Seattle Dining
This is one of those things where I'm making a note more for my future Googling than for anyone else, but this information is not useless for other readers.
One thing about going to PAX is sorting out the food situation. The conference center itself has a lot of fast food options, but A ) none of them are very appealing and B ) they are all jam-packed with PAX attendees. (I heard the Subway in the convention center ran out of bread at one point during the weekend.) There's a Daily Grill across the street from the convention center which is just pricy enough to not be swamped, but still casual enough I feel OK about going there in jeans and a t-shirt; but that only covers one meal really. The convention center is downtown, so you know there are plenty of dining options nearby but you want to identify good choices and move efficiently, right?
Karin started using this site called Earthcomber.com to look for places to eat. If you go there in a regular browser it's sort of a weird site but it looks fine on an iPhone. There's a Yelp app for iPhone but A ) Yelp doesn't really work without a certain critical mass of reviews which Seattle didn't quite seem to have, and B ) it does searches centered on where you are which is usually great but sometimes you're at your hotel and searching for place for dinner and what you really want is next to the convention center.
Anyway, she found two fantastic places that I can recommend for downtown Seattle. The first is a place called The Oceanaire Seafood Room on 7th Avenue, and the second was The Islander on Union Street (down by the water). The Oceanaire was almost too nice for a t-shirt and it was certainly more expensive but it was great food. In particular they served a little tray of pickled veggies and some pickled herring that I quite liked. Karin didn't even want to try it so that was just more herring for me!
The Islander was a little more laid back. They had some nice tiki drinks and good polynesian-style dishes - I had a really good chicken coconut curry. The only downside to this place was we stuffed ourselves (had to get a Pu Pu Platter right?) and then had to walk like six blocks UPHILL back to our hotel.
Anyway, next year I'll probably want to go to both of these places again. And skip the mediocre breakfast we had the first day in the hotel restaurant. :-)
This is one of those things where I'm making a note more for my future Googling than for anyone else, but this information is not useless for other readers.
One thing about going to PAX is sorting out the food situation. The conference center itself has a lot of fast food options, but A ) none of them are very appealing and B ) they are all jam-packed with PAX attendees. (I heard the Subway in the convention center ran out of bread at one point during the weekend.) There's a Daily Grill across the street from the convention center which is just pricy enough to not be swamped, but still casual enough I feel OK about going there in jeans and a t-shirt; but that only covers one meal really. The convention center is downtown, so you know there are plenty of dining options nearby but you want to identify good choices and move efficiently, right?
Karin started using this site called Earthcomber.com to look for places to eat. If you go there in a regular browser it's sort of a weird site but it looks fine on an iPhone. There's a Yelp app for iPhone but A ) Yelp doesn't really work without a certain critical mass of reviews which Seattle didn't quite seem to have, and B ) it does searches centered on where you are which is usually great but sometimes you're at your hotel and searching for place for dinner and what you really want is next to the convention center.
Anyway, she found two fantastic places that I can recommend for downtown Seattle. The first is a place called The Oceanaire Seafood Room on 7th Avenue, and the second was The Islander on Union Street (down by the water). The Oceanaire was almost too nice for a t-shirt and it was certainly more expensive but it was great food. In particular they served a little tray of pickled veggies and some pickled herring that I quite liked. Karin didn't even want to try it so that was just more herring for me!
The Islander was a little more laid back. They had some nice tiki drinks and good polynesian-style dishes - I had a really good chicken coconut curry. The only downside to this place was we stuffed ourselves (had to get a Pu Pu Platter right?) and then had to walk like six blocks UPHILL back to our hotel.
Anyway, next year I'll probably want to go to both of these places again. And skip the mediocre breakfast we had the first day in the hotel restaurant. :-)
One thing about going to PAX is sorting out the food situation. The conference center itself has a lot of fast food options, but A ) none of them are very appealing and B ) they are all jam-packed with PAX attendees. (I heard the Subway in the convention center ran out of bread at one point during the weekend.) There's a Daily Grill across the street from the convention center which is just pricy enough to not be swamped, but still casual enough I feel OK about going there in jeans and a t-shirt; but that only covers one meal really. The convention center is downtown, so you know there are plenty of dining options nearby but you want to identify good choices and move efficiently, right?
Karin started using this site called Earthcomber.com to look for places to eat. If you go there in a regular browser it's sort of a weird site but it looks fine on an iPhone. There's a Yelp app for iPhone but A ) Yelp doesn't really work without a certain critical mass of reviews which Seattle didn't quite seem to have, and B ) it does searches centered on where you are which is usually great but sometimes you're at your hotel and searching for place for dinner and what you really want is next to the convention center.
Anyway, she found two fantastic places that I can recommend for downtown Seattle. The first is a place called The Oceanaire Seafood Room on 7th Avenue, and the second was The Islander on Union Street (down by the water). The Oceanaire was almost too nice for a t-shirt and it was certainly more expensive but it was great food. In particular they served a little tray of pickled veggies and some pickled herring that I quite liked. Karin didn't even want to try it so that was just more herring for me!
