I was learning a bit of maths recently and thought of trying out Mathematica, only to find when I looked into it that it costs about a grand. Maybe this would be enough for what I wanted.
Long list of essays on storytelling in games (both tabletop and digital) by games designers, theorists and scholars. Extracts from an ongoing trilogy of books published by MIT press.
Not without a lot of skill, time, patience and tools you won’t. You can live vicariously though, through this amazing 17 minute video of a French amateur radio operator showing you how he does it.
On friendly fire in games. I think HL2 gets it right here, lowering your weapon when facing a non-combatant and letting you break mission critical apparatus but giving you a carefully worded game over message straight after.
Broad-ranging interview with Alan Kay from 1999. Covers more than the title suggests.
Free multi-faceted project management tool with developers in mind. Integrated Trac, Subversion hosting, and plenty more.
The owner of The Beguiling comic shop in Canada visits the museum of the creator of Atom Boy in Japan and takes lots of pictures.
Royal Institution’s 1991 Christmas Lecture by Richard Dawkins.
Combines the Mongrel parser, Event Machine & chneukirchen’s Rack. Looks interesting, but could be misleading. The performance graph has no numbers and an unmarked axis, and a comment at Ruby Inside suggests it needs a bit more work. One to keep an eye on.
Free online book. HtDP is often mentioned in the same breath as SICP. The examples in this one are geared towards DrScheme though, which has versions available for all major OSes. Handy.