Aug 21, 2025

New project posted on tynanpurdy.com!

Musical Text

Aug 5, 2025

#3dprint of the day: toothpaste squeezer

# Yet Another New Website (eventually)

Aug 5, 2025

I suffer profusely from build-a-new-website syndrome. I swear this time it’ll be great! I want to build a home on the internet that connects with the reset of my digital presence. It should be alive. Just a few minutes on there—even if you don’t read far into any project or blog post—should convey my person accurately.

Some websites that do this well

- adactio.com
- dame.is
- ewancroft.uk
- bmannconsulting.com

My current attempt at building this is github.com/tynanpurd…. While informative, I don’t know if it will be the last attempt.

Jul 17, 2025

Coming to an #opensauce near you…

Jul 10, 2025

El Jefe’s using NFC tags to link to their loyalty program. Works at close range and in low light!

Jun 12, 2025

working on publishing it to the Raycast store rn, but I am posting thru Micro.blog from Raycast with an extension I just built. this is so fun!!

Jun 12, 2025

this is it right??

Jun 12, 2025

don’t forget to save… 🤦🏻

Jun 12, 2025

this at least closes the window right?

Jun 12, 2025

now should pop to root

Jun 12, 2025

it was HUD not toast!!

Jun 12, 2025

messing with 🍞

# I need to know if titles work

Jun 12, 2025

this is another raycast extension test

Jun 12, 2025

testing raycast extension for microblog 👀

Jun 11, 2025

Liquid glass = water

Jun 11, 2025

Raycast extension for microblog? @manton.org @raycast.com I’m a noob but happy to give it a shot. Love the idea of having a thought and posting it at the speed of typing it out

Jun 2, 2025

WePorch is a hot new outdoor coworking space in the heart of Boston. With great views and a five woof rating on DogsOnCouches.com, it’s THE place to be when work needs getting done.

Jun 2, 2025

Typing speed becomes more important as a skill as UIs move towards agentic and intent-based action

May 28, 2025

People are trying my software!! 😊 As a designer just cracking into development, this makes me so happy 🫶🏻

May 22, 2025

🪦 Pocket, 2007-2025 🫡

support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/…

May 14, 2025

Behold, John Prine for disgruntled zoomers Jesse Welles on Spotify

May 13, 2025

the fastest way for me to pull up home assistant on iOS is to spotlight search “ass”

May 13, 2025

Powerpoint renders slides completely differently on the web vs the app. Objects are literally not where they are, don’t look the way they look. Why, Microsoft? WHY?

May 9, 2025

Just discovered penpot.app holy crap this is exactly the local self hostable OSS Figma replacement I’ve been looking for!

May 9, 2025

I have dozens of these dog poop bag rolls. They’re good sturdy paperboard tubes. Lots of potential. Can definitely start with some kind of 3d printed connector system. I’m sure more ideas will come.

May 2, 2025

Is RSS piracy? sometimes it feels like it. Publications have paywalls, but the public RSS feed will just give you the full article, ad free. Is this just free access for the mildly tech savvy? Oversight? Might just be a limitation of the technology that we’ve made peace with.

May 1, 2025

Why does Spotify do nothing to show me what my friends are listening to. I don’t want music TikTok or podcasts. I want a social exchange of music

May 1, 2025

It’d be cool if something like RCS happened to phone calls. What if native phone calls had a chat? Also general audio quality could be so much better. Might throw together a mockup

Apr 28, 2025

Just saw a streetview mapping car drive by my house with what appeared to be an gopro 360 camera bolted on top. Crazy how efficient those sensor arrays have become.

Apr 23, 2025

A win is a win

Flat origami is Turing Complete Thomas C. Hull, Inna Zakharevich arxiv.org/abs/2309….

Apr 15, 2025

Recommendation algorithms suck. The older they get the more overfit and average they become. Listening to Emerson college radio has been a much needed breath of human curated fresh air. wers.org

Apr 8, 2025

New mumford is EXACTLY what I needed rn. RUSHMERE already a banger in my book

open.spotify.com/album/15o…

Mar 6, 2025

Had a blast. So great to talk to people irl and feel that community. TIL next time! @idsa_boston

Mar 5, 2025

It’s national industrial design day! All Boston area friends of design are welcome to IDSA Boston’s hangout at Bell in Hand Tavern

Feb 27, 2025

PR submitted for my latest project and first ever Obsidian plugin → github.com/tynanpurd…

Feb 12, 2025

RT @stacy31.bsky.social

A quick resistance task:

1. Google Gulf of Mexico
2. “Gulf of America" is the top
3. Click on the three little dots to the right of it
4. Select “Send Feedback”
5. Click on “Gulf Of America”
6. Select “Inaccurate content”
7. Select “Incorrect” and type in “The correct name is “Gulf of Mexico”

# I made the write with rhythm picture real

Feb 11, 2025

I saw this clipping from a book when browsing threads one day. Many of us have.

