1. The Week That Was

It’s been a quiet fortnight. As mentioned in the previous newsletter, various vacations and visits meant that half of our team have been out of office for a good chunk of June and July. Shawn and Barry have travelled East, and I — this is James writing, btw — journeyed South and West.

But I’m back now! And I have seized been given the reins of this newsletter to share a little about what’s been going on in the world of Good Enough since we last met. Just give me a minute or two to catch up on Slack, Basecamp, Ponder, LogLogLog, Email, Github…

… OK. Phew.

On our blog, Patrick has shared his quest to find and listen to a song from the soundtrack of a pilot TV show from more than twenty years ago. He’s also been doing some deep thinking about an upcoming super simple site serving service, which we hope can become a great home for the Weird Web.

Lettini has been looking closely at Meta’s Tweet-a-like offering “Threads”, which leveraged Instagram to attract over 100 million users in less than a week. It remains to be seen whether or not Threads will supplant Twitter (and whether or not it can do it without becoming a dumpster fire), but in the meantime, it has some quite nice UX affordances that we are impressed with (for example, how images are handled).

Arun has been ideating and synergising, but more importantly, stepping away from the work to think about how we work, particularly during this rapid prototyping phase. When anything is possible, discipline and process become our rudder, steering us away from chaotic whirlpools of distraction and towards (hopefully) interesting islands of investigation and innovation. The codename for this nascent process is Next Steps. I’m excited to get involved.

My head is full to the brim. Vacations are great, but it’s also nice to be back, refreshed, engines humming with potential. Let’s go!

2. Printers

As part of my travels, I couriered the printer control boards I made a few weeks ago to Patrick, who had taken receipt of a few other necessary components, and between day trips to the pool and nights drinking cocktails and cheesecake (eating, not drinking, that’s insane, what are you talking about, no, I’m not jet-lagged, YOU are jet-lagged), I assembled and configured the printer units for dispatch to the rest of Good Enough.

Pretty soon we will have a bunch of these little buddies operating, and can start some material exploration. What might we find, a decade after the original project (and its commercial cousin) had their fifteen minutes of fame? I don’t know. Maybe you have some ideas?

In the meantime, I have a printer running on my desk here in London, and if you’d like to send me a message, head over to the little message app I built, and it’ll print out like a little charming telegram.

Click here to send our printer a message.

I await your urgent dispatches, dear reader!

3. Watch/Read: Two perspectives on the dawn of personal computing

Most of us at Good Enough are thoroughly enjoying this golden age of prestige television, and we like to share reactions and recommendations whenever possible. Over cocktails with Patrick and Lettini, I was reminded of one of my favourite shows, which follows a handful of characters through the very early years of the personal computing revolution: Halt and Catch Fire. I highly recommend it.

If you’ve already seen Halt and Catch Fire, you might also enjoy this comic, available to buy, or read online: Incredible Doom by Matthew Bogart. It’s set in roughly the same era and touches on similar things, but from a very different perspective. The tagline: “A comic about '90s kids making bad decisions over the early internet.”

Now, I hand you over to Arun:

4. Waterfalls

I asked for suggestions on what to write.

Patrick: "Give us 3 paragraphs of stream of consciousness"

Matthew: "I vote river of consciousness"

James: "I vote WATERFALL of consciousness"

All I can say is: be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

From a stream to a river to a waterfall. Which of course brings to mind this song. It’s darker than I remember. Because all I typically remember is the chorus. 

"Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to."

Out of context, it feels preachy. And a bit alarmist. Waterfalls are amazing! In context, it still feels preachy, but… I get it. We were collectively very worried at the time about drugs and HIV. We called them epidemics. We watched them take lives and steal souls (sadly, they still do – but then, so does being alive).

So I did the thing that some of us do these days – I googled the lyrics. And discovered, on the wikipedia page, that there was a Paul McCartney song with a very similar line before TLC’s song. It, too, was called "Waterfalls."

“Don’t go jumping waterfalls

Please, keep to the lake

People who jump waterfalls

Sometimes can make mistakes.”

I want to go hunting for meaning here. Perhaps there’s some mythic significance to waterfalls. The power and beauty of nature. The way water is soft but, given time, can carve its way through the hardest of rocks. Soft but hard. Yin but yang. Your mom meets your dad and now, against all the odds, you exist. 

