Lauren playing SpyParty
#notebook
“I’ve read Villehardouin’s chronicle of the Fourth Crusade at least two times, maybe three. And yet if I had to write down everything I remember from it, I doubt it would amount to much more than a page. Multiply this times several hundred, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them?”
“The place to look for what I learned from Villehardouin’s chronicle is not what I remember from it, but my mental models of the crusades, Venice, medieval culture, siege warfare.”
“The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life.”
#notebook
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Gameplay Video - 2014 PlayStation Experience | PS4 - YouTube
The Uncharted games are like well-made Hollywood action films. Slight, throwaway, but a lot of fun.
In each generation of consoles, there has been a graphical effect that really stood out and reminded me “this looks way better than before”. In the last generation, it was the river water in Grand Theft Auto 4. In this generation, it is the way the foliage reacts to Nathan Drake passing through.
All the one-off animations really make a difference to the realism. The passing of the gun from right hand to left. Drake twisting the baddie’s gun away from his own head.
But the shooting, with its reticule and pulled in camera, is incongruous with the increased realism of the animation. As soon as Drake fires, it’s a game again.
#notebook
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End Gameplay Video - 2014 PlayStation Experience | PS4 - YouTube
The Uncharted games are like well-made Hollywood action films. Slight, throwaway, but a lot of fun.
In each generation of consoles, there has been a graphical effect that really stood out and reminded me “this looks way better than before”. In the last generation, it was the river water in Grand Theft Auto 4. In this generation, it is the way the foliage reacts to Nathan Drake passing through.
All the one-off animations really make a difference to the realism. The passing of the gun from right hand to left. Drake twisting the baddie’s gun away from his own head.
But the shooting, with its reticule and pulled in camera, is incongruous with the increased realism of the animation. As soon as Drake fires, it’s a game again.
#notebook
The Birth Of A Tool. Part III. Damascus steel knife making (by John Neeman Tools) on Vimeo
I wish it hadn’t been so pretentiously shot. I wish it didn’t have music.
#notebook
The Birth Of A Tool. Part III. Damascus steel knife making (by John Neeman Tools) on Vimeo
I wish it hadn’t been so pretentiously shot. I wish it didn’t have music.
#notebook
Killer, fascinating description of the development of the Eve programming environment. I love how they are talking to non-programmers. I love how they are acknowledging that models like functional programming that simplify things for experienced programmers are not necessarily easier for new programmers.
#notebook
Killer, fascinating description of the development of the Eve programming environment. I love how they are talking to non-programmers. I love how they are acknowledging that models like functional programming that simplify things for experienced programmers are not necessarily easier for new programmers.
#notebook
I like how Cézanne gets the vainness of the swooshy hair. I like how a very corporeal cheek is made up of very unreal splodges of colour.
#notebook
I like how Cézanne gets the vainness of the swooshy hair. I like how a very corporeal cheek is made up of very unreal splodges of colour.
#notebook #medianotes
http://christinacacioppo.com/blog/learning-online
A fantastic blog post about a woman spent a summer teaching kids to program. She used what she learnt about where the kids got confused by programming to build an IDE that was actually helpful to them.
#notebook
http://christinacacioppo.com/blog/learning-online
A fantastic blog post about a woman spent a summer teaching kids to program. She used what she learnt about where the kids got confused by programming to build an IDE that was actually helpful to them.
#notebook
Maciej Ceglowski’s latest great travel memoir.
“My side of the table looks like someone has been repeatedly smashing my head into the food to try to get me to talk.”
and
“As the pile grows slimmer, its power wanes, until even fifteen-year-old Houthi rebel kids start fussing over its fine print.”
#notebook
Maciej Ceglowski’s latest great travel memoir.
“My side of the table looks like someone has been repeatedly smashing my head into the food to try to get me to talk.”
and
“As the pile grows slimmer, its power wanes, until even fifteen-year-old Houthi rebel kids start fussing over its fine print.”
#notebook
A book about graphic design and the design of advertisements.
Some of the things Rand says are uninteresting because they are now so embedded in our culture that they seem obvious.
He describes the abstract shapes in his work as a way to suggest plastic (suggestive, interpretative, symbolic) ideas. But the form of his “abstract” shapes look dated. What he thought of as pure form was, in fact, a fashion.
Most of the ads that feature in the book appear without comment. This is a shame, because having him talk us through them would have been concrete and probably interesting.
#notebook
A book about graphic design and the design of advertisements.
Some of the things Rand says are uninteresting because they are now so embedded in our culture that they seem obvious.
He describes the abstract shapes in his work as a way to suggest plastic (suggestive, interpretative, symbolic) ideas. But the form of his “abstract” shapes look dated. What he thought of as pure form was, in fact, a fashion.
Most of the ads that feature in the book appear without comment. This is a shame, because having him talk us through them would have been concrete and probably interesting.
