Game Review: Iconica by Eric Torres (2/2)

Aaaaaaand, we’re back with part 2 of 2. See, I do finish these series sometimes! This was meant to go up significantly earlier, but, you know, Diablo III. Oops.

Gameplay Review

Honestly, the first thing I thought of when I played the game was Final Fantasy: the idea of building a team with its own strengths and weaknesses, with the possibilities of multiple status effects like poison, sleep, and confuse. This isn’t a bad thing at all! As someone who loves JRPGs with a passion and tabletop/board games with almost an equal passion… it’s awesome.

The game definitely has a learning curve: there is a fairly significant amount of text on the cards, and your team is likely to change from game to game, meaning that making decisions can take a little while. There are also a significant number of status effects to keep straight, some of which only last for a single round, and some of which persist unless they are healed or removed. There are also a lot of other pieces of information on each card, including:

• a teardrop-like symbol on one of the six moves on each card that allows the character to remove status ailments and heal a small amount if doubles of that number are rolled
• moves that can cause extra damage to certain character types
• symbols along each character’s health track that make them immune to certain status ailments at certain health points
• pointed health squares that allow characters to parry attacks and to ignore a small amount of damage
• reaction squares that allow characters to deal back damage to attackers
• “Final Acts” that are a little bit like Final Fantasy limit breaks, that, if successful (they are contingent on a dice roll), can be real game changers (they can incapacitate enemy characters, allow the character to heal some amount of health and stay in the game, or cause any other number of effects)

So, you get the idea–it can be a little overwhelming at first. Luckily, a lot of this information is written on the card in straight-out words. Some is encoded in symbols, but the game designer thoughtfully included a quick reference card with each set that can be laid out on the table until players become more familiar with the game.

Purchase Information

Iconica and related merchandise (including a book and lovely poster) can be purchased at the Etsy shop. At the time of writing this post, Series 1 and Series 2 are going for $45 each: each includes 22 cards and dice and tokens for 4 players. The first mini series, Cirqus of the Three Moons, is on sale for $25, containing an additional 11 cards and quick reference sheet of rules, but no dice or tokens. I bought all three and the book, because when I get into something I tend to get into it, and because I love supporting independent designers of awesome products. Iconica (and the world of Rynaga) definitely qualify.

Parting Words

If you’re a fan of great artwork, creative indie design, and/or intrigued by the idea of a tabletop game that combines aspects of Pokémon battles with Final Fantasy team-building and limit breaks… you should definitely pick up this game. As their Etsy page suggests:

You’ll like Iconica if you:

1. like games in which you’re faced with choices (and some chance)
2. want layers of complexity without reading 45 pages of rules
3. like teaming up with friends during games
4. want a NEW experience in a fictional setting
5. want a game where there are no junk/duplicate/fodder cards
6. like games with a rich backstory
7. like games with RPG flavor

Eric and his team also have more plans up their sleeves: 2013 should see the release of Series 3, with 22 more cards, as well as an Iconica Players Guild, with special “members only” content. Intriguing!

Some Thoughts on Diablo III

So. I promise to post the remainder of my Iconica review (it’s already mostly written, just awaiting a few pictures and a little tweaking), but May 15, 2012 was kind of a big day for video game geeks, and I got a little distracted. If you don’t know why, this might not be the post for you.

I probably don’t even know the length of time a lot of people have been waiting for this game. I’m a relative newcomer to Blizzard’s games: I play World of Warcraft on and off, and have done so for about five or six years. I played pretty regularly in the beginning and since then, usually tend to cycle in a 3-6 month pattern of play time and letting my account lapse. I just played for 3 months, and will probably let my account sit until Mists of Pandaria comes out later this year.

I never played any of the previous Diablo games. The first was pretty much beyond my time, released on December 31, 1996. I would have been 7 years old, for the record. It was ported to PlayStation in 1998, which would have been a bit more plausible for me to attempt, but it wasn’t a game my brother ever picked up. Diablo II came out in 2000. I was definitely playing video games by then, but the vast majority of them were on console, specifically, my brother’s PlayStation, and later PlayStation II. (I did buy a copy of Diablo II from Blizzard’s online store, but although they offer a Mac* client, the game was incompatible with my computer since I’d updated to Mac OS X Lion.)

*Shut up, haters. I plan on partitioning my drive and installing Windows as well on my next laptop.

So: although an expansion for Diablo II was released a year or so later, it has been 12 years since a new game was released. That’s a pretty significant wait. Diablo III was announced in 2008, and fans have been waiting for 5 years for the release date. I can attest to this: my ex-boyfriend had the logo as his screensaver when we were dating, which was like a year and a half ago now. According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, Before its release, the game broke several presale records and became the most pre-ordered PC game of all time on Amazon.com.

I am just trying to drive the point home that there were a lot of eager people waiting to play the game starting at 12:01 PST on May 15th, and the vast majority of them were angry, angry people.

(Ironically, this picture also comes from a post about Blizzard!)

Blizzard made the decision to require Internet access to play Diablo III. Not just to register the game, but to play any of it, including single player. I’m going to guess this is for some combination of stupid DRM purposes and for Auction House connection (where you can spend real world money on in-game items, and Blizzard keeps a portion of that).

The game had the expected rush at midnight, once it was unlocked. I couldn’t get past the character creation screen until about 1:30 AM, and I played until a little after 3:00 AM with some friends. I planned on taking the day off school (which a lot of people ended up doing, with either school or work), so I went to bed thinking I would pick it up the next morning.

Unfortunately, that required the servers to be up, which… they weren’t.

On opening day, of the five times or so I attempted to log in, I was able to play twice. The Americas server was down for the majority of the day. I would have hoped that being able to see how many people pre-ordered the game in combination with the open beta weekend and running, you know, World of Warcraft, they would have beefed up tech support appropriately, but that didn’t end up being the case. Servers were down frequently throughout the day, and for hours at a time: 1:30 PM would get pushed back to 3:30 PM, and when I tried in the evening around 9:00, the forums announced they wouldn’t be functional until close to 11:45 PM.

But! For the couple of hours I was able to play the game, I have to say, it was fantastic. I rolled a demon hunter, of course: given a choice I will nearly always pick the ranged archer/ranger class. Also, I’m just going to throw this out there: dual-wielding crossbows.

