July 01

• The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the shmups I love are the ones I'd arguably classify as platformers.
• I've written about this before, but for reference, I consider platformers to be about spatial navigation. "Platforms" are ancillary.
• E.g.: Mario, Mirror's Edge, Portal, Thrust. Why disqualify a game because it has no gravity or inertia? So yeah, Ikaruga totally counts.
• (I should probably come up with a new name for this classification rather than trying to turn the tide on the widely-accepted definition.)
• One of my flatmates just scooted a chair, and it sounded *just* like Strong Bad's "chairscoot." (http://bit.ly/9w44g1)

July 02

• Functional rat lungs grown in vats: http://bit.ly/a5EZHl
• http://bit.ly/ddPxKM -- "Conspiracy Theorist Claims Competitive Eater Did Not Swallow Hot Dogs Properly And Should Be Banned"
• Interview with Vernor Vinge, with bonus screenshot of notes on his Zones of Thought sequel open in an Emacs buffer: http://bit.ly/dm65H0
• I'm looking forward to Vinge's Children of the Sky more than I ever have anything except Super Mario Sunshine.
• For all your chiptune-on-youtube illustration needs: http://bit.ly/kKmBq
• Oh, even better, an arcade font web app: http://bit.ly/5jWAl -- The fonts are in image files, though, so no TTF for you.
• Have you ever noticed how dogs invariably make sharp, irritating throat-noises when they first notice someone's presence, regardless of who?
• Loving "Nightfall" and "The King of Shreds and Patches." New favorite kind of IF: open-world investigation with no/minimal overt "puzzles."

July 03

• In 1998 I played the Monkey Island 2 theme on an ocarina, recorded it, then reversed the recording. I have the result stuck in my head now.
• Just picked up Deathsmiles. They're only selling limited edition; have sold out several times. Probably people hoping to flip it in a year.
• Jesus, Deathsmiles comes with a 360 faceplate. Um, free to a good home? Even just playing the game is almost too moe-body-pillow for me.

July 04

• Family in Florida always buys the pro-grade fireworks. It's legal if you sign the paperwork saying it's to scare birds away from your crops.

July 05

• It occurs to me: the investigative structure I'm enjoying in The King of Shreds and Patches was also used in Star Control 2. Where else?
• Worst part about the unskippable, embarrassing, juvenile cutscenes in Deathsmiles: you can jam on A to make them go by *slightly* faster.
• A stray sequence of keystrokes just prematurely sent the email I'd been composing in Gmail. That's reassuring.
• http://j.mp/cZPaDb Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands sold fewer than 100k across 5 platforms. Yeah, the one *attached to the Disney movie*.
• (Bad news for Remedy fans while we're at it: Alan Wake sold just 145k in May -- after five years in development.)

July 06

• Lizard-sitting for Shelly. Do lizards breathe? He's supposed to just lie there perfectly still while the crickets crawl all over him, right?
• http://bit.ly/a5dshe -- Power Laces: because it's about goddamn time.
• In infant scrawl: "looking for bassists, guitarists, drummers, vocalists to join newly disbanded band." Must be a really killer band name.
• Okay, Thrall is lying in a slightly different utterly motionless positon from before. Good enough for me.
• Crackdown 2's health meter starts beeping when you drop below 75% health but stops when you drop below 50%. Innovation!
• So many appalling design choices in Crackdown 2, so few characters left in this twit.
• Yes, it's still "fun." Yes, I'm still playing it. As long as that's our continuing standard of quality, we deserve what we get.

July 07

• Still trying to suss out what's special about node.js. It's a fast event-driven I/O library for Javascript, right? Not trying to snark here.
• @polpo I'm all for stripping concurrency out of everywhere it isn't absolutely crucial, but it doesn't support concurrency at all?
• On further analysis, what bugs me most about Crackdown 2 is that Crackdown was a textbook case of a game that needed a sequel to perfect it.
• What Ruffian gave us was a sequel with none of the original's problems fixed and with a bunch of what was awesome about the original broken.
• It's still good in many of the ways that the original was, but if the best you can do is not break *everything*, you get the hook.
• (7:54:39 PM) Danny: gmail protip: enable 'undo send' in settings->labs
• I'm guessing Blizzard has no females on their community team? I guarantee this was every female player's first thought: http://bit.ly/c0Jljy
• On the other hand, at least we'll get to find out what characters the Blizzard employees play in the game, right?

