Apr 1st

• New release of Dwarf Fortress is out: http://bit.ly/zzBZ -- Hopefully the joke is that it has a decent UI now.
• Youtube won't let me apply the text filter to Foolish or the Nethack game from the NF2 credits. Do they know when the video is already text?
• The entirety of "Dark Side Of The Moon," arranged for the NES sound chip: http://bit.ly/auVN3p

Apr 2nd

• The first hour of Just Cause 2 was designed with appalling ignorance of what's fun about Just Cause 2.

Apr 4th

• http://bit.ly/16aSDb -- This Flash tool has a pretty terrible interface, but I'm impressed by the power. You can make real music with this.
• http://bit.ly/8WZQHx -- "Did you feel that?"
• "Easy" difficulty is for people who want to get better at your game; "casual" is for people who couldn't care less. There is a difference.

Apr 5th

• http://bit.ly/bH3B29 -- Okay, I'm going crazy here: is Prince Charles II wielding a fancy sausage holder or what?
• Just Cause 2 has a miraculous LOD system. Mountain, forest, jungle, ocean, all gorgeous all the way to the horizon. (Desert kinda sucks.)
• Our water is off. Outside, the gate is ajar next to the knob that I assume controls the water for the building, but nobody's around. MLIA.
• Synth update: Danny brought the synth to Abby's birthday party on his Android. Was a big hit, I'm told!

Apr 6th

• Hm, the Chumby has a touchscreen. Wonder what the CPU is like. We're already running into performance issues with the Android and iPhone.
• Is it me, or does every app that tries to implement an "augmented" clipboard break even the simplest copy/paste operations half the time?
• Defeating a sliding chain lock using a rubber band: http://bit.ly/bP6bHH

Apr 7th

• Scrabble isn't World of Warcraft. You're not locked to a central server with fun-hating idiots at the rudder. Play using the rules you like.
• http://j.mp/aBc8Cg -- I IV ii V iii vi ii V, right? I feel ridiculous doing analysis of this, but the Circle of 5ths fragment caught my ear.

Apr 8th

• http://bit.ly/cnILB7 -- "An electric épée, with a pistol grip." We really are living in the future.
• http://j.mp/cjwkQI -- Apple's hatred of Flash has become a blood feud at this point. Other cross-compilers are just collateral damage.
• Git seems to really enjoy choking on trivial line ending issues.
• The latest Radiolab, on the limits of human capability, is pretty fascinating: http://bit.ly/bR1WLG
• More on the new iPhone dev license: http://j.mp/cNs7jA "If Microsoft were doing this, people would be burning buildings out in the street."

Apr 9th

• You know what? Since the synth uses a custom preprocessor to generate C++ from a not-quite-C++ base, the new iPhone license disqualifies it.
• Let's be clear: this does not benefit users, developers, or Apple. This is not a Machiavellian chess move; this is Steve's personal tantrum.
• http://j.mp/diPzDY -- "Before leaving a parking lot, check your back seat for anyone you might be trying to abduct and sexually assault."
• I just got back from climbing, and boy are my arms tired.
• "What would it be called if you vajazzle with googley eyes instead of crystals?" -- Isn't that the original definition of a Shoggoth?

Apr 10th

• Never trust anyone over 31.
• Starting to get followers I don't know. Is there a way to separate the "happening in my life" posts from the "interesting to others" posts?
• @pnewnan "Level of detail"
• @Laroquod I wouldn't call it earning a pass, but yeah, it's not even evil. It's just stupid.
• @sugigrl Not that I know of! Yet!

Apr 11th

• Particle insanity from Fairlight/CNCD: http://bit.ly/9ttTSM

Apr 12th

• http://bit.ly/am9YJL -- Jane Espenson on why journalists are better at screenwriting than novelists.
• http://bit.ly/cGRwN3 -- Oh mans, I totally want to lose a limb now.

Apr 13th

• http://bit.ly/7mUR7L -- But what happens when somebody writes a virus that makes everyone feel like they're being hugged *all the time*?

