Apr 28, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
Dottie’s True Blue Cafe is a small place in San Francisco that sits right where the gentrification of Union Square ends and the Tenderloin begins. It is a neighborhood place that has become a destination through well-deserved appearances in every publication that has an opinion on where to eat in San Francisco. As such, you don’t really need me to tell you to go there. But I will anyway.
The next time you are staying the night in downtown SF, you should get up early and get to Dottie’s door by 7:20am so you can get in with the first group.
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Apr 23, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
I had to place a special order with the PLCB the other day to get a bottle of something for my mom. So, as long as I was placing the order, I ordered a bottle of Advocaat. Egg liqueur.
When you say the words “egg liqueur” most people will, instinctively, recoil in horror. There’s no need to do this: the liqueur can’t actually get you if you don’t open the bottle.
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Apr 18, 2008 · peterb · 7 minute read
Computers
Because I’m a glutton for punishment, occasionally I’ll read a thread at some internet forum or other. Often in game forums, but also in more surprising places like this, the topic of software piracy comes up. These threads inevitably result in 20 pages of back-and-forth involving hundreds of people which reduce, in the end, to this exchange:
Person 1: “Hey, stop stealing software. That’s wrong.”
Person 2: “Don’t call me a thief!
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Apr 16, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
I keep trying to write collections of short snippets about games, but they keep running long. So tonight, self-discipline will take over and I’ll keep it short. Really.
Game Demos Make You Think the Game Sucks Over at Gamers with Jobs they are quoting a study that indicates that [games with demos sell worse than games without](http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/14/study-publishers-shouldnt- release-demos-just-trailers/). It seems to me this should surprise no one. Here are some games that I decided not to buy based on the strength of their demos:
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Apr 15, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Racing
While there are many German words that I know, the one that I think is most apropos here is schadenfreude.
Auf wiedersehen, liebchen.
Apr 14, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Computers
There are two universal rules about people who work in software:
1. Inexperience breeds an unrealistic optimism towards the power of new tools.
2. To offset (1), experience breeds an unrealistic hatred of all tools.
We have seen this cycle play out over and over again in the design, implementation and adoption of instruction sets (remember when those still mattered?), programming languages, operating systems, and end user applications. Back when I was younger and more optimistic about the power of new tools, I used to tinker a lot with scripting languages of various kinds.
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Apr 11, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
My cat just gnawed through the wire to my Wii sensor bar.
Good thing you can find replacement sensor bars everywhere! Oh wait. YOU CAN’T.
Edit: It looks like I can order a replacement sensor bar from Nintendo for $10, or pay $20 at a local Gamestop for a battery-powered one with no wire. Guess which one I’ll be doing.
Apr 10, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
In the past few weeks the Tivo appears to have exhausted the current stock of Good Eats shows that are in heavy rotation. Rather than three or four a night, we are down to just a few per week. My original impressions of the show still stand, but I have one relatively minor complaint. He really doesn’t know anything about rice.
Maybe it’s his upbringing. Maybe it’s because there are no Chinese restaurants of any quality in The South.
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Apr 9, 2008 · psu · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
This is a favorite that started out as an accident in graduate school. Obtain 2 full snapper filets. The best way to do this is to go to a good store and have them filet a whole snapper for you. In Pittsburgh, this means you should go to the Penn Avenue Fish Company in the strip, because no other store in Pittsburgh is even half as good. When you get the fish home you will note that it is in two filets, each about 4 or 5 inches long.
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Apr 4, 2008 · peterb · 4 minute read
Culture
I typically avoid making political posts because, first, they tend to be boring, and second, they violate Peterb’s First Law of Human Nature, which, expressed concisely, is:
“You can never tell anyone anything."
Lately, however, it has become impossible to turn a corner in Pennsylvania without hearing people discuss politics, and in particular the politics of personality that surround Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I think that these discussions are emblematic of a particular failure of the Democratic party, and will be the proximate cause of their close-but-no-cigar heartbreaking loss to John McCain in November.
