21 Facts, Font Crafter, How to Make CPU & Truck Desk
#71 of 10+1 Things | Abu Dhabi
⚡ Life finds a way.
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My life, like many others in the Gulf, has a different rhythm now. Emergency alerts have become a part of life and they don’t startle me anymore. Amidst all this, the city is still standing, the sun is still rising and life as usual finds a way to carry on.
One not so strange but interesting observation: GPS here does not work well anymore. Some spoofing(for enemy drones) has been done and my activity tracker can’t locate GPS easily. So I’ve been running the same route again and again just so I know the distance. I never thought of a time where GPS wouldn’t work. Minor annoyance, nothing in the grand scale of things.
Amidst all the chaos, as I mentioned last week, I've been trying to build and ship some projects on internet.
This week I wanted to share something Substack-related I’ve been working on. It’s called StackStats, a better analytics tool for Substack creators. Even though Substack is huge now, the analytics are honestly broken and I hate it. I built this initially for myself and thought I’d ship it to see if there’s some interest. If you write on Substack and want better insights on your newsletter, have a look. There’s also a demo page based on 10+1 Things, so you can see it before you decide!
Without further ado, here are 10+1 Things worth sharing:
🧠 Simple Man: A beautiful short essay on secretly envying people who live a simple life, like the guy comparing drill bits at the hardware store on a Saturday morning with zero existential dread. A life with inherited routines, ready-made purpose and no 3am questions.
🚛 Truck Desk: A welder and novelist builds a makeshift desk inside a junked, barely functional Ford truck so he can sneak in writing during breaks at a petrochemical plant. No heat, no AC, rusted floorboards, but it was his. A lovely piece on finding time to make art wherever you can.
✂️ Paper Modeling: A detailed guide on building 3D paper models from scratch, from designing the mesh in Blender to cutting, scoring and gluing. The end result is a paper SR-71 Blackbird that took a few months to complete. A lovely rabbit hole if you're into making things with your hands.
🎉 21 Facts: An interesting list of facts on how to throw good parties. Some genuinely useful, some a bit scratchy. Tip #2 stuck with me: advertise your start time as quarter-to the hour so people actually show up on time.
✍️ FontCrafter: Turn your handwriting into a real installable font, entirely in your browser. No account, no uploads, no cost. Super handy if you want to replace your signature image with actual text.
📷 Rewindpix: This awesome camera currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter is a film camera with a digital twist. Mechanical winder, optical viewfinder, customizable film presets straight out of the camera with zero post editing. Everything a film lover could ask for.
🗺️ How Big is Iran: Iran is roughly the size of Alaska and 80 times larger than Israel. Al Jazeera puts the scale into perspective, something super relevant right now.
⌚ Fake Casio F-91W? One of the most iconic watches ever made, and apparently also one of the most faked. This guide breaks down exactly how to spot a counterfeit, from the circuit board to the screws. Frequently updated too.
📚 Obviously Awesome: I started reading this book by April Dunford this week after realising that I don’t know anything about sales or marketing. It’s about finding your product’s positioning sweet spot so customers actually get it, buy it and love it. One of my projects has almost failed and it made me realise distribution matters a lot.
“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess.”
📷 Waterworks: A photography project by Stanley Greenberg documenting the hidden water infrastructure of New York City. Tunnels, gatehouses, valve chambers, things you walk past every day without a second thought. Fascinating rabbit hole if you're into urbanism and infrastructure.
🎥 How to Make a CPU: This video explains the entire process of making a CPU starting from literally smashing a rock, in a fun and interesting way. Starts with "get a rock", ends with a fully packaged chip. Under 2 minutes and nearly 20 million views.
That’s 10+1 Things for the week!
Which one was your favourite this week?
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See you next week!
With Love,
Rishi
“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
- Laozi