Jul 18, 2005 · psu · 3 minute read
Culture
The other day, someone was taunting me on our local chat system. He said something to the effect of “If Pete is so down on cliché and repitition, why does he watch the Tour de France year after year when Lance always wins the same way?”.
First of all, in the years that I’ve watched the race, there have been four or five different winners (Indurain, Riis, Ullrich, Pantani, Armstrong). Second of all, while the three week race has been pretty much the same every year, every day is a different one day race.
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Jul 15, 2005 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
A few weeks ago, someone apparently posted a link to my review of Gran Turismo 4 on some Internet forum. This has led to a steady stream of people flooding the comments section of that article and informing me that I’m not any good at the game, I’m homosexual, it’s impossible for a popular game to be bad, I probably didn’t actually buy it, and I am a moron for saying, publicly, that I didn’t enjoy a game.
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Jul 14, 2005 · psu · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
For your edification, a few food places you should try if you find yourself on the road in upstate New York or Vermont.
Shwabl’s: Buffalo NY
This is the original “beef on weck” place. Beef on weck is carved roast beef served on a bun that has caraway seeds and salt in it. The top half of the roll is dipped in the beef juice. The sandwich is given to you on a plate with slaw or potatoes or potato salad.
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Jul 13, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
If you find a URL that you think would be of interest to Tea Leaves, one way to bring it to our attention is to use del.icio.us, which I have written about in the past. Simply tag a link with for:peterb or for:psu, and we’ll look at it when we get a chance.
I particularly encourage and ask for people to tag exciting indie games that they think we should be reviewing.
Read On →
Jul 13, 2005 · peterb · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
I have this problem with cheese: very often, I’ll encounter some super cheese, and then finish it, and then the next time I’m at my cheesemonger I have completely forgotten what it was that I was enjoying so much the other day. I have this problem with wine, too. Of course, sometimes I have the opposite problem, which is that I try some cheese, and it’s revoltingly awfulnot at all to my taste, but then I forget about it, and I see it at the cheese shop and say “Hey, I’ve never had that, I don’t think.
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Jul 12, 2005 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
If you haven’t watched today’s stage of the Tour, then move along.
On the other hand, if you have watched the race, and you want some insight about how bike racing is both a team and individual sport, then go and find video of the stage and watch the clinic that Discovery put on this afternoon in France. After a weekend where a lot of people where aghast and wondering what happened to Lance’s team on that first stage in the hills, Discovery came out today and completely destroyed the entire field.
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Jul 11, 2005 · psu · 6 minute read
Games
I worked my way to the end of this game last night. Action/Platform games usually are not my thing, but this one received nearly unanimous effusive praise both from the gaming press and sources you can actually trust (ha ha). I think the title is similar to Resident Evil 4 in that the core gameplay is really fun, but that core is brought down by a mindless adherence to annoying game design conventions that make the game less fun than it could be.
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Jul 8, 2005 · psu · 1 minute read
Computers
We drove from Pittsburgh to Burlington for a friend’s wedding over the 4th. We drove through 3 states and stayed in 3 hotels and one cousin’s house in 4 different towns. The towns ranged from medium sized college towns to a small Albany suburb, to a rural population center in the middle of nowhere in northern New York. This last place was small enough to not even have a Starbuck’s.
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Jul 7, 2005 · psu · 2 minute read
Games
Today I have a simple question. I was playing the GBA port of Zelda: Link to the Past and was searching the interweb for clues into the flow of the game. What I found was a universe full of material about another matter entirely. You will recall that when Wind Waker was originally released, a lot of people complained about the “childish” look of the game. Having never seen any of the other games, I hadn’t thought much about this, and figured the kids were just pissed off because the new game was different.
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Jul 6, 2005 · psu · 4 minute read
Culture
It’s the first week of July, which means the Tour De France has started again. The Tour, of late, has taken on a certain sameness. Lance starts, Lance stays out of trouble, Lance wins in the mountains, Lance takes more time in the time trials, Lance wins the race. While some would want you to believe that this makes the race boring (and they are, to a certain extent, correct) one should always keep in mind exactly what it takes to be the guy that does what Lance is doing.
