Projects

After finally completing the gargantuan task of manually adding metadata to thousands of my old tweets so they could be more integrated with the rest of my site, I wanted to keep the momentum going. So I turned to the last large personal data source that was still missing from my site: Last.fm, a service for tracking and sharing the music you listen to. As of a few days ago, I’ve been a Last.fm user… See more →

Last week? Not my favorite week. My dog injured her leg while playing with other dogs in the park. My basement needed some emergency masonry work. My acid reflux graduated from intermittent warning shots to full-on assault. But somehow, in the midst of all this, I managed to finish up a project I’ve been chipping away at for countless hours over the past 10 months: manually adding metadata to the nearly 6,000 old tweets I’ve… See more →

Yesterday, for the first time, I closed my site. Any page you visited turned you away with this message:

This site is closed on Sundays. I’m trying to avoid screens at least one day out of the week, and this is my way of encouraging others to consider doing the same. I’d apologize for the inconvenience, but I think in many ways modern expectations of convenience have gotten way out of hand, don’t you? Feel… See more →

Before vector art, high-DPI raster image processing, and retina screens took over the world, if someone wanted to draw very fine and precise lines, they relied upon steady hands, cork-backed metal rulers, French curves, and a set of expensive technical pens. The Rapidograph pens I used in college could be a headache to maintain—don’t let that ink dry in the nib!—but the results were worth it: pull one of those pens across a fresh sheet… See more →

I got a speeding ticket the other day, my first in probably more than 25 years. After a decade and a half of not owning a car, L and I reluctantly accepted a hand-me-down Hyundai Tucson a couple years ago so we could be more nimble for the sake of our aging parents. Not coincidentally, I’ve been driving it a lot lately, making regular visits to the memory-care residence my mom now calls home, or… See more →

So I thought I knew as much as I needed to know about the HTML <video> element, and as usual, I was wrong. I knew I could specify a source file with a src attribute on either <video> or a nested <source> element. I knew what to expect from a bunch of other attributes, like autoplay, controls, loop, muted, and the obvious height and width. I knew the poster attribute gave me control over the… See more →

I started redesigning this site in January of 2020. Remember January of 2020? We didn’t know we were living in the Before Times. There were still a few people in the White House who weren’t Fox News hosts or meme coin shills or raw milk evangelists. Our tech bro billionaires hadn’t yet entered the endgame of their persistent campaign to annihilate whatever sense of objective reality we once shared. We were so young.

I wouldn’t… See more →

I was hopeful, if not naive enough to be confident, that enough people were sufficiently fed up with That Fucking Guy to keep him from returning to the White House. But he will, of course, be returning, and while this time his victory isn’t the shock to the system it was in 2016, his popular vote win, a hair shy of a mandate, still stings plenty. The Democratic Party’s subsequent soul-searching might be morbidly comical… See more →

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

This year I seem to be nostalgic for the age of Satanic panic, as I’ll be doing concurrent, chronological deep dives on The Exorcist and The Omen, two… See more →

From the beginning, it was clear that data migration was going to be this redesign’s biggest, most cumbersome task, as the site was growing from 600-some blog posts to untold thousands. I assumed that reformatting the mountain of data arriving in disparate configurations from over a dozen external sources (as described in my previous post) would be the lion’s share of the work, and it would be smooth sailing from there. How wrong I was!… See more →

I’ve done a lot of work on the site in the last two months, and a launch date, while still a ways off, is finally coming into focus. I’ve been working on this redesign very intermittently for over four years now, but at this point I expect to keep at it until it’s done, with as little interruption as possible.

Among other recent advances, I’ve moved the site from Jekyll to Eleventy, chosen a font… See more →

This is the long story of a frivolous, fleeting creative project that came out of nowhere, completely took over my life for a few weeks, and was gone as quickly as it came. Let it be known that I regret none of it!

