https://projects.metafilter.com/ The past 20 posts to MeFi Projects Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:56:30 GMT Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:56:30 GMT en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60
I was helping my friend Manuel with a short horror movie last year (about a haunted cassette deck, possessed by a 1960s psychadelic rock icon, who was in turn possessed by Satan). He submitted it to a few film festivals, then we decided to have our own. Details are all at the website, but in a nutshell, we've paid out of pocket to rent a theatre at the local indie cinema for six hours on Saturday, September 26. We're looking for short (ideally under 15 minutes), weird (the sky's the limit), cheap (made for couch change) things to screen. Selection will be lightly biased to people who might be able to make it to the festival to join in the fun, but we accept all comers. Also up at Film Freeway at https://filmfreeway.com/Attackofthe5dollarFilmFestival.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6489/Attack-of-the-5-Film-Festival-Submissions-open tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6489 Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:56:30 GMT Shepherd https://projects.metafilter.com/6489/Attack-of-the-5-Film-Festival-Submissions-open/rss
A good tournament poster lets you easily see what's ahead and track the current standings. If you image search for "world cup poster" you'll see lots of loud/busy/confusing designs. This poster is meant to be easy to use and eye pleasing. It has a calendar for the group stage and a bracket for the knock-out rounds. Groups are color coded, and there are areas to record group round match results. The poster is big (24"x36" or A1), but that's what you get with a 48 team field. I've been able to print copies on self-serve large format printers for $20. Professional options cost a bit more. I've had good luck with the poster print services at FedEx and Staples. You can scale down to smaller paper, but it gets difficult to fill in. You can go straight to the PDF download page or the instructions or read about the design's history.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6488/A-Useful-Pleasant-Poster-for-Following-the-World-Cup tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6488 Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:32:23 GMT bruceo https://projects.metafilter.com/6488/A-Useful-Pleasant-Poster-for-Following-the-World-Cup/rss
[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6487/No-Borders-Geography-Quiz tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6487 Wed, 27 May 2026 12:19:23 GMT AlSweigart https://projects.metafilter.com/6487/No-Borders-Geography-Quiz/rss
It started with an Andrew Weatherhead tweet about poetry as a list of horses. It grew into a creative writing project, a database, a tumblr account, and a series of increasingly advanced search tools. Now I am opening my little horse poetry project to the world. Current in open beta so bug reports and suggestions are welcome. The site is currently set to allow posting without admin review so please behave ;)

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6486/poethorse-a-horse-poetry-website tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6486 Mon, 25 May 2026 18:30:13 GMT metaphorever https://projects.metafilter.com/6486/poethorse-a-horse-poetry-website/rss newsletter and are planning to have a blog during the tournament. I wrote about Belarusian football and the Lukashenko regime for the newsletter, and the topics of other pieces include the 1998 match between Iran and the US, an embarrassing moment for Gianni Infantino and the time Bolivia reached the World Cup. The Editor's Note lays out what the people running the magazine envision for it.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6485/Golden-Goal tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6485 Thu, 21 May 2026 15:50:06 GMT Kattullus https://projects.metafilter.com/6485/Golden-Goal/rss
[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6484/Texas-Water-Quality-Visualization-Map tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6484 Tue, 19 May 2026 15:02:33 GMT gregr https://projects.metafilter.com/6484/Texas-Water-Quality-Visualization-Map/rss
A Cave in the Woods is a short interactive fiction game, powered by a few things: writing from me, responses from AI (Claude), and whatever else you wish to add. I want to talk more about the details of this project, but doing so feels like it would spoil the fun of discovery. So I'm going to just keep quiet about all that. I had a lot of fun making this game, and actually got a lot of experience working with AI more and more as the development progressed. One huge thing I cannot emphasize enough: every so often, the AI would come up with a bit of writing that had me literally laughing out loud. I don't think I ever quite experienced that before. I'll let a little slip: I've long been interested in comedy, and in particular - the mechanics behind it: what makes something funny, what makes someone laugh? Trying to describe or structure humor, and to convert it into code/instructions for an AI persona was... a really fun exercise. Best thing about this project: I laughed a lot. Unexpectedly so. I hope you laugh a lot as well.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6483/A-Cave-in-the-Woods tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6483 Tue, 19 May 2026 06:38:47 GMT avoision https://projects.metafilter.com/6483/A-Cave-in-the-Woods/rss this poem, using my wildest goblin-acting abilities.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6482/Voice-Acting-Overheard-On-A-Saltmarsh tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6482 Thu, 14 May 2026 04:13:37 GMT Greg_Ace https://projects.metafilter.com/6482/Voice-Acting-Overheard-On-A-Saltmarsh/rss clock scene in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6481/Metropolis-Shift-a-game-about-futility tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6481 Fri, 08 May 2026 00:54:26 GMT AlSweigart https://projects.metafilter.com/6481/Metropolis-Shift-a-game-about-futility/rss Your Internet Radio Dial (YIRD, ya heard?) is an ad-free and free-to-use interface that comes preset with a bunch of stations organized into bands, but you can customize your own collection of both. It has a bunch of fun lil' features (working VU meter, song identifier, a doze setting to gradually fade out (for sleepytimes), a scan function like a car radio, all kind of stuff that I had a blast building. I think it's pretty, too! Hope you like it, and if you can think of any ways it could be better or run across any bugs or want to suggest a station for the default presets, let me know here or through the site's Suggestion Box. Happy listening!

