Links & notes for this month

• • BBC SPORT | Cricket | Cricket mourns death of Frindall
    That's sad; he was a fount of statistics since I first listened to TMS, and long before that.
    (tags: bbc radio cricket radio4 tms billfrindall )
  • SoundManager 2: Javascript Sound For The Web
    "By wrapping and extending Flash 8's sound API, SoundManager 2 brings solid audio functionality to Javascript." Dark voodoo. Dark, clever, voodoo.
    (tags: flash programming audio music sound javascript mp3 nifty )
  • Creating a Nice Slider With jQuery UI « Keep The Web Weird - Interface Musings from Buck Wilson
    This was actually a pretty good tutorial for the jQuery UI Slider control, if only for illustrating how much code - notably markup/styles - you have to provide before the slider works.
    (tags: tutorial ui javascript jquery screencast slider )
  • YouTube - 2009 Global Game Jam Keynote
    Kyle Gabler of 2D Boy gives the first Global Game Jam keynote. Seven minutes, seven tips, packed with goodness. He's not wrong.
    (tags: tips design games development globalgamejam kylegabler 2dboy )
  • Slow data and the pleasure of automated nostalgia « TEST
    "I’m much more interested in automated nostalgia than automated presence - data feeds that gradually acrue in your wake, rather than constantly dragging your focus on to the next five minutes." Yes.
    (tags: information narrative history data visualisation slow pace )
• • LÖVE - Free 2D Game Engine
    "LÖVE is an unquestionably awesome 2D game engine, which allows rapid game development and prototyping in Lua." And it all looks rather pretty, too. Must investigate further!
    (tags: programming games development opensource opengl engine lua sdl )
  • apophenia: Taken Out of Context -- my PhD dissertation
    danah's PhD dissertation. I need to bookmark this, and have not read it yet, but am sure, at some point, I am going to plough through it, for work, recreation, or (most likely) a bit of both. Until then: just a bookmark.
    (tags: teens socialsoftware paper research socialnetworking publics dissertation danahboyd youth )
  • http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1543/persuasive_games_how_i_stopped_.php?print=1
    "I still have nothing but respect for my more traditional industry colleagues, but I’ve stopped worrying about impressing the games industry and its pundits. Or at least, I’ve stopped worrying about impressing them first. Instead, I’ve started focusing more on the people who might be interested in different kinds of game experiences. People who fly for business more than three times a month, or people who read all of the Sunday newspaper, or people who have kids with food allergies, for example. I am sure these people read magazines and watch television and listen to the radio. But it would be short-sighted to label them ziners or tubers or airwavers. They are just people, with interests, who sometimes consume different kinds of media." Bogost is right, and I'm concerned I'm always going to be ashamed I chose to use that word.
    (tags: games culture casual ianbogost pervasive gamer langauge )
  • How the Computer gets the answer
    "It is a commonplace that if it weren’t for computers we couldn’t fly to the moon, or even keep an accurate record of the national debt. On the question of how it does what it does, however, the computer has always remained essentially mysterious—unfathomable to all but a small handful of initiates. An officer of one major computer concern guessed recently that not more than 2% of his employees really know how it works." 2% seems awfully high these days. Detailed, technical article from Life in 1967.
    (tags: technology engineering journalism life computing magazine computer logic )
  • A LEGO Orange : Man Bytes Blog
    "This is not intended to be a fun game. It has all the trappings of a LEGO game. It has the forgiving game mechanics. The ease of control. But it uses these elements to create a cognitive dissonance between the ease of the actions and the terrible nature of their real world counterparts." Corvus hypothesises what A Lego Clockwork Orange might look like. Thoughtful stuff.
    (tags: games literature lego anthonyburgess clockworkorange roundtable whatif )
  • white on white - By Lorenzo Wang
    "So why not embrace it? That's why You Have To Burn The Rope is fantastic... for games to become art there must be an awareness and a conversation with its own history. Film, music, and literary critic call this allusion, but for the creators, this isn't just a word, it's a dialogue. Which means it should invite participants. For me, I'm far more intrigued by stop-motion artist Patrick Boivin's attempt at turning a linked sequence of videos into Youtube Street Fighter." I'm not sure I agree with Wang on YHTBTR, specifically, but this paragraph is reasonably sensible.
