Spanakopita, games, etc.

I made spanakopita today. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture, so you'll just have to believe my claim that it looked nice. It didn't really look like the photo on that Wikipedia entry; ours was a lighter gold color, and had a bit higher pastry-to-filling ratio. It tasted great; we splurged on some really nice quality feta cheese, and it was definitely worth it. I've had a roll of phyllo dough wasting space in the freezer for months, and this was both a great way to use it up and a fun experiment with a dish I've never made before.

I mentioned some ideas for games I'm working on in my last post. Brian offered to help out with a web game, but I'm not sure how to get hold of him anymore. So Brian, if you're still reading: Send me an email and I'll run my idea by you.

I tried out Minecraft today, although that poor guy probably doesn't need any more links. Penny Arcade did a couple of comics about what a great game it is, and since they're one of the most popular gaming comics on the web (they're #1 or #2), the Minecraft web-site immediately crashed under the load of interested gamers going to try it out. The basic idea seems to be that you wonder around, punching trees, which gives you wood, which you use to make tools, which you use to dig a hole, where you can find diamond and ore, which you use to build a castle and weapons to defend yourself from the zombies. Also: You can build roller coasters, just because. It is, in fact, fun.

Minecraft is also yet another example of publisher-less publishing, and the value of getting attention--the guy managed to get a few thousand registrations over the past 6 months, but in the past few weeks I believe he's made somewhat more than a million dollars. His Paypal account was frozen because they were worried something fishy was going on (600,000 euros in a week!), but as soon as he can get that taken care of, he'll be independently wealthy. Good luck to him.