Links & notes for this month

• • Land Of The Free | Five Players
    "In their wisdom Sega had connected the console’s power board to the console with six wibbly-wobbly pins and made the disc tray’s lid switch from wishes. Dummying data to the edge of the CD was the least you could do for the asthmatic old dear’s clunking and whining laser." Wonderful piece from Five Players on Dreamcast piracy - and how the pirate community kept life in an undersupported piece of magic.
    (tags: dreamcast games piracy community )
  • Game Prototypes
    Jonathan Blow's game prototypes; some interesting stuff here, especially in the READMEs.
    (tags: game design experimental prototypes jonathanblow )
  • dataists » Blog Archive » The Iraq War Diary – An Initial Grep
    "Please don’t believe any of this. Go instead to the data and have a look for yourself." Which is, for this audience, a very good way of putting it.
    (tags: data iraqwar belief trust )
• • Marco.org - The Mac App Store isn't for today's Mac developers
    "...if the Mac App Store is only populated by a subset of today’s Mac software, a few key points (such as “Inexpensive”) still won’t be true. This is why I believe that the Mac App Store will be dominated by (and become known for) apps that don’t exist on the Mac today." This is really good. It might even be right; regardless, it's thoughtful and well-argued.
    (tags: appstore mac osx development distribution software )
• • So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities
    "A bright motivated undergrad decides to ask her professor for a recommendation to graduate school." XtraNormal makes everything somewhat more psychotic than even the original scripts suggest. Fun.
    (tags: satire academia video phd humanities xtranormal )
• • Hannah Montana Linux - About
    "Hannah Montana Linux is a free operating system based on Kubuntu with a Hannah Montana theme." You know you've made it when you've got your own OS.
    (tags: linux distro hannahmontana blimey )
  • nathansearles's Faded at master - GitHub
    "Faded is a super simple fading image and content viewer for jQuery. Easy to setup and design to your specifications. Features auto generated pagination, an awesome sequential image loader, some fancy crossfading, essentially no CSS required and a number of custom option for you to set if you like." Looks nicely coded, too; duly noted.
    (tags: javascript paginator fade transitions imageviewer )
  • 11 Vital Lessons To Learn From Game Dev Story « Double Buffered
    "Building a series of Golf-themed Audio Novels is not the route to financial success." These are all true.
    (tags: gamedevstory games )
• • scraplab — Please Keep Your Belongings with You at All Times
    "The point is that making one-click tools that force the entire web to play catchup, whilst putting people at risk, just isn’t a sensible way of talking about security. There’s a reason we (most of us, anyway) don’t secure our houses with turret guns and dogs, and that’s because most of the time, a lock and key is good enough. We want just enough security to feel safe at night, and not to cause us too much hassle. And that’s why this tool makes me sad. Because it’s a symbol of an arms race – a fight to the death over unimportant things, when really, I’d rather not have to remember to lock my windows at night." Yes.
    (tags: tomtaylor security firesheep )
  • stamen design | Nike Grid: Using London's phone boxes as goal posts
    "Today's video is 'Boys vs Girls', showing the relative points and badges etc. accumulated by boys vs. girls over the course of the day. It ends with a "get running, girls!" message, and I love that data visualization is being used as a way for a brand to tell a story, in something close to real time, in a specific way tailored to the events on the ground."
    (tags: narrative visualisation stories nikegrid stamen )
• • Code Standards | Isobar
    Not a bad list, especially for sites needing hardcore, tight, front-end work, and that are going to face load.
    (tags: development frontend markup standards process css html javascript )
  • Mitu.nu » Kandinsky and Game Design
    Mitu makes a series of interesting connections here, though the conclusion she came to isn't quite the same as mine - which is in the comments. But there's a mass of starting points here as to notions of the "abstract", and what it might mean for games. Something I shall be returning to, for sure.
    (tags: games abstract kandinsky writing art mitukandhaker )
• • The Most Popular Phone in the World
    "This is what the next generation of the mega-selling phone will look like. They'll be rough facsimiles of the high-end smartphones forged for well-heeled buyers, stripped of fat and excess—an embodiment of compromise. They'll be 90% of the phone for 20% of the price, with FM radios instead of digital music stores, and flashlights instead of LED flashes. This is how the other half will smartphone, if you want to be so generous as to call the developing world's users a half. We're not even close." Yes.
    (tags: technology mobile design phones hardware )
  • Music from Saharan Cellphones. This is amazing.... | intercourse with biscuits
    "Sahel Sounds rounded up music salvaged from the discarded mobile phone memory chips in West Africa." Wow; the after-life of dead electronic media made real.
    (tags: music culture media data storage africa )
  • Cardboard Children: Arkham Horror | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    "Board games are different. Sure, while you might love a board game for the sense of immersion it provides, or the way the game lifts off the table and fills the room, you also might love it for how beautiful the mechanics are. It’s like looking inside a clockwork watch. That fascination, as you see how all the pieces fit together, how everything is timed to perfection, how balanced it all is. With a beautiful board game design, you can love it for that craftsmanship you can feel with every turn." Yup. But, of course: this is, increasingly, why I like any game. It's just much more visible in boardgames - where you have to wrangle the rules yourself. And everything else - the immersion, the involvement - will come too; it just comes from that clockwork heart.
    (tags: games boardgames rules mechanics )
• • MCMap Live - Interactive Mapping for Mac OS X [video] - Minecraft Forums
    "MCMap Live is a wrapper for mcmap, Zahl's fantastic and fast isometric Minecraft map renderer. What makes MCMap Live special is that it renders maps in pieces and lets you view them right away in an intuitive, minimalist interface. You can scroll and zoom all around your world and as quick as mcmap can render the chunks, you will see them. Instant gratification!" Impressive!
    (tags: minecraft mapping osx )
• • The Story So Far | Struct.ca
    Nice write-up of the making of (the marvellous) Trainyard, both in terms of polishing and marketing.
    (tags: games trainyard iphone development marketing apps )
• • Halcyon Preview on Vimeo
    "Halcyon is named for the mythological bird of ancient Greece, said to charm the winds and seas into a calm during the Winter Solstice. It is a spacial action puzzle game and interactive stringed instrument designed specifically for the iPad." Lovely.
    (tags: games zachgage ipad music )