July 09

• http://j.mp/9LNqt5 -- The Earth's rotation stopping "would eventually result in a huge equatorial megacontinent and two large polar oceans."
• GodBlock: helping protect your kids from the "violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts." http://j.mp/36CpcX
• http://bit.ly/ayfoM0 -- "Gorgonocephalus. A specialised starfish that captures plankton (krill) on its intricate arms."
• All this time, when you asked if I named myself after the band Mogwai, I thought they played prog metal. This is more like prog smooth jazz.
• (The actual thought process was closer to: "Hey, here's a neat sequence of syllables. http://bit.ly/SZdh Hah, imagine this guy in a beret!")
• http://bit.ly/9iaIhx -- "Offering people small cash incentives vastly improves [patients'] adherence to life-saving medical regimens."
• "Love Machine," photos of RealDolls in various stages of manufacture: http://bit.ly/cxaQlg -- Probably NSFW.
• http://bit.ly/bb2GXF -- "Tired Gay succumbs to Dix in 200 meters" (No homophone.)
• @Johnicholas Not sure how much the ellipsoid shape is just centrifugal distortion of oceans, but I think that's all they're talking about.
• Faultline, the puzzle platformer in which you fold and unfold the world: http://bit.ly/cPrtZ4
• Marc LeBlanc: "Baseball is our predominant metaphor for sexual conquest. In baseball, you cannot go backwards from second base to first."

July 10

• Found the mystery Virt song from that Blockparty video! Plasmatextor, from the Child's Play Charity 2008 CD: http://j.mp/rj1yX
• Actually, "Plasmatextor" is the album closer -- perfect choice. My favorite part is the fakeout on IV at the end of the penultimate chorus.
• http://bit.ly/dszQhs -- "I had become Angry Internet Man. People, you never want to become Angry Internet Man."

July 11

• Monkey Island 2 Special Edition has the only version of the MI2 soundtrack I've heard that's as good on its own terms as the OPL2 rendition.
• @chrisremo I feel the same way about games that don't let you skip boring levels.
• Am I crazy? Maybe. Compare, Yamaha OPL2: http://bit.ly/dfL9WR vs. Roland MT-32, probably the previous best alternative: http://bit.ly/csr5r3
• The Special Edition version: http://bit.ly/dmsdrz Note: the audio production quality does not forgive the removal of iMuse song transitions.
• Unintuitive: you're actually at your least stable when both feet are on the slackline.
• http://bit.ly/cPMPwc -- "Dear, I'm gonna take the raptor out for a walk."
• Ron Gilbert to Tim Schafer: "You had that spritzer on your desk, when we'd come and talk to you too long you'd squirt us like we were cats."
• Errol Morris: "Have I mentioned my Whac-A-Mole theory of the mind/body problem? Upcoming in my next NYT essay." -- You've got my attention.

July 12

• Can someone with experience thinking about crypto tell me whether this makes sense: http://bit.ly/4T29yZ
• http://bit.ly/cCDMP7 -- Look just like this guy for only $1100!
• As far as I can tell, the Deathsmiles scoring system only gets interesting once you're able to one-credit-clear it. I call that bad design.
• Only about 1 in 10 posts to http://crappytaxidermy.com/ is actually about poor quality taxidermy. The rest I'd call freaky sculptures.

