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Simon Wardley @swardley
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
X : Do you play computer games?
Me : No ... well, not usually. I have taken an interesting in Skyrim and the modding scene. It's amazing.
X : Which bit? The dungeons? The landscape?
Me : No. It's amazing how crap code can be. The Skyrim modding community excels at this ...
... imagine a coding community with no standards, where people routinely write over stuff they don't understand and spend more time proving a point than fix a problem. The Skyrim modding community is amazingly fsck'd. There's a research project on messed up cultures right there.
I mean, it is outstanding. Imagine everything you can think of to be wrong with a culture and it's all there in Skyrim modders. It's just a cesspool built in good intentions ... it's like a warning sign of why in open source we have benevolent dictators.
The game itself is somewhat irrelevant. What is fascinating is the mechanics of the culture that is created around it. Fighting mod owners, prima donnas ... it's cats herding cats into cat factions. It's incredible that any of it works. Huge wasted globs of human effort.
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The most popular option every time - backed on average by just over a quarter - has been to leave without a deal at all - bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… ... well, I'd prefer GE followed by Corbyn + Brexit (preferably WTO but EEA docked to EFTA is fine) but that's a bit specialised.
... what I do find amazing is that "no deal" still tops the options after years of continuous campaigning both online and offline to overturn the referendum against no effective opposition. That is fairly spectacular, almost unprecedented.
But as always, do remember these are polls and not reality. Lest we forget 23/Jun/16 ...
Populus had Remain 10% ahead
ComRes had Remain 6%+
YouGov had Remain 4%+
Ipsos Mori had Remain 4%+
... One of the few dissenting voices was Opinium, who produced that recent poll.
Read 3 tweets
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X : Who created Wardley Maps?
Me : Err ... the clue is in the name?
X : Are they new?
Me : In terms of historical scales - yes. It's only 14 years old.
X : Why haven't I heard of them before?
Me : Because the world is large and techniques take time to diffuse?
X : Could you create me a map of my organisation?
Me : I could but it wouldn't help you.
X : Why?
Me : Because you wouldn't know what to do with it. You really need to learn to map for yourself.
X : How do I do that?
Me : Start here - medium.com/wardleymaps - just add practice.
X : How long will it take?
Me : To become really good at mapping, for it to become natural .. many years.
X : I don't have the time, how do I speed it up?
Me : Well, you could decide to actually start and use it i.e. practice. There is no shortcut for practice.
Read 7 tweets
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+1 -> "our ancestor chiefs understood bows, horses, and agriculture, our contemporary chiefs (and those in the media responsible for scrutiny) generally do not understand their equivalents, and are often less experienced in managing complex organisations than their predecessors"
+100 -> "We do not have a problem with ‘too much cynicism’ - we
have a problem with too much trust in people and institutions that are not fit to control so much."
+∞ -> "Most politicians, officials, and advisers operate with fragments of philosophy, little knowledge of maths or science and little experience in well-managed complex organisations."
Read 4 tweets

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Interesting detail in Super Smash Bros Ultimate: stages with flat artwork will flatten the player models too! I'm not sure what purpose this serves - it seems it's only obvious when playing with the free camera?
My best guess is it's so 3D players don't visibly intersect with 2D level geometry. They're also moving the flattened players *slightly* in front of the level geometry to avoid Z-fighting.
And then, even more curious, there are stages like 75m which are fully modeled in 3D but use an orthographic camera during gameplay to give the appearance of a 2D arena
Read 60 tweets
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Proposal: all AWS service names get a 30 second review from me before they ship.

“Route53?”
“Love it.”
“Snowball Edge?”
“Urban Dictionary both of those words.”
“Systems Manager Session Mana—wow that sounds terrible now that I hear it spoken aloud.”

I’m here to help.
“Fargate?”

“Sounds clever, but nobody will know what it does.”
“Timestream?”
“I have a giant repo of Doctor Who references.”
“We’ll risk it.”
“The repo is bigger on the inside.”
Read 36 tweets
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Games aren't magical because people don't know how they're made. They're magical because of talented people doing complex work to make sure the illusion doesn't break.
Games are magical because of the worlds painstakingly crafted by people, with attention to every detail and every location that you come across, whether it’s a dreary skyscraper, a bustling space station, or a beautiful forest.
Games are magical because of the characters that we fall in love with, drawn and modeled, textured and mapped, rigged and animated, written and voiced by people who care about bringing you a character that will matter to you.
Read 13 tweets
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Finally tonight... my Top 5 home #computer games from 1983! All were worth the 6 minute3 load time...
At No 5: Jetpack, from Ultimate Play The Game (1983). Assemble your ship and go!
At No 4: Snooker, from Visions Software Factory (1983). Always fun to play while waiting for the real thing to begin...
Read 6 tweets
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Dropped wife and daughters at airport for week-long trip.

Fantasy: I can watch movies and TV they don't like! Cook food they hate! Play computer games all night!

Reality: [cut to footage of Ken drooling into couch cushions by 8:45 pm]
Actually my son is still home but he's 17 and exists on an independent cycle of sleeping, going to work, screaming obscenities at Fortnite, and microwaving chicken pot pies, and wandering back into the kitchen to re-microwave them because he forgot about them for 6 hours.
No seriously. Kid has better SAT scores than I did and I'm gravely concerned for his ability to care for himself. He forgets to drink water and wonders why he has headaches. He routinely loses track of what half of the day it is.
Read 4 tweets
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Well here it is folks
Another Tumblr thread no one asked for!!!!!!!
1)
2)
Read 365 tweets

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