I’m a proud member of the Philadelphia Psychotronic Film Society. In the organization’s own words:

We carry on the proud tradition set forth by Psychotronic Film Societies around the globe by screening… See more →

I’ll begin by briefly weighing in on five of the most prominent pieces of the 2023 zeitgeist, at least from where I was sitting. Some cynical vibes ahead, so feel free to skip past this part if you’re not in the mood for negative energy:

• Taylor Swift: Gen Z’s version of Beatlemania is a bit of a head-scratcher for me, since I find Taylor Swift’s music to be entirely unremarkable, but that didn’t stop her… See more →

Late last year, my friend Jon (without an h) told me his high school buddy John (with an h) was putting together a band to play Misfits and Danzig tunes for Porchella, the annual Halloween band crawl in Irvington, the town in New York’s Hudson Valley where John lives. John on drums and Jon on guitar. Did I want in? As anyone who has ever spent more than five seconds with me knows, fronting a… See more →

Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films to watch, focusing mostly on ones I haven’t seen before. The schedule, a mix of theatrical screenings and home viewings, is published for posterity and for the sake of anyone who might like to join me.

I’ll often use this month as an opportunity to catch up on a franchise, and this year, for reasons surpassing understanding, the new, tenth installment of the Saw… See more →

I’ve been revising a metadata structure for blog posts and a sitemap for a few months now, and since I haven’t felt the need to tweak either of them in awhile, they’re probably solid enough to document here.

Metadata structure

The blog post metadata has been developed to accommodate a wide variety of post types, to give me a lot of flexibility in how to present them, and to give users a lot of options… See more →

In my previous post, I mentioned Tinnitus Tracker, my standalone concert diary site which can be browsed by genre, artist, venue, city, state, and year. I had been planning to continue updating that site concurrently with V7, but it recently occurred to me that it makes a lot more sense to just consolidate the two sites, which in hindsight seems incredibly obvious.

For one thing, I’ve never been satisfied with the Tinnitus Tracker design, and… See more →

Every static site generator has idiosyncrasies, and Eleventy is no different. As is the case pretty much any time I try out software, I find that Eleventy often does things differently than I think it ought to, and it doesn’t always make itself as clear as I think it could. A couple of examples:

• Eleventy has no built-in mechanism for date-based archives. A common blogging convention I’ve adhered to for many years involves organizing post… See more →

I’ve given my V7 redesign project the unofficial tagline “The Procrastination Destination” since the significant progress it’s seen in the past few months has come mostly in stolen moments, some of which turned into extremely productive (and perhaps troublingly obsessive) deep dives. This recent movement has been pretty non-linear, and the tasks in play are all interdependent enough that none of them are really done until all of them are, but I seem to be… See more →

• Translated from the JavaScript in Sean Yen’s Easing equations
• Illustrations adapted from Andrey Sitnik and Ivan Solovev’s Easings.net

Example usage:

duration = 30
for frame in range(duration):
    return easeInOutQuad(frame/duration)

linear

def linear(t):
    return t

easeInSine

def easeInSine(t):
    import math
    return -math.cos(t * math.pi / 2) + 1

easeOutSine

def easeOutSine(t):
    import math
    return math.sin(t * math.pi / 2)

easeInOutSine

def easeInOutSine(t):
    import math
    return -(math.cos(math.pi * t) - 1) / 2

easeInQuad

def easeInQuad(t):
    return t * t

easeOutQuad

def easeOutQuad(t):
    return -t * (t - 2)

easeInOutQuad

def easeInOutQuad(t):
    t *= 2
    if t < 1:
        return t * t / 2
    else:
        t … See more →

Maude

Leah and I became dog parents early in 2022, adopting a 15-pound, two-year-old Jack Russell / Chihuahua mix. Knowing Roe v. Wade would soon be overturned, we named her Maude, after the Bea Arthur character, who in 1972 was the first sitcom character to have an abortion. Living with Maude has been a big adjustment, but after getting over the initial hump, I’m not sure how we ever lived without her. She loves belly… See more →

I’m excited to be back in Brooklyn this weekend! @kellianderson is organizing what promises to be a delightful holiday art book fair, and I’ll be selling all issues of my algorithmic art zine, Plus Equals, and giving away stickers and postcards. Come say hello and get some gifts for people you want to impress and/or befuddle. ✨

Dec 3–4 (Sat and Sun), 1–5pm 366 Devoe St, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (in E Williamsburg near the Grand St stop… See more →

It’s been nearly two years since I posted an update on this project! I’ve been moving it forward slowly and quietly since then, and I’ll share some details about those activities in due time, as well as details about how work and life changes have introduced new and different demands on my time and somewhat expanded the scope of the site. But for now, the most important takeaway is that my fundamental vision for V7… See more →

I’ve got a table at @phillyzinefest from 12–5 today. Come by and say hello!

