Make your own 3 inch Xbox360

Star Trek Episodes Used In Information Society Songs

DigiPen student games released

"DigiPen Institute of Technology has unveiled most of the student games created for the 2007 academic year. Nearly two dozen projects will available by the end of the month covering a wide range of styles -- from space shooters, to puzzlers and the popular 'riding a motorcycle in medieval times' genre."

Pokemon: It Prints Money!

Hilarious image posted on destructoid.com:

Game Game (Strange Flash Game)

"It's called game, game, game and again game and it's either a genius piece of self-reflective work on the validity of design as art superimposed on top of none-too-subtle messages concerning the materialism of the 21st century, or it's what happens when a Flash programmer has one too many beers.

You play a squiggle, and your objective in each of the 13 levels is simply to reach a door. While one out of every five levels actually makes this goal sort-of-kind-of difficult to reach, for the most part the game just revolves around artistic interpretation of the landscape. Every time you hit an "item," it disappears and is replaced with random words/philosophy. Every once in a while, you can watch a video by the creator."

Guitar Hero 2 - Dead on Expert (8 yrs old)

Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming Infrastructure

"On April 19, 2007, a conference of game developers, IT entrepreneurs, internet security experts, telecom executives, and technology investors gathered in San Francisco to take part in Mastering the Craft of Online Gaming, a day long event in which the complex issues surrounding the online gaming market were discussed."

New Nine Inch Nails Tracks

Now you can download 3 new tracks off the new NIN album in either GarageBand/Logic format or in generic format for other applications here. Surprisingly enough, the generic files are just zip files they're hosting in bittorrent format.

The 52 Most Important Video Games of All Time

"Some of the games on this list are great. Others are downright awful. But all 52 games on this list have influenced the medium of video games in a lasting, meaningful way. Here are 52 games for the ages."

Game Development Map

"The gamedevmap database can be searched in several ways:

* Click on a colored dot on the map to search for all the companies and organizations in that location.
* Type a company, city, country, or region name into the search area and press the search button to find more specific data.
* Click on a category below the search bar to quickly see all the companies that fall under that category."

LOTRO Launch Day at MMOG Nation

"Let’s get the comparisons out of the way first. Is it ‘as good’ as WoW? Maybe. Will it hit WoW numbers? Who knows? Is it as polished as WoW? Yes, but I also think it’s less ambitious. It’s certainly smaller. Will it make Tolkien fans happy? I think that’s a definite yes. Will it make LOTR movie fans happy? Not as much, but it’s hard to stand beneath the party tree and not imagine that dragon firework exploding in the sky above you. (Note to Turbine: If you let me attend Bilbo Baggins’ 111th birthday I could die a happy man. I don’t care if it has to be instanced, I’ll show up.) Is 15 level enough to have seen the whole game? Hell no, but it was enough to convince me that you’ll at least have a couple of fun months with this game."

Nice write-up on someone's initial thoughts about Lord of the Rings Online. I currently have 2 characters up to level 5 and I'm liking it so far.

Flex:Open Source

"Adobe is announcing plans to open source Flex under the Mozilla Public License (MPL). This includes not only the source to the ActionScript components from the Flex SDK, which have been available in source code form with the SDK since Flex 2 was released, but also includes the Java source code for the ActionScript and MXML compilers, the ActionScript debugger and the core ActionScript libraries from the SDK. The Flex SDK includes all of the components needed to create Flex applications that run in any browser - on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux and on now on the desktop using “Apollo”."

NewsBreaker

Interesting mashup on the latest news and breakout.

UIUC, Nvidia Partner For Parallel Processer Class

"Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are part of a pioneering new class supported by NVIDIA that’s preparing them to be leaders in the parallel computing revolution."

The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme

"In celebration of the 17th anniversary of the launch and deployment of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers is releasing one of the largest panoramic images ever taken with Hubble's cameras. It is a 50-light-year-wide view of the central region of the Carina Nebula where a maelstrom of star birth - and death - is taking place."

John K's Guide to Surviving the End of Television

"First, let's see how this TV animation visionary ended up as a Flash animation pioneer.

The contributions John Kricfalusi, or John K as he's come to be known, has given the world of animation are numerous - The Ren and Stimpy Show, his work on the revival series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, the Bjork music video, and his 2-episode revival of the Yogi Bear universe."

First 'habitable' alternative to Earth found

"European astronomers yesterday reported the discovery of a habitable planet located nearby in the constellation Libra.

The so-called 'super-Earth' is the smallest of the 229 planets found beyond our solar system."

