malvasia bianca

I’m rereading The Phenomenon of Life, by Christopher Alexander, in preparation for reading the other books in the series. And, again, I’m blown away by it: if the book contained nothing but the pictures in it, it would be worth it. But, of course, there’s a lot more to the book than pretty (beautiful, profound) […]

Via a link from Niels ’t Hooft, I ran into Sean Malstrom’s Birdmen and the Casual Fallacy. By far the most interesting explanation of Nintendo’s business strategy that I’ve seen, and it turns out that he has a whole website full of articles like that. Which I’ve spent most of the evening reading. A warning: […]

I managed to avoid playing any of the Half-Life games in the past: I’ve been almost exclusively a console gamer since 1998, and the few computer games I’ve played since then are ones that can be played with a touchpad (my hands and mice really don’t get along), which pretty much means that PC FPSes […]

I spent the day at this month’s Bay Area Go Players Association tournament. It was my first tournament in recent memory playing as a 1 dan; I had a record of 1 win and 3 losses and got the impression that 1 dan is a more accurate rating for me than 1 kyu, but that […]

Rock Band arrived today. Despite her lobbying for Mario Kart Wii as our next game purchase, Miranda was plenty excited to see it show up; she helped me carry it in from the car (which was actually pretty useful, the Amazon packaging makes it just bulky enough to be very awkward to carry by yourself), […]

Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed my preferences for online video game coverage shift. I’ve been following the traditional news/reviews-oriented web sites for years (over a decade in some cases), and IGN is still one of the first places I visit in my nightly web surfing. (I never dipped into the forums for […]

Untangle, a flash game about representing graphs as planar with straight edges. (Hmm, are there planar graphs that can’t be drawn with straight edges? Not clear to me.) I linked to another game like this before, but this one’s better. TypeRacer, if you’re curious how fast you type. (I’m usually in the 95-100 wpm range, […]

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations is the third game in the Phoenix Wright series. I don’t have a lot to add beyond what I said before: it’s a good series, and if you’ve played the other games, then by all means play this one as well, while if you haven’t, give the first […]

I was very sad to learn that Erik Ray died on May 14, after being hit by a car while riding his bicycle. He was more of a friend-of-a-friend than a direct friend, but I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with him when we were both living in the Boston area. For those of […]

N+ is the first XBLA game that I’ve bought. It’s a platformer in its purest form: your only controls are a joystick for movement and a jump button. Each level is a single screen: you start at one point on the screen, there’s an exit somewhere else, and a button that opens up the exit […]

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle-based adventure game. Actually, that probably gives the wrong impression, making you think that the game is about figuring out how to use these items to get access to a key that you can use to open a door over there; I should say instead that it’s […]

In honor of the release of the Wii version of Okami, I urge all of you who own a Wii (or a PS2) and who haven’t played the game yet to go out and buy a copy. More here, but the short version is: it’s an adventure game based on Japanese mythology with a beautiful […]

A bit video-heavy today. The power of continuous improvement. A cool-looking physics “game”: (Via BitWorking.) Zefrank on complicated stuff: Falco PA! (Via Game|Life, which also links to a Guitar Hero version.) An fun variant on presenting minigames. Time to add The Muppet Show to my Netflix queue. (Via Cosmic Variance.) Brian Dettmer book autopsies. (Via […]

Eternal Sonata is a quite good Japanese RPG for the Xbox 360. Unfortunately, the main lesson that I’ve learned from it is that I don’t particularly like JRPG’s; I won’t say I’m swearing off of them forever (in fact, I’m glad I played this one), but I won’t give them the benefit of the doubt […]

I recently learned that a Bay Area Go Players Association has been created, with the goal of ensuring that there’s at least one go tournament a month in the bay area. (And, so far, they seem to generally be holding their tournaments quite close to where I live.) I missed the first tournament, but the […]

Half a year or so ago, I retrieved my Nintendo 64 from a friend’s house, since I thought Miranda might enjoy some of the games on it. The one she settled on was Harvest Moon 64, a delightful little farming simulator. So, when Christmas came by, I thought she might want another Harvest Moon; I […]

I still haven’t figured out Cursor*10, but it has some neat ideas. (Via GayGamer.) An ActiveRecord tutorial; a nice little introduction to the concepts, I liked the way they get their hands dirty with showing you the SQL. Yeah, that’s kind of the way I feel about Obama… For no particular reason, a random bit […]

I’ve talked enough about Zack and Wiki that I’m not quite sure what to say here. It’s a puzzle-solving point and click adventure game, with excellent use of Wii motion-sensing controls and a great sense of humor. And a great set of puzzles: Liesl and I thoroughly enjoyed working through them; I was continually amazed […]

Portal is a first-person puzzle game. The controls are like a first-person shooter, but your gun shoots portals onto flat surfaces (walls, floor, ceiling): you can have one blue portal and one orange portal, and the two teleport you from one to another. The game starts out with simple puzzles: you need to get to […]

Mass Effect is the latest RPG from BioWare, makers of the excellent Jade Empire. Like that one, it’s an action RPG: combat takes place in the middle of the environment you’re running around in, and different characters don’t take turns attacking each other. (Though the details are quite different: in particular, the combat is based […]