-
"Elizabeth David was a revelation for me. She was a wonderful prose writer and it was a habit that carried over in to her recipes which are often maddeningly vague. You would be forgiven for wondering whether there are recipes at all. They are really just a handful of paragraphs that serve as a rough guide in the general direction of the dish you're trying to make. The recipe that follows is much longer than anything she'd write." Yeah, but it still looks amazing, Aaron.
-
This is brilliant: mp3s of the little mod/tracker music tracks that accompany keygens, cracks, and intros. Hundreds, and it's strange to say "hey, PHOTOSHOPCS4CRK is my favourite!" A weird little bit of culture, perfectly captured.
-
IF legend Andrew "Zarf" Plotkin has adapted Jason Shiga's marvellous "Meanwhile" for the iPad. If you wanted someone to adapt your interactive fiction for another format – I can't think of a better person. Really looking forward to seeing how they've done this.
-
There is nothing about this that is not amazing.
-
"…halfway through the film, the Ghostbusters realize that NYNEX isn't a phone system at all: it's the embedded nervous system of an angel – a fallen angel – and all those phone calls and dial-up modems in college dorm rooms and public pay phones are actually connected into the fiber-optic anatomy of a vast, ethereal organism that preceded the architectural build-up of Manhattan. Manhattan came afterwards, that is: NYNEX was here first." There is no way this wouldn't be awesome. And: a great write-up from Geoff.
-
How to compile APC into the Marc Liyanage PHP5 package (which is clearly the most sensible one to be using on OSX). Though this is for Server, it works fine on desktop, and as such comes recommended.
-
"This toaster was built from scratch by Thomas Thwaites, a design student at the Royal College of Art, London, as a project in extreme self-sufficiency and to highlight the effects of mass production we take for granted." And this is what it looks like.
-
"I'm Thomas Thwaites and I'm trying to build a toaster, from scratch – beginning by mining the raw materials and ending with a product that Argos sells for only £3.99. A toaster." This is clearly amazing, and a timely reminder of, you know, what the age of mass production really means.
-
"An image a day and an MP3 to go with it, for no obvious reason." And no RSS, so you'll just have to turn up every day. Lovely concept.
-
Wonderful, delightful, charming writing from Duncan Fyfe; this, and the eight chapters that follow it, are pretty essential, and they're nice and brief. Speculative fiction about games, culture, and the future. And fandom.
-
Gosh, that looks lovely – and bonus points for a preview video that films the iPhone, showing the way fingers work on its surface, rather than just showing the results of interactions.
-
"for a while now we’ve been meaning to post some early childhood snapshots of world of goo, to dig deep into our code repository and remember the good ol’ days. the early part of a game’s development is often very enjoyable because things evolve rapidly and there’s a great sense of accomplishment. it’s also a lot of fun to look back at those early days and laugh at what the game use to look and feel like." First in a seven part series, in which 2D Boy walk us through the – playable – origins of World of Goo. Game devs: more like this, please.
-
"This jQuery plugin generates sparklines (small inline charts) directly in the browser using data supplied either inline in the HTML, or via javascript." Nifty.
-
"…when we step into the shoes of that avatar, be it 1st-person, 3rd-person or otherwise, we exit the darkened movie theater paradigm and enter an intricate, performative, exploratory lab of untested ideas and speculation. We enter a playful space that feels and responds much more like a live theater rehearsal than an interactive movie or a triggered series of movie clips." Michael debunks the games-as-cinema analogy with an interesting take that considers them as more like theatre rehearsal.
-
"This is not a book about the VCS, nor breakout, nor video games and video game culture; it is a chronicle of the experience of that entity we might call “the player.” Oddly, there is little I can take from it in terms of approaches to video gaming or thoughts on the VCS Breakout. But it did enlarge my perspective and help me think about physiological, cognitive, and, let us say, monomaniacal aspects of video game play. Nervous, very dreadfully nervous Sudnow has been, but why would I say that he is mad?" Sudnow passed away very recently; I really ought to read his book, more than ever.
-
"[s3fm]… lets anyone run a streaming radio station, with just a folder of MP3s. Put those MP3s in an Amazon S3 bucket, and give your friends the S3 FM link."
-
Matt's talk (in English) from Lift 09, on scientific fiction, stories, and the design process. Good stuff – not too long – and wonderfully filmed: the cameraman focuses on his hands as much as his face, which is just perfect.
-
NeoGAF users band together to make a perfect, eight-stage, LittleBigPlanet rendition of Contra. Remarkable, especially the behind-the-backdrop puppeteering that makes the walking-into-the-screen levels possible. This had better not get a takedown slapped on it, because it's phenomenal.
-
"Perfect gift for any World of Warcraft player or other MMORPGer in general. You get one "main" glass and one "alt" glass. Serving idea: fill your main with your alcoholic beverage and your alt with your chaser since mains are typically stronger than alts." Oh dear. (But: good gag, and dangerous for drinking games).
-
"SFZero is a Collaborative Production Game. Players build characters by completing tasks for their groups and increasing their Score. The goals of play include meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities."
-
"One of my enduring passions is exploring graphic design with programmatic and generative systems. While some aspects of design require the skilled hand of the designer, others can be formalized and explored by computer. For those tasks, Mathematica is an exceptional tool." Some lovely thinking around generative design.
-
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.
A bit of trust from the Kids
21 November 2006
A few days ago, I ran into my college friend Dave, who (amongst other things) is now running a small, independent record label called Kids. Kids release limited-edition, short-run 7″ singles (at the moment); they’ve got a solid lineup (including Paul Hartnoll’s debut single) and, as I bumped into him, Dave was off to a launch party for KIDS009, the latest Wombats single.
We caught up quickly, and he handed me their previous release, the double A-side of It’s Magnetic and Out on 24s (on clear plastic) from Assembly Now. When I got home, I stuck the 7″ on the record player and listened to both sides – really great stuff, and a band I’ll be keeping my eyes on.
What was really interesting, though, was the piece of paper that fell out of the single when I opened it.
On it was written a small note to say that because I’d bought the single, I was entitled to email somebody at Kids who’d send me details of how to obtain the MP3s of that track – for free.
I love this idea. The short runs of 7″ singles that Kids put out are ideal for a small record label trying to find its feet – reasonably cheap to press, I’d imagine, and which can turn a reasonable profit-per-unit. And for their target market, 7″ are still an acceptable distribution format for singles. But their target market also own iPods – and nothing’s more tedious than ripping vinyl to mp3.
So this pattern really works in their favour: people pay money for the music they want to hear on a format convenient for home, and get the mobile format thrown in – because let’s face it, they’re going to find a way to do that anyhow. The convenience of doing things this way around is a huge bonus, though. I hope other small labels do this sort of thing – it’s relatively little effort and cost on top of the pressing, but it’s a smart idea that’s in tune with exactly how people like to listen to music.
And, of course, I hope Kids continues to thrive as a label.