Jan 12, 2009 · psu · 5 minute read
Food and Drink
Coffee is perhaps the most mysterious of all the hot drinks. Sure tea comes from the Far East and can at times be shrouded in ceremony and complicated cultural codes. But as a drink it’s simple. You take leaves, you put them in water that’s not too hot. After a while, you remove the leaves and enjoy your tea.
While coffee works on this same principle, I think what makes it an endless puzzle is the literally thousands of devices that man has thought up to do the job of soaking ground coffee beans in water.
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Jan 8, 2009 · psu · 4 minute read
Photo
If there is something that photographers like to do more than shop for cameras it is this: photographers love to tell you why a given machine is not good enough for what they do. Cameras are too small, or too big, or too slow or too loud, or [too “plasticky”](http://photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera- forum/00LE7S). The flash system might be no good. Or the lens system might be missing that one critical lens, usually an expensive fast prime.
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Jan 6, 2009 · psu · 3 minute read
Computers
One of the many ways in which I’ve had a lucky life is that I grew up with Moore’s law. I became aware of computing hardware just about the time the integrated circuit came on the scene. From high school to college to graduate school and into my work life I have for the most part ridden the curve that the hardware people have so generously provided for those of us who work in software.
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Jan 5, 2009 · psu · 5 minute read
Games
Long time readers will remember that a couple of years ago I worked my way through [the first half of Planescape:Torment](http://tleaves.com/2006/05/03 /west-of-house/) using a Windows emulator on my Mac. Since then I’ve dabbled in the game every once in a while, and then over this past Christmas break I decided to finish it off for good. Since my previous article on the game covered most of what I liked about it, now I get to complain.
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Dec 31, 2008 · psu and peterb · 4 minute read
Games
As the new year approaches, it seems like everyone is contractually obligated to publish at least one end of 2008 list. So here is our humble contribution to this strange ritual for this year: the top core gamer grievances of 2008.
10. What is with the Wii? What are all those people doing with all those Wii consoles anyway? There is no Bloodsport Deathspank 4 deathmatch to play. The Wii is a blight on the industry because it encourages people to buy what they want at a fair price and then have fun with it.
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Dec 30, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Culture
Since the alert readers of this blog were so helpful in identifying the Vivaldi Largo in D minor that was tormenting me, I am turning to you to solve another musical mystery.
Here it is (possibly in the wrong key):
(if you don’t have flash installed, you can download the small MP3 snippet here)
I first heard this little intro/trill on Leon Redbone’s cover of the old Emmett Miller tune “Ghost of the St.
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Dec 26, 2008 · psu · 5 minute read
Culture
It’s been a while since I went to see a movie. In fact, I think the last one I saw this year was The Dark Knight, a summer blockbuster to end all summer blockbusters. This was a popcorn movie with a difference. It was alleged to have a gritty and realistic style and was also taken seriously in the critical community as a movie with “mature” themes. After two and a half hours and change, all I remember thinking was that the film was too long and badly edited.
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Dec 24, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
To keep you busy at the in-laws' house over Christmas, try this [brilliant little web browser game](http://armorgames.com/play/2893/achievement- unlocked).
You’re welcome. Have some eggnog.
Dec 23, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
Dear crust-hater who was eating at Dinette tonight: Good lord what are you thinking? You are throwing away the best half of the pizza you just ordered. I can only conclude that you were raised badly.
For the rest of you who I am sure enjoy pizza crust, Dinette is the best pizza in town since Antonio left us. While it is a bit pricey, I think the value is good.
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Dec 22, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
CNN reports that a recent poll “suggests that one of out of five Americans think that Dick Cheney is the worst vice president in American history.”
My question: what the hell is wrong with the other four?
Dec 12, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
The sales figures that the NPD group (who exactly are the NPD group anyway? No one seems to know) came out this week and the result was yet again the same. Nintendo sold more units of their stuff than Microsoft and Sony combined, leaving Microsoft and Sony to fight over an increasingly small remaining share of the hardware market. This share is mostly made up of the so-called traditional gamer, whose reaction to this turn of events was as predictable as the events themselves.
