Pathfinder and D&D also 7th of Forelithe 2014

A Quick Explanation of Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons

(a longer explanation at my Table Top blog)

TSR was the original publisher of Dungeons and Dragons.  Early on the creator was famously kicked out of the company and people in charge of Dungeons and Dragons had never even played the game.  TSR finally ran out of money in the 1990's, but the new kid on the block, Wizards of the Coast, wanted to be the benevolent benefactor of the origin of modern fantasy gaming.  They bought TSR and set about to make a new version.  They hired the most prolific free lance Dungeons and Dragons content makers to make a new edition, and so these free lancers made the most free lance friendly game ever; 3rd Edition D&D was completely open, using an OGL(Open Gaming License) to let anyone produce content and sell it right beside the official stuff.

The caretakers at WOTC were fired and bullied out once Hasbro bought WOTC.  Dungeons and Dragons was just another line, and not only that, it was under performing, and Hasbro could not understand why it was not discontinued.  A new version of D&D was made.  WOTC decided to gamble all its fans on getting a new larger fan base.  World of Warcraft turned a 200,000 subscriber top point and pushed it to 10,000,000 subscribers and WOTC wanted a piece of that pie.  This caused the Schism because 4th Edition resembled Dungeons and Dragons is only passing ways, it was much more a board/war game.  Unlike other eras, 3rd Edition's fans kept with it enough to make 4th Edition a failure in sales.

Paizo was hired to publish magazines and adventures for WOTC during the 3rd and early 4th eras.  To cut costs, WOTC cut Paizo.  Paizo looked around and had all the equipment to publish, but nothing to do.  They remembered the 3rd Edition OGL and pushed it as far as they could.  Pathfinder was created, it was D&D 3.75 reborn.  Pathfinder IS 3rd Edition D&D with a few balance changes and thanks to the Open Gaming License it was fully legal.  The rejection was so strong for 4th Ed D&D that Pathfinder became the first RPG since Dungeons and Dragons was written to outsell Dungeons and Dragons.

Hasbro loves new editions, and so it was easy to convince them to let WOTC make another new edition, it always is a spike in sales.  The new edition of D&D is a step back toward 3rd, and is actively trying to say "hey, we're more like us that we've ever been before".

But that's a different story.  I was meaning to just explain to people that might not understand why there seems to be 2 different Dungeons and Dragons in existence, or that maybe did not understand that Pathfinder IS Dungeons and Dragons.


7th of Forelithe 2014

Don't take my enthusiasm for Attack on Titan as a recommendation.  The ending to Evangelion tarnished the series so much I gave away the $200 high quality DVD set I had.  Attack on Titan is high energy, emotionally draining, and very brutal, and it could end horribly... I'll tell you in about 20 more episodes if I would recommend it.  So far though, every single episode is a down and up of great magnitude.  Remember in Independence Day when the president gives his speech, and the old crazy guy gives his life to save his family, and you have this weird downer and uplifting thing at the same time?  Yea, EVERY episode so far of Attack on Titan has that.

Wizards of the Coast... that's a great gesture of good will on your part.  If you guys do not know, 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is coming out.  In a way, this is a "my bad" on their part because 4th Edition tried to throw away all their old player base and do a completely new type of game based on MMORPGS(namely WoW) and failed pretty spectacularly.  I have read 5th Edition's beta tests for a year now, and I have to say that they are doing really well to try and get their older players back(I just realized this could be blog fodder in my table top blog, I should do that).  The gesture of good will I mentioned?  They are releasing the "Basic Dungeons and Dragons" for free.  Yep, for a PDF download you will be able to take the 4 main classes and 4 main races from levels 1-20.  Its a full on game, for free.  Good on you Wizards.  I am going to have conflicting thoughts about sticking with Pathfinder or going with 5th for my D&D fix.

Sorry Wil Wheaton, but your project is the same kind of garbage that old men thought would work on G4 TV.  You have a laugh track for a "Soup" rip-off that focuses on nerdy stuff; its not something I care exists and actually actively wishes did not.  You want to know why the big forays into network TV by geek culture seems to crash and burn so much?  You want to know why G4 became "Cops" reruns 22/7, and why nothing good ever came of anything like that?  Its because you're making shows to pitch to old people that don't know what the hell the world is about, and hasn't since 1976.  They probably described you as the Burt Reynolds of the Geek world or something like that, and described your show as Johnny Carson without the guests.  I got nothing against you Wil Wheaton, I love Table Top, I enjoy seeing you on Big Bang, I was even a Wesley fan, but the Wil Wheaton Project is not good.

God of War 2 Post Mortem, 6th of Forelithe 2014

God of War 2: Post Mortem

(longer unabridged post here)

What I liked about God of War was that as brutal and as action oriented the game was, it was just as much intelligent.  The really "great" games on the edge are like that, and the pretenders are easy to spot because you can't fake that kind of thing.  The original God of War made me feel like I was playing this epic mash up of Metroid(once you get to the Tower) and Clash of the Titans, mixed with the closest we ever got to a "Wolverine" like character outside of comics.

The level design is the top of its genre.  Not only are the puzzles satisfying, but several were of types I had not seen before in a game.  While the world did not feel so much like a Metroid, the world was very much larger and things did interconnect to each other as time went by.  The boss fights are, again, the top of the genre, with none of them repeating.  They even resisted the temptation of redoing the Minotaur(the best boss from part one) and instead stuck with making new bosses each and every time.

The HD remake that I played was flawless, and just like with part one, looks to have improved immensely.  I never spent a lot of time with part 2 on the PS2, but I played through part 1 a couple of times, and the HD remake of part 1 only enhanced the game, never took away.  The cameras are repositioned, the textures are tightened up, and the frame rate is rock solid locked at 60 frames instead of dipping below 30 on the PS2.  There is no reason not to play the HD versions over the original, it is a vast improvement in every way.  The only "jarring" part is that the cutscenes are many times still done in low resolution, so many times the cutscenes look worse than the actual game play segments.

Basically it is what every big blockbuster in Hollywood believes a sequel should be: the same as the first but more more more.  While that kind of sucks in the world of RPG's, its pretty apt in the world of Kratos and leaves a satisfying experience.


6th of Forelithe, 2014

Well, I began watching Attack on Titan.  I can see why people would like it.  It is already one of the most emotionally charged anime I've ever watched.  I can tell you though, if you're faint of heart or don't like watching characters you care about die, then don't watch this.  I'm only 4 episodes in and I can tell its not only going to be heartwrenching, but you're going to have to watch very gruesome and sad deaths in this show.  On the flip side, as sad and hopeless I've felt about the characters, I've felt the opposite too about the enemy.  It has been a long time since I've wanted a bad guy to die in horrible horrible ways.  The show is actually a pretty strong "war time" story.  It reminds me of several media that is based on war chronicles like Starship Troopers, World War Z(the book), and a few war movies.

I got so into Attack on Titan(I was only going to watch at most 2 episodes a day, but they like to end on cliffhangers), that I think instead of 3D Dot Game Heroes, I'm going to go ahead and play Shadow of the Colossus.  A little human taking on the biggest of giant and unconquerable creatures?  Yeah, kind of fits both.  Shadow of the Colossus revels in its understatement, so I think it will actually match my mood after watching Attack on Titan well.  I'll get to take on these enemy while being able to chill out a little.

