thingsinjars

  • 9 Apr 2008

    SpreadShop

    SpreadShop

    If you wake up every morning and think, "My t-shirts are so dull, I wish I had interesting clothes...", you need to have a look at my online shop.


    Cartoons

  • 25 Dec 2024

    Monster Coffee Break

    I wrote an RPG Adventure Guide.

    I've been having fun recently with Lasers & Feelings and initially just wanted to make a quick little hack based in a fun and colourful world. Ideas turned into notes turned into scenarios turned into enhancements...

    Long story short, I ended up with a 30 page adventure guide, two conflict mechanics, a bunch of set pieces and inspiration and a load of colourful characters.

    Monster Coffee Break combines RPG, fantasy and comedy horror tropes with the heady and intoxicating world of corporate bureaucracy.

    MonsterCorp is a sprawling corporate office catering to all kinds of monsters, from goo blobs to banshees to vampire bats. Employees run everything from nightmarish supply chains to scream-powered HR seminars.

    The office is absurdly bureaucratic. Monsters need forms, signatures, and permits for everything.

    This is definitely not a full RPG system. It just grew out of my own notes while playing with Lasers & Feelings. It's meant to inspire your own game, provide some interesting ideas and generally be a bit daft.

    Some things might not make sense, some might not work. That's fine, just roll with it.


    Aside: I then used the opportunity to create a simple little one-page website for it and throw in some fun CSS to do with scroll snapping.

    Monster Coffee Break

    Design, Geek, Cartoons

  • 10 May 2020

    Toast Guide

    Ever needed a handy chart to guide you through the complexities of toast?

    Thought so.

    Toast Poster

    Cartoons, Design, Not Geek

  • 1 Oct 2019

    Painting a children's book

    Here's a quick time-lapse of me painting a page from a children's book.

    Not Geek, Cartoons

  • 19 Apr 2019

    It's Art, I tell you!

    After many years of meaning to do it and not actually doing it, I decided to open an Etsy store. It's not my first online print store. In fact, one of the key reasons I ever learned HTML, CSS and PHP was to build an online store for my artwork back in... 2002? Seriously? Seventeen years ago...?

    Anyways... I've put in a few prints so far, mostly from the Octoplural series of paintings although my current favourite is the My Day Flowchart.

    I really like how I could tie Etsy together with Printful so the prints are generated on demand rather than me holding a lot of stock which is how we did it back in the olden days...

    Design, Not Geek, Cartoons

  • older posts

Categories

Toys, Guides, Opinion, Geek, Non-geek, Development, Design, CSS, JS, Open-source Ideas, Cartoons, Photos

Shop

Colourful clothes for colourful kids

I'm currently reading

Projects

  • Awsm Street – Kid's clothing
  • Stickture
  • Explanating
  • Open Source Snacks
  • My life in sans-serif
  • My life in monospace
Simon Madine (thingsinjars)

@thingsinjars.com

Hi, I’m Simon Madine and I make music, write books and code.

I’m the Engineering Lead for komment.

© 2025 Simon Madine