Lu Wilson
patreon
TODEPOND PONDCAST: Todepond
🕑 Added 2024-05-25 12:44:13 +0000 UTCHi hi hi. Welcome back... to yet another weekly episode... of the...
🐸 TODEPOND PONDCAST 🐸
What's new this week?
Todepond
I've been working on my write-up for Seet, a short-lived project that I worked on as part of my Ink & Switch residency. The funny thing with the write-up is that I'm trying to make it good — I mean, I want it to be well thought-out. I want it to have a certain level of 'legitimacy' as a piece of research.
So much of what I do is jokey or silly or whatever. But sometimes, I want people to take me seriously.
I see this as an important step in continuing my work on weird computing. One day, I want TodePond work to be highly regarded, with similar but different standing to other self-publishing labs like Ink & Switch and Andy Matuschak's and Alexander Obenauer's and the Living Computation Foundation and GitHub Next and Dynamicland and Folk Computing and blah blah blah. This might seem outlandish or unrealistic, but I don't care! and I may as well say my goals out loud, just in case someone wants to swoop in and help me with any of them.
The first step of this was doing that talk at SPLASH last year. I found it really hard to add some more seriousness to my work - whilst also keeping all the stupid. And sure, it's only a little bit serious, but it's way more than I've ever done before.
More recently, I submitted an essay with Dave Ackley, and again I found myself trying to combine sensible with ridiculous. We'll find out if I failed or not.
So with Seet...
Seet
With Seet, I'm trying to do this again. How can I elevate my work to a higher status? My blog is full of rubbish, of shitposts and junk (intentionally). So I need to distance my Seet write-up from it somehow. And I've been exploring how to do that.
My current solution is to use a drastically different visual language and style.
But wait! I only ever use one visual style in all my projects. In all my projects, I only ever use one visual style — the Todepond style (that you're seeing right now) (oh wait, you're not! because you're on patreon. but check out here to see this post on my own site)! I use simple flat colours to make my job easier. I don't have to spend time deciding a whole theme each time I make a thing. I can just pick it up and go, plug and play. There's no choice paralysis.
For a while, I've been developing a light mode variant of the theme. But that doesn't feel different enough. And besides, that has now started to mean something in my videos.
So I need a brand new theme! It needs to say:
This is high effort.
This is serious.
This is silly.
The first one is easy. The hard part is combining the final two. I don't want it to be dry!!!!!!!!!!!!
Parallel streams
DreamBerd got a full read-through by Theo who's technically not an influencer, content-creator, or streamer. I'll share the resultant video that gets posted up! It includes Theo donating 500 dollars on behalf of DreamBerd, which is really nice! Theo also did a live reaction to my Spellular Automata video, which was fun. I feel bad that it demonetised his stream though...
I was a guest on Steve Krouse's Val Town stream. It was really fun, and you can now see how bad I actually am at coding.
I'm continuing to get some fantastic Torn Leaf submissions. Thank you everyone! I think I now have enough for the first exhibition. But please do keep sending them in! (for this exhibition, and future ones).
I recorded another Future of Coding episode. It was a bonus episode this time, all about the video game Baba Is You. So I also tried (and failed) to complete the game this week. It's very inspiring for visual coding stuff!
I added another level to my Draw Dead Fish game, parodying Apple's recent advert.
And I've been working on the very start and very end of the next video, Top 99 Ways To Make Sand, to do a bit of foreshadowing for future videos. I like where it's going.
So thank you very much for your ongoing support! I can't thank you enough — really I can't. With your help, I'm working towards my goals. And I think we'll be able to achieve some of them together. Welcome to all the new people this week, and welcome back to the old-timers! And hey, wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing... I hope you have a great week.
Days since tode fell asleep: 505
Days since bot went missing: 470
Days since berd flew away: 133
Back to the pondcast.
