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"…the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie — Toy Story — and Xbox did not yet exist." Fantastic, dense, Wired article on DNF from Clive Thompson
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"For 16 days I lived with it strapped to me as I climbed through the valleys of central Nepal up to Annapurna Base Camp at 4,200 meters." Wonderful review of the GF1, framed as a travelogue, with real photographs. I'd be quite happy if all camera reviews looked like this.
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"Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China's century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower's freedom of action." Mark Lynas on the reality of China's actions at Copenhagen. Worrying.
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"Little stories are the internet’s native and ideal art form." Yes. This is a good one.
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Pup ponders the heat-death of the universe. Beautiful, and a lovely use of space, too.
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"CRM training encompasses a wide range of knowledge, skills and attitudes including communications, situational awareness, problem solving, decision making, and teamwork; together with all the attendant sub-disciplines which each of these areas entails. CRM can be defined as a management system which makes optimum use of all available resources – equipment, procedures and people – to promote safety and enhance the efficiency of flight operations."
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Scrapes lots of things, produces a useful page which actually manages to stay up. Also, it spells TRANSPORT CHAOS the only way it should be spelt: in capitals.
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Named for the year the BJP was founded; nicely written, and not just a fast-moving press release stream.
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All Kenta Cho's code on wonderfl.
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Kenta Cho's making stuff on wondfl, in ActionScript. This example is ASCII-based bulletty goodness.
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"So perverse as it might sound, I'm going to plead for less choice in video games. It's a paradox: by limiting the player's discretion, you can expand the narrative possibilities of the medium. Coercion can create a kind of emotional heft that you can't achieve within the confines of the empowerment-myth." All true, and FC2 is a fantastic example of this. But: this is just one way of making games. More of this, yes, but don't forget all the other approaches.
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"write Actionscript3 code in a textarea, and your code will be compiled server side. Your compiled Flash will be reloaded automatically in the right side of the page, so write code and see it real-time." And you can fork other people's code. It's like github and Heroku all at once, but for Flash.
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"Yesterday was the inaugural papercamp in London, alongside its big sister bookcamp. I presented a half bookish half paperish presentation about travel guides. What I forgot to mention or make explicit: how there are totally different stages and needs for guide books – especially pre-booking, pre-travel, during travel, during holiday. So here is, from memory, what I talked about, with a few additions:" This was jolly good, an a neat branching point between the Paper and the Books.
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Lots of corrections. addenda, and general props from John Romero (who has a sweet personal domain) about the Game Developer article from 1994 linked to recently. Some interesting stuff, including commentary on the NeXTStep screengrab, some of the internal toolchain, and a few clarifications about the id/Apogee/Softdisk relationship.
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"We aim to re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras in 2010. We have acquired Polaroid's old equipment, factory and seek your support." They're serious. Wow.
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"A Ruby library that wraps the Viapost SOAP API, providing an easy way of sending post (you know, real letter box post) from your applications."
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"It’s easy to roll your eyes at the people who look at an Xbox 360 controller or Dual Shock and say it’s too complicated. “Left 4 Dead” proves there are hardcore experiences — not just Wii and DS games — that can draw them in…but the controller remains a challenge that won’t be easily overcome." I'd never roll my eyes; modern pads are very complicated, and twin-stick move/shoot is one of the hardest skills to acquire. Still, a nice piece of commentary on what learning to use a controller looks like, and a healthy reminder.
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"So when I play Fallout 3, and I think this is probably true for most people who are over forty, some part of me is always wondering if this is what it really would have been like. Not in terms of enemies, but in the way that humans banded together into small groups to create enough order to survive." Bill Harris on a perspective on Fallout 3 that I'll never have.
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Click "CM Gallery". Watch. In order to illustrate the xiao's ability to not only take but also print photographs, Takara Tomy really pushed their anthropomorphic metaphor to the limits.
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"Yes, it's true that at no time while playing Prince of Persia did I feel any of the frustration that I felt on a regular basis in Mirror's Edge. But neither did I ever feel the joy of doing something right, of stringing together a perfect series of vaults and wall-runs and feeling like it was based on my own skill. Can one exist without the other? Is it impossible to create joy without difficulty? I don't know. But Prince of Persia lost something significant." I'm a bit worried about the new Prince, especially having read this; the challenge/reward balance is hugely important to it as a series, especially since the marvellous Sands of Time. Also, more worryingly: are developers shying away from letting players fail any more?
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"The Facebook Republican Army, based on Brighton's tough Whitehawk estate, looks for parties on Facebook. The gang boasts it travels nationwide – and has even bought its own coach." Oh boy.
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"As the about page says, if you live exactly 6 minutes from Sunset Tunnel East Portal, 8 minutes from Duboce and Church, and 10 minutes from Church Station you may find it useful too." Bespoke tools for yourself that might happen to be useful to others. I like this a lot.
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"The Firefox add-on "Pirates of the Amazon" inserts a "download 4 free" button on Amazon, which links to corresponding Piratebay BitTorrents. The add-on lowers the technical barrier to enable anyone to choose between "add to shopping cart" or "download 4 free". Are you a pirate?" Almost certainly not the first example; perhaps one of the best realised.
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"That's how I got here. How long will it be before someone builds a raft and sets sail in space? Bill Gates has over fifty billion dollars. What if Richard Garriott had fifty billion dollars? If he wanted to, would that be enough money to build a rocket to get him into space, and a self-sustaining environment in which he could live? Would he want to sail away and never come back? … No matter what happened in our future, [whoever built that raft] would forever be the first. A thousand years from now, people would remember his name." Bill Harris is awesome.