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Apr 1, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Culture
Seriously, everyone, your little April Fools' Day fake news articles aren’t funny and you’re killing me. Let this holiday die. Please. I beg of you.
Mar 31, 2008 · peterb · 7 minute read
Culture
A couple of weeks ago, after [reviewing](http://tleaves.com/2008/02/11 /rifftrax-cinematic-titanic-and-me/) RiffTrax and its cousin project, Cinematic Titanic, I had the happy opportunity to speak with Mike Nelson, the face of RiffTrax. In particular, I was most interested in talking to Mike about some of the [business model issues I raised in that earlier article](http://tleaves.com/2008/02/11/rifftrax-cinematic-titanic-and- me/). He graciously agreed to discuss them.
You started RiffTrax in 2006. How long did it – let me just ask this very bluntly.
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Mar 27, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
I’m probably the only food dork who hasn’t been watching Alton Brown for the last 9 years or so. He became a fixture on the Food Network just about the time that I felt that I had learned everything I needed to learn, for the moment, about the whole food and cooking hobby. So it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago when we were filling the Tivo at random while the flu rampaged through the house that I happened to watch Good Eats for the first time.
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Mar 26, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Culture
I’ve returned from my sojourn across half of the nation. Along the way, there were plenty of adventures: the Priceline reservation that turned out to be in a crack den, the fabulous KC barbecue, delicious and hard-to-get booze, and, of course, the disaster that ended in my being stranded in Indianapolis for an extra day. All of that will be written about in good time, once I’ve collected my thoughts.
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Mar 25, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Games
I remember a couple of months ago I got a little notice from Amazon.com when I visited the web site saying that the credit card information I had given them was about to expire, and that I should go to my account page and fix it. So I went to my account page and fixed it.
Apparently the same thing happened at Xbox Live. Because Microsoft is going to crush all comers in the online service sweepstakes, you would think that they’d have a similarly streamlined scheme for dealing with this issue.
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Mar 24, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
Tonight a simple tip: size matters, so make sure you give the food enough space. This tip comes with a story.
Back when I was younger, I used to actually ride my bike regularly in the summer. Wednesday nights. So one Wednesday I left to do my ride and I left my lovely wife with the task of prepping some aromatics for whatever we were making that night. The recipe called for her to cut up and saute off some celery.
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Mar 19, 2008 · peterb · 5 minute read
Food and Drink
Those of you following me on Twitter know that I managed to find not just one, but three of the types of booze I’ve been looking for last night. This is one of the nice things about travelling out of state: I get to shop at liquor stores that aren’t run by people who are profoundly uninterested in selling liquor.
Here in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, there are at least two local chains that are worth visiting: the larger Berbiglia, and, my new favorite, Gomer’s.
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Mar 17, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
The flu hit the household a couple of weeks ago, so just before I was taken down with fever, chills and that whole body ache, I stocked us up on the main defense against this sort of thing: chicken soup.
This soup is similar to another lazy recipe I talked about before but it’s been refined a bit and is slightly more work. The basic idea is the same.
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Mar 13, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Culture
For a while now I’ve wanted a microscope for performing various silly home science experiments. This week, [I found one](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirec t.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMy-First-Lab-Duo-Scope- Microscope%2Fdp%2FB000NOU54O%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dtoys-and-games%26qid%3D12054575 73%26sr%3D8-1&tag=theusualsuspepat&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325).
It’s marketed as a children’s toy: the “My First Lab” Duo scope. “Duo,” in this context, means that it has two lights, one above the stage and one below. I had a microscope when I was a kid. I used microscopes throughout college. This silly little thing, at just over $50 – FIFTY DOLLARS – is better than any microscope I’ve ever used.
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Mar 12, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
I fired up Shadow of the Colossus last night only to find that I had somehow managed to overwrite my “You beat the game” save file. The last save I have is right before the final battle with the last Colossus. I’d rather pull out my own teeth than jump straight into that battle just to unlock Time Attack mode – again – but I see there are all sorts of save files for the game on GameFaqs.
