"I view ValhallaPlate as being closely related to an SM57. Or a hammer. No need to be delicate with the tool. No need to think about things too much. It just works." I liked this line on toolmaking, especially when it comes to music technology.

Much more Illustrator-like than Sketch is, in many ways, and affordable. Certainly leaps ahead of Inkscape in not being rubbish. Going to use this for lasercutting/frontpanel work, I think.

Really good article on the realities of installing iBeacons, and, secondarily, the way you develop your own internal processes just to solve workflow. I liked the trolly; I felt for the BKM very much as I read this.

Fascinating article capturing how various translators worked around their languages to translate not only the absence of gendered language _suggested_ in Ancillary Justice, but also the author's deliberate use of the feminine as a generic case. (Also, how to translate things for different cultures – what they expect and what they intimate).

Yes, it's a bit heavily focused on copying/emulation, but there's some useful stuff in here and some interesting starting points.

Thoughtbot's engine for Rails admin UIs, sans-DSLs. Filed away for reference.

Corrie Corfield on Peter Donaldson. Lovely.

[this is good] and I will remember more of it in future.

Wonderful, dense, three-part study of one of GTA V's renderer. I like Adrian's posts because he focuses on the art of the technology, as well as the technology of the art; a reminder that game art isn't just plonking OBJ files into a world, but relies on a whole host of developers, maths, and drawcalls.

Interesting; the wrapper Github used for Atom, as a platform. Makes building desktop applications for web-folk like me a notch easier, though as ever, I find the Javascript ecosystem baffling.

Wonderful article from an architect who worked on "The Witness" about the role of architecture practice in game design, and all the rough edges architects see within game worlds. Good on spatial design principles, too.

"Every gallery project needs an Andy" – and other insights from Tim Hunkin on installation design, following his work on 'The Secret Life of the Home' at the Science Museum. All rings very true for me, and glad to see it's not just me that finds this sort of stuff challenging. Also: very interesting on museum culture.

Lovely interview between Jeff Bridges and Roger Deakins – on film, and how they get made, and feel. Lots of deep knowledge and affection in this; I really enjoyed it.

A cogent, thoughtful look at TempleOS – and a reminder not to dismiss things out of hand because of a few of their characteristics. I'm glad someone's taken the time to do this.

Lovely article on Dudley Moore's jazz playing; I'd always enjoyed what I'd heard of it, but this gives a broader overview. That take on 'My Blue Heaven' is just great.

Really impressive: audiomux/midimux let you send audio and MIDI to and from iOS devices over a lightning cable. Which eliminates all manner of cable tangles, for starters.

"Instead of asking “will it scale”, ask a better question: “Does it gracefully handle massive diversity?”… This is not to say that scale doesn’t matter. Rather, understanding diversity is the better starting point. The diversity question accommodates scaling; the scaling question tramples all over diversity." A good post from Matt Edgar, but this point is particularly good.

Lovely – an encoding designed for people, not machines.

Great year-in-review from Panic: open, honest, and excited all at once. Envious of the environment and space they've cut for themselves.

Very good post on Just Using make as your task runner.

This is good – although it's _another_ reminder that my notebooks are not as legible as they once were.

Paul Ford knocks it out of the park – again.

"We learned that being first is important, but should not be the only factor when determining the viability of a project. If you have an evolved approach to a preexisting concept, you are likely doing something original and the results have a good chance of being meaningful." So, in one sense, it's another physical mirror. But: I like this point, that sometimes, you have to do a thing for yourself to learn about it. And by learning about it, you might ultimately differentiate your own work. As long as you don't claim you were first, there is no shame in doing what other people do. How else do you learn things? Not by other people yelling "OLD!" at you, that's for sure.

"Gifsicle is a command-line tool for creating, editing, and getting information about GIF images and animations." Handy.

"These three frameworks — objects as portals, objects as subjects, and objects as oracles — propose distinct (yet related) structures for thinking about how connected objects might begin to contain their own narratives, seek their own history, develop their own perspectives, and become storytellers in a multitude of ways." Nice article about the various perspectives on Connected Objects (which namechecks Hello Lamp Post).

Ah, the joys – and pains – of finding what looks like a software bug… lies in hardware.