Mooselessness

Yesterday's medical news today!

Lab-grown bladders were successfully implanted into humans... four years ago. I am missing the future! Next up: printing organs on fabs.

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How To Sew On A Button Correctly

Sewing buttons are about the outer limit of my handiness, if you don't count assembling a computer. Okay, I stained an armoire once. But if I take the lessons of this detailed guide to heart I can sharpen my button-sewing skills and be prepared for the collapse of civilization. Tim Buttonsewer, I will be. Note the warning in the sidebar: this buttonsewing guide is not professional financial advice.

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Simulating neurons: Blue Brain

When I was a philosophy undergrad and a sf reader, I took it for granted that the way we would build minds in machines was by simulating biological brains, not by planning and writing the software for consciousness. But I was surprised to learn today that people have been working on this very project since 2005.
The Blue Brain project has simulated a rat's neocortical column in software: "10,000 neurons, with about 30 million synaptic connections between them." Whether or not the project will scale to an entire rat's brain, or a human's brain, seems to be an empirical problem: modern computers aren't powerful enough yet. But the project continues.

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How to report the news

Charlie Brooker captures the time-wasting formula that makes television news unwatchable.

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The future of political advertising

The U.S. Supreme Court now says corporations can spend what they like on political advertising. Matt Yglesias observes that Bank of America spent $2.3 billion on marketing in 2008. That's almost six times what was spent on all Senate campaigns combined in 2004. They could swamp any Senator they wanted. And they're just one company.

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Geo-engineering that might happen, unfortunately

Bruce Sterling: "The cheapest and most effective method of geo-engineering is to cut the world's population in half. Just a tremendous massacre. ... When and if it becomes obvious that we truly need massive, ultra-costly geo-engineering interventions, that we have no other choice, then somebody -- likely some traumatized veterans of weather havoc who are full of Al Qaeda self-righteousness -- they're gonna cut emissions in half by cutting people in half."

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I am the modron man.

A moment of enlightenment. Only now does this lyric from Mr. Roboto become clear.

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Study Hacks

The discipline and strategizing on display here make me marvel I ever received a degree at all. An impressive and motivating site. Here's the site's list of favourite posts

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Tent buying guide

We're outgrowing our family tent and will need a new one next season. Much as I love wee backpacker gear in the abstract, the new one will be a car-camping behemoth with a bathtub floor, stadium seating, a great room, a fire pit, and a bear rug made out of recycled polystyrene.

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Finding the genius time

Game developer Flashbang reduced their working hours to 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and saw productivity rise. Many other fascinating lessons in this account of the studio that made games on an 8-week development cycle.

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Word Counts for Children's Books

The quiz company Renaissance Learning lists word counts for a wide variety of children's books. I was surprised to see how far off some of my estimates were. Found at author Cheryl Rainfield's site, who also has a more complicated way to pry the information from some Amazon listings.

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Five Whys

One of the inventors of the Toyota Production System suggests asking "why?" five times to uncover and fix the root causes of a problem. Eric Ries gives a helpful example, applying the lessons to a web site that's gone down.

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Should we take the escalator or the piano?

A Volkswagen-funded project convinces people to take the stairs rather than the escalator by making the stairs way more fun.

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Why I�m Done Making Desktop Applications

The most interesting reason for me was the ability to track how people are using your program (with A/B testing if appropriate) and improve it immediately.
I end up recommending online apps to my novice students for everything these days, even cropping photos. Removing installation and version worries makes it so much easier to guide them.

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Whispers of other gamers

I don't own a Playstation 3, but the dungeon exploration game is doing some unusual things with multiplayer in what is primarily a single player game. You can see where other players have died and even watch ghostly replays of what happened. You can leave messages for other players to find. You can appear in other player's games briefly as a helpful or harmful silent spirit. (Scroll down to the "Underground Wires" subheading to read about these features.

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DoubleBear plans a ZRPG.

