Say ‘flat design’ again. Say ‘flat design’ again, I dare you, I double dare you motherfucker, say ‘flat design’ one more Goddamn time!
— Marcel Wichmann (@UARRR) March 22, 2013
Welcome back to my adolescence.
What happened? That’s easy: I rediscovered my love for gaming through Battlefield 3 on the XBOX. Everything was so shiny and amazing. Weapons and bodies all over the place, Martin, Philipp, Kim, Kevin and me talking while we win and lose against strangers. Basically a lot of fun.
But somehow it wasn’t good enough. Aiming with a controller is a pain and I knew it would be much better if I just could use a mouse for it.
Fast forward.
I have no idea what kind of hardware the cool kids are buying today so I told Leo what I wanted from a gaming-system and he put together the list of things I would need. Here it is:
Fractal Design Define R4 Black (on Amazon)
be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 550W (on Amazon)
Alpenföhn Himalaya (on Amazon)
Samsung 840 Pro series 2,5″ 128 GB (on Amazon)
Intel® Core™ i5-3470 (on Amazon)
G.Skill DIMM 8 GB DDR3-1600 Kit (on Amazon)
Microsoft SideWinder X4 Keyboard (on Amazon)
XFX HD7950 Dual Fan Black Edition (on Amazon)
I wanted a system that’s able to play everything that’s on the market and at least most of it in the best quality as possible. This morning I tested Crysis 3 and it looked and felt amazing with all settings as high as possible. Mission accomplished. I’m totally overwhelmed by how good games can look these days. The last “beautiful” game I played on a PC was Half Life 2, some years ago. That should put things in perspective.
Leo chose the graphics card you see above because of my need to use my 27″ Apple Cinema Display. It’s huge, it’s beautiful and I need it for my work anyway. There is no space for another big display on my desk at home and although I know that the ACD is far from perfect for playing games, it’s good enough for now.
Also I’m looking forward to producing more videos for Saving Princesses, which is a bit tricky with just a 128GB SSD, but I’m planning on buying a huge HDD soon.
Boom. Headshot.
Interview With Dave Rupert➝
Most of going to college isn’t about the degree. It’s a lot about how to make relationships and teaching yourself to learn. You can learn those outside of college, but higher education creates fertile ground for those kinds of skills.
Dave Rupert in an interview on Martin Wolf’s The Amazing Web.
Gradient maps➝
For those unfamiliar with Photoshop’s gradient map adjustment layers, here’s how they work: Imagine a photo in greyscale. Being greyscale, it can only contain black pixels, white pixels, or pixels that are shades of grey. Now imagine that instead of being shades of grey from black to white, the lightest parts of the image are yellow, and the darkest parts are red, with a smooth blend of oranges in between. That’s a gradient map.
I used Photoshop everyday for seven years now and never bothered thinking about what “Gradient Maps” actually are. This article opened my eyes and there is a high possibility that I’m using them a lot in the future.
Interfaces are Stories➝
Patrick Rogan:
I want to be at the edge of my seat. I want your plot twists to make me have to catch my breath. I want structure, originality, and I want purpose. I want to see color spectrums that I never knew existed. I don’t need happy endings, and maybe I don’t even need endings. I want to hear the beauty in the stories that my community is perpetuating. I want more once upon a times.
Patrick Rogan on interface design and how we shouldn’t try to catch up, but rather try to do something better, something new and something unexpected. It’s not exactly what he’s talking about but once again I got reminded of this beautiful and mind opening article by Paddy Donelly: Life, Below 600px.
How Facebook designed a new News Feed using user feedback➝
Jane Justice Leibrock:
“My feed is cluttered.” That’s a piece of feedback the News Feed team has heard countless times. An obvious interpretation could be that people think the design of Feed is too busy and want it to be simplified, but stopping at literal interpretations is one of the easiest ways to end up with a product that fails to benefit the people whom it’s built for.
An in-depth look at what it takes to redesign Facebook’s news feed.
“We need to focus. Keep the self-driving cars, magic glasses, laptop, handheld OS, and Brazilian social network. Ditch the feed reader.”
— Pinboard (@Pinboard) March 14, 2013
UX Myths➝
UX Myths collects the most frequent user experience misconceptions and explains why they don’t hold true. And you don’t have to take our word for it, we’ll show you a lot of research findings and articles by design and usability gurus.
That will come in very handy at some point.
Tomb Raider Review by Rock, Paper, Shotgun➝
John Walker:
With the game making every decision for you – and I feel the need to stress this again – even deciding when you run, walk or crawl, some will argue it all allows this rollercoaster ride to be as smooth as possible. It all allows you to be swept along by the experience, to be wowed by the epic scenery and breathtaking destruction. But me – I want to play.
When it let me, I had a really good time. When it didn’t, well, I sat back in my chair and wondered what I was doing here.
Gaming wednesday on UARRR.org. This is exactly what I figured the new Tomb Raider is going to be, and obviously I was right. I wished for something like Hitman Absolution. Just give me some cutscenes between large levels but stop harassing me while I try playing your game.
Urban Planners Battle For Bragging Rights In The New Sim City➝
John McDermott:
We brought together some of the most interesting urban thinkers to play the new version of the city planning game to see who would make the best fake metropolis. But building a sustainable city from the ground up is harder than it looks.
I’m so looking forward to tomorrow, when the new Sim City is finally available in Germany.