Played some Minecraft for about 30 minutes today.  The Lost Kingdom is built, now I'm going around and making it more "lost".  Also, I've started the chests and books that lead to the quest line.  Just a little extra part of the world me and my girl may one day play in, gives us something to do that is a break away from the old farm.  I'm not using command blocks or anything, I'm not that good with Minecraft.  Just some books, some chests, and an "understanding" to do things in order.  Still, I have some ideas for little emotional parts here and there.

Next Media Block and 5th of Forelithe 2014

Watching: 

Attack on Titan

This looked to me like just the next random darling anime series.  I'm really not huge into "Anime".  I'm a Miyazaki(Mononoke, Howl, Spirited Away) fan, I like Shinichiro Watanabe(Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo) and a handful of other things(Last Exile).  I'm picky actually, if its just too goofy with no substance, if its just a serial series with Saturday Morning plots, if its violent for the shock factor, I'm probably not going to like it.  A few people I watch on Youtube and a few people in other places like it, and its just 1 season so far, so I'll check this out and see how it is.

Movie List on Netflix

I'm going to watch a good bit of my foreign films list.  Korean and Japanese dramas have been something I've enjoyed for the last few years.  These places are making thoughtful films that America just does not seem to do anymore.  Adrift in Tokyo because it was recommended to me after watching Time Traveler.  Mr. Lee vs Mr. Lee was added after I watched Seoul Cafe and it was recommended.  Aftershock has been on my list forever.  I have a couple of Oscar dramas I never got around to watching before as well, so I'm going to do that(The Pianist, and Life is Beautiful).  I think all of these are going to be tear jerkers.  I don't think I'm in that kind of mood, these just happen to be the films on my list that I've been meaning to watch for a long time.

Reading:

The Riddle-master of Hed by Patricia A. Mckillip.

Honestly I don't remember if I've posted this on here before, but I know I"ve talked about her works.  I've read the first chapter and I've liked what I've seen so far.  Just enough "what's going on" and the characters seem alive enough for me to be able to care about them.  I'll be starting it in full now that I'm clear in the reading department.  Within the first 5 pages it tells you this(so its not really spoiler): the Prince of Hed traveled to an island to have a test of Riddles with a 400 year old ghost.  Many famous royals and celebrities have tried as well, none succeeding.  If you lose, you die.  The Prince not only snuck out and confronted the ghost, he won the contest and a crown... but told no one of it.  The famous Riddle Ghost was beaten, and its prize under the bed of someone who seemed to not want the world to know.  He is confronted by his siblings over the crown they peeked and saw one day, and this is where the story begins.

Playing:

I just finished God of War 2, and I was thinking of playing through Shadow of the Colossus HD remake, but I think it might be too close in gameplay.  I'm going to start playing 3D Dotgame Heroes and see how well it keeps my interest this time around.  Its sort of like an homage to Zelda, Final Fantasy 1 and Dragon Warrior all rolled into one.  I think I need something less serious right now after God of War's no non-sense asskicking.  Also, Silicon Studios might have started out on the scene with an homage to old school RPG's, but they then created Bravely Default, a highly lauded RPG that was such a success.

5th of Forelithe, 2014

Grocery day.  Egg Beaters was on sale so we have some of that.  I was always sort of turned away by egg beaters because 1: I don't particularly demonize eggs, and 2: its scrambled eggs are just sad.  I, however, do not make scrambled eggs usually.  I make french style, folded, multi-layered omelettes.  Egg Beaters actually turned out to make these fairly well.  Its quick and easy too, and you only lose a little of the protein.  I add back in the fat with some cheese in the middle before I fold.  Real eggs are cheaper and I'm fine with that.

Had a cousin bring over an old LCD monitor.  This thing weighs SOOO much, and you can see all the circuits and chips inside the thing, its been a while since technology that is post-millenium has looked so old and clunky in my eyes, it was a new experience.  Anyway, its got a weird ass 4 pin connector for power, hence my cousin not being able to figure out how to plug it in.  $10 at amazon and no guarantee it'll work after that, it doesn't look like the most well taken care of thing.  If you're related to me and you read this and it looks like I'm taking in old ass shit to fix again, I'm not.  If you want me to work on your Windows XP monolith, you better be bringing a 6 pack of beer, and I"m not talking cheap ass beer.  It better have a patriot's name on it in the very least.

Weekend of the 2nd of Forelithe

Forelithe The 2nd.  Yep, the next Hobbit month is Forelithe.  I'm in the homestretch now though, as the other Month in the less good world is almost done.  Its strange that in a way I was sort of already knowledgeable about the Middle Earth Calendar because of Lord of the Rings Online as they have a Lithe festival.  Yes, they have an entire month called Forelithe.  Its kind of like calling the entire month before Christmas "Before Christmas", though I guess we now call the entire 6 months before Christmas "shopping season" now.

Speaking of MMO's, more and more is coming out about Wildstar.  This is genuinely the first time since WoW that I hear so much "good" out of a beta.  There have been comics and stuff about other games, some even praising some aspect of the game or lamenting that its like all other MMO's, but there is just some genuine "this is MMO's being fun again" for the first time since WoW took on the EQ monster almost a decade ago.  Anyway, here's a comic about it from PA that says so much if you know the genre: Penny Arcade.  I have the game pre-ordered(I'm a sucker for game launch stuff, my World of Warcraft Collector's Edition account is actually still worth money), but it'll be a while before I have a computer to play it.

I'm continuing to watch Linus on LinusTechTips.  I think I get along with this guy so much more than with Chris Pirillo.  Linus is an Android OS kind of guy, and a computer enthusiast while staying grounded.  Like, some people take knowing about computers in a wildly different way, like if you know all this then you obviously a fanatic.  Linus is someone that knows that you know EVERYTHING, so that you can make your smart decisions.  Pirillo is more of a casual tech guy, and is good at explaining things to people that don't know tech, he's a good translator; but he's more Mac in the way he approaches things(specs don't mean jack, just tell me if it works sort of thing).  Plus, Linus is a die hard Final Fantasy fan despite being pretty anti-console now.  Also he has my same views when it comes to Amazon Prime, Netflix and stuff like that.  Not that I dislike dissension, but sometimes you like to watch people with opinions closer to your own.  I stopped watching Pirillo's tech stuff long ago, I thought I just didn't care for tech stuff unless I was shopping for tech, but it turns out I just don't like the way Pirillo does tech vids, I watch his Vlogs daily, but not his tech.

I finished God of War 2 late Sunday night.  Now my game schedule is free.  I have one last thing on my media list to finish up and then I'll start my next block of media.  Tuesday's top portion post will be all about my next choices.  I've got a TV show lined up to watch.  I'm still deciding on my next game(I have my candidates and I'll choose Tuesday according to how I"m feeling).  I have my next band to listen through after ACDC.  I also have my next novel.  Oh, and a list of movies to toss in there as well.  I have not decided how many movies, but I have a long list on Netflix.

Posts to come: I need to do a God of War II Post-mortem, which means I need to do a God of War 1 post-mortem as well.  God of War II was totally more epic than 1, like whatever you liked about 1, 2 pretty much amps it up.  Sure, some of the "I feel like I've been here before" thing happens outside of boss fights, but the game was still awesome, epic, brutal fun.  I got my media block to write about.  I guess I need to think about a few more things to think of, but that's what Tuesdays are for.

