Ribbonfarm Studio --> Contraptions

A housekeeping note while on break

I’m still on hiatus, and billing is still paused, but wanted to drop a housekeeping note. Sometime in the next few days/week, I will be changing the name of this newsletter from Ribbonfarm Studio to Contraptions, and if all goes well, the new domain will be contraptions.venkateshrao.com. When I unpause and resume writing regularly, it will be under this new name hopefully. The mascot for this new name will be the helicopter in my profile pic:

I expect this process to be janky and there will be some downtime. I’m not sure whether the switchover will preserve/redirect old links properly, but we’ll see. Poetically appropriate for a switch to this name to be janky.

For context, the move is a consequence of my decision to retire my 17-year-old WordPress blog, Ribbonfarm.com. You can read about that decision here. That domain will still remain active and point to the WordPress archived blog, but I’ve been kinda wanting to properly wean this newsletter for a while, and give it a True Name™ that’s not derived from one of my older projects. It used to be called the Breaking Smart newsletter originally, between 2015-2019 (when it was on Mailchimp), and Ribbonfarm Studio 2020-24. But it’s really its own thing that’s never quite fit comfortably in the shadow of either of its step-parent projects.

Kinda late to be giving this project a true name nearly a decade in, but hey, a true name finds you, you don’t find it.

Why Contraptions? Because I feel my Contraptions Theory post from Sept 6 captures the intrinsic essence of the themes/voice/identity of this newsletter. The general idea is that this newsletter has really always been about contraptions in a broad sense, both literal and metaphoric. I explore contraptioney constructs relating to everything from culture and politics to technology itself. Here for example is a post from Aug 31 called The Social Machine, which is basically a contraption theory of political systems. I’ll say more about contraption philosophy in a future issue.

Finding a True Name™ for a project is very clarifying and liberating, so there will likely be some structural/thematic changes in the wake of this renaming. I’m not entirely sure what those changes will be, but some of it will be shedding what’s left of the step-parental baggage here. A couple of new threads may spin up, and a couple of current threads may wind down.

Anyway, I’m enjoying my hiatus. Since I retired the old blog a couple of weeks ago, this is actually the longest I’ve ever gone without writing in public, so it’s kinda refreshing. I’m spending a lot of my spare time… building literal Lego Technic and Meccano contraptions. Here’s one. It’s a winding/unwinding machine.

Not exactly touching grass, but touching ABS and polycarbonate is more my style anyway. Metal and solder if I’m feeling particularly energetic.

Also, a quick hello to people who’ve signed up during the hiatus so far (there’s been a bit of a spike).

Some of you have asked, so a clarification: If you’re not already a paid subscriber, you cannot turn on a paid subscription and access paywalled articles while I’m on hiatus. Weird artifact of how the pause feature on Substack works. If you’re interested in the paywalled content, you’ll be able to subscribe and access them when I unpause in November. Sorry for the inconvenience. It appears Substack also has contraptioney characteristics.

Also, a welcome to long-time Ribbonfarm blog readers who signed up recently. This newsletter has always been somewhat different from the blog, and is going to get more different, so strap in for some minor g-forces.

Final note — I’ll be traveling all November (Chiang Mai —> Bangkok —> India —> Venice), but plan to resume writing during that period. I’ll be sticking to the weekly schedule, roughly Friday/Saturday, but there may be a bit more variance due to global timezones jankiness.

Okay, that’s it for the housekeeping note. Back to building contraptions. I have a couple of little robots and an RPi computer upgrade on my to-do list for the coming week.