Nerd News: Spore is coming to the Mac

At MacWorld '08, EA announced that Spore will be simultaneously released on Mac and PC. That would be great news for me, because the computer I built two years ago (when some folks first thought Spore would come out) is looking less and less capable with the new generation of games that has been released since then.

Unfortunately, they're using Cider to port the game, so it's only going to run on the newer, Intel-based Macs. Which means that the G5 we bought less than two years ago is already obsolete. Oh well, that's why our family has a Mac and a PC. To play games on.

Somebody filmed an extremely short clip of the game running on Macs, but that's not exciting. What is fun to watch is this half-hour video of Will Wright speaking at NASA in January.

Wine is good

¿Nos tomamos algo?, originally uploaded by alfonstr.

In 2006, I won a box of wine from Crush, via a contest at Dr. Vino. To pay it forward, so to speak, I promised to review each of those six bottles as I drank them. But there was a problem. This wine was out of my league.

I'm excellent at enjoying wine, but ill-equipped to quantify or define the experience. The cheap wine that I'm more likely to pick up is relatively easy to differentiate: "tastes like jet fuel" for example, or "smells like feet." In contrast, I lack the breadth of experience to distinguish the nuances of fine wine.

Simply put, I knew that it was good, but I was hard-pressed to explain why it was good. And so, with apologies to the good doctor, I will happily remain an amateur appreciator and leave the reviews to a pro.