Virtual Sysytem and 30th of Thrimidge

A Virtual System Standard

Unabridged Version at my Video Gaming Blog

When people say "8-bit" they generally mean the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Unlike almost any other time in history, that era is the only era dominated so much by one system.  People have a pretty good idea of what "8-bit" is supposed to sound like, and also what "8-bit" is supposed to look like.  When it comes to why the "16-bit" is different, the obvious answer is that there were 2 systems that dominated the era.  This is true, but there's another; expansion.  In the life of the SNES, the developers convinced Nintendo to let them expand the game's abilities by adding special chips to the cartridge that were basically upgrades to the SNES.  The Capcom chips and the FX chip all augmented how their games looked.  Suddenly you had non-pixel based art inside games that could scale and render wire frames and eventually 3-D environments.  I touched on why the 16-bit era does not have unified music in another post of mine, here.  The gist of it is that the SNES used fully digital sound instead of being its own synthesizer unit.  Developers were able to digitize actual musicians playing instruments instead of trying to approximate them using a sound wave manipulator.

I just think it would be really cool if someone came up with a set of sound resources, created a game engine standard that had its own "on purpose" flaws, and its own "on purpose" limitations, and then got a lot of indie developers to make games for this virtual system. The standard would be pretty simple and so developing for it would be easy enough so that entire game jams brought up around the standard would be doable in a relatively small amount of time.  Maybe switch it up and have teams be jumbled and mixed and matched to switch things up.  With a common standard you can switch pixel artists and coders among teams and still have working teams because everyone is on the same standard.

30th of Thrimidge 2014

I have come to a weird decision that I had said I would not do for the last several years.  I am not going to have an optical drive(DVD, CD) in my new computer build.  To be clear, I am not going full digital, I have too many older games and too much distrust of all digital to go that route.  I have decided to go with USB based external drives, and external card reader.  I only use either of those things once in a blue moon, so I'm going to regulate them to a drawer until I need them and reduce the power needed and the heat produced by having these in my main case.  Another reason?  My old drives are Molex power cable based, and I am planning on not using any of those in the new computer.  There are better and safer connectors now.  I would have to buy whole new drives anyway, and new drives frequently take up USB headers, SATA slots, etc etc.  This will simplify things and only cost me about $10 extra each drive to do this.

My headphones from Black and Mild came today.  I'm always so skeptical about getting things that it genuinely surprises me when something like pretty nice headphones are given away for so little effort.  In fact, I would not have bothered if my girlfriend had not got a free pair before I even knew about the give away.  Also a few other nice things about them: free metal carrying case and wooden accent construction.  Both of those make these look very nice and definitely not "cheap" for being a free set of earphones.  The bass response leaves something to be desired, but for rock, metal, and podcasts, these earphones are better than what you'll find at walmart for under $20.  Note: it took about a month for them to come in, so be patient.

Here's a good rule of thumb, you people take this to heart.  If you come into someone else's home, and you use the last of their milk; don't stand there and bitch about how there's not much milk left.  You could be drinking someone elses' whole breakfast away.

29th of Thrimidge 2014

Well, you can tell by the stuff below what I did all day.  I watched Youtube while I did computer research.  I don't really have anything to put up here today.  Tomorrow I have a video game post to put up here, about a common standard idea I had.  I guess this weekend I gotta find a new series of stuff to do because I"m out of book posts that have been the cornerstone of the week for the past 3 weeks.  I do have the "this is all the stuff I decided to start with my media reboot" posts, but I really really want to beat God of War 2 before I go because I finished all my other stuff.  Anyway, sorry for the unentertaining wall of text, but here ya go.  Its free, don't complain.


29th of Thrimidge

New Youtube channel subscribed to.  Linus' tech channel.  I was introduced to him through Chris Pirillo over a year ago, but I had already got tired of watching Chris' tech based stuff, so I did not bother giving Linus a shot.  I now just watch Chris' Vlogs, which are entertaining.  Anyway, Linus Tech Tips is an awesome channel.  He makes tech very entertaining without being stupid, without being amateur, without being boring.  I like his "podcast" shows as well.  I don't know how he does it, but I'm having a blast watching him review stuff I'll never even consider owning.  I also now know who Pirillo has tried to emulate for his channel.  I'm glad Prillo can adapt and change because he's really not the person to be doing hardcore tech reviews.  He's more of a tech "in-betweener", and more of a "at the end of the day, forget specs, this is the experience" kind of reviewer.  Linus is a spec-head, an actual gamer, and tries to look through the bullshit,  the kind of stuff I like to know when I watch this stuff.

Sleeved cables are super mega expensive, holy crap.  I love Corsair, I love how they do the extra 10% that no one was doing and blows away everyone in quality... but charging 80-100 bucks for sleeved cables AND not including the main motherboard ATX cable is criminal.  I'm looking into sleeve kits for doing it myself, but I don't have a heat gun.  I'm going to look up alternatives that use low enough heat that a hair dryer will suffice, but I don't think that's viable.  I may end up just getting sleeved cable extenders from Silverstone or NZXT for the main 4 that would be visible in the window of the case.  I know it is not a performance upgrade, but my last super computer I built was so cluttered inside the case that I gave up on my "fun" ideas on how to add mods and stuff inside.  I want a clean case with neat things inside that I can be proud of.  Doing that last 10% and all that.

Will Strife of the Yogscast was the next Yogs I subscribed to that is "new" to the crew.  To tell the truth, he's a bit dry, but you know what?  I need to shut my damn mouth.  For years now I've complained that youtubers from the mainland U.S. have been "annoy the piss out of you because its funny" people.  People the subscribe to Ben Stiller and Wil Ferrel's brand of idiotic comedy.  I'm not looking forward to when I subscribe to Bebopvox in the Yogs list.  Will Strife's channel is informative, high quality recorded, and well made.  He hooked me by starting a Game Dev Tycoon series, if he had not then I probably would have said "good channel, but not something I want to keep subscribed to".  Does he fit Yogs?  I don't think so.  His show with Parv is excruciatingly unentertaining.  He would make a good strait man, but Parv is not funny enough to be the partner.  Strife is a real gamer, which is lacking in some of the Yogs commentary.  If they would not invariably team with him Parv in a Hunger Games team, then I would put money on him being in the top 3.

Shared Fantasy Series and Thrimidge 28th 2014

Shared Fantasy Series Candidates

(Original Post)

(Stand Alone Novels)

(Epic Fantasy series)

My girl and I had so much fun discussing Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings that we want to recapture this feeling.  This time, though, I had the idea of reading a series that neither of us have read.  Risky, yes but potential for great reward.  I looked at a list of fantasy books my girlfriend liked and they included a lot of what I call fairy tale style fantasy.  I took what I like in books and came up with a list of books.  Here are 3 series that I have not written about yet in previous book posts.

The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

A while back me and my girl went through the entire Disney catalogue, skipping only a few things we've seen before and did not bother with again.  One of the interesting movies we both had never seen(and had a hard time getting a good version of) was The Black Cauldron.  Well, turns out that's the 2nd book of the Chronicles of Prydain.  This series follows a boy from a young age, into the rest of his life as the books go on.  Should sound familiar.  It takes place in a new fantasy world and not our own.

