"…after careful consideration [the editors in charge of style guidelines at the NYT] decided to alter our style. As of now, the spelling whisky will be used not only for Scotch but for Canadian liquor as well. The spelling whiskey will be used for all appropriate liquors from other sources." As it should be.

"…using these guidelines, and building on the experience of much more knowledgeable type gurus, I have compiled a list of font stacks that will both open up more font possibilities for web designers, and hopefully offer more appropriate substitutes:" That's interesting; not sure how appropriate it is, but they're good uses of the cascade, by and large.

"Toine Manders, the Dutch liberal MEP who drafted the report, said: "Video games are in most cases not dangerous. We heard evidence from experts on computer games and psychologists from France, the US, Germany and the Netherlands and they told us that video games have a positive contribution to make to the education of minors."" Etcetera.

A page full of prettiness, and it fills itself up as you go. Art, graphic design, sci-fi book covers; it's all here.

"It’s a scrolling arcade beat ‘em up in the Final Fight-style based within the Watchmen universe. Just like Alan would have wanted." I know, I know. But: it has charm, it's LittleLoud, and it's not like it's setting out to be canon narrative! It's pretending to be a passable arcade game from a long while ago. So I'm going to give it a break (unlike that horrible 3D beat-em-up that's coming out, that looks like it's trying to be Like The Movie).

Music video actively exploiting compression artefacts. The transitions are striking; the reaction to something looking this supposedly broken is peculiarly visceral. Digital patina.

"Designing a game for a limited platform is not only a great exercise for a development team, but can often give real insights into how to take an existing product into a whole new area — often with great improvements to controls and the whole user interface and experience." Denki on porting from low-spec digital TV boxes to even-lower spec digital TV boxes. Some good stuff in here, particularly around constraint.

"…once WoLK came out and half the guild went completely insane and started chasing the really silly achievements, it was clear we were going to need an RSS feed of the things. So I built one. It’s based on the Armory, like most WoW tools, and is a complete kludge, like most of my tools. But here are my notes anyway." Hurrah! Tom wrote his magic tool up. It's great, it's daft, and I love the Armory's crazy XML. Alas, my achievements are few and far between…

"it seems to me Criterion, in particular, has identified and implemented a strategy that works remarkably well in the current games marketplace: release the best product you can and stand behind it; improve the quality and player experience with frequent upgrades; offer additional value-added content worth charging for; nurture the relationship between your consumers and your development team; and give folks what they want."

"Translator 'tempestas_caput' doesn't seem to offer any explanation as to why he's translated Zelda II into Latin, so we just won't ask. But it's not the only game getting his "sleeping language" treatment: he's also he's also gone alone, dangerously with the original Zelda, and is making his way, even more ambitiously, through Final Fantasy III." Brilliant!

"…if the future of games is to become entertainment services, then are subscriptions going to fall away in favour of upfront payments and free updates?" Some good thinking from Duncan.

"Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and provide anyone who signs up access to her home electricity consumption right on her iGoogle homepage."

"So, you finally caved. You've accepted a friend request from your Mom, Dad, crazy Aunt Ida, and your college roommate’s newly divorced mother. Well here's your chance to get back at them for taking away your public privacy."

Daft, lovely, and hypnotic to watch.

"Maybe participating in a Game Jam ought be a required rite of passage for anyone who wants to make videogames. It's a deep, oxygen-less dive into the depths of the industry, compressed into 48 hours. Survive it, and you can survive anything." Development as fractal.

"Smart things: the design of things that have computers in them, but are not computers". Mike Kuniavsky outlines the book he's currently working on. Looks interesting.

35mm, f1.8, crop-factor only, and with a built in motor so all the D40/D60 users can use it. This is big news – the first-party crop-factor prime. If they can make it super-affordable and good quality (at least as good as the 35mm f2 I'm thinking of buying) it's a lock.

"Red dot fever enforces a precision into your design that the rest must meet to feel coherent. There’s no room for the hereish, nowish, thenish and soonish. The ‘good enough’." Dingdingding. +5 points to Taylor, as usual. Place, not location.

"TinkerKit is an Arduino-compatible physical computing prototyping toolkit aimed at design professionals. The interest in physical computing as an area in development within the creative industries has been increasing rapidly. In response to this Tinker.it! is developing the TinkerKit to introduce fast iterative physical computing methodologies to newcomers, and particularly design professionals." Standardised modules, standardised connectors, Arduino-compatible. I remember Massimo showing me his keyboard-emulating board ages ago. Nice to see Tinker productising the platform, too.

