Hah: I knew there was probably a way of getting iPhone compass data in the browser.

Nice straightforward guide to buliding simple Serial protocols for the Arduino. Jolly good.

This is a great reading of Insomnia; I loved Skjoldbjærg's original from the moment I saw it, and this review really neatly encapsulates why I hated the Christopher Nolan remake so much. It becomes about fundamentally different things, and they're not as interesting as watching Skarsgard fall quite so low and never really recover. Also: I'll take Norway over Alaska any day.

"First Novel is not the first novel by Nicholas Royle. First Novel is the seventh novel by Nicholas Royle. The protagonist is a novelist called Paul Kinder who teaches Creative Writing in Manchester. Nicholas Royle is a novelist who teaches Creative Writing in Manchester. Paul Kinder is fascinated by first novels. Nicholas Royle is fascinated by first novels. Paul Kinder is friends with novelist and short story writer, Elizabeth Baines. Nicholas Royle is friends with novelist and short story writer, Elizabeth Baines. Paul Kinder has a fascination with the uncanny. Nicholas Royle has a fascination with the uncanny. In other words, First Novel is very much in danger of disappearing up its own arsehole." I greatly enjoyed First Novel – I'm somewhat a fan of Royle's work – and this is a nice interview, especially his comments on the various overlaps with reality.

"If you're reading this in 2015 and no one remembers what Flappy Bird was, then I want to emphasize one thing:

In February 2014, there was not much controversy for many game developers, especially indie game developers — the internet was harassing Dong Nguyen for making a game, which is unacceptable. Many people do not support how Nguyen has been treated, and have said so. It is always important to remember resistance to a mob."

"…we have tangible evidence that there are ways for a museum to adapt to a world in which all of our visitors have super-powers — aka their “phones” — and to apply those lessons to the way we design the museum itself." This is smart, and tesseract is going into the toolkit.

Yes, all of this. Especially:

"10) be encouraged to think of the arts as including or involving investigation, invention, discovery, play and co-operation and that these happen both within the actual making and doing but also in the talk, commentary and critical dialogue that goes on around the activity itself."

And: this applies not just to the arts but all forms of craft, making, and creating. To be honest, this applies so much to that whole Year Of Code nonsense – much more so than the abstract utility of things. "Code is neither superior nor inferior to anything else that goes on in schools". Yep, that. I am very fond of Michael Rosen; by which, I mean, I admire him a great deal.

And, re: my previous, this. The purpose of higher, further, *any* education, shouldn't be to learn a skill to be put to direct use; if anything, it should be the opposite of that – to luxuriate in a subject, just as the girl studying Norse Literature was, because we don't just learn facts. We learn ways of thinking, we learn more holistically, and a richer education benefits everyone: students, children, employers, peers. (As usual: I will defend my humanities degree to the hilt).

"So the Year of Code isn’t about doing fun stuff with JavaScript, Python and Ruby. It’s about building another element of a society where those that don’t work don’t eat, and where the rewards of work are skewed ever further towards a tiny minority at the top of the pile… It’s about creating childhoods overshadowed by adult anxieties about work and economic survival. It’s about replacing the broad expanse of education – with all the exploration, creativity and genuine freedom that implies – with the narrow tunnel of schooling. It’s training children to have “relevant” employer-friendly skills and the right attitudes and politics to go with them." Yeah, that. I have no problem with the idea of teaching code, but I don't care for the idea that you're teaching code so that people can do code for a living. Education is about more than a direct translation of rote learning to skills for business; it should be about skills for the soul. for the well-rounded adult yet-to-be. I hadn't twigged that the thing that always rankled with me was the 'neoliberal' part.

This looks good; roughly corresponds to how most grids I've built in the past n year _really_ worked in practice.

"At a coffee shop near his office, Kazemi says he feels about his bots the way he imagines parents must feel about their children. “I’ve created these things, and they’re kind of separate from me now, and so I do feel kind of proud of them,” he says. “Every morning I wake up and I look at the last two hours of TwoHeadlines, and it just gets me every time.”" Yup. That.

"Under the [Do What You Love] credo, labor that is done out of motives or needs other than love (which is, in fact, most labor) is not only demeaned but erased. As in Jobs’ Stanford speech, unlovable but socially necessary work is banished from the spectrum of consciousness altogether." This is astute and good, on what happens when work is divided into either "things you love anyway" or "labor that we will banish from view" – and the enabling forces that let someone Do What They Love.

"…we though it would be it would be interesting to ask the students to deconstruct a logic prevalent in the games industry (F2P) and to then apply that logic to a real-world system (in this case, a London transport) service." I loved this when Kars first told me about the brief, and I love seeing it again now.

Great article from Jeff Minter on the journey from 70s vector art, 80s vector games, through to the (excellent) Tempest 2000 – including some great stuff on embracing the Jaguar's chips and instructions to make beautiful weirdness – and onwards through Nuon and Space Giraffe to TxK on the Vita. A really lovely balance in the article of coding voodoo, focusing on gameplay, and always wanting to make things both weirder and prettier. (Incidentally: I loved T2K when I first played it, but playing an original Tempest cab at Ground Kontrol was a special moment – striking how much a spinner changes that game). Definitely recommended.