So: some thoughts on the game, pretty quickly, cause I’d like to get back to playing and make it past level 11.

• I play a healer in WoW (a holy priest), and they made Diablo III awesome in the potions/health orbs/health fountains sense, in that in a multiplayer group, you don’t need a healer. Everyone can just pour out massive dps. It’s pretty sweet.
• Dual-wielding crossbows.
• As a solo player you can choose between three companions (a paladin, a rogue, and a mage, more or less) to aid you in your journeys, and provide a little comedic relief in dialogue. It’s great: the templar and demon hunter make a fantastic pair, because, hey, free meat shield!
• It’s the first game in ages I’ve used a mouse for. I actually play WoW without one, using just keyboard commands and my trackpad, but Diablo is definitely a click-click-click game.
• Dual-wielding crossbows.
• The town portal is awesome. Fast travel (WITH a fast return to where you travelled from) makes emptying out overflowing inventory space and picking up new potions fantastically easy.
• Gold is EVERYWHERE. And everything is breakable. Smash those barrels, pull down those bookshelves, kick over that rock pile. Gold is likely hiding there. Also, you can totally shake the dead townspeople and farmers and such you come across and pick up any gold the poor corpses had on them at the time of their deaths. There’s even a freaking mob called the Treasure Goblin that drops gold as he runs away from you, and more as you beat him with attacks. HE IS A LIVING GOLD PINATA. This is so awesome on so many levels.
• In case you didn’t read all those annoying tooltips at the beginning of the game, holding down shift while you click away on mobs will keep you stationary as you attack. For demon hunters, this is awesome. I spent the first 6 levels or so running into things when I was trying to attack from a distance. Reading in-game hints can be useful!
• Dual-wielding crossbows.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’m going back to slay some more motherfuckin’ demons, and just, you know, save the free world.

Game Review: Iconica by Eric Torres (1/2)

Background

So, Penny Arcade can be dangerous for my wallet. Thanks to their relatively new game journalism outlet, The Penny Arcade Report, I picked up a copy of Metagame and can’t think of a better casual game to kill line time and talk to new people at PAX. (Which I totally bought tickets for and I’m now counting down the days until August 31.)  Here is said article from the PA Report. The variety of games really is extensive: I consider myself a fairly well-informed gamer, and there were still a handful I wasn’t familiar with (or at least, familiar enough with to make an educated argument, which is the strategy at the heart of the game). If you are the least bit interested in gaming, I highly recommend picking up a copy: it is totally worth the price for the fantastic artwork alone.

Another purchase I made thanks to a Penny Arcade newspost (by Tycho this time, not on PA Report) is Iconica. (As much as I love video games, I have been way more into tabletop and card/board stuff lately.) Iconica is a new take on a collectible card game by designer Eric Torres, set in the fictional world of Rynaga. Here is a wonderful explanation of the game from the blog.

Product Review

First things first, and to give credit where credit is due: this game is visually gorgeous. As the author notes in his “About Eric” page on his website:

The visual language is grounded in iconography, paying homage to classic forms of art. We avoid software tricks, filters and trends, using geometric forms to communicate ideas and subtle emotions. We stick to fundamentals of design to guide choices in color, typography and layout. We’re working hard to use high production values in our favor to create products which are labors of love, not cheap commodities.

The cards clearly demonstrate this labor of love. They are built of oversized, glossy card material, with shapely, rounded corners. The artwork is striking, a nice balance of bright colors and dark ink. Here is a closeup of the art on Card 001, the Featherune Sentinel:

Eric’s take on a “new” CCG is intriguing. Magic: The Gathering is perhaps the most famous, and there are certainly aspects of it that are frustrating: as a player, I should know! Booster packs with random cards are the most common purchase: they retail for about $4 at most shops, and contain 15 random cards. Generally speaking, most of those won’t be what the player is looking for. As a result, players can spend lots of money on booster packs looking for specific cards and end up with tons of junk they never end up using. I’ve been collecting MTG cards for under a year, and I already have a gigantic box of them, the vast majority of which I am uninterested in using to build my Ultimate Awesome Black Deck (but which my friends can mine to build stupid white and green decks that kick my ass).

Iconica solves this problem. There are no booster packs: players pick cards from sets (large, 22-card Series releases or smaller, 11-card Mini Series) to build a 3-character team they pit against another player’s 3-character team. Duplicate characters can’t be in the same party (or team, if you’re playing with 4 people), and you can’t use the same Legend or Special character as anyone else playing with or against you, which helps negate the need to collect duplicate cards in the first place. Playing face-to-face, two players need only 6 cards, and four players need only 12. (For comparison, a standard MTG decks runs about 60 cards.) This can easily be done with one Series release, with plenty of extra cards to allow for party choices. (I also imagine the game could easily be played over distances with someone you trust, if you each had a matching Series and a program like Skype.)

In the designer’s own words:

…each Character Card is unique and comes with its own set of skills, weaknesses, and strengths. Each card has its own personality, motive, and story. There are no “grunt” or “fodder” cards.

Other collectible and trading card games force you to expand your game blindly, which often results in wasted money as players end up with many duplicate cards. Blind purchases are not a bad thing in all cases. I plan to offer some specific cards as surprises, included as part of other product promotions.

Rarer cards, known as X-Cards, are available as special promotions at places like conventions or for early purchase of a new release (or re-release, as was the recent case for a reprint of Series 1). As of this time, there are at least 3 X-Cards in release:

• 45: Wandering Siryn
• 57: Fairewood Fool Knight
• 58: Dartugan Sea Rogue

When Series 1 was re-released, one X-Card was offered for a limited time: Orders placed before Sunday, May 6th at 12:00 noon AZ time will ship with one of two different Iconica X-Cards. X-Cards are mysterious characters which are offered as part of special promotions only. I was lucky enough to snag the Dartugan Sea Rogue. Here’s a peek at its artwork (in the slightly reflective plastic slip cover it shipped in): 

I think this is a wonderful twist on most CCGs: rather than throwing money at booster packs, you can spend a little more on full Series. The rarer X-Cards still allow some level of “collectibility” to the game.