Why did James mention a waterfall? Is it a coincidence that, just a couple days ago on a trip to Portland, I was riffing with a friend about this song? Was Jung right about the collective unconscious? And if so, what the hell is it trying to say here?

Stay away from waterfalls? As if.

People can sometimes make mistakes? Yeah, we know.

Life is pretty goddamn strange? You bet. ––AS

5. In conclusion

IJames again. Let me leave you with this, from 1999’s “The Beast is Near”, which was my introduction to the world of David Shrigley. I think about it quite a lot.

I’ve never been able to find it online, and so as the final act of this newsletter, I consecrate this poorly-edited photo into online Valhalla, with hopefully-sufficient metadata such that future humans might be able to find it, and forever appreciate it as I do.

Until next week: keep it foolish. ––JA

1. The Week That Was

Just when you think you’re out, they drag you back in. After editing last week’s newsletter, I thought I was done for a few weeks, but I’m back folks: It’s me, James.

The vast and resplendent halls of Good Enough are still quiet this week, with folks travelling during these summer months, but if you listen carefully, you can still hear the unmistakable hum of work being done, thoughts being thought, and ideas being conjured and dispatched into the maelstrom.

On our blog, I wrote a little about managing the software for our Printer project. Building and updating software for the web is not exactly easy, but it’s orders of magnitude easier than building and updating software for a little box that’s going to sit on a desk with no visible means of configuring it.

I’ve also just deployed the first alpha version of Chicken, which is the codename for the part of the Cosmic Maelstrom that I’ve been conducting. Exciting times.

And, Lettini and I have shepherded in a lovely new feature for AlbumWhale. See below!

Elsewhere, work on our super simple single site serving service (who needs Amazon S3 when you can get Good Enough S6?!, amirite?) continues, but with a less technical and more philosophical perspective. Who do we want as users? Who do we not want as users? How do we steer that? But dear reader, do not worry: as a subscriber of this humble newsletter, you are officially pre-approved.

—JA

2. Album Whale, Remember Us?

It’s been a minute since we checked in on Album Whale, the second app we launched (after DoEvery.Day, remember that?). With our recent focus on prototyping new ideas, we haven’t updated the whale in a few months. Well over the course of those few months, we’ve gained a few hundred users, and we wanted an easier way to see who has similar taste. This week we added a new feature: the album page.

Every album added to a list in Album Whale now has its own page where you can see who else added it to their list, and what they have to say about it. Now it’s even easier to find great music and curators that share your same taste. Here’s an example:

Haven’t checked in on Album Whale in awhile either? Get back into it with these great lists from our community:

• Trilogies by Robert Rackley makes great use of our 3-up grid on desktop.

• Hardcore by Rachel Cabitt takes us on a brief visual history of the art of hardcore music (see also her related newsletter!)

• Instrumental stuff for Steve by stumpnugget is a list that begs the question “Who’s Steve?” and makes you realize “We all are.”

—ML

3. Tom Cruise Runnin’

Hello, this is Shawn reporting from Taipei, where it’s currently a mild 92 degrees. I really don’t like it here in the summer. 🥲One of the highlights of our trip so far is seeing Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning in the movie theater. 

No spoiler here! Ok maybe a little bit: Tom Cruise / Ethan Hunt ran a lot in the movie, and I clapped and cheered every time. It was a 1pm showing and there weren’t that many people in the theater and I didn’t care what people thought.

Tom Cruise running is one of the best things on screen, and my Good Enough friends agree. Lettini shared this gem of a YouTube video, and Patrick shared an ESPN article analyzing Tom Cruise’s running (he’s fast, but running coaches think that he can run faster if he were to angle his body forward a bit).

The most memorable thing about the movie was that the theater had good sound, crisp projection, tasty popcorn, and a quiet & respectful audience––which we haven’t experienced in movie theaters back in New York City. Alamo Drafthouse has terrible sound and their theaters aren’t dark enough (because they’re more like a restaurant with a screen). Regal and AMC have terrible projections and serve stale popcorn. And we’ve had some bad luck with the audience (annoying grownups making stupid comments, or children crying at an R-rated movie).

Please hook me up If you know of a good movie theater in New York City! Also: if you’re a parent with little kids, please don’t take them to see R-rated movies! Thank you!

