http://malvasiabianca.org Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:55:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I wasn't sure what to expect when I started playing No More Heroes. I was astonished by Suda 51's previous game, Killer 7, but I didn't really expect more of the same: for one thing, my brain isn't imaginative enough to contemplate what more of Killer 7 would be ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/12/no-more-heroes/ You have doubtless noticed the new widget in my blog's sidebar. It's for Child's Play, a charity that gives toys, video games, books, etc. to children's hospitals around the world. It's a wonderful cause, and those of us in the Vintage Game Club thought that it would be ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/childs-play/ I dipped into Rock Band 2 a bit more today. Miranda wasn't in the mood, so I went through a few solo challenges; it turns out that the various marathon challenges provide a tour through all the songs on the disk, so my previous concerns are at least somewhat ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/i-love-rock-band-2/ Game | Life on the death of next gen consoles in Japan. The Gallery of Fluid Motion. I like the second one too, though it takes a while to get going. Arlo Belshee on planning without estimating. As with his earlier promiscuous pairing experiments, there's a lot to think about ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/random-links-november-30-2008/ This year's Thanksgiving dessert was the Bittersweet Deception cake from Bittersweet. Its texture is actually almost more of a mousse than anything else; very good. It looks a bit long, but it's actually quite easy to make. (You will want to prepare it the previous day, however.) We ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/bittersweet-deception-cake/ I've now finished the Rock Band vocals solo tour on Hard. To my family's consternation / bemusement, I sung most of the songs in the second half in falsetto: it seems to pick up my pitch more reliably that way? (Dan Bruno says that I'm not the only ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/finished-rock-band-vocals-started-rock-band-2/ I claimed that my last post was going to be my last Christopher Alexander post for a while, but I lied. I spend some time today reading Richard Gabriel's Patterns of Software, the first part of which talks about Alexander's work (up through the carpets book, which isn't discussed ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/richard-gabriel-on-christopher-alexander/ One more Christopher Alexander Nature of Order post, and then I'll take a break. This is a counterpart to my earlier post about living code (I even repeat some of the examples): this time, I'm focusing on the agile processes that might produce that code. Again, thanks to ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/agile-processes-as-living-structures/ At Agile Open California this year, I didn't spend all my time thinking about Christopher Alexander (and I owe y'all still more blog posts about that): I also convened a session on Refactoring Writ Large. I put my notes up on the AOC wiki, but here are the examples ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/refactoring-writ-large/ On Wednesday morning at AYE, I attended a session that Don Gray ran on personality types. The session was focused on the MBTI temperaments; so we broke up into groups based on our personality types, with each group given 10 minutes to come up with a definition of teamwork ... http://malvasiabianca.org/archives/2008/11/don-gray-and-personality-types/