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"I already use PostgreSQL for a few years, but every now and them, when I need to upgrade my local installation, I run into trouble. This is the step by step that I’ve used to upgrade my (homebrew) installation." This worked for me, and saved me a lot of time.
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"In another view, the "true Spelunky" is the live-streamed experience, both for broadcaster and spectator. Spelunky – as a concept, as an experience, as an entity — isn't just the game binary that you download onto your computer. It's also the Twitter banter about the game; it's the daily slog to get better at the game, slowly but surely, death after death; it's the communal effort to uncover new exploits and weird secrets; it's something that's equally "ours" as it is Mossmouth's. Spelunky, like any sport or game that matters — I mean really matters — is inseparable from the culture around it." Doug Wilson's analysis of Bananasaurus Rex's Solo Eggplant Run makes a great late contender for games writing of the year. It's precise, expert, and yet exciting, all at once; it demystifies and celebrates all at once. Great stuff.
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You had me at "a film by Jim Le Fevre".
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"websocketd is a small command line tool that will wrap an existing command line interface program, and allow it to be accessed via a WebSocket." iiinteresting.
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"Because it’s IR-based, the system is sensitive to natural light. But Amanda turned that accident into something creative, producing beautiful, organic ambient performances by leaving her controller outdoors." Easily my favourite part of this post were the "bells" and "breathing" outdoor videos; lovely, accidental, ambient patterns.
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"Tux dresses up sinatra in a shell. Use it to interact with your helpers, view rendering and your app’s response objects. Tux also gives you commands to view your app’s routes and settings." Handy – will definitely be using that in future.
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"Think of it as theatre. Picture books are a lot like theatre, 32 pages of performance to help parents entertain, educate, encourage an audience of one – over and over again. Thousands of copies, each one a paper theatre. You provide the script, the sets, the costume, the stage tricks." Yes, that.
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This is a super-good article about developing generative music – though it's on a games site and one of the focuses is games, it also talks about generative piped music for buildings. And, notably, comments on the difference between a generative score and generative mixing. It's a great article, even if you're not into games.
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"We learned that being first is important, but should not be the only factor when determining the viability of a project. If you have an evolved approach to a preexisting concept, you are likely doing something original and the results have a good chance of being meaningful." So, in one sense, it's another physical mirror. But: I like this point, that sometimes, you have to do a thing for yourself to learn about it. And by learning about it, you might ultimately differentiate your own work. As long as you don't claim you were first, there is no shame in doing what other people do. How else do you learn things? Not by other people yelling "OLD!" at you, that's for sure.
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"Gifsicle is a command-line tool for creating, editing, and getting information about GIF images and animations." Handy.
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"These three frameworks — objects as portals, objects as subjects, and objects as oracles — propose distinct (yet related) structures for thinking about how connected objects might begin to contain their own narratives, seek their own history, develop their own perspectives, and become storytellers in a multitude of ways." Nice article about the various perspectives on Connected Objects (which namechecks Hello Lamp Post).
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Dan Abnett talks about writing. A lot of his writing is formulaic and genre-based, but he's really eloquent about the craft of writing to spec, and the simplicity of getting to know your medium. Really enjoyable talk about craft that percolates nicely.