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Mar 11, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Games
Today I got home from dinner and sat down to do some coughing while I surfed up some of my regular web sites on the couch. Today was a good surfing day because I came across two links worth sharing with you, our beloved readers. One is a smart article, one is a stupid article.
First the good news. There’s been a lot of traffic at the game boards on the role of piracy in the PC gaming industry.
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Mar 10, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Games
Today I read an interesting interview with Tim Sweeney of Epic whose tag line is “PCs are good for anything, just not gamesâ€.
Summarizing the interview perhaps a bit unfairly, here’s what he says:
(1) People aren’t buying expensive enough PCs. (2) Even the expensive PCs aren’t good enough to run his games. (3) People who buy cheaper machines with Intel integrated graphics are giving their money to Blizzard instead of Epic.
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Mar 6, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Web
I’ve been making real progress in the past year, giving away and donating books and DVDs, even finally getting rid of some of my most ancient and decrepit computers (somewhere, in a Goodwill building, are an IBM RT and a Decstation 3100. Good riddance.)
Tonight, I opened the door to The Room I Don’t Go Into for the purposes of throwing away a few things.
The Room I Don’t Go Into is worse than I remember.
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Mar 4, 2008 · psu · 2 minute read
Games
I spent my third day with this year’s flu today. In my fever induced haze, I did manage to read some books I’ve already read, and I made a tiny bit of progress in the video games that I’ve been playing. I have to say, Lost Odyessey is great fun and all, but the costumes on the female “leads” are a few levels past chainmail bras. These chicks go into fights in Full Victoria’s Secret +4 Battle Underwear.
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Mar 3, 2008 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
The good thing about PlayFirst’s Chocolatier is that it reminds me of Taipan!. The bad thing is I’ve gained five pounds this week from playing it, because it makes me crave chocolate.
Art Canfil’s Taipan!, for those of you old enough to remember it, was a sailing-and-trading game. You travelled from port to port in the Orient trying to make money, and to stay one step ahead of the moneylender and pirates.
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Feb 29, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
You have to give the Japanese credit for two things. They know about knives, and they know about rice. After spending more time than is actually healthy for an responsible adult lurking in the insane asylum we call the knife forums, I finally gave in and picked up the relatively pedestrian Shun Chef’s Knife. You can already tell that I am suffering from forum brain damage because I feel the need to call this knife pedestrian.
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Feb 27, 2008 · psu · 7 minute read
Games
I haven’t had anything long form to write about games recently because I have not been sufficiently in tune with my own sense of self-absorption to come up with much of an extended thought. But this does not mean I haven’t spent some time with the old electronic crack.
What Your Mother Will Never Learn My parents visited over New Years. Mostly this meant my mom cooked and we ate a lot.
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Feb 25, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Games
I don’t have a lot of time tonight, because I am playing Dwarf Fortress. On my Mac. Under OS X. Without emulation. That’s right, after years of trial and travail, Dwarf Fortress, one of the most interesting games of the past few years, is finally available on my computing platform of choice. This was the single game that had me keeping a Boot Camp partition on my machine. Now I can get rid of it.
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Feb 22, 2008 · psu · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
Back in the distant past before Tony Bourdain was a TV personality jetting all over the world eating the more questionable parts of animals, I heard an NPR interview with him discussing [Kitchen Confidential](http://www.amazon.com /Kitchen-Confidential-Updated-Adventures-Underbelly/dp/0060899220/), the book that turned him into a TV personality who gets to jet all over the world and eat the more questionable parts of animals. He pontificated about kitchen knives, what pans you need, when to order fish and so on.
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Feb 19, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Games
We spent the weekend visiting some good friends in New Jersey. Since the route home sends us right past Philly, I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to enrich myself with the erudite discussion of the day’s issues at that landmark NPR station WHYY.
Instead, I was assaulted with this show about Second Life run by some psychologist named Dan Gottlieb, PhD. You always know something is going to go badly when the guy makes sure to put “PhD” on the end of his name.
