Curated
Change it up
Do something new every three years:
I was thinking about the three-year rule while reading about Malcolm Gladwell's observation that it takes 10,000 hours to become truly expert at something. If you really throw yourself into a job, you'll spend 60 hours a week working. That's 3,000 hours a year (allowing for vacation), which means you'll hit the 10,000 hour mark a few months after your third year.So maybe that’s where the three-year rule comes from. You’re now expert at what you set out to master. Great. Now go do something else.
Great idea! The article also reveals some of the inner workings of The Economist. A highly recommended, quick read.
The absurdity of X, Y, R, G and B
The Frustrating Magical Aspect - why’s great take on the absurdity of the tools we use to put interesting shapes and colors on our screens. Here’s to hoping for interesting abstractions that are somewhere between rigorously pushing pixels and randomly drawing shapes until something neat pops out.
The Creative Big Bang
That John Gruber, he's good with the words. From Bang:
Consider the Big Bang. One moment there was nothing, except for everything condensed into a single infinitely dense point. Then, one minuscule sliver of a second later: the universe. Nothing was yet formed, all the true work of forming stars and galaxies remained ahead, but the framework, the laws of physics, were set, and the rest was thereafter inevitable.
This is what everyone contemplating a new creative endeavor craves: that in the moment it turns real, to get it right. To frame it in such a way that the very act of framing propels the project toward an inexorable destiny.
That’s a really beautiful way to capture the process of turning an idea into something people see, hear, use or laugh at.
I am going to call Ghostbusters
At the risk of rambling too much about games: DO WANT.
The Ghostbusters video game for the Sega Master System was pretty much the first video game I played.
Beautifully static
Game trailers are frequently a montage of confusing montage. This trailer stands in stark contrast to the standard:
Best use of a Romantic piano sonata in a game trailer? Probably.
Turns out its sort of a take-off on the Halo 3 Believe ad. Also pretty well done.
Fred's business card
I made a business card for Fred.
For those keeping score at home, this is what happens when I’m trying not to code or surf the web at 11:30 PM.
The hopping doll video game
Too cool.
Brought to you by an Arduino.
Dallas' multitudes
The Dallas Myth, Again quotes Molly Ivins:
There is a black Dallas, there is a Chicano Dallas, there is a Vietnamese Dallas, there is a gay Dallas, there is even a funky-Bohemian Dallas. But mostly there is North Dallas, a place so materialistic and Republican it makes your teeth hurt to contemplate it.
For the record, Dallas-proper, like all the major Texas cities, went for Obama this time around.
Gaming and design
Khoi Vinh’s thoughts on games and their relation to what I aspire to do on the web:
...I’m savvy enough at least to recognize that very interesting things are happening in that world. As a point of reference for interaction design — for design of every kind — I’m convinced that games represent an important new paradigm...
Game On. Khoi and I are thinking along the same lines here. There’s lots to learn from games, besides the ease at which one can spend time in them.
Modernism in sheds
Prefab Sheds - Modernism in Miniature. Cool looking stuff, and its promising that people are considering better use of their existing space instead of just seeking more space. Now, if only our own shed weren’t so shedtastic.
Bruce Springsteen in a nutshell
Things can't get any worse, they gotta get better
It’s the deep sadness of his songs, surrounded by undying optimism, that keeps me coming back every time.
One Velociraptor Per Child
The One Velociraptor Per Child project:
The project's origins go back more than four decades to the early days of paleontology, when most dinosaurs were still the size of skyscrapers, and almost no one dreamed they would ever be suitable for children.
Applying CSS
Why Programmers Suck at CSS - a great primer on how to get from mechanical knowledge of how CSS works to actually using it to make nice things.
Stupid Struct Tricks
All About Struct - there’s always more to learn about @Struct@, unless you’re James Edward Gray. Useful and illuminating for all shades of Ruby developers.
Stream of curiosity
Questions going through my head right now:
- Why is “The Men All Pause” seven minutes long?
- What was the point of that “heavy breathing” break?
- Was it really necessary to have six ladies in Klymaxx?
- Why am I listening to this again?