Apr 14th

• Um, Jesus, no wonder Tom Hall hadn't tweeted in four days: http://bit.ly/crmHWe
• Library of Congress gets the entire Twitter archive: http://j.mp/b1szqb -- Awesome. I didn't think the older stuff was archived at all.
• Sean donated a Chumby to the synth cause. Playing with it now. http://bit.ly/3fRPFQ
• It's a pretty weird beast; under normal usage it's just a Flash player pointed at chumby.com, but you can also SSH in and get a bash prompt.
• Frikkin' gender roles! http://bit.ly/b2aFK1

Apr 15th

• Video games are promoted as brands, because promotion is publisher-driven. But devs are getting more credit more often: http://j.mp/df4VfA
• 2010 Lyttle Lytton winners: http://bit.ly/ck1rIq
• Yes, Deus Ex 2 was ugly even for the era and had frequent loads. Now, it's only as ugly as any 2003 game, and loads instantly. Try it again.
• IW has imploded since Zampella and West's firing: http://j.mp/92SrO8 -- Unfortunately for justice, Treyarch makes a competent enough COD.

Apr 16th

• Try this one: "Oh, being good at X? That's easy. You just have to let your brain build up the right neural patterns." Works every time!
• Despite the wacky camp rep, Deadly Premonition is straight up survival horror. Prepare to spend hours fighting zombies and bad controls.
• Distinct stages of an explosion: http://bit.ly/di4kK8

Apr 17th

• The "are games art" thing again? I've linked to this before, but here again is the final word on games and art: http://j.mp/9E85ZG
• "76 Trombones" performed on assorted foghorns: http://bit.ly/ac6tFu
• http://bit.ly/c6i0cy -- Hey, sweet parking job!
• The only thing "art" consistently means is "sophisticated and significant." Both are subjective. Debate has to *begin* with a definition.
• Synth performance solution: let patch designers specify sample rate per module instance. For control modules, e.g., 100hz is often fine.
• @Johnicholas True enough. But the debaters don't seem to realize that they're working from different intuitions.
• http://j.mp/c7HaUZ -- Wow, it's like that "Kitties Forever" Andy Richter bit (http://j.mp/8XH5FB) except totally ethical and not a joke!
• Wow, the Ustream chat for the Blockparty live stream is lousy with Internet-famous sceners: http://bit.ly/aW1e68
• @xobs They're pretty amazing. Actually, the "Spring Break" party was hosted at UCSD from '97 to '99. You only missed it by 11 years!
• Meant to post this earlier: here's the lowdown on 100+ existing games that Section 3.3.1 bans from the iPhone App Store: http://j.mp/bYWWEO
• http://j.mp/87wsne -- "We are looking for a Feel Engineer who excels at creating environmental ambience, player interactions and gameplay."
• Basically, they're looking for the kind of coder/artist/designer superhero that used to be the only kind of person who made video games.
• @xobs If you can wrangle it, I actually recommend demo parties with fewer than 100 attendees. Those were the most fun, in my experience.

Apr 18th

• Some perspective: Roger Ebert reviewed an adventure game, rather favorably, in the September 1994 issue of Wired: http://bit.ly/aK1cSx
• Is there an established term for the SF phenomenon I've been calling "typewriters on the moon"? I'd check tvtropes but I'm scared to look.
• Much like The Onion, The First-Person Observer is hilarious if you stick to reading only the headlines: http://bit.ly/ckRK7R
• Have I already linked to "Boss Rush," Paper Dino's tasteful inversion of the shmup boss battle? Well, here it is again: http://j.mp/cFhUnJ
• Hm. Trillian, Trixia, Trinity... Are there any women whose names start with "tri" who aren't sci-fi love interests?

Apr 19th

• http://bit.ly/9jq8qR -- Just add some glitchy bass and you have a breakcore remix.
• You know what's even more reassuring than promising not to abuse my Twitter account info? Convincing me that a non-abusive use even exists.
• All value systems -- all systems of categorization, moreover -- are necessarily sapient-centered, because nothing else is capable of either.
• Pilot over PA system: "the maintenace guy has done the equivalent of ctrl-alt-delete." -- He brought up the task manager?
• Dreams as stories: Have you ever learned a useful life lesson from a dream? How about a bad lesson that influences your behavior anyways?
• Laptop screen got broken in transit. I'm sure I clicked through something, but I still blame whoever put the inspection notice in my luggage
• http://bit.ly/bxsOxT -- Are games ert or are they not ert? I'm waiting for the T-shirt that expresses my opinion on "fon" simultaneously.

