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Cutting-edge guy that I am, I’m only the 1.2-millionth person to see this video demo of Crayon Physics Deluxe, a game prototype that was shown at the Game Developer Conference last month. It’s just brilliant in its simplicity, though it’s more of a conceptual demo than an actual game.

There have been a lot of games made by now that have really simple control interfaces, most of the casual games out there are controlled with just a point-and-click mouse scheme. But nearly all of these games give up user flexibility in the process - while the games are easy to control, you can’t actually control very much in them, usually little more than the direction and timing of some gun or character movement.

What makes Crayon Physics interesting is that it combines a simple interface with a very wide range of possible user behaviors - nearly unlimited once you let people start to play with the physics of the objects they create. And it’s done with out any of the pop-up menus or other devices that a lot of other games end up adding. While this particular demo was created by a hobbyist, hopefully someone will take the idea and build on it, it has so much potential.

I wonder if other cities go gaga over obscure niche restaurants the way New York has reacted to Momofuku Ko. It opened a few days ago, turning even jaded food critics into gushing groupies… their online reservation site (the only way to book a table) was down for most of the week, probably from all the rabid foodies hitting refresh trying to snag a table… though they were claiming a DoS attack - a bit weird, who would want to take down a web site belonging to a 14-seat East Village restaurant?

I guess they’re busy…

When I went to the site yesterday it wasn’t down, but it did crash often, spewing a screenful of database error messages when I tried to register. I guess chefs aren’t generally very good programmers. I finally managed to set up a user ID today, and of course, not a chance of getting a table. Thanks to the New York Times I probably never will.

I’m in the Fresno airport. I didn’t know Fresno had an airport until I had to get a connecting flight through here..  The airport code here is FAT, which is a bit unfair, people here look no fatter than anywhere else in America. Two fighter jets just took off in tandem, almost blew the windows out.. guess there’s an air force base here too.

Huuuge mural (note the cars at the bottom) funkifying downtown Dallas

Dallas was cooler than I expected, though that’s not saying much.. hung out in the “historic” west end, ate some buffalo steak.. it’s no Austin, but not quite the wasteland I thought it would be.