Markku.lempinen

superbestiario:

“I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” – Gordon Parks

Segregation history, Gordon parks. 1956

This isn’t ancient history. This was NORMAL and ACCEPTED in America in my parents’ lifetime.

We still have a lot of work to do, to realize the promise of equality in this country.

This incredible LEGO model of Pompeii is on display at Sydney, Australia's Nicholson Museum. Read the rest

When I first spotted this, I did not realize it was a render. I am a big fan of scientific builds, and this is definitely up my alley. I particularly love the molecule model. The scale is fantastic. The periodic table is instantly recognizable.

Matt Bace is definitely knocking out some amazing things, like the power strip we featured last week. I definitely recommend poking around a bit in his flickr steam.

I have gone back to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to work on a project called Apollo 1201, which will use a combination of code, law, norms and markets to eradicate DRM within a decade: we choose to do this not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Read the rest

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Artist Charles Young creates a new, tiny, glorious little model for his Paperholm tiny city project each day. Read the rest

“These are not the bricks you’re looking for!” Given that this is only Aaron Fiskum‘s second build, we are very impressed. Using almost 3000 bricks and measuring about 2 feet (half a meter) in length, this Star Wars “X34″ landspeeder was designed to match the scale and style of LEGO’s Ultimate Collectors Series (UCS) sets, that have become much coveted by LEGO’s more grown-up fan base.

Every detail has been faithfully recreated, right down to the very comfortable looking cockpit shown below. Make sure to check out Aaron’s Flickr album for loads more close-up shots.

 

Seven-year-old Liam Porter of Augusta, Georgia was presented with a 3D-printed prosthetic arm modeled after Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers when he emerged from a theater at Regal 20 Cinemas. Members of the 501st Legion of costumed Stormtroopers presented Porter with the arm designed by E-Nabling the Future, along with a matching helmet and made the seven-year-old a commander in the organization.

images via The Augusta Chronicle

via The Augusta Chronicle, Boing Boing

Helen Green drew and compiled this fantastic GIF of Bowie's hairstyles. (h/t Kottke.org)

David Cameron says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" -- and no doubt many in his party will agree with him, politically. But if they understood the technology, they would be shocked to their boots. Read the rest

EFF has released its mobile app to help people join in important, timely struggles, but you can't get it for your Iphone or Ipad, because Apple insists that EFF use DRM, and this is contrary to everything it stands for. Read the rest

Under an insane new Russian "safety law," people with "mental disorders" may not drive. Read the rest

Jim Henson’s beloved Muppets probably need no introduction, thanks to the international success both of the Sesame Street franchise, and a long series of excellent Muppet movies. But it’s a little harder to gauge how well-known The Muppet Show was. Airing over several seasons in the late seventies, the television show was produced and aired in the UK, as no US network would touch it.

After that, it’s less clear how widely syndicated the show became. But these excellent builds of show regulars Waldorf/Statler and the Swedish Chef by German builder Andreas Weissenburg (grubaluk) suggest to me that maybe the show did gain some international popularity after all!

Oh, and a word of warning: If you ever meet someone from Sweden, please please please do NOT ask them what they think of the Swedish Chef …it’s still kind of a sore point with them!

Ok, it’s just a theory, but hey, if you don’t come to a guys blog to hear his personal take on things…you are doing it wrong…:D. And to be fair, it’s not just mine, I don’t recall where, but I recall once reading someone make the point that if you could go back in time and remove the movie ‘aliens’ and the book ‘the lord of the rings’, you would basically eradicate modern gaming. Obviously that is a huge generalization, but I think a decent point is being made. I’ve also noticed it in personal experience, I’ve been in a design meeting where the designer has described big sweeping changes to the way the game should look, and it was obvious to absolutely everyone that he saw ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ the night before.

The problems with that is we have ALL seen Aliens and we have ALL seen The Lord Of the Rings. I’m serious in suggesting 99% of you readers have seen both. You have all seen Star Wars too.

Now there is some decent mileage in saying that you are making a game that appeals to your demographic, and that this is a sensible thing to do, and that yes, lots of people like space monsters, laser guns and orcs. The trouble is, EVERYONE ELSE is doing this too. As a result, you need to bring something else to the table if you are going to compete. The problem is, you are stuck, creatively speaking inside the prison of your own experiences.

Game developers tend to be young, sometimes shy, introverted indoors types who can be a bit obsessive. As a result, they tend towards having knowledge and experience in depth, rather than breadth, and from a game design POV that is stifling. Game design works well (in fact I’d suggest all creativity works well) when you bring multiple influences, hopefully really diverse ones into the mix. Saying you like both Star Wars AND Star Trek does not count. I mean really diverse.