July 13

• It was fine when a for loop sang "508 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" in Monkey Island 2, but some voice actor had to record it for the remake.
• Convergent evolution: http://bit.ly/aYHBTn
• The California Extreme classic arcade game expo in Santa Clara is coming up: http://bit.ly/3XeVi -- Who's going?
• http://bit.ly/8ZvT2v -- This owl freaks me out no matter what posture it's in. ... wait, there are 75cm owls?
• Sleeping tips: if you put a lamp right next to your bed, you won't have to grope blindly from the switch to bed after turning off the light.

July 14

• Ron Gilbert still knows what to do with a dialog tree: give you six punchlines to the same setup.

July 15

• Facebook is pushing features on me by listing friends who use them. Who here loves being used as a corporate peer-pressure puppet?
• http://bit.ly/bEvqMV -- "Enough fat to fill nine double-decker buses is being removed from sewers under London's Leicester Square."
• Ron Gilbert's DeathSpank: imagine if someone made a slot machine that satirized how stupid and mindless slot machines are. Hilarious!
• Now you can enjoy the thrill of the rare drop and the faux accomplishment of the fetch quest, *and* laugh at yourself for doing so.
• DeathSpank is "it" for both the square-jawed hero archetype and the fetch quest. Anybody creating either seriously automatically fails.
• (And anybody creating them jokingly has to stand up to the existing satire.)
• My childhood artifacts are mostly software: NES games, S3Ms, Qbasic code I wrote in 1992. My nostalgia operates in an information economy.
• Physical objects don't persist any more, but the chat logs with your first love do. Is that worse than your grandma's chest of letters?

July 16

• http://j.mp/cmMBnG "In Sonic XL, the rings that Sonic collects are fried, and collecting them causes the hedgehog to get fatter and slower."
• "Thematically, Sonic XL is interesting because it points out how institutionalized consumption is in digital game design."
• Animated cross-section MRIs of fruit: http://bit.ly/d3dvWI

July 17

• You know what they say: never argue with an ibex. http://bit.ly/9Wz9Ip
• So can someone clue me in to the social news aggregator that stayed awesome by not telling anybody it exists?

July 18

• On the way to California Extreme -- with note-taking materials this time.
• Serious demand for Major Havoc. Have yet to see it unoccupied.
• V3 has a VR helmet, plus a screen so you don't look like a complete tool to onlookers.
• Tabletop Mechanical Pong: exactly what it sounds like.
• Sprint 8, 8-player racer. Great kinetic feel on the steering wheels; is awesome to take turns by applying force then letting it spin freely.
• Marksman: fully mechanical "light gun" game in which the gun actually emits light at sensors in the playfield.
• Actually, I think it's the same dude who's been on Major Havoc all day.
• Magical Truck Adventure needs a Wii port badly. Maybe Kinect.
• V3 actually isn't embarrassing at all until you look up from the helmet and make eye contact with your audience.
• When people refer to vector monitors being crisper than raster, they must not mean color vector.
• I'm pretty sure most of these vector display games don't use real 3D projection. I suppose all those divides by Z add up.
• Oh hey, there's whatsisface, the guy who retired from pro basketball to play pinball full time.
• Yeah, California Extreme 2010 is basically the same exact thing as in 2009. Which is to say: awesome.
• They've already started packing stuff up. Doors close at 9. I missed out on "The Act" again this year.

July 19

• Had thoughts; wrote essay. Spent considerable effort dividing the thoughts into 140 character chunks. It's 9 twits long. What have I done?
• http://bit.ly/ctSWJQ -- If South Africa wants to fix this, they should really do something about the 40% unemployment levels.
• Ethical considerations are a luxury, way up on the hierarchy of needs. How do you convince those scrabbling for subsistence to give a fuck?
• My health insurance went up ~10% again this year. I wonder if this is like the subscription renewal scam that every magazine pulls.
• Actually, looking back at it, it was 15%-17% increases the past two years. So by my calculations *they'll* be paying *me* by 2025.
• I put about an hour into Lego Harry Potter before remembering that the Traveller's Tales Lego games are pretty much the worst games ever.
• Take a brand that embodies invention and expression; turn it into mindless, grinding make-work that ends when your bank account hits INT_MAX
• http://j.mp/9lfNvs -- "Humans get a bum rap. To me, the human is what overcomes instinct, not what falls to it."
• "We might possess the only eloquent eyes that will ever exist. We might be the universe's poetry: its only chance to know itself, ever."
• Can't trust pain any more when climbing. As soon as my feet leave the floor, the pain is gone. Cool, sorta? Except for the stress injuries.
• Are there consumer-grade Sprint-style driving controllers? Neither a realistic wheel nor a pong paddle would provide the free-spinning heft.