Nora: The Sequel

Nora the Piano-Playing Cat!

Lord of the Rings Online Map

Nice map of Middle Earth for the new Lord of the Rings MMORPG using Google Maps.

Jeu Chiant (aka Irritating Game)

"Your objective is to not let any of the 2 balls fall for as long as possible. Sounds simple but its extremely challenging and addictive. Hint: If you do not want to play in French ("Jouer" means "play" in French, by the way), you should first click on the Union Jack flag in the lower left hand side to switch to English."

Processing 1.0 (BETA)

"Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain."

Lord of the Rings Online: Early Impressions

"LOTR Online is hitting a good spot in my gut right now. It just is. There's something here. Am I just happy to be a Hobbit? Will it last? Will the game hold up past the initial geek love to maintain in the hundreds of hours, like WoW? Will Turbine provide enough cool content and ideas and gameplay variations to hook new players in and convince them to abandon--or at least take a vacation from--Azeroth? I have no answers. But the good news is that I have more questions having played than I did beforehand. And I want to keep playing. That might be the best sign of all."

Getting this tonight. I liked the beta well enough to be willing to take a break from World of Warcraft for a while.

Brutal Bash

Katamari Wallpapers - a photoset on Flickr

"OFFICIAL Katamari Damacy wallpapers. ENTIRE COLLECTION! The Katamari wallpapers were taken from the official Namco Katamari Damacy website before it was taken down."

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords | Gamers With Jobs

"Like peanut butter and jelly, the Bejeweled-style puzzles and role-playing elements in Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords are a perfect match. The game smooshes these two flavors together, mingling their tastes into something unique and delicious. In a metaphor like this, the Nintendo DS is two slices of hard plastic bread, but don't focus on that."

I can't say enough things about this game. Truely a great combination of two gaming genres.

An Alternative Graphics Rendering Library

"Graff is a lighweight high-performance graphics rendering library. I guess it falls into the category of canvas – as currently discussed on the gtk mailing list. It’s a bit more generic though and focused on providing ways of animating graphical elements over time."

What Type of Game Cheater Are You? -

"What exactly are the 'rules' in a single-player game, anyway? You're not competing against another human -- you're battling the computer, and, in a sense, yourself. On top of that, the game industry has actually co-opted the idea of 'cheats' -- by hiding secret power-ups inside the games that publishers slowly, teasingly leak to the public as a marketing tactic."

Peggle - Why is it fun?

"There’s something oddly compelling about PopCap’s latest release, Peggle. The game is basically Pachinko: You fire a ball from the top of the screen and watch it bounce around until it hits the bottom. That’s right, watch. The player is given zero influence and interactivity as soon as the ball leaves the starting cannon."

Interesting discussion on the merits of PopCap Games' new game, Peggle.

Pummel Ragdoll Clowns (Right in Your Web Browser!)

"I Hate Clowns: Operation Pie Gones is now 100% playable right in your web browser. The game weighs in at a mere 960kb via the Unity web player (a 3D technology set to usurp Director as the plugin for 3D web content)."

Game Career Guide Forums

"Gamasutra's game education sister site GameCareerGuide.com has launched new forums to facilitate the discussion of topics related to getting into the game industry, game career paths, game education, and game studies. Readers are encouraged to create accounts, specialize their profiles with avatars, and start up conversations."

Why paper to-do lists work better

"paper lists are just more practical. They've given us six reasons why paper beats web; mostly, it comes down to convenience (I really don't want to boot up the PC every time I need to look at my list!)"

I tend to agree. I've tried many computer-based todo list solutions, but unless it is the most simplistic method (a running text file of current todos), the complexity involved with checking the list sometimes defeats the purpose, unless the list is complex enough to warrant some sort of meta features a simple piece of paper wouldn't be able to provide. I've been liking the flyspray product over the past year or two.

Digg Reality

Concept, Production, and Mohawk by Christian Williams (www.framezero.com)

A short film about applying the Digg rating system to real life. Shot in San Mateo, CA at Bean Street Coffee, Heidi's Pies, and Moon's Pub.

Music by Girl Band (www.myspace.com/girlbandsf).

Trend Spotting, Cool Hunting and Innovation Trends

"TREND HUNTER Magazine is a community dedicated to Trend Spotting and Cool Hunting. Innovation and strategic advantage hinge on the ability to anticipate trends and identify the next big thing. By tracking the evolution of cool, Trend Hunters generate ideas, stimulate creativity, and ultimately shape our social context. TREND HUNTER Magazine is a multi channel explosion of cool that caters to social leaders, industry professionals, and relentlessly creative individuals. We live for trend spotting, cool hunting and innovation. Do you crave cool? Is your curiosity insatiable? Read. Contribute. Think."