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Feb 18, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
Here’s a dirty little secret: I am kind of a sucker for Bailey’s Irish Cream.
Yes, yes, I know. It’s too sweet. It’s a girly drink. It’s like an alcohol milkshake. It’s sort of gross. I know all these things, and I agree with them, but I still kinda like it. What can I say: i have my guilty pleasures.
But, truth to tell, I never drink Bailey’s anymore, because I am embarassed to be seen buying it.
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Feb 14, 2008 · psu · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
From time to time I try to get ribs around Pittsburgh, or anywhere in the Northeast for that matter. I am usually disappointed. Now, I like ribs in many different styles. There are the Chinese ones my mom made. There are the slow cooked barbeque ribs in the South. There are the braised ribs at fancier restaurants of various types.
Tonight I got the ribs at Tessaro’s. Normally I would only get the burgers there, but you have to change up once in a while.
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Feb 13, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Games
I’ve written before, disparagingly, of the use of the Magician’s Choice in games. The magician’s choice, reduced to its simplest form is: “Pick a card, any card.” And then, whatever card you pick, you’ve picked the one the magician intended you to pick.
When done poorly, this feels like a clumsy and ham-handed attempt at interaction. When done well, it’s seamless. Mass Effect is a good example of what happens when the choice is forced on you by a really good magician.
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Feb 11, 2008 · peterb · 10 minute read
Culture
For many years I was a fan of the cult classic TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. When I say “fan”, I mean this in the most derisive and dismissive way possible: I’m an utter fanboy. My love for the show was, and is, beyond any sort of rational analysis. So as I prepare to discuss two projects that the shows' various members have launched, Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax, the reader would do well to remember that the projects' creators would probably have to drive to my house and literally pee in my cornflakes before I could bring myself to say anything bad about their work.
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Feb 7, 2008 · psu · 3 minute read
Food and Drink
Legume is a new bistro-style restaurant in that increasingly glorious food corridor of Braddock avenue between the Regent Square theaters and the entrance to the Parkway East. I was suspicious of the place because the name conjures up images of a prison run by terminally smug pot-smoking NPR-listening hippy types whose mission in life is to convince me that quinoa (it’s pronounced “keen-waaah”, apparently) is a reasonable substitute for Japanese short-grain white rice.
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Feb 5, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
My personal copy of Imbibe! arrived from Amazon today.
Posts in the coming days may contain many misspellings and seem somewhat inebriated. I apologize in advance.
And, let’s face it, if the last 8 years have taught us anything, it’s that election night is a good night to start drinking heavily.
Feb 4, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
I was really hoping that I’d be able to tell the 72 Dolphins to Suck It.
I guess I thought about that a little bit too much this past week.
Jan 31, 2008 · peterb · 3 minute read
Culture
We’re going to talk consumer home products today, because I have a story to tell, and a recommendation to make.
Slate had an interesting article today where they reviewed a number of warm mist, cool mist, and ultrasonic humidifiers.
This topic is of interest to me because I bite my lips. And so, every winter, when the heaters kick on, the air dries out, and then my lips dry out, and then I have to walk around for a month with dry, cracked lips.
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Jan 29, 2008 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
Pity the PC (or Mac) gamer. We spend thousands of dollars buying or [worse, upgrading our computers](http://tleaves.com/2005/11/30/how-to-upgrade-your- computer/) so that we can play the latest high end games. Then we spend our time with those computers seeking out remakes of the classic games that we actually liked, but which don’t work on modern hardware or operating systems anymore.
The poster child game for this effect, for me, is Panzer General (and its fantastic sequel Panzer General 2).
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Jan 28, 2008 · psu · 6 minute read
Games
Long time readers of our humble writings will recall that we have no love for the [Metal Gear Solid](http://tleaves.com/2006/03/23/metal-gear- solid-3-ineptitude/) games. Pete says, and he is not wrong, that the games implement gameplay systems that are actively hostile towards the player and he doesn’t have time to play games designed by people who hate him. A couple of years ago, I had tried and given up on Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence for that exact reason.
