David Cole

Another batch before bed!

I am Halloweening people’s avatars for them. Let me know if you want in.

I posted about this before, but it took me a few days to actually go sign up on Marrow.org for my kit. There’s no reason to wait, so I figured I’d give anybody else procrastinating another poke. It ain’t just for the South Asians, 1/5 white folk don’t find matches either.

✳ iSwabbedForAmit 

superamit:

Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor, who I’d gone to see the day before because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why.

He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got Acute Leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.”

I was terrified. I packed a backpack full of clothes, went to the hospital as he’d instructed, and had transfusions through the night to allow me to take a flight home at 7am the next day. I Googled acute leukemia as I lay in my hospital bed, learning that if it hadn’t been caught, I’d have died within weeks.

—

I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

A few ways to help:

1. If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.
2. If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.
3. If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above. Thank you.

jayparkinsonmd:

My friend Amit Gupta founded my favorite photography site Photojojo. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Amit is one of the nicest, most genuine, most creative people you could ever meet. Prior to founding the awesome Photojojo, he also co-founded Jelly in 2006 in NYC, a coworking community, that’s now spread to 60 cities across the world and helped spark the coworking revolution. It looks like Amit will need a bone marrow transplant quite soon. We can help him with that.

tony b:

Unlike blood transfusions, finding a genetic match for bone marrow that his body will accept is no easy task. The national bone marrow registry has 9.5 million records on file, yet the chances of someone from South Asian descent of finding a match are only 1 in 20,000.

This is where we come in. We’re going to destroy those odds.

How? By finding and registering as many people of South Asian descent as we possibly can.

Tests are easy– a simple swab of the cheek. If you’re a match, the donation involves an outpatient procedure. It’s not fun, but it’s not dangerous either. And doing it could save a life.

We are encouraging anyone of South Asian descent to take a test to see if you’re a match. 

You can get a free test by mail, or, if you’re in New York, you can join us Friday, October 14th for a special party to rally support.

We’ll have test kits on hand at the party, as well as music, booze, and maybe even a photo booth. It will, for the first time, combine a House 2.0-style party with a New Work City-style party, and if you’ve ever been to either, you know they are always something special.

Please spread the word and please do everything you can to help Amit beat leukemia. He’s a superstar.

Much thanks to Tony and pals for organizing this event, and EVERYONE who’s been tweeting and reblogging.

Please help get the word out any way you can. My life quite literally depends on it.

Amit was one of the first guys I met in the industry that made me believe you could do our sort of work your own way, with heart and care. Please take a look.

I quite enjoyed answering the question on Quora, “What are the most common themes for video game environments?”

I decided to not orient my list around actual frequency of usage (City and Military Base would likely rank in the top ten) but instead I opted for settings that I consider iconically video game-y. I also let Space sneak in there just because I like the song from the Moon level in Duck Tales.

With each, I included my top two iconic/emblematic levels. I’d love to hear what other themes people would pick, and what games they associate with those themes. My choices are certainly personal.

One interesting aspect of pondering these themes is how similarly they change gameplay across disparate titles. For example, Water levels typically play with how basics like movement, level design, and survival work. Fire levels are often twitchier, with more timing based obstacles, and high impact threats.

Final thoughts:

• Can almost all of these be traced back to a Mario title?
• There should be more games with Casino as a theme.
• So many games have a dull Elevator sequence, but isn’t there serious missed potential in Train?
• What themes are emerging as new standards? (maybe: Middle East, Science Facility, War-torn City)

Hey! Nick Martens (of Bygone Bureau renown) and I started a new blog today about iOS gaming. It’s called, deliciously, On Tap. Get it? GET IT?!

I think the iPhone and the iPad are the two most exciting gaming devices to come out in a long time, and we’re just seeing the beginning of a new era of form, distribution, and discovery for games. There are plenty of blogs about iOS gaming, but I’m frequently disappointed with the conversation. With On Tap, we’re aiming to create a space for the gems, the obscure, the experiments, and especially those games that feel like a perfect expression of the hardware.

The center point for the blog is The List, our Michelin-esque recommendation list of games we think are truly worth everyone’s time. We’re trying to cater to people who don’t particularly pay attention to the gaming scene. For example, our points of comparison in The List are games everyone knows, like Tetris or Super Mario.

So, I hope our blog remains very approachable while we focus our coverage on the deeper, weirder games out there.

Here’s one I’ve never put online. There’s actually one of these for each astrological sign, but these are my four favorites. That Sagittarius in the bottom left remains one of my favorite pixel pieces that I’ve done.

✳ pixel art 

Just realized this wasn’t online anywhere! Here it is: Mission Pie’s original location down to the last detail. This was my first real pixel art piece, and remains the most complex one I’ve ever done. Click for a 2x version to enjoy the little details.

✳ pixel art