Aww Snap!

I've recently added the ability to show a preview of where you will be going when you hover over any of the links on the blog. This utilizes snap shots from snap.com and it's completely optional. Feel free to disable this new feature by clicking on disable or options in the pop-up window that appears when you hover over a link.

Natural Docs

"Natural Docs is an open-source, extensible, multi-language documentation generator. You document your code in a natural syntax that reads like plain English. Natural Docs then scans your code and builds high-quality HTML documentation from it."

Alternate Pseudo-Random Number Generator

"When developing games you often need a PRNG that, once initialized with a seed value, produces always the same sequence of random numbers after it. The Math.rand() function in Flash is a PRNG, but it doesn't let you define a seed value (I think it's picked randomly when the swf starts, but there isn't much information about it) so another solution has to be found."

An interesting alternate way to generate pseudo-random numbers using ActionScript.

Motor Physics: Collision Demo

"Collisions are resolved using a very simple but fast method which doesn't support rotational effects - basically the collision model just applies an impulse based on the velocities and masses of both bodies along the normal of collision to separate them, and computes some sort of dynamic friction along the normals tangential component. A restitution factor is used to simulate energy loss (blend between perfect elastic and inelastic collisions)."

Neat demo of an alternate way to detect collisions.

The King Of Kong

"King of Kong is, to a large degree, utterly frustrating, because we witness the jerk come up on top time and time again, but that's what also makes this movie so intense and effective. Like all good stories, we see people grow and change; false faces fade away and true natures become apparent, and how the people in both camps react is also compelling. Of note is Wiebe's wife, who just wants to see the man she loves be the best in just one thing in his life, as well as Steve Sanders, who also has to tow the line between friendship and reality."

Great documentary coming out later this year about a rivalry over being the best at Donkey Kong.

Desuade - Partigen

Real-time particle effects using Flash with Fuse-Kit.

A tribute to a much missed part of gaming culture

"They welcomed me into a whole other life for the very first time, and behind their doors impacting upon me sights, sounds, and experiences I had never imagined before. They hooked me in, showed me just how good it could be, and made sure that I’d be a gamer for the rest of my life. And it’s only recently that I’ve started to seriously consider just how important a phenomenon they were. Unfortunately though, as with a great many of the best things in life, that realisation has partly come about due to their loss."

Great write-up on the glory days of the Arcade.

The Game That Changed The World

"The first time was in 1992 and that moment is tattooed on my brain. I remember it so clearly. It was a little-known adventure game called Out of This World, from a French studio named Delphine. It came on five floppies. There was no manual and no tutorial. The box was cryptic and offered little in the way of assistance to my understanding of game-play or plot. I had no idea what I was about to play. I was taking a chance. Little did I know I was pulling the cover off a masterpiece."

Excellent post about one of the best games ever made, "Out Of This World", AKA "Another World".

Boxhead: More Rooms

"Jon Bambo is back and a new beast is out to get him. Equipped with even more weapons and equipment, the Zombie has become cannon fodder and the new Beast will take you down unless you get all the 90 upgrades and perfect your skill!"

Drunken Ragdolls

"Sumotori Dreams is a small demoscene game created by Peter Sotesz for the Breakpoint 2007 96k game competition (it took first). The premise is simple: two self-balancing physics rigs face off in a sumo ring. The first rig to fall over loses. The implementation is simple but satisfying, and is well supported by solid physics, decent lighting, and good camera work. You can play against a computer opponent, but the real fun is playing Sumotori against a friend on the same keyboard."

Academics for Game Designers

"A wide variety of skills also makes you an indispensable addition to any game company and guarantees a place of honor in the Cockroach Club: a term derived from the fact that cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast... the occasional layoffs of the games industry. Don’t you want to keep your job when companies inevitably downsize and layoff personnel?'"

Interesting take on what it takes to get into and stay in the game industry from an academic perspective.

GDC: Programmer’s Challenge Stumps Panel Of Experts

"Game Developers Conference is focused strongly on education and networking for video game professionals, but Thursday evening featured a game show that the GDC had not seen in four years. Six of the industry’s most well respected programmers were brought together to form teams and answer some of the silliest video game and programming questions conceived."

