"How does a game about killing people, the Old Testament, and the Borgias completely bore an Italian Jew?" Simon Ferrari didn't like Assassin's Creed II; he explains why. It's entertaining, for sure (but I'm still going to pick it up).

Wonderful interview with Richard Mosse, who photographs (quite beautifully) plane wrecks.

"I wonder what Tulon Ethabathel the Dwarf is doing right now." A US brain surgeon talks about his interest in gaming, the amount of time he gives it – very little – but the nontheless-important role it plays in his life. Lovely article, really; well-crafted and thought-provoking.

"For Christmas 2009 the Really Interesting Group wanted to create a a gift comprising a series of 4 unique decorations based on each recipient’s use of the Flickr, Dopplr, Last.fm and Twitter. Having used a couple of the software APIs they were thinking about using (flickr and dopplr) and with experience of rapid prototyping we worked together to turn the data into something physical." Can't believe I haven't linked this already. Ours were wonderful; many thanks to RIG and Andy.

Mike Darga's blog is a smart, insightful, data-driven look at game design, especially for MMOs. It's very good, and goes straight into my subscriptions.

"Clipstart complements your photo application to give you a place that is designed for home movies. Import your movies, tag, search, and upload with one click to Flickr and Vimeo. You can even quickly upload a trimmed portion of a movie without needing to save a new copy." Looks like an interesting alternative to iMovie for most of the uses I make of video.

Scans from a German magazine: messy, full of records, sometimes computers.

"Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context–make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large–and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve." Fantastic: transcripts of a series of lectures about the biology of B-Movie monsters; funny, accurate, informative.

Map of Shanghai, as Sim-City style rendered projection; is this useful? Or is this just a style of imagery computer users are used to?

"I find the watchclock fascinating not simply because it’s a kind of steampunk GPS, a wind-up mechanical location-awareness technology. I’m further fascinated at how this holistic system of watchclocks, keys, guards, and supervisors succeeded so completely in creating a method of behavioral control such that a human being’s movements can be precisely planned and executed, hour after hour and night after night, with such a high degree of reliability that almost a century goes by before anyone thinks of ways of improving the system as originally conceived." Fantastic.

"Sweet Sue's Canned Whole Chicken (without giblets) is an entire cooked chicken in a can (a big one)." For reference: I am not whole chicken-in-a-can hungry.