1. The Week That Was

Summer is here and school’s out (well, my kids still have a week and a half left but the high-schooler doesn’t need attend most days––why?). During the next six weeks, Good Enough’s productivity will take a hit as some of us embark on vacations. Fear not, dear friends––the summer swelter will not stop us from delivering this exceptional newsletter and providing you with informative updates and engaging content.

In the past week: Lettini enjoyed a family vacation exploring the southern shores of New Jersey; Barry made a television appearance and still managed to find time to do some quacking at Good Enough; James packed up some exciting hardware for us as he prepared for his journey to the Americas; Arun wasn’t feeling well but he’s better now and has been fearlessly learning about native apps; Patrick had ants in his router (!?); and I’m finishing up the zine (titled, A Good Enough Zine). Here’s proof of us being Internet Professionals:

Yesterday the six of us had a video meeting. We traded stories about slot machines and turtle stew, and Patrick played his trombone. The next time all six of us will gather in a virtual room together will be in August. 🥲

We wish you a delicious weekend. ––SL

2. “I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares”

Saul Bass, world famous creator of excellent movie title sequences:

The fact of the matter is, I want everything we do, that I do personally, that our office does to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or whether the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.

Watch the full interview. –JA

3. Column or Snippet

I expected the arrival of my children to be accompanied by lots of stuff, but nothing completely prepared me for the never-ending stream of colorful plastic flowing into my house via the grandmother pipeline. Some of the toys are great, but a lot of them just end up in the landfill after a few hours of use.

I thought I’d use my space in this newsletter to tell you about some recent additions to our collection of things, and whether or not those things are Good Enough so you can avoid the same mistakes we were gifted.

• Bee Happy Narwhal Bubble Machine ($8.99 @ Aldi)Immediately set the kids off chasing after an impressive barrage of small bubbles, at least until the dangerous part of the swing set caught their attention. 6 minutes of peaceful play is 1000% GOOD ENOUGH

• Claire’s Club Light-Up Unicorn Wand ($8.99 @ Claire’s)These were an instant hit with my daughter and her cousins, but many of the lights stopped working after just a few MINUTES of real kid™ playtime. If your toy generates tears in the first 5 minutes it is most certainly NOT GOOD ENOUGH 

• Disney Encanto Sing-along Boombox ($29.99 @ Target)Disney obsesses over every last detail in their movies, but they’ll slap their name on any piece of junk and call it a toy. A heavy, $30 boombox that only plays one song over and over with an attached microphone that sounds like it was stolen from a NYC subway car is not a toy and it is definitely NOT GOOD ENOUGH

• Fisher-Price Sing-Along Microphone ($16.95 @ Wal-Mart)This microphone also only plays one song, but it’s small and light and when my daughter sings along with it she thinks she’s frickin’ Lady Gaga, which is most definitely GOOD ENOUGH

Happy shopping! ––PF

4. In Conclusion

Never could I have imagined we would publish a Professional Newsletter in which the words “light up unicorn wand” appear, but here we are. ––SL

1. The Week That Was

Dear friends, Chris Paul is now a Warrior. In the grand scheme of things, it means nada, but for little ol’ me who is interested in seeing the Warriors win one more championship with Steph Curry, it is a very big deal. What can I say? I spend a lot of time thinking about and fretting over these young men whose (very lucrative) job is to put an orange ball through a metal hoop.

A few weeks ago I promised to explain to you what we’re doing here at Good Enough, and finally I wrote a blog post about it. In short: we’re spending the rest of the year building prototypes and experimenting with different ideas. We’re a month and a half into it, and so far we have:

1. Built a prototype for an app called logloglog,

2. Made a little website called Chicken or Egg, which has led to a very interesting project that we hope to share with you soon.

3. Finished a zine. YES, a zine! More on it below.

4. Made Good Enough TV.

5. Put on the finishing touches of a simple online editor called Quack. (Maybe Barry will share it next week?)

6. And James has assembled the pieces for us to put together our own little thermal printer (which we’ll build in August).

And we’ve been writing! Not only have we kept our promise of writing this newsletter each week, we’ve also been writing on our blog:

• Barry explained how to deploy a Sinatra app to Render.com

• James tried to argue that cool URLs don’t die

• Lettini shared something he learned about the Web Manifest file

• Barry compiled a list of our favorite video games

• And Lettini wrote about his connection to a Marvel Winter Soldier cover

My family and I are going on a summer vacation next week, and my brave colleagues will carry on this newsletter. Have a fantastic summer, and I’ll see you all in mid-July! ––SL

2. Cosmic Challenges

While we’re hoping to land amongst the stars with our 2023 moonshot, this way of working doesn’t come without its challenges. Having the ability to build almost anything can also lead to a bit of mental lock-up due to a “paradox of choice.” Decision fatigue can also creep in, as we each are choosing what to work on, how to scope what we’re working on, and how to build the details of each prototype. We have also had to figure out on the fly how we’d like to organize each project, who will lead the decision-making process on a given project, and how to talk about all of our ideas for a given active project.

In particular, we need to determine the goal of each project. Is it to play with some technology, as a basis of building a piece of tech that we can use throughout future products, or to test the product we’re building itself? We are also fighting our tendency to apply all of our experience in order to make each thing we’re building into the best version of the thing that we’re building. At times it is difficult to focus as we consider all the possible useful paths we could go down with a given idea.

None of these avenues of thought are bad in themselves, but they can get in the way of our goal to try to play with many, many ideas this year. Thankfully we have a good grassroots effort in practicing idea generation. Thankfully we have a good sense of checking and balancing each other, raising concerns when our conversations get confusing or unfocused. Thankfully we’re aware of the challenges! —BH

3. A Good Enough Zine

Six weeks ago Arun suggested that we make a zine, and I thought: what a stupid idea. I told my wife about it, and she said, that sounds like a great idea and you should do it! And so I’ve started A Good Enough Zine.

The first issue documents the goings-on at Good Enough in May 2023. It’s at the printer right now, and I can’t wait to see the printed copies when I get back to Brooklyn in late July! ––SL

4. Open Tabs

This week I asked my fellow Good Enough colleagues what are some of their open tabs in their browsers, and here’s a short list of curious links for you to accumulate:

• Lettini: CJRB Pyrite is an edc pocket knife that’s all the rage right now (and I just Kickstarted a titanium version).

• Lettini: Seiko metronome watch is pretty cool. Was googling after watching this.

• Shawn: An interview with the designers behind the beautiful Le Puzz puzzles.

• Barry apparently have 80 (!) open tabs and he shared this: Entire nation of Liechtenstein (almost).

• Barry: I was reminded of Dragon’s Lair recently, and remembered it as stupid hard. So after all of these years I want to watch a playthrough.

• Patrick: Using Diatomaceous Earth on Ants: Complete DIY Guide: We had ants for a couple days (including in my freaking wifi router) so I was googling about how to use a non-chemical solution to control them. They seem to have stopped on their own???

• Patrick: The surprising geography of gun violence

• Arun: Pocketmod & one-page RPG systems

Happy browsing! ––SL

5. Lettini Screeni

This week’s Lettini Screeni is too scary and gruesome for children, but that’s when I first watched it. My exact age escapes me, so let’s say I was lucky number 13. I had stayed up too late watching tv, this came on HBO or something, and I watched the whole thing. It’s now one of my all-time favorite movies and the reason I like horror generally: Event Horizon. Watch it with your kids! [I did, and it’s totally not appropriate for kids! ––SL]

It’s about a ship that can create wormholes as a means to travel the galaxy faster than light, except it goes missing after creating a wormhole to hell. Now it’s back, and it brought hell with it. That sounds cheesy, and it is! But it’s also great. It also stars two sci-fi legends—Laurence Fishburne and a fresh-off-Jurassic-Park Sam Neill—so you know it’s good.

Horror and space don’t often mix well. Outside the Alien franchise, most movies that try to do scary-in-space just don’t work, for whatever reason. Ignoring some absolutely dated CGI in the beginning, Event Horizon is the exception—it’s fucking creepy, and pretty brutal at times. Highly recommended late-at-night watch. —ML

6. In Conclusion

1. The Week That Was

Konichiwa. This is Shawn (not James!). This past week was a hazy one for me, due to a combination of jet lag and a stomach bug. Maybe I should've asked Dr. James Adam to continue this column, but he was watching Barbie (the movie). I hope he enjoyed himself.

