"I’m especially intrigued by reader reviews written by people unfamiliar with the vocabulary of literary criticism. They aim to describe experiences that most of us recognize but that can be hard to articulate, and they have to make up the language for it as they go along." This is a great article on the various assets of reader-reviews, and where they set on the spectrum of criticism.

"The least important question you can ask about Engelbart is, "What did he build?" By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to admire him, to stand in awe of his achievements, to worship him as a hero. But worship isn't useful to anyone. Not you, not him.

The most important question you can ask about Engelbart is, "What world was he trying to create?" By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to create that world yourself."

"It has some unique perspective every once in awhile, but honestly, America can be super derivative. Most of the stories have already been on The Simpsons."

"There’s still a smell of bullshit to almost every videogame story I read, even as it’s advanced to a very high level being in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. To me it derives from this politeness about the thing that’s experienced. In literary criticism there are really cutting deconstructions of things that are inadequate—Nabokov talking about what a fraud and charlatan Faulkner was—but there’s this really intelligent, but painfully milquetoast, quality to the way we appreciate games. It’s a reflection of how partially engaged we are with each one. We consider games primarily as ideas, rather than actual evolving relationships that we’ve had over time." Yeah, that. I enjoyed this discussion: I'm pretty sure you don't have to finish games to review them. Then again: I also think writing about games six months after they came out is way more interesting than trying to hammer through something to fit into a review cycle.

Oooh, the Shruthi got an upgrade: not just white PCBs, but an interesting new filter board. Seriously tempted by one of these.

Cracking analysis from Soren Johnson on Free-to-Play, how it shapes game design for both good and ill, and the opportunities it opens in its wake.

"To keep up with trends, we've developed some iPhone stencils and sketchsheets that'll make the lo-fi stage of development a lot quicker." Passable iOS wireframe templates – but at least they're wireframey, rather than irritating pixel-perfect stencils that are all-too-easy to come by.

"You also know about the Wait. The Wait is Ahab’s white whale; it is America at Ellis Island; it is the night sky to the Greeks. The Wait is a disgusting amalgam of dreams, memories, hopes, desires, and expectations. In fact, barring all else, this may be the only thing that you know about Duke Nukem." A lovely piece of nostalgia – and review-system-breaking-analysis – from Jamin.

"Get great articles delivered to your Kindle without any extra effort." Curated content, delivered direct to your Kindle via the email interface. Will try this for a bit: it's a really obvious opening in the space, and scope for there to be many of these.

If you're going to write a review for a digital medium about a recursive game, this is as good a way as any to do it. Bravo.

"Patrick Stump survived The Scene, then." I went to see Patrick Stump play some music. Then I reviewed it for Londonist.

Nice little collection of indie pen-and-paper RPGs; Dread sounds a lot of fun, and yet another reminder how much I need to get Fiasco.

"The pattern we see here is to keep crises small and frequent, as Ed Catmull of Pixar says in an excellent recent talk. When describing the difficulty Pixar's artists had with reviews ("it's not ready for you to look at"), he realized that the only way to break through resistance to reviews was to increase the frequency until no one could reasonably expect to be finished in time for theirs. The point was to gauge work in motion, not work at rest." I liked this quotation, but as usual, the rest of Mike's post is great.

"Goblin Slayer is a quick, easy to play boardgame of heroic adventure and underground combat for two players." Tabletop dungeon-crawl boardgame with nice little board structure and not bad artwork.

You know the guy who did the 70-minute Phantom Menace review? He went to see Avatar. Yes, it's good.

ARel looks brilliant, but blimey, those are some *big* changes to ActiveRecord. Pratik's post here is probably the most comprehensive I've seen, and well worth your time.

Great round-up of all the stuff out there about Rails 3. If you're as behind as I am on preparing for this, there's some really good stuff here; nice to have it all in one place.

"McGilchrist's suggestion is that the encouragement of precise, categorical thinking at the expense of background vision and experience – an encouragement which, from Plato's time on, has flourished to such impressive effect in European thought – has now reached a point where it is seriously distorting both our lives and our thought. Our whole idea of what counts as scientific or professional has shifted towards literal precision – towards elevating quantity over quality and theory over experience – in a way that would have astonished even the 17th-century founders of modern science, though they were already far advanced on that path." Sharp review of what sounds like a fascinating book; I particularly liked this quotation.

"Building a working computer from Nand gates alone is a thrilling intellectual exercise. It demonstrates the supreme power of recursive ascent, and teaches the students that building computer systems is — more than anything else — a triumph of human reasoning." Ooh, that could be good, when I have an hour spare. (Another Google TechTalk).

"Every day a song is posted, one second shorter than yesterday's. A tumblr by Tom Ewing." Awesome.

In which the Guardian links to Noticings – hurrah! – and describes it as "Random I-spy for grown-ups."