The Z is for zombie. I'm not a fan of all things zombie, but I do like their take on the game: "Serious examination of a national crisis or natural disaster. Humans and a lack of order are a bigger threat than the undead. Think Hurricane Katrina, Children of Men ... Game is about survival. Scavenging resources, exploring the area, dealing with other survivors, and managing a shelter." They don't mention what would be the two leading examples of this approach: Walking Dead and World War Z, both of which are fine, frightening models to pursue.

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Sid Meier's rules, as told to Soren Johnson

Sid Meier's rules for game design are so familiar and wise, they seem like traditional sayings. Most seem intuitive in hindsight, but my favourite still surprises me: "Double it or Cut it by Half," meaning dramatic changes will let you find solutions to your game design problems faster.
�� There's a related principle in game design too, granularity: gains in power should come in bursts, rather than an incremental crawl. Your achievements and choices become more dramatic. They matter.

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Book Launch 2.0

Not 20 minutes ago I was thinking "man, I should really get back into writing." And now I don't want to!

Problem solved.

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Elevated

This entire mountain flyover, music and lightshow is generated by a procedure encoded in 4 kilobytes. Project home.

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Don't waste the reader's time with false suspense

Oh no, the Flash only has time to save one of his children! Which one will he choose? Comic writer Mark Waid discusses ways to make cliffhangers interesting when your reader knows you're not going to let the victim die.

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The president and American exceptionalism

Imagine you're the American president in 2009 and you're asked if you believe in American exceptionalism. The traps lurking in this question are obvious, but what is the path through?

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A slave among the Nootka

In 1803, nineteen year old metalworker John Jewitt was captured by Maquinna, a Vancouver Island Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) chief, whose men killed all but one of Jewitt's shipmates. Maquinna kept Jewitt for his skills and tried to draw him into their culture. He lived with them for two years before escaping.
��This article from The Beaver (which only welcomes search engine and library visitors, hence the roundabout link) is rather genteel. You may want to see the Wikipedia link or Jewitt's own book.

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The Icelandic Collapse

Wondering what happened in Iceland? "You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets."
I must admit, I'm baffled as to how a country whose economy has collapsed still seems as expensive as ever to visit. The luxury hotel mentioned in the article is asking USD$400/night.

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Elmore Leonard's ten rules on writing

Leonard, who ought to know, offers advice on writing lean fiction. "Number 1: Never open a book with weather." I'm astonished that I haven't posted this article before. It just surfaced like an old artillery shell in my mail archives. His canny publisher also managed to make the 10 rules into a book.

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A Valentine's Day Card to the Media Companies

"You have to stop being scared that I'm going to steal your content, because I'm already stealing your content."

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'Four Fuji apples in a plastic box'

We don't even have Trader Joe's here, yet this video makes me miss them. Market on Yates is close. What I like about this fan commercial is that it recognizes that things we love also drive us crazy sometimes. And that's part of the love too.

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Princes of the Universe

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Epic Solitaire Notepad Adventures

Scott Slomiany, creator of PocketCiv, is working on new solo game where an adventurer's lifelong arc of quests, exploration and battles is generated out of 20 cards. The key idea is that the player is guided to create the world as he or she plays.
You wouldn't think it mattered, but part of what I love about ENSA is that one of the jobs shifted to the player is picking names. As you play, you need to name locales, creatures and creature types, guided only by a starting letter. Your first kingdom may be known as Avalon, Appleton or Awesomevania, as you see fit. Your enemies may be divided into categories such as albino, undead, tricksy, and those that at a distance resemble flies
One insight Scott mentions in passing is that the increasing dangerousness of monsters in the world represents a ticking clock against which your own gains will be measured. Difficulty scaling presents a key design challenge for RPG games--Oblivion bungled it--and seeing rising evil as a clock is a smart way to look at it. This approach works best for short games where losing to the clock doesn't cost you a month's playtime.

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