Infovore : tag : poetry

10
September
2010

Links

Tagged as:
cycling, data, geodata, poetry, tomtaylor.

scraplab — This Trail

"The GPS looks forward for me, projecting all my future successes and failings. Every bit of information helps to optimise my path. Contour maps spring out of the hills surrounding, and round the corner ahead. It took a space shuttle and an army of volunteers to help me shift down a gear, and hopefully the data exhaust I leave behind will help someone do it better next time." Tom is brilliant. I miss him.

(tags: tomtaylor poetry data geodata cycling )

16
August
2010

Links

Tagged as:
bsjohnson, design, difficulty, games, limbo, matthewsheret, poetry, writing.

Other words by B.S. Johnson « Matthew Sheret.com

"Two of these books finish with one particular poem, “Distance Piece”, which as his final printed words are tough to read through." Sadly, they are.

(tags: bsjohnson writing poetry matthewsheret )
Gamasutra – News – GDC Europe: Limbo's Carlsen On Making Players Your Worst Enemy And Your Best Friend

"First, he says, think of the player as your worst enemy, and then create the most devious puzzle possible. But then from there, try to work with the player as your friend, so that you can give them the right clues. Start with tough stuff, then scale back." I am not really convinced by this – I find Limbo erring on the side of the cruel and unfair, and think that "thinking of the player as your worst enemy" is a pretty bad rule of thumb, no matter how you later ease off the pressure.

(tags: limbo games design difficulty )

18
June
2010

Links

Tagged as:
avclub, baronwormser, criticism, cult, dslr, eggs, film, futurism, michalmigurski, photography, poetry, rfid, satire, starshiptroopers, travel, ubicomp, urbancomputing, video, zucked.

clipper futures (tecznotes)

"People are understandably jittery, after the numerous social networking data breach debacles of three years ago that seemingly turned a generation off of oversharing. MTC have gone to great pains to assure users of the system that their data is safe from "getting zucked", and they've begun to provide free personal monitoring services to users of Clipper." Mike writes future-history, and in the midst of it, coins a lovely neologism.

(tags: futurism michalmigurski travel rfid ubicomp urbancomputing zucked )
10 Must Read HDSLR Guides For Filmmakers — DSLR Video Shooter

Some interesting things here – most notably, the link on 180º shutter; something I wasn't aware of until now.

(tags: film video dslr photography )
Baron Wormser | A Quiet Life

"What a person desires in life<br />
is a properly boiled egg.<br />
This isn’t as easy as it seems."<br />
(this is good).

(tags: poetry baronwormser eggs )
Starship Troopers | Film | The New Cult Canon | The A.V. Club

"Even if you don’t find Starship Troopers as prescient as I do, the years have been kind to it, if only because it’s now removed from the context of whatever expectations people might have had for it at the time. It seems absurd now to write it off as some silly piece of escapism, as its detractors complained, and the amount of detail Verhoeven and Neumeier… I suspect its future is bright: The line between the world of Starship Troopers and Sarah Palin’s Twitter feed gets thinner every day."

(tags: film cult satire criticism avclub starshiptroopers )

26
June
2009

Links

Tagged as:
capitalism, conetproject, currentevents, data, economics, facebook, gaas, games, interoperability, kneejerk, lastfm, michaeljackson, myspace, numbersstations, platform, poetry, power, prayer, rig, s3fm, shippingforecast, socialcapital, socialplay, socialsoftware, sun, willdavies, xbox360.

Michael Jackson, Tracks played per hour after his death on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

"Fresh data straight out of our uber warehouse: As the news breaks, scrobbles soar as people go to pay tribute to one of the greatest pop artists of all times." I really didn't want to talk about this story at all – but at least there's some interesting data about it. So have some data.

(tags: michaeljackson data lastfm currentevents kneejerk )
4 Takeaways From the Social Gaming Summit — So Far

"Pincus said game-based activity like this was an investment of what he called “social capital,” a means of maintaining contact with our growing network of friends and acquaintances. If the industry further emphasized this advantage in future games, Pincus argued with charming bullishness, social gaming could become as pervasive as social networks themselves."

(tags: socialplay games socialsoftware socialcapital gaas facebook myspace platform )
Xbox 360 And Facebook Games Can Interact With Each Other – G4tv.com

'With Facebook Connect coming to Xbox 360 later this year, could we see similar connectivity between Xbox 360 and Facebook games? "Absolutely," Facebook's head of platform Ethan Beard told me back at E3. "Yeah, totally. That's a simple one — that's an easy one. There's probably things that we haven't even thought of [coming later]."' Hmmn. Worth a quotation, at least.

