Links & notes for this month

• • Pivotal Blabs : Advanced Proxy Usage, Part I
    Some good stuff on ActiveRecord proxy usage. I'm doing some of this already, but the advanced examples look really handy.
    (tags: rails proxy activerecord associations rubyonrails development)
  • Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play
    "Bungie's designers aren't just making a game: They're trying to divine the golden mean of fun." Large Wired article on how Bungie do UX research for Halo 3.
    (tags: games halo bungie play flow ux interaction design testing)
  • Backing Up Lightroom's Catalog - O'Reilly Digital Media Blog
    Some useful tips on keeping Lightroom data safe.
    (tags: lightroom backup)
• • No Starch Press Home Page
    "Build the Models Your Parents Warned You Against". Sounds awesome!
    (tags: lego hacking construction making engineering)
• • Last Exit to Nowhere
    Awesome, awesome T-shirts. Want a Weyland-Yutani one. And a Tyrrell Corp one.
    (tags: tshirts clothing shopping movies style)
• • Spare Room » Blog Archive » If Business Meetings Were Like Internet Comments
    So NSFW. So funny.
    (tags: humour funny business worldofwork)
  • XRAY :: for web developers
    Westciv's XRAY now works in IE6. Which all of a sudden makes it super-useful.
    (tags: css tool web development markup design)
  • Developer | Slider | Measure Map
    "The date slider is a Flash visualization that Measure Map uses as one way to navigate the site. We are happy to provide a version of this date slider to the public." As used on OaklandCrime.
    (tags: flash visualisation development code)
• • Frenzic : Index
    Awesome, awesome OSX puzzle game.
    (tags: games mac osx puzzle)
• • How I Became a Programmer
    "The rest is just implementation detail." Great story from Will Lee about how, despite not doing any of the things you're "supposed" to do, he became a programmer. The answer? He always was one.
    (tags: career programming mac writing originmyth)
  • scRUBYt! - a Simple to Learn and Use, yet Powerful Web Scraping Toolkit Written in Ruby
    "WWW::Mechanize and Hpricot on Steroids". An interesting looking screenscraping library; I'm a big fan of both HPricot and Mechanize, so it'll be interesting to put this to use at some point.
    (tags: ruby scraping hpricot mechanize development hacking library screenscraping html)
• • RubyForge: Net::TOC: Project Info
    Simple, effective Ruby library for creating AIM chatbots.
    (tags: ruby aim chatbot toc library)
• • Language Log: [Sic] news from Nature
    "In this context, the insertion of a Latin word in a couple of paragraphs may be a tiny step: but it is at least one in the right direction." Nature changes its mission statement.
    (tags: npg nature language)
  • Prototype JavaScript framework: Prototype 1.6.0 release candidate
    First RC of Prototype 1.6.0. Some nice additions, notably lots of improvements to Event handling. Welcome, I think.
    (tags: javascript prototype development framework)
  • Farbtastic: jQuery color picker plug-in | Steven Wittens - Acko.net
    Awesome jQuery color-picker. Works exactly as it says on the tin. Makes me very happy.
    (tags: javascript jquery color colorpicker plugin design colour)
• • Essential Electronics for Software Folk
    "From basic electronics to advanced computer hardware, you'll learn the magic behind the gear that makes it all run." PDF only, due for publication this month (August 2007). Could be interesting.
    (tags: electronics programming hardware hacking making)
  • Sugarshock, by Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon
    Free webcomic. Nice, but hope it'll develop. And happen. It's all about Robot Phil, incidentally.
    (tags: web comics josswhedon humour music)
  • jQuery for JavaScript programmers
    "Most introductions to jQuery focus on designers and inexperienced developers. I’m going to try to explain why jQuery should be of interest to experienced programmers as well." Excellent introduction to jQuery from Simon.
    (tags: javascript jquery tutorial programming development library)
  • Oakland Crimespotting
    The Stamen gang mash up screen-scraped Oakland crime data and put it on a map. This is not just any "put it on a map", though; the work they're doing with Modest Maps really is putting red dot fever totally to shame.
    (tags: oakland crime mashup map flash)
• • Somewhere Nearby is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther's Original "Adventure" in Code and in Kentucky
    Wonderful paper about the creation and development of Crowther's "Adventure", and also the real Colossal Cave in Mammoth, which almost certainly inspired the geography of the game-cave.
    (tags: games adventure history if crowther paper textadventure)
  • scottberkun.com » #23 - How to run a design critique
    "The challenge is to create the openness needed for good ideas to surface, while simultaneously cultivating the feedback and criticism necessary to resolve open issues." Tell me about it.
    (tags: design review product management development)