If you read one book this month, make it Patrick Rhone’s new book, Keeping It Straight. I read it on my Kindle, and I just ripped through it. The book may contain a lot of things you already know, but Patrick’s personal essays give insight and at times, a swift kick that will propel you into action.

Chuck Wendig reviews Portal 2, but also addresses an important storytelling mechanic in video games. Sometimes there need to be some unanswered questions and gaps to fill during the adventure, and perhaps even afterward.

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, wrote a well researched article on the possible toxicity of sugar in The New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago. While it may be a long read, the article is worth your time, and once the studies in progress are complete, we’ll know a little more about the hazards of refined sugar, fructose in particular.

I love the game, Tiny Wings, but I have to say, Garrett Murray accurately describes how I feel when I play it, too.

Merlin Mann has become an adept writer, and this piece illustrates that. It is my hope that Merlin’s eventual book is more memoir and less “how-to” because damned if he doesn’t drop wisdom in a most unique and effective way when he simply tells us the story of his life.

Using the analogy of a single family income, Greenspun illustrates how much (or little) Congress’ proposed spending cut will save. We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated....

In 1874 the QWERTY keyboard was invented. In 1963, the world was introduced to the mouse. Some 50 years later, we’ve seen the advent of microprocessors, high resolution webcams, and spatial tracking technology. But all the while we’ve continued to use outdated technology to interact with devices. Why? This is a question that we’ve been thinking about a lot at Google, and we’re excited to introduce our first attempts at next generation human computer interaction: Gmail Motion....

If you don’t already have a backup solution in place for your home computers, then it is time to rectify that problem. I went for some time without a proper backup solution and was nearly bitten by data loss, but I lucked out and was able to recover the data. From that point on, I backed up to an external drive weekly. However, on-site external backups are not enough. If that external drive were to fail coincidentally with a computer hard drive failure, I would lose all of my data....

The Brooks Review elaborates on this conclusion: The only free things I like and trust are free things that are trials, or labeled as beta. Everything else should be charging from day one — I don’t mean to get all 37Signals on people here, but they have a good point. What good will Twitter be next month when 20% of the average user’s stream is advertising? Will I even want to use it?...

There are some cats who are affectionate, some who are aloof, some who play fetch, and some who don’t goof, but you, dear Hayden, loved. You entertained us with your feats of skill when you would attempt to catch the nemesis that was your tail. A lap was never empty for long when you entered room. You snuggled up with me for weekend afternoon naps when Lesa was out and about, but you would always run to meet her when she arrived home....