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6480/An-old-timey-radio-dial-for-the-internet tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6480 Wed, 06 May 2026 06:59:53 GMT slappy_pinchbottom https://projects.metafilter.com/6480/An-old-timey-radio-dial-for-the-internet/rss
It also does some tricks that make it feel more native, like letting you import ,webloc or .url bookmarks from your desktop by dragging. It's also a PWA so you can install it and run it in your Dock alongside all your other apps. And last but not least there's a Chrome extension on the way this week. But for me the biggest feature is that this is an intentional, algorithm-free way to store and organize things you like on the web. It's better than what ships with your browser, but also not some "second brain" productivity play. I'm super proud of this, maybe irrationally so. I hope folks here will try it and let me know if it helps them.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6479/Booooookmarks-is-simple-gratifying-bookmarking-for-people-who-miss-Pocket-RIP tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6479 Tue, 05 May 2026 05:29:22 GMT littlerobothead https://projects.metafilter.com/6479/Booooookmarks-is-simple-gratifying-bookmarking-for-people-who-miss-Pocket-RIP/rss Reeder for years and love and respect it a lot. The latest version requires a subscription to be useful, and includes a lot of features I don't really care about. So I made my own low-frills feed reader and then decided to make it public and share it.

Some features I'm proud of: I'm using Cloudflare's SQLite backed Durable Objects to create a database per user so no one's feeds, favorites, or archives are intermingled. I'm using WebAuthn (passkeys) for authentication (no passwords to store or lose) and heavy use of Cloudflare's "cron" functions to refresh feeds on an hourly schedule. I wrote about some details here.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6478/Teensy--News tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6478 Mon, 04 May 2026 17:53:09 GMT device55 https://projects.metafilter.com/6478/Teensy--News/rss
I made this for Attention (more info on their blog) to address the issues around data centres in a fun, non-preachy way, inspired by soothing audio generators people use to relax and those tactile, interactive museum displays where you can manipulate a system.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6477/DataCenterFM tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6477 Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:29:47 GMT malevolent https://projects.metafilter.com/6477/DataCenterFM/rss
[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6476/Iambic-domains tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6476 Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:16:44 GMT primer_dimer https://projects.metafilter.com/6476/Iambic-domains/rss
I co-organized XOXO, a festival and conference in Portland that celebrates indie artists and creators working on the internet. After the festival ended in 2024, we spent the last couple years making a new website for it that would act as a permanent archive. We wrote about why we made it, some of the highlights, and also launched a bunch of merch to mark the occasion, availably until this Friday, May 1.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6475/XOXO-Explore tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6475 Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:11:36 GMT waxpancake https://projects.metafilter.com/6475/XOXO-Explore/rss
