site: founding post, headline post layout, masonry grid, source links

- New "Why this exists" post; masthead "founded" links to it - Post template: serif headline + date in masthead, "Filed under {category}" in footer - Drop counts from footer Collections list - Masonry component for home + sources grid; source badges link to /sources/#slug - Theme toggle (settings page + cog) with dark-mode-aware tokens - Six new themed find lists; cluster-finds skill
2026-05-03 17:52:14 -04:00
parent c8095d2766
commit e873460465
17 changed files with 683 additions and 251 deletions
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+title: "Small upgrades for the backyard"
+date: 2026-05-03
+tags: [daily-finds, outdoor, gifts]
+description: "Three quiet upgrades for the yard — a camera bird feeder that names every species, motion-aware solar fence lights, and a German screwdriver set that's nicer to hold than it has any right to be."
+blurb: "Three quiet upgrades for the yard, the fence, and the toolbox."
+items:
+  - birdfy-smart-bird-feeder
+  - aootek-solar-fence-lights
+  - felo-ergonic-screwdriver-set
+---
+
+> Small backyard improvements stack quickly. A bird feeder with a camera in the eaves that names every species visiting your yard. A six-pack of solar lights that stay dim until something moves and then actually let you see. And the Felo screwdrivers — German, soft-handled, the household tool that's quietly nicer to hold than the version you've been using for a decade.
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+---
+title: "Mac apps quietly worth the dock slot"
+date: 2026-05-03
+tags: [daily-finds, macos-apps, tools]
+description: "Six small Mac apps that earn their place — a timezone converter, dock folders, a local-AI writer, a Notepad++ port, a throwaway-VM runner, and pixel-perfect iTunes recreations."
+blurb: "Six small Mac apps that earn their place by doing one thing right."
+items:
+  - fluttertime
+  - dockpops
+  - refine-grammarly-alternative
+  - notepad-plus-plus-mac
+  - cilicon-ephemeral-vms
+  - companion-apps-for-apple-music
+---
+
+> A Mac stays clean only when every app on it is paying rent. These six are. A timezone converter you actually glance at, the Dock folders Apple never shipped, a writing assistant that runs entirely on-device, a Notepad++ port that's a real Universal Binary, throwaway macOS VMs for the next sketchy DMG, and pixel-perfect recreations of iTunes 1 and 4 sitting on top of modern Music.
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+---
+title: "Manufactured delight"
+date: 2026-05-03
+tags: [daily-finds, general-delight, play]
+description: "Four things that exist for no reason except that someone wanted them to — a microscope archive of beach sand, 169 games for unconventional places, the bluffing card game everyone is lying about, and a search engine that renders in 1995 browsers."
+blurb: "Four labors of love whose only excuse is that someone wanted them to exist."
+items:
+  - magnifiedsand
+  - unruly-play-archive
+  - skull-bluffing-card-game
+  - frogfind
+---
+
+> Some things exist for no good reason — only that someone wanted them to, and the wanting was contagious. A one-person archive of beach sand photographed under a microscope. An archive of 169 unconventional games designed for escalators, parking lots, and library stacks. The smallest possible bluffing card game (three roses, one skull, twenty minutes). And a search engine that renders in browsers from 1995, which turns out to be a lovely way to read the modern web too.
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+title: "The morning kitchen ritual"
+date: 2026-05-03
+tags: [daily-finds, kitchen, coffee]
+description: "Three tools for the slow start of the day — a sub-$200 espresso machine, a French press whose filter actually keeps grit out, and a jig for whittling your own chopsticks."
+blurb: "Three tools for the slow start of the day."
+items:
+  - casabrews-cm5418-espresso-machine
+  - espro-p7-french-press
+  - bridge-city-chopstick-master
+---
+
+> The first hour of the day rewards specific tools. A cheap espresso machine that makes the Nespresso pod feel embarrassing within a week. A French press whose double mesh actually keeps the grit out of the cup. And — for the patient version of the same impulse — a woodworking jig that makes a clean pair of chopsticks from any scrap of hardwood.
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+title: "Pocket carry"
+date: 2026-05-03
+tags: [daily-finds, edc, travel]
+description: "Five things small enough to live in a jacket pocket and useful enough to earn the slot."
+blurb: "Five things small enough to live in a jacket pocket and useful enough to earn the slot."
+items:
+  - anker-nano-travel-adapter
+  - ugreen-uno-magsafe-power-bank
+  - umoven-pop-up-bifold-wallet
+  - toms-keys-spare-fob
+  - cobak-composition-notebook-case
+---
+
+> The pocket-carry test is harsh — anything that lives in your jacket has to justify the lump it makes. These five do it five different ways: a charger that smiles back, a wallet that opens itself, a travel adapter the size of a deck of cards, a spare key fob you didn't pay the dealer for, and an e-paper tablet hidden inside a comp book.
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+title: "Travel as a kind of attention"
+date: 2026-05-03
+tags: [daily-finds, travel, photography]
+description: "Five things at the seam between travel and noticing — a webcam grid of NYC food lines, an Amsterdam library of occult manuscripts, a camera that erases the crowd, a postcard with a hidden video, and a camera that hides your photos for a year."
+blurb: "Five things at the seam between travel and noticing."
+items:
+  - damnlines
+  - embassy-of-the-free-mind
+  - stillgram
+  - magic-postcards
+  - roll-disposable-camera
+---
+
+> Travel is mostly a structured excuse to pay attention. These five lean into that. A live grid of webcams pointed at New York's worst lines. An Amsterdam canal house holding five-hundred-year-old occult manuscripts. An iPhone camera that quietly removes other tourists from the Trevi Fountain shot. A paper postcard with a hidden video of where you sent it from. And a disposable-camera app that makes you wait three days, three weeks, or a year to see the photo you just took.
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+title: "Why this exists"
+date: 2026-05-03
+category: meta
+tags: [meta, founding]
+description: "A note on why I started Unique — a small log of delightful, unique things to make life a little more pleasant."
+---
+
+I kept losing them.
+
+The clever little tool a friend mentioned in passing. The strange website I bookmarked at midnight and never found again. The kitchen gadget that turned out to be quietly perfect. The app that fixed something I didn't realize was broken.
+
+I'd find something delightful, smile at it for a moment, and then watch it slip back into the internet, indistinguishable from everything else. A few weeks later I'd be half-remembering a name, half-describing a thing, opening twelve tabs to chase a feeling.
+
+So this site is the fix. A small, slow log of things that made life a little more pleasant — products, apps, phenomena, oddities. Nothing comprehensive, nothing exhaustive. Just the ones worth keeping.
+
+I'm building it for myself first. If it's useful to you too, that's a bonus.
+
+Welcome.