I spent a good part of the weekend playing Type Help, an incredible Twine game by William Rous. Each chapter of the story is told in files with the format <timecode>-<two-letter room code>-[list of code for the people in the room at the time], e.g. one of the first you are given is 02-EN-1-6-7-10. It’s been compared to Return of the Obra Dinn and that’s a fair enough comparison – in both games, you progress by analysing the story – but I feel like Type Help is probably the game that will stick with me longer because of the metatextual element. I’m also SO impressed with the mechanics of this. I’ve been working with hypertext for 30 years now and this was pretty new to me (other people have done the “guess the address of the page” before, but never to tell a story like this).
Rob Shearer outlines some of the issues he sees with Mastodon as it currently stands and, as much as I want Mastodon to work, it’s hard to disagree with a lot of his complaints.
Plus you just have to look at the subtoots his post have generated to see how right he is about the worst of that place.
The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region.
I was not expecting to see such a pro-Europe article from The Economist of all places.
Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.
YET, Economist. No EU leader has launched their own cryptocurrency YET.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, Bill Gates has released this really terrific memoir of how they got started, including the source code for the original Microsoft Basic, which he claims is “the coolest code I’ve ever written”. It’s such a great artifact and the presentation is chef-kiss perfect.
We always get asked “why don’t you ever come to play in XYZ”, and, though flattered, I personally also feel frustrated that there’s a lack of understanding as to the financial restrictions touring bands often face.
Los Campesinos! lay out the economics of what it cost them to put on their recent show in Dublin and it’s pretty eye-opening stuff.
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