Monthly Notes:#
About Friendships
No one likes friendships based on mutual exploitation. Although this is one of the social rules in adult society, it especially bothers me when relationships fade over time and can only be maintained for this purpose. It makes me feel indifferent, and subconsciously, I tend to distance myself from relationships that may have exploitative tendencies. After expressing this to Gemini, its summary was, “In short, your aversion to ‘mutual exploitation’ relationships, along with the resulting ‘indifference’ and tendency to distance yourself, is an important step towards maturity and self-protection in interpersonal relationships. It makes you clearer about what you want and don’t want, allowing you to establish healthier and more genuine connections. This is not indifference, but wisdom.”
The Useless is Useful
I want to introduce an interesting website—Japan's "Daily Portal Z," which is somewhat niche and entertaining, with about 1.2 million views per month, aimed at publishing articles that are “interesting but not very useful.”
For example, the first article I read was submitted by a designer in 2016: he discovered that the product names on supermarket receipts could form a type of Japanese poem called "senryu" (similar to a humorous poem in Chinese). He traveled around local stores, collected and arranged receipt items, and created a series of “product senryu.” He eventually summarized it in an article, which indeed turned out to be not very useful, but the process was quite enjoyable to watch. His personal homepage also left a deep impression: “Engaged in design, writing, and video content creation, I think every day about how to enjoy each day.”
The collected senryu poems (following the 5-7-5 pattern of Japanese phonetics)
This inspired me. In today's society, the prevailing values, especially in work, tend to emphasize efficiency and usefulness. However, there are always some people who, outside of work, are fascinated by doing things that have no value. The lack of value in these activities is not important; they may not bring direct benefits, but they can bring curiosity, joy, creativity, and relaxation. Perhaps that is the most important thing—that “uselessness” is precisely another form of “usefulness.”
Website name: Daily Portal Z
🔗: https://dailyportalz.jp/kiji
Monthly Record#
1. Efficiency Tools#
Clock Widget: Hands Time
🔗: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hands-time-minimalist-widget/id6462440720
Best of the month, it looks great, and there are plenty of dial options, with a very aesthetic design. Recommended by Basic Apple Guy
Tracking Tool: Tooboo
🔗: Search TooBoo on the App Store
A navigation software for tracking exercise routes, supports offline maps, can generate screenshot videos, has a decent interface, and is specifically adapted for Apple Watch, making it very friendly for outdoor enthusiasts.
Image Compression Tool: PixZip
🔗: https://pixzip.cutelabs.in/
A tool for batch compressing images, it is very smooth and simple, allows for custom export sizes, and the compression quality is quite good. However, it requires a payment of $9.9 (which I have purchased, and it's not bad). A cheaper alternative is this Compressio, which only costs 19.9 RMB.
Quick Capture Tool - Capture
🔗: https://apps.apple.com/cn/app/%E5%BF%AB%E9%80%9F%E7%AC%94%E8%AE%B0-capture/id6458535284
A web content capture tool, also serves as a temporary transfer station. Its advantage is good support for Apple platforms, even supporting visionOS, and allows exporting to other platforms. I have paid for it, hoping it helps my workflow (most of this month's content used it, and it's okay).
Web Clock: Timeface
🔗: https://www.timeface.co/
A beautiful web clock; I also recommended a color value clock last time, which is very comfortable to have in a separate window.
NoTab
🔗: https://notab.wand.tools/zh
A link preview plugin for browsers, surprisingly only costs $19.9. What about the $19.9 I spent on MaxFocus (which had more AI features and looked a bit nicer 🤏)
Travel Guide: Packing List
🔗: https://m.okjike.com/originalPosts/6876e3fa8a94744e87e8d90e
A very detailed packing list compiled by the original poster after spending two months traveling through four countries in Central Asia, a must-have for travelers.
2. Text Insights#
What Makes a Person Cool?
“A new study suggests that these individuals often share six common specific traits: cool people are typically perceived as extroverted, hedonistic, powerful, adventurous, open, and autonomous.”
The Future of Cursor Design
The design director of Cursor believes that AI makes software design more like sculpture: “AI makes software design more like ‘sculpture’ rather than traditional upfront planning. Designers can create prototypes first and then continuously adjust and reshape, rather than locking in all the details from the start. Quickly creating ‘playable things’ is more important than having a detailed plan beforehand.”
Notion founder Ivan Zhao also has a similar metaphor, he believes that AI is like brewing: “If traditional software development is like building a bridge, it requires precise planning and execution. However, AI's construction method is completely different; it is more like brewing. You cannot fully control the outcome; you can only create an environment for it to develop on its own. Therefore, it is more like a brewing process, and you cannot force AI.”
3. Design Related#
AI Prompt Tool: Prompy
GPT-4 generates prompts for images in different styles, combining text and images.
Visual Inspiration: Plottie
Contains many icons or pie charts used in academia for visual classification references, suitable for finding inspiration for data visualization styles.
AI Lacks Taste, Details Determine Success
The curator of the “Taste Canteen” weekly, also the founder of ZuoWan, design engineer Cali Castle shared insights on going overseas for entrepreneurship in “AI Lacks Taste, Details Determine Success.” The PPT design is very exquisite and worth learning from.
Conversations on Quality
A series of industry interviews launched by Linear on “quality,” filled with cognitive insights.
iOS 26 App Icon Mockup Generator
A template generator for iOS 26 app icons, upload product icons to generate beautiful iOS 26 app icon displays.
Glass3D:
An online 3D glass effect generator, implemented purely in CSS.
4. Other Interesting Finds#
- The Complete Pokemon Dataset This dataset contains detailed information about 802 Pokémon from all seven generations, including base stats, types, abilities, and other features.
- macOS Icon History — Basic Apple Guy The evolution of macOS system icons over the past few decades, including icons for system preferences, folders, notes, reminders, messages, calculators, and more.
- FliiipBook A web-based GIF animation application for creating simple hand-drawn style fun GIFs (up to 24 frames, 2 seconds).
- Apple Park Wallpapers — Basic Apple Guy, Apple Park wallpapers. Beautiful, high-definition, and the homepage also has built-in Vision Pro wallpapers.
- 顔アイコンジェネレーター Z | 人物アイコンをサクッと作成 A self-made outline style head avatar generator with many customizable widgets.
- Chinese Technical Document Writing Style Guide — 中文技术文档写作风格指南 A style guide for writing Chinese technical documents.
- Pointer Instrument - Nudus Blanc, this mouse is really cool, but unfortunately, it seems to look good but not be very functional.
- Reading QR codes without a computer!, teaches you how to visually recognize QR codes, which can be quite straining on the eyes.
- AI Tool: EasyEdit An open-source image editing tool based on Flux Kontext, where users can easily modify images by just entering a prompt. I tried it, and it works well; removing elements is much faster than in Photoshop.
That's all. Thank you for reading. Feel free to subscribe, and I recommend using folo to read my RSS. Also, thank you for the likes and comments that give me encouragement.
WeChat: guonlin
Email: [email protected]