I’d never heard of Ayn Rand before Bioshock. Since then I’ve even bought a book of hers (out of curiosity, don’t hate me, I’ve read The Communist manifesto too, I’m open minded…). I really liked Bioshock (up to a point), and I think the atmosphere and story was what made it great. When I play Bioshock I feel like I’m experiencing ‘Alien’ ‘20,000 leagues under the sea’ and ‘Doom’ combined with a (to me) fairly obscure Russian philosophers writings, with a strong background in art deco. This is why it works. This is why it is cool. This is why Bioshock is not just another corridor shooter or RPG.

Nobody who really does any proper game design thinks they are gods gift to game design. I certainly do not. But sometimes people *do* ask me for advice, and the advice I give is nothing to do with games. If you want to be a better game designer, Read a book you would never normally read. Sit through a movie you would never normally watch, Go somewhere amazing, try something weird. Build up as many experiences as you can. I’ve tried tons, from helicopter/fixed wing flying to horseriding, archery, clay-pigeon shooting, guitar & piano playing, and lost more. I’ve read a fairly bizarre range of books from War & Peace to Chuchill’s War Diaries to Kurt Vonnegut to A.S.Byatt and Naomi Klein.

Kudos (my life sim game) was inspired by a film (Donnie darko…don’t ask), Democracy inspired by a book about cybernetic chimpanzees, GSB by a book about D-Day. It’s probably hard to tell any of those connections, but there are there, and they make a difference.

Don’t stay in the geek bubble, don’t just read science fiction and fantasy, don’t just watch the blockbuster movies. There is a huge range of amazing culture out there that can act as your inspiration, stop sticking to the same few movies.

And yeah…I get the total irony of a guy making ‘Gratuitous Space Battles’ typing this stuff :D

I was planning to deliver you the regular wishes and give some explanations about the recent black-out of the site, but the sad actuality forced me to publish this (bad) strip right now. I'm (was?) an occasional reader of "Charlie Hebdo", and also a genuine fan of Charb's corosive humor. Wolinsky and Cabu were important figures in the cartoon landscape. And my thoughts also go the the other victims. I'm not myself a political satirist and an "engaged" artist, and can only admire those who defend strong (not to say extreme) ideas by their own art. When such people die for their opinions, we are going back into some gloomy darkness...

 

Oscar Rickett and ​Krent Able created The A-Z of Torture for Vice.

I’m a fan of seeing new concepts in Lego creations such as a working zoetrope by Ian Spacek. The viewer rotates the cylinder and peers through the slots to see the sequence of animated images.

Sonya Belousova is one of today's most accomplished young composers and pianists. Watch her demonstrate her skill by listening to a series of Nintendo themes — most for the first time ever — and then coming up with gorgeous arrangements on the spot.

I can pick out a tune on just about any instrument you mut in front of me, but what Sonya of PlayerPianoMusic.com does in this video, a few weeks old but currently making the Reddit rounds, is some sort of dark melodic sorcery.

While the themes from games like Kid Icarus, Castlevania, Duck Tales and Mega Man are ingrained in the collective gamer consciousness, Russian-born Belousova is hearing most of these for the first time, save the original Super Mario Bros. music.

Her Duck Tales moon theme arrangement literally brought a tear to my eye.

The video was put together as a reward for one of Player Piano Music's Indiegogo campaign. Good man, Oliver.

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Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog

All Thumbs has devised a method for molding your own sugar-based hot-glue-gun sticks that you can feed into an unused and uncontaminated gun to produce perfect gingerbread-house-building molten sugar adhesive. Read the rest

From an Imgur Post of the same title: I was moved out to an extremely remote country area in the middle of NSW Australia to live with people I didn't want to live with and isolated with no internet for 7 years during my childhood/teenhood. Using the 1980s reference books from my high school library, I decided to build my own OS so that I had a more manageable way of dealing with files than the standard DOS structure. A short but interesting read about the author's experience with pictures of the finsished product.

LegoJalex built an elaborate kid’s room from the 80’s featuring many iconic toys from the time. How many do you recognize?

Citizenfour, the acclaimed Laura Poitras documentary about Edward Snowden, has been given an R rating by the notoriously corrupt and opaque MPAA ratings board (see This Film Is Not Yet Rated). Read the rest

Congratulation to Ken and Roberta for their Industry Icon Award. Well deserved.

Over the years, I’ve given Sierra a lot of crap, but the honest fact is that without King's Quest, there would be no Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island. It really did set the template that we all followed.

I’ve told this story before, but you’re going to listen to it again…

A few months into Maniac Mansion, Gary and I had a bunch of fun ideas, some characters, and a creepy old mansion, but what we didn’t have was a game. There was nothing to hang any of our ideas on top of.

