Archive for January, 2010
Lions. (Just a great article I found.)
I like Bond films (usually). I also like the music. I found these on youtube a few days. Enjoy!
The Sims 3 released some time ago a Create a World builder tool for their game. It’s a fun enough game, but I’ve actually been using the world builder as an outlining tool. While plenty of things that come up in a story are based on real location and some are just flat made up, I’ve managed to find a certain utility to plotting everything in my mind. Sure, I can have the restaurant in my mind, but where is it in relation to the main character’s house? How is the antagonist supposed to drive by dramatically if the road is a dead end? I’ve had a lot of fun actually plotting these things out.
The Sims franchise has taken digital story telling into a new world. It’s built around the idea of telling stories and sharing them. The video recordings and album photo arrangements were created with story-telling in mind. So far the product has not always been especially high quality, but there are some genuinely stirring examples out there, like the blog Alice and Kev that I posted about a few months ago.
At current, full made games are still more common and profitable, but the price and difficulty of designing worlds is increasingly by the year. Already, multiple games are produced using the same platform, and games like Neverwinter Nights were almosted released primarily as tool sets that happened to include a story. I suspect this trend will continue. A company will produce a framework (such as Second Life), and periodically update the overall capability of the universe, but the user base, which may include secondary companies, will be responsible for content generation. Again, Second Life is basically an example of this already, but it’s yet to take any sort of real Mainstream acceptance.
I envision a sort of hierarchy of virtual creations with an overall base partitioned by various content providers, either persons or companies, to which individuals join. Think a cross between Steam, Second Life, and World of Warcraft. One can navigate throughout a larger virtual multi-verse to ‘log in’ to World of Warcraft like experiences. Once the overall technical capability is at this level, one suspects it’ll be substantially easier to create meaningful content thus opening the userbase even more. The economic and information sharing potential of this sort of creation, would seem to propel the world to greater levels of interactivity in an organic fashion.
I suppose this is all very ‘Snowcrash’ like, but, as small a step as it is, I’ve found a lot of utility from using one, limited tool to create a world and I’m only using it to plot out a written world. Surely, this niche has room to grow. If our internet access ever stops being terrible some of the ideas might actually take off…but that’s enough from me for one day.
A few months ago I went on some rant about scam charities. Recent news is reporting that some of the Haiti charities are less than admirable.
Allow me to post about GuideStar, a website that lets you review the publicly released documents of nonprofit companies. It requires registration, but it’s free and worth the time if you’re out to throw some money around. My paranoia toward everything lends me to wonder what GuideStar gets out of the deal and I find the testimonial data beyond useless, but I enjoy reading the financial statements. It seems to be a damn good deal: now why can’t everything be regulated similarly? If we put a tenth of what we put into any given project making sure the other 90% was spent correctly, I’m convinced the country, the world, the everything, would come out of the deal twice as well as they do now. Alas, I wax depressive, but keep GuideStar in mind the next time you’ve got a nagging urge to donate…
Final rant: GuideStar has a short list of reasons why they might not have the 990 Form from a particular nonprofit. The last one refers to religious organizations that aren’t required to file. I can be convinced sometimes that there is a valid and compelling reason for religious organizations to not be taxed (freedom of religious and that bag), but what exactly frees them from reporting standards? What makes a religion different in the world of honest financial governship? History, I suppose. Phooey.
I’ve recently hit up a few more restaurants in New Paltz. I’ve got 6 or 7 left to hit.
Gomen Kudasai is located within the antique store located opposite the middle school and short ways up the road toward the highway. You could be forgiven for not knowing where it is or what it’s called, because until recently the only sign was a small post-in-the-ground flyer that said ‘Japanese Noodle Place’.
The name ‘Gomen Kudasai’ is apparently a colloquial term roughly corresponding to ‘noodles please’. Being the contrarian that I am, I didn’t actually have noodles. I ordered turkey dumplings, which came with a mound of rice, house pickles, a bowl of miso soup, and a salad in a sort of sour vinaigrette. I had a cup of oolong tea to wash it down and finished the meal with Mochi ice cream, a rice based desert that almost looks like a dough mushroom.