There's SO MUCH resistance to authoritarianism, but we rarely hear about it. This project collects some of the news of local and national protests, open letters from professional organizations, community organizing, lawsuits and victories in the courts, investigations by Congress, neighbors helping neighbors, actions by city officials and state representatives. This project has a United States focus but includes news from around the world. This is part of my new-ish website, The Democracy Habit, intended to foster regular, ongoing, varied participation in democracy and resistance to authoritarianism in a spirit of encouragement and inclusion. As noted in the footer on each page: This site is a work in progress - just like democracy. And just like democracy, I'd rather do what I can now than wait until I've got everything perfect.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6474/Resistance-is-Everywhere-part-of-The-Democracy-Habit tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6474 Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:01:38 GMT kristi https://projects.metafilter.com/6474/Resistance-is-Everywhere-part-of-The-Democracy-Habit/rss Female Kill Machine 3 is the third and final instalment of the electrifyingly satirical cyberpunk sci-fi sensation that is the Female Kill Machine trilogy, in which easy-going antifascist kill machine Maria Tajona must wreak bloody revenge on the richest and most despicable men in the universe. Contains action, absurdity, and at least 3 jokes per page. You can get the entire trilogy at Ko-Fi, Patreon, and itch.io, or read it on Kindle Unlimited at Amazon. It's both pretty good and fairly funny.

Previously on Projects: Female Kill Machine 1; Female Kill Machine 2.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6473/Female-Kill-Machine-3 tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6473 Wed, 22 Apr 2026 12:55:22 GMT dng https://projects.metafilter.com/6473/Female-Kill-Machine-3/rss
[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6472/iheartlists-game-from-easy-to-death tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6472 Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:27:54 GMT dorothyisunderwood https://projects.metafilter.com/6472/iheartlists-game-from-easy-to-death/rss François Morellet created a painting, Random Distribution of 40,000 Squares Using the Odd and Even Numbers of a Telephone Directory. It is a 200 x 200 grid of blue and red squares, using odd and even numbers from the phone book as the random number source. Morellet's wife or sons would read out numbers while Morellet marked the squares to later be painted in. I took about 15 minutes to write a Python program to produce hundreds a second, but also made a web version with several customizable features.

The nauseating blue/red look was decades before the red-text-on-blue-background and blue-text-on-red-background web design of GeoCities pages. He was decades ahead of his time!

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6471/Morellet-Art-Generator tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6471 Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:13:19 GMT AlSweigart https://projects.metafilter.com/6471/Morellet-Art-Generator/rss In the Shadow of the Tower is my seventh novel and the third in the series of The Skyline Murder Mysteries. Published by Oliver-Heber.

Set around the attempted assassination of Franklin Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara, my historical thriller includes real life personalities including Fred Astaire, Bugsy Siegel, and Walter Winchell. From the publicity blurb: A nation on edge. A city crawling with gangsters. A plot that could change history forever. Miami, 1933. The nation is in the grip of the Great Depression, and former New York World reporter Alan Priest is struggling to survive as a freelance journalist. His wife, Lorraine, once a sought-after magazine model, is watching her own career fade with the times. Together, they are drawn into a dangerous investigation that reaches far beyond headlines and photographs. Here is a tongue-in-cheek interview with a panel of the major characters at "MurderCon 1933." Light noir, historical mystery, meticulously researched, In the Shadow of the Tower is in the spirit of The Thin Man.

[Link]]> https://projects.metafilter.com/6470/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Tower-A-Skyline-Murder-Mystery tag:projects.metafilter.com,2026:site.6470 Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:16:54 GMT dances_with_sneetches https://projects.metafilter.com/6470/In-the-Shadow-of-the-Tower-A-Skyline-Murder-Mystery/rss