Interesting Links for 17-07-2014

[andrewducker]

• This Artist Takes These Silly Doodles And Makes Them...Awesome. (somewhat NSFW)
  (tags: art women )
• Amazon's Prepping a "Kindle Unlimited" Subscription Service For Books
  (tags: Amazon books )
• The political party names the Electoral Commission has rejected since 2010
  (tags: politics names UK )
• Why an understanding of Relativity is vital to making

Comments

[cartesiandaemon]

I've recently noticed how *many* computer games are either completely abstract, or involve attacking enemies (even if it's not very graphic, like Mario). I think that's partly the medium -- there has to be conflict -- but also partly a cultural assumption that that's a thing that happens.

[andrewducker]

I think it comes people (generally) wanting to overcome something and beat the game.

The easiest way to do this is through a simulated conflict - and while you can have emotional conflict rather than physical, doing that well is really, really hard. You either need to limit things dramatically, or you need to develop an AI :->

You can have management-type games that don't rely on that. Sim City, for instance, can have you designing a city. And interactive fiction/text adventure/point and click games that can rely on problem solving. You get less of those that don't involve combat than you used to though.

[skington]

The Sims. Minecraft.

[cartesiandaemon]

Out of interest, do you mind me asking where that icon come from?

[nancylebov]

Okay, we now know the limits of a tower that's a single lego wide. What if you're allowed to make a lego pyramid? A wide based tower that's not solid all the way through?

[andrewducker]

Good question!

And I'm sure you can make structures that are full of holes (Eiffel Tower style) too!

[del_c]

Although the brick is a structure that's buckling, you can ignore that and declare a brick to be a material that is squishing, then make the assumption that the tower itself never buckles. The mathematics of towers that squish and never buckle is similar to the mathematics of orbital tethers in a constant gravity field. A solid, straight-sided pyramid will only get three times higher than the tower, because pyramids are a third of the volume of the box they were delivered in. I think a truly hollow pyramid could get only twice as high as a tower before squishing.

A hollow pyramid that's straight on the outside and cleverly profiled on the inside could get better than three times, and an exponentially-flared tower (like the Tour Eiffel) could be in theory indefinitely high, depending only on the steepness of the flare. I think the straight-sided pyramid with the clever insides could be made equivalent to the exponential tower.

[fub]

In the 60's, there was a font designed for the Volkswagen Group, specifically for their yearly (financial) reports. It was designed to be of the same width, regardless of whether it was normal, bold or italic. This meant that the running text could be put together on a Monotype machine, and the bold and italic parts could later be exchanged -- this efficiency alone must have paid for the extra design time. IIRC, it also had two sets of numbers: for use in the running text, and monospaced ones for tables.

Google's font has this as well -- which makes it useful, but it's hardly a breakthrough in design.

This Artist Takes These Silly Doodles And Makes Them...Awesome. (somewhat NSFW)

[cartesiandaemon]

Awesome!

Re: This Artist Takes These Silly Doodles And Makes Them...Awesome. (somewhat NSFW)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I thought they did a great job there - not what I was expecting at all!