July 20

• http://bit.ly/bInUgw -- The Super Mario World music engine is about to have a coronary.
• The other side of the console war coin: http://bit.ly/c0c0H9
• More of me on value systems and the nature of being human. I'm still trying to figure this shit out, alright? http://bit.ly/97hSAz
• (That was the multi-twit essay I decided not to twit yesterday.)

July 21

• Memo to comic book industry: when André Gide said "art is born of constraint," he didn't mean everybody should use the *same* constraint.
• http://bit.ly/a7MM4U -- Lorelei Lee on the poltical merit of "Milk Nymphos." Seriously, I'm convinced. (Still not going to watch it.)

July 22

• Ian Bogost's new Facebook Game, Cow Clicker: http://j.mp/bVu0nM "You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again."
• Good discussion of arachnophobia on Giant Bomb. Protip on how to deal with a spider who won't leave your ear: fill your ear with water.
• http://bit.ly/c8luNo -- Who needs authors any more? It's a totally new model for writing books!
• http://bit.ly/bmNr9X -- "Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory gets funding to test thought-controlled prosthetic limb"
• http://bit.ly/cQYtFt -- They should make a blogging plugin. I want to be able to sort my goombas.org posts by anger level.
• X-Ray Pin-Up Calendar: http://bit.ly/c67LhH -- "Just when you thought models could not possibly get any skinnier."
• Limbo: I don't think I've ever seen such a lackadaisical house-sized spider.

July 23

• http://bit.ly/a4XqJd -- The chipophone: chiptune-oriented keyboard controller in repurposed organ housing.
• T-Square explains so much video game music. This sounds like Double Dragon and Street Fighter 2 and Mega Man all at once: http://j.mp/d7qfHu
• Fascinating, lengthy Postmortem of "The Path" by Tale of Tales: http://bit.ly/cLmYzE
• Telltale's Strong Bad season 1 for $5 on Steam: http://bit.ly/d4PZVh
• http://bit.ly/cEs8Fm -- Astoundingly, this is a decent story (so far) and not just a scientific mind snarking on the Harry Potter universe.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions -- Yep, pretty much all of them.

July 25

• I enjoyed Inception well enough, but I couldn't tell you whether it made any sense.
• Wore a hole in my Vibram Fivefingers, on the outside of the ball. Do I just buy new ones? It's not like I can get them re-soled.

July 26

• I'm clickin' cows. I'm doin' it.
• Okay, I'm done clickin' cows. No regrets.

July 27

• Suicide bomb deterrent patent: http://j.mp/aXDtcm -- Basically just a big packet of pork and a sign saying "but you'll be covered in pork!"

July 29

• http://bit.ly/bXEgrc -- "Wikileaks To Leak 5000 Open Source Java Projects With All That Private/Final Bullshit Removed"
• Simon Parkinson on the JRPG as an approximation of Heaven: http://j.mp/biuTqv -- If you're not feeling it, skip to June 2001 then May 2009.
• For whatever reason, that vignette-from-life style of essay really hits home for me. "Life, Non-Warp" used it too: http://bit.ly/cxmKeH
• http://bit.ly/bnmaex -- "DeathSpank And The Evolving Role Of Comedy In Games"
• @halsted Hm, yeah, both excellent examples.

July 30

• Sometimes writers use "would of" in dialog to tag an uneducated speaker. What's weird: the reader knows, but the listening characters don't.

On Twitter: @mogwai_poet