"Animals as they are." Just lovely.

"After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how this animal actually looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant, thus reinventing an actual existing creature. This tree diagram traces the evolution of the elephant depiction throughout the middle ages up to the age of enlightenment." Elephants!

A Tumblr full of cutaways.

Latest OSXs only but: this does – with a nice template, and JSON options – what a pile of terrible Ruby I regularly update also does. I'd go with this over my terrible Ruby any day.

"…drawing, even at a representational level, is the construction of ideas. Therefore the conscious manipulation of ideas through the act of drawing becomes highly fruitful for a designer." More from Matt on drawing, and particular approaches aimed at unlocking drawing-as-thinking. Excellent as ever. I continue to vaguely try drawing in all workshops and for myself, and am still amazed by the number of people who, in design workshops, illustrate what they mean with sentences. For reference: I am a truly appalling draughtsman who was the despair of many an art teacher.

Both of these are great, and express some of what I've been trying to say in recent talks far better than I've expressed myself.

Rather good interview with MJH; covers lots of bases, carried out just before Light was published.

"Drawings are not just end products: they are part of the thought process of architectural design. Drawings express the interaction of our minds, eyes and hands. This last statement is absolutely crucial to the difference between those who draw to conceptualize architecture and those who use the computer." Not just true of architecture, either.

"…there is something far more interesting at work in Heavy Rain: its successful rejection of the primary operation of cinema. The game doesn't fully succeed in exploiting this power, but it does demonstrate it in a far more synthetic way than do other games with similar goals. If "edit" is the verb that makes cinema what it is, then perhaps videogames ought to focus on the opposite: extension, addition, prolonging. Heavy Rain does not embrace filmmaking, but rebuffs it by inviting the player to do what Hollywood cinema can never offer: to linger on the mundane instead of cutting to the consequential." Ian Bogost is smart, and this is brilliant (and also provides a citation for "film is editing", which is something I've blathered about before).

"i think this might be my proudest professional achievement to date. please please please keep drawing more smoking bears."

A little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of fact, a few reminders of the past. Especially the old Kit-Kat wrappers.

"In the game you are rewarded for keeping your tracks together while navigating through the surreal world of an "architectural" diagram. The camera moves in continuous motion and the object is to finish the course with as many points as possible." Watch the trailer; it's astoundingly pretty. Can't wait for this one!

"On my todo list still is an evil twin of iamnear, designed to be difficult and disorientating in use, but rewarding in unexpected ways should you persevere with it. As Kevin Slavin recently said in his talk at the BLDGBLOG book launch: “a world and a life in which you are always the centre of the map… fuck that”."

"I work at a used and rare bookstore, and I buy books from people everyday. These are the personal, funny, heartbreaking and weird things I find in those books." Bookmarks, dedications, receipts, adverts. Lovely.

"This jQuery plugin generates sparklines (small inline charts) directly in the browser using data supplied either inline in the HTML, or via javascript." Nifty.

"…when we step into the shoes of that avatar, be it 1st-person, 3rd-person or otherwise, we exit the darkened movie theater paradigm and enter an intricate, performative, exploratory lab of untested ideas and speculation. We enter a playful space that feels and responds much more like a live theater rehearsal than an interactive movie or a triggered series of movie clips." Michael debunks the games-as-cinema analogy with an interesting take that considers them as more like theatre rehearsal.

"This is not a book about the VCS, nor breakout, nor video games and video game culture; it is a chronicle of the experience of that entity we might call “the player.” Oddly, there is little I can take from it in terms of approaches to video gaming or thoughts on the VCS Breakout. But it did enlarge my perspective and help me think about physiological, cognitive, and, let us say, monomaniacal aspects of video game play. Nervous, very dreadfully nervous Sudnow has been, but why would I say that he is mad?" Sudnow passed away very recently; I really ought to read his book, more than ever.

"[s3fm]… lets anyone run a streaming radio station, with just a folder of MP3s. Put those MP3s in an Amazon S3 bucket, and give your friends the S3 FM link."

Matt's talk (in English) from Lift 09, on scientific fiction, stories, and the design process. Good stuff – not too long – and wonderfully filmed: the cameraman focuses on his hands as much as his face, which is just perfect.

NeoGAF users band together to make a perfect, eight-stage, LittleBigPlanet rendition of Contra. Remarkable, especially the behind-the-backdrop puppeteering that makes the walking-into-the-screen levels possible. This had better not get a takedown slapped on it, because it's phenomenal.

"Perfect gift for any World of Warcraft player or other MMORPGer in general. You get one "main" glass and one "alt" glass. Serving idea: fill your main with your alcoholic beverage and your alt with your chaser since mains are typically stronger than alts." Oh dear. (But: good gag, and dangerous for drinking games).

"SFZero is a Collaborative Production Game. Players build characters by completing tasks for their groups and increasing their Score. The goals of play include meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities."

"One of my enduring passions is exploring graphic design with programmatic and generative systems. While some aspects of design require the skilled hand of the designer, others can be formalized and explored by computer. For those tasks, Mathematica is an exceptional tool." Some lovely thinking around generative design.

"He probably thinks he is doing a community service but he is blatantly breaking the law and has to be dealt with. I would call him an eccentric." Community service yes; blatantly breaking the law, yes; 'has to be dealt with', really not sure about that. It's not like he was causing harm. Sometimes, the world is a funny place. Oh: and definitely, definitely "eccentric".

I can't really quote from it, but you need to read this; it's the most deliciously bonkers concept, and if they pull it off – which seems like it might just be possible, given the level of detail they talk about the game at – it could be properly magical. Lovely preview, too.