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Dec 11, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
I’m reviewing the Wii game Animal Crossing: City Life for PTD. Any Tea Leaves readers who would like to explore the online component with me should feel free to drop by “Idletown”, at 4468-4770-4775. Leave your name and friend code in the comments section, and I’ll cross-register you.
Just make sure not to tell anyone the terrible secret of Animal Crossing!
Dec 10, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
Locavore (n): A person who eats local and fresh food, and is particularly smug about it.
This fall we happened to book a trip to San Francisco, where we planned to drop in on Slow Food Nation, the convention of the national Slow Food geeks. So we found ourselves in the middle of our favorite food town surrounded by a national population of the food-obsessed. It should have been a fantastic feast for the senses and the palate.
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Dec 9, 2008 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
As [I predicted in 2006](http://tleaves.com/2006/10/12/a-short-take-on-self- deception/), I finally gave in and bought Neverwinter Nights 2. But I have an excuse: I was able to expense it to write a review.
I had [one major complaint](http://tleaves.com/2005/08/25/lights-action- camera/) with the original Neverwinter Nights, which was that the camera management was intrusive. As far as I was concerned, to have a decent launch for NWN 2, Obsidian needed to do two things:
1. Add new campaigns to basically the same game.
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Dec 8, 2008 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
It’s easier, in some sense, to review bad games than good ones. Good games often succeed by just unobtrusively doing what they are supposed to do. Bad games, by their nature, can be held up to mockery and ridicule. It’s harder to be witty about a game that is, simply, fun.
One of the subjects I’ve been known to harp on is the adventure game genre. For a few years in the early 1990s, the entire genre was basically abandoned by the commercial game industry.
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Dec 4, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Games
1. The little Xbox “Mii”’s are pretty lame compared to the Nintendo ones.
2. What exactly is the point of the large dashboard? It appears to almost, but not quite, duplicate the mini-blade interface you get when you hit the big green button. So you think everything is there until you can’t find something and you remember go look at the mini-interface again.
3. Still nowhere to cancel my credit card renewal payment without calling Microsoft.
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Dec 1, 2008 · peterb · 7 minute read
Games
I like Fallout 3 quite a lot, so much so that I’m going to review it even though [psu already did](http://tleaves.com/2008/11/25/wandering-the- wasteland/). This article might contain minor plot spoilers, but I don’t think they are anything you won’t figure out in the first 15 minutes of playing.
“Fallout 3 is great” is not exactly a controversial opinion. Apart from [a few irredeemable nut-jobs](http://www.nma- fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=46914), everyone in the entire world agrees that in Fallout 3 Bethesda Softworks accomplished what it set out to do: deliver a compelling game set in the post-nuclear Washington, DC.
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Nov 25, 2008 · psu · 5 minute read
Games
We’ve all been playing a lot of Fallout 3 lately. I had not decided to write anything about until now for a couple of reasons. First, I am lazy. Second, I think that if I like a game, I should give it a chance to become hateful before I write down how much I like it. Hating a game is different. If a game sucks in the first few hours, it hardly ever gets better.
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Nov 24, 2008 · peterb · 5 minute read
Games
I recently had the chance to try out Kivi’s Underworld, the new “casual hack-and-slash” game from the developer of Depths of Peril. One of the things I thought was interesting about Kivi is that it was released simultaneously on OS X and Windows. Steven Peeler of Soldak graciously consented to be interviewed on the development of Kivi’s Underworld, and the experience of targeting the Mac as a platform.
[caption id=“attachment_1207” align=“alignright” width=“300” caption=“Kivi’s Underworld”][!
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Nov 18, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Photo
As regular readers know, this past summer I undertook an in-depth review of the Nikon D300 camera. My initial plan was to shoot the sorts of photos that I know I’m good at. But shortly after taking my first set, I resolved to push past my comfort zone and shoot subjects that I normally wouldn’t think of as “mine.”
This worked well in a few ways. First, of course, I got some great images.
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Nov 17, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Web
Psst? Anyone there?
It appears that after a bit of technical chaos and angst that we are back. In a slight breach of protocol I’m going to spend a bit of time sending a big raspberry to the “developers” who create the wonderful weblog publishing software that we spend so much of our time using.
