• Arthouse Games vs. Ebert
  Can games be art?

• Past and Future Magazine Titles That Map Our Intellectual Decline.
  From McSweeney’s

FIEA’s Cohort 3 is celebrating. We reached Beta today on our project, Master Plan. We have one more week of bug squashing and playtesting to go before we release it to the world. There’s a teaser trailer on the FIEA website you should check out.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was excellent. Upon finishing it I was overwhelmed with that unique sadness that you only feel at the end of a really good book. Like you’ve just parted company from several good friends and you’re not sure you’re ever going to see them again. I won’t lie, the thought of starting the entire series over from the beginning did occur to me. Novak captured this sensation better, I think, than I ever could.

What follows may be a minor spoiler for those who heard me make predictions about the plot: Of four major predictions I made, three of them were correct, which I think is a pretty good track record. I won’t say what they were, because I don’t want to ruin the book for my friends who haven’t read it yet.

I really liked the overall different tone of this book from the others in the series. The middle section especially, when the war is really raging and Harry’s on the run.

One minor nitpick: I would have liked a longer epilogue. Some have said they didn’t care for the epilogue, but it might have been my favorite part of the whole book. I would have liked to know what happens to all the characters, not just the main ones. I may get what I want in the end though, as I have heard that Rowling might be cleaning up her notes and publishing them as an encyclopedia of the Harry Potter universe.

Of all the emotions swirling around inside me, perhaps the most foreign (to me) is this: I look forward to someday having my own kids with whom I can share these wonderful books.

Update: I think a book of short stories would make a nice addition to the Harry Potter canon.

• Nikon | Universcale
  Powers-of-ten Flash animation. Reminds me of the movie that inspired Spore.

• Gamasutra - The History of Civilization
• TED | Talks | Will Wright: Toys that make worlds (video)

• Microsoft exec tapped as president of EA Sports — OrlandoSentinel.com
  This is, I assume, a pretty big deal for the folks at Tiburon.

• Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen (video)

• Candidates@Google
  Google is hosting many of the presidential candidates for Q&A sessions.

• $282 Million Stolen in Heist at Private Bank in Baghdad - New York Times