    (tags: games criticism culture historiography dialogue )
  • Докторрр ин дер ролле Fima_Psuchopadt (с) - 65 лет назад была снята блокада Ленинграда
    65 years since the end of the siege of Leningrad, this LJ post shows photographs from the late 1940s merged with images of the location in the present. All are striking; some are very sad. Great contextualisation, though.
    (tags: photography russia history location photoshop war leningrad merged )
• • alternate-reality-report.gif (GIF Image, 600x347 pixels)
    "Oh, that's because it's an alternate reality report..."
    (tags: business arg comic corporateculture toothpastefordinner webcomic alternatereality system:filetype:gif system:media:image )
• • Versus CluClu Land: How it is that Games Teach you Things
    "And so my holiday was spent with games on the opposite ends of the spectrum: World of Goo's patient instruction versus Shiren's school of hard knocks. And despite their different approaches I felt that each, in their own way, did credit to the core competence of games as a medium: inspiring the pleasure of finding things out."
    (tags: games learning difficulty roguelike instruction iroquoispliskin worldofgoo expectations shirenthewanderer )
  • Twitter / gothdobby
    "Bio i am a house elf but no one understands me. i like wearing black tea cozies, listening to my chemical romance, and bdsm. sometimes i do emo weed with hermione." Fanfic invades Twitter.
    (tags: fiction twitter harrypotter fanfic emo )
  • Jump London
    In its entirety, on Google Video.
    (tags: london video space cities parkour documentary urban )
• • Switching from scripting languages to Objective C and iPhone: useful libraries :: Hackdiary
    "I’m a web developer at heart, and a scripting language user by preference. Coding for the iPhone doesn’t feel as fluid in text handling or HTTP access as the environments I’m used to. Fortunately I’ve been able to find some fantastic open-source libraries and wrappers that make up the difference. Here are my favourites so far:" A useful - and interesting - set of links from Matt B.
    (tags: mobile osx iphone development framework objectivec scripting )
  • chewing pixels » Troths by Carl Sandburg
    "Oh words, words, words." Beautiful. Thanks, Simon.
    (tags: poetry carlsandburg )
  • Insult Swordfighting: The Nintendo playbook
    "The Wii has captured the imagination of millions of people who didn't consider themselves gamers at all. Why are we so surprised? All this has happened before." And, no doubt, all of it will happen again. Some good insight and quotation from Mitch Krpata on a history of Nintendo's console marketing and sales strategies.
    (tags: games marketing business nintendo sales profit consoles )
  • The Planetside War: Weekend Warriors | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    War reporting from a virtual world; Jim Rossignol documents the first skirmishes in the Offworld/RPS/Escapist conflict. Looking forward to more of this.
    (tags: games rockpapershotgun offworld reportage jimrossignol planetside theescapist )
  • S/FJ: not only with orange
    "It is from the era when people were all 'we will not know if acid is dangerous until we test it on THE FOXIEST GIRLS IN ENGLAND.'" Too right.
    (tags: interview video culture lsd acid hotness )
  • Closure.
    If you can see it, it exists. If you can't, it doesn't. Lovely, tough, fun.
    (tags: games flash blackandwhite light shade closure )
  • On the high seas - a set on Flickr
    "We were delighted to have George Oates, ex of Flickr who started and managed the Commons, come to visit us at the National Maritime Museum in November 2008. When she was here she curated some Commons content for us. This set is the first of this content." Some wonderful selections; the full archive must be remarkable.
    (tags: flickr history commons georgeoates curation sailing marinehistory nmm )
  • scraplab : a few months back i donated £25 to resonance 104.4 fm...
    "Perhaps more charities should project a less glamorous image, and remind us that they still have to do all the boring stuff that everyone does at work. And perhaps then we wouldn’t have such unreasonable expectations. Sponsor a filing cabinet, sir?" The thing I like most about this is being told exactly where your contribution goes; you get a real connection with a real thing. I'd rather buy charities a shelving unit than £25 of vague platitudes.
    (tags: charity sponsorship resonancefm donations funding )
• • IE NetRenderer - Browser Compatibility Check -
    "Unlike other screenshot services, we are able to process a large number of capturing jobs in parallel and in realtime, making it the fastest service that we know of." Ooh. That could be useful.
