Atul Varma @toolness

I enjoy design, coding, and tinkering at @NotionHQ. Formerly @justfixnyc, @18F & @mozilla. @processingOrg 2016 fellow and @eyebeamnyc alum. portfolio.toolness.org Brooklyn Joined October 2007

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

A year ago I wouldn't care, but now that I play @honkaistarrail, I have thoughts. I find Honkai's battle pass healthier than subscriptions, because their benefits are retroactive for the month they're bought in--with subs, I feel pressured to play to "get my money's worth".

Game From Scratch @gamefromscratch

2 years ago

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

If you told me a year ago that my favorite game of 2023 would be a free-to-play, live service gacha game from China, I would have been incredulous, but here we are. This post captures a good deal of what I love about Honkai Star Rail: pcgamer.com/no-game-captur…

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

this is a beautiful paean to view source cordite.org.au/poetry/game/so…

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

Finished watching my first film on @mubi and was pretty pleased with everything. My favorite bit of UX: when the movie is over, they just let the credits roll, instead of shoving the next piece of content in your face.

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

I love this paragraph from @JordanMagnuson's gamepoemsbook.com. If not for this, I would have simply kept telling myself I ought to write a game poem, and left it there. But this paragraph made me finally learn Bitsy and create one.

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

I think my favorite technology of the past 15 years is @firefox's URL bar. This thing is my long-term memory. I can type in a few words I vaguely remember from a page I visited years ago and boom, I'm there.

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Atul Varma @toolness

2 years ago

Today I fixed my first open-source bug for work. Our product uses Mermaid, but a flaw could cause the user's browser to hang: github.com/mermaid-js/mer… It felt good to give back to the community. I really enjoy my job but I've missed contributing to open-source projects.

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Atul Varma @toolness

3 years ago

Even though I'm currently on iOS, I've started viewing green message bubbles as punk. As in "Wow, you have the audacity to defy Apple and do your own thing, despite the implied social stigma of the green bubble. Respect."

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Atul Varma @toolness

3 years ago

This is what I've been working on for the past few weeks!

Notion @NotionHQ

3 years ago

This is what I've been working on for the past few weeks!

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Atul Varma @toolness

3 years ago

Marveling at Mediawiki's ability to always redirect me back to where I originally wanted to go, through account creation, login--any kind of intermediary. So few sites are capable of this anymore. Most are amnesiac and just send me back to the homepage.

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Atul Varma @toolness

3 years ago

My dad completely missed the computing boat in the 80s and 90s, but he's trying to learn now, and it's hard because all this is tacit knowledge now. I *really* wish tutorials like this still existed for folks like him. Maybe I should just send him the 1984 Mac User's Manual.