Monthly Note:#
About Friendships
No one likes friendships that are based on mutual exploitation. Although this is one of the social rules in adult society, it particularly bothers me when relationships fade over time and can only be maintained for this purpose. It makes me feel indifferent, and subconsciously I tend to distance myself from relationships that may have exploitative tendencies. After expressing this to Gemini, its summary was, "In short, your aversion to 'mutual exploitation' relationships, and the resulting 'indifference' and tendency to distance yourself, is an important step towards maturity and self-protection in your interpersonal relationships. It makes you clearer about what you want and what you don't want, allowing you to establish healthier and more genuine connections. This is not indifference, but wisdom."
Useless is Useful
I want to introduce an interesting website — the Japanese site "Daily Portal Z," which is somewhat niche and entertaining, with about 1.2 million views per month, aiming to publish articles that are "interesting but not very useful."
For example, the first article I read was submitted by a designer in 2016: he discovered that the names of products on supermarket receipts could be arranged to form senryu (similar to humorous poetry in Chinese). So he traveled around nearby stores, collected and arranged receipt items, and created a series of "product senryu." He eventually summarized it in an article, which indeed turned out to be quite useless, but the process was fascinating to me. His personal homepage also left a deep impression: "Engaged in design, writing, and video content creation, I think every day about how to enjoy each day."
The collected senryu poems (following the 5-7-5 pattern of Japanese phonetics)
This inspired me. In today's society, the prevailing values, especially in work, tend to emphasize efficiency and usefulness. However, there are always some people who, outside of work, are fascinated by doing things that have no value. The lack of value in these activities is not important; they may not bring direct benefits, but they can bring curiosity, joy, creativity, and relaxation. Perhaps that is the most important thing: "uselessness" is precisely another form of "usefulness."
Website Name: Daily Portal Z
🔗: https://dailyportalz.jp/kiji
Monthly Record#
1. Efficiency Tools#
Clock Widget: Hands Time
🔗: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hands-time-minimalist-widget/id6462440720
Best of the month, it looks great and has plenty of dial options, with a very aesthetic design. Recommended by Basic Apple Guy.
Tracking Tool: Tooboo
🔗: Search TooBoo on the App Store
A navigation software for tracking exercise routes, supporting offline maps, and can generate screenshot videos. The interface is decent, and it has been specially adapted for Apple Watch, making it very friendly for outdoor enthusiasts.
Image Compression Tool: PixZip
🔗: https://pixzip.cutelabs.in/
A tool for batch compressing images, it is very smooth and simple, allowing for custom export sizes, and the compression quality is quite good. However, it requires a payment of $9.9 (which I have purchased, and it's not bad). A cheaper alternative is Compressio, which only costs 19.9 RMB.
Quick Capture Tool - Capture
🔗: https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/%E5%BF%AB%E9%80%9F%E7%AC%94%E8%AE%B0-capture/id6458535284
A web content capture tool, also a temporary transfer station. Its advantage is good support for Apple platforms, even supporting visionOS, and allows exporting to other platforms. I have paid for it, hoping it can help my workflow (most of this month's content used it, and it's okay).
Web Clock: Timeface
🔗: https://www.timeface.co
A beautiful web clock, which I also recommended last time with a color value clock, it's very comfortable to keep in a separate window.
NoTab
🔗: https://notab.wand.tools/zh
A link preview plugin for browsers, surprisingly only $19.9, so what does that make my previous purchase of MaxFocus for $19.9? (It had more AI features and looked a bit nicer 🤏)
Travel Guide: Packing List
🔗: https://m.okjike.com/originalPosts/6876e3fa8a94744e87e8d90e
The original poster summarized a very detailed packing list for travel after spending two months traveling through four countries in Central Asia, a must-have for travelers.
2. Text Insights#
What Makes a Person Cool?
"A new study suggests that these individuals often share six common specific traits: cool people are typically seen as extroverted, hedonistic, strong, adventurous, open, and autonomous."
The Future of Cursor Design
The design director of Cursor believes that AI makes software design more like sculpture: "AI makes software design more like 'sculpture' rather than traditional upfront planning. Designers can first create prototypes and then continuously adjust and reshape them, rather than locking in all the details from the start. Quickly creating 'playable things' is more important than having a detailed plan written in advance."
Notion founder Ivan Zhao also has a similar metaphor, he believes that AI is like brewing: "If traditional software development is compared to bridge building, it requires precise planning and execution. However, the way AI is constructed is completely different; it is more like brewing. You cannot fully control the outcome; you can only create an environment for it to develop on its own. Therefore, it is more like a brewing process, and you cannot force AI."
3. Design Related#
AI Prompt Tool: Prompy
GPT-4 generates prompts for images in different styles, combining text and images.
Visual Inspiration: Plottie
Contains many visual classification references for icons or pie charts used in academia, suitable for finding inspiration for data visualization styles.
AI Lacks Taste, Details Determine Success
The weekly curator of Taste Canteen, also the founder of Zuo Wan, design engineer Cali Castle shared insights on going overseas for entrepreneurship in "AI Lacks Taste, Details Determine Success." The PPT design is very exquisite and worth learning from.
Conversations on Quality
A series of interviews with industry professionals about "quality" launched by Linear, filled with valuable insights.
iOS 26 App Icon Mockup Generator
A template generator for iOS 26 app icons, upload your product icon to generate a beautiful display of iOS 26 app icons.
Glass3D:
An online 3D glass effect generator, implemented purely in CSS.
4. Other Interesting Finds#
- The Complete Pokemon Dataset This dataset contains detailed information about 802 Pokémon from all seven generations, including base stats, types, abilities, and other features.
- macOS Icon History — Basic Apple Guy The evolution of macOS system icons over the past few decades, including icons for system preferences, folders, notes, reminders, messages, calculators, etc.
- FliiipBook A web-based GIF animation application for creating simple hand-drawn style fun GIFs (up to 24 frames, 2 seconds).
- Apple Park Wallpapers — Basic Apple Guy, Apple Park wallpapers. Beautiful, high-definition, and the homepage also has built-in Vision Pro wallpapers.
- 顔アイコンジェネレーター Z | 人物アイコンをサクッと作成 A custom outline style head avatar generator with many customizable widgets.
- Chinese Technical Document Writing Style Guide — 中文技术文档写作风格指南 Chinese technical document writing style guide.
- Pointer Instrument - Nudus Blanc, this mouse is really cool, but unfortunately, it seems to look good but not be very functional.
- Reading QR codes without a computer!, teaches you how to identify QR codes with the naked eye, which can be quite straining on the eyes.
- AI Tool: EasyEdit An open-source image editing tool based on Flux Kontext, allowing users to easily modify images with just a prompt. I tried it, and it works well; removing elements is much faster than in Photoshop.
That's all. Thank you for reading. Feel free to subscribe, and I recommend using folo to read my RSS. Also, thanks for the likes and comments that encourage me.
WeChat: guonlin
Email: [email protected]