This week the fine people at Good Enough made great progress on the same three projects as last week (we'll tell you more soon!) and we wrote four blog posts:

1. Barry tried to convince us that Facebook isn't all bad,

2. James went deep on Turbo Stream and "You",

3. Lettini nerded out on System Colors, 

4. Barry also learned a thing about disabling password managers in a web form element.

I promise I’ve read at least half of those blog posts.  —JA SL

2. City Pop

I am deep in the throes of a City Pop addiction that I don’t think will ever subside completely. I’ve come back from Japan with the sounds of Plastic Love and Ride on Time on repeat in my head. Shiti poppu is a genre of crunchy eighties pop that swept Japan as the country’s tide rose along with their fortunes on the world’s economic stage. For whatever reason (nostalgia? happy music desires?) this genre is being rediscovered by young people in Japan, and through the power of YouTube it is crossing borders to be discovered for the first time by all sorts of listeners around the world.

This resurgence has led to glowing articles about the song Plastic Love. Many young Japanese artists have covered the song in YouTube videos, providing their own interpretation of the classic. Finally in 2019 Warner Music Japan released the first ever music video for Plastic Love. I agree with those articles – in my opinion the song is outstanding. The single sold 10,000 copies upon its release in 1985. In 2023, nearly forty years after its release, Plastic Love has now garnered over 100 million views on YouTube. Wow!

This whole City Pop thing is too big for even this award-winning newsletter. If you want to read more of my thoughts, please head on over to my award-winning blog. —BH

3. Would You Tell a Friend?

Our work here at Good Enough will not be successful if we are not able to get our ideas and products into the heads and hands of people around the world. The things we have built so far are on the border of useful, and we haven’t started charging for any of them to determine if they are valuable. We may not take that “value proposition” leap for a while, but getting the word out about what we are doing starts now.

If you find our newsletter interesting, we’d greatly appreciate it if you take a moment to think about your friends/family and consider if perhaps one of them would be curious enough to subscribe to our newsletter. Now that you have a name in mind, please share our newsletter with them. Use this link, or perhaps share a link to a specific newsletter or blog post that you think they would find interesting.

You’re reading A Good Enough Newsletter for a reason. I think that many of you believe there is still an Internet out there that isn’t terribly littered with ads and offers useful tools to help make our lives a little better. We believe that, too! The more people we can share our thoughts with, and who may be able to give us feedback on our experiments, the better. Thank you for considering! —BH

4. Interlude: The White Lotus Season Two Theme Be Like

If you’ve seen The White Lotus Season Two, then you’ll understand. If you haven’t, then… I don’t know, I’m not in a position to judge or anything, but… maybe you should?

(I was originally served this by the infinite machine of Never-Find-Again-ity that is Instagram Explore, but by the sweet grace of The Algorithm, it was just re-delivered to my eyeballs on Youtube, and I take that as a precise and unmistakable sign that I ought to share it here.)  —JA

5. In Conclusion

Now, may I tell you a story about R-15?

My family went to see the movie Oppenheimer while we were in Taipei. At the movie theater, a worker asked if our younger son was over 15 years old, I told the truth (he's not), and the theater guy told us that our son wasn't old enough and he couldn't let us in. Apparently the movie is rated "R-15," and by Taiwanese law they can't let a child under the age of 15 to see an R-15-rated movie, because can you imagine the damage an R-15-rated movie might do to the mind of an innocent child? 

I tried to reason with him. I told him we're his parents and we'll never tell the law authorities. I lied and said that our child was under-developed and he was actually almost 15 (he's 11). I reminded him that we're from America and the American government let us parents ruin their children by letting them see terrible, R-rated movies. I seethed and shook my head. I thought about crying and begging. My wife pulled me aside and said that she didn't want to watch Oppenheimer anyway and told me to take our 14-year-old son in (yes, he's under 15 but large enough that the theatre worker didn't bother questioning his age).

So our older son and I went in to see Oppenheimer (we missed the first 10 minutes because of all the aforementioned action), and we both thought the movie was excellent.

(And it was a good thing that the theater worker didn't let my wife and younger son in, as they would've hated it).

The moral of the story is that, if you're ever in Taiwan, check the movie rating if you plan to bring your children with you (and be prepared to lie about their age).

We hope you have a splendid weekend and we’ll see you again next week. ––SL

1. The Week That Was

May I start this week’s update with a joke?

What do you call an exploding monkey? (Punchline at the end of this newsletter.)

This was quite a week, and we’re finally ready to talk about what we’ve been cooking up during the past few weeks of Cosmic Maelstrom:

1. YAY.BOO –– The amazing duo of Patrick and Arun have been working their magic on this truly magical little site. It’s not completely ready yet, but if you’re curious, click here to try it out (at your own risk!).

2. Chicken –– This is a software for remote teams to quickly see who's around, who’s deep in focus, and (very very roughly) what other people are up to. We’ve been experimenting with an early version of this tool, and I really love it, but it’s not quite ready for public consumption (still lots of problems to work through). James is the lead on this project and he might, if you’re nice, tell you more about it next week.

3. Howdy –– The magnificent team of Lettini and Barry built this little site for you to make a simple “Contact Me” form. Why? Because some of us want there to be a way for people to get in touch without sharing our email addresses on the world wide web. (Of course you can easily make this page on a website builder, but some of us aren’t using Wix-space). We don’t know what to call this software yet. Let us know if you have any ideas!

Also––do you like zines? We’ve made a zine and it’s called A GOOD ENOUGH ZINE. Want a copy? Write us with your mailing address. USA only for now (sorry, we’re not making any money yet and international shipping is expensive!). —SL

2. Reframing Thoughts

Here’s a little step-by-step exploration of thoughts. It’s intended for any of us who, from time to time, struggle with intrusive or negative thoughts in any way.

Step 1: humans produce near-infinite rubbish thoughts

All you really have to do is look at any social media platform. People will just tell you all their garbage thoughts. All of them – and there’s quite a lot.

Or just look around at people. They think all kinds of things, and I’d be very surprised if you didn’t agree with me that most of the things people think and believe are, well, pretty silly.

Conclusion: humans generate a lot of thoughts, and most of them are not worth very much.

Step 2: it takes nothing not to believe in rubbish thoughts

Again, social media is very instructive here. There’s some stuff you agree with, surely, but a whole lot more of what you don’t. And it’s effortless to disbelieve those thoughts, to not be compelled to adjust your entire reality to fit the shape of those thoughts.

Conclusion: not believing thoughts is actually pretty easy.

Step 3: notice that you’re a human, too

We’ve established that humans think a hell of a lot of thoughts, and that most of them aren’t very good/productive/useful.

So here’s the critical step – a step of humility, really: you are a human, too, and so there’s a pretty good chance that not all your thoughts are winners.

And all you have to do is not automatically believe them! (see: Step 2)

Hard to believe, right?

See, part of the problem is that we seem to act as though a thought that happens in our head makes it special, automatically right in some way. It’s not. All it is is just another thought by just another human. And the more we notice and realize that, the freer we become from false or limiting patterns of automatic belief.

See for yourself: try thinking the thought "I am a panda with a unicorn horn." Almost certainly false, but you can think it. Just look at that – even your thoughts can be untrue!

Ultimately, a thought is just a thought – it’s not reality. And we might do well to extend a healthy skepticism toward ones that show up within, especially those gnarly ones that tell us stories about ourselves that are negative or harmful. Once we start believing thoughts, we start taking actions based on those beliefs, and that can lead to painful, uncomfortable, or just bad places.

Conclusion: you absolutely do not have to believe every thought you think. Do me a favor and think about that. ––AS

3. Tab Madness

One nice thing about having over 200 tabs in my mobile browser is that I can use those tabs as a sort of place to browse for writing topics. Like today when I was inspired to write a too-long and completely off-topic blog post about fixing things. After that, the very existence of all of those tabs (OMG SO MANY) led to this writing. So, yay?

This spring I had 500 tabs in that browser and had to declare TAB BANKRUPTCY, moving those tabs to a safe place where I'll never see them again. At least not until that day that I get my current tab overload handled and am frolicking around my browser looking for some hidden inspiration. Life is all about fooling yourself to believe that these types of scenarios will actually eventually occur.

I AM NOT ENCOURAGING THIS BEHAVIOR. All of the rosy ideas above are the tiny upside of having hundreds of browser tabs awaiting your attention. The downsides are numerous. For instance, every day you open your browser on your phone and wonder how you ever ended up here. Am I even a functioning adult?

Also, half of these tabs are related to a recent trip. I don't want to close them because I want to write a bunch of trip memories down. Why haven't I written those yet? Do I even care about that amazing trip and my intentions around remembering it?!

I recommend not using tabs as some awkward future to-do list. Document all of those things into actual to-do list software. Then you can feel this anguish at the appropriate time – when looking at your to-do lists! Keep your web-browsing pain where it should be, which is when you open x.com. ––BH

4. In Conclusion

Ba-Boom.

And what do you call another exploding monkey?

Oranga-BANG.

If you don’t like the joke:

1. Blame it on Dr. James Adam.

2. Send us better jokes (that will go to our little printer).

We hope you have a bangin’ weekend. 