This ended up being 1400+ words, so tune in shortly for part 2/2. Or, if you can’t wait any longer, here is a link to the Etsy shop where you can purchase the game!

More notebooks. Again. Sorry.

Last time for awhile, hopefully.

My Midori Traveler’s Notebook (MTN) arrived at long last and I am absolutely in love. The leather has a really great feel, and I even ordered a vintage brass key from Etsy to add some (more) character to the cover:

Not that it’s necessary or anything, but I’ve yet to add a bead or charm to the bookmark. I think something green would look nice, with the brown and the brass. I have some pretty glass beads I picked up at the Oregon coast a year or two ago, so I might sift through those and pick something out.

I’m sifting through all the various refills I ordered, wondering what the best combination is going to be. I ended up ordering the 2012 diaries in monthly and weekly + note, even though I already bought a really nice/creative planner for this year from Laurel Denise. One of my goals with the MTN was to combine everything into one book, a bit like a Filofax or whatever: calendar, commonplace book, random notes and scraps of paper. I’m a big paper person!

From front to back, the current layout is is: 2012 monthly diary, current* 2012 weekly + note book, grid notebook for random bits and such, commonplace book (extra-thin blank pages), and a zipper pocket in the back. I attached one of the large pocket stickers to the back inside cover, and that might hold the other 2012 weekly + note book: because of the number of pages in the inserts, the 2012 weekly diaries are split into two notebooks, January to June and then July to December. I’m not really sure that I like this… I like having the year all together. But it might be nice in July, only having to carry half the paper.

I also attached my colorfully varied book darts to the back cover of my commonplace book, because I think they look nice in a tidy, orderly line. I’d just like to say that metal products look great alongside the leather:

I might fiddle with the notebooks. That’s one of the lovely things about a flexible, changeable system like the MTN. Because the weekly diary comes with a page each week for notes, I might take out the grid notebook, depending on how much I find myself writing down in it. I’d like to get the insert with the dedicated (12 slots) credit/business card holder pockets. It’ll take some fiddling with, doubtless. But I like the flexibility very much, and the design is just so lovely compared to Filofaxes or Dayrunners or whatever all those mini-binders are. Plus, even staple-bound booklets like Midori refills feel more permanent than the hole-punched Filofax pages.

Alongside my 2012 diaries arrived a series of smaller, little pockets. One is designed for business cards, the others are just smaller flap pockets than the big one. I think the little pockets are meant for the passport-sized little MTN, but I attached the business card pocket to the top of the inside cover and one of the little pockets below it. Fun fact: because the business card pocket is a little oversized, russell+hazel “Quips+Queries” cards fit perfectly. I’m toying with the idea of either having my contact information on that, in case of the the horrible possibility I misplace it, or doing something a little closer to the namesake and having little bon mots or quotes that I switch out every now and then:

I also ordered a new fountain pen, because no-really-I’m-serious, I have a problem with office supplies. I wanted something middle of the road, leaning towards cheaper rather than expensive. I’m still undecided on fountain pens? I love them but all the ones I’ve tried in the past have been too thick for my taste. I write really small, and so tend to favor fine point pens like the Sakura Gelly Rolls or the Pilot Hi-Tec-C pens in 0.5 mm. This is a Lamy Al-Star in purple with an extra fine nib, so hopefully it’ll work out.

Lamy is a pretty good everyday “school” pen, from the reviews I’ve looked over. The Al-Star model has a metal body and is just a little more expensive than the Safari model, which is plastic. Also, isn’t that color purple fabulous? I’m trying really hard to work a little more color into my wardrobe and accessories and things. It’s a cartridge pen, and I ordered black, red, and green cartridges. You can also get a converter so you can fill it with any kind of ink, but since I’m new to the whole fountain pen thing, I think I’ll stick with the easy-to-use cartridges for awhile first, before getting all fancy.

So. I think everyone should carry a notebook, whether it’s a stupidly overpriced one like the ones I tend to favor, or just a $0.99 mini composition book from the local drugstore. The Field Notes* books are also very popular, as are the Moleskine cahiers. Notebooks are useful! I’ve used mine for jotting down phone numbers, shopping lists, playing MASH at the bar, and countless other things.

*They have the best slogan ever: “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”

To inspire you to carry one of these dead tree relics around, I wanted to compile a collection of notebooks from movies. Unfortunately, I didn’t come up with much. Really, I’m more of a book person than film person. Movies, however, come with much better visuals! So, there are a couple below. Dr. Jones and Nicholas Cage used theirs for awesome adventures, won’t you be sorry that you’re paperless and penless if you suddenly find yourself on an epic quest?

Indiana Jones: Dr. Jones’ (Sr.) Holy Grail diary:

Se7en: the scary composition books:

The Notebook: The notebook from The Notebook, of course:

National Treasure: Nick Cage’s Moleskine-esque notebook:

Only, you know, don’t do like the guy in Se7en, cause that would be bad.

A Love Letter to the iPad(2)

I guess a disclaimer should be offered up-front: I’m a total Apple fangirl. I’m typing up this blog on a MacBook Pro, I own an iPhone. And while I’m not the only one by any means, I am really and seriously in love with my latest Apple toy.

I bought an iPad 2. I named it Mnemosyne, after the Greek personification of memory and the mother of the Muses. While my laptop is called the “Turing Machine” after one of the fathers of modern computing, all my Apple peripherals are named after Greek mythological figures: my iPod was Apollo, who was the god of music as well as the sun; and my iPhone is Hermes, as it delivers text messages to me regularly.

The purchase was ostensibly for class, to load up readings to carry to class that would be lighter, more convenient, and possibly more eco-friendly* than printing everything out (one of my classes had decided to forego textbooks in favor of a tangled web of PDF files). I did download some helpful academic programs (GoodReader deserves all the praise that it gets), but I also decided to go to the local FedEx Office to print out double-sided copies of my readings for class anyways, so my excuse pretty quickly flew out the window.

What can I say? I just focus better when I read stuff on paper for class. Also, as much as I love my toys, sometimes my eyes need a break from digital screens.

*I’m still not sure if e-books and such readers for them like the Kindle/Nook/iPad are actually more eco-friendly than good ol’ paper, and neither, it seems, are other people.

