A Village Below the Lake

For a while now the home page has been doing too many jobs. So I asked: is it time to give Books its own section and make home more of an overall collection of sections and main content? This is what came out of one long conversation on October 19 with Claude, and one long afternoon of making pictures.

First, the seasons

The first step went live the same day. The lake now opens in whatever season it is where you are, and a small picker inside the lake lets you choose another one. The tabs no longer change the season. They only change the words, which makes them quicker too.

Then, a village

Here's how I put it: "We got a workshop, place to go, build things, have fun in there, like almost like a shed, big workshop. Then we also have a newsstand. We've got our magazines... and then learning area, library." The home page would be the lake, and below the lake would be the workshop and the farm, the home, if you will.

From there it grew fast. We have a time machine, the Tumble, so it gets an observatory ("Observatory is perfect rather than university"). Bike ramps, hiking trails and climbing walls to practice on. Labs near the water. And every place can filter the Notes, so the bike park shows the rides and the trailhead shows the hikes.

Made with care

Two of the first ideas, a salvage yard and a garden of scrap robots, felt a little negative to me: trash, unwanted things. So the salvage yard became the Parts Depot, where every part is kept because it's going to become something, and the scrap became the Kinetic Garden, polished sculptures that turn in the wind.

Then the Dao came in, quietly. A water wheel that turns because the stream flows. An uncarved block on the workbench. A footbridge for the joy of the fish. The useless tree that nobody cut down. I wanted it made with care and attention to details and filled with tiny little hidden easter eggs. Enjoying the journey through the world one little pixel at a time.

A door for the Studio

The Studio is where Notes get made, and it should be easy to reach if you have a login. So it gets a small glass building with a VIP door. Everyone else can still watch the light show from the coloured liquid flowing through it.

I'd been changing the Studio's colours by the time of day anyway: blue mornings, green daytime, orange nights. Now it does that on its own, with a manual override always there to test and see, and a reset to home time.

Tubes for A.L.T.A.

A.L.T.A. lives in the lake. I wanted big glass tubes coming up from the grass below the lake, so she can get in and out of it visually without having to touch the lake itself.

More than 130 Images

Made with AI

134 pictures

Claude wrote a catalog of prompts: one shared look pasted at the start of every prompt, so the buildings match. Each place stands alone on flat magenta, not green, because the grass, the green liquid and A.L.T.A.'s sea glass would all vanish with a green key. There's no ground and no shadow under them; those are drawn by the site, so the places sit right in any season.

I made the pictures in Google Flow, four versions of each: day, night, day with snow and night with snow. Thirty places at first, then sixteen more pictures for the water wheels, Starlee's shed, Marley's house and the trailhead. All told, it came to 134 pictures.

Claude checked that the four versions of each place line up, and they do, almost to the pixel, so one can fade into the next. Then each was cut out of the magenta, all four to the same frame, with the glow of the lamps kept and the magenta taken back out of it.

On the hill

The places now stand on the hill under the lake, along a path, with the stream coming down from the lake to the labs' pond. They follow the lake: snow in winter, and their windows lighting up when night comes, each change a slow fade. Hover over one and it lifts a little and glows; click it and it opens its part of the site, or Play's Notes of its kind: the Bike Park opens the rides.

There's a Village Map too, for getting around: zoom in, pick a place and go. From the map you can choose a magazine, a showing in the Screening Barn, or the Parts Depot, which takes you to the Parts Catalog, or head to the Observatory and on into the Tumble, the time machine.

Enjoying the journey through the world one little pixel at a time.

One painted ground

Then I had an idea: paint the whole village as one scene, then take the buildings away. Claude made a guide with every building in its spot; I repainted it as one picture, then had the buildings removed, leaving the hill with its path, stream, waterfall and plots. I made it by day, at night and in snow, like the places. Claude found where each building stood in my painting and set the cut-outs back on their plots, so the separate pictures read as one, and every building can still light up and lift.

Then the seasons: spring meadow flowers, fall leaves and winter snow, each by day and by night. And a second, tall painting of the same village for phones, in all eight versions too.

A window

One more idea: the village should be tucked into its own area, like a window. My first frame was too heavy and squeezed the village, so I asked for one much slimmer, with the orrery and the plaque sitting outside the edges instead of eating into the view. Now the village sits in a wooden frame with crystals at the corners, and on phones in a tall frame of stone and roots.

What comes next

The crew moves in.