GDC: The First Decade of Mobile Games

"At his keynote at his year's GDC Mobile, event founder Robert Tercek gave a presentation covering the ten-year history of mobile games, from perspectives of business, innovation, and gameplay."

Are Games Art?

"“Here we go again.”

That was Tim Schafer’s reaction when I recently asked him the question, “Are video games an art form?”"

Interesting discussion of whether or not games are an artform.

Wii Hacks

"Welcome to the internet authority on Wii Hacks the one and only Nintendo-Hacks.com . Already a number of hacks have surfaced for the Wii, some of them involve using the old gamecube techniques for playing homebrew and virtual console, other hacks involve Linux, Mac or Windows and the Wii remote."

Great collection of hacks for the Nintendo Wii console.

What About Flash? Can We Really Make Games With It?

"We’ve heard this story before: big-game developer gets tired of big-game team size, pressure, and politics, and switches to making small games. New companies filled with people escaping the retail AAA industry, developing these “casual” games, are popping up all the time. These aren’t the silly little things that get forwarded to us in email and hold our attention for 30 seconds. These are games that make money, and hearken back to the days of yore when a couple geeks in a garage could put together a hot shareware title in a few months and get rich quick. The big difference today is in the tools. We can build bigger, better, prettier, more advanced games with fewer people in less time and for less money than ever before!"

Great article discussing what Flash can and can't possibly do with respect to game design.

Demonstration of LOTRO Music System

LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online) allows you to either play an instrument via your keyboard or by importing MIDI transcribed files into the game. This video demonstrates "Dust In The Wind" by Kansas on a lute :)

Independent Game Festival Nominees

In the latest issue of PCGamer, the Backspace column has a nice mention of the Independent Games Festival and this year's nominees. Check them out:

• Aquaria: http://www.bit-blot.com


• Castle Crashers: http://www.castlecrashers.com


• Bang! Howdy: http://www.banghowdy.com


• Everyday Shooter: http://samorost2.com


• Weeday Warrior: http://students.guildhall.smu.edu/ffweekdaywarrior

The six things you can't say in Silicon Valley

"God, these people are uptight! The recent tiffs over some startupper dissing the women of Microsoft and another startupper's wandering wifi sniffer reminded me one of the reasons this culture bores me to tears: You can't say anything interesting without offending a crowd of prigs that make anyone of substance feel like Evita staring down the Argentinian aristocracy. Well, since I've nothing to lose, I'm going to say the six things you can't say at the parties, conferences and meetups of Silicon Valley."

diggflashdevkit - Google Code

"The Digg Flash Kit is a collection of ActionScript 2.0 classes that can be used to build visualizations of Digg data like those featured on Digg Labs."

Acrobots

Neat flash game that involves gravity and wacky-wall-walker inspired characters.

How Internet Domains Are Used

In the latest issue of Computerworld, there is an interesting article regarding the stresses that the current domain name system is under. The following breakdown of how domain names are being used is insightful (if accurate):

• 49% are "parked" on other Web sites, such as pay-per-click ad portals


• 31% have been developed as functional Web sites by their owners


• 5% are used to manage affiliate marketing and advertising services


• 5% are setup to redirect traffic to other Web sites


• 10% are used for unspecified "other" purposes

Citizendium

"a 'citizens' compendium of everything,' is an experimental new wiki project. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on that model by adding 'gentle expert oversight' and requiring contributors to use their real names."

Fed up with the original Wikipedia he helped create, Larry Sanger went ahead and created another more 'friendly' environment for more serious posts to live.

Freeloader: Free Games on the Web

"Gaming is an expensive habit. Sure, there are some of you out there who can take your games responsibly and in moderation, but how many more of us sacked out on the sidewalk in the rain before PS2 launch day or raided our sister's piggy bank for the last couple bucks we needed for a copy of Bloodfist 4: The Quickening? Yeah, some of us can take it or leave it, but some of us need it every day."

Great collection of free games from the people who publish "Games For Windows" (formerly Computer Gaming World).

Troubles With Wii

Welp, today I dutifully checked the Target Wii inventory site to see if any Targets in the area had the Wii in stock. Lo and behold, a few actually did. After proceeding to check one of the stores, they said they actually did have them in stock, but they couldn't sell them until Sunday, April 29th because of some promotion that involved bundling the console with another game.

Now I have to hope that Best Buy or Circuit City would have them without a silly promotion attached to it.

Nazi Robot Attack!

Should you even die once in a well-designed game?