Take the Wordpress upgrade and migration scheme. Please.
It’s not clear to me who thinks that this is a well designed process.
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Nov 14, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
…it means that our transition to the new hosting service was successful. Here’s to another few years of game reviews, chowhounding, and bitterness!
I think one or two of the most recent comments on posts might have been lost. I’ll try to move them over later today. In the meantime, consider visiting our forums and commenting there instead, while things settle down here.
Nov 10, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Web
This week, on a whim, I bought a harmonica. It always seemed like a fun instrument to play, and you can get a quality instrument for just a few bucks.
There’s only one problem: I don’t know how to play the harmonica. I dug around a little on the net, and found a series of instructional materials on YouTube. As soon as I started watching one, I realized there was something crazy going on here:
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Nov 5, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
Meanwhile, it’s pretty clear that someone at Amazon.com’s mp3 download department is [happy about the election results.](http://www.amazon.com/gp/pro duct/B00138H7YK?ie=UTF8&tag=theusualsuspepat&link_code=wql&camp=212361&creativ e=380601).
Nov 5, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
I am introducing a new term into our public discourse. Schadensürfing: The activity of deliberately seeking out blogs, articles, and forum threads by defeated political opponents just for your own personal enjoyment (such as [th is](http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjBhMWEyZmZhYTYwZTNlMjIyM2E1NmQwO WUzODBlZTc=), if you’re an Obama supporter.)
Nov 4, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
I have no broadcast TV antenna in my house. I have no cable. I have no satellite feed.
So for me, the most fascinating part of this year’s election is that I am able to choose from among multiple professional webcasts of election coverage to watch, live. I have ended up going with the BBC coverage as the most interesting. Tip of the hat to Cynthia Closkey for the recommendation.
Nov 3, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
In an astounding blow to the forces of darkness and evil, Amazon has introduced what they are calling [Frustration Free Packaging](http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_7803552_5?ie =UTF8&node=1234279011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_r d_r=0WYE1WTD8C70NVF830HF&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=457765901&pf_rd_i=507846). This does away with all of the extra bullshit that manufacturers like to surround their products in for the sole purpose of making sure that after you buy product you cannot use it. Jeff Bezos I salute you. Truly you are using your superpowers to fight for truth and light.
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Oct 29, 2008 · peterb · 8 minute read
Games
I had been wavering on whether to buy Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 or for Windows.
Normally, this would have been a no-brainer for me. I like playing games from the couch. But recently I reorganized my house a bit, and the feng shui of the room with the iMac is just about perfect for games. And, truth to tell, I’m a little irritated by the amount of noise the 360’s fan makes.
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Oct 27, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
As I’ve mentioned recently I’ve been on a Japanese liquor kick, enjoying the hell out of various hard-to-get-but-delicious Japanese whiskies. Whisky, of course, is a comparatively new import to Japan. Their classic liquor production tradition subsists in two drinks: shochu, a distilled spirit probably first imported from the Asian mainland, and sake, a type of rice wine or rice beer.
A friend of mine recently stopped by Astor Wines in New York and asked me if I wanted anything.
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Oct 24, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
I like pancakes.
I like them thick and fluffy and full of maple syrupy goodness. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find good pancakes. So finally out of desperation, I stole a recipe from Alton Brown. So now I get pancakes like this:
Every Sunday.
Luckily, good pancakes are fairly simple. It turns out that the fluffiness that you want comes from combining just the right leavening agents with the right amount of heat.
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Oct 22, 2008 · psu · 5 minute read
Culture
Ever since Fresh Air started putting up a daily podcast I’ve spent entirely too much time in the car listening to Terry Gross or one of her cohorts interview various people who are famous for various reasons. I have noticed something interesting about the “entertainment” related shows. Often they will perform a friendly interview with the director or star of some new TV show or movie. Everyone will sound intelligent and thoughtful, it will make you want to see the film.
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Oct 21, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Games
This is a brief review that will appear in next month’s PTD Magazine. Thanks to PTD for graciously allowing me to pre-publish it here.
