Brasserie Blanc, Portsmouth

In a previous post (link), and after a particularly good dinner, I suggested that Brasserie Blanc (link) might be Portsmouth’s best restaurant. Now, after a disappointing visit last Friday, I’m going to revise my opinion a little; Blanc probably serves the best food in Portsmouth (partly because the competition is somewhat limited) but as a place to dine with friends it is no longer at the top of my list (we’ll be at Greens in Wickham next time).

Why the change? Well mostly it is the menu, which is great for meat eaters or fish fans, but pretty awful for vegetarians. One of our party of four on Friday evening struggled to find anything she could eat as a main course, eventually settling, rather unsatisfactorily, for the Crispy goat’s cheese parcel from the Starters list. That wouldn’t have been too bad but it turned out to be deep fried and our friend dislikes deep fried cheese (to be fair, we might have been able to work this out by more closely inspecting the menu but a glass of wine at the end of a long week makes such diligence difficult).

To be fair, my slow cooked beef was excellent (although I should have asked for it without the parsnip puree, which turned out to be unavoidable once served) and the duck also looked pretty good. The French beans, served as a side order, were about as good as green beans can get.

The deserts, however, were not quite right. The steamed chocolate pudding, for example, tasted as much of steam as of chocolate and the lemon tart was truly tart; nicely made and well presented, but too tart for my taste.

On the plus side, the service was reasonably quick, friendly and polite, the bread served as we sat down was tasty and the atmosphere was fun; the arrival of a large party of birthday celebrators a slowed things down a little but that’s only to be expected and, to be honest, if you can’t find something to talk about while waiting for the waitress to take your drinks order you’re probably out with the wrong people.

So would we go back to Brasserie Blanc? I think the answer is likely to be “probably, yes”, but not until their vegetarian selection improves and not for a few months; good food is worth paying for but only if the whole experience is good and, unfortunately, this experience simply wasn’t worth the money. The food was generally good and it’s possible that a more careful inspection of the menu would have yielded better choices (for me, at least, if not for the vegetarian) and a move positive overall impression but that’s just too much work and I can’t be bothered to make the effort. I like to sit down, skim through the menu and pick a couple of dishes quickly without having to think too much. Brasserie Blanc failed the simplicity test; Greens next time for a smaller selection of better meals.

Quake Live

Quake Live (link), which entered Open Beta on 24th February, is Id Software’s latest incarnation of their all-conquering 1996 game, Quake but, unlike its illustrious predecessors, Live is built from the ground up to be a web-based multiplayer kill-fest emphasizing speed, aggression and online fun; I love it. 

Available as a free browser-based application, the game starts after registration with a short test of gaming competency where the player indicates his familiarity with the conventions of an FPS by first maneuvering across some simple obstacles before entering a one-on-one battle with a computer-controlled bot called Crash. Fifteen minutes of increasingly challenging play against Crash gives Id’s skill-assessment engine a pretty good idea of your abilities, after which it’s time to play against real opponents, and the game takes off.

Once past Crash (and when the game has finished downloading – browser-based it may be, but it still needs maps, sounds, textures and all the paraphernalia associated with a traditional FPS) you are presented with a choice of playing arenas and game types, all of which feature players at or close to your own skill level. By matching your skills to those of your opponents the system creates, with a reasonable degree of success, balanced and challenging matches without the high levels of frustration often inflicted on novices by games of this type.

Most arenas will be familiar to players of Quake 3 Arena or Team Arena, but there are also several new maps, all of which seem to work well. The weapons and game styles have also been copied from previous games but this largely reflects their earlier success rather than a lack of imagination on the part of the designers; anyone who has played similar FPS games (Unreal Tournament, for example) will quickly feel at home.

Given that this is a free game (funded by in-game advertising) the overall quality is high and it is easy to lose several hours chasing one more frag. The game collates performance information in nauseating detail, allowing players to see their (and anyone else’s) accuracy with each weapon, number of frags and deaths, number of matches won and lost etc. This feeds the inner geek but will make boasting more difficult since complete and accurate information is available to anyone interested in searching it out.

More importantly, this information highlights the extremes of player abilities. My own kill ratio is about 1-2 (kills to deaths) but the best players achieve around 4-1, a humbling eight-fold difference – it’s just as well that skill levels are matched. 

So is it worth the effort? There is no expense with a free game so if you like the FPS genre then Quake Live is a no-brainer. The skill-matching engine is a huge advantage over other online games and the simplicity of the interface (weapons have only one fire mode and a “sniper” zoom) and the HUD make it readily accessible for casual gamers. 

It’s fast, furious and fun; what more could anyone ask from a free online game?

Apple TV

We have an Apple TV (link) at home which, despite its name, isn't a TV (it doesn't have any sort of display, not even the rather uninformative panels normally found on consumer electronics) and contains no vitamin C. It is not clear exactly how successful this product has been, but if the reactions of everyone I have spoken to are anything to go by then they probably have not sold very well because nobody seems to know what it is, what it does or why it exists; not good if you hope to pay your mortgage by shifting them.

In fact, the only people who seem to understand this product, and to have some idea of just how good it is, are the people who already own one. It isn't perfect, of course, and some people are not convinced of its brilliance even after spending a few hours playing with it, but we love it and we use it all the time.

“But what”, I hear you say, “is it for? Why bother with it if it isn’t actually a TV? What, when you get right down to it, does it do that you can’t do cheaper and better elsewhere?” Good question (or questions) and, after a long-term test (about six months), here are the three most common uses to which we put our Apple TV:

1. Watching movies - iTunes has a huge selection of movies to rent or buy and downloading them is really simple (although it can take a while, particularly for HD movies) and the films look great on an HD TV,
2. Listening to music - our entire music collection is synced to the Apple TV from our desktop; the CD player isn't even plugged-in anymore,
3. Looking at photos - the default screensaver when listening to music is a rolling display of randomly chosen photos from our collection - a great source of conversation when we have people over.

It has some other features, like a YouTube search tool, a TV show downloader, access to Flickr and other online services, but we use these only occasionally compared to the big three. More useful is the Remote application for iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing very slick remote access which is particularly useful when selecting music from a long list.

Could it be improved? Of course - more storage, more energy efficient operation, more sophisticated remote control, better integration into home audio systems, addition of a web browser etc. - but every product in existence could do something better and there is no point waiting for the Next Big Thing just because the you think you might want to froth milk while watching Saw IV.

Here's my advice - if you have digital music or photos, or if you like to watch movies or TV shows, and if you already have a decent TV and home theatre system, get an Apple TV (the 160Gb version), dump your CD player and jump-in - the apple tastes great.