I’ve returned to Hyrule this week; I’m exploring caves teeming with bioluminescent fish, fusing mushrooms to every shield that I find, and mercilessly stomping on any goblins that dare get in my way. My love for this game is unexpected though because I wasn’t into Breath of the Wild at all—what with its floaty combat, mostly annoying physics, and meh story—yet I’m utterly obsessed with Tears of the Kingdom.

So what makes this game so good? Two thoughts here.

First: a video by NakeyJakey about the problems with Rockstar games. It’s a great review where he argues that in Red Dead Redemption and GTA, Rockstar will give the player a set of tools to explore a beautiful world and then suddenly decide that you must do things precisely the way they want you to. Did you want to sneak through that house? Game over. Oh you wanted to run away from this fight? Game over. Did you want to park your horse anywhere else except this little yellow marker on the map?

Game. Over.

Hi hi hi. Robin here.

It’s Saturday. I’m up early, dressed, eated, walked. Now: under an awning outside my favorite cafe in the city, with the rain making a racket all around me. Who cares though? I’m deep in the stack of writing and CSS-ing and there’s simply no amount of screaming kids, howling dogs, or thundering rain that can stop me.

I’m invincible right now because I’m building an archive.

Pals! Nerds! Photo-buddies!

I just hit the big green publish button on a new essay about photography, networks, and shadows called…wait for it…In Praise of Shadows.

Back in February I picked up a camera, the FujiFilm X100V, and then spent six months in a photography-shaped hole: tidying up images in Lightroom, reading blog posts about ISO, scrubbing through videos about FujiFilm cameras and editing and where to put your feet to take a good shot. All these new skills became…addictive…because I knew effectively nothing about photography. I was a beginner again! I could ask really dumb questions on forums! And read books without the burden of experience!

📕 Whittle; to sharpen; to render eager or excited

This weekend: Portland. We’re on the return flight south after watching Pop-Up Magazine, walking around the Japanese Garden, and eating delirious amounts of food.

A good time was had by all. But what else happened this week?

Super secret literary society!

(It’s so secret that you didn’t even realize you were a part of it, huh? Other secret societies can only wish they were as secret as mine.)

I’m writing to you from a tiny coffee shop, click-clacking away at this essay about photography. Last night I moved all of my notes out of Keynote and into Figma because 1. my enthusiasm had stalled and 2. I hoped that just pushing things around would encourage me to delete a lot of junk or fill in the gaps that have been sitting around since February.

And it worked!

Friends and intergalatic, spacefaring warriors!

I am writing to you from here:

This weekend I’m tagging along with C to a medical conference in Hollywood, Florida. We got in late last night and I’ve been walking around town this morning alone only to discover that this is a land of beaches and hotels and cars cars cars. But, despite that, it’s extremely lovely to walk around in shorts and hop along the beach listening to music with no shoes on and trying not to think about how folks here have terraformed this hostile world by moving almost exclusively inside air-conditioned mobile pods and then shifting an almost unfathomable amount of cement around so that they can drive tractors to the beach and flatten out the sand so it’s just perfect for my little toes.

Pals!

I’m struggling this morning. My focus is all over the place. So! I’ll just pop out for a quick walk and wake up a bit. Please hold whilst I go for a long brood across the closest thing I have to a highland moor.

Thank you.

< walking... >

< brooding... >

< walking... >

< returns... >

< falls deep into an Elden Ring shaped hole... >

< several days pass... >

< slowly climbs out of hole... >

< goes for another walk... >

Okay, so this week: three things. First off, I adore this typeface-in-progress by Erik van Blockland, LTR Principia, which is just a very strange and condensed assortment of letters that I really, really like:

I’ve always adored Erik’s work, and his especially odd website. Make sure to click around and see all the peculiar projects he’s been hacking away at.

Second: Kobodaishi by Nick Sherman is an absolute wonder. Like Principia, I don’t think you can actually purchase this thing yet but it’s wonderful in a very different way with stately, tall, and very happy letters:

Copains!

Robin here. I’m writing to you from a small Parisian hotel, hidden in a back alley in the 2nd arrondissement, and I’m still dazed from the trains and the walking and even more trains on top of that.

Last night we stumbled into the hotel foyer where cool bank robber music bounced along the walls and welcomed us from every direction. Well-dressed and dimly-lit strangers whispered French and German and Japanese behind enormous plants and swirling wine glasses. It was the most beautiful sight after a long day of travel—enormous windows opened up into a courtyard full of strangers and bright plants swung (swang?) from every surface so that I assumed that we’d mistakenly walked into a greenhouse.

In short: it was cool as hell.

Friends!

This week: England. London. The cold, cloudy place.

It’s been…4 years? Far too long, really. So long, in fact, that the accents are strange to me now, the air is colder, and the cussing has improved across the board. Also, words like “nab” make me stop for half a beat to properly interpret.

Friends! Chums! Mates!

Two things this week. First, a reminder: the finest compliment you can give someone is not a retweet, a like, or a follow. Instead, the best expression of thanks is to link to their work.

Here’s one example: earlier this week I was reading a book and it quoted a chap who linked to a blog post which linked back to…my blog! Wha—? And also: wot? It was that rare sort of ~Publishing Feeling~ I get when I can see my own hyperlinks make their return trip home. There’s this punch-to-the-gut when someone links to my work or points back at a note somewhere in the ol’ archives and it’s nothing short of exhilarating. There’s no higher honor, no kind of thanks giving better.

But is that feeling…good? That feeling I get when someone links to my work? Is it desperate? Isn’t it just a selfish hunger for fame and attention? Sure, probably, deep down that’s likely the case (my dad once asked what I wanted to be when I grow up and when I was 8 I turned to him very seriously and exclaimed that “I want to be a great man of history!” At the time I didn’t quite understand that you have to do certain things to be great, I just wanted to see my own face printed in books and etched on stone).

Hyperlink compatriots!

Robin Rendle here. This morning began with a slow but productive start. I was up early. Showered. Dressed. Laundry. Dishes. Trash. Breakfast. After all that the Mobile Depression Device told me that my screen time was up 30% this week which sounds about right. I still feel dazed from all the screens.

And so today there will be only books, only reading. Let’s begin:

If a Web site is moved, deleted, or hidden behind a paywall, every link that pointed to it becomes meaningless, dangling like an anchor line cut loose from a ship.

Late-night edition of the newsletter this week, folks. But a quick reminder: I’m Robin Rendle, a web designer and writer, and you likely subscribed to this newsletter via my website.

Apologies in advance, etc. etc.

Last year I barely read at all. I just couldn’t sit still, couldn’t find anything that captured my attention. I spent the whole year up to my neck in video games; tuning in, dropping out. But this week I’ve been reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro and it’s light-hearted and earnest and all the things that I want from a novel. It’s reminded me what novels are capable of.

Remember last week when I said I feel online again, all systems go? Well, this is the book to blame for that. And so I’ve found myself in love with stories and literature and reading all over again—reading in the morning and in the middle of the night. But if I was absolutely honest here—perhaps cringingly, painfully honest—then it’s more than love that I’ve found in this book.

I’ve found…purpose? Ew.

Friends, colleagues, arch nemeses!

This is your friendly neighborhood newsletter from me, Robin Rendle, and you likely subscribed a short while ago from my website. This is the inaugural edition and I’m not entirely sure what this is, or what it will be just yet.

Oh and feel free to hit the reply button whenever you like; feedback, insults, and adoring compliments are always welcome.

Let’s get to it.