Justin's year. What a year. (Also: some days, I wish I saw things better.)

George Saunders on 'story'; watching this, and hearing him talk, I begin to see more about his writing emerges. It's still a mystery, but it feels like a tiny bit more of a known mystery.

"The Unfortunates" as a kind of promenade; marvellous.

"Perhaps “saving handwriting” is less a matter of invoking blind nostalgia and more a process of examining the historical use of ordinary technologies as a way to understand contemporary ones." Fascinating and thoughtful article about the relationship of tools (the fountain pen), materials (ink), and skills (cursive script).

"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.

"The characteristic grid-like simplicity of the view, the absence of barriers… a landscape where nothing officially exists, absolutely anything becomes thinkable, and may consequently happen… — that’s Reyner Banham describing deserts, though I like to imagine he was looking at a spreadsheet." Rod's component of By Hand & By Brain is just wonderful.

"Having to learn how to make something ‘the long way’ helps you to understand how to manipulate materials at a fundamental level. It means that you can become fluent. The ability to articulate your thoughts through and with matter, rather than just make it into a shape you have thought of, means that you are more likely to find innovative or creative ways to exploit both materials and machinery. This is true whether you are talking about traditional craft techniques or more contemporary (digital) ways of making: I don’t think you can avoid the notion that time and effort are the only way to get good at something. Using digital technology as a way to shortcut the temporal aspects of craftsmanship is effectively relegating these sources of immense creative potential to the category of ‘labour saving devices’. I am really looking forward to a time where we can fully appreciate the potential for modern digital craftsmanship, by which I mean the skilful manipulation of digital systems as ‘matter’, rather than as express facilitators of shiny objectness." yes-yes-yes-yes.

I've loved playing Her Story, and if you had any doubt that some of its success were more down to coincidence than writing – well, Sam Barlow's blog will prove you wrong. This, on Ballard's use of fragments, and that as a motif for storytelling is cracking. (And: lots of the readings of Her Story are coming about not just because of the quality of Barlow's work, but because non-linearity leads us to strange and exciting places; the skill is allowing the text to support that not by covering every base, but by hinting at many bases).

Wonderful little story from Saxey about language, gender, and singular-they, although as with the best stories, it's all in the telling. Lots of good brain-tickles in here.

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.

"The mobile internet is the internet of motion, defined by mapping and directions, activity tracking, travel schedules, GoPro, Passbook and Uber. We have been given GPS receivers and three-axis accelerometers and proximity sensors for our pockets and purses, and the things we build for them urge us to keep moving. They are optimised to tell us that we’re not where we want to be: miles from our destination, steps from our daily goal, seconds from our personal best, an immeasurable distance from our rose-gold aspirations.

What, then, does the internet of rest look like?" Double thumbs-up for Nick Sweeney

"There are experiences of landscape that will always resist articulation, and of which words offer only a distant echo. Nature will not name itself. Granite doesn’t self-identify as igneous. Light has no grammar. Language is always late for its subject. When I see a moon-bow or a sundog, I usually just say “Wow!” or “Hey!” Sometimes on a mountain, I look out across scree and corrie, srón and lairig – and say nothing at all. But we are and always have been name-callers, christeners. Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes grained into our words."