The Islander was a little more laid back. They had some nice tiki drinks and good polynesian-style dishes - I had a really good chicken coconut curry. The only downside to this place was we stuffed ourselves (had to get a Pu Pu Platter right?) and then had to walk like six blocks UPHILL back to our hotel.
Anyway, next year I'll probably want to go to both of these places again. And skip the mediocre breakfast we had the first day in the hotel restaurant. :-)
Out of the pool!
So that's it then. My Windows Boot Camp install started doing that "boot to a black screen" thing again, as bitched about previously. Now I'm suspicious that it's due to my OS X reformat and/or a VMWare Fusion upgrade but I've just had it with Windows. If it won't behave like a grown-up piece of software then it's going to get treated like a second-class citizen. I'm setting up a brand-new Windows install in a VMWare machine and once it gets all upgraded, patched, and activated I'm going to save the whole stinking virtual machine, burn a DVD archive. Next time Windows blows up I can just clone a working install. Shades of Norton Ghost, years later.
I haven't decided if I'm going to try to resurrect the Boot Camp version or not. I'm sure the whole restore thing would work. And I further suspect that if I just resurrected the Boot Camp version and left it alone it would be fine. Except ... I think the last time I "activated" the obnoxious DRM I was in VMWare and so I'm not sure if the restored backup is "activated". Feh. I throw up my hands.
Anyway, I'm going to try life without a "real" Windows install for a while. I don't think I'll really miss it.
So that's it then. My Windows Boot Camp install started doing that "boot to a black screen" thing again, as bitched about previously. Now I'm suspicious that it's due to my OS X reformat and/or a VMWare Fusion upgrade but I've just had it with Windows. If it won't behave like a grown-up piece of software then it's going to get treated like a second-class citizen. I'm setting up a brand-new Windows install in a VMWare machine and once it gets all upgraded, patched, and activated I'm going to save the whole stinking virtual machine, burn a DVD archive. Next time Windows blows up I can just clone a working install. Shades of Norton Ghost, years later.
I haven't decided if I'm going to try to resurrect the Boot Camp version or not. I'm sure the whole restore thing would work. And I further suspect that if I just resurrected the Boot Camp version and left it alone it would be fine. Except ... I think the last time I "activated" the obnoxious DRM I was in VMWare and so I'm not sure if the restored backup is "activated". Feh. I throw up my hands.
Anyway, I'm going to try life without a "real" Windows install for a while. I don't think I'll really miss it.
I haven't decided if I'm going to try to resurrect the Boot Camp version or not. I'm sure the whole restore thing would work. And I further suspect that if I just resurrected the Boot Camp version and left it alone it would be fine. Except ... I think the last time I "activated" the obnoxious DRM I was in VMWare and so I'm not sure if the restored backup is "activated". Feh. I throw up my hands.
Anyway, I'm going to try life without a "real" Windows install for a while. I don't think I'll really miss it.
I don't know about this ...
Children's author Eoin Colfer is to write a sixth novel in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, seven years after the death of its creator Douglas Adams, Penguin said Wednesday. The Irish writer, best known for his Artemis Fowl fairy stories, has the blessing of Adams' widow, Jane Belson, to continue the bestselling science fiction saga. Called "And Another Thing...," the new novel will be published in October 2009. Colfer said he was a big fan of the original books, which started as a BBC radio serial.- Yahoo News As much as I like Hitchhiker's (which is a lot) and as much as I enjoyed the fragments of the novel presented in The Salmon of Doubt, I've got my grave doubts that anyone can pull off writing a "Douglas Adams" book. I'll buy it of course, but I'm dubious.
Children's author Eoin Colfer is to write a sixth novel in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series, seven years after the death of its creator Douglas Adams, Penguin said Wednesday.
The Irish writer, best known for his Artemis Fowl fairy stories, has the blessing of Adams' widow, Jane Belson, to continue the bestselling science fiction saga.
Called "And Another Thing...," the new novel will be published in October 2009. Colfer said he was a big fan of the original books, which started as a BBC radio serial.
- Yahoo News
As much as I like Hitchhiker's (which is a lot) and as much as I enjoyed the fragments of the novel presented in The Salmon of Doubt, I've got my grave doubts that anyone can pull off writing a "Douglas Adams" book. I'll buy it of course, but I'm dubious.
Atari 2600 boxes for modern games
Before the over the top, logo heavy madness of today’s next-gen masterpieces became the visual norm for video game cover art, there was the basic beauty of the Atari 2600’s approach to package design. Clean composition and vague descriptive text came together to create something that was just so…intangibly fresh and mesmerizing. But what if the biggest games of now fell into the hands of a 2600-era artist? We’d have Atari Modern Classics, a vintage look at our new favorites through the pixelated beer goggles of an era where simplicity was king.- Atari Modern Classics (I saw it via Wil Wheaton's Twitter) Good stuff!
Before the over the top, logo heavy madness of today’s next-gen masterpieces became the visual norm for video game cover art, there was the basic beauty of the Atari 2600’s approach to package design. Clean composition and vague descriptive text came together to create something that was just so…intangibly fresh and mesmerizing. But what if the biggest games of now fell into the hands of a 2600-era artist? We’d have Atari Modern Classics, a vintage look at our new favorites through the pixelated beer goggles of an era where simplicity was king.
