Scott Andrew

This colors NPM package looks handy for colorizing the terminal output of your Node application. See also these tokens that can be inserted into JavaScript strings to add colorized text.

Posted May 31, 2017

I love everything about this:

One night, after smoking a joint, [Toronto-based dungeon master John Dempsey] resolved to quit those day jobs and focus on the wild idea of playing Dungeons & Dragons full-time. He'd already spent hours building elaborate, three-dimensional dungeon sets; what if it wasn't purely for leisure? "For a month and a half, I heard nothing, and I thought to myself, 'what a stupid idea'. Some of my family and friends thought it was a stupid idea, too," he says. "But then I got a call, and another, and another, and before I knew it, this became a full time gig. I couldn't believe it! I still have a hard time believing sometimes that I make a living being a Dungeon Master. I currently have 14 groups, and it keeps growing every month."

After not playing for almost 20 years, I had the pleasure of joining some co-workers for a one-shot campaign with first-level characters, and it was a total blast.

Posted May 30, 2017

A native JavaScript alternative to RSS and Atom:

We — Manton Reece and Brent Simmons — have noticed that JSON has become the developers’ choice for APIs, and that developers will often go out of their way to avoid XML. JSON is simpler to read and write, and it’s less prone to bugs.

So we developed JSON Feed, a format similar to RSS and Atom but in JSON. It reflects the lessons learned from our years of work reading and publishing feeds.

JSON has emerged as the interop format of choice, without question. It's a trend worth embracing.

Posted May 29, 2017

A catalog of quirks and gotchas. Worth a quick read if you work in the JS space.

Posted May 25, 2017

"Remember: there is no such thing as a bad note, just a bad resolution."

Posted May 24, 2017

Tips from Ryan Estrada on how to hack your comics workflow.

Posted May 23, 2017

It occurs to me that by the time 90125 was released in 1983, the founding members of Yes were pushing 40 and now had to navigate this new thing called MTV. Jon Anderson's vocals sound so confident throughout Yes' recorded catalog, so it's strange to see him here not knowing what to do with his hands. Doesn't matter -- 90125 is still a great album.

Here's Yes in 1972, slaying on "Roundabout." How strange that only a decade separates these two very different incarnations of the same group:

Posted May 16, 2017

Currently on repeat on my Spotify playlist:

Posted May 5, 2017

The creators of This is Spinal Tap, the most influential mockumentary ever made, have been paid almost nothing due to "creative accounting":

In 2013, Harcourt advised [Harry] Shearer to ask Vivendi for a complete statement of his interests in This Is Spinal Tap. Harcourt combed through the material that came back, and her conclusions were so shocking that Shearer’s response was as unprintable as some of his band’s lyrics. According to Vivendi, Shearer and his three creative partners’ share of total worldwide merchandising income from 1984 to 2006 was $81, and the total income from soundtrack sales from 1989 to 2006 was $98. That’s just dollars, with no zeros at the end. It was Stonehenge all over again: They’d expected feet and got inches.

The co-creators -- Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Michael McKean and Christopher Guest -- are suing for 400 million.

Posted May 4, 2017

A Cuepoint writer flees to Vegas during Coachella to confront the harsh reality of age. But I admit that Vegas during Coachella sounds pretty sweet:

"For that night, every part of what one might want out of a live music experience was available: A critically-acclaimed artist playing her full set, a cloudless night, a gorgeous view of the peculiar neon beauty of the Las Vegas Strip, and as my local friends would remind me, copious amounts of alcohol. St. Vincent finishes, we head inside for a nightcap cocktail, and then I head back to my hotel room, only having to stand in one quick taxi line (rather than the mess of a festival parking lot) to do so."

Posted May 3, 2017