First Page of the Journal

blank paper will not judge you

The big event of this last weekend was the Maker Faire, but I went to that just on Sunday. On Saturday I went to the Fremont Burger and Brew Fest and...frankly, it was a little strange.

My recent obsession with Recettear led me to watch a few Let's Play videos of it. It's fun to watch people's reactions to the quirky characters, but some observations, both good and bad, soon become apparent.

Warning: some spoilers about the game mechanics follow.

Recettear gets (or got, when it was new) a lot of press for its innovative concept: you're not the adventurer; you run the item shop. Many other reviews will happily note the joys and shortcomings of this system; I'll leave you to peruse those. What no one points out is that Recettear passes the Bechdel test in its very first cutscene, and constantly throughout play, even with a cast that includes a lot of men.

My dad recently got his first smartphone, and the other day he asked me for my thoughts on cycling apps. I found myself advising him not only on cycling apps, but also the process of evaluating apps in general, because it's a little tricky compared to more "traditional" software.

They're tricky.

I recently found myself with a particular First World Problem. Pepperplate, the recipe management app I'd been using, no longer properly imports from myrecipes.com, which serves as the recipe repository for Cooking Light and some other related magazines. I wrote in and received a possibly-canned reply about it, but after a couple weeks, had to face the fact that the app has had no real updates since 2014 and waiting any longer was probably futile.