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Jan 24, 2008 · peterb · 6 minute read
Games
There’s a certain question that makes straight men freeze with fear: “Does this outfit make me look fat?” Men hear this, and they are paralyzed in a moment of fight-or-flight panic, because they know, first, that they have to respond and, second, that there is no correct response. Women, so I’m told, often have the same reaction to being asked “Hey, honey, am I starting to go bald?”
The reason these questions are problematic is that they are sometimes not asked in earnest.
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Jan 22, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
I’ve contributed a chapter to an upcoming book, ‘‘Computer Games as a Sociocultural Phenomenon: Games Without Frontiers - War Without Tears’’, edited by Andreas Jahn-Sudmann and Ralf Stockmann. The book can be ordered directly from the publisher, or you can [pre-order it from Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Games-Sociocultural- Phenomenon- Frontiers/dp/0230545440/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201054860&sr=8-1).
My chapter is titled “There and Back Again: Reuse, Signifiers, and Consistency in Created Game Spaces”, and builds on some ideas you’ve seen on this very weblog.
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Jan 21, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
The grasshopper is a classic sweet cocktail that, typically, sucks. If you order it at a bar, you’ll get a concoction made from bad green creme de menthe, worse white creme de cacao, and cream or half and half. It will be undrinkably sweet, but to make up for being too sweet it will also taste bad.
The mystifying thing about the grasshopper is that it should be good. Chocolate and mint is a great combination.
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Jan 18, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Food and Drink
I’m not too much for spreading around YouTube memes, but I can’t let this one go without comment. It has to be seen to be believed.
The missing context is that the star of the show, “Ramon Razor Hard Gay”, is actually a fairly well known comedian and professional wrestler. So that makes it all OK and not at all sick.
I think.
Jan 15, 2008 · peterb · 4 minute read
Games
My co-writer may complain bitterly that I infected him with the shopping virus, but from my perspective, turnabout is fair play. I have spent the past month mostly ignoring any game that doesn’t have “Disgaea” in its title, and it’s all his fault.
I finished the main storyline of the first Disgaea game, and then switched to the second game. It’s time to talk about it a bit. But first, let me tell you a little something I’ve noticed about our web traffic.
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Jan 14, 2008 · psu · 4 minute read
Food and Drink
Tonight I am upset with my co-writer, although it’s not really his fault. It all started when we had an innocent conversation over lunch where peterb told me his dad was going to buy him a cooking knife for his birthday. Until that point and time, I had thought about cooking knives perhaps three times in the last fifteen years, and each time it was to plot how to make my friend Erik sharpen my knives for me.
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Jan 9, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
I wrote, some years ago, an article about rum and its many uses. In it, I mentioned that I don’t understand hot buttered rum, because I’ve never found a recipe for it that resulted in something even remotely drinkable.
Nat provided me with a recipe at the time, but it just didn’t work for me somehow. This week, however, he lent me a copy of David Wondrich’s awesome book Imbibe! From Absinthe Cocktail To Whiskey Smash, A Saulte In Stories And Drinks To “Professor” Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar.
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Jan 7, 2008 · peterb · 2 minute read
Food and Drink
Thanks to the generosity of my dad, I now own a really nice chef’s knife, a Kumagoro 210mm gyuto.
[](http://wptest.tleaves.com/wp- content/uploads/2008/01/img_9084.jpg “kumagoro” )
Gyuto - “Cow knife”
Dad decided to give me the gift of a sharp cooking implement for my birthday, on the condition that I research it and pick it myself. I suspect this was his own way of defusing his own lust for an ever-increasing number of knives.
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Jan 4, 2008 · psu · 1 minute read
Culture
In a special report, here is a summary of the breaking news over the past few days:
Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Obama Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Edwards Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Money Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Clinton Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Huckabee Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Romney Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa Iowa
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Jan 3, 2008 · peterb · 1 minute read
Games
It’s awesome, except for how it sucks.