malvasia bianca

With the addition of Rock Band 3‘s pro mode, there’s quite a bit more to learn when mastering a song; to that end, they’ve added a new variant of practice mode. Rather than simply having you play through the whole song (with options of changing speed and going back through sections), they pull out a [...]

My very first impression of Rock Band 3 was surprisingly negative. Liesl, Miranda, and I sat down to play; I’d assumed that we’d go through career mode on Miranda’s band. The game, however, created a band for me and then refused to let us change to one for her. (I didn’t look into it too [...]

I normally blog about a video game here when I finish playing it; that causes problems with games that I never actually stop playing, and the Rock Band games are the worst offenders in that regard. Still, with Rock Band 3 coming up, I figure it’s time to come to some sort of stopping point [...]

At GDC this year, Randy Smith recommended that game developers provide a “game-toy” as their players’ initial experience with their game: strong, juicy affordances with low pressure. Which is great advice, but is of course not all that you need: as Smith also comments, we want players to be able to enjoy the game for [...]

Earlier this summer, we went to see Puccini’s opera The Girl of the Golden West. Which was quite the spectacle, but my first thought after it was over was “after this, I’d better not hear anybody ever complain about video game plots again!” Its plot was threadbare and ridiculous; I’ve certainly played video games with [...]

One of the rules I try to follow on this blog and on Twitter is to not talk about prerelease information for video games. (And, indeed, I don’t even follow prerelease information for video games too closely—why would I want to spend my time thinking about games that don’t yet exist in preference to games [...]

The Internet Archive has made a million books available for free to those who are blind or otherwise print-impaired. A delightful Bob-omb Battlefield performance. A city of staples. (Via @rands.) I love this attitude towards reuse. (Via @markhneedham.) “Games are too hard, they’re too long, and they provide way too much stuff.” (Via @ncroal.) CSS [...]

Daniel Floyd and James Portnow on Video Games and Moral Choices. Ryan from 37 Signals on applying Christopher Alexander to everyday work. Seth Godin’s April Linchpin session. A cat and an iPad. Which I find totally fascinating in a non-cat-youtube-video way. (Via @Laralyn.) I am a biotic god! (Via @truffle.) Amazing clouds. (Via @marick; also, [...]

If any of you love the music in Studio Ghibli movies and would like to play said music on the piano, allow me to recommend スタジオジブリ作品集 to you. It’s got music from all of their movies, including ones that haven’t been released in the United States (incidentally, I recommend おもひでぽろぽろ, and the English subtitles on [...]

More and more, I’m getting interested in programs because of their aesthetics. (Via Daring Fireball.) NPR’s 404 page. (Via @jpallas.) I should have spent more time in Mass Effect 2 with Tali and Garrus in my party. (Via @elenielstorm.) The whole world has linked to this one, but for good reason. There’s also a Wired [...]

I was intending for BioShock to be one of the first games I played on my 360 but, well, one thing after another came up, and it took me a couple of years to get around to the game. In the mean time, it has garnered some amount of discussion, so I’m fairly sure I [...]

I try to write a blog post after every game that I finish playing (or, in this case, take a temporary break from playing), but really: what more do I have to say about Rock Band 2? As Bill Harris put it, it’s “more of a lifestyle than a game”, and it’s a lifestyle that [...]

Gerald Weinberg is, sadly, in poor health. Never tried doing Rock Band vocals this way… (Takes 15 seconds or so to actually start.) (Via @dan_schmidt.) R.I.P., Brother Blue. (Via @scottros.) The difference between motion and action. (Via @harlan_knight.) An unforeseen design problem. (Via @shawnr.) Nice perspective on slow programming languages. Glad to see non-Miyazaki Ghibli [...]

I’m kind of thinking I’m not doing nearly enough to minimize waste. (Via @littleidea.) Playing a bigger game. (Via @DianaOfPortland.) Luck as a skill. (Via @superkiy.) A good list of tech blogs. This round’s Pink Tentacle link is an anatomy of folk monsters. Magnetic Ink: (Via Dubious Quality.) And on (rather than just from) Dubious [...]

In a recent podcast, Justin Keverne talked about how it was odd that we define genre in video games almost exclusively in terms of what you do, whereas in other media genre is linked more with the themes that are under consideration in the works. I’m still not sure what I think about this (and, [...]

Sorry for the delay between posts; Miranda asked recently if she could watch Haibane Renmei (which I highly recommend), so we’ve spent many of our recent evenings going through that. And I don’t have a real post now, either, but I’ll at least give a link round-up. (Besides, the Zork walkthrough is much more awesome [...]

Really, everybody should have their own domain these days. Rands on Your People. Cave photos. (Via 25 Times a Second.) A handy list of Rails security tips, and a lesson on timing attacks. Sections. Tetris meets Magic Eye. (Via Offworld.) Being a blogger. A different look at the Beatles. (Via @dan_schmidt.) Two on programming hardware, [...]

Tanuki testicle art. One day in kanban land. Pixie Driven Development. A plain-text version of the Declaration of Independence. (Via Kelley Eskridge.) Rock Band as a music theory teacher. Maira Kalman on Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. (Via @bos31337 and The Edge of the American West.) The red handprints are a particularly nice touch. Another [...]

Some evidence for anybody curious how well being good at Rock Band drums transfers to real drums. The neuroscience of illusion; I’ll embed one of the videos so you can see the kind of thing they’re discussing. (Via Kelley Eskridge.) A pleasant network logic puzzle game. (Via User Friendly, which makes it essentially impossible to [...]

Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce: the power of choices, of market segmentation. Two on folded paper: pictures by Simon Schubert (via @KathySierra) and a TED talk by Robert Lang on the origami that modern math and computers allow us to produce. An abandoned island city. (Via @japanesepod101.) Or, if you want a whole blog about [...]