    (tags: design web tool utility browsertesting compatibility )
  • XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Prevention Cheat Sheet - OWASP
    "This article provides a simple positive model for preventing XSS using output escaping/encoding properly. While there are a huge number of XSS attack vectors, following a few simple rules can completely defend against this serious attack." Pretty comprehensive, and some clear guidelines if, like me, you're unsure where to start when protecting against XSS.
    (tags: security development web reference xss )
  • Kodu - Microsoft Research
    "Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input." Which is interesting. I know it's only a research project, but it'd be lovely to play with some time.
    (tags: programming games teaching microsoft tools xbox resarch kodu )
• • Curating Chemistry
    "Today it feels harder than ever to get the tools to play with science at home and I want to be able to give my son a chemistry set that he would relish getting out to experiment with. One that he could pass on to his younger brother when the time is right. One that will instill the joy of science, exploration and discovery in him. If I can’t buy one then I am going to make one, so this site will record my attempts to put together the best chemistry set a boy or girl could wish for." Smashing.
    (tags: education learning science chemistry experimentation home )
  • Transmission
    "Transmission is a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client." Impressive OSX version, for a multi-platform tool, too. Very pleased with this after Tomato gave up the ghost.
    (tags: osx opensource tool utility bittorrent client )
• • RIP Jan Kaplicky « Magical Nihilism
    "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.
    (tags: none)
  • Bungie.net : Inside Bungie : News (Balancing Melee Combat)
    "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!
    (tags: games stats bungie halo3 latency balancing lag )
  • AJAX APIs Playground
    Playground for Google's Ajax APIs. Well implemented, and very useful.
    (tags: development web api google testing tool )
  • Near Future Laboratory » Blog Archive » Isla Lyddle End 2050
    "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.
    (tags: design futurism culture prediction flooding apocalypse julianbleecker lyddleend2050 britain )
• • Chrome Cow » US Democracy Server: Patch Day
    "Reputation with various factions are being rebalanced. The gradated reputation scale was erroneously being overwritten by the binary For Us/ Against Us flag." Entertaining explanation of the changes in the White House in the style of World of Warcraft patch notes. No, really.
    (tags: wow humour politics america patch barackobama )
  • News Knitter
    "News Knitter converts information gathered from the daily political news into clothing. Live news feed from the Internet that is broadcasted within 24 hours or a particular period is analyzed, filtered and converted into a unique visual pattern for a knitted sweater. The system consists of two different types of software: whereas one receives the content from live feeds the other converts it into visual patterns, and a fully computerized flat knitting machine produces the final output. Each product, sweater of News Knitter is an evidence/result of a specific day or period."
    (tags: visualization information clothing news knitting clothes textiles )
  • Drop7
    "Drop7 combines the easy fun of casual drop-and-break games with the smart, brain-stretching enjoyment of simple number puzzles." Chain Factor as-was hits the iPhone. It's very, very good. It's also $0.99 or 59p right now, so you should buy it.
    (tags: games iphone puzzle appstore areacode chainfactor drop7 )
• • The connected book (and how to make soda water) - Boing Boing
    "Slowly, over time, a page typeset in 1771 might start to get a whole new life, thanks to the growing authority we grant it through that elemental gesture of making a link." And this is why we need to empower the socialised book, not just through Google Books, but through the physical things themselves.
    (tags: writing books publishing research google stevenjohnson )
  • Welcome to Poken
    Official Poken site.
    (tags: socialnetworking connectivity rfid generationc poken socialhardware )
  • Poken - buy Poken at Firebox.com
    "Simply pull out your Poken and ‘high five’ it with your new best friend’s. Clever RF technology then zaps the info between the devices, so next time you log on to your favourite site, your profiles are linked. Genius!" Physical exchange of details, dead cheap, integrated through a web intermediate. Lovely.
    (tags: hardware socialnetworking connectivity networking generationc poken socialhardware )
  • Gamasutra - Hirai Claims PS3 'Official' Leadership, Criticizes Rivals
    "We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" It's good to see that Sony can still afford their weekly supply of crazy pills. Locking up potential inside a monkeypuzzle is a _good_ thing? "Official" leadership? What the hell, Kaz?
    (tags: development marketing sony insane bonkers kazhirai )