or: why the best restaurants in London are all ethnic food.
You’ve been learning to actually cook food, with recipes that don’t start with “remove foil wrapper from cup”. Phrases like “gently braise” suddenly and inexplicably combine with a shocking lack of calls to Domino’s Pizza. Yet half your cooking seems to come out like some demented cardboard pudding. I’m here today to explain the problem. The problem is the British empire.
As those of you who care may have surmised, I, along with psu, picked up a Nintendo DS Lite the other week.
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I had pretty much decided to get a DS when the Lite hit earlier this summer. One of my co-workers had imported one a few months ago, and the new form of the device is pretty irresistible. Of course, I also had to keep up with Pete.
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I took a few books with me on vacation. One of them was an Italian novel called La strega innamorata, (”The witch in love”). It’s funny, and quirky, and easy to read, even for someone whose language skills are as rusty as mine. And every time I picked up the book, it did me the favor of reminding me that I should pour myself a glass of what might be my favorite digestivo, Liquore Strega.
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One curious constant in the American food tradition dating back at least as far back as I can remember is the neighborhood ice cream truck. These small white vans are similar in shape to a mail truck, but much more festive. They play a happy song as they move down the street, and the colorful pictures on their bodies promise an irresistable selection of sweet confection. As far as I can tell, these trucks are the same everywhere. And, as far as I can tell, they’ve sold basically the same products for the last thirty or forty years.
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Can’t write — too busy playing Advance Wars DS.
Recently, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback, both privately and on the site about the state of the local coffee scene. I am always happy to get this kind of information, since it never hurts to have new places to try. But, one aspect of these messages has been puzzling. Over and over again, the advocate of the new place will say “you have to go to Café XYZ, they use these special Moon Beans from the Outer Rings of Venus, which Rule.”
With all due respect, this is nonsense.
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I read The Soul of a New Machine for the first time when I was in high school. It is the best book I have ever read about computers. It is one reason I ended up working in software engineering. If you have not read this book, you should go and buy it now, and read it, and then come back here. Ready? OK.
Every so often I mean to write an article about how Chris Crawford doesn’t know what he’s talking about. It’s pretty impressive, in some ways: his book on game design, for example, is practically a manual on how to write a sucky game. And Crawford keeps inspiring me to write this article because every time he opens his mouth (or uncaps his pen) he says stupid things.
Lots of people have weighed in on the meat of Crawford’s latest musings on how the game industry is moribund and uncreative, and I’m not particularly interested in tackling them. Instead, I just want to say something that needs to be said:
Chris Crawford wrote games that weren’t any fun.
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I’ve spent the last month dabbling with Planescape from time to time on the laptop. I’m not quite all the way through, but I think I’ve played enough to say a bit more. My overall opinion of the game has not changed since writing my first impressions. I think it’s clearly the best of the classic “western” RPGs that I’ve played from the 1990s.
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