1. A Good Enough Zine

Sometimes, something is so good that it’s worth repeating: dear friends, we’ve made a zine, and it’s called A Good Enough Zine. The first issue covers the events at our little business during the month of May. 30 pages of inside jokes and silly photos. Measures 6 by 9. Printed in color. 

Give us your address if you’d like a copy. ––SL

2. The Week That Was

Even though we’re a remote team, sickness still somehow spreads among us. Arun was sick in the beginning of the week, then I (Shawn) was down for a day, and now James has a bad cold. Be careful, Barry & Patrick!

(Matthew was out, too, but for a happier reason: he’s getting married! Congratulations! 🎉)

Our focus this week was to wrap up yay.boo (or is it YAY.BOO?). We’re done with almost all of the technical things, but the website still needs a few more finishing touches and we should be ready to official launch it next week. 👻

And we continue to publish High Quality Content over at the ol’ blog:

• Patrick wants you to consider pairing up if you’re stuck

• James pontificates on the identity anchor for us remote workers

––SL

3. Barry Shares Our Internet Finds

There is this site that comes online for about five weeks each year. It’s called The Life and Death of an Internet Onion. I haven’t actually read it, but sometimes you just enjoy that something exists? Yes. This breaks many rules of the Internet, including our own. No permanence, no deep links, varying design. Sometimes bad ideas are good ideas!

Iceberger is one type of page that we would love to see land on Yay.Boo. (Seriously, what’s the best way to type Yay.boo?) It’s a game inspired by a tweet, and it’s educational!

At first The Uncolouring Book entices you to outline the shapes you see in the clouds. Then it starts to get funny and weird and hilarious and weird. I’m sure it’s even better when people begin adding meaning to the colors/colours.

If you have any links that you think we’d dig, capitalizations that you’d like to propose for yAY.bOO, or shapes you’d like to draw for us, please fax (I mean print) them to us. —BH

4. Over at the Whale

Would you like some upbeat music? Humdrum got just the list for you on Album Whale. Or how about this list of chill grooves by Rute Correia?

Do you like music and food? Rachel Cabitt of The Art of Cover Art compiled this extraordinary list of albums with appetizing covers. 

5. In conclusion: get some sleep, will ya?

I’m supposed to be using my space today to recommend something and the only thing that comes to mind is “sleep”. Have you experienced it recently? It’s shockingly elusive for far too many of us!

My wife and I have a 7 month old at home and, although he’s been a pretty good sleeper in general, the last few weeks have been decidedly not so good. I’m sure you’re not interested in hearing yet another parent complain about how tired they are all the freaking time, so I’ll just tell you to stop fighting and close your eyes. Stop watching The Bear, skip that last game of Rocket League, and put the book down. It could literally add years to your life. —PF

1. Checking in on Chicken

Last week on the blog I wrote about The Space Between Us, and there I talked about my interest in exploring ways we can make groups and teams feel more “solid”. I think this is important for all teams, but particularly for ones where the majority of time is spent remote from each other.

For the past few months, we’ve been exploring this via an application called Chicken, which is a playful anagram of “Check-in”. It’s not for managing projects or coordinating work; it’s for creating the kind of environment that exists in a real shared space, where you can see who is around and approximately what they’re occupying themselves with just by glancing up from your screen.

Right now we use it to communicate things like “I’m here” or “I’m out”, and beyond that, some of what we happen to be working on at the moment. 

It’s our playground for exploring new ways to interact and share as a team. We’re exploring how this sits beside and interacts with software where teams already live. I’m also exploring new interactions and more glanceable ways to be together while we’re all spread across the world.

If you think this might be interesting for your team, or if you have any other thoughts about this––or anything!––please get in touch. —JA

2. The Week That Was

This week James was updating the printer software and this happened:

Apart from our printers malfunctioning, it was a quiet and calm week. Nothing major to report. Ah, for those of you who requested the zine––just this morning I affixed the required three First-Class stamps on each envelope, and my wife just dropped them off at the mailbox, so you should receive your copy next week! —SL

3. That Feeling When You Keep Trying and Failing

You ever have that thing you’re trying to solve and it seems like it should be so easy and you keep trying this/that/the other and it keeps not working and you kind of feel like you’re going mad? That thing was happening to me on Wednesday. After doing the hard thing (with the help of James) to build a little montage image of the covers for an Album Whale album list, figuring out how to get that image to appear on the fancy card Twitter offers for shared links was seemingly impossible. I tried everything (I thought), eventually heading to Yay.Boo so I could more rapidly get public links with different options to test.

Often finding the solution to these problems is a let down. It can be a typo or, as in this case, not reading the documentation. Anyway, after a night of sleep I figured out my problem on Thursday morning, changed it up, and suddenly things worked. Yay! 

The Boo of the matter is, while I had 20 tabs open and felt that, boy, I should have learned something, the main positive to take away was simply that the thing I wanted to do was finally working. The problems I had overlooked were all written about on the Internet already. While there’s one library documentation update I can offer, mostly it’s a reminder that not all days in software land feel super successful or creative. And that’s okay! —BH

4. In Conclusion

Maybe you can clone the Mona Lisa better than I did? (We love how VOLE.wtf is keeping the internet weird.) Hope you have a calm, quiet, yet dazzling weekend!

1. Sometimes we watch videos on the internet

You may remember a while back that we put up a little project on our homepage called Good Enough TV. It’s still going strong, with a number of new videos in August. We keep adding to it, hoping some folks out there find it to be a useful filter on the world wide internet. We are also curious if it will become a remototem for our team.

Recently we discovered two new trailers: The Killer from David Fincher and FERRARI from Michael Mann (!). There are also new movies coming soon from Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott. Combined with a summer of Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan, etc, it seems we’ve run into a very good year for movies. Hooray for us! —BH

2. The Week That Was

A reader sent us this wonderful chicken drawing! Would you like to draw something for our little printer?

This week James helped Lettini with his printer (yes, each of us have a little thermal printer set up so we can send each other secret messages). And they improved the drawing interface, which made me very happy. We have some more fun ideas for the printer, but it’ll have to wait as everyone but Barry & I are taking next week off.

We’re also turning our attention back to LogLogLog, a small little web-app we made back in May. We’d like to improve it a bit and share it with the world, and you’ll hear more about it in the coming weeks.

Last but not least: tomorrow is Barry’s birthday! Write him a joke or a poem? —SL

4. Sharing is Caring

Here are some recent discoveries that are too good to keep to ourselves. ––SL

• Barry shared this interview with designer Matt Stevens, creator of the Good Movies as Old Books series, for which he reimagined films as vintage books. My favorite book covers: Fargo, Get Out, Alien, and Fight Club. If you like those covers, consider supporting his Kickstarter project!

• The folks at Panic are publishing another beautiful game: Despelote. I love how it looks (also love how the website cuts up that background image on top so that when you scroll the page there’s a surprising layered effect).

• This Buttondown’s breakdown of all the software it uses to run itself is very useful. We’ll remember to share our stack when we start making some money.

• Lettini shared this CSS meetup that he plans to attend in September. I love the design of that website: nice font, pretty color combination, and fun logo sketches!

• Lettini, a CleanShot X fan fanatic, shared this little demo video of some impressive new features. 

• Barry shared this a while ago, but it’s worth sharing again: The Judd Library website, designed by Chips. The site navigation design is so well done, and the breadth of data is mind-boggling. There’s no way that Judd read all them books, right?

• My younger son shared this ridiculous and hilarious site with me: Find the Invisible Cow (from 2013, but I’ve never seen it till now).

• And if you’re looking for something to read this weekend, may I suggest this fascinating investigation about a foot bridge in Minneapolis? Both James and I came across the article and shared it with Barry twice. Happy birthday, Barry!

3. Lettini Screeni

Would you believe that a straight-to-streaming movie would be a Lettini Screeni? Because that’s what we got this week with Prey.

Prey is built off of one of the best movie ideas I’ve heard in years: Take a monster movie and set it 300 years in the past for no good reason. It’s the fifth installment in the Predator franchise, and like many monster movie franchises, those have gone consistently downhill after the second one. So to revitalize it, rather than make yet another sequel, this one is a prequel, though not in the traditional sense: it doesn’t go into any lore or origins. It’s just a really cool fight between a young Native American warrior girl and a predator, harkening back to what made the first movie so potent.

But it’s good! I think that’s due to having a solid director in Dan Trachtenberg, who also did 10 Cloverfield Lane, another fantastic evolution within a monster movie franchise (which you should also watch, it could be its own Lettini Screeni). Anyway, this is a Hulu Original movie, so you’ll annoyingly need Hulu to watch it, but I promise it’s worth that. —ML

4. In Conclusion

The US Open is my favorite sporting event in New York City (I love basketball but Steph Curry only comes into town a few times a year), and I’d like to remind you of this delicious moment from four years ago when a young brash player named Medvedev embraced the booing crowds (two years after that he won the US Open).

