What's Good #20
published 2026-07-03 | tags: #whats-good
Table of Contents
shed
This post is coming out a few days late because I had to finish building a shed!
This is an external home office sheduation, so similar to an ADU but without you know... running water and electricity.
It was a kit build from Amazon weirdly enough, turns out Amazon will gladly let you send them north of $10k and in return you'll a logistics company will drop off two big ass pallets of parts for you to assemble into a shed.
I have visions of putting a solar panel on top and having it "off grid" using an chonky Anker battery I bought for when the power goes out. I'll also need to figure out a better wifi situation because my router is in the basement and just about as far away from the shed as you can get with a few layers of wood and ventilation between it and the internet, so if you have ideas about how to solve that let me know... I suspect it'll involve a router I have in a box and OpenWRT.
xteink4 e-reader
Besides the shedapalooza I also bought an XTEINK4 which, to put it mildly, fucking rocks -- for me.
- small e-reader with a 4.3" screen, easily fits in my pocket.
- no touch screen, physical buttons only.
- a thriving community with dozens of open source custom firmwares easy and ready to flash.
There are of course some downsides:
- no backlight, which is one of my favorite parts of my Kindle.
- i love getting books through Libby and sending them to my Kindle over the air, that's a non-starter with this non-Kindle device.
- in general it's difficult to acquire non-DRM epubs that are compatible with this device :-(
Anyway, since buying this I've become a voracious reader. I blasted through All Systems Red and am now reading The Complete Cosmicomics both of which are very enjoyable.
The key I'm realizing is that especially with little kids, convenience is king for entertainment.
- Watching movies on my phone
- Playing videogames on the Steam Deck
- Reading on a little screen in my pocket
I'm able to turn it on, read the equivalent of one or two pages, and when I get interrupted -- because the kids decided they want to hang out now -- I can put it away. I'm able to bin-pack reading into my day in a way that I just couldn't with a Kindle or even an app on my phone -- because my kids flock to the phone in a way they don't for a "boring" screen like this.
Order of the Sinking Star (Demo)
Jonathan Blow is one of my favorite video game creators out there. He is thoughtful, interested in pushing the art form forward, and makes awesome games.
Note: he has some politics I don't agree with. Don't @ me about liking his work please.
Order of the Sinking Star is his next game, about 10 years after The Witness came out, and the demo dropped this month in Steam Next Fest and I really enjoyed it. I still haven't finished it, because on puzzle is kicking my ass, but it's a really interesting puzzle game. If you're interested in puzzles you should definitely play the game, and I think everybody should try the demo.
Pretty sparse this month, unfortunately I started a few things but didn't finish them; hopefully next month will be a bit more stacked as a result though.