(As for the movie itself: the plot was kinda weak, but the stunts and running were excellent. Good enough!)

—SL

3. Barbenwhatnow?

Patrick here to continue the movie train. You’ve no doubt heard this weekend brings the theatrical releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer – aka Barbenheimer. The pairing of two movies so thematically opposite has seemingly sparked a return to theaters (for at least one weekend anyways) and a lot of fun internet memes. Go look for yourself!

Not that long ago, I would have absolutely been signed up for a double feature weekend. Instead, I’m in a bit of a movie theater drought brought on by a 6 month old who won’t yet let his mom get away for long enough to sit through a full movie. Getting to see one movie in the theater this weekend would be an incredible treat – the luxuriousness of seeing two is almost unimaginable.

In a world where going to the movies was actually on the table this weekend, I’d have a genuinely hard time picking between the two. Oppenheimer is better reviewed and seems like the kind of fare perfect for giant screens and speakers. I love the way the Barbie movie looks from the costumes to the sets to the pink (my favorite color). I mean, just look at how meticulously crafted the Barbie Dreamhouse set is!

I’m not sure I could pick so I’d probably just take Shawn’s advice and see Mission Impossible.

–PF

4. Hello From Seoul

Barry is currently in the city of Seoul and sent us this photo:

5. In Conclusion

Two weeks in a row? Maybe this is my newsletter now. Tune in next week (i.e. please don’t unsubscribe) to see what I do with this unchecked power, or, more likely, which of my colleagues has successfully ousted me from my editorial throne and changed all my British English spellings back to American English.

Anyway, I must apologise, I’ve been rambling for some time now. How are you?

—JA

1. The Week That Was

I AM STILL IN CONTROL. This is James. The coup is complete. The paperwork is filed to rename “Good Enough” to “James Enough”. 

There is nothing wrong with your email client. Do not attempt to adjust the font size. I control your horizontal alignment and your vertical spacing. I can change the lucidity of my prose to mindless gibberflibberwibberish, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. You are about to experience the awe and mystery that stretches from my inner mind to…

… the outer limits. Or at least, into your inbox. 

[a floorboard creaks]

Oh, shit, no, wait, I can explain, I ca– [muffled noises, suggesting a struggle; the sound of keyboard smashing into British hands, a desperate scream, and then… silence, except for ragged breathing.]

Barry and Shawn are back from their travels. We are, once again, quorate. I apologise for my hubris and disrespect. I only hope I can earn their trust and respect again.

Work continues on projects codenamed Chicken, S6, and a new prototype that I will, this very moment, christen Howdy [editor’s note: we will probably change this almost immediately]. 

With everyone back, the volume of coal being shoveled furnace-ward increases exponentially, deep in the belly of the SS Good Enough, and we push ever forward across the Sea of Innovation, through the dark, moonless night of “But, Why?”.

I return the helm to you, Captain, and I will see myself to the brig. —JA

2. Back From the Other Side of the World

Shawn and I just returned from the other side of the world – East Asia. I don't know about Shawn, but I'm still a little bit grogged out by the jet lag. (Kidding. I do know. Shawn is jet-lagged as well.)  I'm also a little thrown off by no longer being present in either the safe, clean, and polite borders of Japan or the vibrant activity of Seoul. We're home and everything is a little more dirty and rude while our surroundings are a little less exciting and new (to us).

The great thing is that today we had a weekly meeting with the whole team for the first time in a long time! We mostly discussed travel and right-sized dogs, but we also touched on some important improvements that we can make in how we work. As all readers could have predicted, project management is unavoidable even with a small team working cosmically. As the dog days of summer approach, we will also be considering how we can keep our team a little more focused and together on the projects at hand.

To keep our vacation memories alive, we have good smells from a spray one of our hotels gladly sold us ($$$), lava rocks from Mt. Fuji in our water, and snacks just delivered from H Mart. I'm sure these things will have a calming effect on our demeanors. Happiness won't help but grow in our hearts. —BH

3. Lettini Screeni

“Found footage” movies can be pretty hit or miss, but let me tell you about a hit you might have missed: Chronicle.

