• "A decade or two ago I spent some days in a “study” in an old Oxford college: bed, desk, lamp, and a window with a view of the quadrangle; nothing else. It made an impression that hasn’t faded. Among other things, I made insane, immense progress on a difficult piece of writing at the front of my to-do list. Here’s a prediction: Geek fashion in particular and intellectual fashion in general will swing hard over: from cluttered to ascetic, from high to low entropy, from library to monastery." A few thoughts from Tim Bray - not all of which I agree with - on the changing geek aesthetic.
  • David Hellman releases hi-res assets of all the Braid artwork. It is beautiful, and am thinking about how best to use some of it on my desktop.
  • "We are a loose collection of mostly London-based comic-artists, illustrators and writers, who have grown up listening to the Magnetic Fields and got together over a mutual love of the songs. One day, on Twitter, a couple of us decided that illustrating - or writing a comic - or a short story - inspired by all 69 songs was a worthwhile and exciting pursuit, so here we are!" Let's see how this will turn out.
  • "Players need to understand all the inputs and all the outputs to make interesting, informed decisions. These are the mechanisms through which we express our will in the game. This is the machinery that transforms our medium from passive to interactive… This is a multifaceted (and as far as I'm aware, relatively unexplored) issue, but we can begin making inroads. Making games more readable begins with two things- empathy and data." Nels on Don Norman and readability, amongst other things.
  • Blimey. Video from the 4k demo competition. Yes, that's terrain generation, that looks *that* good, in 4k. Eek.

Links & notes for this month

Endnotes