Curated and ongoing set of links to resources around the topic, from the Serpentine. Will be highly useful for future teaching, although god, my ongoing exhaustion around much of the AI discourse doesn't seem to be dissipating. Most excited to go over some of the interviews an and lectures.

"It now makes absolute sense that this comes from a nation a non-trivial amount of which is below sea level and who’s storied history is in fact chock full of water engineering feats. It stands now to reason that this could only come from the Dutch. Or some kid from Nebraska who just loved water parks as a kid, ended up baked out of his mind on the streets of Amsterdam for nine years until he discovered his long lost passion and talent for making side scroller games. Chances are it was both." Jim is writing about games and it's a delight.

"The two points I want to focus on here are about Ricky’s initial attitude about this warehouse idea and about the fact that he made this prototype ‘to surprise me’

Earlier I said that Ricky and Nate were sick of hearing about this idea. That was an understatement. In reality they openly mocked it. They had a running joke that I should call it ‘Clown Warehouse’ and make all the things in it clown paraphernalia. I wasn’t particularly hurt by this. It was good banter. It’s kind of how we talk about game ideas a lot of the time. 

But then Ricky made a prototype to surprise me. (Not to mention spending months taking it from a prototype to a finished game.) And my point is that this is how friendships work. These expressions of good natured antagonism and affection, Winding someone up one day and giving them a nice surprise another, are the hallmarks of real friendship.

If you make games and your game development process isn’t like this you are doing it wrong. In my opinion."

This whole article from Dick Hogg, on making Wilmot's Warehouse, is a delight. On making parts and working out what a game is later; on friendship; on playtesting; on games with endings. Just great.

A 'yes' to all of this; English Weird as a thing, and Christmas is the time of English Weird. TDIR begins on December 20th; time to read along.

Filed away for a thing on data next year.

I love jq at the command line for even the simplest tasks; I need to go over this at some point.

This, like everything Tony and Taylor did, is very good. Not just on film, but on creative work, too.

Excellent overview and collection of links on cryptocurrencies from the Co-op Digital Newsletter; some useful links in here for A Thing.

I liked this from Chris Randall on musical blocks, and unblockings.

George Saunders on writing, and the creative process. Brilliant, both as I'd expected, and in ways I hadn't.

Lovely short films about simple creative acts in the musicmaking process; more of Ableton's excellent commitment to useful, sharp content.

God this is good – AL Kennedy on language, its power, its potency, and the awful ways grammar is currently being taught.

"I am here for you freelancers where every day is a new war; I am here for you day-jobbers where it’s all the same old battle and then family at night and you’re too tired to work on the story and all you want to do is watch TV. I see you and I want you to know that you’re okay. That we all fight this battle in different ways, and I know you’re doing the best you can. Living is hard. Creating is harder. I am here for you on the weeks you write zero words and the weeks you only write 500 and the weeks it all flows out of you like salt water and you’ve written 10,000. I see you when you look back over it and wonder if any of it is any damn good at all. Keep it. It’s good. Keep going. You can edit when you are done." There is no expiration date. This was good.

"We are defining a story, and this will be the context for the music, and music will always be about that context. If the story of my music was like, “Yeah, I download illegal software and I make a hundred tracks and ten are good, and I’ll always do it while I’m on the train or the bus, and I have headphones on and I just make music all the time,” it would raise a question: ‘What is inspiring you?’" This leapt out at me and smacked me around the chops a bit. Smashing interview with Nils Frahm about his recent collaboration with Ólafur Arnalds. (Also, I did not realise how the Korg PS-3100 did polyphony. Blimey.)