Linked List: September 2024
Saturday, 28 September 2024
- Screenshot from last Thursday’s Helldivers 2 session ✶
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Part B, that is, due to a WISPy internet connection. Part A is here, though I left the echo voice effect on for half the stream, again 😅 Streaming can be hell!
Thursday, 26 September 2024
- ♫ Holding On ✶
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Beautiful song and video from The War On Drugs.
Wednesday, 25 September 2024
- Interview with Portal 2 project lead ✶
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Josh Weier, who’s currently working on a game that includes an emulated Apple II called Zero Page.
Wednesday, 18 September 2024
- Can we make a computer screen light in color when turned off? ✶
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Or is the only alternative to keep displays on all the time?
- Is it possible to work and play at the same time? ✶
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Or are “work” and “play” terms for the left (analytical, procedural) and right (creative, random) sides of the brain so we’re balancing both all the time?
Which companies have the best balance of work and play?
What books about this have you read and recommend?
Consider creativity and flow.
Monday, 16 September 2024
- The Outside World ✶
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Delightfully bizarre animated film by David Oreilly’s Department of Computer Graphics.
Sunday, 15 September 2024
- What “Follow Your Dreams” Misses ✶
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From Grant Sanderson’s commencement speech:
Influence is not distributed uniformly in the population and I for one would feel a lot more comfortable if it was you who were at the helm guiding this crazy ship that we’re all riding.
If you step into the next chapter of life with an implacable focus on adding values to others, you’re more likely to be the ones at the helm.
If you recognize that action precedes motivation, you’re more likely to be at the helm.
And if you ask what’s possible now that wasn’t 10 years ago, you’re more likely to be at the helm.
If you appreciate just how much power you have to shape the lives of the generation that follows you, you’re more likely to be at the helm.
And if you remain adaptable to a changing world, treating passion not as a destination but as a fuel, following not dreams but opportunities, you’re more likely to be at the helm.
- Art History Project ✶
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Previously known as Trivium, now Obelisk, still a website to explore the ongoing story of art via large images.
Thursday, 12 September 2024
- ET Book ✶
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Bembo-like serif typeface designed by Dmitry Krasny, Bonnie Scranton, and information display expert Edward Tufte.
Wednesday, 11 September 2024
- Building a small solar power system ✶
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Photovoltaic energy system guide at Low-tech Magazine.
Tuesday, 10 September 2024
- Variable fonts ✶
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Find and try variable fonts, like Work Sans.
- Have to, want to ✶
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Jesse Schell talks about games and how engagement makes for better education.
Efficiency, or have to: Avoiding negative consequences.
Pleasure, or want to: Seeking positive consequences.Good games have:
- Clear feedback
- A sense of progress
- The possibility of success
- Mental and physical exercise
- A chance to satisfy your curuiosity
- A chance to solve a problem
- A feeling of freedom
Sunday, 8 September 2024
- Piano Booster ✶
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Software that reads Musical Instrument Digital Interface files and takes input from the MIDI instrument connected to your computer displaying the musical notes as you play. Windows, Mac, Linux versions. Open source.
Saturday, 7 September 2024
- To create for the ages combine art and engineering ✶
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As I watched him paint, dad taught me that art was not about being decorative, but was a different way of communicating ideas.
- Feynman The Explainer ✶
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In the meantime, we were having a lot of trouble explaining to people what we were doing with cellular automata. Eyes tended to glaze over when we started talking about state transition diagrams and finite state machines. Finally Feynman told us to explain it like this,
“We have noticed in nature that the behavior of a fluid depends very little on the nature of the individual particles in that fluid. For example, the flow of sand is very similar to the flow of water or the flow of a pile of ball bearings. We have therefore taken advantage of this fact to invent a type of imaginary particle that is especially simple for us to simulate. This particle is a perfect ball bearing that can move at a single speed in one of six directions. The flow of these particles on a large enough scale is very similar to the flow of natural fluids.”
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Richard made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult. He was never afraid of telling the truth, and however foolish your question was, he never made you feel like a fool.
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Actually, I doubt that it was “progress” that most interested Richard. He was always searching for patterns, for connections, for a new way of looking at something, but I suspect his motivation was not so much to understand the world as it was to find new ideas to explain. The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else.
Friday, 6 September 2024
- Is my toddler a stochastic parrot? ✶
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Beautiful illustrated story by Angie Wang about so-called artificial intelligence, in The New Yorker.
What we say is not weighted by probability alone but is given its heft and color by our wish to share our lives.
Mere mimicry is not enough. … You’re human, too. You understand love. With that in mind, surely you understand how even the most useless tiny people on this planet are more real than any probabilistic word predictor, and how you must be, too.
Via Aviva Michaelov.
Thursday, 5 September 2024
- Compound interest ✶
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Or the wheat and chessboard problem. A little bit goes a long way.