I have recently been on a bit of a Japan kick, and someone on social sent me this 2018 article from Clyde Mandelin about translating Japanese videogames: There’s a common assumption that when you translate something from English into another language, there shouldn’t be any English left when you’re done. Otherwise...

Oh, this is a fantastic adage I haven’t heard before, mentioned here in 1978, arguing against distorted, or “faux” typography: A Linotype assembly elevator with the gate closed. This is the center of an operator’s attention as the mats tumble down and are arranged automatically in lines. The spacer bands adjust...

I found this weirdly delightful: There are a few new ringtones in iOS 26, but they’re not new new ringtones – they’re sort of “riffs,” or maybe remixes of a default Reflection ringtone. If you don’t have an iPhone, here’s a short video where you can hear them. I’m guessing Apple sees the default ringtone as sort of...

September 6, 2014, was a landmark day in speedrunning history. I like Summoning Salt’s videos about speedrunners because they manage to add a great dose of storytelling to what otherwise would be boring, mundane events, and this one about Punch-Out is no exception. It’s Rocky meets Moneyball, in a way. This pairs...

★★☆☆☆ This could have been an essay. When I first learned about this book from Jacob Geller’s video just months ago, I thought this was another example in the vein of The Power Broker – a perfectly Marcin-coded book that somehow escaped me knowing about it for decades. “Pilgrim” is from 1983, and is a story of a...

A fun and short video from Juniper Dev about how Undertale is a fantastic game despite being fantastically poorly written: When you make dialogue in a video game you have a distinct file that has all the possible text that can pop up in your game. This is usually a CSV file, or a JSON, and you can think of it as...

Just kidding. But it’s a happy 20th annivesary to the little interactive explainer I made of Fitts’ Law back in 2005! It’s charming in a sort of early-web kinda way, but still holds up – at least on bigger screens. I even ran it on my iPad and it worked. #marcin wichary #principles

Wes Fenlon at PC Gamer: Every so often, a wonderful thing happens: someone young enough to have missed out on using computers in the early 1990s is introduced to the Windows 3.1 “Hot Dog Stand” color scheme. I can’t figure out whether Gruber’s take (“That’s Microsoft.”) is also a subtle jab at Apple in the year of...

Forgot about this cute little story: It used to be that when you dragged an item off the Dock and dropped it, the icon would disappear in a puff of smoke and make a satisfying noise. The animation was strangely primitive against the backdrop of the slick user interface of what used to called Mac OS X. I too wondered...

This is inside my Sony Alpha camera: a teensy too technical, or maybe slightly-lost-in-translation-from-Japanese message. I love it. It has personality without trying to be cute. #writing

I just got my first Windows laptop in ages, and a little nervous to dig in, given the burgeoning reputation. (My secret: I used to admire Windows in the 3.x and 9x and 2000 era because I always thought its keyboard operation was a lot better than Mac OS’s.)#windows

I spend a lot of time at work thinking and designing (and avoiding) loading states, and someone just reminded me of a piece I wrote ten years ago, so I just moved it from Medium to my new website, and updated with new things I learned. It’s about TV clock idents and what they meant to me growing up – possibly the...