I also, however, was quick to download games and other entertainment: both Marvel and DC offer applications to download digital comics (and have helpful links to purchase paper editions as well), and there are a lot of gaming options, including new-for-the-iPad advancements/adaptations (such as a new version of Dead Space by EA) and some great board game adaptations (from classics like Monopoly and Scrabble to still-favorites-but-lesser-known gems like Catan and Carcassonne).

Bypassing all the pre-loaded iPad apps for now (things that Mac users will be used to, like Calendar, Notes, YouTube, and Photo Booth), here is a screenshot of my second screen page, with third-party apps gloriously displayed:

The Video folder includes Hulu and Netflix, as I have accounts for both. Here’s an expanded view of my Games folder:

Fun Mac Tip: Holding down the home button at the bottom center of the iPad (or iPhone) and clicking the top power button will take a screenshot of the device.

I’m not going to do a run-through of each and every app, but I did want to cover my favorites pretty quickly:

• Battleheart is a really fun little hack-and-slash game with an amazingly adorable cast of characters. It has a really simple control system, where you drag a character to an enemy to attack, or to another character to use a special ability. You can switch up your team, recruit new members, buy equipment, and play in arenas until your adorable characters are swarmed by equally adorable goblins and bats. Very simplistic but very addicting.
• Dropbox is a must-have. An account up to 2GB is free, and I use it to sync documents between my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad, as well as back up important papers and such until I’ve turned them in.
• GoodReader is amazing. You can read lovely PDF files, mark them up with highlighting and notes (and save these changes to a second copy, so your original stays pristine), and everything comes through in bright, crisp color – I scoff at your Kindle or black & white Nook.
• Instapaper makes reading long articles and such a pleasure. You sign up for a free account, add a little bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, and save all the reading you don’t want to finish at the moment to your account. Sync it up while you’re on wifi and a simplistic text-and-pictures version is available offline for you to read at your leisure. They also offer editor-picked choices of popular articles, if you’re not sure what you want to read on your commute.
• The New Yorker has a really beautiful iPad app. As a print subscriber, you have access to the digital editions as well. The iPad makes reading magazines a really pleasurable experience, with easy scrolling and links to additional material that a print magazine could never offer: slideshows of additional images, audio clips of poets reading their work, etc. (A one-year print and digital subscription is $69.99, only $10 more than the one-year digital-only subscription at $59.99 – monthly digital subscripts are available for $5.99, and individual issues for $4.99.)

Moving beyond apps and into a general review, the iPad is a genius device. It’s beautifully designed, which is only to be expected for an Apple product. It also just feels nice in your hands: I have a slip case for protection (see below) when I put it in my bag, but I don’t use any permanent case for the front or back. It just feels too glossy between my fingers for me to want to put a case on it.

It’s great for curling up in bed and watching video – it’s very light and comfortable to use, more so than a laptop. The iPad 2 clocks in around 1.35 lbs. The MacBook Pro at 5.6 lbs. Also, the slide button on the top of the right side of the iPad, where the silent/vibrate button is on an iPhone, can be set to either mute/unmute or can be used to lock or unlock the screen rotation – so you can set a video on landscape mode, lock the orientation, and then curl up on the bed in whatever position you want without having the screen get all twisty on you. Which is nice, cause I’m the kind of person that likes to watch video while curled up on my side. Which is awkward, to say the least, with a laptop (damn hinged screen), and just so much cozier with the iPad.

The iPad is also a great little e-reader device. Kindle offers an iPad app, so you have full access to anything from the Kindle store. Apple also has its own app, iBooks, with an integrated bookstore, and a slick digital-bookshelf display:

I’ll be honest: I still love my physical, paper-pages books. They’re heavy, they collect dust, they take up copious amounts of space on shelves. But there’s just something about physical books and turning pages that I’m in love with. Still, I have the iBooks program, and I did download the first book in the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, which my friend Mark has been pestering me to read for over a year now. It was only $1.99, which was pretty awesome, and it did allow me to read in the car when my mom and I left at 5:30 AM to get to LA in time for another of my grad school orientations. It was way too dark out still to have been reading a paperback. Sure, you can buy book lights and stuff, but it was nice and convenient. And just like any other e-reader, you can carry hundreds of books at once for only 1.35 lbs.

For my fellow geeks, I would definitely recommend an iPad (or Nook color) over something black and white, like the Kindle. Why? Because a full-color screen means full-color comics: as previously stated, Marvel and DC both offer apps for the iPad, where you can download both free and paid comics. With DC having just rebooted their universe, it’s a great and far more approachable time to start getting into comics, instead of getting scared by the really high issue numbers and being concerned about massive amounts of backstory.

Also, if you were inclined to scan high-resolution copies of your legally purchased comic books (because you would never illegally download them from the internet), they would not show up well on a Kindle. On a beautifully colored iPad screen, however, comics are a joy to read. Occasionally, there are some issues with double-page spreads, but it’s still a very enjoyable experience.

So, would I recommend that you run out and buy an iPad? I guess that depends on what you want to do.

I tend to agree with the viewpoint that the iPad is a great tool for absorbing media – The New Yorker app is one excellent example of such. Watching video, reading articles, and playing games are all fantastic. However, I can’t really picture using it to heavily produce media.* The on-screen keyboard is definitely easier to use than the tiny one on the iPhone, but it still isn’t the best experience, especially for those used to touch-typing on a full keyboard. (For instance, ‘apostrophes’ and “quotation marks” aren’t available on the primary screen, which makes typing out more than a few contractions or lines of dialogue irritating. The purchase of a wireless keyboard (yay for Bluetooth!) might make a difference in this, and Apple actually offers a version of their wireless keyboard with an iPad dock integrated. This, however, raises the point that you’d might as well get a laptop instead if you intend to be carrying around a keyboard frequently. Part of the appeal of the iPad is the portability and sleek design.

(Then again, the most expensive version of the iPad (WiFi + 3G and 64 GB) will currently run you $829. Even with the addition of the $69.99 Apple keyboard, it remains cheaper than even the lowest-priced MacBook Air ($999) or MacBook Pro ($1199), as far as other portable Apple options go.)

