Toffee Milkshake

"To me, the sad thing is that expensive films are now dominated by the visual-effects houses. And who..."

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 07:50:47 +0100

“To me, the sad thing is that expensive films are now dominated by the visual-effects houses. And who are the artists of the visual-effects houses? You know, nerds who have spent their whole lives looking at comic books and video games. So that’s where they get all their visual ideas. That’s why there is an endless repetition of visual ideas in so-called spectacular fantasy or in science fiction.”

- Brian DePalma

Art forum interview (via milesgunter)

Raises the question: Why is the visual imagination of most games and comics is so conventional?

"Creating a good piece of data journalism or a good data-driven app is often more like an art than a..."

Thu, 31 May 2012 14:34:30 +0100

“Creating a good piece of data journalism or a good data-driven app is often more like an art than a science. Like photography, it involves selection, filtering, framing, composition and emphasis.”

- What data can and cannot do | News | guardian.co.uk

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether: Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman,...

Thu, 31 May 2012 11:06:19 +0100

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Annie Leibovitz and Amy Poehler

"Everyone had our media one-sheet. Everyone (we thought) was on the same page about which accounts to..."

Wed, 30 May 2012 20:38:30 +0100

“

Everyone had our media one-sheet. Everyone (we thought) was on the same page about which accounts to tag in their Tweets and Facebook posts, which hashtag(s) to use for which subject/campaign, and who to go to for questions …

And then Justin Bieber tweeted with a different hashtag: #BILLBOARDawards

”

- Billboard.biz

Justin Bieber is the Leeroy Jenkins of self-satisfied social media campaigns.

(via katherinestasaph)

Amazing! The whole thing’s like an Onion article.

"The cowardice of Brent’s Labour council in stripping Kensal Rise library, and the philistinism..."

Wed, 30 May 2012 15:53:18 +0100

“The cowardice of Brent’s Labour council in stripping Kensal Rise library, and the philistinism of unscrewing the brass plaque remembering Mark Twain from its wall, in the middle of the night, would horrify anyone who still recalls Labour’s founding mission to share education, knowledge and hope with the people. We will continue to fight for our library,”

- Kensal Rise library stripped in night of books and Twain plaque | UK news | The Guardian

waxandmilk: Assorted campaign pins (via Legacy Americana)

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:39:01 +0100

waxandmilk:

Assorted campaign pins

_{(via Legacy Americana)}

Twist Street: I'm Having a Difficult Time Answering the New iPhone Security Questions

Tue, 29 May 2012 17:56:00 +0100

Twist Street: I'm Having a Difficult Time Answering the New iPhone Security Questions:

twiststreet:

What weapon would you use to murder a box of kittens?

Deadly gas triggered by radioactive decay of course!

Fighting people who are wrong on the internet!

Tue, 29 May 2012 16:58:00 +0100

I try not to argue on the internet too much for all the obvious reasons but combating innumeracy with graphics is like my dream Jeopardy category so here goes:

James on twitter drew my attention to this quote from a paper by the Center for Social Justice (note I haven’t read most of the paper):

The first methodological flaw of the Government’s central measure of poverty is that it is defined in relative terms. The result of this is that the poor will always exist statistically, as it is inevitable that some in society will have less than others.

It isn’t the first time that someone who gets paid to understand this stuff has failed to understand this stuff. Here’s Frank “poverty czar” Field back in 2010:

Any candidate sitting GCSE maths should be able to explain that raising everybody above a set percentage of median income is rather like asking a cat to catch its own tail. As families are raised above the target level of income, the median point itself rises.

Actually any candidate sitting GCSE maths should be able to tell you that both these quotes are wrong.

Here is a chart illustrating how using a relative measure of poverty (the one we actually use, below 60% median income = poor) you might distribute incomes so that no one would be in poverty (note to the CSJ: Don’t worry, some people still have more money than others!):

There are lots of other ways you can achieve this but this is the one which requires pretty much the least adjustment from the current distribution of incomes. You can play around with the chart and find your own preferred distribution here.

The median is actually a bit of a tricky concept to get an intuitive grasp of, one of the reasons that this simple interactive chart is one of my favourite things I’ve built is that 1. it didn’t take very long and 2. it really shows how well interactive graphics can make abstract concepts more tangible, allowing people to explore a system’s possibility space*.

That said, however difficult the idea of the median might be there’s not really any excuse for people who are paid to understand this stuff not understanding it (esp if they’re being paid by the tax payer and/ or their lack of understanding might condemn people to lives of actual physical hardship and early death). I mean, to write a critique of the way in which something is measured without actually having a reasonable grasp of that measurement kind of undermines any conclusions you might come to don’t you think?

Bonus content! Some other poverty reduction strategies:

* also everyone liked my smiley face design which is the kind of thing I normally never get through all the checkpoints (for perfectly good reasons) :)

PS James also says…

Does anyone else apart from CSJ remember Blair-Brown years as featuring “astonishingly high levels of income redistribution”?

Over the past few years, Archie Comics has become one of the...

