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Canadian Travel Notes: Toronto & Ottawa
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2–3 minutes·
No comments on Canadian Travel Notes: Toronto & OttawaThe Canadian National Exhibition (aka CNE/”The Ex) My understanding of state fairs comes largely from longform pieces in magazines like The New Yorker by people like David Foster Wallace, so it’s hard to compare the CNE in Toronto with others. My expectations weren’t high, but it still felt more soulless than I’d imagined. For example,…
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Edinburgh Fringe 2018: Brief Reviews, Part 2
I caught a few more shows at the tail end of the Fringe, largely thanks to Lydia Nicholas’ science-tinged recommendations: Lovecraft (Not the Sex Shop in Cardiff) was a fantastically funny and touching and scientific gig by Carys Eleri about the neuroscience of love and loneliness. It was very poorly served by its poster, which suggested a…
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Gamescom 2018 thoughts: Spider-Man, Starlink, Forza Horizon, Oculus, and more
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7–10 minutes·
I managed to play a fair few games here at Gamescom in Cologne in between business meetings. The first day – Tuesday – is solely for “trade visitors” rather than the general public, so the crowds weren’t too bad. That said, people in the games industry tend to like playing games, which meant highly-anticipated titles…
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Edinburgh Fringe 2018: Brief Reviews
Owing to work and travel I haven’t seen many Fringe shows this year, but here’s what I did see: The Half: Well-performed tragicomedy about a comedy double-act (both women) reuniting after a decade. Very much about what it’s like to be a woman in theatre/comedy. Afternoon Concert at St. Michael and All Saints (Free): The Roxburgh…
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Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective – Fantastic Theming, Poor Puzzles
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7–10 minutes·
One of my favourite games in recent years is Her Story. It’s more of a puzzle than a game, really; you’re trying to uncover the truth of what happened in a crime via a database of short video interviews with the suspect. The only way you can access a given video is by searching for…
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Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: Quick Notes
Quick notes on this book by Jeanne E. Arnold, Anthony P. Graesch, Enzo Ragazzini, and Elinor Ochs, a popularisation of a 10-year study in which 32 middle-class Los Angeles families opened their doors to archaeologists and anthropologists to photograph, count, and classify every single visible object in their house. Introduction In general, it’s fascinating to look…
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This House & Rhinoceros
Saw a couple of plays in Edinburgh recently: This House is about the efforts of whips to maintain the shaky Labour government from 1974-79. When it premiered in 2012, a time when the most exciting thing in British politics was the coalition government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, it doubtless felt like an exciting, topical…
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I really need to stop paying attention to The Verge’s book reviews. They loved The Gone World, which struck me as a novel-length SCP written by a fan of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion. Gratuitously gruesome, weirdly incompetent (woman) protagonist, plot that doesn’t hold up under inspection at all. So… let’s make it into a movie!
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Artificial Intelligence: Another Inspection
Film critics were not kind when A.I. Artificial Intelligence was released in 2001. A.I. was directed by Steven Spielberg but originated from, and was made with, Stanley Kubrick, up until his death in 1999. A lot of reviewers accordinly blamed Spielberg for pretty much everything they disliked about the film, notably its final 30 minutes…
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Snap Judgment: The Novel of Podcasts
Snap Judgment is the novel of podcasts for me – each episode is hard to get into, and each story can be intimidatingly unpredictable, as personal tales inevitably are. But overall, the podcast is surprisingly rewarding and consistent. That’s a real achievement compared to more highly-produced podcasts that are like crystals, almost too perfect and…
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