*I haven’t yet tried out the iPad versions of the popular Mac apps iMovie and GarageBand yet. (If my friends and I get around to the collaborative vlog we talked about during the summer, I might pick up iMovie and toy around with it.) I’ve heard good things about both, but neither are currently programs that I would have use for. Also, for heavy creative purposes, I still imagine that their Mac computer counterparts would be more useful.

Sure, there are a lot of competitors out there – Lenovo, Samsung, Toshiba and more offer versions of tablets. Still, the iPad continues to dominate the market, and I can’t imagine that changing in the next few years, unless something truly revolutionary comes out. (Remember all those so-called “iPhone killers”?) And with their huge share of the market, App availability is something to take into consideration. Developers build for the iPad. Sure, there are a lot of lame things cluttering up the iTunes App Store, but there are a lot of really great programs, too. And while there are some Android-only apps, there continue to be many more that are iPhone/iPad exclusive – and developers often develop Apple versions of apps first, as there’s a bigger market there.

Finally, I have no idea what syncing to a Windows computer* is like, as I use a Mac laptop. I do know that with a MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad, all my toys play together nicely on the same WiFi network, and as far as syncing documents back and forth with programs like Dropbox, that work on all platforms. I have a fair number of apps that are accessible on both my phone and the iPad, which is great. And there are often Mac version of apps for your laptop or desktop Apple computer that will sync or share with portable versions (such as the iWork suite of Pages, Keynote, and Numbers; iHomework; Bento; and many others).

*Apparently, when iOS 5 is released this fall, needing a computer at all to sync will be unnecessary – something you might want to take into consideration if you’ve been hesitant about mixing Windows and Mac products.

So: should you shell out the money for an iPad? If you can afford it, if you love Apple products, if you already own other Apple products – I would say absolutely. While I definitely purchased some new apps the day I got my iPad, I had many I’d already downloaded for the phone that were cross-compatible, which was nice.

If you’re hesitant but you think you want one, head down to your local Apple store (or Best Buy, or whatever other authorized dealer is around) and play with one in-store. I have a feeling that you’ll fall in love just like I did. The Walnut Creek, CA Apple store had a bunch of apps pre-loaded that let you feel out the capabilities of the device. If you’re looking for a more data-entry heavy machine (like for taking notes every day in class) that is still less than a full computer/laptop, it’s possible a netbook would be more your style. Or you might want to try out the iPad/wireless keyboard route.

If you’re an anti-Mac person – well, sorry for the last 2000 or so words, and I doubt I’ll be able to change your mind. Mac haters are just as enthusiast as Mac lovers. (I should know – I used to be a Windows girl, and groaned whenever I had to use a Mac for class.) But you should still head down and play with one. I went through an enlightenment, and maybe you will, too!

Edit (25 September 2011 @ 7:04 PM): Take a look at this clip from McSweeney’s FAQ about their iPhone/iPad app for what I mean about Apple’s majority market share:

Q. Why is there no version for Android?

A. Unfortunately, we have no plans to make an Android version of the app at the moment. Apps written for the iOS and Android operating systems cannot quickly be ported to one another — they have to be re-written from scratch. Developing an app takes a long time and because we are a small company, with an even smaller technical department, we just do not have the resources to support multiple platforms. There is no subterfuge, corporate bias or underhand dealings — Apple’s platform was simply the most mature when we first decided to make an app. We would love to have an Android version, but we’re just too busy right now. Sorry.

It All Comes Back To Food In The End

I love food. I figure if we have to eat to survive, we might as well enjoy what we eat. I love to cook (and bake) as well. I particularly love to cook for other people, because cooking for one isn’t nearly as much fun. I love kitchens, how cozy and comfortable they feel to me, and how much fun they are when you’re working with multiple people in them: the dance you engage in, reaching for spoons and spatulas, opening the oven door, chopping things on the counter, and simmering things on the stove.

I just read A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, the author of the delicious food blog Orangette. I can’t recommend it enough – it’s beautifully written, which is only to be expected having read her blog for more than a year now, and it’s speckled with recipes for a number of things that I can’t wait to cook.

I particularly love the way that the book is a little hard to define: it has recipes, but it’s so much more than a simple cookbook. Before each recipe, she gives its history: who she thinks of when she cooks it, what part of her life it is associated with. The macaroon recipe perfected after ordering a cake-sized macaroon for a birthday in college. The cabbage salad she grew to love with her boyfriend, later to be husband. The pickled grapes (!) they served at their wedding.

This is the way I think of food and my own personal history – although nowhere near as eloquently as Molly Wizenberg does.

Elementary school brings up memories of picking out a new lunchbox each fall, of fruit roll-ups with the pizza-shaped punch out pieces or the tongue “tattoos,” and occasionally getting a note from my mom on my napkin – embarrassing, but kinda sweet all the same. My private school served a hot lunch every day, and the haystacks (nachos) on Thursdays were awesome, as were pizza Fridays (ordered in from a local shop). When we were really lucky, there would be a fundraiser for which Mrs. Wallace would make her homemade* macaroni and cheese, which was superb. I totally inherited my dad’s love of mac and cheese (‘inherited’ as much as an adopted kid can, at least).

*This would have been in the early 90s at a private religious (Seventh-Day Adventist) school with approximately 300-400 students in grades K-12 combined, when lawsuits weren’t around every corner.

We’re going to skip middle school, because essentially every lunch period of the eighth grade consisted of either a $1.50 tray of nachos with the kind of cheese you pump out of a spout, or a microwaved bean-and-cheese burrito. Eighth grade was a classy year.

High school was a little better: sandwiches, or nachos. But these were classy nachos, with more than pseudo-cheese on overly salty chips. These nachos included meat, lettuce, beans, and… probably other delicious things, but they’re not listed on my high school’s menu anymore (!) – I checked. On rare occasions, they also sold meatball sandwiches. My friend Mark ate a turkey and cheese sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie basically every single day of high school. I was impressed by his dedication.

I can’t remember what I wore on Valentine’s Day any year, but I could tell you what I ate all the way back to Valentine’s Day of 2007 (sausage pizza delivered to my bedroom along with a charming little four-piece box of chocolates). In 2008, a bacon cheeseburger and tater tots. (Clearly, we were not very romantic.) In 2009, at least, it was a homemade meal: prosciutto and melon, melted brie and roasted garlic with baguette toasts, spaghetti and meatballs, and a selection of desserts from Market of Choice, because fuck you, I’m not Martha Stewart and there’s only so many things I can do. 2010 involved a trip to the Humble Beagle and another burger, along with their amazing garlic and parsley fries. (This year involved take-out from Bombay Palace, but it’s also the only year since high school during which I’ve been single on Valentine’s Day, so whatever.)