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Jul 5, 2005 · peterb · 8 minute read
Games
In my family, growing up, the men played Pinochle and the women played Mahjong.
Later in life, this became a source of vexation to me, because the men so clearly got the short end of the stick. First of all, to play Pinochle you have to use a stupid Pinochle deck, which isn’t any use whatsoever when playing War or Go Fish or other card games that normal people play. Secondly, there was some sort of unwritten law that said that in order to play Pinochle, you have to have at least one guy smoking a really stinky cigar, which is gross.
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Jul 4, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, a long-time couple.
How the hell did that happen?
Jul 1, 2005 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
The last few months have been filled with a steady stream of hype, drool, drool-induced hype and general nonsense about the coming of the next generation consoles. The “next gen”, we are told, will bring us unprecendented processing power which will allow us to create fantastic gaming vistas full of particle effects, physics engines and environments that are normal-mapped and pixel-shaded out the ass. All of this, it is said, will provide an unprecedented level of “realism” and therefore “immersion” in future games.
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Jun 29, 2005 · peterb · 7 minute read
Culture
Bear with me for a few paragraphs, while I approach a review of the Disney release of Howl’s Moving Castle from a very oblique direction.
I’m one of the people who prefers to watch movies that are dubbed instead of subtitled, all things being equal. This is, apparently, a controversial position. I don’t really understand how there can be any debate over this. If you have a movie with a superb dub, and a movie with great subtitles, the dub is the better movie.
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Jun 28, 2005 · psu · 4 minute read
Culture
I have for the most part avoided watching pro basketball over the last few years. The main reason for this is the recent period of extended futility in which the Boston Celtics have found themselves trapped. But, I think there are deeper reasons for my distaste. It seems to me that the game has lost any sense of flow and grace. Instead, you watch a game and you see ten virtuoso athletes surrounded by their prodigious egos dribbling into an endless series of isolation plays and 2-on-2 pick and roll.
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Jun 27, 2005 · peterb · 6 minute read
Games
People have been making “space opera” trading games for 25 years. Among these is Ambrosia Software’s Escape Velocity, first developed in 1992. It is the best game of its kind. The most recent version, Escape Velocity Nova, is available for both Windows and Macintosh, and provides varying levels of challenge for the novice and for the experienced player. It is a classic, and everyone with a soul will enjoy it.
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Jun 24, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
The first ripe wild black raspberries (rubus occidentalis) of the season have been spotted.
And eaten.
Jun 23, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
If you like the game-related articles you read on Tea Leaves, you should definitely visit the third installment of The Carnival of Gamers, a collection of some interesting gaming-related articles. Tea Leaves is honored to have been able to participate.
Jun 22, 2005 · psu and peterb · 9 minute read
Games
Video games, like all forms of entertaiment, have their own set of idiosyncratic formal conventions. All the Zelda games have a series of dungeons, broken up by exploration, where you collect items to defeat the final enemy. Horror games have a slow pace, shuffling zombies and stupid camera angles. Platform games have hateful jumping puzzles and take place in a strange world where whacking a box turns it into money. Conventions like this can be useful because they provide a formal framework in which the game designers can work.
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Jun 21, 2005 · faisal · 7 minute read
Racing
So it’s come down to [this](http://f1.racing-live.com/en/index.html?http://f1 .racing-live.com/en/headlines/news/detail/050619215144.shtml). Eleven years after Ayrton Senna’s tragic death cast a pall over Formula 1 and made everyone rethink safety, Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley have put up a tent and made everyone rethink clown cars.
This weekend’s US Grand Prix was the ninth race of the season, the first season of the millennium to not be so boring as to serve as a prescription insomnia cure.