"How hard should a video game be? Should it tromp on your skull the whole way through until you break multiple controllers in aggravation? Or should it hold your hand throughout, offering a plethora of tutorials and stages easy enough for anyone to complete? Of course, the obvious answer is somewhere in between the two, but I think that it is even a little more complicated than that."

Chicago Game Studios Highlighted On Gamasutra

Tour of Chicago Pt. 1: High Voltage Software
Tour of Chicago Pt. 2: Wideload Games
Tour of Chicago Pt. 3: EA Chicago
Tour of Chicago Pt. 4: Day 1 Studios
Tour of Chicago Pt. 5: Midway

No SCUMM For You!

"Steve Jobs has announced that the new iPhone will not allow 3rd Party applications in what this author can only assume is an outright attack on Monkey Island. I'm sure within the halls of Apple and littered in confidential internal memos this was referred to as the 'mProblem'. It's a shame that the rest of the software industry has to suffer just because they didn't want Monkey Island on the iPhone."

Flash 8 Accessibility Overview

"Did you know that you can now create accessible web and e-learning content that includes rich media? Have you wanted to use Macromedia Flash content, but were concerned about policy or accessibility issues? If so, check out the new accessibility features built into Macromedia Flash 8 and Macromedia Flash Player 8."

I am 8 Bit opening draws the best of LAs chic geeks

"There is something about being surrounded by video game art and jamming out to chiptunes that makes me feel at home. Apparently I am not the only one, as Gallery 1988 on Melrose had a line wrapped around the block last night to see this year's I am 8 Bit premiere. There wasn't an inch of room to spare among the throngs of geek hungry attendees."

35 Designers x 5 Questions

"35 designers. 5 questions. 5 precise answers. Result: 175 professional suggestions, tips and ideas from some of the best web-developers all around the world. "

Digg API contest

"Digg has just released its new API, which provides developers with access to the amazing data, information, and processes of the Digg site. To celebrate this milestone, we're challenging you to come up with the most creative and dynamic Flash visualizations and applications that utilize the Digg API."

To Flash Or Not To Flash

"Macromedia’s Flash Player is a remarkable piece of software. It is widely deployed, features a full ECMAScript implementation, an XML parser, audio and video capabilities and an advanced vector rendering engine, and many more. If used appropriately, it can provide visitors of your website with a better, richer and unique browsing experience."

Interesting piece on the Flash plugin and considerations to be made with respect to the average user. They go on to recommend ultimately parsing in XHTML into Flash:

"My advice for anyone planning to develop a Flash enabled website (and you will also get this advice from any ethically correct “Search Engine Optimizer”) is: Structure your site’s content well and create a simple XHTML version before you even touch Flash. Follow best practices for authoring the XHTML."

Weng Weng Rap (explicit)

Dark Lord of the Sky: Darth Vader Balloon

"When the Belgian 501st Legion FanWars Garrison first suggested that one of its members, Benoit Lambert, create a Death Star-shaped PVC helium balloon, he was not only thrilled but already envisioning a chance to show off his artistic talents as well as his love for Star Wars--and his skills as a hot-air balloonist."

Super Mario Bros: Frustration (explicit)

Atomic Sonic

Awesome collection of retro electronics equipment.

Infrant Technologies

"Have you ever had a hard drive crash and with it many irreplaceable documents and priceless photos were lost forever? Are you looking for a safe and effective way to store and serve your data? Then the New ReadyNAS NV from Infrant Technologies is the answer you have been looking for."

I recently acquired a ReadyNAS NV+ and I'm loving it. I've been able to consolidate all my external drives that were connected to separate machines and instead just have one large network attached storage (NAS) device from which all my machines can share. Upgrading the LAN to GigE didn't hurt either.

Cat vs. Printer

Telegraph Clacks out RSS Feeds

Pretty neat project where someone converted an old telegraph machine to sound out RSS feed data.

A modern approach to Flash SEO

"Search engine optimization is one of the most popular subjects when nerds sit around and talk about Flash. “Does Google index your swf files?” seems to be the most popular question, usually garnering plenty of ‘yes‘ and ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ answers. The real answer to this question, once and for all, is this: It doesn’t matter."

Secret NIN Show "Raided"

"Chairs were lined up facing a small makeshift stage.. We were confined to the left side with three sheets or red, white and black sprayed with the AIR logo broke the room in two. On both sides of the chairs about 5 crew members stood ominously overlooking the proceedings. Once everyone filled in our guide went behind a metal sliding door and a minute later a man in camo gear came out and took the stage."

Trent Reznor seems to be taking this alternate reality game (ARG) pretty far. Some say a movie will be coming down the road as well.

