I will allow myself a brief comment on the little local blogging drama. I will keep it short and sweet, and anyone who doesn’t already know what I am talking about can safely ignore this.
My comment is “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Archive for September, 2008
Teacher. Wordsmith. Blowhard.
September 30th, 2008 by peterbPost-Consumption Glow
September 26th, 2008 by peterbI am not given to declarations of consumer affiliation (subliminal: buy !) But last year I waxed rhapsodic about Seagate’s FreeAgent Pro external drives, and tonight, well, I’m going to do it again. I needed more storage, and I couldn’t quite convince myself to shell out the cash for a Drobo storage robot (mostly because I was afraid it would be loud) so instead I just bought another FreeAgent. Specifically, I picked up the 1 Terabyte model (more…)
DRM and Me
September 24th, 2008 by psuI’ve had some bad luck with hardware this year. For the first time ever I had a disk fail in one of my computers. And then after getting my laptop rebuilt my iMac’s power supply went south and I had to get that machine rebuilt as well. When the laptop came back, I had to install all my old tools one by one, something I haven’t had to do for three or four years thanks to the wonderful Apple magic brain transfer function which makes imaging old machines into new machines easy and painless. For some reason, in doing all this work I didn’t reinstall Photoshop… until this weekend when I wanted to do some panoramas. Therein lies my story.
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Spore: Turning Gold into Lead
September 23rd, 2008 by peterbWhat’s wrong with Spore?
This is the question that’s been occupying me this week. With the help of about an hour on the phone to India I managed to resolve my DRM issues and played the game for days and days. It leaves me a bit cold.
But frankly, I expected Spore to leave me a bit cold, since I’m one of the 2% of the population that doesn’t like The Sims. The interesting thing is the particular way it leaves me cold, which I didn’t expect, and that I’ve noticed is that it’s leaving other people a bit cold, people who should like it. I think this is worth examining in some detail. (more…)
The Cold Hard Reality of Perspective
September 22nd, 2008 by psuThere is a classic scene in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where it is revealed that the best way to destroy the mind of the average intelligent being is to put them in a room that shows exactly how insignificant they are with respect to the rest of the universe. In other words, the last thing people need is a sense of perspective.
I felt this way the other week when we landed in San Francisco and got some Dim Sum.
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Message Unreceived
September 18th, 2008 by peterbAs sometimes happens, I began writing a long and detailed article about how I have given up on having my stereo receiver be part of the “AV” system my TV is hooked up to. Quickly I discovered that psu wrote the same article a year and a half ago, in more detail and with better reasoning.
So I’ll just say that tonight is the night I gave up. I unhooked the receiver and speakers, decommissioned the classic Xbox and the DVD player (anything I want to watch anymore I stream from iTunes, and I can use the 360 as a DVD player in a pinch), and moved them out of the room. (more…)
Breaking news: Canon 5D Mark II
September 17th, 2008 by peterbI don’t usually republish press releases, but this is so fresh that I’m taking liberties:
Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging, today introduced the EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera, the long-awaited successor to Canon’s highly popular EOS 5D, introduced in 2005. Building upon the qualities that made the EOS 5D camera so successful, Canon has coupled the creative power of a full-frame CMOS sensor in a relatively compact and affordable camera body, together with groundbreaking HD video capture that opens the door to a much wider range of imaging possibilities for photographers. Along with the ability to capture full HD video clips at 1920 x 1080 resolution, Canon’s EOS 5D Mark II Digital SLR camera features a 21.1-megapixel full frame 24 x 36mm CMOS sensor, DIGIC 4 imaging processor and significantly lower noise, with an expanded sensitivity range from ISO 50 to ISO 25,600.
Five Things I am Too Lazy to Twitter
September 16th, 2008 by psuI signed up for Twitter last week even though I have no idea why. Apparently you use this service to post things that are too useless or trivial to even write into a weblog. Of course, here at Tea Leaves, nothing is too useless to post. So here we go.
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Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened
September 15th, 2008 by peterbChildren have their heroes: Luke Skywalker. Indiana Jones. My hero was, and is, Sherlock Holmes.
Happy are we to be living in the era when Arthur Conan Doyle’s copyright has expired, freeing up the name and likeness of Holmes for the use of other creators: in stories, in books, and even in video games. One such game is Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, or, as I like to call it, “Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu”. (more…)
A Good Rule of Thumb
September 11th, 2008 by peterb“Any game that has the language it is written in in the name is going to cause deep hurting.”
And yes, authors (or packagers, whoever deserves the blame) of PySolFC, I’m looking at you. The thing where installing the cardset images also slapped a full-on Fink installation onto my mac was particularly poignant. This is like buying a cup of coffee at a 7-11 and the next thing you know the cashier moves into your basement.