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"It’s a bit like augmented reality, a layer inserted between what leaves the server and what hits your brain." Yes. Also: see Ben's comment about the browser as weapon.
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Alan is writing the Guardian's crosswords blog, looking at crosswords from all publications. Brilliant.
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"Zugzwang is one of my favourite words, and an extremely useful one. Essentially, it's a condition where it would be better not to move, in a game where you have to move, such as chess. Strictly speaking, it describes a situation where that move will end the game, with the mover as the loser, but the definition in chess is looser, and only demands the loss of a piece or the worsening of the player's position. The player has to take the least worst option. It's a kind of judo – using the ineluctable forward momentum of the rules of the game to force the opposing player to do your work for you." The momentum of rules! I like that a lot.
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Oh, nice; I'm always adding #format_date and #format_time methods to my formatting_helper.rb striaght off the bat, so it's nice to know there are built-ins – although I'm not keen on just overriding defaults, if only so other programmers don't get lost working out why the defaults aren't the same.
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The win-screen from Windows Solitaire, made physical. (Scroll down for explanations).
Everyday Gaming
15 August 2011
My latest Game Design of Everyday Things column is now live at Kill Screen. It’s about games and the “everyday”:
This column is nominally about looking at the relationship between design and games. But, in its title that riffs on Don Norman’s most famous book, I’d argue that the “Everyday” is as important as the D-word. After all, design is not really something most people engage with actively, either as connoisseurs or as critics. Most often, it is something people engage with without knowing it’s there. “Design,” it turns out, is usually the answer to the question we so rarely ask of the products we use everyday: “What made this good?”
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"Martin Woodhouse, who has died aged 78, was a psychologist and medic, but worked variously as a novelist, scriptwriter, engineer, programmer, government planner, artificial intelligence researcher and perfumer." Early AI and writing for the Avengers. Blimey. When I grow up, I would like life to be like this.
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"Every once in a while a video comes along which requires no comment at all. This is That Video." G1 JOCKEY!!!
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"The easiest hustle for tips is flattery and a smile."
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"This is a VT220 serial console (circa 1983) set up as a terminal for my Mac Pro (circa 2010), a nerdy dream I’ve had for a long time that I finally made a reality yesterday." Beautiful. Just look at it!
Police Business
12 August 2011
“‘Police business’, he said almost gently, ‘is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get – and we get things like this.'”
Raymond Chandler, The Lady In The Lake
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Fascinating article on the lengths one has to go to to get perfectly accurate hardware emulation. It's not enough to get stuff to run; you have to get it to run right, and in the era this hardware comes from, that means it needs to take into account the weirdness of hardware.