davermont

It’s not often that a totally different new game appears that just knocks my socks off. Back in the late 80s it was Tetris, a game that totally justified buying a GameBoy. A decade later it was Space Channel Five on the DreamCast. And a couple years ago it was Lumines on the PSP. And today a strange and wonderful little game called Echochrome will be released for the PSP.

Echochrome is a 3D game in a world with rules designed by M.C. Escher, where the laws of physics and perspective twist your brain in different directions, and perception is reality. In this world, if there’s a point of view where two unconnected things look like they line up, then they really do line up. For example, in the drawing below the stairs lead up to a beam that extends to the left, the end of which is obviously not connected to the L-shaped beam at the bottom of the stairs:

BUT! If you shifted your point of view up and to the right a bit, you could look down on the model, where the top and bottom beams look like they’re closer together:

Move just a wee bit more and you can get the two ends to line up exactly, and at that point magic happens in the game: they actually do connect, and one could easily walk from one beam to the other. From that point of view the model would be a continuous loop, where you could climb the stairs and walk back around to the stairs and climb them again, forever and ever.

These games of perspective and point of view are at the heart of may of Escher’s drawings and woodcuts, but to turn them into a playable game is shear genius. The game involves changing your point of view so that beams line up, gaps in beams are hidden behind other beams (if you can’t see a gap it doesn’t exist, and the little guy can walk right over it), and a guy falling thru a hole in a beam lands safely on a beam below it. The levels get complicated as you learn the rules of this world, pretty soon the levels start looking like this:

A demo of the game has been out for a while now, but it only offers a half dozen levels, but rumor has it the released game will have 56 levels. The game isn’t available yet, but then it’s not even 9am yet. Must… be… patient…

Watch the Echochrome trailer

And spring must finally be here since the daffodils are out and the grass is starting to look more green than yellow.

In a race where Clinton has no chance of winning according to the pre-determined rules of the game (the candidate with the most delegates wins), the only way to win is by changing the rules and turning the game into Clintonball.

Back in January I brewed another batch of Chimay-clone Belgian with the help of Tim. As the brewing progressed, however, it turned out I was brewing something completely different.

The first clue was while Tim was reading the ingredients out loud. When he said “one ounce black patent malt” my head jerked up as I distinctly remembered carefully measuring out one pound of the stuff while I chatted with Matt at Vermont Homebrew Supply. Normally an ounce of the stuff helps give the Belgian it’s distinctive golden color, but a whole pound is enough to make it stout-black, and give it an astringent bite. Sure enough, the liquid that came out of the grains was completely opaque, and looked very much like a stout.

The second clue was when I was starting the boil, and getting the hops together so it could be added add the right times. I remembered picking Hallertau and Goldings out of VHS’s cooler, but instead of those hops I found I had a bunch of Czech Saaz. This truly was becoming a Franken-ale. After doing a little research it turns out the Saaz isn’t too far off from the other hops, and is even used in some Belgian ales.

So now it’s 2-1/2 months later, and it’s time to start thinking about bottling my little Franken-brew. Since the keg was free I decided to use it, and a half hour later it had enough CO₂ in it to taste-test. It poured out dark, like a stout. I closed my eyes to taste it, fearing the worst. It was surprisingly drinkable, the lightness and mouth feel of a Belgian, but dark as night. I’m thinking that it’s enough of a Belgian to improve with age, and even an hour later my second glass has lost most of the back of the tongue bite that was in the first tentative sips.

The label, of course, pretty much made itself:

Inspired by Obama’s speech in New Hampshire, Will.i.am (of the Black Eyed Peas) put together this amazing song and video: www.dipdive.com

“We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

Powerful stuff. Check it out.