February 2012
18 posts
Dear Esther
With no characters to interact with, no enemies to fight, no puzzles to solve, no way to manipulate the environment around you, Dear Esther is guaranteed to spark a thousand hand-wringing debates about what a game actually is. Can a game have none of the elements listed above and still call itself a game? Or is it enough to provide an experience to the player? Come to think of it, if...
Feltron Biennial Report →
Nicholas Felton has released the latest version of his “annual reports” - a collection of all the data that makes up his life. As someone who has trouble keeping track of the movies he’s watched, I’m very jealous of his ability to consistently keep track of this stuff.
After the internet design community started spooging over these things a few years ago, he set up...
The myth of the eight-hour sleep →
Scientists are arguing that the 8-hour sleep is unnatural, and that humans naturally fall into a more segmented sleep cycle. In other words, I should be treating every day like I treat Sunday, with a pre-sleep nap.
“The problem with Gamification is that it tries to solve a problem that...”
– Greg Costikyan nails it
WatchDouble Fine are using Kickstarter to fund their new adventure game. 140% funded in 24 hours.
Seriously, this is monumental.
Fountain - A Markup Language for Screenwriting →
John August:
Back when we announced FDX Reader, I got a lot of emails asking, ‘When are you going to make a screenwriting app?” Answer: Today. My hope is that we just made a thousand. Fountain turns every text editor into a screenwriting app.
This means flexibility. This means genuine collaboration - people in geographically different locations can edit the same Google Doc at the same...
El Wingador →
Errol Morris Op-Doc on Bill ‘El Wingador’ Simmons. I love that he has a cross-stitch by his front door saying “NOTHING EXCEEDS LIKE EXCESS”.
Crowdsourcing
One of the unfortunate effects of living in another country for almost five years is that you have to almost completely rebuild your knowledge of your home city. Specifically, I find that I need to find out where the best bars and restaurants are (because, honestly, there’s only so much Crackbird a man can handle).
In theory, this is where things like Yelp and Menupages are supposed to...
Russian scientists searching for underground... →
Sorry for linking to the Daily Mail, but HOLY FUCK.
Connecting nvALT and Address Book →
I use nvAlt (synced with SimpleNote) all over the place, from storing little code snippets to keeping track of ideas and lists over time. Brett Terpstra has come up with a great idea for linking notes with individual people in your address book. Love this.
The Dublin cinema manager who became the only... →
This post shows why Come Here To me is, by a huge margin, my favourite Irish blog.
January 2012
11 posts
Lighthouse Cinema re-opening →
I was saying to my missus on Saturday about how I was really sad that I was living away from Ireland for the entirely lifespan of the Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield. Now it’s Monday and they’re announcing that it’s being re-opened!
So let’s see if I can use my new power for good: I am also really sad that Rubicon and Terriers were cancelled.
2 Broke Girls panel turns ugly with racism,... →
I really like Kat Dennings as an actress and was really happy to hear she had landed the lead in a sitcom. But holy shit, 2 Broke Girls is unwatchable. I think they only hired an actual Asian to play the Asian character because they couldn’t hire Mickey Rooney from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
The Rules
I’ve been cycling in and out of town almost every day since July. A half-hour in, against the wind. A half hour back, uphill almost the whole way. My entire attitude towards cycling has changed. It’s not just simple transport any more. It’s war. War against myself. War against taxi drivers. War against Dublin weather.
Which is why I love Velominati’s Rules of cycling...
December 2011
28 posts
A Proper "Alien" Resurrection →
Speaking of Alien, Mubi is hosting a fantastic assessment of all the little things that make that film so great. Love this line: “Even the design concept behind Saul Bass’ (uncredited) opening titles transforms the viewer’s initial perceptions of something seemingly benign into an understanding of a thing that is concretely threatening.”
Guess what film I’ll be watching...
In a recent interview with The Nerdist podcast, J.J. Abrams (who, incidentally, comes across as an incredibly friendly and yet completely joyless person) suggested that cinemas wouldn’t suffer the same level of decline as traditional book and record shops. His reasoning? He reckons the experience of going to the cinema can’t be properly reproduced, even by the most tricked-out and...
Has Randy Bachman Solved a Decades-Old... →
I have spent an embarrassing amount of time and almost crippled myself trying to contort my fingers into a shape that sounds like a passable version of the first chord of A Hard Day’s Night. Couldn’t figure it out. Randy Bachman has the answer, and it’s beautiful.
“Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want...”
– Paul Graham on Trolls.
“How to describe Metafilter to a novice?
Well, say there’s a video with a...”
– Metafilter user not_that_epiphanius explains exactly why I love Metafilter
Nintendo's Miyamoto Stepping Down, Working on... →
On the one hand, this is incredibly sad news - the end of an era. But on the other hand, I’m excited to see what he can do with “smaller games”.
“Her mother read her mail
And her Dad was a Policeman
Which I must say worried...”
– — Billy Bragg, From a Vauxhall Velox
Not only is this a perfect simile, it’s goddamned ballsy to drop a term like “contraflow system” into a pop song.
Who's Afraid Of Lana Del Rey? - The Awl →
If you’re as baffled by the whole Lana Del Rey as I am, this is a good place to start. I just wish the author had expanded it a bit more - five lengthy paragraphs about the ways in which people are hating her, barely a mention of why.
