KAELAN.FYI / RESEARCH DESK 44 ITEMS / 8 PROJECTS
Research
Source notes, literature reviews, and working documents before they become garden notes.
writing (7)
- Jan 4 The Art of Description Lit ReviewResearch on effective descriptive writing—when to describe, telling details, sensory language, avoiding purple prose, and lessons from masters
- Jan 4 Essay & Narrative Structure Lit ReviewFrameworks for organizing essays and stories—from inverted pyramid to hero's journey to braided essays
- Jan 4 Grammar & Punctuation Crash Course Lit ReviewThe 80/20 of English grammar—rules that cover most cases
- Jan 4 How to Write Well Lit ReviewSynthesized principles from masters of clear prose—Orwell, Zinsser, Graham, Pinker, and others
- Jan 4 Self-Editing Lit ReviewThe revision process—line editing, cutting ruthlessly, common mistakes, and how professionals approach manuscripts
- Jan 4 Writing Dialogue Lit ReviewThe craft of dialogue—subtext, distinct voices, pacing, and lessons from Elmore Leonard, Hemingway, and Mamet
- Jan 4 Writing for the Web Lit ReviewHow people read online, formatting for screens, hooks, SEO basics, and examples of great web writers
maintenance (7)
- Jan 24 Bicycle Anatomy Lit ReviewA complete guide to bicycle components—what each part is called, what it does, and how it works
- Jan 24 Bicycle Maintenance Lit ReviewEssential maintenance for the home mechanic—the M-check, chain care, tire repair, and derailleur adjustment
- Jan 24 Bicycle Maintenance Tools Lit ReviewA deep guide to every tool in the home mechanic's workshop—what each does, how it works, and why it matters
- Jan 24 Essential Maintenance Skills Lit ReviewPractical care for the things that last—knife sharpening, cast iron seasoning, leather conditioning, and tool preservation
- Jan 24 The Philosophy of Maintenance Lit ReviewWhy care matters—from Pirsig's motorcycle to Crawford's shop class, and what we lose when we stop fixing things
- Jan 24 Surly Preamble Lit ReviewA versatile steel commuter built for real-world durability—Surly's entry-level bike that refuses to compromise on frame quality
- Jan 24 Surly Preamble Maintenance Lit ReviewBike-specific maintenance for the Preamble's steel frame, microSHIFT Acolyte drivetrain, and Avid BB7 brakes
reading (6)
- Jan 24 Building a Reading Practice Lit ReviewSystems for reading more and better—from daily habits to the anti-library, and the question of what to read at all
- Jan 24 How to Read a Book Lit ReviewA synthesis of reading frameworks from Adler, Bacon, Schopenhauer, Woolf, and modern practitioners—how to move from passive consumption to active understanding
- Jan 24 How to Read Poetry Lit ReviewA different kind of reading—sound, silence, line breaks, and the collaboration between poet and reader
- Jan 24 Improving Verbal Intelligence Lit ReviewThe trainable skill of thinking in words—vocabulary, fluency, articulation, and the feedback loop between reading, writing, and speaking
- Jan 24 Music for Focus Lit ReviewWhat the research says about listening while reading and working—when sound helps, when silence wins, and what to choose
- Jan 24 Reading Like a Writer Lit ReviewHow to reverse-engineer great prose—the sentence-level attention that transforms readers into craftsmen
Web Graphics (9)
- Jan 24 Building Procreate for the Web Lit ReviewState-of-the-art architecture for a professional raster painting app in Chrome
- Jan 4 Building Figma Today Lit ReviewState of the art stack for a professional graphics tool in 2025
- Jan 4 Loro Dev · article How to build Figma-style multiplayer with conflict-free data types
- Jan 4 Figma's Rendering Architecture ReadingEvan Wallace (Figma CTO) · article How Figma built a professional design tool in the browser
- Jan 4 Zed Industries · article How Zed renders like a videogame — SDF primitives, immediate+retained hybrid
- Jan 4 Rust + WASM for Browser Graphics ReadingVarious · article State of the art for high-performance browser rendering in 2025
- Jan 4 Vello: GPU Compute 2D Renderer ReadingLinebender · article Next-gen vector graphics rendering with GPU compute shaders
- Jan 4 WebGPU Future Roadmap (2025-2027) Lit ReviewWhere browser graphics is heading — bindless, ray tracing, mesh shaders, WebNN
- Jan 4 WebGPU vs WebGL ReadingMDN / W3C · article The successor to WebGL - what changes and why it matters
stationery (1)
- Jan 24 Stationery Lit ReviewA guide to fountain pens, ink, paper, and notebooks—the tools of deliberate handwriting
creative-process (3)
- Jan 4 Building a Writing Practice Lit ReviewSustainable habits, daily word counts, schedules, accountability, and what working writers actually do
- Jan 4 The Creative Process Lit ReviewWhere ideas come from, the four stages of creativity, incubation, and practical techniques for generating more and better ideas
- Jan 4 Writer's Block Lit ReviewThe psychology, types, and practical solutions—from freewriting to silencing the inner critic
author-studies (7)
- Jan 4 David Foster Wallace's Craft Lit ReviewSincerity, irony, footnotes, maximalism, and the dangers of copying a style without its purpose
- Jan 4 Joan Didion's Craft Lit ReviewSentence rhythm, grammar as camera, fragmented structure, and writing to discover thought
- Jan 4 Annie Dillard's Craft Lit ReviewAttention, sensory detail, revision, and the discipline of spending your best material now
- Jan 4 Hemingway's Craft Lit ReviewOmission, concrete language, submerged dialogue, and revision
- Jan 4 Le Guin's Craft Lit ReviewSound, sentence variety, exposition, point of view, and steering a story by ear
- Jan 4 Orwell's Craft Lit ReviewClarity, political language, the six rules, and the limits of rule-based prose
- Jan 4 Vonnegut's Craft Lit ReviewThe eight rules, story shapes, plain style, and respect for a reader's time
E-Ink Display (4)
- Jan 4 E-Ink Training Display Working DocRaspberry Pi Zero 2 W + 7.5" e-ink display for calm, ambient training data
- Jan 4 speedyg0nz · article Prior art - battery-powered e-ink calendar with Google integration
- Jan 4
- Jan 4 Waveshare 7.5" E-Paper HAT V2 ReadingWaveshare · article Technical reference for the 800×480 e-ink display