Theory of Fun PDF

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*[Cory Doctorow]{style=""}: I reivewed Raph Koster's brilliant Theory of Fun book (think of it as an Understanding Comics for games) here before, and now I'm delighted to see that Raph's posted a tremendous, graphic-rich picture-book in PDF format detailing the notions from the game. 4.7MB PDF Link …

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Outsourcing to Kona

I love the idea of outsourcing to rural parts of the country[via]{style="FONT-STYLE: italic"} [Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet]

As a person who’s “outsourced“ himself, first to :45 minutes from San Francisco and now to 3,000 miles from the mainland, there’s a certain temptation …

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Getting My Hopes Up On Episode 3

Dammit. The trailer for Star Wars 3: The Revenge of the Sith, actually looks good! I just know I'm going to get my heart broken again...[via]{style="FONT-STYLE: italic"} [Marquee de Sells: Chris's insight outlet]

Dang, it does look good. Mostly because it features 3 characters from the original …

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Stoplight turns red for speeders

*Mark Frauenfelder*: The city of Pleasanton, California has come up with a funny way to punish speeders:

[The] city's traffic engineers have created a traffic signal with attitude. It senses when a speeder is approaching and metes out swift punishment. It doesn't write a ticket. It immediately turns from green …

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DB40 goes open source

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[Browsing Freshmeat this morning and I noticed that DB40 has gone open source…. db4objects - native Java and .NET open source object database engine and is well worth a look. [Via]{style="font-style:italic"} [Fast Takes]]{style=""}

Ah! Object databases. Always have been The Next Big Thing. And I’m …

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DSL Tools Now Available

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We announced it last week, but the DSL Tools home page just went live today. The big thing is the Microsoft Tools for Domain Specific Languages Technology Preview. There's also a walkthru of the tool, a newsgroup and Jochen's blog. We also published the third article in the Software …

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"Out of Sight, Out of a Job" Column Now Available

My latest column for SD Times is a bit of spleen-venting about stupid MBAs who believe that the loss of technical expertise is fine: “[F]uture entrepreneurs and great businesspeople will come from the countries where the work is done, not from a country whose 'comparative advantage' is reduced to …

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Interpreting Ink as Python Video

Jon Udell's recent forays into making movies of software  inspired me to take this video of “Pynk,” my interactive Python IDE for the TabletPC, in action. Here then, Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you: “Interpreting Ink as Python code.” Consider this a 1 minute and 20 second teaser for a 2 …

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Must-read before going into videogame programming

This note from the spouse of an Electronic Arts employee, detailing mandatory 80+ hour work weeks with no overtime pay or comp time, rings totally true to me. via \<a href="http://www.brandonfurtwangler.com/index.php%3fp%3d46" ">Brandon Furtwangler

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Acrobat Reader Speed-Up Utility: Must Use!

Holy Cow! I don't think I've ever been happier with a 129K download than with the ARSU utility. It makes a huge improvement in Acrobat Reader start-up time.

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