We hope you have a tasty and breezy weekend. ––SL

1. Hooray for Yay.Boo

A few months back, I was tickled when Shawn asked me to dedicate some time to a very important project about one of life’s great questions. Building a silly website with no real purpose other than to make ourselves laugh took me back to the earliest days of my time building websites – when I would make something just to see if I could.

That kind of energy is what inspired us to build Yay.Boo. We wanted to make a place where there was very little friction between building something and seeing it alive on the interwebs. I’m really happy with how well we delivered on that mission. Watch how fast I published a very important website yesterday:

Our hope is that Yay.Boo might inspire you to build something weird and share it with us. It’s so easy! It’s so fun! There’s no pressure to be perfect or to build something that can make you millions — it’s hopefully a little like the weird web of the old days.

See you there? —PF

2. The Week That Was

Hi there, folks. Sorry that we didn’t send out a newsletter last week. Did you miss us? Some of our crew were out, and most of last week, it was just Barry and I:

(That’s a screenshot of Chicken, an experimental app built by James to address the problem of team presence. If you’re curious, let us know!)

What we’ve been doing lately:

• Barry worked on a photo montage for Album Whale. Now, when you share a list on Twitter or Mastodon, there will be a pretty preview image made up of the four latest album art on the list. This turned out to be a much trickier problem than we expected!

• Barry also brought a few refinements to Ponder, our little forum software.

• Patrick continued on Yay.Boo which you just read about. Try it!

• James bought a webcam to film the Good Enough printer. What for? You’ll find out soon!

• Arun returned to the land of native app development this week, and I’m excited!

• Shawn (that’s me!) labored over the next issue of A Good Enough Zine and is hoping to send it to the printer next week.

Take a look at these fun doodles we received on our printer! Thank you! Keep those drawings coming and tell your friends about it! ––SL

3. Side Effects May Be Vomit 🤮

Our youngest has decided to run cross country this fall. It’s kind of unfathomable to me as neither my wife nor I had any interest in running during our younger years. The first thirty-five years of our lives would find someone talking about running and us responding with “that sounds terrible.” (Still does to me.) From those genetics comes a girl who says one day “I like running.” Now that she’s into it I don’t know if she or we are sure if she actually likes running, though she is enjoying it as the team dynamic seems to be very good! (We’ve asked around. Apparently this is a consistent theme in many communities: “The cross country team is so nice!”)

Our daughter’s participation means we’ve attended a few cross country meets now. Not infrequently people will cross the finish line and rather immediately spew forth the contents of their lunch and other various bus snacks. This finds me further struggling to understand the sport. Perhaps this would be a good Yay.Boo site: A list of the contexts where vomiting is considered somehow good or positive. Certainly at times a good chunk-blow can be relieving, though I connect that feeling to illness or inebriation. Perhaps it’s good for your body to be pushed physically and mentally to the point that you have a physical release of your stomach’s contents? Or the upsides outpace the downsides? Convince me! —BH

4. Sharing is Caring

• A clock where time is mentioned on YouTube, created by Russell Samora for The Pudding –SL

• I don’t need another browser but Horse (a web browser) has the most excellent site. –SL

• I ran into Gossip’s Web when reading People & Blog’s interview with Rachel J. Kwon. There is so much good stuff on the Internet! –BH

• Don’t Go JSON Waterfalls (from Gossip’s Web, which is a dangerous website if you want to be productive!) –SL

• Yesterday morning we were all looking at this live stream of a waterhole in Namibia, hoping to spot a giraffe (no luck, but there were plenty of Gemsboks). The site is an experiment using PartyKit, made by Matt Web, and the live stream is provided by Gondwana. –SL

• EmojiGen is the ideal app to finally get that :capybara: emoji for your team’s Slack –BH

5. In Conclusion

So we have arrived at the end of our time together this week. I say our time, because this is no one-sided exchange. We have an assignment for you! If you have any love for the weird web, we’d greatly appreciate it if you put up a goofy site at Yay.Boo. We also need you to make us a drawing. Get creative and it’ll give us a smile. You’ll probably smile as you do it. Smiling is contagious! Yay! ––BH

1. Printer Gallery

Thank you all for the special drawings you’ve sent to our little printer. We’ve created a gallery for all the magnificent art. Keep them coming and please tell your friends!

This thermal printer project has been a lot of fun, and we’re not done. Look what James has been building:

2. The Week That Was

Half of the team has been feeling under the weather this week, but we managed to get a few things done:

• James worked on a surprise for the printer project that we hope to share next week!

• Patrick created a little site on Yay.Boo and we think it might be is his best work at Good Enough.

• Arun continues to hack on the mobile app for BumbleLog (it has a name now!).

• Barry built the admin section for the printer gallery and he made improvements to Ponder.

• Matthew experimented with a new color scheme for BumbleLog and helped build the printer gallery.

• And little ol’ me submitted the next zine to the printer and drew a little printer:

  

 —SL

3. Pumpkin Spice

Moving to the suburbs has been full of adjustments for me, but one of the things that has surprised me most is how much I’ve come to enjoy fall. I am no fan of pumpkin spice, but I am absolutely all about that leaf peeping!

I grew up in midwestern corn country and the changing of seasons from summer to autumn means empty, flat, brown fields as farmers harvest their crops. The changes in the Northeast come with rolling hills full of explosive reds, yellows, and oranges. My normal morning drive goes from ho-hum to holy shit! lol, yes I just wrote that.

The big show appears headed my way starting next week and I am ready to move my desk outside. See you out there? —PF

4. In Conclusion

From Barry’s better half:

I’m taking my younger son to Superiority Burger tonight and I intend to have a fantastic weekend. We sincerely hope your weekend will be full of spice and zest. See you next week. 💜

1. Welcome, Patrick 🎉

Our lone part-timer, Patrick Filler, decided to join us full-time this week. He shared his intention with Barry and me on Tuesday, while I was busy scanning in prints (for our beautiful Guestbook), and I wrote him a quick response:

good morning and thanks for the note.

He didn’t like that. So let’s try again:

Patrick, thank you for your interest in joining Good Enough full time. We are pleased to welcome you to the [Company Name] family and are confident that you will be a valuable asset to our team. ❤️ —SL

2. Live from London: the Good Enough Guestbook

Y’all—we got a live feed on our little printer. Which means that after you draw us a beautiful doodle, you can now see your masterpiece come out of the printer. HOW COOL IS THAT!? SO COOL. SO, SO, SO COOL.

Take a look at this beautiful setup James got going at his co-working office in London:

I work with some smart motor flockers and I have no idea how any of this works (even after James’s eloquent explanation). But I did draw this capybara.

What are you waiting for? Get scribblin’!! 😘—SL

2. The Week That Was

This week was all Yay.Boo and Guestbook, both of which are starting to see some action from people none of us know in real life. Seriously, look at those bountiful guestbook drawings!

There’s a sort of validation that comes from seeing strangers use the things we’ve built that makes us feel like we’re on to something over here. Our goal isn’t just to make silly projects, but rather to remind as many people as possible that the web can be weird and interesting and fun and isn’t just a machine for turning human eyeballs into dollars. Maybe it’s workhhhhhing a little bit.

To those of you reading who don’t know us IRL, welcome. We truly appreciate your time and attention… and we genuinely want to know what the hell we did to deserve it. Reach out and say hi or to tell us we’re terrible or whatever!

Other goings on:

• Matthew learned about touch-action in CSS to prevent double-tap-to-zoom on phones.

• James discovered Tapback keyboard shortcuts in Mac’s Messages.

• Arun got back to his art marking ways and built a revolutionary text editor.

• Barry will pick a crayon for you (and tell you the date & time).

• Shawn set up an Instagram account for Good Enough.

3. Distant Friends

My mornings are usually pretty quiet. I’m in London, and until lunch my colleagues are all still blissfully unconscious in the United States of Snooze. This offset works well in some respects; it gives me some time to focus, some time to reflect. And as my colleagues slumber, far, far away, I’ve—somewhat appropriately—been thinking a lot about distant friends.

One of the great curses of modern life is that our closest friends are often far away. A hundred years ago, the only people you knew lived in your town, or your street, and you’d see them all the time, your lives woven together into a community of daily familiarity and support. 

Today, we travel so much more, and so much further, and we meet people from all over the world. And sometimes those people end up being your people, just because that’s how the stars were shining that fateful night you met. We’re lucky to meet these friends—people we might never have otherwise known—but sometimes it can be years between actually seeing them.