Debugging Fast-Paced Action Games

"During the development of my last game I took a different approach of debugging it which is especially useful for real time games. Because it's so simple I'm wondering why I haven't used this method before (perhaps too lazy ? ;-)) Usually you include a bunch of trace statements everywhere or create a logger system which prints out the information you need. But this is useless in games where many simultaneous events occur. Your logger will be flooded with messages so it's hard to keep track of everything."

Froogle Is No More

"'We were a really young company, and I don't think we really understood the burden of a new brand,' said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google. 'I also think it was very hard to build awareness. Our product offering was very robust, but it will fare better with a Google Product Search name.'"

MySpace cedes editorial control to users

"MySpace, the social networking site owned by News Corp, is close to launching a news aggregation service that will allow its 160m members to rank news stories and headlines in order of importance and relevance.

The service, which could be announced as early as Thursday, effectively cedes editorial control of news selection to the MySpace user base and is the latest example of the company’s attempt to diversify into new areas."

BBC to open up archive for trial

"The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK."

GBA tech demo shows off some mighty horsepower

"Talk about impressive. This video from Unseen64 demonstrates the kind of horsepower that the GBA really had, showcasing a tour of a facility not unlike the docking facility in the original Metal Gear Solid. Pretty neat that the best 3D on the GBA outweigh sub-par work on, say, the PSX. Not that you'd ever want to, y'know, play a 3D game on the platform -- bit of a pain with only 4 buttons and a D-Pad -- but it just goes to show just how much juice could be squeezed out of the little bastard with the right engine behind it."

Interactive Rabbit

Interesting interactive "game"?

Wii Remote Strumming Interface

Interesting First Take On Silverlight

"First let me say that it's not my intent to bash Silverlight, or defend my beloved Flash platform. In fact, it looks like I may very well have to be doing some work with Silverlight at my job, so it's something I'm going to need to learn and get used to. This is why I decided to give it a look over today. I have to say, it wasn't quite what I expected."

2007 Flash Goddess Award Winner

Interesting techniques, especially the transitions for each selection.

Book Excerpt: Creating Casual Games for Profit and Fun

"You will learn to implement a casual game, from initial treatment to final installation, in this part of the book. Casual games typically feature many special techniques that are detailed and demonstrated in Adobe Flash and Adobe Director. Common game development methods are also demonstrated in this section."

How to become a Game Designer?

"There is no precise set of requirements for becoming a game designer. Most designers come from different fields of computer arts, programming or directly out of QA and I could totally see people from science or psychology fields orienting themselves in the video game field. In fact, the more diverse are your knowledges, the better."

Nice article about one way to become a game designer.

Game Over! - Universally Inaccessible Game

"'Game Over!' is the world's first (and hopefully only) universally inaccessible game. This practically means that it is a game that can be played by no one. But why was such a game created? Well, the goal of Game Over! is to be used as an educational tool for disseminating, understanding and consolidating game accessibility guidelines."

The Escapist - Issue #93

Funny commentary on both real world and software pirates.

Should We Care About Quad Core Just Yet?

"Today, Microsoft announced their long awaited replacement for the XP operating system for enterprise / business users, code name Vista. And last week, Intel announced the worlds first (think 4 PC brains in one package) Quad-Core microprocessor. So, is this just another evolution of power, performance and productivity for employees or is this a real revolutionary change?"

Google Announces Google Presentations

"We've already freed those of you working in teams from the burdens of version control and email attachment overload when going back and forth on word processing and spreadsheets. It just made sense to add presentations to the mix; after all, when you create slides, you're almost always going to share them. Now students, writers, teachers, organizers, and, well, just about everyone who uses a computer can look forward to having real-time, web-based collaboration across even more common business document formats."

Live Action Monkey Island Play (Part 1)

Who is Sick?

Amusing Google Maps mash-up that shows who has reported themselves as being sick in your area.

Tips for migrating your Flash applications

"Adobe Flash CS3 Professional includes many great new features, including the ActionScript 3.0 programming language and the ActionScript 3.0 FLA file format. This article is a summary of my notes and reflections as I migrated to using ActionScript 3.0. I also provide solutions that address these topics:

* Changes to handling movie clips
* Changes to loading data, content, and symbols
* Changes to building object classes in ActionScript 3.0"

Microsoft Announces Xbox Live Pac-Man Championship

"Representatives of Microsoft and Namco Bandai have announced a new global Xbox Live Pac-Man World Championship contest, with players competing for a chance to travel to New York City and be crowned champion by the game's creator, Toru Iwatani."

