"Sheetsee.js is a JavaScript library, or box of goodies, if you will, that makes it easy to use a Google Spreadsheet as the database feeding the tables, charts and maps on a website. Once set up, any changes to the spreadsheet will auto-saved by Google and be live on your site when a visitor refreshes the page." This is good.

"All it takes to get a website going for a repository on GitHub is a branch named gh-pages containing web files. You also don’t need a master branch, you can have a repo with just one branch named gh-pages. Here is what I think is really cool, if you fork a project with just a gh-pages branch, you’re only a commit away from having a live version yourself. If this repo being forked is using sheetsee.js then everyone is a fork, commit and spreadsheet away from having a live website connected to an easy (a familiar spreadsheet UI and no ‘publish’ flow because Google autosaves) to use database that they manage (control permissions, review revision history)." Very smart.

Hosted statistics tool with attractive interface and smart API. Not cheap for its single-tier plan ($99/mo), but looks like it might be worth a poke.

"Analog a la carte is an experiment I (@urtubia, @bigrobotstudios) am conducting for rendering sequences on real synths remotely. This webfrontend will enqueue sequences into a job list that is read by a raspberry-pi at "headquarters". Once the raspi receives the job, it then both sends the sequence via midi to a synth and records it in realtime. Finally it encodes the resulting audio file into an mp3 file and uploads it to Amazon S3, so that this server is nice and ready for getting more sequence requests."

"About 1 minute and 4 seconds after Gunpoint became available for pre-order on the evening of Monday the 27th of May, it had recouped its development costs. This was not entirely surprising, since the only direct development cost was buying Game Maker 8 for $30 three years ago.

The surprising bit happened next." It is really lovely that Gunpoint has worked out so well for Tom. It's an interesting little game, and I'm glad he's going to keep poke "interesting" games rather than having to make a pile of money. Well done him.

"The same API that powers Forecast.io and Dark Sky for iOS can provide accurate short­term and long­term weather predictions to your business, application, or crazy idea." Crazy idea: yup, that'll do.

This looks lovely: the right balance of editor-as-environment (ie: multiplayer level-building, which people recognise from Minecraft) with scripting, full control, and a learning curve. Really need to poke this.

"Someone smarter than me once described game development as jumping out of an airplane with nothing but a needle and a silkworm." Brendon makes good games, and this is a good post. But I really liked this quotation.

Test in multiple browsers, potentially automated, over the net. Latency might be an issue, but worth knowing about, given how much I hate setting up browser test rigs.

via @aanand, and because I forgot to bookmark this when I read it the first time. Good, straightforward points.

"I wanted to compile a list of online, Web-based tools that Web engineers can use for their work in development, testing, debugging and documentation." It is a really good list (I say this mainly because the first thing on the list is RequestBin, which is the thing I always forget the name of).

"Popularity rules, and fitness for purpose is secondary. We even make up a little rationalization about this: “Our code must be easy to read for the next programmer, so we pick idioms that will be familiar.” That would make stellar sense if idioms are forever, but they aren’t. They come and go like trends in pop music, and Ruby Archeologists can accurately date a business application by examining its gemspec file." I liked this line of thought.

This is marvellous: Tog on magic and software, and what one can teach the other. The stuff about perceived time periods, and also on distraction, is particularly great. It's not just about the functionality: it's about how you present it; showmanship all the way down. (And: I like the reminder about the kinds of honesty that are important, in order that dissimulation still works0.

Excellent, thoughtful article from John Allspaw on what experience in software engineering really looks like. Valuable reading both for software engineers, and also for the people who work with them.