Month: November 2012

Polygon’s coverage of the explosive conversation on the challenges faced by women in the games industry – 1 Reason Why. My favourite spin-off thread, Jane McGonigal noting the conspicuous absence of a 50 Shades Of Grey game (and then building a team and tossing concepts around).

Scientific journal Nature looks at its gender balance numbers and faces up to some uncomfortable truths about itself (via MrsMeows)

Toy laptop for boys vs. toy laptop for girls. Can you guess how they are different? Well, one of them looks like a laptop, and the other is bright pink. But that ain’t even the worst thing. (via Theremina)

Letters of Note: Will & Grace producer owns.

Y’all seen that rather fantastic and possibly going-too-far elevator ghost prank? How about this other elevator prank, with a collapsing floor? (via Naomi Guyer, warning: this is marketing for LG). Elevators = fundamentally freaky places.

The first bootlegs of The Hobbit are already out there. Watch it before it gets taken down! The special effects aren’t quite as good as I expected.

(via Pearce)

Lego Blade Runner street (Via Malc)

On Paleofuture – 1936 literary folk predict which authors will endure

The awesomely creepy background art from the original Scooby Doo cartoons.

A new explanation for some famous psychology experiments, the prisoners vs wardens one and the electric shocks one. And if anything we humans come out looking even less admirable.

Online worlds after all the players stop turning up – abandoned fantastic cities (via Ed)

Thoughtful & detailed look at Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee idea, finding it nice but deeply flawed. (via Making Light)

The Secret Histories Project – 50 people who never turned up in your history classes (via Gem Wilder)

GATE, a puzzle game about Mars, robots and logic (free to download)

Kiwi dark crime webcomic Moth City – really good! (supported by Creative NZ no less) – sequential art peeps will want to see how it layers and changes elements.

What if a cat & a dog were your (human) flatmates? (via Mike Foster)

And finally: apparently I never got around to sharing this linky: Nic Cage as cats (via Bef)

Awesome volcano action in the central North Island. Worth a look, non-Kiwis. Walking over this volcano is a very popular day expedition.

Juan Cole lays out his 10 requirements to get a lasting peace in Israel/Palestine. It seems to me like a pretty realistic list, and as he puts it: good luck.

And, um, here’s an indie comic with an ambitious premise… an American baseball coach recruiting as his new pitcher a “Palestinian rock-thrower”. Hmm.

Ryan North, who I mostly know through links from Kate Beaton but has been linkied here before for his in-depth analysis of the Back to the Future novelisation, has a kickstarter up for a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure version of Hamlet, illustrated by Ms Beaton and many others. Sounds groooovy, and actually quite interesting too. Blew through its target in the first few hours of day one – 29 days to go!

Speaking of Kickstarter and Hamlet – here’s one for a project to adapt Hamlet into a six-episode series. Also sounds very interesting. I really need to get more familiar with this play.

Short but lovely piece on the politics of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (via Tof Eklund), as a companion piece to Laurie Penny’s interview with the man (via Laurie Penny).

Here’s a comic that mashes up the Muppets and the recent Thor movie. (Drawn to roughly follow Roger Langridge’s character redesigns.) It’s worth a look – way more than you might think.

Problems with the different cloud storage services, and what to do to fix them.

In comments last week, Stephanie reminded me about the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which I linked back in July & promptly forgot about. This video-diary adaptation of Pride & Prejudice has racked up 65ish episodes of their core storyline plus loads of other bits and pieces by other characters. Check it out!

Mashup oddity: Nine Inch Nails with, er, the sound effects from Super Mario Bros.

1946’s Disney short teaching girls about menstruation.

Which Bond villain plan would have actually worked? (via Allen Varney)

The colour palette in Nolan’s Batman trilogy progresses from dusk to dawn. (via Allen Varney)

Why the world loves soccer and America doesn’t (via Gareth Michael Skarka) – I just don’t feel the deep love in my heart for the beautiful game, but this is a good short account of where the appeal lies.

Neat profile of “the world’s most patient gamer”, Triforce Johnson (via Quinn Murphy)

Amazing Street Art – 2012 collection

6-year-old schools Hasbro on gender equality. Via Emily Care Boss.
Also: a new study finds girls are increasingly into boy brands. (Unsurprisingly there’s no examination of the way these gendered brands are constituted, so the explanations given are pretty weak, but it’s an encouraging trend.)
Also also: See Jane, a neat little video about representation of women in media from Geena Davis’s project…

Vending machine dispenses random books

We are entering the post-password age. An amazing article that breaks down what we’re all reluctant to admit – that passwords don’t work any more.

Revered alt-culture magazine Coilhouse has announced it’s taking a rest – and they’ve made every acclaimed issue a free download on their beautiful site.

Obama’s war council of supernerds.

And finally… Trotify (via William Gibson)

Via Frank N, and then most of the internet, a lovely zoomable view of the galaxy. (The tech behind it is super neat too!)

So the IDF livetweeted their attack on Gaza. Leave aside for a minute the rights and wrongs of the action (and yup I have some pretty strong opinions on that) – and you have another reminder of the fascinating and troubling future that is already happening, a world where the PR war is directly overlaid on the physical conflict in realtime. Did I mention that IDF opponents in Gaza were tweeting right back?
UPDATE: WHAT THE HELL? IDF gamifies war

Waiting for Elmo. (via Dangerous Minds)

And here’s 10 Sesame Street performances worth seeing. Stevie Wonder (not that clip, a different one)! Herbie Hancock! Cab Calloway! More than half of these were completely new to me. (via Vivian)

RPG folk – grab the free quickplay edition of my buddy Dale’s new horror RPG, EPOCH! It’s got some really interesting stuff going on in it. Check it check it out.