We’ve all seen that guy. The one out on the dance floor, doing that shuffly dance guys do. The guy is convinced of his own savoir-faire. He’s convinced he’s talented. He’s convinced he’s irresistible. To everyone else in the room, however, he looks like a clumsy, embarassing dork.
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Oct 9, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Photo
It’s been about a year, so it was time to look around at the current round of compact digital cameras, since I grow tired of lugging my D200 around so much. Conclusion: they still all suck. So, dear photo industry, please get with it and make something good. Thanks!
Oct 7, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
I can’t get this song out of my head. I don’t have a copy of the original. I’m pretty sure it was from a commercial for color film from either Fuji or Kodak in the late 1970’s or early 1980’s. But I could be misremembering.
I jotted down the notes and made a brief MP3 fragment of the melody here. Please take a listen, and if you know what this is called, tell me.
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Oct 6, 2008 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
A tip of the hat to Michael Collins who, knowing my weakness for turn-based strategy games, suggested that i check out Ring of Red, (or, in Unicodese, Ring of ?ed), a PS2 tactics/action hybrid.
There are advantages to not buying a game until 8 years after its release, and one of them is this: I was able to pick this up at The Exchange for a mere $7. Given the current state of the stock market, that’s about all I can afford.
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Oct 3, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
I spend a lot of time complaining about the press to peterb. I will storm into his office and start drooling and ranting about how so much radio, TV and print coverage about so many subjects is so vapid, shallow, ill-conceived and flat out factually incorrect. Then he reminds me that I work in software, where time to market is everything, and I shut up.
So I’m happy when every once in a while I come across something in the press that is not vapid or shallow or ill-conceived or simply wrong.
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Sep 30, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
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.”
Sep 26, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Computers
I am not given to declarations of consumer affiliation (subliminal: buy !) But last year I [waxed rhapsodic](http://tleaves.com/2007/10/30/backing- up-998532-files/) 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
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Sep 24, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Computers
I’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.
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Sep 23, 2008 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
What’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.
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Sep 22, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
There 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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Sep 18, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Culture
As 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.
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Sep 17, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Photo
I 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.
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Sep 16, 2008 · psu · 2 minute read
Culture
I 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.
Shazam! The [Shazam](http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id =284993459&mt=8) app on the iPhone is perhaps the best encapsulation of modern dork convergence ever to be conceived by man.
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Sep 15, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Games
Children 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.
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Sep 11, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
“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.
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Sep 11, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Culture
I sat down a few times this week to try and crank out my weekly or twice weekly little rantlet about nothing in particular, but I have not been able to summon the interest and the energy necessary to type the letters in the computer. In contrast, I just listened to the 100th GWJ podcast, which was the very definition of a guilty dork pleasure. How they managed to maintain the energy needed to fill that many hours of content with a relatively intelligent level of discussion about video games is almost beyond my comprehension.
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Sep 8, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Games
Item: a seemingly huge number of people (including me) can’t play Spore online because [the copy protection breaks the game](http://i137.photobucket.c om/albums/q224/Rage_2007/Spore/Sporereleased.jpg).
Item: as of this writing, the average review score for Spore on Amazon is 1.195: 27 5-star reviews, a smattering of 4s, 3s, and 2s, and nine hundred sixty-three 1-star reviews. Most of the 1-star reviews focus on the copy protection of the game.
Item: the average score of the Metacritic user reviews of Spore is 6.
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Sep 7, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
Once again, I suffer so that you don’t have to. This morning I picked up Maxis/EA’s new Spore. Apparently, though, the online part of the game – which is to say “most of it” – is completely broken and doesn’t work. At all.
I’m sure I’ll hear from the “works for me” contingent any moment now. But for those of you who haven’t yet bought the game, you might want to peruse [this 39-page thread](http://forums.
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Sep 4, 2008 · peterb · 5 minute read
Computers
As regular readers know, I’m not only a gamer, but I’m a gamer who lives primarily on the Mac OS X platform. For years, this has been an insufferable position, akin to being seated at a restaurant where all the other customers were being served but where you couldn’t flag down a waiter. There have always been unique games for the Mac platform, and the occasional game like Diablo 2 that was on both PC and Mac.
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