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  • Versus CluClu Land: O Tempora! O Mores! (pt. 1)
    “…arguments of this exact form have been raised against nearly every distinctly modern art form.” Barber’s book sounds interesting, if flawed. Pliskin’s criticism is, as ever, good. It’s getting exhausting linking to him.
    (tags: culture criticism consumption consumerism writing marxism benjaminbarber games play childishness society)
  • Font Conference – CollegeHumor video
    “You’re insane! No-one uses Microsoft Works any more!” Jolly good. Better than good, in fact: mailbox. Open mailbox.
    (tags: type typography fonts video short humour awesome design)
  • lixo.org :: Git Iterator
    “I wanted to generate some visualizations of our project’s growth, so I decided to put together a little shell script that looked at the output from git log to spit out some metrics.” Ooh, nice one, Carlos!
    (tags: git visualisation infographics information sourcecontrol metrics version)
  • check out the size of this compass rose | deputydog
    “…the compass… measures a whopping 1.21km in diameter. according to wikipedia, ‘it is inclined to magnetic north (around 13 degrees east of true north) and is used by pilots for calibrating heading indicators’.” Blimey. That’s big.
    (tags: navigation flight photography geography marking illustration terrain huge massive enormous)
  • The Medium – Stet – The Internet’s Typographical and Grammatical Morass – NYTimes.com
    “I am stumped by how to excerpt the language on message boards and blogs… My problem with message-board language brings up a prior problem in journalism: the difficulty of translating spoken language into written language.”
    (tags: quotation language writing internet online journalism transcription dialogue speaking)
  • Versus CluClu Land: Gamers are Maximizers of Utility
    “I thought this decision to attach a reward to the choice represented a failure of nerve on the part of the designers … wedding a gameplay-reward to a decision that ought be governed by one’s sense of character and motivation.”
    (tags: iroqouispliskin criticism games writing gta4 narrative gameplay storytelling reward)
  • Aza’s Thoughts » Firefox Mobile Concept Video
    Some really nice ideas in here, that I need to think about more: notably, the use of edges (or are they seams?) to give control over the page in the middle, and context for it related to other pages. It’ll be interesting to see it on real devices, now.
    (tags: fennec firefox mobile concept video demo design interaction browser)
  • Click Nothing: Ludonarrative Dissonance in Bioshock
    “By throwing the narrative and ludic elements of the work into opposition, the game seems to openly mock the player for having believed in the fiction of the game at all.”
    (tags: games story criticism narrative bioshock storytelling interaction play design)
  • BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer
    “A hidden hoard of recordings made by the electronic music pioneer behind the Doctor Who theme has been revealed – including a dance track 20 years ahead of its time.” Wow.
    (tags: electronicmusic audio sound radiophonicworkshops deliaderbyshire music effects)
  • “Ryan” – YouTube – Screening Room
    Remarkable, oscar-winning short; real interviews, and some incredible CGI character design. At the heart of it: a very sad story. Beautiful soundtrack, too.
    (tags: animation ryanlarkin cgi computer illustration characterdesign)
  • Neil Gaiman – SIMCITY
    “A city is a collection of lives and buildings, and it has identity and personality. Cities exist in location, and in time.” Neil Gaiman’s essay from SimCity 2000 (I believe).
    (tags: cities urbanism society culture simcity personification)
  • Good Experience: Secrets of book publishing I wish I had known
    “Following up on these overviews of the book industry, I thought I’d share some lessons I learned from publishing Bit Literacy.” Some useful advice.
    (tags: books publishing advice marketing sales media)
  • Vous Etes Perdu ?
    [rough translation] “Lost on the internet? Don’t panic; we’re going to help you.” (You are here).
    (tags: french map direction humour funny ironic text)
  • :: GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS :: Little green friend
    “As you may have guessed, we’ve solved these problems, and replaced the Exception Notifier in most of the apps we manage, with a homegrown solution called hoptoad.” Gosh, the Thoughtbot guys really are on fire.
    (tags: hoptoad rails exception notification error tracking metrics)
  • Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – Resurrecting Tennis for Two, a video game from 1958
    Building your own version of Higinbotham’s oscilloscope tennis game, to work on a real oscilloscope.