Life pulls us geographically apart, and though the internet lets us stay connected, there’s no substitute for actually being there. For being able to help haul an armchair to their mother-in-law’s house, or to sit quietly beside them while they are in pain. For having an unplanned drink on their stoop on a warm night, or being able to talk without screens, without purpose and without the pull of getting back to “real life”. For our kids to play and grow up together while we sit, watch, and smile.

Until we finally get Star-Trek-style transporter technology, that’s just how it’s going to be, and let me tell you: it breaks my heart. So, to my distant friends: I love you so, so much, and I wish I could be there with you, all the time. 

No, I’m not crying, you’re crying. —JA

4. Sharing is caring

• Have some self-respect and smarten up your quotes, people. —ML

• Sites like Cordog.io and Corgi Orgy are big inspirations for Yay.Boo. —BH

• I used Pirate Ship for the first time this week and was really impressed with how easy and smooth their software was (and the shipping rates were incredibly low). —SL

• Is the art, the art, or does it go beyond that? What is an art? Am I an art? —JA

• In our team meeting this morning I mentioned Obvious Plant, and James told us about Leg Boot and their Bugkiss toy. (If you know anything about toy-making, please let us know!) —SL

• No idea what Special Fish is but we dig it! —SL

• Do you feel that you talk too much (or too little) on video calls? Check out Unblah. (Via Rafał) —SL

5. In Conclusion

Here’s a prize for getting this far: we’ve just received the latest issue of A Good Enough Zine, and you’re the first to know. If you want a copy, email us your mailing address.

It’s decorative gourd seasons, motherfuckers. We’ll see you again in October.

1. Two Comes After One

The second issue of A Good Enough Zine is here. It’s much better than the first one—I’d even go so far as saying that it truly is good enough. If you’d like a copy, email us with your address.

For the curious, here’s a blog post about the why and how of making the zine. —SL

2. The Week That Was

This week was Yay.Boo all the way:

• chalk-swirl.yay.boo

• coalesce.yay.boo

• wikitrails.yay.boo

• pi.yay.boo

• achoo.yay.boo

• nothingtoseehere.yay.boo

• intentionallyblank.yay.boo

3. Halloweeni Screeni

Long-time followers of my Screeni columns have probably noticed they were almost all horror/suspense/thriller-genre movies. What can I say, I love them. And it’s Halloween month! And there’s a Friday the 13th next week! It’s a great month for great movies. Hot tip: all of the Scream’s are on Paramount Plus, except 4 which is on Starz or Peacock or something, for some reason.

For the last few Halloweens, my wife and I have picked a “theme” and tried to stick to that for the month. One of the more enjoyable ones was “werewolves” and my unexpected favorite movie that year is this week’s Screeni: Ginger Snaps.

Ginger Snaps is a B-level movie with an A-level theme. It’s a werewolf movie, so you know the plot: two main characters, one is bitten by a werewolf, and she needs to be stopped. But it’s the only werewolf movie I’ve seen that relates transforming into a werewolf with women going through puberty and menstruation. It makes a lot of sense: they’re both based on moon cycles, they both have an overarching theme of body transformation, and it’s personal perception whether that turns you into a god or a monster. My wife and I really enjoyed this spin.

Brimming with early 2000s vibes and containing no real actors of note, Ginger Snaps is heavily under-rated and still holds up today. If you didn’t have Halloween plans yet this year, now you do! —ML

4. Sharing is Caring

• We’re inspired by Steve Ruiz’s tldraw, an incredible web-based drawing / whiteboarding tool.

• Barry shared an article about scrobbling CDs. I didn’t realize people still cared about CDs (or Last.fm!?).

• Patrick shared the trailer for Dream Scenario (it’s a good one). He should maybe put that on tv.goodenough.us?

• Barry shared this very disturbing thread about what people put on the cistern of their toilets.

• This morning I was reading Rafał’s latest and most excellent blog post which led me to Dither it!, an awesome web app for dithering images (by Alex Harris), and that took me to the solar-powered website of Low-tech Magazine where I’ve lost an hour of my time and nearly forgotten about this newsletter. I ❤️ the internet. —SL

5. In Conclusion

We hope you have a glorious weekend. Perhaps you’ll take Lettini’s suggestion and watch a B-movie, or you might look for a live broadcast of Coco vs Swiatek at the China Open (isn’t it incredible how hard it is to watch professional tennis?). Or maybe try this chili recipe, send our printer a Halloween-inspired drawing, take a walk, ride a bike, eat an apple, read a manga, pet a cat. I don’t know, guys, I’ve got food coma and I want to take a nap. —SL

1. The Week That Was

Let’s start with a correction of a bone-headed mistake I made last week: here’s the blog post about how I made A Good Enough Zine. And a reminder: if you want a copy of our new and improved issue 2, email us your address.

This week was all Yay.Boo (and next week or two will be the same). We love this project and want to add a payment plan to it, so that people can upgrade for a few extra features—and we can have a sustainable revenue stream to keep Yay.Boo going forever.

And in case you missed it, take a look at this mesmerizing art by Arun.

2. Introducing Dusted: A Shop for Better Popcorn

My wife Rianna loves home-made popcorn and experimenting with big, bold, unique flavors. I’m partial to white cheddar myself, but that’s too run-of-the-mill for her. After years of flavor hunting and finding some amazing products (like seasonings that actually stick to the popcorn), she is now creating a space to share those products with other people who also love making popcorn at home. If you’re reading this newsletter and are a fan of Good Enough, you might just be one of those people! So check out her new shop Dusted which launches today.

Dusted is a store for everything you need for making popcorn at home: a curated selection of kernels, popping oils, finishing oils, unique dusts and seasonings, and of course, gear to make and serve popcorn. But its flagship product is its Popcorn Packs, Rianna’s hand-picked bundles that give you everything all at once. Have you ever had popcorn that tastes like ramen? I hadn’t either! It’s delicious. Ramen is the first pack she’s launching with, in two flavors (spicy and umami), just in time for the cooler weather.

Dusted is based out of Brooklyn & ships nation-wide in the US. In her words:

Dusted exists as this celebration of exciting flavors, and as a place for popcorn nerds to find everything they need to truly nerd out about their home popcorn. No other popcorn lover should have to waste time scouring the internet for delicious, quality ingredients. Dusted is more than just a shop; it's a popcorn bazaar that celebrates the simple joy of one of life's best snacks.

Happy snacking! —Matthew

4. Sharing is Caring

• Our friend Dan Marino launched an EP last week. He’s charging $3 on Bandcamp but I paid $5 because I’m nice.

• Barry shared this cool JS library that lets you make games that look like retro 80s computer interface.

• This 2001 Nintendo website is perfection.

• Tim Holman (of a useless web) made another useless website: The Long Doge Challenge. It’s like the endless horse but a dog(e) and lots of wows.

• Barry found the Magic Bullet and it’s advertised to help me unlock my brain’s potential so I can finally achieve my goals!

—Shawn

5. In Conclusion

Our printer received more great drawings this week! It’s incredible to see how the gallery has grown, with so many beautiful drawings now on the website. Thank you.

Wishing you a fabulous and safe weekend. Remember to floss and hydrate. Watch out for dog poop and bird droppings, and when in doubt: turn right. We’ll see you next week.

1. The Week That Was

Yesterday our Guestbook project was momentarily the top story on Hacker News, and that brought us a sudden and enormous wave of traffic that we did not expect. The site was brought to its knees and our little printer was overwhelmed—and poor James was just watching all of this happen at his co-working space in London.

We’re grateful for the attention. But our little art project is a labor of love, and we never expect 800 prints in one day. (Before yesterday, we were receiving about a handful of drawings every day, and I would re-print each drawing and scan it.)

To all the people who sent us drawings: THANK YOU (well, actually, most of them are probably not reading this newsletter, but still). Unfortunately about 50 drawings didn’t come through, and we won’t be able to scan most of the prints.

The funny thing is that I just wrote a blog post about marketing & preparing for when people show up—and we were clearly not prepared! But we’ve learned from the experience and there will be a follow-up about the event. 

Aside from the Guestbook excitement, this week was all Yay.Boo: billing, custom domains, and a few fun goodies. The goal is to finish it next week and turn our attention to Letterbird (it’s not ready, so please proceed with caution if you want to try it). —Shawn

2. What Do You Notice?

You’re having some kind of experience right now, presumably. At the very least, I know that I am. Something seems to be happening.

It's easy to forget this! It's so easy to get mesmerized by the goings-on of the world, of our day, of our duties, obligations, projects, goals, and struggles. And on and on – you know this game.

But underneath all of that is the raw, unadulterated fact of experience. Something is happening. How do I know? I don’t know, but there’s always a surprising amount of things to notice, just by noticing what I'm noticing. 

