Deus Ex is still one of my favorite games of all time. First played dozens of times when first released, and every few years I still break it back out to stroll through the dystopian visions of Hell’s Kitchen, Hong Kong, and Liberty Island.
Probably a decade ago or more I found the original ambient synth soundtrack mp3s and still give it a listen once in a while, which sends me straight back to 20 years ago, sitting at the PC at 2am.
The composer of the original soundtrack, Alex Brandon, just recently produced a remix album called Conspiravision, with most of the tracks revamped. You can even get it on vinyl in August1.
That 10 minute long UNATCO theme really brings back the memories.
Man, a world where you can get a 20 year old video game soundtrack re-release on vinyl is weird and fantastic. ↩
The world of open source software (and GitHub, specifically) really is amazing. Kids out there the age I was when I played these can now go online and look at the source code to see how they’re made.
Seems silly, but this kind of thing is great for the open source movement. There’s still an enormous amount of tech out there built at big companies that creates little competitive or legal risk by being open. Non-core tools and libraries (meaning not core to the business differentiation) are perfect candidates to be open to the community. Check it on GitHub.
An Inside Intercom interview with investor David Skok, the king of SaaS metric measurement. His blog has some of the best reference material for measuring your SaaS performance on the things that matter. This deck goes through many of the most important figures and techniques like CAC:LTV, negative churn, and cohort analysis.
A cross-platform port of one of the all-time great PC games, System Shock1. I don’t play many games anymore, but when I get the itch, I only seem to be attracted to the classics.
Astute readers and System Shock fans will recognize a certain AI computer in this website’s favicon. ↩
A great interview with Bret Victor on the Track Changes podcast. His work has always been an inspiration for how to think about both creating things and teaching people.
This post from Caitlin Hudon is a great reminder for anyone that works with data. Combining git versioning with your SQL is super helpful for archiving and searching previous analysis queries.
You will always need that query again
Queries are living artifacts that change over time
If it’s useful to you, it’s useful to others (and vice versa)
I love the map and exploration of Skyrim. As an artistic achievement, the map there isn’t as eye-catching as Grand Theft Auto, the Ultima games, or even previous Elder Scrolls games. But I love the unlabeled overhead picture of the world that forces you to get out and walk to find your way.
The absolute piece de resistance of a game world map has to be the continent of Tamriel for The Elder Scrolls. People have tried to wrangle Skyrim’s map into submission with mods and interactive versions of it, but it fundamentally is a map that doesn’t explain itself to you or aspire to be particularly helpful. The world is what it is - now you have to go and find your way across it.
