Tea Leaves

Several years ago, with the help of Lidia’s restaurant we organized a tasting of Italian amari - bitter digestifs. It was a fabulous event, both informative and fun, and we immensely enjoyed writing about it in this space.

It was so much fun, in fact, that we decided to do another group tasting. This time, however, we chose a spirit from a little closer to home: Tequila.

In case you’re wondering where tonight’s post is, my Mario Kart Wii code is 1032-1807-7532. See you on the track.

Here’s how it works:

1. Previews of GTA IV appear in every magazine and weblog on the internet. Afraid of being attacked by mobs bearing torches and pitchforks, they universally give it 10/10, 5 stars, whatever the rating is that means “Jesus has returned to earth in the form of a videogame.”
2. Everyone buys GTA IV, including all of your 12 year old cousins.
3. Eventually, you give in to the hype and buy it too.
4. At this point, you realize that the “innovative” gameplay all of the reviewers in Step 1 talked about is, in fact, nothing more than the exact same gameplay from the past 5 games, only now with more pixels.
5. After about a week, you put the game down and never play it again.

Lather, rinse, and repeat with whatever other hit titles our corporate masters want to sell you in a given month.

I suppose people are probably expecting me to tear into the ethics behind GTA IV. I’ve certainly done the same with respect to other games. This time, I won’t bother for a few reasons. First, I haven’t played the game, and have no intention of playing the game. Second, and more importantly other people are making the argument for me, which I take to be a very healthy sign.

The more interesting question, to me, is: should I pick up Mario Kart for the Wii?

Dottie’s True Blue Cafe is a small place in San Francisco that sits right where the gentrification of Union Square ends and the Tenderloin begins. It is a neighborhood place that has become a destination through well-deserved appearances in every publication that has an opinion on where to eat in San Francisco. As such, you don’t really need me to tell you to go there. But I will anyway.

The next time you are staying the night in downtown SF, you should get up early and get to Dottie’s door by 7:20am so you can get in with the first group. Kurt, the owner and chef, will then serve you the best American breakfast you have ever had. If this does not happen, I will personally pay your bill.

I had to place a special order with the PLCB the other day to get a bottle of something for my mom. So, as long as I was placing the order, I ordered a bottle of Advocaat. Egg liqueur.

When you say the words “egg liqueur” most people will, instinctively, recoil in horror. There’s no need to do this: the liqueur can’t actually get you if you don’t open the bottle.

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, occasionally I’ll read a thread at some internet forum or other. Often in game forums, but also in more surprising places like this, the topic of software piracy comes up. These threads inevitably result in 20 pages of back-and-forth involving hundreds of people which reduce, in the end, to this exchange:

Person 1: “Hey, stop stealing software. That’s wrong.”

Person 2: “Don’t call me a thief! Copyright violation isn’t theft. Anyway, I really need to use this software, so that makes it OK.”

Beyond the obvious observation — that Person 2 is a dickhead — there’s something more subtle going on here. Today, it dawned on me. The Person 2s of the world aren’t just pirating software because they are bad people. They’re pirating software because they haven’t learned how to not pirate software. It’s not simply an ethical issue, it’s a personal failing, sort of like not knowing how to stop after one or two drinks.

Therefore, today, I’m going to teach you how to not be a software pirate. Let’s call today “Come Clean Friday”. Today’s the day you’re going to become a better person. I’m going to help.

I keep trying to write collections of short snippets about games, but they keep running long. So tonight, self-discipline will take over and I’ll keep it short. Really.

While there are many German words that I know, the one that I think is most apropos here is schadenfreude.

Auf wiedersehen, liebchen.

There are two universal rules about people who work in software:

1. Inexperience breeds an unrealistic optimism towards the power of new tools.

2. To offset (1), experience breeds an unrealistic hatred of all tools.

We have seen this cycle play out over and over again in the design, implementation and adoption of instruction sets (remember when those still mattered?), programming languages, operating systems, and end user applications. Back when I was younger and more optimistic about the power of new tools, I used to tinker a lot with scripting languages of various kinds. Over about ten years or so what this experience taught me was very valuable in my later career. The main lesson was this: pick one, learn it, and then stop paying attention. The one I picked to use most at the time was perl. Since then, perl has become a popular punching bag for newer and shinier scripting tools, but I have stuck to my guns. I know perl, therefore there is no reason to learn another scripting language.

My cat just gnawed through the wire to my Wii sensor bar.

Good thing you can find replacement sensor bars everywhere! Oh wait. YOU CAN’T.

Edit: It looks like I can order a replacement sensor bar from Nintendo for $10, or pay $20 at a local Gamestop for a battery-powered one with no wire. Guess which one I’ll be doing.