3 day weekends are great, but 3 day weekends which you go into with no plans whatsoever are the best.
Some nice post-it note cartoons - you might have come across some of his "adult life in illustrations" cartoons that seem to have spread all over Facebook and been reblogged a million times already, but this is going back to the source of that actual guy writing them, rather than the parasitic world of syndicated content farmers that is probably my least favourite thing on the internet at the moment... (You should probably follow him on Instagram, but I'm not really on Instagram so I don't know if thats the kind of thing that people really want in their feeds...)
On her instagram is a video of Daisy Ridley waving a stick around. Hopefully the reason that this caught my attention is self-explanatory. How long do I have to wait to see Episode VIII? Is this showing the kind of moves she's going to be doing in Episode VIII? I kind of feel like VIII should be about her learning about the Force rather than "mastering" it, and it should be Episode IX where she gets to be the lightsaber master… but then, the obvious journey for her to be on would be a big struggle with the power of the dark side in XI, which would follow from setting her up from "raw talent but unskilled" in VII to "skills + talent = power" in VIII, leading into "power + temptation" in IX… Which reminds me that I haven't had a chance to watch The Force Awakens lightsaber fight properly ¹, let alone all the DVD/Blu Ray extra features, which 10 years ago I probably would have seen about 4 times over by now. Is it weird that there isn't a commentary track? Is it weird that the 3D version hasn't been released yet? How long until a "collectors edition" that I'm probably going to buy, even though I probably won't get round to actually seeing all the extras…
Still, I love it that there is new Star Wars going on again…
Speaking of which - the Rogue One teaser trailer is kind of old news now, but I'm dropping the link anyway in case you didn't watch it properly. If you can't get enough of that kind of thing, then you will probably enjoy spending 1hr 37 minutes listening to the Incomparable podcast, with John Siracusa, Jason Snell, Dan Moren and Serentiy Caldwell talking about it.
On the subject of trailers, the next Call of Duty game has been unveiled. Also available in a bundle with a remastered for PS4/Xbox One version of CoD: Modern Warfare, which is going to be 10 years old next year - which makes me feel very old…
Also this weekend, I saw a TV ad for a new Doom game, which I didn't even guess was a Doom game until the logo at the end. I never got round to playing Doom3, but this has all got me thinking about what Valve are up to in their weird offices, whether anyone there has decided to do some work on the Half Life story, whether the Source engine is being ported/upgraded for the "next gen" consoles², what that might look like, how much of the Half Life 2 "episodes" I will be able to remember/didn't actually get round to playing, how much that will matter considering that there will probably be people playing Half Life 3 that weren't even born when Half Life 2 came out… (And again: feeling old...)
Back in the world of grown-ups (or maybe not), Ken Livingstone made some poorly-judged comments. The Huffington Post did a story about it. I'm not massively interested in the Labour party debate - but the combination of a complicated topic and a very simplified way of telling the story is something I find really interesting.
Similarly, I've found the Quartz app to be far more engaging than I had suspected. Maybe its because I get alerts for news stories that are interesting, as opposed to depressing.
On the other hand, I still like a good old-fashioned long read to give me an idea of what I should be thinking, as opposed to what I should know about. On that front, I thought this offered some real insight into whats going on with this current debate. (Is it a debate? Are there actually people putting forward reasoned arguments on either side? Perhaps I'm actually actively avoiding it, rather than just not looking in the right places for that kind of thing…)
A Quora post on the 5 most important programming concepts. Smart.
I really like the Reply All podcast, but this latest episode sent me through all kinds of emotions. If you haven't listened to it (and especially if I have told you to listen to it), then its a pretty good starting point. (Even though it doesn't have a Yes, Yes, No game, which is probably my favourite thing…)

First time - too busy soaking in the whole "new Star Wars" thing. Second time - was more interested in seeing my son's reaction to it all. 3rd time - on a tiny back-of-an-aeroplane-seat screen and too tired to think about lightsaber styles. My definition of 'watching a lightsaber fight properly' might be a bit stricter than most… ↩

I have a PS3, so "next gen" is "next gen" until I get a PS4, then it becomes "current gen." ↩

Some Random Nerd