Apr 20th

• Every value system implicitly values itself most. Anything else would be equivalent to the Liar's Paradox.
• Our radio usage has peaked and is declining. A technical civilization may transmit powerful broadcasts only for a small window. Sorry, SETI.
• But believe it or not, rarity of life would actually be very good news for our own long-term prospects: http://bit.ly/UBwpy
• See where I'm going re value systems? "Value" is a sapient invention. Only sapience can assign value, so sapience is the locus of all value.
• http://bit.ly/aKY42E -- "I'm NOT Drunk: The Game." "Give me your keys, player 1." "[Decoy keys]" "[Belligerent rampage.]"

Apr 21st

• @Johnicholas Yeah, it mostly was. I probably should direct something at them. I legitimately am at a loss as to why they're a Twitter app.
• http://j.mp/cXQomC "Killing leaders of a religious terrorist group seems to increase its chances of survival from 67 percent to 83 percent."
• http://bit.ly/9NwNOG -- "Yo momma so easy, my guild has her on farm status." "Yo momma so fat, she’s exalted with Burger King."
• http://bit.ly/abIaDk -- "The redesigned salt crystal, with more surface area, [tastes] just as salty with only 20 percent as much salt."

Apr 22nd

• http://bit.ly/acKGVl -- "Optimization hinders evolution." "The proof of a system's value is its existence." "Notes only in the note spaces!"
• @Johnicholas I don't remember the idea you refer to, but my mental model of a human has any number of value subsystems bouncing around.
• @Johnicholas Which could be modified by the primary system. Gets fuzzy when I try to isolate my primary system from the rest, though.
• http://j.mp/9x4roC -- Hm, you don't see many musicians with just mustaches. Full beards don't count. P.S. I so want an "Oh Yeah!" cube hat.
• This video is so preposterously sweet I was certain it was about to turn violent at any moment: http://bit.ly/cAIa0h -- Spoiler: it doesn't.
• @Johnicholas I remember that now, and it's clearly related to value systems, but I don't know quite what you were getting at bringing it up.
• To those from countries accustomed only to put-ball-in-goal games: if you think Baseball is a weird game, wait til you try Super Mario Bros.
• Science is the best known way to understand the universe, but it's not *defined* as such. It's a specific thing.
• Which means that before science, there was The Suck, and it also means that science will probably be superceded some day.
• What that would be, I can only guess. But, e.g., reading the universe's source code would qualify.

Apr 23rd

• Tim on Camden, NJ: "You think it's only going to be as bad as the worst thing you've ever seen, but it's so much worse." (http://j.mp/jMMLO)
• Since arriving in Princeton I've seen four cemeteries and zero emergency vehicles.
• To those wondering how often I re-braid my beard: if the braids are hanging straight, I've re-braided them since I last slept.

Apr 24th

• Jason Rohrer describes using a "Sleep is Death" scenario to tell his wife the story of his wife going to the hospital, from his perspective.
• "I thought the hospital was calling to tell me that I had died," she said.
• Tim and Lucy's is the first wedding I've attended that I've been cognizant of. Still working out how I feel about the whole thing.
• (But congratulations, Tim and Lucy!)
• http://j.mp/ccdyys "The point here is that if you want to see videogames considered seriously as true art, all you have to do is not die."

Apr 26th

• Monkey Island 2 Special Edition will have a creator commentary track: http://bit.ly/aOvvLD -- Michael Land isn't in there, unfortunately.
• The combatless, literary roguelike in which hurricanes chase you around an island that I mentioned at Tim's wedding: http://j.mp/9xtgEZ
• Danny Carey drumming along to the last 3 minutes of Lateralus: http://j.mp/10Gmy5 (They should've told the cameraman about the gong bit.)
• On the plane home, I showed Indy the Chumby and he tried to convince me to support fixed-point math in the synth. We were both really tired.
• He concocted a scheme to set the exponent per-module using the existing code to find each module's output range. It might *almost* work.
• http://bit.ly/6bhTPf -- "There is no safe wish smaller than an entire human morality. There are too many possible paths through Time."
• "The only safe genie is a genie that shares all your judgment criteria. ... With a safe genie, wishing is superfluous. Just run the genie."
• Huh. Banned from the IRC server I use, for "flooding." Been idle for hours. Theory: mibbit.com isn't such an awesome IRC client after all.