Read On →
Jun 20, 2005 · psu · 2 minute read
Culture
I’ve actually done enough riding this year to progress past the “start gasping for air every time you come off the downhill” stage of fitness. More books than I can list here have been written about training for cycling. Certainly, the success of the more systematic methods used by Lance Armstrong and such to win the Tour De France over and over again have gotten a lot of attenion if for no other reason than they use cool toys.
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Jun 17, 2005 · peterb · 6 minute read
Games
It is well understood that there is nothing new under the sun in video games. I recently borrowed Wrath Unleashed from the local library, not knowing what it was.
Archon
What it was is a remake of Archon.
Archon, for those of you who have never heard of it, is on every old computer game player’s list of The Greatest Games Ever Made. The basic idea is: it’s chess.
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Jun 16, 2005 · psu · 4 minute read
Culture
The office had a trip to see the new Batman movie. The movie itself, while flawed in some ways, was for the most part enjoyable. However, the whole movie-going experience itself has become tedious in many ways. First, there was lunch. The theater is actually only close to a bunch of boring box restaurants, and one of the people in our group required gluten free food. So we ended up at P.
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Jun 15, 2005 · peterb · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
My chocolatier, Amy, said “I’ve got something special for you.”
OK, so she’s not just my chocolatier. She owns the store where I get most of my chocolate. For a while now, I’ve been getting most of my cocoa powder from Mon Aimee Chocolat in Pittsburgh’s Strip District.
As it happens, I drink a lot of cocoa. So when it comes to this particular commodity, I’m what is known as a “value” shopper (or, as psu would call me, a “cheapskate”).
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Jun 14, 2005 · psu · 4 minute read
Photo
Back when I shot film, I had evolved to shooting almost 100% black and white. There were various reasons for this, but ultimately it was just because I liked the look and I liked printing. One place I especially liked shooting black and white was Paris. I have hundreds of pictures in my files from there that I will hopefully get back to printing later in my life.
With the switch to digital, I hardly make any black and white pictures.
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Jun 13, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
Stephanie Zacharek of Salon doesn’t like the new Hayao Miyazaki film, Howl’s Moving Castle.
I felt ambiguous at the prospect of seeing this film: Miyazaki’s [Princess Mo nonoke](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00003CXBK/theusualsusp epat) was epic, luminous, and put me to sleep, wheras the pacing of [Spirited Away](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005JLEU/theusualsuspep at) was just right. But Zacharek thought that Howl, based on [the book by Diana Wynn Jones](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006441034X/the usualsuspepat), was somewhat boring. Zacharek, helpfully, is always completely wrong about everything, so I’m taking that as a sign that Howl is probably pretty good, although not as good as it would have been had she thought it was a pile of unwatchable tripe.
Read On →
Jun 9, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
Our Internet provider suffered a significant outage today, just in time for our Carnival of Gamers entry. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Jun 8, 2005 · peterb · 13 minute read
Games
I’ll start off with a disclaimer. I know Andrew Plotkin, the author of The Dreamhold. We’ve worked closely together. We run into each other at the library on occasion. I consider him a friend. So as I discuss the game, I’ll wear my bias on my sleeve: I think Andrew’s games are great. Despite (or because of?) that, I think I have some interesting things to say about it.
I like to think that I inspired The Dreamhold.
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Jun 7, 2005 · psu · 1 minute read
Games
After a short detour through the land of zombies and the land of slam dunks, I’m back into Jade Empire. Overall, I have found the experience satisfying in that KOTOR but with Kung Fu way. But I must complain about the recent boss fight. Here we have a triple wammy of bad game design.
1. The Boss is much much harder to kill than the entire sequence of enemies you just dispatched all at the same time.
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Jun 6, 2005 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
I don’t know a lot about coffee.
This surprises people who know how much coffee I drink (a lot) and who know how obsessive-compulsive I can get about other things I drink, such as tea or wine. With those drinks, I’m always branching out to try new styles, while simultaneously deeply exploring the styles I know I like, trying to discern and describe small differences in taste. With coffee, though, I more or less just walk into a good coffee shop and drink whatever they hand me.