The Books of Swords by Fred Saberhagen

A huge cast of characters and a set of swords with moral questions of how to use them.  If a series is going to recapture the talk about the "cast" of characters like me and my girl did with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, its this one.  Plus, I've wanted to read this for a while.  The gods forged 12 swords each with special powers.  The cast of characters intertwine as they interact with the swords.  Each sword usually has a catch 22.  If you can defend a town without failing, even if against an army, the downside is the towns people will hate you forever after.  It has always sounded awesome to me.

The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

A youth finds out he is actually a magical person in our very real world.  That's right!  A Harry Potter analogue from the 1970's!  While Harry Potter takes a HUGE inspiration from Roald Dahl, The Dark Rising is more on the epic fantasy side of things.  Harry Potter pulls from Renaissance era legends and The Dark Rising pulls more from the Dark Ages and primeval European Mythologies.  The "first" book of the series is more a mystery that built the foundation for the 4 novels to come later.  That is why the series is named after the "2nd" book, as the first is a bit different than the rest.  The story starts with a quest to follow a map relating to King Arthur's tales, but then opens up into grand tale involving Norse Mythology, Welsh Mythology and what's typically "accepted" as "celtic" mythology.


Thrimidge 28th, 2014

Bird Saga comes to an end.  If you haven't been keeping up, last week I found that a bird had made a nest in my truck.  The nest was so well made that eggs were able to keep safe and hatch while I was doing my driving and errands.  The baby birds hatched and I found out they were still alive while I was at Walmart.  I stopped driving the truck to give them the best chance they could get.  In older photos I took to try and identify their health, I see that there were at least 3 at one time, but I think one had died before I had discovered them.  It looks like those two little baby chicks made it through every thing and left the nest by today.

Now you do not need a Kinect to have an Xbox One, and now its $100 less to buy one!  Now you can pay just as much as the PS4 for an inferior, underpowered, game console with Mount Dew and Dorito ads all over the place; what a bargain.  When you build your brand on mindless bro-dudes caring about nothing but "being the best while playing the best" you should probably focus your development on making the highest powered console... not the niche market of motion gaming that died out around 2008.  You know, I heard a lot of "the kinect will get better with time, just wait till they get it right" but none of those people thought that it meant it would take baby steps EVERY CONSOLE GENERATION.  They aren't trying to make the original better, you never got your "good" kinect.  Xbox One owners will never have the "good" Kinect, and chances are there will not be a Kinect with the next generation, so no, it will not get better.  It is a failure.

One Third.  One third of the cost of my initial "what I want" computer spec can be eliminated without effecting game performance.  Yes, the case will be a bit warmer, and yes there storage will be a bit less, but when it comes to frames per second on the computer, it will not go down one twitch.  The "fun" factor of making the computer went down 90% though, and when it will take me months of working to make the computer, "fun" counts for a hell of a lot.  I am currently focusing on everything I need for the case, and its actually pretty complex taking in considerations fans, air flow, and what is compatible with what.  I was actually planning on using a cooler with a too large radiator for the case... even though the case AND the cooler were made by the same company.  I don't like the idea of mounting fans on the outside of a case, it looks tacky, not "hot rod".  I think I've pretty much got it all planned out.  I read a few posts by an engineer and a car exhaust designer on how to optimize my particular case, and I've looked at some mods, and I think I'm pretty set.

Weekend: 25th of Thrimidge 2014

Weekend update and thoughts:

I'm not one to get all up in arms about where things are made in the world.  If the quality is there, I don't mind if things are made in China, Argentina, Czech Republic or whatever, as long as the people are doing good quality.  There are some exceptions, however.  One: I will never buy anything knowingly made in Indonesia.  The level of corruption in the government, the acceptance of inhumane bullshit that is glorified on their 5 o'clock news, I just will no longer do it.  Fender and Lakland both now do their overseas budget lines in Indonesia, meaning Squire and Skyline branded equipment comes out of this horrible place.  The other is Vietnam.  The music brands Ampeg and now Marshall do business out of Vietnam for their budget lines.  This means I will not purchase anything from the DSL line of Marshalls, and pretty much everything from Ampeg is off the table.  There are some heroes that have come out of these practices though.  Blackstar is a newer brand and is made up of ex-Marshall employees using their contacts in South Korea to continue making good stuff there.  Dan Lakin, the originator of Lakland basses, also left his company instead of work with Indonesia, to produce better instruments elsewhere.  These people can't come right out and say that it has to do with business deals in these shitty countries, but I applaud them anyway.

When I do my final research for PC builds, I tend to do several steps and builds.  The most fun one is the "what I want" set of course, where I go within reason, picking the parts I would like to have.  This is not a "no holds barred" list, however, this is still on the edge of reality.  I also do a "10% less power" build, where I spec out how much it will cost to do just 10% less power(which I estimate is 2 years off the usable gaming lifespan of a PC).  I still do the bells and whistles, I just ramp down the power.  There are hard choices in this one, but its not all that hard to do.  The one I hate... that I hate so very very much is the "Same Power, lower price" build.  In this build, it is the SAME power as my "what I want" build.  You will not see 1 less frame per second in a game.  But all my bells and whistles are gone.  I find it interesting that I am more accepting of less power as long as I get to keep "fun" things like optimized fans, and the case I want, but absolutely hate the "all the power, none of the fun" build.  After I make all my versions, I sit down and write my compromise build that ends up being pretty much my "final" decision.

Grilled out and did jerk chicken.  I do not know why I do not make this often.  When it comes to preparation, its honestly easier than a lot of the stuff I make.  You pretty much want some char and fire on the chicken, so its hard to over season it, and simple to just throw this and that in there and it turns out right.  The main ingredients are lime, nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon.  I leave the heat out and make a dipping sauce from garlic, red pepper, sugar and vinegar(think Mcdonalds sweet chili sauce).  We have also been eating plantains as of late, as its a new thing for the house.  It goes well with Caribbean flavors.

Watched "The Good, The Bad, and The Weird" which is a take on The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.  The movie is not based 100% on "G, B and U" but takes a lot of inspiration from it.  It is well shot, and done in high quality.  The scenes are created very well, and the effects are all really good without looking too fake.  I can't say I cared for the story, and especially the ending will make you say "what? really?" and not in a cool "that's F'd up" kind of way, but in a disappointing way.

Watching Dr. Who and I quite like the current episode.  It is the 10th Doctor and for the first time there's stuff someone else knows and doesn't let the Doctor in on it.  The Doctor practically makes a living knowing more than everyone else and holding it over their heads to get them to trust him, so it is nice to see someone else doing it to him finally.  Though, I guess it is him doing it to himself... I think?  I haven't seen the later parts of this arc, but it makes sense that he would tell this person to not tell himself about these things.  If you can understand that, heh.

Future posts this week?  Well, I have the list of Fantasy Novels I plan on sharing with my girlfriend as we read them.  I've done posts on Stand Alone novels, and Fantasy Series for me, and so the 3rd one consists of series that I think we both have a chance of liking more.  I may have a few more updates on the bird nest in my truck.  My "Sound Chip" post last week inspired some thinking, so I'm going to do another gaming post on retro stuff.  As for other stuff, I'll just have to see what comes up during the week.

24th of Thrimidge 2014

While I have a few "up here" posts roughly written, they're similar to stuff I've already posted this week, so I'll save those for next week so you don't get too tired of reading about books and games.


