A few days ago, I came across this video of Bill Hader; I'd gladly reference the source, but I honestly can't pinpoint where I found it.

He is talking about writing, but touches on a couple of topics that seem transferable and relevant to design:

• Fail fast: a.k.a share early and often. I'd also note that starting with a generative design approach pays off.
• On (giving and receiving) feedback: When providing feedback, focus on explaining what isn't working and why. Refrain from suggesting solutions unless folks specifically ask for it. When receiving feedback, synthesize it and reflect on it. And when others provide potential solutions, exercise your judgment instead of accepting them outright.

Of all the different social apps that I've tried recently, Retro is the one I find most interesting: it has a very low barrier to post, encourages a small following, limits the amount of content that followers can see unless you share a key with them, and tricks users into being active over merely lurking.

It is not flashy, but it is very beautiful, and enjoy the close friends vibe, where you can see normal life (kids et al). It feels like a private photo journal, focused, delightful, no hashtags or filters.

Simply simple.

We checked the Apple Visitor Center close to Apple Park. The place is beautiful and I truly fell in love with the stairs. Some of the pictures feel straight out of a render engine 😳

I finally had some time to enjoy Maxime's "training your AI image model" talk, and he does a great job explaining the process and showing very good and actionable examples. I'm looking forward to trying it out myself.

★★★★★ – will watch it again.

I have been trying to be more intentional about the photos I take, and I always go out with a few topics in mind. I'm not a photographer, but I'm obsessed with decadent beauty, manifested as old buildings, abandoned places and cars, and rusty shop signs. I'm also a sucker for symmetry.

After trying a few times to bring the kids along unsuccessfully, I'm really enjoying this book about prompts for kids. The projects are very affordable, the examples are fantastic, and the layout is beautiful. The kids are already working on a photo-alphabet!

Aperture also publishes "Seeing things", which may be, by far, my favorite photography book.

It's too damn hot!

This week we had an internal design conference at GitHub. We named it LGTM! (Looks Good To Me). I'm not going to give you a lot of details about the great talks that we had because you will soon be able to watch most of them on Youtube.

I had fun preparing some slides about creative uses of GitHub Actions. It was great to talk about my fixation with automation, rescue the "Design tool as CMS" concept, show how to build your own "Wayback machine", and try to get the team excited to automate repetitive tasks.

I'm particularly proud about this actual footage of me successfully getting my GitHub Actions to green.