"The buttons are designed to look very similar to basic HTML input buttons. But they can handle multiple interactions with one basic design. The buttons we’re using are imageless, and they’re created entirely using HTML and CSS, plus some JavaScript to manage the behavior." Dark, dark voodoo, but very impressive – and excellently explained by Doug Bowman. It's nice to see Doug blogging again.

"If 2009 is going to see the emergence of high-quality browser-based games, then 2009 is going to be the year of Unity. It has: lots of powerful features; iPhone support; Wii publishing; a developing community; quality developers using it; and an upcoming upcoming PC version. In short, it is about to make a major splash. I feel compelled to jump in with it — the indie license is cheaper than the Flash IDE."

"bash completion support for core Git." Ooh. This looks really, really nice.

"With Half-Life and Counter-Strike, and more recently Team Fortress 2, we've learned that we're no longer making stand-alone games but creating entertainment services. With Left 4 Dead we're extending that tradition by creating additional gameplay and releasing our internal tools to aspiring developers so they may also create and distribute new Left 4 Dead experiences." Lots of places have the news; this quotation is the killer, though. "Entertainment services". GAAS, anyone?

"What's So Great About The Wire?", a course at UC Berkley. Given the comparisons they suggest, to leave out any of Series 2 from their studies is, frankly, criminal.

"On Tuesday we shipped an update that added a bunch of features / bugfixes / balancing tweaks that came out of the community's feedback. In particular, it made some changes to the underlying TF damage system, and as part of that, it modified the way critical hits are determined. We thought it might be interesting to dig a little into the change, and hopefully give you some insight into our thinking." Another cracking example of explaining game mechanics clearly and directly, to an engaged community.

"You've got to get shit happening – you can talk about it, you can write it down, it means nothing until you actually make it and think f**k that's nothing like what I thought it was going to be! That happens most of the time." Gary Penn on prototyping, getting real, and how they do stuff at Denki. More good stuff.

"We always start with the idea of toys," says Ralfe. "They're the quickest way into finding fun. Rules aren't fun, so we never begin with them." Great feature from Keith Stuart on a visit to Denki; lots of good stuff in here.

Fantastic, all of it.

Sneeze is the latest minigame inside Routes to be released. It's a bit like Boomshine and Every Extend, except using the common cold as your weapon. Children are easy vectors, the elderly are slow but you get more points for infecting them. Lots of fun, and great splatter effects.

"This story clearly illustrates the problem with ordering over the phone." Oh dear.

"A set of rudimentary exercises intended to prepare students of rhetoric for the creation and performance of complete practice orations (gymnasmata or declamations). A crucial component of classical and renaissance rhetorical pedagogy. Many progymnasmata exercises correlate directly with the parts of a classical oration."

"Our team of investigative journalists has compiled a database from four years' worth of company accounts to show how much the FTSE 100 companies make in pre-tax profits, and how much they pay in tax. We have published this data as a user-friendly interactive guide at guardian.co.uk/taxgap/data." But, as well as the user-friendly guide, there's also all the data. Bravo.

"Unlike other games, L4D brings this entropy to the surface — there's a palpable feeling of dread throughout, as if the world is relentlessly and mercilessly trying to turn you into a red mist as fast as possible." Not convinced entirely, but this is a really important point: the best games expose their mechanics in plain sight. The systemic nature of the game – the entropic tension between survivor and zombie – is clearly critical to it, and there's no point where that's not made clear.

"FreeAgent is an easy online accounting tool, perfectly suited for freelancers and small businesses." Lots of good support for UK-based business, especially when it comes to tax calculation.

"Templates are simple ruby files containing DSL for adding plugins/gems/initializers etc. to your freshly created Rails project." That looks very handy.

I've had this bug for ages. Basically: when you upgrade to Lightroom 2, keywords from Lightroom 1 aren't exported by default, making exporting to Flickr irritating, because you end up having to rekey some (but not all) keywords. This magic Lua script fixes everything.

"During Condition 1 weather, winds gust at speeds of anywhere from 50 to 60 MPH and the wind chill hits anywhere between 75° F to 100° F below zero. Ouch. Not surprisingly, personnel are prohibited from leaving their buildings during these storms." Which gives them ample time to make videos like this.

"Most usability experts will agree, Dr. Donald Norman’s book “The Design of Everyday Things” is required reading for any aspiring user experience or product designer. But it’s also an excellent resource for game creators – even if it’s less commonly found on studio bookshelves." NGMoco's blog, on POET, and what it means for game designers. Not rocket science, but really well explained to a non-specialist audience.