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Jun 3, 2005 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
For several years of my life, I have had a tag line attached to me that goes “Oh, those are better in Paris.” While I believe that this tag is somewhat unfair, there are definitely a few things routinely available in France that seem to have no counterpart of comparable quality back here at home. Cheese
Every single time we are in Paris we visit the cheese shop. Two particular varieties of cheese stand out here.
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Jun 2, 2005 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
Apparently, [controversy still rages](http://buttonmashing.com/2005/06/01/the- tent-stakes-are-coming-up/) about my article The Best Review Money Can Buy, which was included in the recent [Carnival of Gamers](http://buttonmashing.com/2005/05/26/the- carnival-of-gamers-2/).
In particular, Matt at cgonline.com was quite upset. He feels that I’m painting mainstream game reviewers with too broad a brush, and that my description of them as lacking credibility was not fair. I stand by my article, hyperbole and all. Clearly, though, I’m going to have to start adding little smiley faces whenever I talk about how ultra-credible I am: some folks didn’t get the joke.
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Jun 1, 2005 · psu · 2 minute read
Games
One of my more beloved games on the Xbox was NBA Street V2. But, pulling off the advanced tricks with the Xbox controller was always too hard because the Xbox controller only allowed you three “turbos”. Still, when you got in the right rythm, your little avatars could dance around, pass the ball off someone’s head and then through the air to a thunderous dunk. This made for more fun in 3-on-3 than my other Xbox basketball experience.
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May 31, 2005 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
Our last night in Paris, we found ourselves at Brasserie Balzar for dinner. This place is something of a landmark (even with its recent aquisition by a large corporation) in the center of the St. Germain area. The place is pretty popular, so it was with a certain lack of wisdom that we arrived sans reservations, much to the annoyance of the manager. We explained in our broken Junior High French that yes, we should have made reservations, but that we would be happy to take any table, perhaps the small one there on the terrace?
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May 30, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
The pints of blueberries have arrived. I am happy, until late September.
May 27, 2005 · psu · 9 minute read
Culture
If you ever find yourself sitting in the F terminal of the FilthyPhiladephia International Aiport waiting for a U.S. Airways Express plane to take you back home to Pittsburgh, you know you have had a bad day. Every single person at the gate had the same story to tell. There was the woman who had been four hours late getting out of Seattle and re-rounted half way around the world and back to the F terminal.
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May 26, 2005 · peterb · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
Every so often, I think that I’ve reached some sort of plateau in terms of how much I hate the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Then I make some stupid mistake, like shopping at a Pennsylvania liquor store again, and I discover new vistas of animosity and contempt. I drove up to Cranberry tonight to get a bottle of Amaro Montenegro, because the PLCB’s web site indicated it was one of the only stores west of the Susquehanna that had any.
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May 24, 2005 · peterb · 9 minute read
Culture
In 1988, LSD was popular among some people at Carnegie Mellon. So much so that when a number of people had “bad trips,” the administration released a public service announcement warning people: “The acid with the picture of the sunshine on it is bad, and has been causing bad trips. Stay away from the ‘bad acid’”. Then, of course, for the rest of the academic year, absolutely everyone on campus used “Whoah, bad acid!
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May 23, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
Today I saw the first hour and 40 minutes of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Instead of sharing my incomplete opinion of the part of the movie I saw, let me ask you: is it worth going back to see the end, or should I just wait for it to come out on DVD? Due to unforeseen circumstances, I left shortly after Anakin formally became Darth Vader.
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May 20, 2005 · peterb · 2 minute read
Games
I’m still not ready to give my full review, because I’m still evaluating the game.
That being said, I have spent the past 2 hours saying “well, just one more race,” and my heart is pumping in a way that it hasn’t been since the San Francisco tracks of the original Project Gotham Racing. So I would be remiss if the last thing I left you with for the weekend was my cryptic “Hmmmmmmm” from yesterday.
