I picked up Lumines for the PSP and have been playing it between levels of Shadow of the Colossus. I don’t have that much to say about the game. Others have already provided much more verbiage about this title without, er, illuminating why the game is fun and interesting. I can’t possibly add many more words to that discussion. I have just noticed one interesting aspect of the gameplay: I do better when I don’t know what I am doing.
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Archive for October, 2005
Shine and Shine and Shine and
October 31st, 2005 by psuA Fistful of Static
October 28th, 2005 by peterbPreamble
Somewhere in a distant time and place, a letter is delivered by runner:
From: Light of the World, Voice of Nur, High Priest Akh-na-GogTo: Honored Slave Tinker and Inventor Euripaelus
Subject: Re: Industrial accidents.
Hear now the words of Holiest of Holies Great Nur, Light of the World, Peace be Upon Him, through his High Priest Akh-na-Gog, who says unto you: can we build the next colossus without any hair? The aboriginal barbarian hordelings are having a field day climbing these things by their hair and painting graffiti on them. Worse, half the time they are drunk on that disgusting fermented yak milk, and the janitorial slaves have to spend hours scrubbing to clean up their “accidents.” And if they’ve sicked on the hair, the smell lingers just about forever.
So no hair next time, Honored Slave Tinker and Inventor.
So speaks Holiest of Holies Great Nur, Light of the World, Peace be Upon Him, through his High Priest Akh-na-Gog.
Choices I Don't Need
October 27th, 2005 by psuBuying socks used to be easy. You’d go to the store, buy 6 pair of lightweight Smartwool hiking socks, and go home. Smartwool used to only make about three kinds of socks: thin, a bit thicker, and really thick. But, as with all successful companies, they have been cursed with the diversification disease, and we are all worse off for it.
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Shadow of the Shadow of the Colossus
October 26th, 2005 by peterbSome of you may be wondering why there haven’t been many gaming articles lately. I believe the reason is that both psu and I are playing Shadow of the Colossus, and are desperately looking for some angle from which we can claim that it does not contradict our long-held position that “Boss” battles are stupid.
We can’t dodge the topic forever, though. Look for our comments on Shadow of the Colossus soon.
Available Light
October 25th, 2005 by psuIn an earlier article, I advised that if you needed to use a flash, there were no good pictures to be taken anyway. I realize now that anyone who has spent time reading the wankier photo forums, especially those related to Leica cameras could have taken this the wrong way. To clarify, my statement was not meant as a dig against flash or an attempt to uphold the ideals of “available light photography”. If people want to gain a sense of nobility by shooting in crappy low light, that’s not my problem.
The point that I wanted to make was that using the flash well is hard, and you should know some things before you try. Used well, flash can provide you with that “natural light” look anywhere you can plug a light into a wall. Used poorly, artificial light will turn that $10,000 full frame 16 megapixel digital body you just bought into something that may as well be a point and shoot.
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It'd Probably Work Better If It Were Run By Drunkards
October 24th, 2005 by peterbCertain topics come up again and again in this space. In videogames, we constantly talk about why save points are stupid. In photo we talk about equipment obsessions and how technique is more important than the camera.
And in the “food and drink” category, I always find some occasion to complain about the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (”PLCB”). This is because, like a dog who returns to his vomit, I keep trying to go into their liquor stores to do crazy, wild, unexpected things, like purchase liquor.
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Sort of Poached Salmon
October 21st, 2005 by psuMy friend Erik used to be a chef, and he also spent a lot of time in Alaska. Therefore, he has strong opinions about salmon. Chief among them is never to buy salmon in Pittsburgh. But, if you break this rule, for god’s sake don’t poach the fish. Poached salmon, to Erik, is like a boiled beef roast. You end up with a piece of fish that is certainly cooked, but is no longer really good for anything but carrying large spoonfuls of garlic mayonnaise from your plate to your mouth.
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Wool Socks
October 20th, 2005 by goobI wanted to take a moment to put down some words about wool socks.
It is often been my experience that wool socks are maligned things. “They’re itchy,” I am told. “They look goofy,” they say. The intimation is that wearing wool socks brings with it immediate and irrevocable membership in some nebulous club that cares about recycling, saves kitchen scraps for the compost pile and is likely vegan. Plus wears socks with sandals.
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Tools of the Trade
October 19th, 2005 by psuIf there is one inescapable fact of life in our dynamic technological society, it is that if enough people are interested in a given activity, the tools that enable that activity will change. I was thinking about this recently as I was presented with two press items about the film industry. One was a loving lament for and tribute to the last of the hand-drawn animation studios at Disney. The other was a review of the new Wallace and Gromit movie. Each piece drew the inevitable comparisons between hand-animated films and films animated by computer. The authors expressed their perfectly valid preference for the hand-animated style. Strangely though, each also came to the completely unjustified conclusion that computer animation is why they don’t like computer animated films. This is a stupid thing to say.
If they don’t like computer animated films, it is because the people who produced those films did work that they do not appreciate, or worked in a way that resulted in a bad film. It’s not the computer that made a bad movie.
How To Eat Prunes
October 18th, 2005 by peterbTonight at the grocery store, I needed to pick up some prunes to make one of my favorite treats. It turns out you can’t buy prunes anymore — instead, the major cooperatives want to sell you “pitted dried plums.” Pitted dried plum, of course, is a longwinded way of saying “prune.”
Why this not-so-subtle shift in marketing? For a long time now prunes have had a connotation, in the US, of being something that senior citizens eat to cure their constipation. This doesn’t make a lot of sense. The same connotation hasn’t attached itself to raisins, or figs, or granola, or any other number of high-fiber foods.
My conclusion is that the reason people think this way about prunes is because they don’t understand the right way to eat them. Fortunately for you, I am here to help.
The right way to eat prunes is to eat them as pruneaux d’Agen. A literal translation of this is “prunes of Agen,” Agen being a region in France. This translation is wrong. Don’t be upset if you mistranslated it: French is a subtle, many-layered language, and it can take a lifetime to learn its complexities. The correct translation of pruneaux d’Agen is “prunes soaked in booze.”
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