Quite Useful Weekly Roundup

This week I concluded the Let’s Make a Game Series.  I also announced the start of a new series, Beautiful Algorithms, in which I’ll discuss beginner-friendly graphical algorithms alongside examples from the history of computer graphics.

I’m going to take Monday off, so you’ll see Beautiful Algorithms start on Tuesday.

Twitter Summary

Developer

cdargs has made a big difference to the way I work.  It’s a little thing: bookmarks for cd in the command line.  Despite being a simple tool it makes it easier for me to switch between projects; which I need to do a lot in an average day.

Chartbeat looks like a friendly way of keeping track of service outages and page load times.  I don’t like the use of speedometers on their dashboard, they take up a lot of space that could be used for other information, but it’s worth checking out.

Designer

The Tools Artists Use is an interesting blog.  Hearing about the tools artists use is fascinating, yet something not usually discussed in detail.

Boks is a way to explore CSS: it’s an Air app that provides an interface for Blueprint CSS.

Smarthistory is an alternative to art history text books.  I actually love reading art history books, as dry as they are.  Smarthistory’s clever use of modern web design techniques, videos, audio and short text will definitely appeal to students.

iPhone

iPhone Mobile Air Mouse turns your iPhone into a mouse.  This makes using your computer from a couch easier, or might be cool for presentations.