#notebook #medianotes
Not very good. The parts about domestic life were two-dimensional. The parts about the war were sensationalised.
#notebook
Not very good. The parts about domestic life were two-dimensional. The parts about the war were sensationalised.
#notebook
On Saturday, my friend Ruth (aka Barbarolla in the London Rollergirls) took me to see my first ever roller derby. We saw a bout between Manhattan Mayhem and the Queens of Pain. We were supporting QoP because Ruth idolises Suzy Hotrod, one of their jammers.
The basic structure of the game is as follows. About five people from each team skate around an oval track. Each team has one jammer. This person must try and pass members of the opposing team. For each pass, the team scores a point.
The game itself is fascinating. Much like rugby or football, it is dominated by manoeuvring a thing from one place to another. The fact that the thing is a person doesn’t seem particularly important. What is important, and what makes it completely different from those other sports, is that the whole field is important all the time. In football, generally speaking, different players get involved as the ball moves to different parts of the pitch. Which is to say: control is handed over. In roller derby, because everyone is going round all the time, and because everyone can move so fast, all the players are involved all the time. This means that the game is a quick succession of setups around choke points. A group of players get into a blocking formation, the opposing jammer comes in and tries to get past them, aided by blocks and shunts from her own team mates. It’s all delightfully tactical. And there is a wonderful contrast between the vicious barges and elegant weaving.
#notebook
On Saturday, my friend Ruth (aka Barbarolla in the London Rollergirls) took me to see my first ever roller derby. We saw a bout between Manhattan Mayhem and the Queens of Pain. We were supporting QoP because Ruth idolises Suzy Hotrod, one of their jammers.
The basic structure of the game is as follows. About five people from each team skate around an oval track. Each team has one jammer. This person must try and pass members of the opposing team. For each pass, the team scores a point.
The game itself is fascinating. Much like rugby or football, it is dominated by manoeuvring a thing from one place to another. The fact that the thing is a person doesn’t seem particularly important. What is important, and what makes it completely different from those other sports, is that the whole field is important all the time. In football, generally speaking, different players get involved as the ball moves to different parts of the pitch. Which is to say: control is handed over. In roller derby, because everyone is going round all the time, and because everyone can move so fast, all the players are involved all the time. This means that the game is a quick succession of setups around choke points. A group of players get into a blocking formation, the opposing jammer comes in and tries to get past them, aided by blocks and shunts from her own team mates. It’s all delightfully tactical. And there is a wonderful contrast between the vicious barges and elegant weaving.
#notebook
Instead of going to see a broadcast of the stage version of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, directed by and starring Al Pacino, my dad, in his infinite kindness, took my niece to a singalong showing of Frozen ♥
#notebook
Instead of going to see a broadcast of the stage version of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, directed by and starring Al Pacino, my dad, in his infinite kindness, took my niece to a singalong showing of Frozen ♥
#notebook
I’m rewatching [Band of Brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_Brothers_(miniseries)). I’ve just seen episode six. It’s the one where Easy are besieged in the forest. It’s winter and there is snow everywhere. The soldiers have no proper winter clothing and spend most of their time dodging airstrikes or shivering in their fox holes or getting lost in the fog as they move from one part of the line to another.
The sense of place is really excellent. The programme is fuzzy about the geography of the staging area. I often find myself wondering, Where are those men in relation to those other men? What path did they take to get from that piece of cover to that emplacement? The Bastogne episode is similarly fuzzy on spatial relationships, but it is anchored by a back and forth between the nearest captured town and the line. The medic, the focal character for the episode, spends time shivering with his comrades. After a while, someone gets shot or blown up. The medic takes the casualty to the church that the French are using as a makeshift sick bay. The medic has a cosy exchange with the nurse working there, then goes back to the line.
This back and forth is strengthened by the sense of place. The snowy forest is hushed and anything farther than twenty yards is fogged away. It is weirdly tranquil. The viciousness of the conditions and the fighting accentuates the few flickers of closeness between the soldiers, and makes a sanctuary of the medic’s visits back to the nurse.
#notebook
I’m rewatching [Band of Brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_Brothers_(miniseries)). I’ve just seen episode six. It’s the one where Easy are besieged in the forest. It’s winter and there is snow everywhere. The soldiers have no proper winter clothing and spend most of their time dodging airstrikes or shivering in their fox holes or getting lost in the fog as they move from one part of the line to another.
The sense of place is really excellent. The programme is fuzzy about the geography of the staging area. I often find myself wondering, Where are those men in relation to those other men? What path did they take to get from that piece of cover to that emplacement? The Bastogne episode is similarly fuzzy on spatial relationships, but it is anchored by a back and forth between the nearest captured town and the line. The medic, the focal character for the episode, spends time shivering with his comrades. After a while, someone gets shot or blown up. The medic takes the casualty to the church that the French are using as a makeshift sick bay. The medic has a cosy exchange with the nurse working there, then goes back to the line.
