Jonathan Romano

Oh hi bunch of new followers who found me somehow 😄 Quiet for the moment due to life, but hopefully soon you can expect some thoughts here on software, art, music, design, community, collaborative and hybrid intelligence, games and game development, open source, citizen science, etc!

….oh no, I’ve discovered rgb smart lights are actually kinda nice

The modern research ecosystem of online tools and communities is controlled by for-profit companies. But we think that researchers should be the priority - not the product. So, we're announcing Aster ID: not-for-profit Atmosphere account hosting for researchers.

Officially on a self-hosted PDS - cheers @tranquil.farm! Is this the start of my atproto era? We shall see :D

Been thinking about this a fair amount recently (especially as I’ve been doing a bunch of proposal writing and such) - how even mundane writing tells you something about the person who wrote it.

I am going to make so much use of this

It was a joy to chat with Ronen, get some insight into the direction Cosmik and co are going, and explore all the shared vision we have (which only seemed to increase as we went!). Also inspired some exciting concepts for the future of participatory research (including with @atproto.science!)

I do love the classic formulation of “naming things, cache invalidation, and off by one errors”, but if you think about it they’re all communication problems 😛 For real though, this is such an important part of what we do!

‘git history reword <commit>` 🎉 Thank you, one more minor inconvenience I encounter every so often that now need not be an inconvenience!

Look I know I don't usually post about stuff like this, but... I am so looking forward to it, it should be SO much fun. And for a good cause! Sad my Sunday plans were cancelled but glad I'll be able to catch it ^.^

…magnetized star? Huh!

This is the best product review I’ve read: samhenri.gold/blog/2026031... It doesn’t matter if you’re interested in the MacBook Neo or not; this is the kind of essay that makes you think about the potential of technology and the joys of exploration.

Vite+ is open source under MIT and free for everyone.

Just thinking about this again these past two days The exact same game can succeed or fail based on whether the people jumping in are getting the game they expected A lot of the wrong players -- players that won't like it -- jumping in to play is really gonna color perception of that game.

The community being built on display here is so inspiring 💚

My heart is so full tonight at this concert. Amazing music, and especially a joy to get to chat with the group. Haven’t smiled like this in ages, I so needed that. 🙂

we have 6 different clouds all collaborating: - Dynamic mask clouds based on "cloud cover" parameter - High up stylized cirrus clouds to create direction\interest - Far static horizon cumulonimbus, to create a "back plane" - 2x static midground clouds for parralax -"bounce plane" clouds

Oh no, I’ve found a new obsession.

Oh hey I was wondering about the viability of this. Want to look into implementing this under @vite.dev Vitepress (for the @frameshifter.org site and eventually my own once I finally get around to migrating off VuePress and implementing the blog stuff I’ve learned from building that)

Corollary to an argument I've been making recently: If you're applying AI to solve something for you, maybe what you actually have is a UX problem. open.substack.com/pub/signalsn...

A couple months late, but finally got to write about some exciting work that was finally published and the broader impacts. Link to the full blog post in thread!

ProtoPro is no longer invite-only, and we've moved the app to the regular domain: www.protopro.blue

My obsession for a decade: Parts of games are real, not fiction. Like, you are not really becoming a powerful knight when you gain a virtual level. That's fiction, fantasy. But you DO gain real skills. In manipulating buttons, game tactics etc. In multiplayer games, the friendships are real.

I was amazed when I saw @rachael-kretsch.bsky.social present about this in an @rdaslab.bsky.social meeting. ROOL and GOLLD are stunning (dare I say beautiful) structures. She presented about this for @eternagame.org last year too! Recording available at eternagame.org/eternacon/2025 #RNASky 🧪

EternaJS in TypeSlayer ^.^

It’s only networking if it comes from the LinkedIn region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling friendship

Man, what a fun way to spend Christmas, curled up doing a score study of John Powell’s score for HTTYD with a fresh copy of the book from Omni and the deluxe soundtrack on play. Really gives me a deeper appreciation for this fantastic score

Huh! This is neat

I wrote an article about dialogue choice as part of a narrative designer’s toolkit *aside* from branching, instead considering how choice can invite us to *perform* a character. My case study is South of Circle’s beautiful fuzzy meaning-making (using symbols instead of words). 💜 Give it a go!

I learned about Brian Eno’s “airport music” when I was in college. Just came across this cool overview by @arbitersofsound.bsky.social of a different but related device in Japan for train arrivals and departures: youtu.be/-KxQIEhsFQk?...

This is huge. I’ve tried doing type performance analysis before, and it was pretty arcane. This is a big step forward and will be super helpful for improving DX. Also, it’s just straight up cool.