Right now, I notice:

a mild ringing in my ear

a thought about the form of this piece of writing

the taste of a burp (tastes like coffee)

a bit of pressure at the top of my head

a sharp, almost stinging sensation in my throat

a sense of movement from there up into my head

more pressure

the wavy nature of that pressure

the sight of my hands typing at the bottom of my visual field

the smooth moistness of my eyes blinking

a thought about whether this is interesting or not

a thought about trying to land some narrative-poetic art

a hint of an emotion flowing up my torso (a hint of a taste of sadness)

a thought about making sure to assure you that I'm ok

wondering if that even matters – why would you care?

little micro-movements of my neck and head

the aliveness of sensation in my legs

the ringing again – mostly in the right ear

still the ringing

how the ringing kind of waves up and down with my breath

a little bit of pain in my ribcage

remembering that I'm looking at a screen

a thought about how to wrap this up

There's so much more I could say about this – the nuances of it and the benefits that can accrue from doing something like this regularly. But I'm much less interested in that more in: when you look, what do you notice? —Arun

3. Sharing is Caring

• Patrick shared a website that bills itself as a “generator of random awesomeness” and it really is. (Be careful—you might want to sit down and give yourself an hour or two.)

• Arun loves this artist’s animations.

• Chocolate + 3D printing anyone? (via Web Curious)

• Matthew was impressed by how the team behind Orion was able to launch their latest app in 45 days.

• Matthew also informed us of a Good Enough x K-pop opportunity.

4. In Conclusion

I’ve been slowly going through the 800 or so drawings we received yesterday. We expected the occasional 🍆 but I did not expect so many ❤️s. Shaded hearts, hearts within a heart, heart balloon, hearts with nice messages: hello from Croatia, have a beautiful day, and have a nice weekend. And there was this message from Jojo:

You’re welcome, Jojo, and I hope you’re feeling better. ❤️

Wishing you all a beautiful weekend.

1. Would you like some Chicken? 

Do you work on a remote team and would you be interested in trying out Chicken, a small app we made for keeping our remote team feel more connected? We're looking for a few other teams (2+ people) to help us test it out, and explore its potential. If this interests you, please fill out this form (or you can learn more about Chicken here). Thanks!

2. The Week That Was

Dear friends, I’ve just returned from a three-week trip to Asia (mostly in Taipei with a few days in Tokyo). This past week marks my first back in Brooklyn, and it's been wobbly, thanks to jet lag. 🥴

As the year draws to a close, some of us are starting to feel a bit restless about what 2024 holds. What's next after Cosmic Maelstrom? What will we work on in 2024? And how will we make money to keep this Good Enough ship afloat? I want to let you know that we're thinking hard about these Big Important Questions, and we’re committed to enter the new year with a solid plan.

Aside from planning, we also did some things last week. Barry, Arun, and Matthew were knee deep in a new project, Pika. Patrick continued to Yay.Boo—and he made a Yay.Boo explorer for you to see some of the goodness on our little ghostly site. James's been chickening around (see above). And I drew a pigeon but AI took my job (more on this developing story next week). —Shawn

3. Investigating Attention

Attention is important.

Everything you’ve ever known has come to you by way of attention, and it might be the most valuable thing you possess.

The big tech companies know this. They alchemically transmute human attention into giant bucketloads of money. 

Despite this, we generally live our lives mostly unaware of, mostly inattentive to, our very own attention. This has the unfortunate consequence of leaving us vulnerable to hijack and waste.

So, as seems to be my wont in these newsletters, I'm here to issue an invitation. 

The invitation is simply this: start paying attention to the process of paying attention. Pretend you’re a detective, or better yet, a scientist. Get curious about where your attention goes, how it works, and what you can do with it.

(Note: a true inquiry starts from a position of not already knowing the answer. A scientist may have hypotheses, but she does not already know the answer. If she did, she wouldn't have to run the experiments, yeah?)

Here are some questions to get you started:

Where does your attention go? How is it spent? Perhaps you could spend a week tracking it. Or perhaps you could just sit quietly for 5 or 10 minutes and watch what it does when you're not doing anything in particular. Do this every day, and some might accuse you of having a meditation practice.

What regularly traps your attention? Hint: screens are a good place to look, but not the only place. Repeated patterns of thought and feeling are also good places to look. 

What can you keep your attention on? Why?

What can't you keep your attention on? Why?

How much control do you have over your attention? Find a concentration practice of some kind and practice it for a while. Does that give you more skill with attention? If so, what kinds of downstream effects are there for your life?

And so on. What questions do you have about your own attention? Go wherever your investigation leads!

Another important note here – read and learn about attention all you want, but the kind of investigation I'm inviting is not out-there, it's done by looking directly at your own in-here experience of your attention.

Try this for a week. Or a month. Or a lifetime. Or don’t – I’m not your dad! —Arun

4. Sharing Is Caring

• A friend of GE has completed an impressive “post-photographic” photography project: New Farmer.

• Will André 3000’s new flute album slap?

• We love focused products by small teams, so we’re definitely curious to see how Smmall Cloud is received!

• We should auto-share every new Bobby Fingers video on GE TV. Jeffrey Bezos.

5. In Conclusion

So there we go. It’s time for the weekend. Next week is American Thanksgiving, and we’ll give thanks for you by not writing a newsletter. If you’re in the US, enjoy eating a lot or relaxing or reading or playing football. If you’re outside of the US, enjoy GET TO WORK. And wherever you are, please don’t spend all of your time shopping for junk. Unless you’re shopping at small businesses, in which case shop away.

Have a GREAT weekend, friends. —Barry

1. Posing Pika to the People

Kids these days with their loud music and their Dan Fogleberg. Their Zima, hula hoops and pac-man video games. They have attention spans that can only be measured in nanoseconds! What they need is a place to relax, feel at ease, stretch their minds, and write. They need a blog!

It’s time to throw all caution to the wind and open Pika for sign up! That’s right, Good Enough is joining the incredible wave spreading across the internet (circa 2004) and unleashing on the world our take on blogging software. We’ve spent 2023 experimenting with all sorts of software, but I just couldn’t get out of my head that all I really want is a lovely text box on the internet to write some words as well as an easy place to tend to my personal website. Thankfully the rest of the team indulged me and now with Pika we are going back…to the future!

If Pika interests you at all, please read more about why we built Pika and what to expect from Pika at today’s alpha launch. Then get yourself signed up! As you play around, don’t hesitate to reply to this email or write us a note with your thoughts and feedback. —Barry

2. The Week That Was

This week we wrapped up the alpha version of Pika and added an important feature to Letterbird. We also spent some time planning the rest of this year and thinking about 2024.

Matthew tried to install a new thermostat in his apartment and broke the building’s boiler (he’s ok, don’t worry). James got a root canal (he’s ok, don’t worry). Patrick announced, scrambled eggs and Indian leftovers might be a top 5 favorite meal for me. Arun’s been feeling a bit under the weather, and so have I (my fingers are icy cold right now). Barry went to see pro wrestling one night and reported back, “The best was one moment where the face and heel were slapping each other back and forth and the entire crowd was yelling YAY! BOO! YAY! BOO! for like 15 iterations. Amazing. Too bad I don't have audio.”

Oh, it’s December! —Shawn

3. Feed me

I am here to tell you that Good Enough will not be publishing a holiday gift guide. Every website and newsletter on the planet seems to have published their own guide which makes me feel like maybe I’m breaking the law by not issuing our own, but I just can’t do it.

Well, that’s a bit of a lie. As our resident product reviewer, I absolutely intended to use my column space this week on some junk you could spend your hard earned dollar bucks on. But this week has been very distracting with scheduling issues and making actual real progress building a new feature for Letterbird.

Have you seen Disney’s wonderful movie Soul? It has a great score written by Trent Reznor, but more importantly I’ve been told by someone who knows things (hi, Arun) that it does a great job depicting what it’s like to be in a flow state. Characters who fall deep into flow lose sight of what’s important and forget to enjoy the world around them. Well, today I got a bit too into the flow and looked up from my work only to see that it was almost 1:30 and I hadn’t written this column or eaten lunch.

I’m a bit hangry. [Editor: he had a taco, and it wasn’t very good.]

—Patrick

4. Sharing Is Caring

• Patrick shared this purple toilet with us and we still don’t know why he did it.

• tldraw is doing all kinds of crazy things and we can only chuckle at this owl-drawing demo.

• I don’t know much about these guys but they have an extraordinary website.

• Barry shared this lovely collection of colorful rotary phones.

• And, last but not least, Arun shared these delicious doodles he made:

We asked Arun how he made those drawings and he gave us the following instructions:

1. Let pen wander freely.

2. Occasionally emphasize something that seems interesting or fun.

3. Repeat #1 and #2 in any order until you're done.

5. In Conclusion

A reminder from Tony, via The Good Enough Guestbook (sorry, live stream down at the moment but we’ll put it back up next week!).