An illustrated excerpt from Gary Provost’s 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing

I’m no writer, but I am more pedantic about writing than most. Growing up homeschooled does that to you. So when I saw this I thought YES. FINALLY. Somebody giving clear advice on how to make your writing not feel like corpo-chatgipitty slop. Save. Scroll.

Some time later I still thought about that post. It’s a nice idea, but how would I actually write that way in practice? The colors were so pretty in the picture, but no editor highlights sentences like that. Right? right?…

I use Obsidian. I can go off about how I use Obsidian later, but I use it. And I know that Obsidian is super customizable, like ridiculously customizable. It has a whole community plugin store where anybody can throw together a little code and change any aspect of the app, from adding entirely new functionality to simply moving a button or changing the color scheme. I can code. A little. I can read docs and I know someone who can help me out with the rest, lArGE LaNguAge mODEls.

A few evenings of messing around and ta-fricken-da I had myself a plugin.

Its not much. For a first-time Obsidian plugin dev I’m happy with it. I knew I wouldn’t make something perfect on the first go but I did want to make it good. The toggle is contained to individual tabs. It doesn’t change any of your source text. The colors are fully customizable, sentence length thresholds too. It’s nice.

I will publish Musical Text to the official community plugins directory and update here when it’s approved. Didn’t want to hold off on talking about it for the sake of listing it. You can check out the code or manually install from my GitHub.

GitHub | musical-text

EDIT 2025-02-27: the PR is submitted! waiting for review from the Obsidian team before it goes up on the official plugins list

EDIT later: It’s up! Search for “Musical Text” in the community plugins section of settings and give it a try.

Feb 10, 2025

Obsidian just added a web viewer and I’m now seriously reconsidering what a web browser is supposed to be…

Feb 7, 2025

My crack at gyeran bap

Feb 3, 2025

So let me get this straight… If I post from here (micro.blog) it goes to all my socials and my website that I own? I love the open social web!!!

# Why media is good at product

Aug 28, 2024

In recent years, we’ve seen an interesting trend emerge: tech media personalities are stepping into product development, and they’re excelling at it. Meanwhile, established tech companies sometimes struggle to create products that truly resonate with users. What’s behind this phenomenon? The answer lies in the unique advantage that professional reviewers bring to product design: deep, articulated user experience.

Tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee (MKBHD), Linus Sebastian, and Michael Fisher (Mr. Mobile) don’t just test products—they live with them. Their entire professional existence revolves around using devices in real-world conditions, finding and articulating pain points, understanding the emotional impact of design choices, comparing hundreds of similar products, and communicating these experiences to millions of viewers. This constant cycle of use, analysis, and communication creates a depth of understanding that’s hard to replicate in traditional user research settings.

What sets these media professionals apart isn’t just their experience with products—it’s their ability to articulate what makes technology succeed or fail on an emotional level. This is why companies like Google have made strategic moves to bring in talent from the tech media world, such as hiring Dieter Bohn and Dan Seifert from The Verge.

These individuals don’t just understand what makes a good product; they can express, the philosophical implications of design choices, the emotional response to user interfaces, the subtle distinctions between good and great experiences, the broader context of how products fit into users' lives

Traditional product designers face inherent constraints in their research process, limited project timelines, fixed research budgets, small sample sizes, artificial testing environments

While designers work hard to understand their target users through observation, interviews, and collaborative design sessions, they’re ultimately bound by these practical limitations. Whatever level of understanding they achieve when the research phase ends becomes the foundation for their design decisions.

Tech reviewers turned product designers bring two crucial advantages to the table, extensive product knowledge, and experience with hundreds of competing products. Deep understanding of market trends. Awareness of both successful and failed approaches. Refined User Perspective. Years of analyzing user experience. Thousands of words written about product details. Clear understanding of what separates “okay” from “great”. Natural ability to think from the user’s perspective

The success of media personalities in product development isn’t just a fluke—it’s the natural result of their unique position at the intersection of user experience and communication. Spending every waking hour doing self-ethnography for years gives them an intuitive understanding of user needs that traditional research methods struggle to match.

As more companies recognize this advantage, we might see a growing trend of journalists transitioning into product development roles, bringing their unique perspective to the design process. I can’t wait to see how they change design along the way.

this post was totally a collaboration with Claude, exploring!

# Welcome to blog.tynanpurdy.com!

Jun 26, 2024

Howdy folks! In the never ending journey of personal and career development, I figured I’d give writing a try. No promises on how often I’ll post or what I’ll write about, but expect to hear my honest thoughts on design, tech, life, robotics, and whatever catches my eye.

If you like my work and want to receive my writing as soon as I publish, you can use the RSS link below (post idea, why you should use RSS instead of depending on algorithmic feeds).

blog.tynanpurdy.com/feed