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:48:00 +0100

Over the past few years, Archie Comics has become one of the most socially progressive comic book publishers in the market, with genuinely solid storytelling that’s been pushing the boundaries of what they’ve done with their formula in the 70 years since the freckle-faced teenager made his debut. Today, they announced their latest move: In the upcoming Archie #633, they’ll tell the story of a future where Archie marries Valerie Smith (of Josie and the Pussycats fame) and they have a daughter.

It won’t be the first time that Archie has portrayed an interracial marriage in their comics. This month’s Life With Archie #16 already hit that mark by putting the marriage of a gay soldier right there on the cover of one of the few comics you can still pick up at the grocery store: (via Archie Is Having a Baby with Valerie From ‘Josie and the Pussycats’ [Exclusive] - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews)

Translation: Tom hears Peter Schilling on FM radio He knows...

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:39:29 +0100

Translation:

Tom hears Peter Schilling on FM radio
He knows "Travelling the Cosmos is my passion"
Until soon after a space shuttle exploded on TV
And the mother said: "Better become a doctor"

And so he didn't become a space ship conductor
[The human has been neutralized]
And so he became a banker
[The human has been neutralized]
And the sun sets, time passes by
Tom continues waiting for the seriousness in life

Tom sees a girl with a ring through her eyebrow
Excited, he has to look a second time
He says: "I will have such a ring through my nose"
The mother says: "We'll have to talk about this"

And so he didn't become a punk
[The human has been neutralized]
And so he became a banker
[The human has been neutralized]
And the sun sets, time passes by
Tom continues waiting for the seriousness in life

Tom reads the "Happy Computer" magazine and is fascinated
Wau Holland writes: "Information wants to be free"
Tom now wants to give away source code for free as well
The mother says: "One has to think about one's pension"

And so he didn't become a GNU fore-thinker
And so he became a banker
And the sun sets, time passes by
Tom continues waiting for the seriousness in life

Tom's feet rested too long under the father's table
He wants to afford a leather sofa
David Hamilton snaps the application photo
The bank boss likes the color of his tie
In his CV there is no astronaut or rocker
Instead it's printed with CV-O-MAT(TM) from TopWare(R)
The mother presents to him a world time clock for group leaders
to help with international business transactions

And so he became a banker
[And you, comrade?]
Whom he consults goes insolvent not before tomorrow
And the sun sets, time passes by
Which brings us to the end of Tom's path of life

Anno NTK from the people who gave you NTK last time: exactly the same thing, 15 years later.

Sat, 26 May 2012 10:13:40 +0100

Anno NTK from the people who gave you NTK last time: exactly the same thing, 15 years later.:

Yes, for your nostalgic delight, please find enclosed the
very first NTK, sent fifteen years ago this week.  If you
subscribe at http://www.tinyletter.com/annontk 'll continue
to send you each new historical copy in turn, soaked in tea
and burned at the edges, in glorious ascending chronological
order, until it trails awkwardly off again, in another ten
years or so. By which time, maybe we'll all have grown out
of this obsession.

And so, our curtain rises on a world where Windows 95 and
Internet Explorer 3 is the dominant web platform, and, in
Cupertino, a mortally-wounded and desperate Apple board
incant ancient summonings they do not yet fully comprehend...

The year is 1997, the date that begins...  ANNO NTK ]

an excellent essay on e-book design focusing on rethinking cover...

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:11:00 +0100

an excellent essay on e-book design focusing on rethinking cover design.

There are a few fairly uncontentious things that I think e-books really need to get right: 1. ditch the DRM it only helps Amazon (and they don’t need any help), not publishers or authors 2. actually proof read the things 3. work out how to make them look nice

1 seems to be happening, 2 should be easy and this essay seems a good starting point for 3.

Extend NY : The Manhattan Grid extended to every point on...

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:04:41 +0100

Extend NY : The Manhattan Grid extended to every point on Earth

(via kosmograd )

Whereas the Beijing Olympics represented an embracing of China...

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:40:00 +0100

Whereas the Beijing Olympics represented an embracing of China into the coven of Westernism, the London Olympics will show us just how venal unfettered capitalism can be, how its default modus operandi is paranoia, and rather than a celebration of human endeavour and athleticism, it demonstrates more that the power of branding requires such strict parameters of control that nothing can be left to chance. Brand Exclusion Zones are just one manifestation of the privatisation of public space that London is fast-tracking.

…

The spatial politics of brand paranoia will be part of the true legacy of the London Olympics.

Kosmograd: Olympics Brand Exclusion Zone

katherinestasaph: tomewing: toffeemilkshake: [stuff i...

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:59:00 +0100

katherinestasaph:

tomewing:

toffeemilkshake:

[stuff i said]

It was surprisingly fun, and I think the focus on mechanics Tom talks about is interesting - but like another responder said I’m in the camp which likes representation. BUT what was really intriguing is how I found my mind groping for representation even when there was none - imposing a story structure, giving characteristics to the environment, opponents etc. It would seem oddly like “spoilers” to go into detail about what those were - like a rorschach blot it’s something that needs to emerge out of yr own subconscious, man - so maybe later for that.

