#old reader picks

The name of the site is clunky- Giant Robots Smashing into Other Giant Robots- but the site's pure, minimalst design and straightforward posts about web and mobile development delivers the goods. 

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Scott Hanselman is a programmer for the Web Platform Team at Microsoft, but the site is his personal, first-person exploration of the world of web development. (He's also a prolific speaker and podcaster in the industry.) 

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Codrops has everything from a CSS reference library for beginners to cool HTML and CSS experiments, tutorials and templates for curious web developers trying to reach a higher level.

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You've Been Haacked is the pet project of Phil Haack, a developer at GitHub who shares his interests and enthusiasms, especially around developing Open Source projects. 

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One of the most dependable and regular blogs out there is the Speckyboy Design Magazine, which publishes long, illustrated posts and infographics daily on web and mobile app design, UX design, and graphics. Based out of Inverness, Scotland, the team of writers look for useful tips as well as stuff to inspire frustrated web developers and designers. 

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There are a lot of blogs out there for digital artists and designers, but we've tried to identify a couple of the best. Web Designer Depot and Smashing Magazine talk about essential tools and CSS tips you need to know while emphasizing good design, trends, and advice for making websites that don’t suck and are maybe even pleasing to the eye.

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CSS Tricks is probably the corniest name around, but it’s also the most on-the-nose. As you might guess, it’s a blog with tips and tricks for website developers of all levels of experience. For example, I just learned how to automatically generate Lorem Ipsum placeholder text in a test page, which probably saved me five minutes already today.

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The Old Reader is an app for readers, by readers. Here’s a few of our favorite places to go the read interesting, inspiring writing online. 

Following the demise of Grantland, The Ringer is Bill Simmon’s second attempt at a pop culture/sports site featuring a regular cast of writers. The site’s idiosyncratic take on sports and music includes everything from an analysis of the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement to a fake oral history of the movie Space Jam. 

Brainpickings offers selections of long reads curated by Maria Popova, a journalist and MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. Popova finds articles on a wide range of topics, including art, science, philosophy, history, and politics, as well as timely stories, like last weeks’ long-form content on Leonard Cohen.

Originally just a Twitter feed recommending articles to its followers, Longreads is now an open community where readers can share online longform stories. 

Similarly, The Browser offers links to great articles, although the site has begun charging $34/month for access to the full archives and some features.

We really can’t have an article on long-form writing without talking about The New Yorker, can we? While the print magazine remains the standard in contemporary journalism, the site’s RSS feed is just as indispensable. RSS is especially useful because you can subscribe to specific sections or authors within the magazine.

The emerging Vice empire has been criticized for obscuring serious issues with narcissistic, thrill-seeking reporting. But the site offers a continuing stream of quick hits and longer articles from the world’s underbelly and is endlessly curious about the state of the world, as all good writing should be. 

The U.S. election is finally over, but you probably aren't feeling less anxious. In these times of tension, here are a few of our favorite feeds to follow that will hopefully help you acheive inner peace, mindfulness, and calm in the face of life's adversity.

Mindhacks is not really about meditation, but it provides “neuroscience and psychology news and views.” In other words, they are interested in how the mind works, why we feel the way we do, and the science behind mental health. 

 Zenhabits' motto is “breath.” But the site is much deeper than that, posting several times each week on topics such as mindfulness, dealing with your moods, achieving balance, as well as more tangible things, like finances and traveling with kids.  

For those of us new to this whole meditation/mindful/relaxed lifestyle thing, About Meditation addresses the struggles new meditators face and provides tips and tricks to make it easier to keep practicing meditation. There is even a free mini course on how to get started meditating.

Gretchen Rubin is the founder of the Happiness Project. Rubin tends to be analytical and programmatic, writing about her core beliefs about habits and happiness. That means regular posts about principles of happiness, meditation, and relaxation.  

The Daily Zen is the project of an English couple dedicated to battling anxiety and depression with meditation, spirtuality, and a heavy dose of inspiring quotes from influential individuals.  

