Roundup of Unusual Size: Damn ninjas, get off my roof.

At the rate at which article density seems to drop off on the weekends, I’m going to end up taking Saturdays off as well. Feh. If only Maggie Greene was still doing Kotaku’s Weekend Reader. (P.S. Follow her on Twitter.)

Onward for your links! Mostly of the zany and “wait, what?” variety tonight.

Roundup of Unusual Size: Fans make everything better.

I am having a tough time coping with the idea I won’t have classes again for another four months. Fortunately, my summer’s shaping up to be quite busy already. Apart from one more term paper to turn in next week, I’ll be assisting the research on a senior colleague’s book this summer and doubling down on my hours at my day job. This will basically be the daily routine from now till my trip up to Seattle in August for PAX.

That all said, sleep is currently at the top of the list of things I am overdue for. I pulled an energy drink-fueled all-nighter to finish what turned out to be a very successfully received interactive scholarship piece, but with this now taken care of, the only thing on my agenda is hibernating until at least July. Enjoy tonight’s links!

Roundup of Unusual Size: Brathwaite, Barack and Bessel beams

A day like this requires Cuttershy.

Never fails. The night I need extra time to dig into a term project, the blagosphere explodes. Explodes full of depression.

Even WordPress is making me sad right now. The little “Are you new here?” button seems all passive-aggressive and questioning. May one or more of these links provide a decent distraction for you all tonight.

Roundup of Unusual Size: type like a movie hacker, rant like a gamer

At the rate this jQuery assignment is getting done, I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep the next couple of days.

Roundup of Unusual Size: My mother says to get a job, but she don’t like the one she’s got.

Ah, the innocence of my pre-adolescence.

As a Green Day fan of the old guard, I’ve felt pretty much secure in listening to their new stuff without feeling like a shamefully overgrown tween. American Idiot is a fantastic, polished album. It’s no Dookie, but it’s full of the grime and muck of suburban dystopia that I’ve always loved out of them. 21st Century Breakdown, well… they gotta put their kids through college somehow, I guess.

However, something happened today. My music player shuffled over to one particularly bad track of 21st Century Breakdown, the one where Billie Joe is crooning the word “love” every other word, and something snapped inside my brain. I could not stand it. This was not in any sense of the word listenable.

“Oh my god, no,” I thought. “This goes against the laws of nature. Just go back to singing about masturbation again.”

I was about to stab my eardrums in protest so to preserve my own health, I put on their old stuff and felt marginally better. They actually used to do punk, you know, before they decided 50s soft rock ballads were apparently more their schtick, and now I don’t really know what to make of them. Do tweens really go for this stuff?

Anyway, rant over. Your links are going to get cold.

Roundup of Unusual Size: I could (should) be sleeping…

Now this is more like it!

Roundup of Unusual Size: Her name is Caroline. That’s all I can say.

Oh man, Portal 2 co-op might be some of the best fun you can have with another person.

Short list tonight, so enjoy your pagan fertility festival tomorrow!

Roundup of Unusual Size: graceful suicide and Love Plus

I’ve dispensed with the last of my stylistic holdovers from the former Livejournal edition of these roundups and removed subheaders. There is still a rough hierarchy which will be familiar to anyone who used to follow the DLR but it just made sense to go full prose. Articles are still organized by category, however.

I’m getting increasingly disappointed with the size of these roundups so hopefully this weekend or the next will allow me the time to properly steal Ben Abraham’s list create a broader and more comprehensive blogroll to work off of. Or I could just, you know… sleep.

Hit the jump as usual for some tasty links. Some great Gamasutra pieces tonight!

Roundup of Unusual Size: I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Someone’s discovered that all of Mythbusters is available for streaming on Netflix. So… see you in a few weeks?

Roundup of Unusual Size: What is this, a roundup for ants?

GLaDOS fanart by makani @ deviantArt

Portal 2: weirdly psychosexual. I approve. Now to play the co-op mode.

For some reason it’s a slow news week. I’m not even bothering with a jump at this point. Just click your links.

Videogames

GameSetWatch;

Simon Carless has a link roundup of the GDC Vault’s new public video offerings. One I’ve been enjoying: We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!

Joystick Division;

Garrett Martin has an essay on the hype backlash of Portal 2: “Hate the Hype, Not the Game.”

Federal Trade Commission;

FTC has a report on the effectiveness of retail regulation by medium. Guess what, games do the best!