Funny or Die

Will Farrell's new Web 2.0 video sharing site.

Adobe CS3 Video workshop

New videos detailing all the new features for Adobe CS3 which was just released.

The porn of Web 2.0

"Spammers do everything they can to defeat things like Akismet. So they certainly don’t care they’re wrecking other people’s stuff if they don’t even care that the things they use would be destroyed by their use."

Comprehensive article detailing the problems with spam and blogspam today.

DiggGraphr

"DiggGraphr is a treemap view of Digg, where each story is represented by a rectangle and the area occupied by each rectangle is proportional to the number of Diggs relative to the other stories in that channel."

Pretty neat way to graphically see all the top stories on Digg.

Microsoft, Adobe Competition Heats Up

"Microsoft Corp. is preparing to launch Expression Studio, a suite of design software that will go head-to-head with Adobe's flagship tools, Photoshop and Illustrator. It also will include a tool for building multimedia programs to bring it in line with Adobe's Flash. At $599 for the suite, Expression is a steal compared with the $1,000 or more Adobe charges for its Web developer suites."

Charlie Clouser Pro Logic Demo

Vectors for Flash

"These tutorials are meant to explain how to use vectors with Flash and actionscript. You dont have to know high level mathematics to understand the ideas, but some previous knowledge is always good. Please notice that only 2D vectors are discussed and if you are looking for 3D vectors then i am afraid you need to look from somewhere else."

Great review of basic level vector arithmetic in the context of the ActionScript language.

Why art thou n00b?

"Numerous factors impact a player's performance, and the requisite skills can vary greatly by genre. In the early days of gaming, ruled by classics as Pac-Man and Galaga, pattern recognition (and, yes, a bit of reflex action) gave the champs their deserved place atop the high scores list. In games that become increasingly fast, giving the human mind less and less time to evaluate and decide upon a course of action, the ability to unconsciously react based on previous experience becomes paramount."

An interesting write-up on what it takes to overcome being a gaming n00b.

Gravity Probe B is a success

"Conceived by Stanford Professors Leonard Schiff, William Fairbank and Robert Cannon in 1959 and funded by NASA in 1964, GP-B is the longest running, continuous physics research program at both Stanford and NASA."

The experiment has finally come to an end, confirming Einstein's original predictions about the warping of space time around the Earth, specifically "frame-dragging".

Decode IR signals with an electric guitar

"This article will describe an efficient and simple method for decoding ir signals. There is no electronics experience or use necessary. You will need an electric guitar or bass (or some kind of magnetic coil pickup), something to amplify the signal from line level, a sound card with audio input, and some kind of program to record and view the waveform. There are many freeware programs available such as Audacity. Just Google search 'Wav editors'."

Maniac Mansion Speedrun - 9 minutes

Only THE best adventure game ever created.

Peggle

"Ready, aim... bounce! Clear the orange pegs from 55 fanciful levels as 10 whimsical teachers guide you toward Peggle greatness. Wield mystifying Magic Powers, rack up huge bonus points and make shots you'll smile about for weeks. Amidst all this fevered action, only one question remains: Can you become a Peggle Master?"

Great new addictive game from Pop Cap Games.

Oldie but a goodie

Rap-cat

A rapping cat. What will they think of next.

Jordan Expert 5* 312k No Hyperspeed Killswitch & Tapping

Ok this is just plain nuts.

Guitar Hero 2 Rush YYZ on Expert

He's got flair you can say that much.

Guitar Hero III Confirmed Online, Coming To Wii, DS

"Representatives from Red Octane have confirmed that the latest in its best-selling Guitar Hero franchise will be focused on online play and downloadable tracks, as well as hit every major platform -- including the Wii and Nintendo DS."

Microsoft Silverlight Presentation

"Microsoft Silverlight is all about rich media experiences. And it's all in High Definition Video directly in your web browser. You can have chapter points and full screen support."

Was Videogaming Better Back in the Day?

"Sean Sands at Gamers With Jobs looks back at the dawn of videogaming, when we were all kids just typing in our games, one line of BASIC at a time. And he finds the present lacking: 'The dreamers became assets instead of leaders, and the rockstar designers became, well, Rockstar ... or Blizzard, or Valve. Publishers with cash-rich money to spend bought the creative process, and the minds of marketing professionals replaced four guys hopped up on sugar doughnuts and generic cola. So, how dare I be surprised that the price of today's gaming blitz is a little piece of last generation's soul?' Do you agree? Was simple gaming better, or are you a story in games fan?"

