"One [memory] always stuck with me was him showing a moody, uplit black-and-white press portrait of Richard Meier in the cliché black-turtleneck and severe glasses in front of venetian blinds – eyes directed up and away in search of the future – very fountainhead. Kaplicky rumbled: “This is not design”. He pointed at me to click the slide carousel forward. An image of a carpark full of Boeing employees, from design engineers to HR to office cleaners in 777 project t-shirts waving at the camera. Kaplicky, now beaming, crookedly: “This. This is design.”" Sounds about right to me.

"Multiplayer Design Lead Tyson Green checked a week ago in with a lengthy explanation of the melee system in Halo 3, how it’s different from Halo 2’s what worked about both versions, what didn’t work and how it’s being addressed by the auto update. here's a reminder of what he explained." Via Offworld, this frankly excellent explanation of a Halo 3 patch from early 2008, explaining the problems latency brough to melee combat, and why Bungie implemented their solutions as they did. Clear, educational, and it feels like the right answer. More writing like this, please, games industry!

Playground for Google's Ajax APIs. Well implemented, and very useful.

"Isla Lyddle End lies on the far east of the British Archipelago. It is the largest of the eastern islands in what was once the continuous land mass known as Hornbyshire. Isla Lyddle End celebrates the Golden Jubilee of The Grand Iman of Britain HH Patel bin Windsor with a minaret clock tower, constructed of hard-pack, molded synthetic carbon nodules in full compliance with the Rock and Soil Conservation Act of 2038." Julian's Lyddle End 2050 entry is excellent.

Because I've never known how to spell it until now, and it's one of my favourite words.

Very beautiful, and, so far, very sensible implementation of touch interactions. Looking forward to playing much more of this over the holidays.

"Tears shouldn’t be our goal. Stories don’t need to be our tools. The majority of art forms don’t rely on narrative for their emotional impact. Stop and think about that for a second. The games industry tends to draw on such an amazingly limited roster of inspirations that it’s easy to forget it. But our obsession with linear, story-based – word-based, even – non-participatory art at the expense of all the other forms makes life so much harder for games, and it makes me crazy."

"Modern day awesominers know there are actually 118 fundamental "awesoments" that compose all good things. The Periodic table of Awesoments can be a very useful tool. It's designed to show the relationships between awesoments, and often one can even predict how awesoments interact simply by their positions on the table."

Very good – some good stuff around how the library works, but also lots of basics around how to optimise Javascript.

Gerard Way reviews Left 4 Dead on My Chemical Romance's (totally excellent) blog.

"Left 4 Dead is out
Friends kill zombies together
Is it worth getting?"
Yes Gerard, it is.

"If you want a recipe for restless sleep, I can give you one. Add one part “what will my wife think” with 3,000 parts Benjamin Franklin; stir in a “beer anytime you damn well please” and top with a chance at financial independence."