This back and forth is strengthened by the sense of place. The snowy forest is hushed and anything farther than twenty yards is fogged away. It is weirdly tranquil. The viciousness of the conditions and the fighting accentuates the few flickers of closeness between the soldiers, and makes a sanctuary of the medic’s visits back to the nurse.
#notebook #medianotes
I’ve been playing this on the PS4 for a week or so. I’m starting to see the shape of the game. You go into the castle. You go from room to room and use a mixture of timing and agility and lore to kill baddies. You die. You find treasure and spend it on either new abilities or new gear. Your heir inherits your abilities and gear. They also have some random characteristics: maybe they are tall, or strong, or fast, or sickly.
As you hone your motor skills, and as you improve the attributes of your lineage, you get better at surviving and gathering treasure. Thus, you can improve your skills and lineage further. All this is heading towards some goals that I haven’t glimpsed, yet: defeating bosses, areas, the castle.
It is fun, for sure. But there is a problem.
You input time and you improve your ability: better motor skills, a better understanding of how the objects in the world work. This is satisfying because you are learning. But, the increase in avatar skill is much greater: more hit points, more spells, a sharper sword. This is unsatisfying because you are not learning.
In contrast, the ratio in Spelunky is the other way around. Though some small avatar improvements persist, the great weight of improvement occurs in the player’s ability to predict what will happen when they do something.
#notebook
I’ve been playing this on the PS4 for a week or so. I’m starting to see the shape of the game. You go into the castle. You go from room to room and use a mixture of timing and agility and lore to kill baddies. You die. You find treasure and spend it on either new abilities or new gear. Your heir inherits your abilities and gear. They also have some random characteristics: maybe they are tall, or strong, or fast, or sickly.
As you hone your motor skills, and as you improve the attributes of your lineage, you get better at surviving and gathering treasure. Thus, you can improve your skills and lineage further. All this is heading towards some goals that I haven’t glimpsed, yet: defeating bosses, areas, the castle.
It is fun, for sure. But there is a problem.
You input time and you improve your ability: better motor skills, a better understanding of how the objects in the world work. This is satisfying because you are learning. But, the increase in avatar skill is much greater: more hit points, more spells, a sharper sword. This is unsatisfying because you are not learning.
In contrast, the ratio in Spelunky is the other way around. Though some small avatar improvements persist, the great weight of improvement occurs in the player’s ability to predict what will happen when they do something.
#notebook #medianotes
A drama about a volatile young offender who gets sent to a prison for adults. The documentary-like scenes about the mechanics of the prison - the hierarchies, the rituals, the mediums of exchange - were very good. The second half of the film felt far too plotty and causal, as the characters conducted neat, explosive relationships and said the words of the director and screenwriter.
#notebook
A drama about a volatile young offender who gets sent to a prison for adults. The documentary-like scenes about the mechanics of the prison - the hierarchies, the rituals, the mediums of exchange - were very good. The second half of the film felt far too plotty and causal, as the characters conducted neat, explosive relationships and said the words of the director and screenwriter.
#notebook
Ed Catmull: Creativity, Inc. Entire Talk - YouTube
Could I have said anything to myself at twenty years old that would have made a difference? And honest to God, I don’t know. I go through some examples in the book of things which I think are important. But that thing which I thought is powerful I later learnt meant nothing. One of them is that ‘story is king’. And we believed that. But then I realised that every studio said that, whether or not they were producing works of art or complete utter pieces of dreck. The phrase didn’t have any meaning. So my logic is then go to the next stage of that. Sometimes those things that are 'true’ don’t actually alter our behaviour.
#notebook
Isabelle Huppert plays a woman who has a stroke and slowly learns to walk again. She is marvellous: plucky, outraged, childish, bad-tempered, funny and appealing. The rest of the film is uninteresting.
#notebook
Isabelle Huppert plays a woman who has a stroke and slowly learns to walk again. She is marvellous: plucky, outraged, childish, bad-tempered, funny and appealing. The rest of the film is uninteresting.
#notebook #medianotes
I saw this at the Film Forum with Lauren on Saturday. It is a noir directed by Billy Wilder. It is simultaneously very funny and very unsettling. It is run through with Raymond Chandler (“Up in Medford, we take our time making up our minds.” “Well, we’re not in Medford now, we’re in a hurry.”) The leads are odious. The supporting characters are decent.
#notebook
I saw this at the Film Forum with Lauren on Saturday. It is a noir directed by Billy Wilder. It is simultaneously very funny and very unsettling. It is run through with Raymond Chandler (“Up in Medford, we take our time making up our minds.” “Well, we’re not in Medford now, we’re in a hurry.”) The leads are odious. The supporting characters are decent.
#notebook #medianotes
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