"…In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography." Finally, found the Borges quotation about a map the size of the world.

"In cinema and theater, we often hear about method acting, a technique by which actors try to create the situations, emotions, and thoughts of their characters in themselves in order to better portray them. In creating Cow Clicker, I rather felt that I was partaking of method design, embracing the spirit and values and ideals of the social game developer as I toed the lines between theory, satire, and earnestness." Bogost calls it Method Design; I've been describing it as "systemic satire" – the making of satirical mechanics.

"The secret to winning this game is rolling "Rock." If you can continue to roll "Rock", you're going to win eventually, because Nothing Beats Rock."

Brenda Brathwaite is awesome. This is brilliant. You should watch it. (This is also in tune with so many things I'm banging on about at the moment).

Spy Part is sounding – and looking – increasingly good. Can't wait.

"The story description is "Giving objects in a story world symbolic weight has often been done by hand, but rarely procedurally. Here's one method for doing so."." This is stunning.

"The book assumes no prior knowledge of programming, but also doesn't treat I7 like a regular programming language: loops, for instance, are barely mentioned. In fact, Thinking in Inform 7 might have been a good title." This sounds great.

Brilliant.

Nice, if somewhat DVD-extra-y, video on the RDR soundtrack. The most interesting footage is of the recording sessions and the musicians. It's a shame we're still at layering everything at same tempo/key, when it comes to interactive scores; I miss iMuse. But otherwise: great stuff.

"Videogames are systems, not themes, but dress a system in the right theme and you can catch the attention of someone who would not otherwise be interested. So it is for my father, who, in these awkwardly rendered moments, catches a glimpse of what I'd been seeing my entire childhood." Lovely, lovely piece of writing from Simon.

Fanfic, if you like, about App Store products. Lovely.

Oh my.

"National Geographic has closely documented the journey of the final roll of Kodachrome manufactured, down to its being processed. Dwayne's is only photo lab left in the world to handle Kodachrome processing, so National Geographic Television producer Yvonne Russo and National Geographic magazine senior video producer Hans Weise found themselves in Parsons Monday, along with McCurry, with the final roll of the iconic film of the 20th century." Steve McCurry shot the final roll of Kodachrome in the world.

Jeffrey does that hard work so you don't have to. I'm going to leave my slider set around 75, but it's still good to know what the hell is (vaguely) going on under the hood…

"We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication and did not contact Rockstar Games prior to publishing the story. We also did not question why a best selling and critically acclaimed fictional games series would choose to base one of their most popular games on this horrifying real crime event… It is now accepted that there were never any plans by Rockstar Games to publish such a game and that the story was false. We apologise for publishing the story using a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member. " The combination of "no attempt to check the accuracy" and "soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member" is really quite astonishing. Idiots.

"I suspect a lot of people aren't sure what's the top idea in their mind at any given time. I'm often mistaken about it. I tend to think it's the idea I'd want to be the top one, rather than the one that is. But it's easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it's not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something."

A short film by Jeremy McIntosh about IF; covers some nice ground, and at ten minutes, is about the right length.

"Lethal Weapon. A metafictional masterpiece. Who knew? The postmodern flourishes proliferate throughout the script…" Lovely Granta piece on the prose styles of screenplays; the Shane Black example is great fun, though the Dan O'Bannon speaks to me most, perhaps.

Excellent, detailed article on how Microsoft calculate TrueSkill – an algorithm for matching you to players about in your skill level. This is what is used every time you hit "game with strangers" on an XBL title, basically. Fascinating, detailed, not too challenging if you take it slow/steady – and the implementation is on github…