24th of Thrimidge

Bird update: I observed the mom in the nest last night.  I really don't want to disturb them, but I had to chase away a giant white tom cat that was snooping around my truck.  I'm sure the cat was all "what? I wasn't doin' nothin',you jerk" but I know cats better than that.  I will not be snapping any more pictures because I'm sure the baby is large enough that it would disturb it as well.  The baby, or babies, should be out by next week though, so my rooting at home this week will not be without results.  I just hope I still have the motivation I found last Monday to get out and do my plans.

I've known for a while about the "Woman Tone" of Eric Clapton.  Sounding like something you know is a strong motivator when you're learning guitar.  Learning the beginning to Ramjam's Black Betty is what launched me into 70's rock.  Learning the starting parts of "Wind Cries Mary" got me playing alot more clean/OD Hendrix blues stuff.  If you're aware of Clapton's stuff in Cream and his 70's stuff, then you should attempt the "Woman Tone".  Its simple really.  Play a humbucker with the tone control rolled all the way off through a low gain, but higher distortion amp.  It works with a Fender amp using a fuzz pedal, but was originally done with a Marshall.  If you use the neck pick up, you'll get that perfect "White Room" tone.  Later, Clapton did switch to a Stratocaster but his taste in tones was still similar in the 70's.  Because of this, if you use the bridge pickup on a Gibson and roll the tone off, you can get a "Wonderful Tonight" or "Cocaine" sound pretty easily.

I would really like to finish God of War II before I go headfirst into my new round of media consumption, but any time I boot up the old PS3, I play guitar instead.  I'm searching for my next "show" in the mean time, and I have not watched any Anime in a while, so I think I'm going to look into that.  I do need to see the 2nd series of Gundam, the old 80's one, because its a direct continuation of the first series, which I liked overall.  I have watched all of 08th MS team and MS Igloo, which are Gundam series that happened at the same time as Series 1.  I've also watched a few of the alternate reality Gundams(the ones that are more serious and less silly) and so I'm a pretty big fan of the political thriller anime.  But... Attack on Titan is huge right now, and I can't for the life of me imagine me liking the series... so I'm thinking of watching it.  I like surprises.  A 3rd option is Avatar.

8 bit Sound Club and 23rd of Thrimidge

Unified Sound Era

(original larger post at my gaming blog)

Something is missing from today's gaming.  When you hear the words "8 bit" and maybe "retro" you get this thought in your head of how things should look, but a huge part of it is how things should SOUND.  Think of your favorite games from the NES era, and you might notice that they all sound very similar.  This doesn't happen in today's gaming, but why?  Well there answer here is that the NES used a synthesizing sound chip instead of digital music.

The sound chip inside it had its set of blips and beeps(wave modulations actually), and the games issued commands of what order they were played in(triangles, white noise, square waves).  Let me put it another way.  With digital, you can record a wide variety of instruments, orchestras, and bands.  You are only limited by reality and sample quality.  The Nintendo Entertainment System shipped with a pre-packed band that you could not change.  All games had the same guitar, bass, and drums that all the others had.  Starting with the SNES, music went digital.  SNES music was pre-recorded, digitized and played back at a later date, much like how MP3's work.  Your Nintendo Entertainment System was an actual music instrument playing live for you.

DJ culture in Japan and Korea is huge, and their forefathers are the game composers from this era of gaming with sound chips.  In that area you will not only find "8 bit" synth masters, but also "16 bit" because the Sega Genesis also used a sound chip instead of a digital system.  The "west" culture is awakening to the sound, but its old hat over there, where the actual composers of games of the era are producing music in the clubs.  Today in the west, we are modifying old NES's and Gameboys to be used live in synths.  This too has been going on for a long while in Korea and Japan, where these systems(especially with the Sega Genesis) were actually pretty powerful for this purpose, and very cost effective compared to dedicated synthesizers in the 80's and early 90's.

23rd of Thrimidge

Bird update: At least one of the chicks seems to have lived through it all and is growing fairly quickly.  They have gotten large enough that they do not make sound unless the mom is feeding it, something I have not witnessed.  A few years ago I heard baby birds for a week while they were on a nest at the porch, but the truck is too far away for me to hear.  It looks like they should be moved out by next Monday, I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Lots of wind with the rain yesterday in my area.  It did not seem like a hugely strong wind storm, but the wind never stopped, sort of like when we have left overs of hurricanes come through.  Since the trees don't get a rest between gusts, many of them break; including our oldest apple tree.  Before I lived here a tornado actually hit the home and ripped the roof off.  The apple tree eventually grew back after this attack, and so maybe it will survive this wind storm as well.

I will be starting my next book trilogy today.  I have decided on reading the Riddle Master of Hed trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip.  It is a shorter set of books, each one being a little over 200 pages, but from what I have read about McKillip, she is a "never waste a word" kind of writer that puts actual art and thoughtfulness into her writing.  That actually makes me a little nervous because I'm more of a "write plainly" kind of person, but I hear she is not pretentious, just very artful.

Enterprise Post-Mort'em and 22nd of Thrimidge

Star Trek Enterprise
(Longer more complainy Post here)

I'm going to keep this relatively short.  I'll have a paragraph about complaints, one about cast, and one about plots.

The complaints are numerous and I'll give my opinion on if its justified.  The first complaint is the opening song, and yes its justified as the worst crap to start a scifi show ever.  The cast is complained about as being wooden and un-likeable.  I have to disagree; aside from Jolene Blalock trying to figure out what a Vulcan was, the cast is very good at what they do.  Some say Seasons 1 and 2 are garbage.  I would not call them garbage but I would call them entire seasons of pretty much no character development.  Its not quite Seinfeld in space, but there is a whole lot of nothing going on in these seasons.  The Finale sucked.  Oh yea it did.

The cast is not the problem.  The writing is the problem.  Bakula is better than Sisko and is a great actor, particularly for taking "silly" sci-fi things as "serious business".  He's a veteran sci-fi actor and does his job well, though he's more characterized by not knowing what he's doing than by getting things done.  You will grow to like Trinneer, he's a bit hamfisted at the start, but in the end he's probably the most complex and likable of the 3 headliners.  Ignore Jolene Blalock till about 1/2 through season 4.  The B team also has some great people.  The problem with Sato(played by Linda Park), Malcolm(played by Dominic Keating) and Travis(played by Anthony Mongomery) is that they do so little with them aside from being side dressing.  I'm sure Park and Montgomery were weary of asking for a larger role when Keating's "character push" was either expounding on how little a personality he has(literally whole episodes about how he has no opinion on food) or how much of a jealous dick he is about the new security crew.  Two characters shine as bright as any of the Data, Quark, or 7 of 9 stuff from the other series though.  One is the ship's doctor, a worthy person to hold the Doctor title as its a hallowed position in Trek.  Phlox(Peter Billingsly) is awesome and always makes an episode better.  He's sort of a "chinese medicine that works" sort of alien doctor.  Yep, an alien doctor with a crew of Humans.  The 2nd character, Shran(Jeffery Combs), is only a guest star in the series, but his part grows as the story goes, and you'll love disliking, but respecting him.  Combs has played 9 characters in Trek, you'll likely know him as the Weyoun clones in Deep Space 9.  Shran is a much better character that you'll wish had more screen time.  He should have been the first Andorian in Starfleet.