For about six years straight when I was a kid, my birthday cake was “pink, with cool whip frosting.” That pink was strawberry flavor, but I didn’t think of it as strawberry cake, just pink cake. Eventually I developed taste and started requesting Marie Calendar’s cheesecake instead – but man, that pink cake was delicious.

Side note: my mom is famous for flopping my brother Sean’s birthday cakes. My pink cakes turned out fine, because they were box mix baked in a 9×13 Pyrex pan and slathered with cool whip for frosting, which were not exactly difficult cakes to put together. They were, however, delicious, and I love my mom for making them and not making fun of her daughter, who hated pink in pretty much anything else.

Freshman year tasted like mediocre… mediocrity. I didn’t hate dorm food: it was conveniently available most hours of the day (2 am to 7 am I might have been forced to subsist on the Golden Grahams and pretzel Goldfish I kept in my room), it was hot (or at least heat-lamp warm), and there was a fair amount of variety most days. Oregon puts more effort into keeping it healthy and not awful than the colleges my friends go to, at least from stories I’ve heard – a lot of the meat and dairy is hormone-free or free-range or organic or whatever, and the university doesn’t serve tofu eggs, like UC Santa Cruz. On the other hand, it was dorm food.

Summer time tastes like Otter Pops (especially the orange ones, which thankfully not a lot of other people seem to love like I do), like dripping slices of watermelon (we went through something like 23 one summer), and Smirnoff Ice drunk in the chaise lounges in the backyard at night.

Years from now, I know that some of the things I will remember the most from college are the Country Poach from the Glenwood (biscuits and gravy with poached eggs), egg and ham and cheese breakfast sandwiches on challah bread and the magic bars from Barry’s Deli – graham cracker crust and everything under the sun, including chocolate and butterscotch chips, coconut, and walnuts. I’ll think back to Eugene and laugh about the fact that some of the best Mexican food up here comes from a place called Burrito Boy, and that for nearly a whole term, I ate take-out Indian food from Bombay Palace at least three times a week. (The guy behind the counter knew my schedule.) I’ll wake up in the morning five years from now and think about the stuffed hash browns at Todd’s Place, or the beignets drowning in powdered sugar from the (now sadly closed) City View Deli.

Some of the things that I’m looking forward to in Los Angeles include real Mexican food (dreamy sigh), Pinkberry frozen yogurt, and sushi. Do you know how difficult it is to find good sushi in Eugene, Oregon? It’s a college town that is hardly cosmopolitan by anyone’s definition, and an hour from the coast. Los Angeles is also home to a veritable fleet of food trucks, all of which I intend to sample before I graduate.

Nearly all the important moments in my life I can trace back to food: the international foods warehouse in Oakland where I ate my first meal back in the United States after coming back from New Zealand and Australia (glass noodles), the mediocre burrito from Grab n Go that was my first meal on campus, the beef teriyaki from Azeka’s on Maui that was always the first thing I ate upon arriving at the island, until it closed.

They say that smell is the strongest memory-association sense, but I think it’s taste.

Delicious Library (2) Is Delicious

Delicious Library 2 has apparently been around for awhile. I sure wish I’d known about it sooner – the program seems really cool!

It keeps track of all your belongings: books, DVDs, video games, tools, software, board games, pretty much anything you could think of. You can manually enter things, scan them in using barcodes and either the built-in iSight camera or a laser barcode scanner, drag them in from Amazon…

Once loaded, items appear on digital bookshelves with filled-in information. So far I’ve been scanning in my DVDs, a much smaller collection than my books for a starting point. (I’m guessing I have about 800+ books, but only about 40-50 movies.) The information that is filled in are things like director, theatrical release and DVD release, stars of the film, run time, retail price and average current price for sale… all sorts of information.

The program also has a lot of other nifty features: if you loan things to friends or family, you can make notations of it in the program, even including a “Return By” date if wanted. No more loaning books or movies (or expensive power tools, as the program suggests) and not remembering who has them if they aren’t returned! It gives estimated current prices for items, and makes it super easy to sell your belongings on Amazon. You can export lists/libraries to your iPhone, and there’s automatic syncing with your iTunes library, so it keeps track of your digital music/movies/audiobooks. You can compare your iTunes material with physical CDs, making sure all your owned CDs are uploaded to your computer.

Also, as the website helpfully notes:

…have you ever had someone break in and steal all your CDs or DVDs? Your insurance company wants an exact list of what you had, but you can’t remember every last thing, and so for years afterwards you think, ‘Drat, I forgot to list Rocky Horror Picture Show, and now it’s too late!’ Well, with Delicious Library you always have a complete inventory of your stuff, with replacement costs. You can print it or back it up to the web, so it’s not going anywhere.

There’s a full list of features on the official website.

The conclusion of the contents of my apartment currently: 102 books, 41 movies, 29 video games, and 5 “toys” (in this case, board and card games). Cataloguing everything is going to make paring down my life and simplifying my possessions as I leave for grad school easy – or easier.

Pros:

• Adding items is really easy! You can scan them by barcode using your computer’s integrated iSight camera or an attached peripheral camera if one doesn’t come with your computer. You can also manually add items by hand, or books by ISBN number, or manually enter information by hand if it’s something without an ISBN number or barcode (like my new Scary Go Round collection).
• The digital bookshelves look really nice. It’s kind of awesome to see all your stuff lined up like that. They can be sorted by any number of methods: book title, author, etc. There’s also a master library where you can see everything (books, movies, video games, toys) grouped together. The total shopping junkie in me loves seeing all my purchases grouped together. God help me if I figure out an easy way to add clothing to this thing.
• While you can publicize your items if you want to, there’s also a handy little box you can check marked “Private” to keep those items from appearing to the general public. Hooray! No one has to know I own the Twilight books, I guess.
• I’ve been impressed by how well the attached camera for my computer works. Even in low-light settings, the light from my computer screen seems to be sufficient for scanning in items.

