all the features I’ve added in last few months. The first is multiple notes. By default we start with 3 notes: scratch inbox daily journal Here’s a note switcher (Ctrl + K): From note switcher you can: quickly find a note by partial name open selected note with Enter or mouse click create new note: enter fully unique note name and Enter or Ctrl + Enter if it partially matches existing note. I learned this trick from Notational Velocity delete note with Ctrl + Delete archive notes with icon on the right star / un-star (add to favorites, remove from favorites) by clicking star icon on the left assign quick access shortcut Alt + <n> You can also rename notes: context menu (right click mouse) and This note / Rename Rename current note in command palette (Ctrl + Shift + K) Use context menu This note sub-menu for note-related commands. Note: I use Windows keyboard bindings. For Mac equivalent, visit https://edna.arslexis.io/help#keyboard-shortcuts

2 days ago 3 votes
Thoughts on Motivation and My 40-Year Career

I’ve never published an essay quite like this. I’ve written about my life before, reams of stuff actually, because that’s how I process what I think, but never for public consumption. I’ve been pushing myself to write more lately because my co-authors and I have a whole fucking book to write between now and October. […]

3 days ago 10 votes
Single-Use Disposable Applications

As search gets worse and “working code” gets cheaper, apps get easier to make from scratch than to find.

3 days ago 8 votes