Chronicle chronicles the story of three young men who happen upon some real deal superpowers. One of the kids is an inspiring filmmaker, hence the found footage art style (the reason this is not headache-inducing like Cloverfield is because he unlocks telekinesis, which makes the camera work very smooth and not shaky). He also happens to be the school loser, frequently bullied, and now recognizing he’s the one with all the power.

Starring a young Michael B. Jordan and should-be-a-bigger-star Dane DeHaan, Chronicle was a surprise. It feels like what would really happen if a few young high schoolers really got superpowers — they discover and test their new powers, have some fun, get into some antics, and slowly but surely things start spinning out of control when their darker sides start to show. It’s an action thriller with an intense and uniquely filmed climax, and my favorite found footage movie to date. —ML

4. In Conclusion

Your chronicles may be fiction or fact. Your travels may be near or far. You may be groggy or alert. One thing we can all agree on is that you’re subscribed to this newsletter and you’re good enough. This newsletter was also good enough.

July is almost over. Summer is almost done. The kids are almost back to school. The first snowfall is almost here. Have a great weekend! —BH

1. Letterbird Is Flying High

It’s been wonderful to see people trying out Letterbird, our simple, well-designed, good ol’ fashioned contact form on the internet. And, it’s also great to see people linking to theirs from their own pages! We especially love all the fun colors and style personalization people are putting on their forms. 

Did you know that you can add totally custom CSS with a Pro subscription? Check out this very stylish rainbow I added to mine:

Letterbird is free for everyone, so why not give it a test flight: https://letterbird.co

2. The Week That Was

Someone calculated that, once you account for various holidays and things,  there’s only 6 or 7 “working weeks” left in 2023. How can we make them count? Especially as we near the end of the Cosmic Maelstrom? 

The answer is by Maelstrom-ing even harder. Barry is full steam ahead on his vision of The Great American Novel Blogging Tool, Patrick continues to go cray-cray on the Yay-yay, Lettini is Letterbirding and Arun is, well, everywhere, like a zen ninja. Or air. And as for me? I’m d̴̪̈̿e̷̻͑͑c̴̪͖̽ö̸͊͜n̶̘̳̐s̴̹̈̅t̷̛͙͚r̶̯̊̒u̷̢͉̕͝c̴͔͓̈̌t̵̝̪͐͠ī̸̙̕n̷͉̕ģ̷̬̉ ̷̤͊̓m̸̳͌͜ý̶͎͒ ̸̹̬͆͐m̷̥̃́ị̵̃̓n̷͜͝d̵̘̿͘. Yeah. — JA

3. What Do We Do With All of This Stuff?

At our house we’re entering the winter of figuring out what to do with all of this stuff. We have the belongings of five people, three of them being our children. Over time this can really add up!

I’m very jealous of those who have minimalism and stuff-elimination as a natural state of being. While I can work toward being more minimalist, it’s not natural for me. Firstly, I love collecting things and so I have books, movies, and music all about my home. Secondly, I can easily convince myself that someday I’ll need it. Thirdly, I have great difficulty getting rid of something in a way that doesn’t get it to someone who values that something. I have a weird, hand-assembled stereo amplifier sitting on my floor that no one at Goodwill would understand. I once kept a NeXT Computer for fifteen years before I finally took it to Best Buy for recycling.

What do you do with the stuff of your children? If your children are young, I suggest figuring this out now. If you’re planning to lean minimalistic, bring your kids into your reasoning as soon as you can because I’m sure it would feel terrible if your parents just donated half your stuff without engaging you in the process. If you’re planning to keep their belongings long term to allow adult-them to decide what to do with their things, then make sure to include a sizable line item in your annual budget. You’re going to need space in your home or a storage unit to collect all of it.

In our case, we’ll probably be mixing together all of the solutions. Minimizing where we can while also considering additional storage options. Perhaps this winter is actually turning into the winter of DIY custom shelving. 😂 — BH

4. Sharing Is Caring

AI Johnny Cash: “It’s so close to being amazing, but there’s a lack of humanity in some of the phrasing that is really uncanny valleying my brain”

Game+Logo via Aftermath: "They are right, that’s a cool twitter account.”

Two visions of the future of human-computer interaction. One concrete, and one so obtuse as to be almost meaningless! Enjoy.

The official key cap for our very own quack.page (remember that??)

Finally, a moment of zen for you, via the League of Pigs.