Everyone’s been sharing this highly informative Reddit thread explaining the nuances of New Zealand culture. e.g. “Something people who come to New Zealand might not be aware of is that the government provides four sheep for every person. Be sure to ask at the airport! Even if you’re just visiting, you can have four sheep to follow you around while you’re here. Some people feel quite bad that they missed out on their sheep.”

Anyone out there wanting French to English translation services? My friend Heather is in the game and now she has a website ho ho ho. (Also, editing.)

SFX covers 10 episodes every sci-fi show must have (via Craig Oxbrow)

Via Calum Dow, a cringingly funny but VERY unpleasant tale of a pregnant lady getting a massage that goes very very wrong. Better for listening than reading, but the page gives you both options.

Via Gem Wilder, 21 very awkward situations (told in animated gif form) (gif was the US word of the year!) (oh hai john key) (my favourite is the basketball player accidentally rubbing the wrong knee)

Pearce sent me this Prometheus review that’s even more scathing than my one was. A pre-Damon-Lindelof script draft has turned up online too, and the big news is, it pretty much makes sense, unlike the released version. Google for “112142280-Alien-Engineers” and you should find it.

Illustrations of dozens of characters from The Wire. As a poster.

When a woman cries, she’s emotional and irrational. But when a man rages, that’s just being direct.

A dad hacks video game to switch all the pronouns around so his daughter can have a hero character who is a girl. Groovy. (Don’t read the comments though unless you want to be exposed to much rage about how he DESTROYED THE INTEGRITY OF GAMING CULTURE RAARGH.)

The MIT game lab has produced a game that demonstrates the effects of the theory of relativity – by setting the speed of light really close to walking speed. Fascinating.

These photos will tell you all you need to know about the David Petraeus affair scandal.

If you find a free photoshop service online, be wary, because it might be the Photoshop Troll! (via d3vo)

Irish graphic designers create a group exhibition out of their most frustrating client instructions.

So last linky I shared a “Occupy fizzled out as a failure” essay. Right on cue, Occupy has launched something very real using exciting new thinking that has people talking everywhere – a plan to buy out and write off debt (debt is bought and sold at a fraction of the debt value). Making Light here discuss and dismiss one objection to Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee

And finally, Windows95 tips and tricks.

After 8 years of Dubya, Americans were so out of control they accidentally elected a black man. Four years later? Four years of relentless obstruction and lunatic rage at his presidency? I kinda think re-electing a black man is the greater achievement.

US election retold in cleverly animated webcomic form

Iconic album covers reimagined with superheroes

Cutting, important argument about why Occupy Wall Street failed – because it was too mired in academia, for a start. Don’t agree with everything here but there are definitely some home truths for supporters of the Occupy movement. (via Amund)

Craaaazy amazing: a mental abacus “sport” that goes SO FAST. Wow! (via Maire)

& a potential breakthrough in mathematics – turns out there’s something more to know about a + b = c. The guy who’s advanced this proof sounds like a very interesting cat. (via Ivan)

Who said it: Hitler or Lovecraft?

The Necronomicon – it’s like the Bible, but different! (via Craig Oxbrow)

In praise of the hashtag. The hashtag as new literary device? This writeup is actually off on several things, but it gets a lot right. The # is the symbol character of the ’10s just like the @ was the symbol character of the ’00s.

Christopher Walkenthrough: computer game walkthroughs in the voice of Christopher Walken (via Dave Chapman)

Samuel L Jackson Lorem Ipsum

How can there not be a movie of this? An amazing slave escape story. Edge-of-the-seat true life adventures!

That Kate Nash performed the Buffy musical episode. (Kate Nash gets a lot of flack, but Scroobius Pip rates her, so.) (That Buffy musical episode is a great episode of TV, but I still think it really doesn’t work outside of that context.)

Big Sugar has been weirding the evidence of the dangers of sugar for years. Like Big Tobacco, only successful. Fascinating.

The National Office of Importance

And finally… The Snuggery (via Pearce)

How to learn: Mastering linear algebra in 10 days

Star Wars girl gets a treat. Couple years back this girl was bullied at school for liking Star Wars more than pink princesses. This is the tale of her great costume for this year’s Halloween. (via Anthony Kitt)

Linda Blair’s on-set dialogue delivery for The Exorcist (via Pearce and loads of other places)

Mean Doses offers up the PSYning

12-year-old uses D&D monsters to help his dad with some eye-tracking research. And is lead author on the paper! NEAT.

H.P.Lovecraft Institute of Software Design
The physics of “The Call of Cthulhu” (PDF)

Amazing! A magical feature of the London underground, one I never heard of before. (via Making Light)

You’ve seen that pic of the baby-as-Ripley-in-power-loader costume, yeah? Mat Gritt found video. Yay!

I read about this project when it was a plan. It rather exceeds expectations. Check it out: boxes of english-language android tablets dropped, with no instructions, in isolated & poor Ethiopian villages. Within six months the kids not only have taught themselves to use them – they’re HACKING THEM.

Ha! The game Monopoly? Was stolen! From a game in the public domain! (via Allen Varney) (still a sucky game)

Wgtn cartoonist Grant Buist created a complete webcomic adaptation of Waiting for Godot’s act one. Using clip art of cacti.

Big History – an alternative curriculum for schools, that puts our place in the world in perspective. Nice. (via Ivan) (actually this reminds of the curriculum my high school history teacher Michael Fowler invented for the junior-school class he made up “heritage studies”)

Can I buy you a coffee? This is an analogy. It seems like a pretty sharp one.

James Bond: the nymphographic

and finally, ELECTRIC BOB’S BIG BLACK OSTRICH (or, LOST ON THE DESERT)

and also finally, the ultimate educational game, FROG FRACTIONS. Just play it, to the end.