The building itself is a bit haphazard, so I wasn’t sure whether to expect overly formal or chaos. Instead, I found the atmosphere quiet, but functional. The service was excellent and the food even better. My oolong tea was appropriatelystrong with a subtle sweetness in the aftertaste. The turkey dumpling were more filling than their ornate arrangement would have suggested. I wasn’t quite sure how to take the desert, there is a rather particular texture to mochi ice cream, but after dutifully trying to cuisine, I wasn’t going to botch the trip with a slice of apple pie.
In relation to a national average, Gomen Kudasai is maybe a bit expensive, but in relation to New Paltz it is actually quite competitive. My meal, with tea and desert, came to $25, which gave me some amount of sticker shock, considering the environment, the food, and presentation it was actually very reasonable. I won’t be making this noodle place a day adventure, but it’s a solid addition to my dinner retinue.
I can’t seem to find a proper link for Main Course. The website goes to their catering business and doesn’t seem to include their current menu. Main Course used to be located next to Subway, which has recently been taken over by the 8th pizza place in town. Main Course’s new location right near The Indian Restaurant is much more inviting.
Entering Main Course, I found myself somewhat confused. There is a counter directly ahead and a spattering of small tables, but no waiters or waitresses to be found. Instead, the counter area is a segmented portion of a larger cooking area where they have their ingredients and dishes in various states of preparation. A cook with full chef regalia frits about making the orders directly as they come in.
In final tally, Main Course has become a sandwich shop, albeit a classy sandwich shop. I had the Northwind which was salad and grilled portabello on a panini with a side salad garnished in a house dressing that I should remember, but don’t. The whole thing came to about $8. More expensive than subway, yes. Excellent price for what you get: definitely. I’ve never had a fairly fancier meal any cheaper. I suppose ditching the waiters paid off…for me, it also saves on the tip.
Ahh, and I think I have the right menu! That’s a great way to end my review.
Both restaurants were phenomenal. At current the remaining list is:
Beso
Harvest Cafe
Mudd Puddle
Picnic Pizza
Hokkaido
New Paltz Tea House
Locust Tree
What is more absurd, that pirates still exist or that we ever thought they were gone? Gone are the days of Letters of Marquis (sadly?). Instead pirate defense have become a study in non-lethal creativity.
Also of interest is the linked article: 2.5 trillion dollar commodities scam. I miss the days where commodity trading meant coming home with a barrel of something…
Damn eggs, you complex! After years of disappointing failure, I now have no excuse for screwing up a boiled egg ever. Well, aside from my bad habit of not paying much attention to how long I’ve been cooking something, which is turns out is the most important thing when cooking an egg. Le sigh.
And I’m glad that cooks can be just as pedantic as computer types…
In America, there’s a simmering resentment towards “liberals” and “leftists” within some parts of the country that always astounds me. Despite the complaints, American is, from California to New York, and immensely conservative country. Our most liberal politicians were be center-right in almost any other country.
Case in point, Norwegian Prisons. There is no mainstream politician in American that would ever suggest island prison retreats or a hard cap on prison populations. It is anathema to the entire basis of American “Moral Jurisprudence.” We are still absolutely intent on punishment and that goes a nice way towards are record prison population. Arcane and draconian drug laws aren’t especially helpful either.
There is nothing new about treating prison system as an actual reform mechanism and American has taken it as official policy as well. The trouble is not really some grand moral divide. Rather, Americans are cheap, greedy, and spiteful. As the recent healthcare fun has noted, our country has hardened itself against humanity in a genuinely frightful way. Regardless of where the majority might stand, the loudest voice within American, however small, is firmly against any sort of social morality beyond the Bible and its dangerous interpretations. Whether backed by a sort of inner xenophobia, racism, or some other indistinguishable motivation, our politics have become a battle between ’somewhat reasonable’ and ‘barking mad anti-socialism’.
It is my firm hope that someday a prison like Norway has might become a topic of genuine political discussion. It wouldn’t be my highest priority to put into practice, but any society that can see and appreciate the benefits of making prisons less barbaric and more humane is much improved on our own.
