08.21.12 |
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The consistently excellent Tom Bissell, writing for Grantland:
I have my qualms about the story this game tells, but then I always do. At the same time, I’m aware that BioWare’s writers have had to juggle the individual and — depending on player action — often highly variable fates of several dozen characters throughout something like 150 cumulative hours of in-game narrative time…In light of that, the story’s occasional failure to make sense is forgivable. Slightly less forgivable is the fact that Commander Shepard, Mass Effect’s indomitable hero, seems to meet the same two dozen people in every Mass Effect game. Is this the smallest galaxy ever imagined? It seems like it. There’s a point at which fan service becomes narrative prostitution.
I couldn’t agree more. As I noted in an earlier editorial the constant “coincidental” bump ins with past characters from the Mass Effect universe got pretty grating. This could have been handled a more gracefully if some aspects of this were just directly written in the plot (e.g. Shepard is asked to directly assemble his old team.)
08.20.12 |
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Dan Mall is a huge figure in the web design community. I’ve been a fan of Mall’s output for years, yet I haven’t spotted many interviews with him after he left NYC firm Big Spaceship. This talk with The Industry‘s Conor O’Driscoll is brief yet informative. I especially liked hearing about Dan’s day to day:
I wake up everyday around 4:45AM-5:00AM. I get to the gym between 5 and 5:30 where I’ll lift for an hour then play either basketball or racquetball with my brother, then head home around 7 to shower and get ready for the day…We’re in bed by 9PM.
That’s an early schedule, and I’m impressed Dan sleeps eight hours a night.
08.20.12 |
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Film Crit Hulk on the the ending to Mass Effect 3 (game spoilers will follow):
To be honest, hulk thought it was one of the best video game endings that Hulk has ever seen. It went for a brief, beautiful articulation of everything it ever needed to say about its central, driving theme. But even if it didn’t do it for you in that same emotional way as it did for hulk, there is no denying that the ending is a single, economic thought and pure expression of the creators.
Hulk argues well here. It’s probably the best defense of Bioware’s original intention I’ve read. Yet like many (most?) of those that have finished the game, I remain disappointed by Mass Effect 3‘s ending. It fails on several levels – it’s length (there were early side mission cut scenes that ran longer) and its failure to account for decisions made earlier in the game, a hallmark of the Mass Effect series. Yet for me the biggest shortcoming was less plot and more user interface; that “walk to one of three options” final choice on the Crucible was flat out confusing.
08.17.12 |
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I noted Hiss earlier as a little stopgap measure to send Growl messages to Notification Center. I used the app for a few days but remained unsatisfied, as every notification is listed as sent from Growl, instead of the proper original app.
Enter Bark. Similar premise, but cleaner. Run Growl and select Bark as the notification style – it takes care of the rest. So far so good, though much of this should be nullified once the Growl 2.0 SDK is fully implemented.
08.16.12 |
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Tech manager/writer Michael Lopp:
it’s 10:35am and the fact you’re reading at 10:35 am means you’re not really that busy…There are many forms to not being busy. You might just be getting your day started with a cup of coffee, you might be on your lunch hour, or you might have seven precious minutes to take a deep breath amongst your crushing responsibilities, but here’s my question: is the lack of busy more fun than your job?
That’s deep Lopp, deep. Yet it’s a good question to consider in today’s rapidly changing workplace.
08.16.12 |
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A nice extended comments thread over at Hacker News where users suggest websites and other resources for UX and UI design.
08.15.12 |
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I’ve lately been catching up with this news summary site each evening after work. It’s a quick summary of the big stories and uses excellent typography and a responsive design. I shouldn’t be surprised given the work is by Mule Design. It was mocked up and launched within a week.
08.15.12 |
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I learned a few nice tricks here by web developer Flavio Copes, most notably the ability to debug code based on DOM modifications.
08.15.12 |
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I saw this originally over at Craig Mod’s Twitter stream. I agree with his take: even though the Iconfactory normally does excellent work, there’s something about the default Sublime Text 2 icon that doesn’t quite click. I like this smooth pure black square alternative by designer Dan Perrera more.
08.14.12 |
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I’ve already linked to a few of these extended back and forth conversations between NYT critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis; they are uniformly excellent. This week’s topic adds optimism to what tends to be a sore spot in the summer movie season: diversity. We’re finally seeing a lot more films this summer that appeal to multiple tastes, not just the hyper violent, lightweight teenage segment. I especially liked Dargis’s indie funding idea:
If I were running a studio (ha!), I would take the money that I’d set aside for the next bad idea (like a remake of “Total Recall”) and give a handful of directors, tested and less so — Todd Haynes, Barry Jenkins, Kelly Reichardt, Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Aaron Katz, Benh Zeitlin, Damien Chazelle — $10 million apiece to make whatever they want, as long as the results come in with an R rating or below and don’t run over two hours.