5. In Conclusion

Ah, so you made it this far. Do you want a cookie or something? You do? Well, go to nearly any website on the internet and I bet you can find a lot of cookies, so I think you’re good. No offense, but you have all the cookies that one person could need.

Okay, fine, last week we mentioned a blogging software could be coming, and it is coming along nicely indeed. Maybe we’ll have some early peeks to share next week? There’s also been some extreme rabbit-hole-following this past week, which we think will lead to some more C-O-S-M-I-C cosmic building in the next few weeks.

Excited? Would you be more excited if we slapped “AI” onto all of our marketing pages? We just might.

Okay, it’s time to go. Bye.

All of the rest of Good Enough is asleep, and I (James) am the only one in my co-working space, here in London.

It’s a peaceful end to 2024. Well, aside from the music I’m blasting.

Speaking of music: the top album of 2024 on AlbumWhale was, predictably, BRAT by Charlie XCX, with The Smile, Tyler the Creator and Vampire Weekend all joint for second place.

Anyway, where was I? We wanted to send a sort of “end of year recap”, because it’s been a big one for us.

We left the Maelstrom and this Serious Business started to get serious about finding markets for some of our ideas.

Pika!

We launched Pika at the end of January, and just yesterday we welcomed our 200th subscriber!

The consistent love for Pika is real validation of Barry’s intuition that people will blog again if we give them a simple yet beautiful place to write.

We’ve dipped our toes into podcast advertising with Pika, which has been an interesting experience and overall seems to be working pretty well.

Some quotes about Pika:

I actually adore it. It makes my heart happy so that says it all

Everything about Pika is filling me with the joy of what I loved about blogging back in the day

I could never have predicted how much positive feedback Pika was going to get. It’s really wonderful to receive.

Turns out you are ready for that Jelly

Hot on the heels of Pika’s launch, we had already started work on Jelly, a better way to share an inbox.

Jelly is by far our most ambitious project yet, and our biggest bet: we believe there’s a huge market of small groups and teams that would benefit from a shared inbox but who are totally underserved by Support Behemoths trying to suck up every dollar on the table.

We started using Jelly internally in mid-Feburary, and had our first Beta teams join us in May. We launched properly in September, even receiving a viral welcome on Hacker News (you will never find a more wretched hive of snark and cynicism, typically).

Intermission: New additions

Is there any sweeter moment than getting that first paying customer? Well actually, yes. One of our team (me!) also welcomed his second kid and took some generous and much needed parental leave while all of this was happening. And that was pretty sweet too.

The other new addition to the Good Enough family was Cade! While I don’t love Cade as much as either of my children, I do like and respect him a lot, and Good Enough is certainly more Gooder-er with him around. Welcome, Cade! No, I will not change your diaper.

Jelly pt. 2

We’ve now had over 200 teams sign up to Jelly, and we’re hoping that only accelerates as we turn the corner into 2025. It’s a harder sell than Pika, because it’s a bigger ask to get a team to trust you with their communication lifeblood, but we are very optimistic.

Some Jelly quotes:

the shared inbox software we always hoped for

It’s lovely

simple, aesthetically pleasing and a joy to use

Yes, yes it is. And we’re only just getting started.

Odds and ends

We did our first podcast interview! We spoke with Jeremy and Jess about Good Enough, how we work, why we work, who we work (not much about where or when we work), and about Jelly too. As a group we tend to keep our heads down, but it was a nice breather, and it’s also important for us to take a bit of time to reflect on where we are, why we are, who we are (and some of what and when we are).

Speaking of which, it’s also so affirming to see our vision — a better internet filled with less crap software — resonating with the world

I really appreciate what you all are doing to make the internet a better and more human place.

holy hell I’m in love

That last quote might be from a famous blogger who’s site rhymes with “caring wirehall”. Might be.

See you next year 🥳

Good Enough is heading off on holiday break. We have so much planned for next year, but before we turn the page to 2025, we want to share a most important message:

Thank you.

We’re incredibly grateful for the time and attention you’ve shared with us this year. Whether you’ve used one of our tools, sent us a kind email, told a friend about us, or just lurked quietly, you’ve given us plenty of fuel to keep our corner of the internet going in 2025.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us.

Happy holidays. Happy new year. Peace on earth.

– Barry, Cade, James, Matthew, Patrick, and sometimes Shawn