Mooselessness

Cognitive fluency

We trust that which is easy to learn. I have no problem believing this easy to read Boston Globe article.

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Vancouver in time lapse

A student shared this HD time lapse photo series of Vancouver. The music's not to my taste, but I will always be lost to any scene where mist envelopes towers. Vancouver does seem like a dream city sometimes, and for this post I'll forget I've ever thought otherwise. Do view one of the full-screen HD versions.

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OnLive

I had written off the cloud gaming service of OnLive as something I'd love to see, alongside robot cars and butlers. But saints alive, this presentation makes it seem like it might happen. And the cloud allows much more than hardware savings. You can watch other people play, see broadcasts from top players, record brag clips. I want to believe.

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Making games less intimidating

The creator of Canabalt shares some ideas about what makes a video game hard for non-gamers (one interesting answer: gravity) and how designers might make their games enjoyable for a wider audience. Smart, straight-forward analysis.

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Propaganda posters from Red Dawn

Wolverines!

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Slicing up airships

Your team slices up airships while still on board. The trailer made me smile. Skip to the 40 second mark if you're in a hurry.

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Scenes from an Alternate Universe: The Beatles

A masterful alternate history of the Beatles and the world that keeps surprising you throughout.

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Defence Scheme No. 1

Canada's 1921 plan for a counterattack on the imperial American dogs. "First we take Seattle, then we take Great Falls."

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Soy and chocolate

Grant Achatz is a top-level chef and restaurant owner from a family line of the same. In 2007, in the middle of treatment for cancer of the tongue, he sampled a sauce in his restaurant and realized he couldn't taste a thing. This is his essay, written with Abbazia di Novacella, about how he cooks now and makes new discoveries about flavours and pairings.

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AcaWiki

Plain language summaries of academic papers. I hope this catches on.

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Zendikar

I'm long out of Magic: The Gathering, but I still found myself eyeing their concepts and paintings for the new series. Scroll down to the physics-defying landscapes at the bottom. There's also big concept art paintings and a guide to the world.

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How Tim Schafer joined LucasArts

Tim Schafer shares the story of how he started in the games industry, including how he accidentally confessed to piracy during his interview, and drew the pictures for his job application (you heard me) on his KoalaPad.

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Mosquito taste preferences

Mosquitoes prefer people with blood type O, especially if they leak sacchrides through their skin. Shannon, I told you you were sweet.

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Sincerely, John Hughes

"I just poured my fucking heart out to you and YOU SENT ME A FORM LETTER." A sweet story for a sad week.

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Hi Liz!

I sometimes encounter people who seem testy over email. But I work in a field of bunnies compared to DC. Skip the summary article and scroll down to the actual emails.

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Draft One

Mystery Man tells of an atrocious first draft with a great destiny, the story of a young man called Annikin Starkiller. Yes, it's Star Wars: draft one. For real.

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Telling More Interesting Lies

A gamemaster suggests a better way to handle role-playing challenges, like bluffs, in pen and paper games. Instead of rolling for the end result ("I convince him to let us see the king"), you roll for stepping stones along the way ("I convince him we met at a royal ball last year").
��This feels like the way we handed challenges in our 4E D&D experiment. You didn't roll to survive the wilderness, you described the moment you remembered that certain fungi are edible and the roll determines which way the story goes from there ("...but you forgot they're a purgative in the rainy season").

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Business cards from graphic designers

It's rare for me to need to pass along a business card, but I'd still like to have a small case of luxurious, creamy and understated ones. Of the fifty listed here, I admire Josh Cunningham's lion tamer the most.

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Slow, Dramatic Clapping

Penny Arcade brings the Witchalok to D&D 4E. Also, runner up in today's foolish activities is City of Heroes planned new text-based MMO. Bring your Hayes compatible modem.

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If you're lucky, we'll let you buy our game

To help smooth its growth, the unforgiving online game Darkfall releases copies for sale only once per day at a random time. Would-be players are camping the online store, waiting for the loot to respawn.

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Fighting is bad

Now that Anna's older, many friends ask for parenting tips.

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Do this one on spec: MMO Community Enhancement

Trenton Kennedy is an undergrad who wants to be a computer game designer, so he wrote a long report about the state of community management in online games, spiced with his suggestions.
You used to hear you couldn't get a job without experience or experience without a job, but web publishing has cut a hole through the paradox by letting you build a reputation and demonstrate your skills and commitment without a job. In fact, I find it hard to imagine breaking into a field now without personal projects like this one under your belt.

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Pride and Predator

"Brooding aristocrats encounter a brutal alien that lands in 1800s-era Britain." Oh you're just mad you didn't think of it.

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War makes thieves and peace hangs them.

"More on that from the Law and Order team..." In these times of corporate malfeasance and economic uncertainty, it's gratifying to see a government provide a detailed and transparent account of wrongdoing, the effect on the economy, and the punishment that will fall on the wicked. Unfortunately, the economy is not ours, but is one based on the mining of fictional moons.

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The Globe wishes it was still an undergrad

I'm not sure how the Globe and Mail ended up being a Canada-wide version of the Queen's Journal, but there always seems to be something about my old school in there.
I was amused to see that the top online story in the National section today was "Woolf named Queen's new principal. The historian is currently the dean of arts at the University of Alberta." I'm sure people from St. John's to Tofino are grabbing their papers and shouting "honey, you won't believe the news!" Maybe if it were an actual wolf.

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