Links & notes for this month

• • Riding Rails: Upgrading to Snow Leopard
    A good list of tips - lots of compiled stuff needs to be recompiled to x64, and this will be confusing. I am not upgrading quite yet.
    (tags: ruby rails mac osx mysql snowleopard upgrade tips )
• • Token by ~brsev on deviantART
    A quite nice monochromatic icon set, including both dark-on-light and light-on-dark options.
    (tags: icons graphics free )
• • Opening Shots: The Conversation - scanners
    "The camera itself will trap Harry, leaving him all the more vulnerable because he is alone." But of course. A wonderful opening to a wonderful, wonderful film; still, perhaps, my favourite film, and one so rooted in editing and film-making. The camera, constantly trapping Caul, boxing him in, is worth paying attention to, and this short description of the opening captures its predatory nature.
    (tags: theconversation coppola film movies analysis titles )
• • three frames
    Animated gifs made of three frames of film. Not all are safe for work, though none are obscene. You might love it; it might make you feel a bit ill.
    (tags: animatedgif threeframes movies slightlydisturbing )
  • chewing pixels » Best Thing I Saw Today #49: Three Frames
    "...the ongoing charm and usefulness of the animated .gif lies in this very economy. Like a good one-liner, the animated .gif can tell a joke with the impact of a one-inch punch, trimming away the fat of unnecessary frames to deliver its message with streamlined effectiveness." All too true. And Simon gives me my own discovery of the day
    (tags: simonparkin internet culture animatedgif threeframes )
• • The British Experimental Rocket Group « Matthew Sheret Online
    "What an incredible thing. He and The British Experimental Rocket Group have become ideas – vague, powerful concepts that have all the potential to change the world or dissipate trying. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?" It is awesome when people write about your company the way you only imagined they might.
    (tags: berg matthewsheret writing histories )
• • Gamasutra - News - Breaking: CCP Announces Dust 514 Console MMO At GDC Europe
    "In fact, when Dust 514 launches, the map of EVE, currently divined only by player structures owned in the PC game, will also take into account infantry successes and failures within the console game. Players in the PC MMO can "fund mercenaries and give them goals" in the console title." Oh, now that is nice: CCP build a multiplayer game for consoles, and tie it - with data and everything - to the PC MMO, but it's only an indirect link. As a 360 owner without a PC, I shall have to be proud to serve in the mobile infantry.
    (tags: ccp mmo online eve games consoles multiplayer connectivity heinleinian )
• • A Different Kind of Blue — The Bygone Bureau
    "Kevin Nguyen talks to the minds behind Kind of Bloop, a chiptune cover album of cool jazz masterpiece Kind of Blue." A good interview with some of the Kind of Bloop gang; Shnabubula's "All Blues" is utterly marvellous, so it's nice to hear more from the artist.
    (tags: kindofbloop music chiptunes interview jazz )
• • Playpitch » Essay: Everyday Hacks: Why Cheating Matters
    "Cheating is hacking for the masses. It is one of many opportunities to ‘soft programme’ our technologies and culture without heavy reliance on advanced knowledge. Cheating creates an opportunity to play with design, think about it, and tinker around. By effectively unbalancing a game, we can move behind the screen to consider games through their limits. If you put too many assets on screen with the Sonic debug mode, the system would freeze and crash. In this it taught young players an important truth about games; that they aren’t infinite systems, but rather careful gestures reliant on an economy of elements. Cheats of the kind seen in Sonic fostered a generation of gamers to be both critical and respectful of what games are. Knowing that the level is one configuration among many comes from a point of view only afforded through cheating." David Surman is writing more about games, and it is a good thing.
    (tags: games cheating hacking mastery sonic systems manipulation rules )
• • Gamasutra - Features - From Me to Wii: Martin Hollis' Journey
    Simon Parkin interviews Martin Hollis. As with much of what Martin says, it is gentle, readable, and dotted with nuggets of purest gold. And the word "teleportage". Martin's a lovely, lovely chap, and he really, really knows his stuff; reading this should convince you of that.
    (tags: martinhollis simonparkin gamasutra interview bonsaibarber games design programming )
• • YouTube - Future of Singapore in 2015
    The city, it turns out, is there for you to SPEND MONEY IN. And augment the hell out of. No grim meathook future in 2015 Singapore, that's for certain...
    (tags: singapore ar augmentedreality futurism video peakoil capitalism )
  • List of gairaigo and wasei-eigo terms - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    "This is a selected list of gairaigo, Japanese words originating or based on foreign language (generally Western) terms, including wasei-eigo (Japanese pseudo-Anglicisms)." One of my new favourite Wikipedia pages; there is some fascinating stuff in here.
    (tags: japanese language english portmanteau waseieigo culture gairaigo )