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May 19, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
Well, it’s better than Gran Turismo 4, but…
Hmmmmmmmmmm.
I’m not feeling terribly optimistic today. I’ll play it for a few more days before going in to more detail.
May 18, 2005 · peterb · 3 minute read
Culture
Yes, I’m desperate for the sixth book in the Harry Potter series to be published, already. I realize that in some circles this marks me as a rube, a sucker, someone sucking at the mass-market teat. The type of person who, if he wanted Chinese food, might go eat at P.F. Chang’s.
I don’t care. If Roger Ebert gets to like monster movies, I get to like Harry Potter.
I actually do agree with A.
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May 17, 2005 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
Tonight, we began playing with book titles, rewritten to include references to food. Or videogames. Or both. We very quickly settled in to a groove. Here are the results.
93. The God of Small Things That Taste Like Chicken. [peterb]
92. The God of Stupid Console Savepoint Systems [psu]
91. Love in the Time of Super-sizing [peterb]
90. One Hundred Years of Solitaire [peterb]
89. The Moor’s Large Fry [agroce]
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May 16, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated antediluvian and protectionist state laws that prevent direct sale and shipment of wine by out-of-state vendors to consumers, at least in states which allow direct shipment by in-state wineries. The case, Granholm v. Heald, can be [obtained online](http://a257.g .akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/16may20050800/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04pdf /03-1116.pdf). It remains to be seen whether this will have any practical impact in Pennsylvania, since I’m uncertain if PA allows direct shipment of wine by in-state wineries to consumers.
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May 13, 2005 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
Jane at GameGirlAdvance writes [an apologia for game review puffery](http://ww w.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2005/05/12/the_big_score_issue.html), as a result of Gamespy getting busted perverting the central message of one of their writer’s reviews. The executive summary of her article is “editing game reviews is so very hard!”
Huh? No, it isn’t. Why are some authors and editors so intent on pretending that it is? Anyone who tells you that this is a difficult, thorny problem is telling you a bunch of apologist, industry-shill claptrap.
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May 12, 2005 · psu · 2 minute read
Culture
Buying shoes used to be easy. You’d go to the store, try on two or three pair in your size and pick the one with the closest fit. You could also count on being able to go to the same store a year or so later and get another pair of the same sort without too much trouble. In our modern economy, this has all changed in the name of maximizing choice.
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May 11, 2005 · peterb · 13 minute read
Food and Drink
[](http://www.tleaves.com/weblog/images/articles/DSC_200 50330-01662.jpg)
The drinks are poured
The first part of this article can be found here.
As the drinks were poured, Lidia entertained us by talking about how they are made. Generally, amari are built on a base of strong alcohol that has been infused with herbs, roots, and sometimes fruits.
They occupy a strange space because of their dual role as both pleasurable and medicinal drinks.
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May 10, 2005 · psu · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
Since we live there part time now, I thought it would be fitting to provide a bit more commentary on the new Mexican place in Squirrel Hill. The Big Picture
Go there, now.
Some Extra Details
In our previous episode, Pete recommended the chorizo, barbacoa (goat), tripas (tripe) and lengua (tounge) tacos. I can vouch for these recommendations and add that the longaniza (spicy sausage), carnitas (roast pork), and cabesa (cow’s head) tacos are also yummy.
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May 9, 2005 · peterb · 5 minute read
Computers
Dear Mac Developers:
I know very well that software developers are creatures of habit. Given a tool that does roughly 80% of the job we need to do (such as Emacs, or the X Windowing System), we are inclined to grab on to it with both hands and refuse to let go until we are forced to.
Today I would like to try to force Mac developers to stop using Stuffit.
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May 6, 2005 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
I don’t normally just link to other weblogs without a connecting article, but I think that Red State Rabble’s continuing coverage of the kangaroo court trying to re-introduce creationism in Kansas is self-explanatory, and import enough to warrant a bare link.
Remember: if this sort of skullduggery succeeds in Kansas, it’s likely that Pennsylvania is next.