juv3nal

It's only a bad idea if you have to take loans to pay for it. If you've got enough parental support/grants/scholarships/financial aid/grading/TA income to cover it, post grad schooling is not such a terrible idea.

fyi KotOR is surprisingly playable on a phone. It's also currently on sale, I think. Pretty bad as far as battery drain goes, although maybe not as bad as xcom which on my phone, anyways is the worst.

RIP Yusef Lateef: http://www.freep.com/article/20131223/NEWS08/312230128/yusef-lateef-dies-obituary-jazz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKGnMSYbnJ0

yup. It's super adorable.

Some other sound-only ios games: Freeq (haven't played this one) Codename Cygnus - a choose your own adventure spy story. There's not a lot of branching here and it's fairly short, but it does a neat thing where you can input your choices by speaking them into the microphone.

ZOMG another Decoder Ring Theatre listener? High five! I have a feeling NIght Vale isn't particularly niche (or at least not anymore), but as you allude to, as part of the listenership, it's hard to tell.

1) Not really so subtle. 2) Arguably it's inextricably tied to what made his writing effective (I mean in his case specifically, obviously, not saying one needs to be racist to write horror, or even his type of horror well): there's this pervasive fear/revulsion at "otherness"

He mentioned it briefly on twitter at the time that it was because it was for a book review site.

If portability is not a high priority, I recommend the collected which has everything afaik. The hardcover, at least, is kind of bulky, not sure if that holds for the paperback.

NUTS & BOLTS

Get yourself a Borges collected short fiction if you haven't read the large majority of his stories already.

Jimmy Smith, king of the Hammond B3:

Unfinished Swan is pretty good unless you get obsessed about getting all the collectables. Then it's dumb (because there are levels where the game pushes you forward if you try to tarry). I'd also recommend the Pixeljunk stuff, in particular Eden, but one of the shooters is probably worth checking out if you have someone to play couch coop with. I played a ton of Fat Princess back in the day, but I have no idea if the servers are still even up (or if they are, whether you can find a game). It's kinda like a capture the flag RTS except you're only controlling an individual unit. There's single player (which is just vs. bots) and it's fine, but it's way better online.

full spoil ahead:

Ok so looks like not, what it is: pretty neat.

Haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but is that an infinite jest reference?!?

Main reason for me is it excels in making you feel like you're clever (in many ways, it is a puzzle game): - There were instances where you could feel like you were sequence breaking (but probably weren't in any "unanticipated by the designers" sense) by making some improbably shaped vehicle and jumping off the back of it to reach a ledge or something to access an extra part or two earlier than you "should" be able to. It was even possible to levitate your vehicle by using your magic wrench thingy while you were standing on (but not driving) it. - Also so many event/race things where when you first encounter it, you're like "how the hell do I do that" only to eventually come up with a design that makes it so easy it feels like you've gotten away with something.

I ended up with both 360 and ps3 but definitely regret the 360 (which I got first and even replaced once when the first one broke). I went 360 originally because the PS3 came out of the gate ludicrously priced and Mass Effect, Braid and Fez were exclusive and it wasn't such a know quantity (at least to me) that exclusives were basically all times exclusives. Although, for that matter the first Mass Effect never made it over to PS3. About the only game that owning a 360 exposed me to that I would have been sad to have missed out on was Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts. That was a pretty great game.

In regards to the mid tier going away, it's not such a horrible situation. In its place are more indies self-publishing which I see as largely a good thing.

There's some comparison shots here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=714725

The Shivah is apparently getting a "Kosher Edition" graphical update in preparation for an ios port: http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/games/the-shivah/

this game officially marks the longest delay (for me, yet) between plunking down for a pre order and actually seeing the final product (edit: just checked...August 2011). I may double dip if it comes to iphone. It's pretty great.

So Wim Wender's Alice in den Stadten (Alice in the Cities) is pretty great. If you're not familiar with Wenders, he has done a ton of other great stuff, but I'd never seen this one before and happened on it on tv. This may not be the best entry point to Wenders. Probably Paris, Texas or Wings of Desire are more approachable. Tokyo Ga is a great documentary if you're a film nerd (but then you probably didn't need me to tell you about Wenders). I also have a lot of affection for Until the End of the World, but it is definitely flawed. edit: oh here's a clip from Alice in the Cities:

1) The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk, a meditation on Turkish identity in the face of "Western" influence. 2) The Collected Stories of Paul Bowles, is fun as a kind of counterpoint to that as it is (at times) about Westerners completely out of their depth in Morocco/North Africa.