David Guetta & Bebe Rexha - I’m Good (Blue). Somehow this song broke through my Spotify fortress of progressive rock and 1990s Grunge. I’m instantly transported back 20 years. Much better lyrics than the original. Truly terrible music video - they basically did whatever they wanted as long as it had bikini clad women (strangely also takes me back 20 years). Also, Guetta, at 55, is shredded. Is he related to Springsteen?

Incredible wood carving on a scale I have never imagined possible, Hulk vs Wolverine. Definitely watch the making of video.

If I was 15 years old with $1,000 to burn this would have been an insta-purchase.

I don’t know how else to be.

On my latest trip Florida it dawned on me that I generally am genuinely happy in, when I’m in creation mode. Originally I had thought that this mode was mainly going to be spent around the creation of comics. Turns out that was pretty limited conceptually.

The last few years I have tried to combine all my interests together, in all things Stet. While that does remain my focus hobby, I have found that I do want to continue doing other things as well. Making things and putting them out into the world is something that makes me happy. None of these things are commercially viable. I’ll stick to my day job thank you very much.

I do these things very much for myself and if others find value in them as well then that’s an awesome bonus as well.

I do these things because I don’t know how else to be.

Totally inspired by Mendo’s post, finished off the KAA typeface and did a little comic about it.

Its taken a really long time but very nearly there with KAA-regular (and KAA-bold).

As much as flying and travelling let’s you break routines we lost for the pandemic, there’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

Importing SVG Files from Affinity Designer into iFontMaker. Yup will be using this at some point in the near future.

🏖️ One of the important aspects of a break is the mental reset. It’s the whole reason for the break in the first place. Let your brain wander a little. Let you have some time for things you previously you did not have the mental capacity for. As I’ve grown older I’ve realised how much more important these mental breaks are to let me truck on no matter what is thrown in my general direction.

Bye bye Florida.

Ah makes sense. So In was up against Barry Windsor Smith’s Monsters. That’s a tough one to go up against in your debut outing, against one of the masters of the medium. Having said that I haven’t been able to finish Monsters but I read In a few days after I brought it…

📚 Finished reading: In: the Graphic Novel by Will McPhail. What an incredible book. I’m surprised it hasn’t won any awards. Really surprised.

Writing my newsletter on a Sunday can be a pretty relaxed affair. Once I have the idea ready to go, I tend to go into production mode and the few points I want to make come out reasonably quickly. The biggest barrier from stopping me from doing it weekly is that I don’t want to add stress to my life. I like taking it easy with this, because it then becomes sustainable long term.

The part that I am loving is keeping in touch with what is going on in the built world. I get to learn something myself as much as those that have subscribed. This was one of the main reasons to bring the newsletter back even if in a slightly limited capacity.

📚 Finished reading: Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen

Following the last post, Calligraphr, let’s you create your font based on your handwriting with some easy to use tools. I prefer iFontmaker, however this allows you to use something like Procreate and it’s seemingly infinite brushes.

An advise / idea for comic artists: make your handwriting and font.
I created my own font family based in my handwriting, with the invaluable help of Type-ø-tones heroes Laura Meseguer and Josema Urós. Some of you had already spotted the typeface use in my comics and asked, so here’s your answer.

Wonderful post and idea. I would also add that you can do this yourself (I’m using ifontmaker on the iPad) but it takes time.

Watched Downton Abbey: A New Era. This movie is purely for the fans. Get to spend a little bit more time with them all and tying everyone’s story in a nice bow. Highlight, by far, was Mr.Mosley finally coming into his own.

The joys of going into an actual book store is the ability to browse and serendipitously stumble on something gold. In my case it was the works of Will McPhail. I was presented with two options, In and Love and Vermin. Both incredible works of art that I’m so glad to have discovered.

I checked the price on Amazon and obviously it’s like 40% lower…and yet I could have spent my entire life and I would never have stumbled on these books. A fair price of admission.

As a hobbyist author, the Pages app for iOS really is an amazing tool in your arsenal. Low stress because you can do just about anything you want to deliver and create something wonderful.

I now have three books on the move - the irony being I can’t seem to be able to read a book but can be writing three of them at the same time.

Watched the Banshees of Inisherin on the flight over to Florida - great movie although I guess I wanted more maybe from the ending?

Since the kids were born I’ve found it increasingly difficult to sit down and watch a movie the entire way through. In some ways it’s similar to reading a whole novel at the moment. I have several great books on the go and yet haven’t been able to finish any of them.