(tags: interoperability facebook games xbox360 gaas socialsoftware platform )
potlatch: why capitalism is about to get burnt

"…once we return to the sun, late on in our economic history, are we still innocent enough to view it this way? The sun isn't so very different from the Beatles back catalogue – there's a lot of it around, you can't control it, we value it highly, it's a 'public good problem' – but the Beatles are subject to various legal and political protections, most recently retrospective copyright extension. If EMI are allowed to profit from music that they didn't create, might not North Africa have some right to profit from energy that it didn't create?" Some brilliant stuff from Will Davies

(tags: willdavies economics capitalism sun power )
Permanent Bedtime: poetry, sedative, or just a weather report? – The Globe and Mail

"Prayer is an appropriate analogy: So many prayers are poems, and most are repeated to the point at which they become pure sound, a soothing sequence of syllables which remind us of something. “Hallowed be thy name” is not a phrase, for example, which immediately gives up its meaning in everyday English, and yet it still comforts those who intone it. The shipping forecast shows a bit, I think, how both poems and prayers work." A top trump of the web today: S3FM, RIG, the shipping forecast and numbers stations all in one post. Blimey.

(tags: rig shippingforecast prayer poetry numbersstations conetproject s3fm )

02
June
2009

Links

Tagged as:
animation, art, beatles, bonjour, castronova, characterdesign, coalesce, collaboration, databases, economics, games, gems, git, gitjour, hardcasual, harmonix, humour, microsoft, mysql, natal, networking, paper, poem, poetry, programming, research, rockband, ruby, ryannorth, sql, teabagging, tools, utilities.

SSRN-A Test of the Law of Demand in a Virtual World: Exploring the Petri Dish Approach to Social Science by Edward Castronova

Castronova's paper on whether the Law of Demand, as it works in the real world, also works in the virtual.

(tags: economics games castronova research paper )
qwantz: "select" is a workhorse, "update" is as routine as a pair of pants. "coalesce" is something special

Ryan North makes a little poem dedicated to the COALESCE function in MySQL. He's right: it's super useful.

(tags: databases mysql poem ryannorth poetry programming sql coalesce )
Dr Nic’s What is *jour and why they are killer apps for RailsCamp08

"Local devs, running local services, but how to share with everyone in the room?" Answer: rebuild all your tools to work across Bonjour. Slightly bonkers but very cool.

(tags: git ruby bonjour networking collaboration gitjour gems tools utilities programming )
E3 EXCLUSIVE: Microsoft’s Natal To Deliver 1:1 Teabagging on Xbox Live | Hardcasual

"When we assembled a focus group of Xbox Live players, they immediately asked for one feature we hadn’t even considered – in-depth tracking of the groin area, for post-kill celebrations. We were proud to help them find a new revolutionary way to teabag – and believe me, these ain’t no waggle controls." Hardcasual goes for the soft targets, as usual. Ahehe.

(tags: teabagging microsoft humour natal games hardcasual )
YouTube – The Beatles: Rock Band Press Conference Trailer 1

Seriously, Harmonix' character design is just amazing, and this movie – just the _intro_ movie to Beatles Rockband – is making me care more about that band than anything in my life has. Harmonix are gods.

(tags: games beatles animation characterdesign art rockband harmonix )

26
March
2009

Links

Tagged as:
art, bodyart, books, clinthocking, design, development, farcry2, games, gdc09, idsoftware, iphone, johncarmack, literature, play, poetry, programming, quotations, tattoo, tattoos, wolfenstein, writing.

Gamasutra – News – GDC: Clint Hocking On Improvisational Success Through Design Failure

"Mastery is not a prerequisite to improvisational play. The only prerequisite is confidence, and the only prerequisite in making the game is that we do not discourage the player from improvisation by "humiliating" the player." This talk really does sound like it confirms what I already know: Hocking is bang on a lot of money, very self-aware, and I want to give him consensual manhugs. Also, I want him to make more games. Lots more games. Curses at not getting to GDC.

(tags: design games play farcry2 clinthocking gdc09 )
Wolfenstein 3D Classic

John Carmack writes about porting Wolfenstein 3D to the iPhone – there's a lot in here that's very interesting, and some smart notes on design and interface choices; there's also some Carmack Being Carmack. Still, he's an impressive developer, and it's nie to see someone being so open at development, especially for the iPhone

(tags: programming games iphone development idsoftware johncarmack wolfenstein )
Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos

"Tattoos from books, poetry, music, and other sources." As with all tattoos: some are misspelt, some are a bit blah, some are beautiful.

(tags: writing art tattoo books literature bodyart poetry quotations tattoos )

27
January
2009

Links

Tagged as:
acid, blackandwhite, business, carlsandburg, charity, closure, commons, consoles, culture, curation, development, donations, flash, flickr, framework, funding, games, georgeoates, history, hotness, interview, iphone, jimrossignol, light, lsd, marinehistory, marketing, mobile, nintendo, nmm, objectivec, offworld, osx, planetside, poetry, profit, reportage, resonancefm, rockpapershotgun, sailing, sales, scripting, shade, sponsorship, theescapist, video.

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 )

25
January
2006

personal

Tagged as:
me, poetry.

Timer

0 comments

So Coudal have this thing called Verse by Voice, where you leave short poetry on their answerphone. Now, it’s a while since I read poetry aloud, but I remember being alright at it, and I remembered a particularly apposite poem. So I phoned them up.

The upshot is, there’s a recording of me reading Timer by Tony Harrison on the CP website for a while.

Timer

Links & notes for this month

Endnotes