That's sad; he was a fount of statistics since I first listened to TMS, and long before that.

"By wrapping and extending Flash 8's sound API, SoundManager 2 brings solid audio functionality to Javascript." Dark voodoo. Dark, clever, voodoo.

This was actually a pretty good tutorial for the jQuery UI Slider control, if only for illustrating how much code – notably markup/styles – you have to provide before the slider works.

Kyle Gabler of 2D Boy gives the first Global Game Jam keynote. Seven minutes, seven tips, packed with goodness. He's not wrong.

"I’m much more interested in automated nostalgia than automated presence – data feeds that gradually acrue in your wake, rather than constantly dragging your focus on to the next five minutes." Yes.

"Unlike other screenshot services, we are able to process a large number of capturing jobs in parallel and in realtime, making it the fastest service that we know of." Ooh. That could be useful.

"This article provides a simple positive model for preventing XSS using output escaping/encoding properly. While there are a huge number of XSS attack vectors, following a few simple rules can completely defend against this serious attack." Pretty comprehensive, and some clear guidelines if, like me, you're unsure where to start when protecting against XSS.

"Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It is designed to be accessible for children and enjoyable for anyone. The programming environment runs on the Xbox, allowing rapid design iteration using only a game controller for input." Which is interesting. I know it's only a research project, but it'd be lovely to play with some time.

"One [memory] always stuck with me was him showing a moody, uplit black-and-white press portrait of Richard Meier in the cliché black-turtleneck and severe glasses in front of venetian blinds – eyes directed up and away in search of the future – very fountainhead. Kaplicky rumbled: “This is not design”. He pointed at me to click the slide carousel forward. An image of a carpark full of Boeing employees, from design engineers to HR to office cleaners in 777 project t-shirts waving at the camera. Kaplicky, now beaming, crookedly: “This. This is design.”" Sounds about right to me.

"Multiplayer Design Lead Tyson Green checked a week ago in with a lengthy explanation of the melee system in Halo 3, how it’s different from Halo 2’s what worked about both versions, what didn’t work and how it’s being addressed by the auto update. here's a reminder of what he explained." Via Offworld, this frankly excellent explanation of a Halo 3 patch from early 2008, explaining the problems latency brough to melee combat, and why Bungie implemented their solutions as they did. Clear, educational, and it feels like the right answer. More writing like this, please, games industry!

Playground for Google's Ajax APIs. Well implemented, and very useful.

"Isla Lyddle End lies on the far east of the British Archipelago. It is the largest of the eastern islands in what was once the continuous land mass known as Hornbyshire. Isla Lyddle End celebrates the Golden Jubilee of The Grand Iman of Britain HH Patel bin Windsor with a minaret clock tower, constructed of hard-pack, molded synthetic carbon nodules in full compliance with the Rock and Soil Conservation Act of 2038." Julian's Lyddle End 2050 entry is excellent.

"When it’s just you, the rooftops and Faith’s slim repertoire of jumps, shimmies, slides and rolls, it’s something like the urban Tarzan game we all hoped Mirror’s Edge would be. Time Trial mode rewards practice and it rewards perseverance, and it’s the only reason to buy Mirror’s Edge." An interesting take on Mirror's Edge, which has a lot of truth in it.

"Thank you to everyone who emailed asking about a World of Goo Soundtrack. This is probably as close to an "official" soundtrack I'll ever make for the game World of Goo. I'm making it available here on my personal portfolio for free." No, thank you, Kyle.

A useful guide, although perhaps more detailed than you'd normally need. Still, clear instructions for handling reverting changes in git.

"Afterwards, we came to refer to certain types of accomplishments as “black triangles.” These are important accomplishments that take a lot of effort to achieve, but upon completion you don’t have much to show for it – only that more work can now proceed. It takes someone who really knows the guts of what you are doing to appreciate a black triangle."

112 different games1 It's amazing to think that "Moving Shields" and "Zigzagging Laser Bombs" could be counted as different game-types, though, and presumably that number comes from all possible combinations. The videogame industry's obsession with bullet-points on the box is deep-rooted, it seems. (From Simon Parkin's lovely "Box Art" blog).

"Mr Aygun once said: "I thought how much easier it would be if they could take their food with them." The first of the new snacks was served on March 2, 1971, at Hasir, his restaurant in Berlin. It was called a doner kebab after the Turkish word "dondurmek" which means a rotating roast." So now you know.

Olly Moss has now moved from movies to videogames, pastiching classic Penguin covers; the Goldeneye one is superb.