Maybe this little holiday will recharge some of those muscles and let me actually fill my brain with ideas and creativity that will help my own along the way.

43,000 posts. Across 25 years. That’s the equivalent of 1700 posts average per year or 140 posts per month. Or 4-5 posts per day. For over 2½ decades. Kottke is seriously dedicated to the cause.

New typeface by TipoType Axios Pro looks amazing. I’m a real fan of their extras and their italics which so much identity. I just need to pick the right project for this.

The Final Curtain Call on pirating the Oscars is a fascinating view on how to solve a problem by approaching it from a completely different angle.

And so the work on the BEC Volume 2 begins.

An unfortunate effect of moving countries and the pandemic is that my kids have never experienced the movie theatre. I think The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a great place to right this wrong. It helps that I am super excited about this movie myself.

Haven’t heard a Daring Fireball show in a while. I wish all my podcasts had the same approach to notes and chapters. Really looks wonderful on the Feedbin companion app Airshow. Good job @gruber

⚽️ Really enjoyable game. All big to small teams should have a player advantage. Makes the game so much more fun to watch.

Modern life is increasingly a struggle of managing multiple channels. Work channels. Home channels. Family channels. Online channels. Financial channels. Health channels.

Each channel jostles for attention. Sometimes some channels dominate your thoughts and other times they are left seemingly abandoned. The worst part is when your mind switches constantly between them all. Its true that it is not possible to always be ontop of each of these, all the time.

What I’ve found to be useful is reviewing these every month and seeing where everything is. Has it moved a little since last month? Can you remove some of these from the list. My preferred method of review is pen and paper, in what I refer to as a Life Book. I also have a Work Book.

reMarkable is a really interesting product, that probably costs x2 what I would be willing to pay. $1058 (Canadian) for the tablet, pencil/eraser and new folio keyboard. I paid less for my 2018 iPad Pro, which remains one of the greatest Apple purchases ever.

⛑️ I’ve recently noticed that I’m getting out of breathe walking up and down stairs. Clearly overweight, but the strange thing is that I have been walking more this winter than at any other time. 1hour to and from work. Time to get back into HIIT sessions.

Our Time. This Ford commercial announcing its back in F1 is amazingly well done.

Something is very, very different with these beans. Good times ahead.

☕️ Oh man I was not wrong. I’ve always felt that Costa Rica had something special when it comes to coffee beans. What an incredible cup of homemade coffee.

Medium’s me.dm Mastodon Server Opens Up. Same price as Micro.blog. I think I would pay $20-30/year for Mastodon. I get some value out of it but nowhere near the same value I get from Micro.blog.

As much as I love Status.lol, it has some serious flakiness to it.

Issue 003 of my newsletter Stet, is now out. This issue looks at the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum.

The thing about stationary is that it doesn’t generally go bad. You might not use it for a year or two or three, but when you finally get around to it, it can absolutely delight. Like this Tennessee Red Cedar pencil. Highly recommended.

Reconnecting with some old friends.

❄️ Apparently it’s called thunder snow. Damn that’s a raging storm out there.

Feedbin 10th Anniversary Tee. So totally there. Need a Micro.blog one as well.

Sometimes starting in the digital space is just not the right move. Back to paper and pencil and my little project for the week has taken a new lease on life.

Working on something…

🚇 Public transport in Toronto is interesting. If I choose to walk from my house, I get to work in 25-30min. If I take public transportation it takes me 20-25min.

Yesterday was tough work walking home. Times it perfectly to be hit by the storm. Wasn’t particularly cold, but the wind. The bloody wind. Good news. Tomorrow unlocking begins.

✏️ Drawing with the kids today. Also have a fun drawing side project that I can’t wait to get going.

By far one of the most awesome displays at the match was the black and white flags from the Newcastle United fans.

☕️ Quiet Sunday morning to reflect on the week that passed and maybe start to mentally prepare for the one coming ahead.

Beware of poisonous internet worms. The Scott Adams (Dilbert comic creator) controversy is at best, disappointing. It’s incredible how some fringe crap can get a poisonous worm in your head that grows and ultimately makes you spew some racist, segregationist crap on the internet. It’s 2023, not 1823.

🛟 So much life happening this year. So. Much. Life.

Fun metric. Sometime this year I turn 16,000 days old.

Speaking of Mo Willems, his site, Pigeon Presents, is actually a celebration of his work. More authors and artists could really learn something from this presentation.