O. Noir - Blind dining in Montreal

Hi!

We've lived in Montreal for over 4 years now, and we've been curious about a restaurant called O. Noir. The waitstaff are blind or partially-sighted, and you eat in the dark. We decided to go try it finally on last Friday.

I always figured it would be in semi-darkness, where you might be able to see after your eyes adjusted. But no, it was completely pitch-black. The moment the light first disappeared and the noise crashed in on me, I almost had to leave as it kicked off my claustrophobia. I got past that, and survived the rest of the evening.

Well, I can't say I recommend going. The concept is something that I think is interesting. We were forced to do everything without sight, which meant re-learning how to eat and interact with other people. I found that part very interesting. The food was decent, though not brilliant.

But the place seems to cater to a tourist audience, and many of the other people treated it as a gag. The same thing happened there as you get on internet forums: give people anonymity, and they act like morons. A group next to us were shouting and howling and generally being a nuisance. I sincerely doubt these people would act that way anywhere they might be recognized.

Combine peoples' behavior with the acoustics of the room, and it became too loud to hear myself think. So I found that the combination of not being able to see, and not being able to hear anything above the din was stifling.

The service wasn't great, as they do a seat-everyone-at-once style banquet thing. So we felt trapped at our table as the waiter didn't come by except to bring food. Trena never got a knife despite asking for one twice. I understand that you can't expect perfect service when it's completely dark. But it could have been better. Given they were charging $40 per person (+drinks and tax), I found it odd that their strategy was to cram as many people into the space as possible. I suppose that makes an amount of sense given people can't see they're crammed in, but it certainly was apparent from the noise.

Overall, I think if they catered to a different audience and improved the acoustics of the room, they'd have something really special.

EVE: Strengths and Weaknesses

At the risk of posting too much about EVE, I decided I was tired of typing this. So now I can just point people to this post. :)

--------------------------

EVE's weaknesses:

Poorly documented (being worked on).
Interface bugs (though these are slowly being cleaned up).
Tech II Blueprint Originals (I'd have to do some explaining on this one).

EVE's strengths:
Not sharded; all players are in the same world.
Robust player-driven economy and political system.
Expansions are always free, and there are two major ones per year.

Things you may or may not like, depending on your preferences:
Steep learning curve.
Skills train offline with real time.
PvP can happen anywhere, though they REALLY have to want you to go after you in high-security space.
Death incurs loss of equipment (not skills, if clone is kept up-to-date).
Classless: choose any skill to train, provided you have the pre-reqs and the cash.
You can train for years and still not top out the skill system.

For me, the game's inherent harshness makes it rewarding since you have to earn your way through the game; it doesn't give you anything.

One thing that worries new players is that if skills train with time, you can't ever catch up with the veterans in skill. They mitigate that by making the training time for levels exponential. Skills top out at level 5. Training times for a skill might be

L1: 15 minutes
L2: 2 hours
L3: 15 hours
L4: 2 days
L5: 30 days

It doesn't really take very long to get a lot of L4 skills, and skills usually add % bonuses. So you get get within 80% effectiveness on many things quite quickly.

EVE-Online: The Covetor BPO, The End of the Line

So, sadly, it's time to write the last chapter about the Covetor BPO. I wrote earlier that it paid off. That was because the invention percent on the first run was above average. Now that I have run it long enough to get the correct invention rate, it turns out not to pay very well. Apparently, due to the existence of Hulk BPOs that can make Hulks without the cost of invention, they can undercut us inventors and still make a load more money. CCP needs to do something about the old Tech II BPO situation, in my opinion.

We put 4.6 billion ISK through it in a combined operation of selling Covetors, Hulks, and Covetor BPCs. Net sales were 2.5 billion. Net profit was 230 million. Not a very good margin, considering the amount of effort it was compared to manufacturing and selling battlecruisers.

We make about 2 million each selling Myrmidon battlecruisers, and we can sell about 15 a week with very little hassle. Simultaneously I can run other battlecruiser BPOs and earn similar amounts of money, and since I can sell the various types one jump from where I make them, it's better business.

So, I sold the BPO:


We are now sitting on 3 billion in cash, and are looking for new adventures.

Starcraft II comment

Allegedly, Starcraft II will have "nonlinear levels." From an interview with a Blizzard dude:

"He says the missions aren't linear, so if you can't beat one, you can say 'I'm going to go [get] myself something powerful and come back here and make this one suffer'."

I have never, ever liked this kind of gameplay. Give me properly balanced levels, or skill settings. Don't make me wonder if I should go play some other level to make this one possible.

Grrr.