Notices by Jake Rodkin (ja2ke@idlethumbs.social)

@mcc Linux people are a constant at the center of that Venn diagram

Not enough UI designers these days ask”what if the folders were floating?”
https://botsin.space/@osxthemes/113214122888679151

@noah yeah OS makers spent a good decade or two trying to hide their file system and primary interface metaphor from its users and are now confused that nobody knows how to use their software.

@jaseg @rberger thanks for this thread it was an interesting read! (I almost said illuminating but then caught myself)

@PHIL_FISH you definitely hit the mastodon bullseye with this question. that was fun to watch

This video from Corridor Crew is pretty amazing. They re-create the nearly perfect compositing from the penguin dance sequence in Mary Poppins, which was achieved using high intensity sodium vapor lights and a very custom beam splitter, instead of a blue or green screen. It truly feels like a lost art rediscovered. When the matted footage just perfectly drops in I gasped haha https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuIVsNzqDk

When you realize you still make Simpsons references despite there being adults 20 years younger than you who basically never watched it.

@thanius @1994clipart I appreciate this context! I suspect the original artist had no intentions of accurately representing a NES knockoff, as cool as that would be. They likely just grabbed the DB9s from an existing PC clip art. But I mean, I’d be happy to be wrong.

@1994clipart this knockoff Nintendo with its two serial ports is pretty great!

@bburbank damn didn’t know you were designed by Mike Krahulik

I should be posting about playing games on this thing* but since it’s Mastodon I will post about the tiny pang of delight I experienced when I noticed the Classic Steam keyboard and the goldsrc Half-Life console matched. The whole look of the LE Deck OLED plus all this green vgui chrome is really working for me.

* (or uh just playing the game and not posting at all, I guess)

@dosnostalgic the main menu is a re-creation of the ‘98 original. it was originally an avi file playing on an 8 color indexed background. Ended up upresing or re-creating all the assets for ~4k/21:9 and then we animated it in code with timing meant to match the avi (but it randomly moves instead of following the 4 second loop). it was fun as hell to get to indulge in this

@glassbottommeg damn… strong disagree I think. Saying a character drank a Coke is just life. Hanging out behind the Taco Bell is a real thing people do. Hanging out behind the Taco Schmacko isn’t. If your story is taking place in the real world it’s okay to set it there. We live in a world full of brands. It’s also fine and great to make a subtly different AU where the same amount of brand presence exists but it’s all fake. It just won’t seem like it takes place in real life (in this one way)

@glassbottommeg @grumpygamer I also wonder if this would apply to 3D scanned props.

A couple of days ago at work we announced the Steam Deck OLED. It’s available next week (Nov 16) and though it’s got a bunch of great improvements like longer battery life, faster downloads, the star is the ultra-bright HDR OLED screen.

The screens are ridiculously bright and vibrant, so we thought it would be fun to use actual Steam Deck OLEDs as lighting sources to light our entire launch trailer.

Of course this necessitated building a giant metal orb. First though, here’s the final spot:

Some work from Half-Life: Alyx. In Russell’s lab we wanted the space to be full of old computers all doing different tasks (mostly related to the development of the Gravity Gloves). I made a simple fake Win 95-era OS and filled it with a lot of output from our dev tools, some of the actual in game Grabity Glove source code, and Gordon’s gloves from Half-Life 1 as the “low res preview” model. #HalfLife