diff --git a/daily-finds.log.md b/daily-finds.log.md index d4028f0..b0d3703 100644 --- a/daily-finds.log.md +++ b/daily-finds.log.md @@ -1106,3 +1106,10 @@ Pattern notes this run: - **TidBITS continues 403**: 4 consecutive runs blocked to WebFetch. Try `curl` with Safari UA before next run; if also blocked, flag `fetch: skip`. - **OSXDaily mostly Apple-press-release territory this cycle**: very little actionable for the find brief — 11 of 12 most recent posts are iOS/macOS update news or deal announcements. Worth a `cadence: as-needed` flag — they still occasionally surface a real find (May 9 dial-up ISP was an example) but the signal-to-noise has degraded. - **Eclectic Light essay-vs-tutorial split**: half of Howard Oakley's recent output is art-history essays ("On Reflection," "Medium and Message: Pottery") that don't fit our brief. The macOS-internals posts continue to be productive. No action — just a reminder that the source has two modes and one is off-brief. + +## 2026-05-22 — review: cursor-camp-neal-fun + +Graduated from find captured 2026-05-04, source: Kottke.org. +Hero: reused the find's existing hero.png — Neal Agarwal's canonical 1200×630 share card at `neal.fun/share-cards/cursor-camp.png`. Single-image review (no carousel) — the source page has the share card plus the campground itself, which is JS-rendered canvas, so static screenshots wouldn't add much. +Category: **`play` — new category proposed**. None of the existing categories (interface, indie, writing, etc.) fit a browser web-toy. The 2026-05-14 `six-browser-games` bundle already shows there are 5+ unbundled finds that would graduate cleanly into this category. New category page auto-generates at `/categories/play/`. +Bundle membership: cursor-camp-neal-fun is in `2026-05-14-six-browser-games` and remains so after promotion — the find lives, the review is the canonical long form. diff --git a/src/content/find/2026/05/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx b/src/content/find/2026/05/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx index 1642980..25ec063 100644 --- a/src/content/find/2026/05/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx +++ b/src/content/find/2026/05/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx @@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ topics: - general-delight tags: [neal-fun, browser, play, web-toy] description: "Another small browser-based delight from Neal Agarwal — a playground that turns the humble mouse cursor into the toy." +promotedTo: cursor-camp-neal-fun --- Neal.fun keeps shipping the kind of single-page browser experiences the early web promised — small, weird, requires no account, and you smile within five seconds. Cursor Camp puts the mouse pointer at the centre of the experience: a spinning wheel of cursor variants you can summon and play with. It takes about two minutes and you'll forward it to a friend. diff --git a/src/content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/hero.png b/src/content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/hero.png new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8016754 Binary files /dev/null and b/src/content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/hero.png differ diff --git a/src/content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx b/src/content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a2097e1 --- /dev/null +++ b/src/content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/index.mdx @@ -0,0 +1,26 @@ +--- +name: Cursor Camp +subtitle: Neal.fun's playground for browser cursors +date: 2026-05-22 +category: play +tags: [browser, web-toy, neal-fun, play] +description: "A Neal Agarwal browser experiment in which the mouse cursor itself is the toy — open the page, summon a radial wheel of cursor variants, drag them around an animated camp. Five minutes, no signup." +link: https://neal.fun/cursor-camp/ +linkText: neal.fun/cursor-camp +source: "Kottke.org" +fromFind: cursor-camp-neal-fun +--- + +![The Cursor Camp landing card by Neal Agarwal — a softly-illustrated campground with a radial wheel of cursor variants orbiting around the central tent.](./hero.png) + +*A campground for your cursor.* + +> A single Neal.fun page whose protagonist is the mouse pointer. Open the URL, summon a radial wheel of cursor variants, drag them around an animated camp — no account, no install, no monetisation, about five minutes from open to closed. + +Neal.fun has been quietly running the best single-page web-toy studio on the internet for ten years — Stimulation Clicker, Internet Roadtrip, Asteroid Launcher, Spend Bill Gates' Money. Cursor Camp is the latest in the lineage: a softly-illustrated campground, and a radial wheel of cursor variants that orbits your pointer on demand. Click to summon, drag to play. + +The trick is that the cursor is the protagonist, not the input device. Variants include a wand, a comet, a magnifying glass, a fishing rod, and about a dozen more, each with its own behaviour against the campground props — tents, fire pits, a lily-padded lake. Two minutes uncovers most; the variety is the whole point. + +The infrastructure for this kind of thing barely exists anymore. Every other vendor of micro-entertainment is trying to graduate you to a subscription, an account, or an email capture. Neal's whole catalog ships under the older rules: one URL, no signup, no ads, no app. Cursor Camp is proof that those rules still produce work worth forwarding to a friend. + +Desktop only — phones don't have cursors. Five minutes from open to closed; rewards re-visits less than some of Neal's earlier pieces (Internet Roadtrip, which you can lose hours to). But that's the brief: a small thing made well, free, and gone before you've started checking your phone. diff --git a/src/lib/hero.ts b/src/lib/hero.ts index dc6eb5a..d1f70b1 100644 --- a/src/lib/hero.ts +++ b/src/lib/hero.ts @@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ import altTab from '../content/reviews/alt-tab/hero.jpg'; import apex from '../content/reviews/apex-markdown-processor/hero.png'; import bartender from '../content/reviews/bartender-6-dynamic-peninsula/peninsula.png'; import blip from '../content/reviews/blip/hero.jpg'; +import cursorCamp from '../content/reviews/cursor-camp-neal-fun/hero.png'; import esproP7 from '../content/reviews/espro-p7-french-press/hero.jpg'; import finalist from '../content/reviews/finalist/hero.png'; import folderPeek from '../content/reviews/folder-peek/screenshot.png'; @@ -42,6 +43,7 @@ export const heroes: Record = { 'apex-markdown-processor': { kind: 'image', src: apex }, 'bartender-6-dynamic-peninsula': { kind: 'image', src: bartender }, blip: { kind: 'image', src: blip }, + 'cursor-camp-neal-fun': { kind: 'image', src: cursorCamp }, 'espro-p7-french-press': { kind: 'image', src: esproP7 }, finalist: { kind: 'image', src: finalist }, 'folder-peek': { kind: 'image', src: folderPeek },