01.11.13 |
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Valve CEO Gabe Newell:
We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box, [and] if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination. We also think that a controller that has higher precision and lower latency is another interesting thing to have.
I’m going to take a guess and say an ‘official’ Steam Box should make it ways out by the end of 2013, coinciding nicely with the launch of next-gen consoles by Sony and Microsoft. We could have a potential PC (Steam) vs. console (Sony, Microsoft) vs. mobile (iOS) race ahead of us, fighting for attention in the living room. I think iOS mobile gaming will inevitably stay strong and get stronger, but all bets are off in terms of how consoles and PCs will end up two years from now.
01.10.13 |
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As a YouTube commenter points out, it’s pretty rare to get interviewers that can keep up with Tarantino’s rapidfire thoughts, but Furguson does a good job. Watch to get Tarantino’s thoughts on Prometheus, Hatfields & McCoys, kids movies and more.
01.10.13 |
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I find myself in Photoshop pretty much every day in the office. As our web team moves increasingly to a responsive, grid based framework, design work has to match grid structures perfectly, hence the importance of grid guides or layers to keep things on track.
But Photoshop doesn’t make quick guide generation easy out of the box. Enter GuideGuide, a free tool by designer Cameron McEfee. Install it as a Photoshop extension, and with just a few clicks you’ve got simple horizontal or vertical grid guides based on percentages or pixels.
01.09.13 |
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Mark Bowden writing for The Atlantic (warning, Zero Dark Thirty spoilers ahead):
The charge that the film is pro-torture is easy to debunk. I have already noted the dramatic failure depicted in the opening scenes with Ammar. The futility of the approach is part of the more general organizational failure depicted in the movie’s first half, culminating in a dramatization of the tragic 2009 bombing of Camp Chapman, in Khost, Afghanistan, where an al-Qaeda infiltrator wiped out an entire CIA field office. The agency is shown to be not only failing to find bin Laden and dismantle al-Qaeda, but on the losing end of the fight.
There’s been a huge flap in recent weeks over Zero Dark Thirty and its ‘pro-torture stance’. After viewing (and being blown away by) the movie last week, I just don’t buy it. Adding onto what Bowden writes above, the early torture heavy scenes made me feel queasy and very uncomfortable, and I think that’s exactly what director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal intended. It happened, and to skip over it or portray it anything else than what it was would be a whitewash.
01.09.13 |
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I’ve been listening to the design/mobile/tech podcast Iterate for a while now. While it’s often pretty jargon dense and gets pretty deep in the weeds in terms of iOS and mobile design, as a full time web designer/developer, it’s a must listen each week. Episode 36 with designers Louis, Brad and Jessie of group Pacific Helm is one of my favorites to date. Very funny with plenty of little design tools and tips I didn’t know about.
01.08.13 |
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Rembrant Browne, writing for Grantland:
Being uncomfortable. False ownership of terms. False ownership of cultures. Troubled histories. Finger-pointing. Segregation in an integrated world (or is it integration in a segregated world?). All of these things contributed to the myriad emotions I felt in that theater. But these were just my emotions. There were hundreds of people in that theater alone, and hundreds of thousands more have already viewed the movie. Everyone‘s seeing Django. That’s what makes it an important work, beyond the quality, because we’re all having to deal with it, together.
01.08.13 |
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A great primer on CSS3 transitions by developer Alex Maccaw. I really like how Alex mixes up basic syntax with performance implications and cross browser support.
01.07.13 |
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This episode recorded this last Saturday at CES has some good back and forth specific to the web in the first twenty to thirty minutes. In particular, hosts Josh, Nilay and Paul discuss the recent spat between Microsoft and Google due to the removal of Google Maps web access on Windows Mobile. There’s talk about monopolies on the web, Webkit and web standards.
01.07.13 |
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Robin Sloan:
Today, I don’t think—and I’m almost afraid to write this, because it’s like the tolling of some great bell—today I don’t think the amateur’s best effort is good enough. We as internet users have less patience and less charity for janky, half-broken experiences…
…But you know who can totally craft an experience that works flawlessly on a phone, a tablet, a laptop, and a rice cooker? The team that made Medium. Other teams like it. In a word: professionals.
Robin’s illustrates how responsive, multi-device design has really taken over the web design world. It also underlines how important constant education is for even experienced web designers – experience with the latest and greatest often separates the pros from the amateurs.
01.04.13 |
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Major credit to the video editors here; all references are in strictly chronological order. The rarity of almost any references from the 90s or later I think subtly keeps Tarantino’s early filmography from feeling too dated.