Thinking about using my digital tabletop setup as a kind of combined text editor, file viewer, clipboard and desktop: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN3W...
Sending text and screenshots onto the digital tabletop
YouTube video by Grant Custer
youtube.com
grant
@grantcuster.com
Slowly going out on a limb. Making experimental creative tools on the web at http://constraint.systems. He/him. grantcuster.com
I'm going to "Terra Ignota NYC Reading Group #1".
Terra Ignota NYC Reading Group #1
Join us for the inaugural event of the Terra Ignota NYC reading group, meeting at Forever Brewing in Gowanus, on August 26th! We'll be discussing the first book of the series Too Like the Lightning. The group is going to be meeting monthly, on the last Wednesday of the month! To keep up with group and get an email for future events, subscribe at tinyc.leaflet.pub
atmo.rsvp
Experimenting with throwing into the trash on the tabletop. Much better than selecting and hitting keyboard delete.
I liked Andy Matuschak's use of the word "physics" to describe a set of rules in software and I've been thinking about why. Physics in the real world constrains and enables what we can build. It supports a shared understanding of how things operate. feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-07...
Thinking : Software physics - Feed
I like Andy Matuschak's use of the word "physics" to describe a set of rules in software [tn his talk on the possibilities LLMs open up for programming](https://andymatuschak.org/tat/). Two examples: ...
feed.grantcuster.com
Behind the scenes of the current digital tabletop setup: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN_q...
Digital tabletop writing experiment
YouTube video by Grant Custer
youtube.com
The artist compresses their perception of the moment and the scene, then the viewer opens it back up. The unfolding does not fully recover the artist's experience -- and that's even better. The viewer interpolates in their own experience to the shape provided. feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-07...
Thinking : Art as compression - Feed
David Hockney talking about the difference between photography and painting: > ...the reason you can’t look at a photograph for a long time is because there’s virtually no time in it - the imbalance ...
feed.grantcuster.com
Trying out canvas-based paragraph reordering pared with a live document preview.
Experimenting with calibrating the overhead camera. Using OpenCV to process out the lens distortion. Book text is just readable at 4k.
New physical computing setup test run: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGRu...
New physical computing setup
YouTube video by Grant Custer
youtube.com
New from me on Constraint Systems: Branch - A collaborative collage of tree and branch photos. Take a photo and trace the flow to add to a branch. branch.constraint.systems
I read The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin. Finishing a reread of probably my favorite fantasy series. A lot of questions for this one to resolve (sometimes felt rushed through) but by the end it achieves it. I really like how the stone eaters' stories develop. feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-07...
Books : The Stone Sky - Feed
 I moved a little slower through this one, mostly because I found a lot of the Nassun chapters tough ...
feed.grantcuster.com
Today I started in on blog revamp. Overall I'm thinking about how I want my software and computer to work in a world where LLMs make adding features/cheap. I want to avoid bloating the surface area (particularly for one-off admin feature experiments). feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-07...
Thinking : Blog rework and composition - Feed
Today I started in on blog revamp. Partly because I wanted to experiment with [Matt Pocock's LLM skill workflow](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/blob/main/skills/engineering/setup-matt-pocock-ski...
feed.grantcuster.com
Experimenting with mini-browsers limited to specific urls or domains. Clicking on external links saves them to a list (that possibly you then feed into a different mini browser?). www.youtube.com/watch?v=PytZ...
Constraint Browsers - thinking about mini browsers to keep you focused
YouTube video by Grant Custer
youtube.com
Put together a prototype writerdeck with the modos dev kit. Direct sunlight does work. It's a bit bulky and I should probably use one of my minimal low-profile keyboards, but I do love typing on the kinesis the most. In some other world I'd cut up and mod the kinesis body directly.
Experimenting with putting the embedded texts from cosine.constraint.systems into UMAP and then fitting to a grid. Not as glanceable as images would be but I think there's probably some interesting moves to make here.
sphere-paint.constraint.systems got a little rowdy and then somebody came in and erased (drew over with white) the whole thing.
grant@grantcuster.com · 2mo agoSomeone has drawn a nice flower-eye (amongst many other things).
Delighted by the Marble Answering Machine by Durrell Bishop durrellbishop.com/ideasresearch via Matt Webb's post on form interconnected.org/home/2026/06... I'd love to make something like this
Wikimedia concepts embedded and then mapped to a sphere with UMAP. Trying out topic clusters as continents. Not really sure where it's going.
I read The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin. The dedication is "For those who have no choice but to prepare their children for the battlefield" and you feel that all the way through the book. feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-06...
Books : The Obelisk Gate - Feed
 I'm trying to spread out the series I read so it is a testament to how good <a href="https://feed.gr...
feed.grantcuster.com
Putting together a personal RSS reader that always shows the original articles. With vim-style navigation.
Made a site that takes objects from wikipedia and turns them into endless I Spy > neal.fun/wiki-spy/
I saw the bowls (clinamen v.11 by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot). A perfect generative piece because you can immediately understand how it operates but the results are no less magical. It feels very like something from nature in that way.
I read The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin The first time I read this I didn't know "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". Having that context - that the conversation about "who are you willing to sacrifice" has this history of being explored - added another layer. feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-06...
Books : The Fifth Season - Feed
 The first time I read this I hadn't read my fantasy. Having read and enjoyed a bunch now this still ...
feed.grantcuster.com
Experimenting more with tiling at different levels-of-detail on a sphere. Trying to make a little world.
Trying out the small Modos Paper Monitor dev kit on an overcast day at the park. The high refresh rate is impressive and seems great for writing and coding. Screen is glossy though. I've held off on writerdeck builds for a while but it's really tempting to try and put something together with this.
Thinking about how computers can support intentional work. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7pb...
Attention architecture - thinking about todos, timeblocks, and calendars
YouTube video by Grant Custer
youtube.com
I read Shape by Jordan Ellenberg I always feel mixed about reading popular surveys of a topic. They're never as exciting as reading something more targeted and idiosyncratic. It's a lot like listening to a greatest hits album. feed.grantcuster.com/post/2026-06...
Books : Shape - Feed
 I always feel mixed about reading popular surveys of a topic. They're never as exciting as readi...
feed.grantcuster.com