05.01.12 |
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Giles Richards for The Guardian:
At eight, Jann [Mardenborough] thought he might have a chance of making it as a racing driver. Steve, an ex-professional footballer, had taken him to a kart circuit, and before long the owner took notice and told Steve his son was a natural. But finance proved the stumbling block. The local track closed down and the nearest alternative was in Bristol. “I stopped when I was 11,” says Jann, “because it got too expensive.”..
In the middle of 2011, Mardenborough had entered an online competition on Gran Turismo 5 that offered one final shot at the real thing. Out of 90,000 other virtual racers, he made it into the top eight in Europe and won the chance to test himself against other gamers in a real car at Brands Hatch. That he had kept it to himself for so long was entirely in character for a boy who did not like to make a fuss. “At that point we had no idea what it was,” admits Steve.
Seven months later, in January this year, Mardenborough, who’d never set foot in a racing car, was at the wheel of a serious piece of kit in the Dubai 24 Hour race – and at the beginning of what appears to be a very exciting career.
Wow.
05.01.12 |
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This Atlantic piece on famed Braid creator Jonathan Blow has been passed around heavily online, but I finally got around to reading it this weekend. I’d recommend it, if nothing more for seeing author Taylor Clark – someone who’s clearly not a gamer – try to assess the “hard core” gaming scene from a fresh journalistic angle.
That said, Jonathan Blow comes off as pretty unpleasant. The guy clearly has a near messianic view of his own importance in gaming; he knocked out an “objectively better game than Pac-Man” on his Commodore 64 as a teenager? Total illusions of grandeur.
Also Clark makes too many generalizations of the industry. He’ll start out with something semi-reasonable:
Even the industry’s staunchest defenders acknowledge the chronic dumbness of contemporary video games, usually with a helpless shrug—because, hey, the most ridiculous games can also be the most fun. (After all, the fact that the Super Mario games are about a pudgy plumber with a thick Italian accent who jumps on sinister bipedal mushrooms doesn’t make them less enjoyable to play.)
But then he goes onto a whopper:
But this situation puts video-game advocates in a bind. It’s tough to demand respect for a creative medium when you have to struggle to name anything it has produced in the past 30 years that could be called artistic or intellectually sophisticated.
I’d be as fast to chime in about the general intellectual laziness about the current gaming industry as Clark. But 30 years of lack of artistry or intellectual sophistication? Completely false.
05.01.12 |
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A three part documentary testing the latest crop of high end digital video cameras. 12 cameras are tested head to head, from the expensive Red One M-X (getting increasingly popular on the indie film circuit) to the well known Canon 5D Mark II and Nikon D7000 DSLRs.
It’s rather technical, but if you want to see where the film and camera industry is moving, this is a good start.
04.30.12 |
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Really interesting analysis and breakdown by the opinionated Tom and Lorenzo couple of Mad Men’s fashion. It’s deeper than just what’s trendy in the late 60s; by reading their episode recaps (with plenty of helpful screen grabs) you learn a lot about costume design and how subtle choices can help characterization on film and TV.
04.30.12 |
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I first heard about this over at the Brooklyn Creative League, and I’m digging this collaborative tech for project management. It’s crazy cheap ($3 a year for 3 minigroups and a gig of storage) and looks very straightforward. It’s so inexpensive I’d consider it for non-work web collaboration with friends out of NYC.
04.30.12 |
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Invariably this article, like the ones on Foxconn working conditions, will be dismissed as something that all multinational corporations do, not just Apple. Be it better working conditions in China, more jobs in the U.S., or paying a fair share of California taxes, Apple won’t do it because it won’t “maximize competitive shareholder value.”
Yet don’t we expect more from Apple? Many wouldn’t think twice of criticizing Mitt Romney’s 15% effective tax rate, yet Apple gets a free pass? It’s clear to stay competitive Apple can’t change everything. But something, from donations to California public schools, to bumping up the price on iPhones and Macs (or at least presenting the option) by a few bucks for better working conditions, can be done.
04.27.12 |
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Smartly written piece by Killscreen Daily writer Theon Weber reminiscing on radio stations in the Grand Theft Auto and Fallout series. I loved this line:
Mario’s never needed period pop to bind together his adventures, or situate them historically: Princess Peach is to the right of where he is, and left is where he came from.
04.27.12 |
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As the debut of Google Drive underlined this week, there's a lot of options out there for cloud storage. To help you decide what's best for your needs, Ars Technica breaks down the pros and cons of each service.
(For the record, I'm pretty happy with the 8GB I get via Dropbox. Some great iOS integration with key apps doesn't hurt either.)
04.27.12 |
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Twitter is awesome, yet I’m very selective with my follow list; a lot of people I otherwise respect just don’t tweet with either a frequency or content that I’m comfortable constantly scrolling through. For that reason a lot of Twitter recommendation engines I find don’t work well.
Peep could change all that. It’s a little tool, produced during this year’s Seven on Seven conference, where you type in any user name and get a private list added to your account which mirrors all their followers. In other words, you get a list that mirrors their timeline. Clever.
04.27.12 |
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Vlad Savov for The Verge:
Apple sold more iPhones in the last quarter, 35 million, than Nintendo has been able to sell handhelds in any single year. The total of 109 million iPhones sold over the past four quarters eclipses the 98.5 million Nintendo portables sold over the past four years.
The market of a dedicated portable gaming device is clearly drawing to a close. Sans major handheld sales, where will Nintendo move next?