    (tags: games play oscilloscope tennis electronics hardware history archive)
  • Running for Office: It’s Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner
    “My name is Sean Tevis [photo]. I’m an Information Architect in Kansas running for State Representative. I’ve decided to “retire” my current State Representative. I’m going to win.” Bold. He might just Howard Dean on us, but he deserves $9.
    (tags: politics america kansas representations crowds comic)
  • Baconwrapt Scarves
    “one of a kind bacon wraps are the perfect holiday gift for every bacon fan!” yes. yes, they are.
    (tags: clothing design fashion scarf bacon)
  • Adobe – Developer Center : The invisible city: Design in the age of intelligent maps
    “…the act of mapping is itself a process of analysis, discovery, and design. It is a process of finding and giving meaning to information, of contextualizing information, and of developing new understandings of the places represented.”
    (tags: design mapping geo location cartography adobe)
  • Tom Hume: Going mobile
    “Battery life, intermittent connectivity, input constraints, context of use… all different, all unavoidable, all vital to consider when going mobile.”
    (tags: mobile design interaction mobility location context constraint)
  • YouTube – Feist on Sesame Street
    Leslie Feist, counting to four, on Sesame Street. Almost, but not quite, as good as James Blunt’s triangle; still, delightful nontheless.
    (tags: feist singing music sesamestreet counting awesome)
  • Fable 2 Hands On // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer
    “Lionhead’s system acknowledges the social context of co-op that other games ignore, and the bargaining over who gets to be the hero and how much the henchman is paid is a crucial part of the fun.” It’s all about the context; aninteresting take on co-op.
    (tags: coop fable2 lionhead games play design cooperative social multiplayer)
  • Process Perfection
    “The bottom line is, there are laws on the books in the EU that stand in direct conflict with the needs of Google’s architecture, and no amount of hand waving will make that fact go away.” Smart artcile about the legal issues of cloud computing.
    (tags: architecture google privacy law cloudcomputing distributed computing hosting)
  • Craft
    “Having successfully built a soundchip out of a microcontroller together with my friends in kryo, I wanted to tackle the greater challenge of generating a realtime video signal along with the sound.” Wow. An ATMega88 turned into a demo platform.
    (tags: development microcontroller electronics hardware demo hacking blimey)
  • Dark Knight Shift: Why Batman Could Exist–But Not for Long: Scientific American
    An interview with E. Paul Zehr, whose book, “Becoming Batman: The Possibility of a Superhero”, discusses the matter of the interview. (is it possible for a normal guy to become about as fit as Batman? And can you maintain it?) Some smart points.
    (tags: analysis health fitness exercise batman comics essay science)
  • Blackbeltjones/Work » But it bears repeatin’ now.
    Will Wright: “…the process of play is the process of pushing against reality, building a model, refining a model by looking at the results of looking at interacting with things.“ Jones: “That’s still the mission plan.” Yes.
    (tags: play games modelling design feedbackloops iteration playful interaction)
  • Versus CluClu Land: Rules and Fun
    “The pleasure of video games, it seems to me, comes from our sense that we are collaborating in the realization of the designer’s intentions by learning those rules.” Yes. This is why I loved watching Mission Impossible: every week, a puzzle is solved.
    (tags: rules games play philosophy pleasure mechanics systems)
  • RA DIOHEA_D / HOU SE OF_C ARDS [Google Code]
    Radiohead’s new video was created using 3D scanning data and animated in software. The video has its own Google Code page. You can download the original data. Squee.
    (tags: radiohead music video animation software visualisation 3d graphics data)
  • Versus CluClu Land: The Final Exam
    “The capacity to convey narrative through interaction is a constitutive rather than accidental feature of the medium. Every time a designer exploits this ability we get closer to finding […] what forms of expression are unique to games…”
    (tags: games criticism narrative story art expression)
  • :: GIANT ROBOTS SMASHING INTO OTHER GIANT ROBOTS :: Regulators!!! Mount up
    “The general rule to take from this is “dont use modules to create namespaces in controllers that are also names of pre-existing constants from other class definitions”” Matt J with some useful tips for namespaced controllers. Also, Warren G.
    (tags: controllers programming rails rest resources thoughtbot)
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