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Monthly Archives December 2007

New Glasses

I just got in two new pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical. Here’s the regular pair, with nifty European-style frames and anti-reflective coating for night driving and computer work: And the prescription sunglasses, with 80% gray tint and some regular frames: Total cost for both pairs: about $50. The quality of the glasses seems good, [...]

Posted 28 December 2007 § Commerce ‡ Comments (3)

Emergent Game Design

The traditional approach to designing a game with a narrative has been for the game designer to work like a movie screen writer: he creates a series of “scripted” events at various points in a game level which are followed from beginning to end, and which always occur in the same order whenever the game [...]

Posted 27 December 2007 § Computers § Games ‡ Comments (1)

Am I Hot Or Not: The George W. Bush Edition

Steven Levy has a very interesting article over at Newsweek where he talks about William Poundstone‘s upcoming book Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It). The gist of it, to steal both men’s thunder, is that by giving the election to the candidate who got the most votes [...]

Posted 18 December 2007 § Politics ‡ Comments (0)

A Pragmatist’s Love Song

A Pragmatist’s Love Song I have not fallen in love with you, as if love were a puddle into which one trips by accident, and from which one might stumble just as easily. I am not mad about you, our love a confused and screaming Bedlam, filled with unreal fears and phantasms that don’t know [...]

Posted 16 December 2007 § Family § Poetry ‡ Comments (2)

Saturday Morning Time Machine

This morning, wearily dealing with the weekly bookkeeping chores while Kathy was out shopping, I posted this to my Twitter account: Paying bills. I think I liked childhood Saturday mornings, packed with sugary cereals and cartoons, better than those of my adult self. When Kathy arrived home, what should she be bearing but two great [...]

Posted 08 December 2007 § Family § Then & Now ‡ Comments (0)

Tamale Party

A highlight of this past weekend was a tamale-making party at my friend James Buratti‘s house that he and his wife Jen hosted. Tamale-making is a ritual that holds a certain mystique in Mexican culture, with recipes and techniques handed down from generation to generation and horror stories of young people’s apprenticeships in the kitchen [...]

Posted 03 December 2007 § Food § Friends ‡ Comments (2)