I just had the first apricots off our apricot tree. They were wonderful. The best part is that there are over a hundred more still ripening. I think I will need to relearn how to make jam.

Watch here: http://www.xspore.com/?media=go
Drink every time Will Wright says the word "procedural" or "procedurally"

This weekend was my birthday, so I decided to throw a second food and games fest. Mike and I did a lot of work getting the house cleaned, which was needed. The party was planned to last past midnight, so it was a bit unfortunate that I had to get up at 8 AM to have the appliance people pick up the old refrigerator and freezer that have been ( Read more... )

I flew to Edinburgh over the past weekend. I hung out with 8bitnintendo, a whole bunch of my cousins, and my sister. It was awesome and I'll try to post a more detailed trip report with pictures soon.

For the trip, I went to Chaucer's and bought The Devil's Doctor : Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science by Philip Ball, Smoke and Mirrors ( Read more... )

If anyone's looking for a good puzzle game, I recommend TubeTwist. It's a sort of "Incredible Machine" version of those kinetic sculptures with the balls and tracks that you see at airports. The individual levels mostly play fast, and you can save your progress. It's pretty cheap too. I just finished it tonight.

The fourth Girl Genius collection is finally out! I'm going to see if Metro has a copy of it tomorrow. This will be excellent, as it will finally bridge the gap between the existing collections and the online comics. I only managed to pick up one of the print issues from in between.

I watched V for Vendetta this weekend and it was good. I ( Read more... )

There's a Ted Sturgeon story I like called "Two Sidecars". I decided to make myself a sidecar as a nightcap, since I'd gotten a bag of lemons and some decent brandy. The thing was, there was just enough lemon juice left over for a second, it was the hand of fate. It turns out that that's a rather large amount of alcohol to knock back. In the ( Read more... )

Friday night I drove Mike and Keith down to Huntington Beach, it only took about two and half hours despite going slightly the wrong way. That night we played Tsuro, which is a simple but fun and really nice looking tile laying game, and Beowulf, which is an interesting bidding game with a strong gambling element (I won Beowulf by having really ( Read more... )

There's a site called www.zillow.com that combines Google's satellite map data with home sale data to give price estimates for an area, with things neatly divided into lots. It's rather interesting, though some of their extrapolations are somewhat questionable.