“For every white or Asian male expert programmer you know, imagine a parallel universe where they were of another ethnicity and/or gender.”
Yup. I was lucky enough to have a number of mentors who treated me as “equal”, but I also had more than a few who did not. (Those ones are a big part of the reason I had to quit my tenured job at UCalgary.)
The 33 best tools for data visualization | Web design | Creative Bloq
“A picture is worth a thousand words, but creating cool infographics can be time-consuming. So we’ve found 33 amazing tools to make it easier.
Not a web designer or developer? You may prefer Free tools for creating infographics”
Why I want Bitcoin to die in a fire – Charlie’s Diary
“Bitcoin just crashed 50% today, on news that the Chinese government has banned local exchanges from accepting deposits in Yuan. BtC was trading over $1000 yesterday; now it’s down to $500 and still falling.
Good.
I want Bitcoin to die in a fire: this is a start, but it’s not sufficient. Let me give you a round-up below the cut.
Like all currency systems, Bitcoin comes with an implicit political agenda attached. Decisions we take about how to manage money, taxation, and the economy have consequences: by its consequences you may judge a finance system. Our current global system is pretty crap, but I submit that Bitcoin is worst.”
Design Principles | Android Developers.
Enchant Me
- Delight me in surprising ways
- Real objects are more fun than buttons and menus
- Let me make it mine
- Get to know me
Simplify My Life
- Keep it brief
- Pictures are faster than words
- Decide for me but let me have the final say
- Only show what I need when I need it
- I should always know where I am
- Never lose my stuff
- If it looks the same, it should act the same
- Only interrupt me if it’s important
Make Me Amazing
- Give me tricks that work everywhere
- It’s not my fault
- Sprinkle encouragement
- Do the heavy lifting for me
- Make important things fast
BBC News – Internet Archive puts classic 70s and 80s games
Classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser for nothing.
The collection has launched with games from five early home consoles, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision.
The games do not have sound, but will soon, the Internet Archive said.
“In coming months, the playable software collection will expand greatly,” archivist Jason Scott wrote.
“Making these vintage games available to the world, instantly, allows for commentary, education, enjoyment and memory for the history they are a part of.”
The other machines included are the Atari 7800, the Magnavox Odyssey (known as the Philips Videopac G7000 in Europe) and the Astrocade.
Well-recognised titles such as Pacman, Space Invaders and Frogger are all in the archive – with more consoles and games expected soon.
Nostalgic urgesUnlike today’s titles, which are stored on disks or even simply downloaded directly to a console, many older machines would use bespoke cartridges to store games.
As the consoles fell into disrepair and became ever more scarce, playing these games has become difficult.
For many years, communities of gamers have created ROMs – read-only memory – images of games. These files can be played on a normal PC by using an emulator.
However, in many cases, gaming in this way can be illegal – particularly when the games involved are made by the likes of Nintendo and Sega, which clamp down on such activity, deeming it a form of counterfeiting.
But older games such as the ones found on the Internet Archive fall into something of a legal grey area.
Publishers and developers often turn a blind eye as, with the games no longer available to buy, the ROMs mean the titles are still able to be played by many.
Yet with smartphone gaming on the rise, publishers are now in a position where these old titles can be revived, cashing in on the timeless quality of the games, as well as fans’ nostalgic urges.
“Last year I suggested that mirror neurons are the most hyped concept in neuroscience. Discovered in the 90s by neuroscientists in Italy studying monkeys, these are motor cells in the brain (involved in the control of movement) that are also activated – mirror-like – by the sight of the same movement by others. Thankfully a new review has just been published that provides us with a calm update on what we know so far about these fascinating cells.”
This is an interview with me about my experience at Michigan State University taking their new Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research – Serious Game Design & Research.
Turns out, I’m the first person to graduate from this program.
Cool.
These are some of the projects I worked on:
Zen and the Art of Waiting Rooms: a Serious Game to help people relax and slow heart rate while waiting in emergency rooms.
(C) Mink Hollow Media, Ltd. All rights reserved.
Gene Rummy – A card game to teach Mendelian genetics.
(C) Mink Hollow Media, Ltd. All rights reserved.
It’s Showtime! An application to manage ARBA rabbit shows.
(C) Mink Hollow Media, Ltd. All rights reserved.
BBC News – Harvard plans to boldly go with ‘Spocs’.
How are “Spocs” different from other small private online courses (i.e. the ones we’ve been doing for well over a decade)? … Aside from have a sexy new acronym, I mean.
Is it because Harvard says it is? Because, honestly, some of us are becoming less and less impressed by Ivy League institutions assuming that if they thought it up, it must be great.
I realize that many have been doing online courses very badly. Many still do. What passes for “eLearning” is, in many cases little more than decades old correspondence classes on the web.
Not that that is necessarily bad …. my mom did an interior design course by correspondence in the 60’s. It came with all kinds of colour images; house plans; fabric & paint swatches. I remember thinking it was pretty cool.
However, far (FAR) too many online courses fail to make use of the technology that is freely available.