It is surprisingly hard to find blogs and RSS feeds by, for, and about stuff dudes like. Here are a few of our favorite websites of cool stuff.

The Everyday Carry site motto asks, “What Are Your Everyday Carry Essentials?” If you didn’t know that this was a real concern, then you haven’t visited the site. Every post offers a close-up shot of the essential gear different people keep on their person- from pocket knives to notebooks to electronics. Does the site fetishize tactical gear? Yes. Does it make you want tactical gear? Yes. 

Cool Material offers gear, insightful articles, and insider info on stuff for the gear-obsessed. The site has grown from the small hobby blog in 2009 to a daily selection of curated items. But the site also goes deeper, offering an insider’s look at workshops and stores, meets the craftspeople, and reviews new TV shows and movies.

Founder Michael Williams’ perfectly manicured beard is a good indication of the thoughtful masculinity found at Continuous Lean.  Williams is a writer and creative strategist living in New York City who started the website in 2007 to look at small, under-appreciated companies, with an affinity for things made in the U.S.A.

Valet is an independently-published lifestyle website delivering daily news on style, grooming and culture tailored especially for the 21st-century gentleman. The site tends to frame its articles in a How-to format, telling readers how to dress, win arguments, and have a successful first date. They also solicit questions from readers, giving you a chance to get pro tips on your burning questions.

Impossible Cool is a website similar to the Sartorialist in that it offers gorgeous images of things we all will want, although with a more contemporary bent.

The Cool Hunting site visits innovative designers, tells you how to do things like build a better martini, and gives music and art recommendations along with reviews of the best new shows, gear, fashion, gaming tips, or food.

We hope you like the blogs, websites, and feeds we’ve picked. We hope this stuff will appeal to all genders and orientations, and look for plenty of new picks coming soon.

Nothing is more subjective than comedy, but there are a wealth of funny and informative sites for comedy fans and hardcore comedy nerds all over the web. Here’s just a few of our favorites. 

Splitsider covers comedy in movies, TV shows, web videos, books, and any place funny stuff is happening. Our favorite feature is the Second City Archives, a weekly offering of old Second City sketches. It’s gold for comedy nerds, featuring Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, and other future stars in their formative years.

Laughspin began life as Punchline Magazine was in 2005. It’s like a trade magazine, but funny, with comedy news, videos, interviews and opinion, and other cool stuff.

You’re probably very aware of The Onion’s Clickhole, but we think the best way to read it is in your feed. Inverting and destroying the earnest platitudes and shallow clickbait of the web and social media, Clickhole is the best antidote to the inanities of the web.

Marc Maron’s WTF podcast is a bi-weekly obsession for comedy nerds, but his website blog is also an important comedy destination. You’d think a man who unloads his inner turmoil and private life in his podcast each week wouldn’t have material left, but Maron continues to publish regular missives from inside his head.

Like Maron, a few other comedians are still practicing the disappearing art form of the long-form comedic essay. Awesomely Luvvie is the blog of Luvvie Ajayi, with long-form comedic essays from the perspective of an African American woman on everything from police shootings to why the Video Music Awards are so annoying. John Lee Taggart is a comedy writer from England who puts his voluminous travel stories into story form on Story Time With John, while Paul Johnson is a writer and stand-up comedian behind the Good Greastby, his own collection of essays and stories. 

That title is NOT dig against XKCD. We love XKCD, but XKCD has been one of the top Old Reader feeds almost since our beginning. If you’re not an XKCD reader, we definitely recommend it. But today we want to highlight as many other comics as possible. 

To start, we want to point everyone to one of our personal heroes,the anonymous programmer behind ComicSyndicate. If you love newspaper comics like Doonesbury, Foxtrot, or archived Calvin and Hobbes, the comic syndicates that put them online often make them hard to subscribe. Thankfully, the ComicSyndicate has links to put hundreds of syndicated and independent comics in your feed.