I’ll be selling zines and giving away swag at @PhillySoapbox’s Philly Zine Fest tomorrow afternoon. Come say hello!

phillyzinefest.org plusequals.art

Happy Halloween! Here are a few quick notes about this year’s design for Robtober, my annual horror movie marathon.

The ransom letters

The ransom note concept for the title screen came to me in the middle of the night, and I don’t remember if it was inspired by something specific. But in my subsequent research, I read the entire Wikipedia article about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, so if that’s a knowledge hole your pub… See more →

Hint: Each letter is from a different decade, from the 1930s to the 2000s (but not in chronological order). twitter.com/robweychert/st…

Here’s a fun game for a Friday: Try to identify the eight horror movie posters that the ransom letters on the Robtober 2022 title screen came from. (I’m looking in @iamrumz’s and @NickSherman’s direction, but all are welcome to play.) twitter.com/robweychert/st…

Every October, I broaden my cinematic horizons by putting together a big schedule of horror movies I haven’t seen yet. Alas, this year’s plans have been upended by my abduction, and for some reason, my mysterious captors aren’t interested in money. Instead, their ransom demand is that people watch the movies I’ve scheduled. These dudes seem like they mean business, so if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it. But if you’re too… See more →

@eleven_ty @pdehaan Evergreen thanks also to @stuntbox, without whom I might never have gotten past being intimidated by the command line and static site generators. They’ve improved my web life so much over the past seven years. 🙌🏻

I’ve been coding plusequals.art entirely by hand up until now (apart from the SVG), but I’m happy to say I’m just about done moving it onto @eleven_ty, and it’s been easier than expected! Big thanks to @pdehaan for his help with the final hurdle: github.com/11ty/eleventy/…

Plus Equals #6 shipping to subscribers today!

plusequals.art/06/ shop.robweychert.com/products/plus-…

Or if you prefer your scribbles all in front of you at once, there is a poster: shop.robweychert.com/products/plus-…

If you’re into the idea of paging through hundreds of systematically generated scribbles, Plus Equals #6 is just what the doctor ordered: shop.robweychert.com/products/plus-…

I’m looking for more ways to share what I’ve learned. If you would be interested in a workshop on creative coding, design, and/or zinemaking, please take this brief survey: forms.gle/He9L6rzudCrty6…

As always, you can read Plus Equals online for free, and if you enjoy my work, please consider supporting it by buying a zine or poster from my shop. shop.robweychert.com

Also included: a crash course in the (relatively uncomplicated!) mechanics of Bézier curves, and some topical handwringing on the subject of AI art.

For this issue, I wanted to see if a series of loose, seemingly spontaneous images could be produced via a rigid system. Spoiler: They can, and I’ve algorithmically generated 562 unique scribbles to prove it.

The sixth issue of Plus Equals, my algorithmic art zine, is out now! plusequals.art/06/

In addition to being a bit of an homage to Reid Miles and Saul and Elaine Bass, this project gave me a good opportunity to play around with a Python script I wrote for @drawbotapp to make abstract geometric images from linear halftones. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

I love that @marcthiele always commissions inspiring opening titles to kick off his @btconf events, and I had a lot of fun putting this jazzy sequence together for this year’s Berlin edition: vimeo.com/744154897

Did you know I make a zine about algorithmic art called Plus Equals? You don’t have to be a computer nerd to enjoy it. You can read it for free online and help support it by buying the print edition and other merch. Check it out!

plusequals.art shop.robweychert.com

First batch of Plus Equals orders ready to go! 📦🚛✈️ shop.robweychert.com

Plus Equals is also now available in print! Visit my new shop to buy subscriptions, individual issues, and posters. Plus Equals will always be free to read online, but if you want to support my work, buying something at the shop is a great way to do that. shop.robweychert.com

For this issue, inspired by Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, and Battle Chess, I designed a chess set and merged its pieces 57 different ways.

The fifth issue of Plus Equals, my algorithmic art zine, is out now! plusequals.art/05/

One of the more satisfying pieces of merch to come out of something I designed (in this case, new branding and website for @philamoca).

Excited to unveil the new branding and site design I did for @PhilaMOCA, a beloved Philly institution for underground culture: philamoca.org

I’m going to focus on making art full-time for awhile and see what happens, but if you know of a design and/or illustration opportunity you think might suit me, please do hit me up. 🚀

On my way out the door, I wrote about the article layout framework I designed and built for @propublica, which feels like an appropriate coda to this chapter of my career. propublica.org/article/inside…