Great interview with Olivier from Mutable – lots of nice thoughts on the nature of synthesis, on designing electronic products, and so forth. I particularly like his list of what's inspiring him. Good stuff.

"I learned a hell of a lot designing and building Dopplr. I still stand by a lot of the principles that we as a team tried to follow." So did we all, Matt; it's still a model in the background of my head for things I work on.

"What did The Hustle™ accomplish? I gained weight. I wasn’t spending enough time with my (now) wife. I felt like shit. I began to resent my work, and the work I was producing clearly wasn’t my best. I started cutting corners. I went from a mindset of shipping with quality and integrity to “when is this going to be over?”" I've almost never worked like this – but every time I have, it's always been as terrible as I've suggested it will be beforehand. Mainly on the software end of things, but not always. And the hustle is short-term thinking: the long-term damage is usually so much worse, including, but not limited to: technical debt, RSI, ill health, weight gains, emotional exhaustion, damage to relationships, friendships, and family. I am not only convinced that nothing is worth that; I know it.

Really excellent technical article on the development of Novation's Launchpad S. It's not that remarkable a product in many ways, but this is a super-detailed post about some of the thought and improvements that have gone into what looks, on the surface, like a most incremental upgrade – but is in fact surprisingly comprehensive and affects many things at low levels. Really clear, well explained – as is the rest of Focusrite's engineering blog.

"It is a sign in a public space displaying dynamic code that is both here and now. Connected devices in this space are looking for this code, so the space can broker authentication and communication more efficiently." Gorgeous, thoughtful work as ever; I completely love the fact the phone app has no visualisation of the camera's input. Timo's point, about how the changing QR code seems to validate it more, seems spot-on, too.

The Spring/Summer 1985 Argos Catalogue, in its entirety, on Flickr. A slice of consumer history. Products, industrial design, toys, games, technology, all preserved. Hoping this doesn't get taken down.

"Better alternatives [to the RAILS_ constants] have existed for a while in Rails core (some since 2.1.0), and it’s about damn time you start using them properly. There’s also some other helpful methods on the Rails module we’ll explore in this post." That was handy.

"As an industry, we need to understand that not wanting root access doesn’t make you stupid. It simply means you do not want root access. Failing to comprehend this is not only a failure of empathy, but a failure of service."

"Bayer’s DIDGET™ is the only blood glucose meter that plugs into a Nintendo DS™ or Nintendo DS™ Lite system. This unique meter helps encourage consistent testing with reward points that children can use to buy items within the game and unlock new game levels." Blood glucose monitor for diabetics that plugs into your Nintendo DS. Utterly awesome, and exactly what a new world of products should look like.

"I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long." How have I only just encountered this?

Some jolly good stuff from Chris, notably "And I Saw..". I mainly like it, though, because he went and made a thing, and it definitely worked, and it's so, so simple.

"For even if all it does is sit ceremonially on your mantelpiece next to a bar of Toblerone and a signed photo of Swiss Toni as a tribute to all things Swiss, you will have achieved greatness, my son." Best. Product. Description. Ever. (This feels like an April fool, but apparently no).

Oh jesus it's a Watchmen videogame and it's been converted… into a free-roaming beat-em-up. Rorschach in Streets of Rage 3D. Shoot me now.

Yes.

"ACME is a worldwide leader of many manufactured goods. From its humble beginnings providing corks and flypaper to bug collectors ("Buddy's Bug Hunt/1935") to its heyday in the American Southwest supplying a certain coyote, from Ultimatum Dispatchers to Batman outfits, ACME has set the standard for excellence. For the first time ever, information and pictures of all ACME products, specialty divisions, and services featured in Warner Bros. cartoons (made by the original studio from 1935 to 1964) are gathered here, in one convenient catalog."

"…while almost all of the game’s residents are free to go as they please, heading off to new towns and lives on a whim, once you step off the bus and choose a house in which to settle, you’re here for good…. you are the local constant, the hick who’s never left its borders and there is some comfort in the knowledge that the places the other animals leave for can never be known by you." Simon's original version of his Wii Animal Crossing review; some lovely analysis of the series to date.

"Uses the Flickr shapefiles to show you where the world thinks its neighbours are." Damnit I wish Tom would stop magicking up awesomeness all the time.

…and bloody frustrating too.

Clive Thompson on how Mirror's Edge "hacks" your proprioception: "it explains, I think, why Mirror's Edge is so curiously likely to produce motion sickness. The game is not merely graphically realistic; it's neurologically realistic."

"You know the [dark days] when all the MBAs left, and the people who loved the Web went on building it — building meaningful, crazy, artistic cool stuff, and the ethos of the social web war born, back before that meant more then widget crazy/Facebook-tulip-bloom-madness. Yeah, that sure sucked."

"…doing strategy happily is probably more important than doing it quickly or slowly."

Ooh – a decent search tool for cc'd Flickr images.

"This would be something different though potentially – not buying into a product design as a brand, but more like micro-investing in a product at it’s conception. Almost like a distributed commission of something that you’ve followed the progress of like a work of art."

"Director of Community Heather Champ doesn't just guard the pool and blow the occasional whistle; it's a far more delicate, and revealing, dance that keeps the user population here happy, healthy and growing." A nice SFGate piece that at least acknowledges the complexities of community management.

"After all, what is science? It's a technique for uncovering the hidden rules that govern the world. And videogames are simulated worlds that kids are constantly trying to master. Lineage and World of Warcraft aren't "real" world, of course, but they are consistent — the behavior of the environment and the creatures in it are governed by hidden and generally unchanging rules, encoded by the game designers. In the process of learning a game, gamers try to deduce those rules. This leads them, without them even realizing it, to the scientific method."

Jason Kottke republishes the supposed rules that Chuck Jones and other Road Runner animators stuck to whilst making their cartoons. Perhaps a little apocraphyl, but I like the idea of rules for things that aren't games.

"Merb’s routing shiznits needs some serious documentation love. Whilst I have a shot at getting some proper docpatches together here’s an overview of how to use routing in Merb 0.5." Thank god for that – was finding Merb's docs a little patchy in places.

Cannot believe I only just discovered this: it's a sleeping bag with arms and legs. Incredible.

"…it’s my feeling that experiences can’t really be designed. You can only provide the resources for people to have an experience; then it’s the people (users) themselves who create the experience." Dan Saffer hits the nail on the head at his new studio's blog. Can't wait to see what comes out of Kicker.

"This leads into something else that felt very clear after the conference; the need to look outside of what we already know. If, as Matt Jones, posited, execution is more important than ideas, we’re going to need an understanding that is based on people who are not us, and that understanding is going to have to incorporate all the richness of what they know, how they model their worlds, and how they model their interactions with the world around them." Looking forward to more from Alex on dConstruct

"The Box is an ambitious and unique year-long project for BBC News to tell the story of international trade and globalisation by tracking a standard shipping container around the world." Awesome. What's better is that it's a working container, which means it's not significantly contributing in a negative way to environmental damage any more than other containers. Could be interesting.