Crude line art done in Microsoft Paint about heavy themes including depression and mental illness might not sound like fun reading, but Allie Brosh’s blog is still one of the most interesting and insightful reads online.

The Perry Bible Fellowship is updated irregularly, but delivers beautiful art and dark humor with every new edition. 

Not a comic, per se, but if you like funny and clever charts, graphs, and Venn Diagrams on index cards, Indexed is the blog you’ve been waiting for. 

Silly, clever, weird, and funny, Tree Lobsters nails all four quadrants. 

PHD Comics is obviously written for grad students of the world, but we think it’s funny, too.

Not far below XKCD, The Oatmeal remains one of The Old Reader’s most popular comic feeds. The comics, quizzes, and occasional articles by Matthew Inman aren’t just entertaining—they are often thoroughly researched and informative. 

An ongoing, female-centric steampunk fantasy-adventure story, Girl Genius has been publishing online since 2005 (and regularly winning Hugo awards in the process). 

Is it too much to ask for delicious food done with a minimum of effort? The Minimalist Baker promises recipes of 10 ingredients or less, made in 1 bowl or 1 pot, done in 30 minutes or less. The recipes do not adhere to any one diet, but are all plant-based and gluten free. Recipes range from the world’s easiest Cinnamon Rolls to a Sweet Potato Chickpea Buddha Bowl.

BTW- If you’re wondering whatever happened to the original food Minimalist, Mark Bittman left his New York Times food column and as co-found vegan start-up The Purple Carrot. You can still read hundreds of healthy recipes here,including excerpts from his column at the Times.

David Frenkiel, Luise Vindahl, and their daughter Elsa are the personalities behind Green Kitchen Stories, which offers healthy vegetarian recipes with stunning, sumptuous photography. The recipes are all embedded in stories about their travels, their family, and the food they eat. While it can sometimes be annoying to hear someone talk about how they do everything more beautifully and elegantly than you, the recipes, photography, and stories work as simple blueprint for anyone looking to eat better.

For anything from gluten-free, Paleo, vegetarian, or vegan, The Roasted Root blogger Julia Mueller offers recipes, essays, and gorgeous pictures of her experiments in eating. Mueller is a rigorous and skilled cook, but her writing is clear and rigorous so that anyone can make the hundreds of recipes on the site. 

Considering going Paleo but don’t want to commit to an extreme diet makeover? Nom Nom Paleo, written by Michelle Tam makes Paleo approachable and even adorable, starting with her pigtailed avatar and comic-book style posts. Come for the cuteness, stay for the Hard “Boiled” Eggs and Lazy Devils.

Okay, this is pick number six, but it's a different animal than the others. For a deep dive into food policy and politics, check out the aptly named Food Politics, written by scientist and nutritionist Marion Nestle. She addresses issues like what  "natural" means and the way industry-sponsored research corrupts and distorts what we are told about food. Nestle makes the obscure and technical readable and relatable to your diet and life.

Canadians are too modest. Vancouver-based artist Jeff Hamada claims his site Booooooom is Canada’s highest-trafficked art blog, but we think it is a great location to find inspiring graphic design, film photography, art, and even music for a worldwide audience.

Do you get turned on by big, bold typographic design and lettering? Friends of Type has nearly daily updates of the best (and sometimes worst) in typography and design.

Fabien Barral’s design blog Graphic Exchange is one of the rare sites that lets the design speak for itself. The site highlights glorious, close-up pictures of beautiful design, packaging, typography, graphic design, posters, letterpress, and other disciplines with minimal commentary or text.

From up North curates content from across creative industries. We find that the site’s collections of the best design, illustration, print design, and art offers some of the best inspiration anywhere on the web,   

We’re all suckers for a pretty package. The Dieline is the brainchild of package designer Andrew Gibbs, who, along with his editorial team, highlight the best in design from high-end wine and liquor bottles to microwavable package design.