Into the uncanny valley of Xbox360…
I bought an Xbox 360 yesterday as a companion to getting a nice big HD flatscreen – so far haven't really done anything more than been a UI nerd about the 'blades' interface, downloaded a trial of Viva Pinata (which Foe seemed to get into, but looks like a lot of hard work to me), enjoyed a bit of Boom-Boom Rocket (but not sure it will have that much longevity – esp. with Foe shouting about how much it pays 'homage' to the fireworks minigames in VMK!) and gotten beaten a lot by the computer (console?) in Rockstar Table Tennis.
RTT really is my first gaming experience of the uncanny valley as has been described by Clive Thompson with reference to hidef gaming. I wonder however if the valley can be escaped by getting the high-polygon-count NPCs to be possessed like puppets from afar.
Which is a long winded way of saying: can get I get your gamertags?
Mine is moleitau.
On having a really long notice period in the gelatinous cube
I gave my notice at Nokia in March, and my contract stipulated a three month notice period. I love the team of people I work with directly, there's no bad blood I'm aware of with my boss, and I'm not going to go work with a competitor.
So, I asked to work for all of the notice period, as opposed to taking it as 'gardening leave', which is normally the default for large organisations.
I'm about to enter the last month of my notice period, and I'm starting to become more peripheral – partly through my own engineering, partly through the engineering of others, and partly through some kind of weird autonomic self-healing capacity of large, slow-moving corporations.
It's like slowly escaping a gelatinous cube.
And, we’re back!
Many thanks to the good people of The Flirble Organisation.
How to: deliver picnics from high-orbit
Available shortly
Inspired by something that Chris Messina said in a Web2Expo panel
Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones.
(hopefully) to vote for at Threadless, and to buy direct from Spreadshirt. URLs to come.
For designers, hackers, and those that love them.
Saffer And Jones: They fight 8-bit crime!
Borough Market, Good Friday
Spending the weekend enjoying our new neighbourhood, much like the star of this photo, before both of us hit San Francisco for a week.
Joy vs Authority
"It is odd – will I say heart-breaking? – how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is its great enemy – the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority…
…Pomp, an unwholesome diet, a cause of choler, a pleasure paid to late and at too high a price, like lying with a peppered paramour."
Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian, Chapter Six, P173.
QotD: Strange Little Songs
What are the weirdest song titles in your playlist or music collection?
Submitted by Charline.
"King's Lead Hat" – Brian Eno
"Hair Pie: Bake 2" – Capt. Beefheart
"Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish" – Capt. Beefheart
In fact, I think I'll stop there as Capt. Beefheart kinda pwns this QotD.
Petafloptimism 