Infovore : tag : learning

13
December
2011

Links

Tagged as:
editor, learning, programming, vim.

Vim: revisited

Really good look at getting your head around vim from Mislav. Especially on the money with regard to starting slow, and adding things as you need them. The worst thing you can do is _start_ with somebody else's .vim files.

(tags: vim programming editor learning )

10
June
2011

Links

Tagged as:
books, information, knowledge, learning, libraries, robinsloan.

Children of Troy « Snarkmarket

"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people – people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." Both the letters described, and Robin's point, are beautiful.

(tags: libraries books learning information knowledge robinsloan )

31
May
2011

Links

Tagged as:
clothes, jeans, learning, manufacturing, process.

Grain & Gram — The New Gentlemans Journal / The Exchange / A Conversation With Roy Slaper

"Skateboarding, metal work, solitude, machining, precision, and practicality. That's where Roy began." Lovely interview with a chap who makes custom jeans, on his own, simply because he decided one day he wanted to – and then he got good at it. The photographs of his workshop at the end are lovely.

(tags: clothes manufacturing learning jeans process )

28
March
2011

Links

Tagged as:
bouldering, climbing, controls, culture, design, game, GIRP, innovation, learning, london, technology.

GIRP

This is beyond brilliant. Not because it's More Hard Fun From The Maker Of QWOP, but because it's actually easier than QWOP, and it tickles exactly the same part of my brain that bouldering itself tickled, and it makes brilliant use of finger-gymnastics and the keyboard, and it's marvellous, really. I just want to go home and play it all night.

(tags: climbing controls game design bouldering GIRP )
W. Brian Arthur Vs Silicon Roundabout, ‘Start-Up Britain’ and other shake-and-bake approaches « Magical Nihilism

"Deep craft is more than knowledge. It is a set of knowings. Knowing what is likely to work and what not to work. Knowing what methods to use, what principles are likely to succeed, what parameter values to use in a given technique. Knowing whom to talk to down the corridor to get things working, how to fix things that go wrong, what to ignore, what theories to look to. This sort of craft-knowing takes science for granted and mere knowledge for granted. And it derives collectively from a shared culture of beliefs, an unspoken culture of common experience." Craft / scenius / place / knowledge. The W Brian Arthur sounds great, and Matt's point – that building strength in a sector is building culture, and that requires investment in something that won't see immediate returns (rather than "five-year plans" and "strategies") is acute. Very good stuff.

(tags: innovation technology culture learning london )

21
August
2010

Links

Tagged as:
games, learning, limbo, mitchkrpata, puzzles.

Insult Swordfighting: Limboned — Video Game Reviews and Rants

"The puzzles [in Limbo] aren't brain-busters, and even though you die a lot, it always puts you right back where you started. It's just so capricious. It never bothers to set limits or rules for the world you're in. Its sole concern seems to be killing you for no apparent reason. Instead of asking you to apply what you learned from your previous deaths, the game keeps changing the rules so it can kill you again. It's as though it's making things up as it goes, like a rambling first draft that could use a good revision."

(tags: mitchkrpata limbo games puzzles learning )

14
June
2010

Links

Tagged as:
annotation, books, denki, design, dogearing, education, games, greece, juggle, learning, marginalia, nostalgia, plato.

On Bookmarking, Dog Ears and Marginalia | booktwo.org

"I’ve been having a lot of conversations with people recently about how they bookmark stuff. It seems to be on a lot of peoples’ minds as more and more of our reading moves onto screens. So I thought I’d share a few things, and ask for some feedback." James on bookmarking and annotation – something I'm a big fan of.

(tags: annotation books dogearing marginalia )
Getting Juggly With It (Part One) « Denki

"For the past 20 years I’ve had this urge to make a series of games that never were – mainly to suggest lost archives now discovered; to create an emotional resonance akin to that experienced by, say, new-found Beatles demo tapes – but also the idea of recreating contemporary games and themes in an old style to suggest an alternative past and present." Lovely writing, smart ideas, nice little game, but the clarity of thought is the real stand-out here. Another example of why I love Denki so much.

(tags: denki games design nostalgia juggle )
Educational games from 3500 years ago | Mssv

"…The teachers, by applying the rules and practices of arithmetic to play, prepare their pupils for the tasks of marshalling and leading armies and organizing military expeditions, managing a household too, and altogether form them into persons more useful to themselves and to others, and a great deal wider awake.” Well done, Plato.

(tags: games learning education greece plato )

25
March
2010

Links

Tagged as:
ambition, chance, childhood, franklantz, games, handsignals, johannesburg, language, learning, life, probability, quotations, signs, southafrica, system:filetype:pdf, system:media:document, understanding, waltermurch.

Game Design Advance » The Truth in Game Design

"Shouldn’t games be an opportunity for players to wrap their heads around counter-intuitive truths?" Yes, they should.

(tags: games probability chance learning understanding franklantz )
what you loved when you were nine or ten « fenced lot

“I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old. At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you “should” be doing. If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself.” And now, I love Walter Murch even more.

(tags: quotations waltermurch childhood ambition life )
Hand Signals for Johannesburg Taxi Directions [pdf]

Depicted as a grid by artist Susan Wolf; to circumvent the large number of languages spoken in Joburg, taxi drivers have official hand signals to take you from A to B. This PDF shows all of them. (via Bobulate)

(tags: southafrica johannesburg handsignals language signs system:filetype:pdf system:media:document )

18
February
2010

Links

Tagged as:
armitage, design, education, interaction, learning, music, narcissism, notation, type, typography.

Jonas Friedemann Heuer – portfolio – Noteput

"“Notput” is an interactive music table with tangible notes, that combines all three senses of hearing, sight and touch to make learning the classical notation of music for children and pupils more easy and interesting."

(tags: music learning education notation interaction )
Designing Armitage | i love typography, the typography and fonts blog

"I had been studying this style of letters on similar buildings in Washington, D.C., and something about them always felt a little dull. But in the Claremount letters I found life in the charming way the awkward proportions and loose spacing came together. So I set about designing a Claremount typeface." Nice article on designing a typeface, and, I must admit, it's rather good-looking (especially for something named after me).

(tags: type typography design armitage narcissism )

10
January
2010

Links

Tagged as:
culture, education, games, learning, society, tomchatfield.

Why playing in the virtual world has an awful lot to teach children | Technology | The Observer

"…it's high time we began to understand games on their own terms, with all the potentials and dangers that entails: as arguably the most powerful models we have for connecting and motivating, and understanding those vast, disparate groups of people a digital age throws together." Short interview with Tom Chatfield in the Observer.

(tags: games culture society learning education tomchatfield )

22
December
2009

Links

Tagged as:
challenge, design, difficulty, education, games, interaction, learning, movement, nintendo, via:matlock, zelda.

Grit: The skills for success and how they are grown | The Young Foundation

"Grit: The skills for success and how they are grown, a new Young Foundation book published on Tuesday 30 June argues that Britain's schools need to prioritise grit and self-discipline. Drawing on evidence from around the world it shows that these contribute as much to success at work and in life as IQ and academic qualifications."

(tags: education learning difficulty challenge via:matlock )
Movement Mechanics in “The Legend of Zelda” « Troy Gilbert

"What’s happening here is a very neat trick. While Link can move a single pixel at a time, in any direction, the longer he continously moves in any direction the more he gravitates toward aligning himself with the underlying grid of the screen." Lovely little analysis of the different ways the original Legend of Zelda, and the subsequent Link to the Past, subtly correct the player's input to ensure they never feel cheated by pixel-perfect hit detection.

(tags: games nintendo zelda movement design interaction )

Links & notes for this month

Endnotes