Enforced Ads Coming to Flash Video Players

"The BBC is reporting that Adobe is releasing new player software which will allow websites that use their Flash video player (such as YouTube) to force viewers to watch ads before the video they selected will play. 'But the big seller for Adobe is the ability to include in Flash movies so-called digital rights management (DRM) — allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts, or restrict copying. 'Adobe has created the first way for media companies to release video content, secure in the knowledge that advertising goes with it,' James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research said.' This seems to have been timed to coincide with Microsoft's release of their own competitor, Silverlight, to Adobe's dominance of online video."

First Man

Just recently finished the book "First Man", which is the only authorized biography of Neil Armstrong (first man on the moon, etc.). It's a good read, even if it is over 600 pages. It's very heavy on everything before the Apollo 11 mission, so don't expect to read a whole book about the details of the moon landing itself. I'd say it's a pretty comprehensive overview of the man's entire life from the looks of it.

Guitar Hero 2: Freebird on Hard

I just beat GH2 on medium over the weekend and couldn't imagine getting past Freebird on Hard. Yet.

FREE MMORPG wiki

A huge list of "free" massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG).

The History of Computer Role-Playing Games Part III: The Platinum and Modern Ages (1994-2004)

"Welcome back, brave adventurer, to the third and final installment of my history of our favorite computer game genre--the Computer Role-Playing Game, or CRPG for short."

Great series of articles. I highly recommend reading them from the beginning.

Classic Commercials: Macintosh Nightmare

"Forget that the history final was today? Fear not, Macintosh is here to save the day. Check out this strange 80’s commercial after the break."

Wii Store Locator

Still looking for a Wii? Use this site to scrape store availability the Nintendo Wii console sold at Target stores.

Yuri's Night . San Francisco Bay Area . 13 April 2007

"On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin blasted off the launch pad in Baikonur at 9:08 AM local time. His call-sign for the flight was 'Cedar.' Sergei Korolev, the Program's Chief Designer, would call from the ground, ''Dawn' calling 'Cedar.'' Gagarin made his historic 108 minute flight (orbiting around the whole Earth once) and parachute landed near his Vostok 1 capsule in the plains of Russia. This flight made him the first human to orbit the Earth and an international hero. Yuri was only 27 years old. (from YurisNight.net)"

Silicon Valley Electronics Fleamarket 04/14/07 - a photoset on Flickr

A great collection of images from the latest Silicon Valley Electronics Fleamarket.

Wiimote used to control robotic arm - Engadget

"If you got all your information about the Wii from its very own Engadget tag, then you'd probably think that it doesn't play games, such are the number of tasks that inventive users have coaxed the Wiimote into carrying out. That combination of an IR sensor and accelerometer has churned out the likes of beat machines and an array of crappy plastic accessories, but now someone has put the Wiimote up to the task that we'd all been willing it: the control of a robotic arm. A student group project in a Mechatronics class at the University of Michigan produced the Wii-bot arm, which apparently 'features direct end effector control using the accelerometers, D-Pad, and a 50 LED sensor bar, unlike the other popular Wiimote Robot Arm (the one with the sword) which was controlled using pattern matching'. Ya hear that? The Wii-bots are already preparing for war. Peep the embedded video after the break, in all its whirring and buzzing glory."

Red Octane says Xbox 360 guitars patched via Xbox Live - Joystiq

"Apparently Red Octane discovered the problem in their guitars and fixed it with a software patch this morning. On Red Octane's website they're saying that as of 4 AM pacific today a patch is available via Xbox Live that 'should resolve the situation where input from the whammy bar was not always recognized.'"

Fun and Profit With Obsolete Computers

"C|Net has a story about the value of aging computer hardware, and the subculture of people who collect them. The story details some of the more enthusiastic collectors currently participating in the hobby, as well as their old-school beautiful hardware. '[Sellam Ismail] recently brought a quarter century-old Xerox Star computer back to life to be used as evidence in a patent lawsuit. The pride of his collection is an Apple Lisa, one of the first computers (introduced in 1983) with a now standard graphical interface. Such items sell for more than $10,000. In an old barn in Northern California that also houses pigs, Bruce Damer, 45, keeps a collection that includes a Cray-1 supercomputer, a Xerox Alto (an early microcomputer introduced in 1973) and early Apple prototypes"

Welcome

After taking a bit of a step back to reorganize, I'm starting to blog again from scratch. Here's to the future!