Cons:

• Sometimes scanning items by barcode doesn’t work. It seemed to have particular problems with my really old Stephen King paperbacks. It would read the bar code, but enter in something different instead. Maybe bar codes get recycled after awhile? In any case, as long as the ISBN is still somewhere in the book and I entered it by hand, it had no problem pulling up the proper book then.
• For date fields, such as release date and purchase date, it requires the format [Month, Day, Year]. For books I wasn’t sure of and tried to enter something more vague, like Fall 2010, it wouldn’t accept it. Sadness.
• It’s Mac-only. Sorry, PC-using friends!
• Unless you buy a really expensive wireless laser scanner, you have to bring items to your computer and scan them using your computer’s camera. This could be an issue if you use a desktop computer and your library is in another room. (I use a laptop, and have not found it a problem.)

All in all, I’m loving the program so far, and once I finish scanning all the books I have at home, it’ll be nice to have a comprehensive list of the stuff I own – specifically the books. You can try out the software for free and add up to 25 items without purchasing a license, but to unlock all the features and add more than 25, you’ll have to pay the $40.00 USD for a software key. So far, I’ve found it to be totally worth it.

On Zombies

Yes, I know it’s past Halloween. Whatever, it’s my blog, I can do what I want!

Zombies are definitely my favorite supernatural horror baddie. Witches are meh, werewolves are whatever, vampires ceased to be scary after Twilight came out. But zombies? Zombies are terrifying.

I’m not sure exactly where this obsession stems from. The Resident Evil franchise probably had some minor part in it. A long list of amazing horror movies (Army of Darkness, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Shaun of the Dead, and Zombieland, just to name a few) no doubt also contributed. Max Brook’s World War Z might have been the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. It took the zombie apocalypse, and created an amazingly readable book around it that wasn’t just horror or gore, but dealt amazingly with politics and people and human relationships.

Suffice it to say, I love zombies. In fact, I had a dream about the zombie apocalypse (you know it’s coming!) earlier in the week. My apartment building is next to a bar, and a little after 2 in the morning, the bartenders from that night toss out the beer bottles and such. That particular night, a couple happened to be loudly arguing in the parking lot as this was happening.

In other words: I was woken up from my dream about the zombie apocalypse by the sounds of crashing, breaking glass and people screaming at each other. It took a good fifteen minutes for my heart rate to get back to something approaching normal.

(And I totally confess, when I realized we weren’t actually in the midst of a zombie invasion, I was a little disappointed.)

AMC aired the first episode of The Walking Dead last Sunday: conveniently coinciding with Halloween. I didn’t get a chance to watch it live, but I downloaded it and watched it the next day with a friend. We both loved it. The fact that I loved it isn’t a surprise at all, but he’s totally critical of most of what we watch and horror is really not his thing. They did a really good job making the show about the characters, with the zombie situation almost serving as merely a backdrop. It’s really excellent, and I highly recommend that you give the show a try. The second episode airs tonight at 10:00 pm.

And, that’s all she wrote, folks! I might be totally lagging behind my expected wordcount for NaNoWriMo, but I can totally do this blog-post-a-day thing for November! See below for more zombie action from Cracked, where awesome articles and things are posted daily.

Zombies on Cracked:

• 5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen
• 6 Signs You’re About to be Attacked by Zombies
• 5 Popular Zombie Survival Tactics (That Will Get You Killed)
• 5 Reasons You Secretly Want a Zombie Apocalypse
• 6 Characters Who Show Up In Every Zombie Movie
• 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)
• How 7 Iconic Movie Characters Would Do In a Zombie Attack

Thursday 13 – 13 Bay Area Food Favorites

1. Burger: I’ve always been partial to Nation’s burgers. The bacon cheeseburger, to be precise, with light dressing, no tomatoes, light lettuce, grilled onions and pickles. Their fries are okay, not bad at all but not really excellent either. They do 1/4 pieces of pie slabs, and their coconut cream is good, if a little heavy on the whipped cream topping.
2. Fries: Andy’s Bait & Tackle in Santa Cruz, close to the boardwalk on the pier, is deceivingly delicious. It looks pretty ramshackle, and they do sell bait and tackle stuff, so ordering food from it was a little weird the first time, but they seriously have the most delicious fries I’ve ever had. I think they must batter and double cook them or something, but they’re golden and crispy and amazing. They’ll serve them up as chili cheese fries, too, which are also excellent. Plus, you can watch the sea lions or whatever while you eat!
3. Chicken-Fried Steak: 1/4 Pound Big Burger in Concord is a quirky place, with weird wood-panelling wallpaper (I think it’s wallpaper) full of hunting scenes and a jukebox, but it’s open 24-hours and they serve a fork-tender chicken-friend steak. It’s a meal type deal, with hashbrowns or country potatoes on the side, as well as three eggs and toast, which ends up equaling a huge amount of food, but it’s seriously the best I’ve had.
4. Breakfast Sandwich: Burger Road in Pleasant Hill wins for the best breakfast sandwich for the sheer fact that they include the hashbrowns in the sandwich and not only on the side. I take mine with scrambled egg and bacon on sourdough.
5. Baked Potato Soup: While Outback does a delicious version, and I do love their loaves of whatever dark bread they serve with butter, my favorite potato soup came from Houlihan’s, when they operated an outpost at the Sunvalley Mall. (Houlihan’s also gets top marks for their ranch dressing, which is the best I’ve had to this day.)
6. Ribs: The best BBQ ribs I’ve had to this day come from Bulldog BBQ in Martinez. They are every bit as tender as the ones from Back 40, but are at least twice the size. They also do not come too heavily sauced, which is sometimes a complaint I have. Their sides include all the stand-bys (mac and cheese, coleslaw, baked beans, etc.) and are equally yummy.
7. Sandwich (Hot): This was originally a tie between the ball-tip from Kinder’s (get extra sauce) and the Italian Trio from IB’s in Oakland, but IB’s edged out as the winner because I really think that the Kinder’s BBQ sauce is the only reason I considered the ball-tip to begin with. The Italian Trio has three different kinds of salami, is served up hot, and you can get curly fries (yum!) and glass-bottled grape soda on the side. What is there not to love?
8. Sandwich (Cold): Over a number of years I have had a number of sandwiches, and I’ve honestly got to say that Safeway’s deli serves up one of the best. After much experimentation, I’ve found that getting either the split-crust pesto or the Dutch Crunch bread with either light mayo or garlic aioli, light mustard, pastrami and salami, light lettuce (only if you are going to eat the whole thing in one sitting, otherwise forego the lettuce, because it goes funky in the fridge), the mozzarella in oil, black olives, red onions, and pickles is the best combination ever, period. I will fight you if you say otherwise.
9. BBQ Sauce: Kinder’s original, hands down. I could pretty much eat the stuff straight out of the bottle. A lot of people like the Sweet Baby Ray’s stuff, and it is tasty, but nowhere near as good as Kinder’s.
10. Caesar Salad: Man, this is hard. The best salad I’d ever had was from some place based in Berkeley who deliver meals to houses for people that can’t cook for whatever reason (old, injured, what-have-you). A client of my mother’s gave her a gift certificate after she’d has surgery, and we ordered dinner through them. Their rolls were excellent, topped with a huge mixture of seeds, but it was the Caesar salad that was to-die-for: a non-creamy dressing with a hint of bite over perfectly crisp romaine and with homemade croutons. I dream about that salad to this day, but I can’t remember the name of the company we ordered through. It’s pretty much a damn tragedy.
11. Pesto Pasta: DeVino’s in Pleasant Hill does a dreamy pesto sauce. It’s very thick and different from anything else I’ve had at any other restaurant, and I’ve tried to replicate it at home before. The closest I’ve come is a roughly half-and-half combination of a cream-based sauce (white sauce or an alfredo or something similar) with a traditional pesto, but even that isn’t quite right. It’s best with their linguine, and make sure you have bread at the table to soak up the leftover sauce on the plate.
12. Bread: The Acme Bread Company makes two of my favorites: my absolute favorite is definitely their Rustic Roll, very cheap and very delicious. I usually devour at least three by myself. They make the same bread as loaves, but I firmly maintain that it tastes much, much better in individually-portioned rolls. If you’re craving something a bit more swanky, I suggest the sourdough cheese spirals/pinwheels/whatever they are called. Delicious, and usually containing at least a few bites that include cheese that has been browned in the oven to crispy (the same way the best bites of macaroni and cheese involve crispy corners).
13. Cheesecake: I guess I like the traditional, because Marie Calendar’s classic New York style cheesecake is still my favorite. Tall, thick, and without any syrups, sauces or fruits, I could eat an easy two and a half slices before I start to think about putting the fork down. My official birthday cake of choice for a number of years running.