Now we have the plots.  Yes, I said earlier season 1 and 2 kind of go nowhere.  With Season 3 you get a season wide movie in the style of Deep Space 9, but that makes it very hard to watch any episodes out of order or as "one shots" because they are so tied together.  Season 4 things get broken into smaller plots of 3-4 episodes long.  The last half of season 3 is easily the best, they relent a  little on "give them guns, its exciting" and get more into the political intrigue.  There are entire parts of season 4 better left unremembered, particularly the bullshit about Klingon genetics, but hey, at least in Season 4 they "fix" the shitty Vulcan characterizations in season 1 and 2... but its like 100 episodes too late to fix that.  Do yourself a favor, if you ended up liking the characters or the show, skip the finale.  Use Terra Prime as the final episode.  All the character and story arches conclude, the Federation is well under way to being real, it ends there well.  The Finale literally takes place as part of a Next Generation episode, and pretty much everyone gets either left behind or worse in the plot.  There's even a part where the actor knows its bullshit, so they pull off the worst scene in the TNG era, easily up there with "Spock's Brain" of the original series.  The Finale left a bad taste in my mouth when I was ready to come on here and recommend that Enterprise might be better than Deep Space 9.  Because of the Finale... forget it.

I think later I'll do a post, probably not shown here, about the suggest "abbreviated series" I'd do.  A list of maybe 15 episodes(out of 98) you could watch and feel like you've watched the whole thing well enough.

22nd of Thrimidge

I don't really have an update on the bird situation.  Either they are really good at being quiet or they are quiet when the mom is there.  I tried to take pictures, but its not the easiest thing to do, and there's no room for my real head to get near to look inside the nest.  I guess I'll give it a few more days, there should be some sign of life in there some time by then.  I can't really do anything to help, but at least I'm not hindering them.  I've borrowed my mother's car so they wouldn't be disturbed while I do my errands.

We're having a 2nd Spring lately, the clover has just erupted for a second time this year and its all over the place.  I guess its the little bit of extra rain we had near the start.  I love clover and would have my entire yard plastered with it instead of grass.  It smells better than grass, is softer on the feet, and is entertaining to observe as you walk through it.  It even has a built in game of "find the 4 leaf clover", its like the pre-installed app of the natural world.

Oh yea, I was supposed to update about the Yogscast additions.  I did add Pyrion Flax to my subscriptions and I have to say that I think he fits in.  Sadly, I mainly know this because of the Civ 5 games he is playing in with the main cast because his channel shockingly has very little content.  He is a funny guy, I'd say in half way in between Lewis and Sips when it comes to humor and vulgarity.  Even if he had more on his channel, I'd keep him on the list, I think he's a fine addition to the cast.  I added Will Strife this week and I"m going through his stuff, he has A LOT more content and seems to add a couple of videos a week.

I had a little bit of inspiration and played some Minecraft yesterday.  I have a world with my girlfriend that we only play together and I have TONS and TONS of stuff for her to find and even storylines to go through.  I just can't play it very easily with her lately and its left me too depressed to really get back into the game.  For the first time I used creative mode to build.  Usually I think of a new "character" to be, and start from scratch and build something.  There's a carpenter, a bansai tree farmer, a greedy miner, a laboratory professor and quite a few more.  This area has no "character".  Its a place to find and interact with, and maybe do a lot of neat stuff with.  I guess it would sort of be a new "quest" hub and its about 1/3rd finished.  Its huge and massive and hopefully would be a lot of fun.  Only thing I'll say about it is that its a "Lost Kingdom".  Yes, a whole Kingdom.

Stand Alone Fantasy Novels and I found some birds...

Fantasy Stand Alone Candidates
(larger post at my Media Blog)

Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
Several websites list Tigana as their #1 pick for a fantasy stand alone.  Sometimes this worries me because some of these sites favor Game of Thrones to Lord of the Rings, but apparently Tigana is widely accept by both camps as of late.  I am very hesitant to read Kay's stuff because he does a lot of "real world turned fantasy" stuff, of which I'm not a huge fan of.  I hear he is a great writer and not just  a great story teller, and I'm interested to see if I like him, which is why Tigana is on my list.  It is a story about a musician(lots of those around these days) and his friends struggling against a tyrannical sorcerer that has enslaved the free world.  This book is also in #1 lists for "most feels evah"


Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover
This book has gotten a few add on novels, but the original was meant to be a single story and can still be read as one.  This sounds like the kind of gritty "Game of Thrones" stuff that I can actually take.  This book gets put on the top of lists about Anti-heroes, and for people that like characters such as Wolverine, The Punisher, and Kratos.  These kind of adolescent "power trip" fantasies are my guilty pleasure.  Its no surprise then that he wrote the God of War novelization...  I love reading about some smug, snooty asshole that thinks he's untouchable get confronted by the true unstoppable monster in hero form.  Its the story of an assassin doing what assassins do.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie
Joe Abercrombie has a popular set of books, a couple of trilogies, that are liked by those that like Game of Thrones, but are said to be made of sterner stuff.  I'd like to see how his writing is, and if he can do epic army clashing fantasy without resorting to "shock" factors like Game of Thrones.  That's what I'm reading in the previews of this book anyway, and epic battle to end all battles or some such.  Sounds good.

Bonus not found in my media blog:
Wonders of the Invisible World by Patricia A. McKillip
This is an anthology of stories that I found a really really favorable review of on a popular sci-fi/fantasy website, and it did introduce me to McKillip as a potential author I would like.

21st of Thrimidge

Had some big plans for Tuesday, and now they're kind of on hold.  Why?  Because a bird built a nest in my truck apparently, and despite me using my truck almost daily, managed to hatch these eggs into babies.  I discovered this while going to the grocery store.  The birds survived their trip to the store and back, and I decided to forgo the use of my truck till they have gotten big enough to leave the nest(hopefully by the end of the week) because #1 my head can't handle the stress of driving around with 2 baby birds living in my truck right above the wheel, and #2 I may be a baby bird perched precariously in a large moving vehicle to something in this universe, and maybe that thing will put their plans on hold to ensure my safety and a fair chance at life.

Two pieces of toast with maple syrup is not that bad of a pancake substitute if you're having a craving mid-week between your pancake days.

Some people get discouraged going through the lawn and garden section of their local super store.  They do not like they it reminds them of how much they don't do.  I'm not one of those people, i know that my hold back in monetary.  Whenever I go, I make plans.   Plans that are realistic, do-able, and would have really amazing results.  Those plans live in my head for now.

I am getting excited for Wildstar.  I have had hopes for some MMORPG's in the past, but I have always tempered my enthusiasm.  I think DAOC was my first MMO-burn, though I know many people would find argument with such a statement.  Anyway, I lived through the MMO boom when vague promises and half-shitty games were shoved out the door, and I watched as various friends and guild-mates fell prey to them.  As the years went by, you could tell a person's "mmo-age" by if they got excited about the new shiny.  I think the last MMO I got excited about pre-release was Conan, and that group went further than any MMO before it to lie and screw people out of money.  It was criminal, no two ways about it.  Wildstar is in beta, and getting lots of great reviews.  You can go on Youtube right now and watch people level 40+ levels and see how the game really is.  I don't know if it'll keep numbers, but I think Wildstar may be my MMO of choice for the next few years.  I haven't played one since 2009, and when I say "play" i mean commit.  Things have to happen first though...