- Atari Modern Classics (I saw it via Wil Wheaton's Twitter)
Good stuff!
Big Doings
Lots of big happenings lately. I picked up Spore (both the full game and the DS version) last week on vacation, I bought Rock Band 2 on Sunday, and iPhone OS 2.1 released on Friday. Oh, and I reformatted my Mac Pro.
I'm not entirely sure I'm prepared to discuss Spore or RB2 yet. Spore is surprisingly uneven. I enjoyed the "Creature" stage quite a bit, but that's only one of the five stages. The cell version was basically a flOw knockoff, although it did have a very limited creature editor. The Tribal and Civilization stages were both shallow and frankly annoying. The Space stage ... well it's really cool but it's also very repetitive. The combat is clunky and poorly done - the key bit seems to get the AI ships in your fleet because they are vastly more effective than the weapons I have so far. I haven't made up my mind about the Space stage but I'm surprised that I have as many issues with it as I have so far.
As for Rock Band 2, it seems trickier than the first game. The horizontal lines are further spaced out than they are on RB1 and I've seen notes come in between the lines now, even on DLC tracks that I've played on RB1 before. As a consequence I think the timing is tighter than it used to be. I had to drop back to medium difficulty to make it through intro-difficulty songs. I think I like the new layout more but I've only played an hour or so and that was pretty much entirely taken up with going "Whoah! This shouldn't be that difficult!"
2.1 for the iPhone so far seems brilliant - maybe even what 2.0 should have been. Icon placement is now permanent, I installed an app upgrade over the phone without iTunes getting all upset later, and backups are much faster. I can tell the cellular radio is doing something different because when it's plugged into my kitchen speakers I can hear the radio noise. It uses the radio much more often with 2.1 than it did on 2.x. Which raises the question what the battery life is like, but I'm not sure about that.
Lots of big happenings lately. I picked up Spore (both the full game and the DS version) last week on vacation, I bought Rock Band 2 on Sunday, and iPhone OS 2.1 released on Friday. Oh, and I reformatted my Mac Pro.
I'm not entirely sure I'm prepared to discuss Spore or RB2 yet. Spore is surprisingly uneven. I enjoyed the "Creature" stage quite a bit, but that's only one of the five stages. The cell version was basically a flOw knockoff, although it did have a very limited creature editor. The Tribal and Civilization stages were both shallow and frankly annoying. The Space stage ... well it's really cool but it's also very repetitive. The combat is clunky and poorly done - the key bit seems to get the AI ships in your fleet because they are vastly more effective than the weapons I have so far. I haven't made up my mind about the Space stage but I'm surprised that I have as many issues with it as I have so far.
As for Rock Band 2, it seems trickier than the first game. The horizontal lines are further spaced out than they are on RB1 and I've seen notes come in between the lines now, even on DLC tracks that I've played on RB1 before. As a consequence I think the timing is tighter than it used to be. I had to drop back to medium difficulty to make it through intro-difficulty songs. I think I like the new layout more but I've only played an hour or so and that was pretty much entirely taken up with going "Whoah! This shouldn't be that difficult!"
2.1 for the iPhone so far seems brilliant - maybe even what 2.0 should have been. Icon placement is now permanent, I installed an app upgrade over the phone without iTunes getting all upset later, and backups are much faster. I can tell the cellular radio is doing something different because when it's plugged into my kitchen speakers I can hear the radio noise. It uses the radio much more often with 2.1 than it did on 2.x. Which raises the question what the battery life is like, but I'm not sure about that.
I'm not entirely sure I'm prepared to discuss Spore or RB2 yet. Spore is surprisingly uneven. I enjoyed the "Creature" stage quite a bit, but that's only one of the five stages. The cell version was basically a flOw knockoff, although it did have a very limited creature editor. The Tribal and Civilization stages were both shallow and frankly annoying. The Space stage ... well it's really cool but it's also very repetitive. The combat is clunky and poorly done - the key bit seems to get the AI ships in your fleet because they are vastly more effective than the weapons I have so far. I haven't made up my mind about the Space stage but I'm surprised that I have as many issues with it as I have so far.
As for Rock Band 2, it seems trickier than the first game. The horizontal lines are further spaced out than they are on RB1 and I've seen notes come in between the lines now, even on DLC tracks that I've played on RB1 before. As a consequence I think the timing is tighter than it used to be. I had to drop back to medium difficulty to make it through intro-difficulty songs. I think I like the new layout more but I've only played an hour or so and that was pretty much entirely taken up with going "Whoah! This shouldn't be that difficult!"
2.1 for the iPhone so far seems brilliant - maybe even what 2.0 should have been. Icon placement is now permanent, I installed an app upgrade over the phone without iTunes getting all upset later, and backups are much faster. I can tell the cellular radio is doing something different because when it's plugged into my kitchen speakers I can hear the radio noise. It uses the radio much more often with 2.1 than it did on 2.x. Which raises the question what the battery life is like, but I'm not sure about that.