I was feeling a little lost. “There is no game”, I kept saying.

We had our christmas break and I went down to visit my Aunt and Uncle. My eight year old cousin was playing King's Quest I. I’d never seen the game before and I watched him for hours.  Everything Gary and I had been talking about suddenly made sense.  Maniac Mansion should be an adventure game.

Without King's Quest, I don’t know if that leap would have happened. No matter how innovative and new something is, it's always built on something else. Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island are built on King's Quest.

We always had a fun rivalry with Sierra and they always made us try harder and be better.

Thank you Ken and Roberta and everyone else at Sierra.

Tons of amazing concepts by our good friend Simon Stalenhag. Check out conceptships.














Keywords: concept mechs robots droids runaway kids wireless controlling robot toward police car futuristic realistic robotic landscape concept art by simon stalenhag in stockholm sweden

Tons of amazing concepts by our good friend Simon Stalenhag. Check out conceptrobots.






Keywords: concept spaceships flying vehicle illustartions hd high definition concept art by simon stalenhag in stockholm sweden concept robots

Luca Iaconi-Stewart is building a "1:60 model of an Air India Boeing 777-300ER made entirely from manila file folders," with an unbelievable level of detail (it even has working mechanisms!) Read the rest

Image & Form's turn-based strategy game SteamWorld Heist is coming to "all current platforms," studio CEO Brjann Sigurgeirsson revealed this week. SteamWorld: Heist is now scheduled for release on the Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, and...

I made this poster after seeing (and retweeting) this from @CompSciFact, whom you should be following:

‘Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small.’ — Rob Pike

— Computer Science (@CompSciFact) December 2, 2014

It’s the most amusing of Rob Pike’s 5 Rules of Programming, which are listed below:

1. You can’t tell where a program is going to spend its time. Bottlenecks occur in surprising places, so don’t try to second guess and put in a speed hack until you’ve proven that’s where the bottleneck is.
2. Measure. Don’t tune for speed until you’ve measured, and even then don’t unless one part of the code overwhelms the rest.
3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don’t get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.)
4. Fancy algorithms are buggier than simple ones, and they’re much harder to implement. Use simple algorithms as well as simple data structures.
5. Data dominates. If you’ve chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

It’s a good set of general rules to keep in mind.

I’m not very good at game balancing and low level design decisions (like whether gun A fires faster than gun B, or what the cost of power C is). I’m just not. I also suck at art. I have no idea what colors go with what colors. This is why my better half chooses my clothes. I’m safe with black, but beyond that, I’d end up dressed like a circus clown if left to my own decisions.

I’m good at some other stuff. I’m very good at Game Names, big-picture ideas for game themes and ‘style’. I’m very good at optimization, and good at the business/strategic/marketing side of things. The thing is, it’s taken me a while to absolutely come to terms with what I am and am not good at. I started selling games in 1997, so it took me 17 years to work this out. That means that for most indie devs out there, the chances of you having really worked this out yet are pretty fucking low.

I know one game developer who is good at big picture stuff, but very bad at mechanics and actual coding. They are awesome at marketing. I know another who is a genius at both high and low level design, but not so good at strategic biz stuff. Both are great talented people who are doing ok. Both will remain nameless :D

The big decisions and difficulties come when you think about what to do regarding the stuff you aren’t good at.

There are basically two choices: Get good at them, or outsource them. Obviously it isn’t that easy. You *can* outsource almost anything. Even big-picture stuff like game name and style/design can be outsourced. You won’t see an advert for people who do this, but there are plenty of very talented designers who would work for you as a consultant on such stuff. There is no shortage of guys in suits who will act as consultants for you on the topics of business and marketing/PR as well. When it comes to coding/art etc, the options to outsource that stuff are well known and varied.

In the long run, you need to work out what bits of your business you do want to control and run personally, and what stuff can be left to someone else. For me, with my temperament and skills/interests, I want to control all of the business, PR and big picture design. In an ideal world I’d do all the coding too (I still do…), but I could cope with letting that go a bit one day. That means I need good artists, QA, and design people, and I’m gradually over the years building up a list of the right people for all this.

The tendency, and I’m sure many indie devs encounter this, is to pretend you can be good at everything, just given enough enthusiasm/late-nights. This is bullshit. Steve Jobs didn’t solder together Apple II components, nor did he design the iMac. He knew what he was good at, and stuck with it. At the start, when you have no money, you’ll probably need to offer revenue share to artists or PR/biz people who help you out. That’s fine. At the very start, if you are feeling adventurous, you probably (for at least one game) try and do it all yourself, for no other reason than to work out what you really do enjoy, and what you don’t. Try not to be like me, and take over a decade to work this out.

 

peterfromtexas:

Some statistic for today