This is one of the better sets of instructions for this – contains some useful commentary.

A Redis-based queueing system for ruby; much more efficient than Resque, from the looks of things, and really nice deployment configuration (ie: someone's bothered to write cap recipes and similar). Definitely going into the toolbelt, I think.

A huge, fascinating, braindump from Bret Victor, mainly on the state of how programming is being taught (especially in the "learn to code, live" idiom that's popular at the moment). A lot of it is very good; I'm not sure it applies everywhere, and I'd like to see examples not about geometry (which I think are entirely possible, given Victor's idioms). But still: it's huge, and dense, and well-reasoned, and has lots of jumping off points. Good to see someone thinking about this stuff like this.

"By many accounts, including my own experience, it looks like Feedburner is on its way out. (It may have quietly left already. We could just be looking at a cardboard cutout of Feedburner at its domain.)" Might be time to migrate away, I think.

Oh, lovely: using Inkle to write a historical adventure in epistolary form – or, rather, drafting and redrafting a letter to be sent. And: by Emily Short! I'm glad someone's got around to that format.

'Together with Caper I have also been working on a small art project for the RSC. We’ve been interested in working with the building itself… We wanted to explore the building as a whole, the total sum of effort and action that makes experiencing the performance possible; some of it behind the scenes. To do that, we wanted to put together an app that would analyse, visualise and display activity in the building as it happens." Lovely stuff from Natalia; this is another piece of work commissioned at the same time as the piece I'm doing for the RSC (more of which anon).

"The fascinating thing about the New Aesthetic could be that it was never new — it went from being unknown to being ubiquitous and thoroughly banal with barely a blink. The frisson of shock or wonder one experienced at seeing an aspect of the New Aesthetic out in the wild comes because that is the only time it will be noticed; afterwards it will pass unobserved. The New Aesthetic is not about seeing something new — it is about the new things we are not seeing. It is an effort to truly observe and note emergent digital visual phenomena before they become invisible." This is a really solid, careful piece from Will Wiles.

"That's when we realized how big this was, and that we'd need outside help. We enlisted people to go to stops, measure traffic and count people getting off and on and we hired bike messengers to see where the buses went. The cyclists used Field Papers to transcribe the various routes and what they found out, which we recompiled back into a database of trips, stops, companies and frequency. At a rough estimate, these shuttles transport about 40% of the amount of passengers Caltrain moves each day." This is brilliant.

"H+: The Digital Series takes place in a world where people have access to persistent computer interfaces projected into their vision. Before talking to someone face-to-face they perform a “curtain closing” gesture. Presumably it’s a gesture to remove the UI from their vision, but clearly it’s also interpreted as a social cue: “I am giving you my attention”." Oh, very good.

"We always knew Magic: the Gathering was a complex game. But now it's proven: you could assemble a computer out of Magic cards." Oh lordy. Via Aanand, this proof that you can make a Turing Machine out of Magic The Gathering.

"Perhaps the best Wii idea of all, and one too little copied in other consumer electronics, was that the device itself lit up when something important had happened to it. If a friend sent you a message or if a game needed an update, the system would start emitting a blue glow from its disc drive. You didn't have to turn the Wii on to know something was ready for your attention; the device's light pattern showed it. Most inert consumer electronics do nothing like this, which is a pity. What a disappointing failure that we don't have more electronics that make themselves useful even while they are more or less turned off." Steven Totilo's farewell to the Wii is full of some lovely thought and analysis – as well as great game write-ups – but this in particular bears repeating. (It drove me mad, but, still).

"The moment that stopped me in my tracks was when I checked to see if there was anything in the external disk drive." I really want to find out what's on it. Lovely, simple storytelling from Aanand.