Please do stay hydrated and stay clear of goblins, and if you want to blog, consider Pika, please? Hope you have a calm and colorful weekend. See you next week.

1. What software do you pay for?

Here’s a question: do you pay for software? We do, but lots of people don’t. Part of our bet is that people – like you – will be happy to pay for software that does simple things well and is a pleasure to use, but we also know how attractive free can be (even if it means that you become the product).

So, our one main thing this week: what software do you personally pay for? Do you like it? Do you love it? Hit reply, please! —James

2. The Week That Was

Our focus continues to be on Letterbird (the little contact form that could) and Pika (easy and beautiful blogging), with our enormous and powerful brains gradually tilting away from “just build it” and towards “also help people find it”.

For Letterbird, we improved the embed code that lets you put the form directly into your existing site, making it easier to put your Letterbird on Google Sites, Postcard.page, and other website builders.

For Pika, we’re preparing a great new feature to sit alongside your blog posts. More on that next week probably! (Speaking of Pika, another product named “Pika” made a bit of a splash this week. It’s an AI thing so we are quietly betting that it won’t really matter in a few months 😅) —James

3. Midnight

An app I recently bought and love is Ensō. It's a quirky little writing app that makes it hard to edit. Why would that be good? Because when you're writing (like I am now), you can get caught up in editing instead of flowing with your writing.

Ensō is designed and built by a lovely human named Rafał, who has a fascinating blog where he shares thoughts ranging from philosophical to technical. Spend half an hour with them, you won’t regret it. Also, what a wonderful all-hands-meeting simulation he’s made.

4. lastyear.singles

In response to last week’s Album Whale end-of-year lists, Jonny Thaw emailed us about his project, lastyears.singles. It’s a gorgeous site that lets you listen to all those end-of-the-year song lists. Spoiler alert: Billboard chose a country song as their top song of the year. Crazy!

I love this project and asked Jonny how he built it:

The origin of the site was simply the fact that me and my friend (now housemate) loved listening to the Pitchfork 100 list and I wanted to make an accompanying thing to track which ones we liked. Actually an earlier iteration is up still. Then I figured it'd be cool to scour some more lists and just aggregate them in that ideology of "if I like doing this, maybe some other people will too". All the code is actually on Github, it’s just very messy. 

I have scrapers set up to help me structure the data from the various sources, there's a manual step of filling in the Spotify track id and the YouTube link for each track, but there's a little GUI that runs for that. But it was all in the idea that it's quite fun to make a 'sort of' free music player website.

Go listen to some music on lastyear.singles (it works best if you sign into Spotify) and share it with your music loving friends! Then go do the same on Album Whale! —Shawn

5. In Conclusion

This will be our penultimate visit into your inbox for 2023. I’ve really enjoyed our time together, and I hope you have too! Stick around for next week: we’ll bring mince pies and mull some wine around the ol’ yule log. It’s going to be seasonal as fuck.

Wherever you are, friend, keep warm. See you next time. —James

Dear friends, I hope 2024 has started off well for you.

Our new year has been a bit choppy. Several of us have been dealing with influenza and other illnesses, one had a burst pipe at home, and another one has been complaining about not getting enough sleep because of his baby child. But the six of us are here today and I have a newsletter for you.

First, some not-so-great news: this newsletter will no longer go out on a weekly cadence. The high quality of this newsletter is the result of considerable time and effort, which we can no longer provide for at least the next few months. Our focus, instead, will be on: 1) completing and launching Pika, 2) developing our next product, which will be more ambitious and complex than any we’ve attempted so far.

I understand that for some of you, A Good Enough Newsletter is the highlight of your week. To you I say: thank you, but may I implore you to explore a broader array of interests? —Shawn

1. Studio Update

The most notable thing that happened in the past two weeks was Dr. James Adam’s visit to New York City! I was the only one on our team who had never met him in person, and it was a truly joyous occasion. I smiled. He smiled. We hugged (twice).

[Correction: Barry hasn’t met James yet. Oops.]

The mostly decent people at Good Enough have been diligently working on Pika. The plan is to launch next week. That means: a better theme selector, several improvements to the editor, and billing—so we can take your money thank you very much. There will also be other small delights, such as this little pika:

Pika might not be the world’s best blogging software, but it will have the cutest mascot.

(Actually, what even is the best blogging software? Blogging software is like a notebook. We all have our preferences, and what’s good for me might not be for you. The only way to find out is to try and use the software yourself. For us, Pika is the shit, and it’s not really comparable.)

2. SO MANY ALBUMS ON THE WHALE

Holy moly people have been busy making album lists on Album Whale. 

And speaking of music, Patrick has started a blog (on Pika, of course) about listening to music. So far he’s written about two albums: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Guts. I may not agree with his music taste, but I do enjoy his writing. Give his blog a chance, will ya?

3. Sharing is caring

• Matthew put Letterbird on Product Hunt. If you’re on Product Hunt, give it a vote?

• Patrick shared a video about these identical twins and urged us to watch it. (I haven’t seen it yet, don’t tell him.)

• Barry came across this CSS framework inspired by the old Nintendo Entertainment System.

• Patrick pinged me about this ingenious art project: Prompt Brush 1.0. It’s so clever and the drawings are 👨🏼‍🍳😘.

• Matthew likes this delicious font named Cosmica Mono. Me too!

One more thing! Have you heard of Be My Eyes? It’s a fascinating volunteer service that lets people with vision impairments to call someone for help. Patrick has volunteered for them in the past, and he shared his experience:

In my experience, it’s been people asking to differentiate between things in their house. One guy called and wanted to know which shirt in his closet was white because he was playing a saxophone gig that night and that was the required color.

The calls usually get right down to business since they’re looking for help, not a friend. And they usually only last a minute or two. My shortest was like 20 seconds.

I’ve identified money, shirt colors, cheeses, soup, and whose lunch was whose.

I love it and wish it rang me more, but they have too many volunteers

4. See you in a couple of weeks?

I wish I had something wise to conclude this email with, but I just ate two pieces of bread with peanut butter and jam and I’m feeling sleepy. So I’ll just end with a screenshot I took this morning:

Have a splendid weekend now, yeah? Mhm.

Dear readers, hello! Did you know that, on the show Atlanta, Earn’s dad is Clay Davis!? I just noticed him in Season 4 Episode 4. Apparently Isaac Whitlock Jr. first showed up in Season 1, but I’ve forgotten.

Studio Update

In the time since we sent our last newsletter, the Good Enough team has been busy building a prototype shared email tool. Our work has gotten far along enough that, as of last week, every email sent to one of our team-wide addresses at Good Enough lands in the new prototype’s inbox.

If you’re curious, James wrote a blog post that shares some of the reasons & philosophy behind that project. Our collective estimate was that it would take us a month to build a functioning prototype and we’re pleasantly surprised to have gotten that guess right. The tool is already proving to be a great platform for trying and testing new ideas about how a team might collectively converse with the outside world through email.

Want to help fill our new inbox up? Write us a message (or email hello (at) goodenough.us) and tell us something you’re excited about! —Patrick

Pika Pika

Pika’s first month has exceeded our expectations. We haven’t spent a penny on advertising, and frankly, Good Enough isn’t famous—and yet the word has gotten out and there’s been a steady flow of new sign-ups.

Thank you all for trying out and sharing Pika. And a special thank you to those who have upgraded. Your support means a great deal to us, and we do not take any of it for granted!

Starting this week, Barry has shifted his focus back to Pika, and we are excited to bring some improvements to our humble blogging app soon. 😎

The Wonders of the Internets

• Have you heard of John Giorno’s Dial-a-Poem? If not, read about it here. And please give it a try! It still works (though with a different number): 641.793.8122. (Note: I’m not sure if it works from outside of the U.S.)

• Explore NYC in the 1940s on this wonderful site by Julian Boilen.

• I find this Ai-pet adorable and irresistible. (Original thread)

• If you’re into cats and indieweb—Nekoweb might be the thing for you! It’s like Yay.Boo but with cats, you know what I mean? 😸

• Patrick sez, “This video about building a drone to follow F1 cars around the track is pretty awesome and I don’t even like F1. They built a drone that can go 0-300kmph in 4 seconds and it can do tight turns. Skip to 8:58 to watch the footage if you don’t care about the rest … it’s worth it.”

Are you (or someone you know) working on something interesting? Maybe you wrote a blog post or composed a song, or maybe you have a podcast or a video game. Email us and we'll feature your project in this very newsletter!

