mssv

  • The Death of Publishers

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    4–5 minutes

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    49 comments on The Death of Publishers

    Update: Virginie Clayssen has done a wonderful French translation of this post on her weblog teXtes.  Adrian Buys an eBook Reader A couple of weeks ago, I idly visited mobileread.com and discovered something incredible – Tiger Direct in the US were selling Sony eReaders for $100, a discount of $250. Thanks to the rampaging power…

  • How many seconds?

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    2–4 minutes

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    1 comment on How many seconds?

    I’ve heard it said that the iPhone has inferior features to other phones. On paper, there is some substance to this. Compared to the flagship products of Nokia and HTC, the iPhone lacks: 3G a high megapixel camera (competing phones usually have 3-5 megapixels compared to the iPhone’s 2 MP camera) video recording ability video…

  • New Conversations

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    2–3 minutes

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    6 comments on New Conversations

    At GDC this year, I remember hearing some writers talk about the sorry state of story and dialogue in action/adventure games. One of the promising games that they looked forward to, though, was Mass Effect – apparently it would have a brand new conversation system. Over the months, details emerged. In effect, the game would…

  • Echochrome

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on Echochrome

    One of the most innovative games that’s come out of this year’s E3 is Echochrome for the Playstation; basically, if M. C. Escher could’ve made a computer game, this is what it would look like. I have some questions about the control scheme, difficulty level and gameplay (e.g. does the guy keep on walking all…

  • Bits and Pieces: Left Turns

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    2–3 minutes

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    No comments on Bits and Pieces: Left Turns

    The research at U.P.S. is paying off. Last year, it cut 28 million miles from truck routes — saving roughly three million gallons of fuel — in good part by mapping routes that minimize left turns. Incredible – something that seems obvious in retrospect, but in practice hard to implement. Interestingly, it wouldn’t work in…

  • Bookmooch

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    4–6 minutes

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    1 comment on Bookmooch

    Along with selling a whole bunch of games, I’ve started addressing the problem of my overflowing bookshelves. Granted, I only have two bookshelves, but I’m not really at a stage in life now where I have the space to keep hundreds of books. A couple of weeks ago, it was getting so bad that I…

  • Bits and Pieces: Centuries

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    3–4 minutes

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    1 comment on Bits and Pieces: Centuries

    Weather In a book about weather (called ‘Weather’) that I’m reading, there’s a fact that blithely states: Driest location: The Atacama Desert in Chile has virtually no rainfall (0.08mm annually), except for a passing shower several times a century. Not several times a year. Several times a century. What impresses me about this is not…

  • Transformers – not enough robots

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Transformers – not enough robots

    That’s what this wonderfully incisive Movie Preview Review says, anyway: http://www.ifilm.com/efp I’m going to see the movie – for the robots.

  • Feeding the weblog

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    1–2 minutes

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    No comments on Feeding the weblog

    Now that Feedburner has been bought by Google, I’ve signed up with them so that I can see how few people subscribe to my RSS feed. In theory, this should make absolutely no difference to anyone who is subscribing to the feed, since the current address automatically redirects to the new Feedburner address – but…

  • On the other side of silence

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    2–3 minutes

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    No comments on On the other side of silence

    A little while ago I manage to acquire the last four years worth of In Our Time, a Radio 4 panel discussion that covers every subject under the sun in a very engaging and thoughtful manner. I’ve been working my way through the archives, usually alternating between topics that sound interesting (e.g. Agincourt, Tea) and…