Weekend of 18th of Thrimidge

I've just about finished Star Trek Enterprise, and I have a good bit to say about it.  Star Trek is certainly something I could spend time on and get several posts out of, but it is something I've talked about often enough outside of the blog.  So maybe just 1 post about it later this week, maybe two if it starts looking like too much of a wall of text.  I have to say that I dispute the general consensus that both Season 3 and 4 are good.  I think its more of a range, but there's a catch 22 with saying these are good; I'll talk about it in the post later this week.

Last week's post about books is not the last of that either.  I have two posts on such, but I'm not sure how I'll present them, or if they'll come this week.  I have a list of "Potential Shared Fantasy Candidates", which is the series I am considering for me and my girl to read at around the same time.  We both keep long lists of books we "need" to read, and so always have a lot on our plate for reading, so I was looking for "classic" and perhaps easier to fly through series.  I also have a list of "One Shot" Fantasy novels that I actually think a few of you may want to look through.  They are less of a time commitment and a way to introduce you to authors that have done larger projects.

You know, for all the talk about Teenagers not realizing their own mortality, they sure seemed to scatter like Charles Manson was chasing them when that jumping spider appeared on the porch during the cookout Sunday.  Jumping spiders are cute, and while this was a rather large example of a jumping spider, it was harmless.  I eventually caught it in my hands and brought it out to the field and let it go.  It was obviously a very smart one to have gotten so large, and it woulda been a shame to have it smashed because of some people's irrational fear of spiders.  Jumping spiders are probably the least harmful outside of "Grand Daddy Long Legs"... though admittedly those are said to be more crab than arachnid.

I continued making popovers.  Really I think I may use them as pancake substitutes for a few Sundays.  They are really good, but also a lot better for you healthwise.  Then, they are very versatile.  I can use jelly in them, butter works too, and actually sausage and gravy.  They are super simple to make as long as you do it all correctly without skipping steps, and maybe don't deserve their sketchy reputation.  I can easily see people saying "oh, well eggs strait out of the fridge will be ok" or "I'm sure I can just put the butter in the pan, it'll be hot by the time I pour the stuff in".   I have to say, I do want to experiment with flavoring them as they cook... I know the toad in the hole variation, but I'm wondering about cheese too.

Fairy Tales, Wasps, and Popovers

Fairy Tale by Satoshi Nakamura 

(Original Post on my table to blog)

Fairy Tale is a rare kind of card game where the gameplay is based upon "Drafting" a hand of cards to play.  To give a history, "Draft" gameplay began with Magic the Gathering.  You would buy several booster packs and pass them around the table.  Everyone would open a pack, choose a card and pass the pack until everyone had a pre-determined amount of cards to build a deck from.  The skill was in the knowing and utilization of the entire expansion's set of cards, and a little luck.  Fairy Tale emulates this.

The story is about leaders of Kingdoms as they rise in power and are manipulated or opposed to one another.  It has lots of "theme" to it for being closer in Euro style gameplay.  There are dragons, knights, wizards, fairies, elves, armies, demons and tricksters.  There is a story going on here if you're diligent enough in looking at the artwork and inferring the cards to see the easter egg of a hidden plot.

The players draw a hand of 5 cards from the main, randomized deck.  Each turn they take 1 card and pass the hand to the next player.  Everyone does this until they have 5 cards.  The more players you have, the more mystery surrounds what everyone is playing.  The cards in the deck work together to perform point accumulating combos.  There are 4 colors, three of which are identical and 1 that focuses on forcing the other colors to flip their cards, or having you trade points for desired effects on your own set of cards.  It takes a little while to figure out how things work, but it is somewhat simplified in that 3 of the colors work virtually identical  to each other.

Once everyone knows their stuff, its a quick game to play and quick to tally up at the end.  Its smaller on the player interaction between cards, but if you play black you CAN mess with the other players. It can be had fairly cheaply on Amazon.  The cards are better than Munckin and Fantasy Flight quality, but nowhere near as nice as Flying Frog's card stock.  If you loved Draft in Magic the Gathering(as I did), you'll love the mechanics.  Also it is self contained, it is not a collectible card game, you do not need to buy expansions.

17th of Thrimidge 2014

Its open season on wasps around here.  This year they are not keeping to their end of our truce.  They are invading the insides of my home, endangering my pets and people I care about, so they've violated the contract and will now pay by being on my "too dangerous to leave alive" list.  Its harsh because only venomous snakes and two types of spiders generally live on that list, but they overstepped themselves this year.  Dirt Dobbers are not yet out, and it'll be at least a few weeks before they start showing themselves, so the wasps did their transgressions at the wrong time, its easy to not confuse them when only wasps are out and about.  I took a crappy little sly swatter and I improved it for wasp killing.  I don't know what laws made all fly swatters to be created as shitty as possible for their use, but I fortunately have the wire bending skills to reinforce the hands, and enough tape to ensure weight on the flap.  I want "one slap, one death" with this thing, so so far my results have proven themselves.

Alton Brown is a sort of mentor of mine.  Before I got real training at working in a restaurant, it was Alton Brown that was teaching me to cook.  His popover recipe is something I've always enjoyed doing, but had two flaws.  First is the insistence on using a blender or machine to get air into the batter.  I have considerable whisking skills thanks to having to hand whip cream every morning while I did work at my first restaurant.  So I tried them without the whisk this week.  Second was the milk.  Its only a cup of milk, but when you combine it with the kind of foods that go well with popovers, you start adding up the calories.  So I tried it with water.  Both were an astounding success(I use large muffin pans as well, but I already knew they worked).  There is very little change in the flavor of the popovers for using water(use filtered water).  If you did not know, popovers are a style of Yorkshire pudding made for 1.  They are sort of like crispy, hollow pancakes.  Some people cut the tops off and fill them with mashed potatoes and roast beef.  They are tricky like souffles, and if you're a friend on Facebook or G+ I can tell you the tricks to get them right.

The Street Fighter Joke is old and 16th of Thrimidge '14

Street Fighter Syndrome

(Original Posting on my Gaming Blog)

The world of video game journalism thrives on the ability for the "journalists" to be snarky and inject humor into their journalism, that's just the state of things.  One of the ongoing and longest running jokes is about Street Fighter and its numerous editions over the years.  Its an easy joke, and somehow gives the journalist "cred" to say it, with bonus points if they actually think they are the first to make the joke(it is a 20 year old joke).  I feel like I have to explain why it makes sense to have updates and iterations to Street Fighter, and indeed other fighting games.

Looking at the select screen in Street Fighter IV's later iterations can be daunting, look at the pure number of fighters.  Old players like me had the benefit of learning new characters as they were created.  Instead of learning 50 characters, we got to learn the first 8 in 1991.  Then every couple of years 4 new characters came.  While technique, timing and game change, the way to play each of these characters have stayed consistent.  Still, this is unfair for new players to be expected to know how they all work.  The #1 way to be better at fighting games is to know your opponent, know what to expect from the character.  Because Street Fighter IV came out in 2008, we have had 6+ years to get better at it.  If you spent a few months getting better at it in 2008, it'll only take a little time in 2014 to get your bearings.

