Personal canon

A collection of concepts, quotes, articles, works, etc. that have influenced my thinking, work and art.

Inspired by Canonize: Creating a Personal Canon Template.

With time I will be adding more items here, and also add my own notes about them.

Art + Creation

• Concept Building in public

  The practice of sharing your work with openness and transparency.

• Book Show Your Work!

  A book by Austin Kleon about building in public.

• Quote So create

  When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create.

  —why the lucky stiff

• Quote The Gap

  All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap.

  For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

  —Ira Glass

Knowledge + Learning

• Concept Commonplace book

  Notebooks that compile quotes, proverbs, poems, tables, etc.

• Concept Deliberate practice

  Deliberate practice focuses on the hardest, most difficult parts. I find this essential when building skills.

• Concept Learning in public

  Learning in public is the practice of sharing what you learn, as you learn it.

• Quote On the shoulders of giants

  If I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

  —Isaac Newton

• Concept Spaced repetition

  A memorization technique with flashcards in which you new and more difficult items are presented more frequently than older and easier ones.

Development + Engineering

• Article The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community

  An article by Ashe Dryden about how to be able to do unpaid labor for an open source project is a privilege.

• Concept High cohesion, low coupling

  A foundational principle of software development. A lot of other techniques (like SOLID) are just practical applications of this.

• Concept Katas

  A code kata is a programming exercise meant to be repeated over an over in time. Useful as deliberate practice.

• Concept Open Source

  Software that has its source code available, which can in turn be modified and redistributed.

• Article Survival Tips for Women in Tech

  Distilled wisdom from Patricia Aas, a veteran software developer. A must read if you are a woman working in technology.

Game Development + Design

• Book A Theory of Fun for Game Design

  A classic of game design, and in my opinion the best book on the topic.

• Article Finishing a Game

  Derek Yu shares advice on finishing games. Explains cutting out scope, prototyping and grit.

• Article How to Survive at Making One Game a Month

  An iterative approach at making games in a short amount of time, borrowing principles from agile development. Useful for game jams, prototypes, etc.

Writing

• Article How Not to Write Your First Novel

  Lev Grossman explains how damaging the "starving artist" myth is, and that it's OK to work a day job to pay the bills. You cannot make good art if you are struggling to survive.

• Quote Resistance often begins in art

  We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

  —Ursula K. LeGuin

Sci-Fi + Futurism

• Movie The Matrix

  A sci-fi and action movie by the Wachowski sisters about the nature of reality.

• Concept Non-human person

  Personhood granted to non-human beings (such as great apes, for instance) is an on-going debate, and a common occurence in sci-fi for alien species and robots/AIs.

• Book This Is How You Lose the Time War

  One of my favorite books. There's transhumanism, time travel, a sapphic romance… It has it all.