To be fair, my mind gropes for representation with everything. I’ve imagined storylines to games of FreeCell, and I have an entire canon for my various Nethack deaths.

(Standard caveat applies, which is that I know exactly what that says about me.)

That’s what I enjoy about games like Nethack, old text adventures etc. the scope they give your imagination to make up yr own stories, settings etc.* I really like Tom Armitage’s idea of ‘narrative exoskeleton’ wrt this stuff. The amount of stuff - setting, backstory, characters, visual and mechanical things all included - required to help you tell your own stories. Games that live most vitally in my memory are things like the aforementioned nethack, sim city, civilization, the sims etc. things with little or no traditional story but with all the tools to make up your own. Maybe more in there spirit of tabletop RPGs in that sense.

Also, I think the variety of interpretations you can place on top of something like Parameters is a bit of an indictment of the narrow range of fictions that video game devs put onto of their mechanics.

—

* related: Novels I don’t get on with often fall in to the category of too densely and fully imagined, impressive as these feats of authorship might be there’s nothing for my imagination to fill in so they seem somehow lifeless (I’m looking at you Richard Ford)

(via MTV Geek – Chris Ware Reveals Details About New Graphic...

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:50:57 +0100

(via MTV Geek – Chris Ware Reveals Details About New Graphic Novel ‘Building Stories’)

rumirumirumirumi: Played it, thought it was cool. An...

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:26:00 +0100

rumirumirumirumi:

Played it, thought it was cool. An interesting take on RPG battle mechanics stripped of much of its representative content. That said, this proves in my mind the crucial importance of representation in games. Even a text adventure like Aardwolf is more engaging without graphics because the representational text gives me content and context to work within. If you’ve got 30-45 minutes, it’s worth giving a go.

Definitely agree about the importance of representation, though I think crucial maybe overstating it. What is the representational content of Poker?

I think the fictional content in a game is important for couple of reasons that Parameters plays with. 1st the role-playing reason which I think is what rumirumirumirumi’s talking about. i.e. it’s really cool to pretend to be a kick ass martial artist or an amazing skate boarder or whatever. 2nd the fiction acts as an aide memoire for the meaning of actions in the game e.g. Scissors, Paper, Stone is easier to remember the rules of and play than a game with identical mechanics but with red, green and blue as the available moves and some arbitrary hand symbols as their in game representations.

RPGs of the type that Parameters condenses rely heavily on representation for both these reasons, in Parameters there’s still some representation - sword and shield icons, locks and the names of stats - but it’s pretty much the minimum that’s possible whilst leaving the game playable. Part of the enjoyment for me was working out how the visual stuff that is left in the game relates to the underlying stat-grinding engine without the help of representational pointers and then optimising the hell out of it (this may say more about me than anything else).

Tangent, occurred to me on my morning ride in to work: So the way you get mastery and achieve that sought after flow state in bullet hell shooters and things like Geometry Wars - fast reaction, visually overwhelming games - is that you eventually learn to abstract away the visuals, ignore them and see the underlying mechanics. See through the signifier to the signified, at that point the games really comes into their own.

Games like Final Fantasy/ Pokemon etc. etc. work on me in kind of the opposite way: I generally enjoy them up to the point where I see through the fiction to the underlying mechanics at which point I’m like : “Oh Jesus! I’ve just wasted 80 hours of my ~~young~~ life on this barely disguised Skinner box”*. Parameters changes this by shortening the feedback cycle to the extent that you can play on the mechanics of an RPG more like you would a bullet hell shooter.

—

* The RPG type game that seems to have escaped this sorry fate for me is Disgaea which I’ve been revisiting fairly regularly for nearly 10 years, possibly because it’s so upfront about it’s mechanisms and because those mechanisms are so intricate and baroque and the fiction attached to them so uncompromisingly odd.

"Some forms of SF are becoming irrelevant not because we’re living in “the future” but because, with..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:10:09 +0100

“Some forms of SF are becoming irrelevant not because we’re living in “the future” but because, with the rise of gadgetopia over the last decade or so, science has begun to directly claim its place in the spectacle. In another ten years, with less need for publicity partners, shared branding may be over. But this could be an advantage. No longer a junior partner in the SciArt project–no longer limited to proselytising & pegagogic duties, & owing no one anything in the way of intellectual fealty–science fiction could return to one of its shadowier, guiltier, more fulfillingly imaginative relationships with the concept of knowledge. SF writers could rediscover the freedom of being unapproved outsiders working in a space which precisely isn’t a teaching aid.”

- back out in the cold | the m john harrison blog

criterioncorner: Teaser Trailer: Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE...

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:58:25 +0100

criterioncorner:

Teaser Trailer: Paul Thomas Anderson’s THE MASTER

(via The Film Stage)

Yes, really looking forward to this. Sci-Fi wirters, cults and PT Anderson. Together at last!

thingsmagazine: Computer, Performance, DC-8, United Airlines

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:56:44 +0100

thingsmagazine:

Computer, Performance, DC-8, United Airlines