Small iterations are genius in another way; there's no reason to not upgrade.  Besides being cheap(less than $5 a month after release sometimes), the updates tweak and add only a handful of characters.  Since it is the same game, people don't reject it as if their old favorite game was abandoned.  They move in, feel comfortable and suddenly there's zero reason to stick back in the old version.  You do not want to split your player base, you want that arcade(online or off) filled with players.  You don't want to bring out a sequel if the older one is still king, you'll just eat your own profit.  Its just a simple truth that creating a brand new fighting experience every year, or even every other year, just is not good business for fighting game developers.  It would also suck pretty badly for the players as well.  So yea, its an easy jab to make, being snarky and "clever" making the "I'll wait for Street Fighter Omega Awesome Dash update 12", but you're really just showing idiocy, a small mind, and the lack of knowledge in your field to create original and even topical humor.

16th of Thrimidge, 2014

I listened to ACDC's Flick of the Switch a few times now and actually found it "not bad".    Lots of in band troubles came along.  Brian Johnson had big family problems, Malcolm and Phil had lots of drug and alcohol problems, it was the era of the band trying to cope with super stardom.  They lost having Mutt Lange produce albums and so decided to do it all themselves and try and recapture their early days.  There are problems, don't get me wrong... the lyrics are... you get a sentence or two and then 3 minutes of repeating the chorus... rather short choruses that repeat, but the music is solid.  Stand outs?  Well there's not much to really stand out, but different sounding songs include Power Rising, Landslide, and Bedlam in Belgium.  Landslide is ALMOST amazing. The album is well produced, and I just don't see how people hound on it so much.  It still very much fits into the era no matter how the band intended it to turn out, its hard arena rock, not classic rockabilly like their first albums.

Smacked a wasp yesterday that was on my ceiling, but I never found the body.  Well, I found it, or rather it explored out the morning after.  I was watching Dogs 101 because I'm a dog person, and of course it made me think "I should probably give my dog some attention".  She was asleep and lying on the floor so I moved over to make sure she was warm and about 2 inches from her head was the wasp.  Apparently it no longer could fly but it was crawling and looking spry.  I grabbed a near by shirt(my dog likes sleeping on the shirts I wore the day before) and pinched it up.  This wasp already proved it was resilient, so I went outside and wiggled the shirt until it fell out,  Sure enough it was alive and beating its wings trying to fly.

Gerard Butler seems to have come to his senses and backed out of the horrible Point Break re-make that is trying to get made.  When he signed a contract to participate it gave the project wings that it should not have gotten.  I can't believe people do not see this as a bad idea.  The director all but said "we take the name of the film, we take the name of the characters, and we make our own film" and so he's no stranger to leveraging bullshit reasons to getting things press.  He's got a movie he wants to make and no one will fund it, so he's trying every underhanded technique to get that movie made.  I'm hoping even more people see through the bullshit and don't let this happen.  I'm no fanboy of Point Break, but I'm strongly against people using other people's work to leverage their own.

Book Candidates and Thrimidge the 15th, 2014

I'm looking at smaller 3-5 book story archs for myself to read.  I did the 'stand-alone' novel last time and I think I'm ready for something more epic.  I already have a long-form series to read with the Dresden Files, so that's why I'm limiting to smaller archs... plus I want an ending.  I'm not one, in TV or book, for experiencing things before I know they have a real ending.  I'm already reading Kingkiller Chronicle(Name of the Wind, Wiseman's Fear) for something like that, and its already sufficiently driving me crazy.

Jack Vance Lyonesse and Dying Earth

I owe a lot to Jack Vance, indeed a lot of popular geek chic culture does though they might not know it.  Magic in Dungeons and Dragons offshoots are "Vancian" because they relate to Jack Vance's Dying Earth series.  Dying Earth is more a collection of loosely connected short stories, something I'm not looking for.  He does have Lyonesse, a series based on mythical Earth with Arthurian, Atlantean and Welsh myth analogues, it is also considered outside the realm of Tolkien influence.  I just got done with an Atlantean analogue after Elantris, so as much as I want to read a Vance series, he's off the table.

Dragonriders of Pern by Ann McCaffrey

This book series has one of the strongest cult followings to never break into the mainstream.  They meet every year at Dragon*Con.  They helped popularize Multi-user Dungeons in the 90's, leading to the basis of many of today's MMO's.  My first suitibly epic book series ever was Dragonlance, and many today consider Dragonlance a shitty alternative to Pern(really, Dragonlance is thought worse than dog crap, especially with today's insistance on having unlikable, inhumane anti-heroes as protagonists, and their focus on rape and slaughter... its like 90's comic books finally caught up with novels).  Anyway, there are 2 basic trilogies and I'm still tempted to start them because Pern resides right along with Lord of the Rings and Jack Vance when it comes to the making of modern epic fantasy.  Almost all the basis of human/dragon relations in books today have the basis in how they interact in Pern.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams

I do not know Tad Williams aside from what I've read on the net.  This trilogy is supposed to be really good, but really with today's popular opinion of what's "good" and what's "crap", its hard for me to commit.  I wanted to do like I did with Sanderson and read a stand alone novel... but with William's work I'm regulated to a story about a human minded cat or a rocker that gets transported to a fantasy world.  There are a surprising amount of "Yankee in King Arthur's Court" that contain rockers getting transported... almost all of them stopped being written in the 80's.  Its not a genre I find compelling(though Brutal Legend, the videogame was really awesome).  Let me be clear, Memory Sorrow and Thorn is not in this genre.

These have been dropped from my list, but stay on my roster as possibilities later.  They aren't the "wrong" sort of books, they're just the wrong "time".

15th of Thrimidge, 2014

Finally... finally, Enterprise has an episode on the caliber of Star Trek Next Generation.  Actually its the 2nd good episode this season(3rd), but the first GREAT episode out of 62 I've watched so far.  Other good episodes include the first season's Dear Doctor, and 3rd season's Twilight.   Episode 62 is Similtude and is worth watching even if you hate Enterprise(I still dislike it over all, as of 62 episodes).  I grew up on Next Gen, so its Next Gen and Voyager style I favor, not the TOS "fluff" pieces.  I want questioning of identity as an individual like Data's stories, or questioning of duty and honor like with Worf, or the balancing act that Picard has to play between fair, right, and correct.  I hear many times that 3rd season is when Enterprise gets good, but so far all I've seen is that everyone gets guns, they put marines on the ship, and all but 2 episodes have fire fights for 75% of what we see on the screen.  That's not my definition of "good".  Oh and the plots and show structure is more like Deep Space Nine, which I'm sure tons of people like... but I do not favor.

First time for me to fry Plantains at home.  I've only had plantains probably twice in my life.  I remembered them as a sort of banana-potato hybrid.  We had this one almost a week, and the skin was already black when we got it.  Now, if you don't know plantains, then you've probably seen a stack of what looks like rotten bananas in the store and thought "gross".  On the inside of that black is a nice white/yellow starchy thing that hasn't rotted like you seem to think it would.  Ours was no different, but it was very much sweeter than I've had in a plantain before.  It was close to a sweet potato, but without the certain horrible taste I associate with sweet potatoes.  It was rather nice, though since ours was super ripe(for a plantain) they did tend to caramelize quickly before the outside got the slight crunch I associate with the food.  Still, it was good with dirty rice and smoked sausage, they really cut through the spice.