malvasia bianca

There are enough posts on this blog (this will be number 1144) that I’ve long since lost track of them. For most of them, that’s fine (actually, for most of them, forgetting is probably an act of mercy), but there are some posts that capture ideas that I still refer to occasionally, and I’m sure […]

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP has the distinction of being the most disappointing game I’ve played in ages. I’d heard a lot of good things about it, and rather liked the visual style. The problem is, though, that I didn’t like the writing style or the musical style, and the former of those in particular […]

I’ve been playing through a bunch of Billy Joel songs this month in Rock Band, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Mostly repeated chords and chord progressions, but they’re interesting enough chord progressions for me to have fun playing them, and there’s a fair amount of melody interspersed throughout the songs as well. One song […]

I’ve already talked about the puzzle gameplay in Catherine; what about the rest of the game? For me, the tone was set with the very first question I got asked in the confessional: “Does life begin or end at marriage?” Which is an analysis of marriage that I would never for a moment consider performing: […]

Catherine seems to mostly attract interest for reasons related to its narrative, but of course you spend most of your time with the game shoving blocks around in the puzzle mode. I went through it on Normal which, generally speaking, meant: quite difficult. So I failed a lot, but with persistence, I made it through […]

I’m surprised that I don’t seem to have blogged about it here yet, but I’ve been curious about the barefoot running movement for a while. (Prompted by reading Born to Run, among other things.) My first experiment was with huaraches made by Invisible Shoes: once my feet got used to them (which took a couple […]

I was pleasantly surprised by the original Puzzle Quest; I enjoyed Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, but not as much. Given that, I assumed that I’d eventually play Puzzle Quest 2, but I’m also not surprised that it took me a little while to get around to it. Recently, though, I found myself awake in the middle […]

I woke up this morning in a musical but frenzied mood; so, as soon as the rest of the household emerged, I sat down at the piano to play (and, in places, sing) through a Billy Joel collection that I bought yesterday. I’d been full of energy this week, so next I decided to work […]

We used to be a two-dog household, but our older dog, Yosha, died a few years ago. (Has it been five years? Wow.) Which was (quite) tough on Zippy for the first month or so, but he got used to the new state of affairs, and went back to his general good albeit mere mood. […]

I had the pleasure of appearing on the Experience Points Podcast this week. Kirk Hamilton and Dan Apczynski were also guests, which made it the most participants in any EXP podcast; at 1:15, I suspect it’s also the longest. (I guess we all like to talk.) The topic of the podcast was music games, which […]

A few years ago, I was spurred by the book Good Calories, Bad Calories to worry less about fat and to cut down on some of my carb excesses. And, in general, I was happy enough with the results, but it hadn’t had a huge impact on my life after the first year or so. […]