Apr 27th

• Maybe your favorite political group was *founded* on a preponderance of evidence or at least a convincing argument, but it's a religion now.
• Regardless of your reasoning, every individual belief you hold is also held by a tribe of irrationals living in a cultural echo chamber.
• http://bit.ly/dCu6dU -- Quicksand exists? I just assumed the phenomenon was invented for 1930s serials or something.
• The Double Down is marketed as all-meat crazy, but if you look at the ingredients it's just a chicken and bacon sandwich *minus* the bun.

Apr 28th

• http://bit.ly/aGmDI8 -- "Porn Star Appears in Court to Clear Man Facing 20-Year Sentence for Transporting Child Porn"
• Six-month pinhole camera exposure of the Sun's path through the sky: http://bit.ly/cC4zZQ
• When writing boilerplate C++ methods, I sometimes get the soothing, zoned-out feeling I used to get playing World of Warcraft. It scares me.
• Do people consider Java to be a higher-level language than C++? I always had to do way more typing in Java than in C++ to get anything done.
• The best reason to participate in NaNoWriMo is that if you ever do so again, you get to tell people you're working on your *second* novel.
• http://j.mp/9710Vo Geocities circa 1998 is quite similar to MySpace today. Also, this may be the worst MIDI rendition of any pop song ever.
• Never finished Super Mario Bros but totally kick ass at Mega Man or Contra? Now's your chance to rescue the princess: http://j.mp/cENxqu
• Imagine how much more like "Super Mario Crossover" there could be if the you didn't have to remake Super Mario Bros from scratch to make it.
• http://j.mp/anFzyT -- Abdul Ahad Momand, hero cosmonaut who fled Afghanistan as a political refugee, on his new job: "It is not in space."
• @Johnicholas Yeah, consensus over on Facebook seems to be that it's not about expressiveness but abstraction. It makes some sense.
• @Johnicholas I haven't tried GC in C++. Does a given GC library tend to be locked to a given compiler/platform?
• Added a mini profiler to the synth. Surprise #1: on Windows, input is using ~40% of execution time. This probably won't hold on the iPhone.
• The six chapters on the Quake engine from Michael Abrash's enthralling Graphics Programming Black Book: http://bit.ly/9WlVRd

Apr 29th

• Some blog engine genius really needs to solve the problem where blog posts in a series never have navigation to the next item in the series.
• http://j.mp/9hJeEE -- "Visitors gather in front of a huge animated baby mannequin displayed at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai."
• http://j.mp/awgjmh "I suspect the US health insurance industry is actively suppressive of entrepreneurial start-up ventures by older folks."
• Coherent Extrapolated Volition is still the most robust attempt at an objective definition of "good" that I've seen: http://bit.ly/6qssNk
• http://crappytaxidermy.com/
• http://j.mp/aHbSXq -- Why "MAXIMUM"? Because all the letters are symmetrical, so artists could just flip the sprite rather than redrawing.
• Other possibilities they could've used: "WAXY VOMIT," "WHAMMO UMAMI MOUTH."
• @xobs I think between us we've discovered terrible negligence on the part of SF2's artists: every character should've had symmetrical text.
• Designing technical notation to look like natural language is a great marketing tool, but a terrible drain on actual use.
• You'd be surprised at how many movies that ostensibly aren't male-centric don't pass the Bechdel test: http://bit.ly/cqpRe2

Apr 30th

• http://bit.ly/14mYP -- "You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places."
• Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch at 500 frames per second: http://bit.ly/95e9dx
• http://j.mp/cQqhU2 -- "I'd always been fascinated by the idea that consciousness had a chemical component, and I wanted to play with that."
• In this hour, I review the opening of Digital: A Love Story: http://j.mp/9l4WvE
• What is it like to have Lupus? The Spoon Theory of debilitating illness: http://bit.ly/9M65NH

On Twitter: @mogwai_poet