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"Far Cry 2 is about you and death. Of course every single person you meet wants to kill you. Of course you spend about as much time fighting the environment as other persons. Of course you are clinging to the barest scrap of health and well-being; Even the malaria is trying to kill you."
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"I spent 10 weeks last Summer as an intern on the strategy team of Transport for London's (TfL) London Rail division…. My general task was to help London Rail start to make use of the oceans of data spewing out of the Oyster smartcard ticketing system, but I spent the bulk of my time working on a project that came to be titled Oyster-Based Performance Metrics for the London Overground. I've posted my final report and slides and outline for the presentation I gave to TfL executive management." Some interesting data and information here.
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BioWare now have a blog. It looks like it's going to be full of good stuff about games and, especially, writing for them. Can't wait.
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"The international conference “Thinking After Dark: Welcome to the World of Horror Video Games” unites scholars who all study a corpus that has been left out up to now: horror video games. Considering the relatively slow progress of generic studies among the recent surge of academic interest towards video games, this event represents a major first step."
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Science doctoral candidates attempt to communicate their thesis subjects through the medium of dance. The winners get time with a professional choreographer to make the whole thing better, and to see it performed by professional dancers at the end. Crazy, wonderful.
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"The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard."
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"These travel posters by Steve Thomas, Amy Martin and Adam Levermore-Rich promote travel to exotic eras and destinations, such as the Crimson Canyons of Mars, Tranquil Miranda, or the Winter Wonderland of the Ice Age." Beautiful.
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Lots of sed-goodness here.
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Javascript demoscene craziness from Matt Westcott; 3D, music, and the most incredible editing tool I've seen in JS ever.
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"The rest of this article will be a tutorial showing you how to host and manage Git repositories with access control, easily and safely. I use an up and coming tool called gitosis that my friend Tv wrote to help make hosting git repos easier and safer." Nice guide to getting up and running with gitosis.
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"Turning the economic crisis into one of those clever internet memes." Lols.
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"The Mugen (infinite) series of toys from Bandai Asovision has now brought us the Mugen PeriPeri, a keychain toy that aims to replicate the pleasure of opening a package for the first time. Snacks, boxes, and other tear-open packages tend to reveal good things, so perhaps experiencing this sensation boosts endorphins and sends us into pleasure mode." Tear-off wrapping you can tear forver.
Dopplr: Huge Success
11 December 2007
Just a brief post here to unashamedly promote the work of some friends. As the title hints, Dopplr – the little startup that could – is now out of beta and releasing on time. It’s a great site – a product that exists not to make you travel more, or travel less, but to make that travel more pleasurable, by fostering coincidensity.
Now, I don’t travel a great amount, so I put “smaller” trips than most people in. Somebody once laughed that I put trips to visit my parents in. But that’s where other useful functionality of Dopplr comes in handy: it lets my trusted friends know when I’m not around. Sometimes, I’m telling you I’m away, not that I’ll be there.
And it’s super-handy if you don’t travel much, but you have foreign friends – it’s already engineered several “oh, you’re passing through London?” meet-ups for me, that otherwise I’d never have had.
So, Dopplr: if you’ve not been playing with it in the beta, take a look. It’s wonderfully put together, with lots of tiny touches that make all the difference. And if you’re not sure that it’s quite for you… think again; it might come in handy. The only thing you need to get your head around: it’s not about your friendsters. It’s about your friends. Proper, real-life friends. You need the people you know on it – but once they are, it makes the business of global friendship so much easier…
Time to leave
12 March 2006
Well, that was America. Thanks to the very generous Dan Heaf, I’m sitting in the Virgin Atlantic Lounge at LAX, sipping free drinks and catching up the world online. The presentation went down well, it seems; I’ve had some interesting emails as a result and some kind words. The PDF isn’t up online yet, but the most indepthwrite-up – featuring pictures of yours truly + slides – is over at Near Near Future. Given Regine was in the front row, hammering away at her notes, there are obviously some gaps but the basic premise is there. I’d argue it’s less a “consumer” perspective and more just a perspective on the gaming industry (rather than academic/research perspectives), but it’s still great to see it out there, and to a huge audience. Thanks very much for the write-up, Regine!
And so I’m about to board a plane and hop back to the UK. I’ve had a great time at Etech – it all began sinking in late on Thursday (and especially very late on Thursday, when I had a fantastic night, thanks to danah, Matt, Alex, and many others).
Many thanks must also go to the organisers of the conference, O’Reilly and especially to all those (friends and new acquaintances) in the British contingent who put up with me, nerves and all, and steered me through safely. It’s slowly sinking in just how wonderful an experience it was. My further thoughts from the conference – and there are, as ever, several, will follow in due course.
San Diego so far…
06 March 2006
So, I made it. Been in the states a few days now and I’m pretty much over the jetlag. I think.
ETech kicks off today – I’m sitting watching Cal set up for an eight-hour marathon on How We Built Flickr – well, I missed it in the UK, so I may as well take all the opportunities I can get. My talk is in rude health – pretty much there, just requires a degree of fine tuning.
Have been having a great time in the US so far. The train ride down from LA to SD was just awesome; I’ve got a big stack of gorgeous photos that’ll be gracing Flickr soon, I hope. Then I hung around with Simon and Tom for a while – watching them eat a $200 lunch, hitting up the Apple Store for goodies, and then finally (and much documented), watching the Oscars.
Last night a huge stack of UK geeks went to the Kansas City barbeque joint – as the sign outside said, where the “Top Gun Sleazy Bar Scene” got filmed. Good barbeque, I tell you.
And now the talk’s about to begin. More later…
Off we go
02 March 2006
That’s that, then: one bag packed, everything checked off my list, all my details safely stowed, and I’m checked in onto the plane. All that remains is to get some sleep, and get to Heathrow.
Fingers crossed.