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Nintendo Revolution

Nintendo has released a teaser video of their new system and wild new controller. Danc from lostgarden.com offers a scholarly essay on Nintendo’s genre innovation strategy.

Nintendo Revolution Controller

At first I thought the controller looked ridiculous and thought it would be a tremendous flop, however Danc’s article has made me reconsider. His article doesn’t focus on the new system itself and it is a bit long, but if you’re curious about why Nintendo would invest so heavily in an untested market, it’s worth the read.

I hope we talk about this in my Theory and Aesthetics of Video Games class.

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Sensible Emails

Here are some great tips on writing great, productive, emails. When I worked at City Hall I discovered the myriad of emails that some people have to go through. I’m sure that if more people would practice the tips from this list their emails would have been read more often and timely, and had a greater chance of actually being acted upon. It would have made things easier for everyone. Many of these tips are also applicable to voice-mail.

  • First: Understand why you’re writing
  • Get what you need: Providing information, requesting information, or requesting action
  • Write a great subject line
  • Brevity is the soul of…getting a response
  • What’s the action here?
  • More good ideas – including make it easy to quote
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Not to Do List

Well I feel at ease posting a link to this Not-To-Do list because I’ve spent the morning working on a project. But truth be told, I probably did more than a couple of these things that may have distracted me momentarily. At least my (now empty) garbage doesn’t smell!

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"How We Got Engaged"

If this isn’t just sweet enough to give you a toothache… Two artists created a comic book description of their courtship and engagement.

Sorry I’m still bitter about my own situation; I actually liked the comic.

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A New Kind of Trigonometry

From the sound of this article from physorg.com, Dr Norman Wildberger, a University of New South Wales academic, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit.

Does this mean schools the world over will be updating their curriculum? It makes me happy because I was one of those students that memorized the old rules for trigonometry long enough to take the tests and then promptly forget about them. I hope it’s safe to assume these new rules can be applied to computer programming and physics as well.

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Science Friday

I’ve been listening to Science Friday via their podcast lately and I love it. It’s a great science show published by the NPR.

“Each week, we focus on science topics that are in the news and try to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join Science Friday’s host, Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science – and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.”

Science Friday is a little like the CBC’s Quirks and Quarks but due to a labour dispute the CBC podcasts are on hold. In the meantime check out Science Friday’s feed.