Tim Holman: Exploring Small Ideas for Big Gains

Introduction and Personal Projects (0m00s)

Tim Holman introduces himself and his philosophy of creating "truly useless" things on the web. He showcases a variety of his projects including The Useless Web, Wow'en Wilson, smelvetica (which received a cease and desist from Monotype), and Obnoxious.CSS.

"I'm a tinkerer, tuner, tamperer, kind of I just like to make things."

"These little GitHub Corners if you've ever seen those with the cool little handshake, that's a me thing."

Core Philosophy (2m30s)

Tim outlines the main themes of his talk: finding inspiration in everyday things, indulging ideas unwaveringly, exploring small ideas for their hidden benefits, and embracing weirdness. He emphasises how going down any pathway, whether big or small, will always prove useful.

"It's about indulging the ideas that you have and the pathways that you want to take and kind of unwaveringly going down those roads."

"It's about kind of the benefits of exploring small ideas and kind of showing that when you go down a pathway whether it be big or small it's going to be useful to you no matter what."

Project 1: The DVD Screensaver Problem (4m00s)

Tim describes becoming mesmerised by a DVD screensaver that never hits the corner of the screen perfectly. He explores the mathematics behind when the logo will hit the corner, discovering formulas involving lowest common multiples and screen dimensions.

"There's something about this DVD thing that never hits the corner."

"How much time has been wasted on this not hitting the corner? Of my life personally but everybody's lives?"

Solving the DVD Problem (8m00s)

Rather than just speeding up the animation, Tim develops a solution where the logo detects when it will come close to a corner and imperceptibly adjusts its trajectory. Despite seeming pointless, this project taught him about Canvas, RequestAnimationFrame, Bezier curves, and line intersection mathematics.

"Three bounces, feels fully natural, you don't feel like you're cheated."

"That was a lot to gain from messing around with the screen saver on whatever afternoon."

Project 2: Meditation for People Who Can't Meditate (11m00s)

Tim explores his inability to meditate traditionally and decides to create his own form of meditation. He looks for inspiration in menial tasks around the house, ultimately focusing on light switches as a meditative action.

"Meditation to me is a menial task completely because you're literally doing nothing."

"I was looking around the house for inspiration not on Dribble at the menial things that I have to do every day like brushing my teeth."

The Zen Zone (15m00s)

Tim creates various meditative games including a switch-flipping game, spiral drawing, and circle-breaking exercises. These combine menial tasks with captivating gameplay to create a form of active meditation suited to his needs.

"I found that this is meditating. And as I switched each one I just kind of fell into a deeper and calmer trance."

"You can't go too fast you know because you miss the switch and you waste a click."

Project 3: Buddy - The Browser Extension Gone Wrong (18m40s)

Tim creates a Chrome extension companion called Buddy, initially with different voice options. He then allows friends to contribute code daily, leading to increasingly chaotic features including Reddit shaming, random tab closing, and pizza ordering.

"Double Reddit, nice."

"Triple Reddit, you're a real power user now."

Buddy's Descent into Chaos (24m00s)

The collaborative experiment spirals out of control with features like Google search fading, image distortion, and celebrity quote announcements. Tim documents the increasingly hostile behaviour of his creation.

"Never turn me off again, I get lonely."

"Too many times I'm going to randomly close one in five seconds."

Project 4: Generative Art and the Tool Belt Concept (28m00s)

Tim explores generative art by breaking it down into fundamental components: lines, tiling, displacement, recursion, and repetition. He introduces the concept of building a "tool belt" of techniques that compound over time.

"Each time I've built one of these things... each one of those had a different complete skill set."

"The more advanced you get the bigger your tool set is and the more able you are to deal with other situations."

Building Educational Tools (36m00s)

Tim creates Tutorial Markdown and Generative Artistry to help others learn through step-by-step code evolution. These tools show the thought process and incremental changes that lead to complex outcomes, rather than just presenting finished code.

"You don't see the breakdown of their tool set."

"When you have a block of code you pretty much insert it from, a from and a to."

Conclusion (42m00s)

Tim reiterates that any idea, no matter how small or seemingly useless, has value. He guarantees that exploring these ideas will provide learning opportunities and expand one's technical tool belt.

"Any idea that you have has complete value."

"Going down those paths will provide you with something, I guarantee it. It's the Tim Holman guarantee."