Froyo Addiction

People, I have a very serious addiction this summer – frozen yogurt. I swear, I’ve had the stuff just about every single day for the past two weeks. It’s fat-free and I get the fruit flavors with fresh fruit (okay, and maybe a little scoop of gummy bears) as toppings, so it’s definitely not as bad as my past cheesecake problem, or what an ice cream problem would be like… but seriously. Mountains of frozen yogurt.

The damn stuff is just so good! With flavors like blueberry, mango, peach, lemonade passionfruit, strawberry, and orange creamsicle, what isn’t there to love? They offer strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, watermelon, lychee, kiwi, and a million other things as toppings. The latest thing is the self-serve and pay by the ounce, so if you just want a little you can just get a little, or you can fill up that cup as high as it’ll go. It’s cold, creamy, delicious, and waaaaay healthier than ice cream for you – it’s pretty much the ultimate summer food.

Because I’m such a froyo fiend this summer, I’ve pretty much been all over the place locally to try out different places. Below is what I’ve determined from repeated testings (with Yelp links for each):

Fourth place goes to Yogurt Park in Walnut Creek. The location is great for a quick pick-me-up between Macy’s and Nordstrom (yes, I have a shopping problem, can we just leave it alone, please?), and the frozen yogurt is yummy, but it’s not a self-serve place, which I’ve totally grown to love. It’s served in a styrofoam cup, so points get taken away for the lack of eco-friendliness. There’s also nearly zero seating around, which kind of sucks, since you can’t exactly take it into the stores with you to eat as you browse. Also, I found that this frozen yogurt dripped way more than any of the other locations – this might have to do with the cup serving as opposed to the wider-mouthed containers everywhere else. All in all, delicious, but I’d hit up the Coco Swirl in Walnut Creek instead. (I haven’t tried the Berkeley location yet, but believe me when I say it’s on my to-do list this summer!)

Third place goes to Yogurt Shack in Lafayette. It, like all the others except Yogurt Park, is self-serve and pay-by-the-ounce. They had less flavors than the other location, however, and less fresh-fruit toppings, which are my preference. Their yogurt flavors didn’t include very many fruit options – and yeah, okay, maybe I’m a little biased, but orange creamsicle and original tart were the only ones I ended up with there. They have tons of candy toppings, and they were the only location that had a frequent buyer card handout. I have nothing against this place personally, I just think I would like it a lot more if I didn’t prefer the fruit flavors.

Second place goes to Coco Swirl (the locations I visited were in Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek). Really cute decor and tons of flavors. A good selection of both richer flavors like New York cheesecake and Ghiradelli chocolate and the fruitier flavors like strawberry, mango, and lemon sorbet. Also had a good selection of both candy-and-chocolate toppings and fresh sliced fruit. One of two places that had lychee (the other being Yogurtland), and they get bonus points for dicing up their lychee instead of leaving it whole. I think the one in Walnut Creek might have more flavors and toppings than the one in Pleasant Hill, but it doesn’t offer any outdoor seating.

First place goes to Yogurtland in Pleasant Hill. This one was on advice of my brother Sean, who told me it was way better than the Pleasant Hill Coco Swirl. He’s totally right. Way more flavors and toppings – though they don’t dice up their lychee, which kind of sucks. They’re the only place that offered chopped watermelon as a topping (it’s really good and the texture difference between the watermelon and the yogurt is awesome), and they get super bonus points for not only having cardboard (as opposed to styrofoam) cups but also biodegradable spoons! This place is also cheaper than Coco Swirl – I got more yogurt than I got at CS for about $1.50 less at Yogurtland. Plus, their gummy bears are the miniature size, which I like better. Definitely my favorite of the summer.