Acetio | Blogma

Chris McVeigh has a lot of fun and funny photos. There is something about the composition and color that makes them more compelling than simple snapshots of toys and animals.

I will never abandon Dogfish Head's 90-minute, but super-hoppy ales can only take me so far, particularly in this intense summer heat I'm experiencing in Georgia. I still want a full-flavored beer, but not one as cloying as the high-ABV beers tend to be.

I've been enjoying porters and stouts more lately, but those can be too heavy as well
- meaning I feel physically full after one or two.

So here comes New Belgium (best-known for their Fat Tire) with something that is like a stout or porter but not as heavy - and similar to Guiness but much more flavor.

I have not heard of "Black Ale" as a distinction before. Saranac makes a Black Forest Ale that is somewhat similar (and also quite good) but that is the only other example I know of.

info on the New Belgium site

Beer Advocate gives them a B+
ratebeer.com gives them an 87%
(but what do those jerks know?!)

I used to look down on porters because of a story I heard long ago about the pubs in Olde England: Whenever a keg got down below 1/4-full, the barkeep would dump the remains in a common cask, glasses of which were sold for half-price. This beer tended to be flatter and tended to be a very average ale - not light or dark or sweet or hoppy - but also unpredictable, and likely starting to go a little sour. The porters, who were the equivalent of all our FedEx and UPS and DHL and USPS delivery men (and some women) would stop in a few times per day to fill up, but only had enough for the cheapest ale, and tended to drink from the common cask as it was cheaper. Hence the tradition of calling the common-cask ale "Porter's Ale".

I don't know of that's true, but from my knowledge of couriers and FedEx delivery guys in New York, they smoke a joint every two hours, and/or pick up their "lunch" from the corner liquor store. Given that they are our modern-day porters, naming a beer after a group known for having a low-cost and perpetual buzz on makes sense.

"Porter" nowadays seems to mean an ale somewhere between a "red" and a stout, often with distinctive smokiness. The good ones are very good.

Prior to one of Charlie Rose's interviews with Chuck Close, the staff recorded a 'Charlie's Green Room' clip, where Close says, "Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work." This is a paraphrase of pretty much all the best advice that I've never followed. I'm still waiting for the muse to pay me a visit, to my chagrin.

One treasured memory of when I lived in New York was watching Charlie Rose almost every night at 11 on channel 13 WNYC. The image would sometimes flicker when I walked between the rabbit ears and the tower on the World Trade Center. At the time that seemed annoying, but from what I've seen of digital TV, with its blocky, pixelated artifacts, occasionally dropping out altogether, I definitely prefer analog.

Student project at Savannah College of Art and Design

(there's even a 'making-of' video)

Little Wheel is a very cute game that is more like interactive fiction than a real game since the puzzles aren't difficult at all. Great "2.5-D" animation and robots.

Part 2 of the Simeon Meade series.

This game has gotten better reviews, but much less play than the previous one.

It is longer and easier than the first. Most said the first was too hard, and many are saying this is too easy, although that could just be bragging.

Theories:
- Only those who liked the first one (less than 50% on average) played the second
- Exposure matters and so far this has been a much more controlled release
- Having the walkthrough available right away may have backfired since some players seem to play solely in order to provide hints to others.

I made the mistake of buying beer at the Kroger's. About a third of the time I've gotten beer there it's been bad - had that hard-to-describe off taste that's not really skunky the way Corona is, but musty and just not right.
1/3 the time is far too often, and I should have learned my lesson a long time ago.

Beer going bad at the store is a problem that I've had more frequently in the south, and more frequently in the summer which tells me it's probably light/heat related.

So, I have some bad beer that I want to drink. How do I fix it?

There is an interesting thread at Chowhound about "cleaning" cheap vodka by passing it through a drinking water filter, and I thought it might be worth trying the same thing with beer.

I really enjoyed the first season of Flight of the Conchords, although the last episode had me wondering if perhaps they had run out of songs. Season 2 confirmed that they had.

Season 1 had over 20 songs that had been polished and perfected by being performed in front of live audiences over several years. Season 2 was mostly original material that had been written hurriedly just for the show, and it's evident in the quality, which is a shame.

There were a few gems, however, that reminded me of the first season. For whatever reason, the songs I liked the most were in just two episodes: #2 and #5. They are all, or mostly, original songs that weren't in season 1.

Sugalumps

This song sounds like several song ideas stitched together, with a pattern something like: abcdaefg.
But it works and it's very catchy.

Youtube has an HD version:

The construction worker is oddly graceful.

You Don't Have to Be a Prostitute

It's like a parody, but not of any one song in particular. I couldn't get the tune out of my head for days.

Carol Brown

Like most of their best songs, the melody stands on its own and the lyrics are icing on the cake. The arrangement of this song is much nicer than the stage version which has just the male voices. Michel Gondry directed the video, which is also pretty cool.

Patrick Smith is a brilliant Flash artist who has been producing works of wonder for the past several years at VectorPark

His latest game is his most whimsical and technically sophisticated work to date, a downloadable game called Windosill.

There is nothing like Smith's stuff anywhere. He's managed to come up with a pseudo-3D engine for Flash that no one else has replicated.

In terms of game commerce, this is an interesting experiment because the download is only $3. The price point for most casual games has been $15, but now with GameLab going out of business, it looks like that wasn't enough to pay their bills, but at the same time was too expensive for many people to want to pay.

The download is free and you can play the first half without paying anything. I got about $20 worth of enjoyment out of it, so it was worth it.

Play Windosill.