Dolphin games: no mere child’s play?: "Dolphins seem to deliberately make their games difficult, possibly in order to learn from them. And such pastimes may play a key role in the development of culture and in evolution—both among dolphins and other species, including humans. "

Designing for Flash on mobile devices: "Of course there are some universal truths to optimizing Flash content: don’t animate huge complex artwork; don’t tween a zillion things simultaneously; go easy on the transparency. And while on the desktop Flash 8 (finally!) solves these performance issues, on devices we just don’t have the oomph we need to kick out the crazy Hollywood effects, yet. Furthermore, some devices perform better than others, sometimes dramatically. And because mobile authoring often requires that we publish to many different devices, it may be the case that we have to author for the lowest common denominator. That being said, a byte here and there may make all the difference."

Is it me, or does this intimate that Flash for mobile won't actually be all that similar to the familiar desktop Flash we all know and love?

'Casual' video games are serious business: "The developers are gamers themselves and always want to push the envelope on the games they make," Olhava adds. "But if they try to make something bigger or more complex -- and people don't play it or buy it -- at the end of the day, business will win out. The developers will get the hint quickly enough that this isn't what the casual gamer wants."

Whilst I'm on the subject of dScape, it'd be worth popping over for a look at the results of the cameraphone competition we ran for Wired Sussex: inviting folks from across Brighton to send in their snaps of the city, which were projected onto a backdrop at the evening event (and look rather smart, if I say so myself). All credit to Jon Andrews and Devi Lozdan @ FP for their work on this.

We were horribly busy at the time (obviously) so didn't celebrate it at the time - and remedied this on Thursday of this week, by closing the office and relocating to Brussels for the day.

In summary: Eurostar, pissing statues, EU parliament, Tin Tin, cheese, beer, gadgets, idiocy. Full photo set is here - I'm sure there will be others. And, as will now be traditional, absent friends get to chew on a chocolate pope.

On a more sentimental note: wow, 5 years. This means I've been working longer here than anywhere else I've ever been: and despite that, it's still fun. So a big thankyou to everyone who's been a part of that, and those who continue to be.