In Conclusion

The first book I fell in love with was a bootleg copy of Dragon Ball I bought from a street vendor in Taipei. Back then I had to wait a month for each new issue, and I remember making up future plotlines and sharing them with my fellow fifth graders. But I could never have predicted where Toriyama would take the story—and I nearly pissed my pants when Vegeta arrived on earth (and shat myself when Frieza changed into its final form).

Like many others, I fell in love with comics because of Akira Toriyama. And I learned to draw because I wanted to draw like him (still can’t even come close though, dammit).

Rest in peace to the legend.

Hello friends. Last week was a scary one for us East Coasters. On Friday the earth beneath our feet shook, and then on Monday this happened:

What other exciting natural phenomenon will happen next week? 😅

1. Team Inbox

If you’ve emailed us in the past month, you’re among the first people on Earth to have received an email from our new shared inbox software.

That might not mean a lot to you, but it’s incredibly exciting for us. The product is functioning and we’re using it daily! We’re improving it based on our own real-world usage, and each day we see it inching closer to a Good Enough Product™.

Our next goal is to bring the software to the point where we feel comfortable inviting a few early alpha testers. (Adding a few more quality-of-life features, smoothing out some UX rough edges. We have high standards for what is good enough for others. 😎)

If you’re interested in being an early alpha tester of a super simple & friendly shared inbox software, please email us!

2. Some People Are Good Enough: Jessamyn West

A while ago, a kind reader emailed us and suggested that we interview people in our community and feature them in this newsletter. We love the idea! So, here’s the beginning of a new interview column: Some People Are Good Enough. We’d like to interview people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter—write us!

Our very first interviewee is Jessamyn West who left a fun drawing of moss on our Guestbook.

Who are you?

I'm a Vermont librarian and technologist who also exists in some extremely online spaces. I own MetaFilter and help run MLTSHP.

What’s one thing about libraries that most of us don’t know, that you wish we’d know about?

We're a huge distributed mutual aid network of information, technology and, most importantly, the people who can help you navigate those things. There are a lot of archives of stuff out there and a lot of inaccessible technology; that's not us. The public library (in the US anyhow) is for everyone.

Why moss? (And do you really collect moss!?)

I'm not sure why exactly. I used to not really be able to grow houseplants (since COVID I've improved) and moss was a thing that was readily available, could be easily taken care of, and brought some green into my wintertime. I even have a web page that tells you how to make moss terrariums (please excuse my http).

Thanks, Jessamyn! You can learn more about Jessamyn from her website and blog, or follow her on Mastodon!

3. Sharing is Caring

Cool links for you cool people:

• xkcd machine. Barry was amazed by this game: “You can play with it and then if you complete one…you submit it, name it, and get into an entirely different space to look at.”

• Revolutionary pizza invention. James took a break from his paternal leave to share this with us.

• In B Flat is a lovely, simple site. Only works on laptop / desktop tho!

• The Flipbook Experiment by The Pudding: 13,489 frames drawn as of this writing!

• Albums from Reservation Dogs. Great list for a great TV show!

And some great, recent blog posts on your favorite blog software, Pika:

• An incredible, cosmic story by Phil B. ❤️ I love everything about this story.

• Instead of investing in the S&P 500, invest in the "S&Me 500”. Mike Karnj urges you to invest in yourself.

• Ben Tsai went looking for a knee scooter and ended up discovering a Don Norman wisdom. I still don’t know what a knee scooter is! But what a great reminder that, yes to usability and accessibility, but also: aesthetics, pleasure, and fashion, please!

• Brendon Bigley was shook by the recent earthquake and thought about Twitter and Threads. A trip down the social media memory lane.

• Foofaraw shares how they come up with their new banners. I’ve been following the adventure of this new indie media startup and thoroughly enjoyed these illustrations!

4. In Conclusion

Barry recently re-published a blog post about his very first computer program, which was written for this amazing looking machine:

Do you remember your first computer program? If you do, please share your story with us!

Please remember to hydrate yourself and don’t forget to water the plants. See you in a week or two (or three). ✌🏼🌸

Good afternoon, friends and new subscribers! We have a lot to cover today, so let’s get into it…

1. Studio Update

Our shared inbox software is now alpha ready! This means that imminently, inevitably, indubitably, the software will be used by Other People™. Excite!

If you have a team that’s looking for a shared inbox (and don’t care to pay the insane price tag of those bloated help desk software), get in touch, yeah?

Two weeks ago we launched Pika’s new Guestbook feature, and it’s gratifying to see the many cool drawings and messages on different people’s guestbooks.

Some recent updates to our beloved lil’ Pika:

1. Add your own web analytics

2. Verify your site on Mastodon

3. And we’ve made some fixes to the RSS feed (here’s a TIL for those of you Rails folks)

Lastly, Barry wrote a thoughtful blog post about web curation that’s been getting some attention lately. A quote:

We are the human beings that are meant to curate the web. We should continue to spread the word about how we use the web, which is very personal and as active participants. We should make clear our desire for technologies that are accessible for non-technical people to be able to join us in controlling their own web presence. We build our websites and share our thoughts and link our links. Over time the web becomes surfable to more and more people.

Hear, hear!

2. Some People are Good Enough: Fei of Village One

We are interviewing people who have drawn on our Guestbook, started a blog on Pika, or made a list on Album Whale. If you’re one of them and would like to be featured in this newsletter—write us! Now let’s meet Fei!

1. Who are you?

Hi, I’m Fei, a backend engineer and co-owner of Village One, a cooperative studio for ethical design and technology based in Berlin, Germany. Village One was founded in 2022 by a small multidisciplinary group of people with the goal of democratising work and supporting projects that have positive impacts on our society and environment.

2. How do you avoid the pitfalls of design by committee while staying true to the democratic values of a co-op?

I think we rarely design anything by committee. When a task arises, one or two people usually take ownership of it quickly, and everyone else trusts that they will execute it well or to ask for support/feedback if needed.

This trust comes from our shared values, therefore we are not afraid to give everyone the same autonomy to make decisions and represent us. The cooperative structure allows us to formalise this trust and autonomy.

Establishing these shared values, though, has been a process that has required time and discussions. However, being a team of six rather pragmatic individuals with minimal egos has helped keep these discussions short and productive. Personally, I am very curious about what kind of processes we will introduce in the future as we grow larger.

3. Do you have a good recipe to share with our readers? :)

I've recently learned about fermentation and have been fermenting all kinds of things. It's such an easy way to preserve food. So here's a simple recipe for fermenting radishes:

Place radishes (cut into chunks or slices) into a jar, add 1 bay leaf and 4-5 juniper berries. Dissolve 30g of salt in 1 litre of water and pour it into the jar until everything is fully immersed (you might need to use a weight or toothpicks to keep the radishes submerged).

Close the jar and leave it at room temperature for four to seven days. Afterwards, you can enjoy it right away or move the jar to the fridge where the fermented radishes will stay good for at least a month.

Thanks, Fei! You can learn more about Fei on her website!

3. Sharing Is Caring

Bebop is a lightweight, super fast iPhone app that lets you quickly jot down notes. This wonderful app was made by our friend and world-famous author, Jack Cheng. Jack also wrote a fantastic blog post about how he designed and built the app all on his own.

Fig is a drawing app where each pixel has a lifespan. Yes, you read that right, and you’ll have to try it to understand it. This beautiful, poetic app was built by our super-talented friend, Rafał. Be sure to read his blog post on the inspiration, design process, and technical details behind Fig.

Adam Fuhrer has been making some beautiful pen plots. I have one of his prints here on my desk and it’s mesmerizing. Each print is 5x7” and costs $40 CAD.

Pouch magazine is ready for pre-order. I’ve been following Victoria’s (aka vrk) journey of starting a magazine, which she chronicles in her fascinating newsletter. Vrk used to be a programmer at Google and Arc, and it seems she’s decided to make a career switch to follow her love for paper and stationery. Respect!

And here are some great, recent blog posts on Pika:

• Why do you blog? Robert wants to know.

• Our very first font analysis blog post on Pika. Thank you, Ben.

• Did you know that Kindle has a large version that you can write on? Richard shares his thoughts on the Kindle Scribe.

• Jon wants you to make an /interests page. Interested?

• Here’s an interesting blog of reviews on non-alcoholic beverages.

4. In Conclusion

1. If what Kendrick said were true, shouldn’t there be a lawsuit or two against your favorite Canadian hip hop artist?

2. Go Wolves! Go Knicks!

3. A very short Lettini Screeni review of Bird Box: it was fine.

4. If the new Billie Eilish album isn’t moving you, maybe look for your next favorite album on Album Whale.

5. Have a wonderful weekend, you beautiful people, whoever and wherever you are. Did you know that octopuses have three hearts? Neither did I and I didn’t verify that fact. You can’t go home but you can’t stay here. 👋✌🏼