Weekend of June 27th

Last week this blog surpassed my old Minecraft blog as the most posts of any of my blogs.  It did that pretty quickly, I actually kept my Minecraft blog for a couple of years.  This is also most consistent I've done a blog, generally I would only post when I had something to say.  It started when I was doing my Rocksmith challenge and I just kind of kept the frequent posting and keeping the challenge of finding new things to talk about each time.  Page views are nothing compared to my Minecraft blog, though it hasn't seen traffic since the whole Minecraft boom started fading, and also I stopped keeping a game journal.  Still, this isn't about pageviews, and generally I do this one as a challenge to myself to do at least 3 things I can blog about each day.  Anyway, I've done pretty good so far and so I'm going to keep it going.  One day I might even blog interesting stuff.  I'm crossing my fingers.

Watched a documentary called "Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey, and its about how Arnel Pineda was discovered through Youtube and became the lead singer of Journey.  It is a pretty good documentary, though  the crowd were coached in a few scenes.  Aside from that, it shows that Arnel really is pretty amazing.  He's this guy that can hardly speak english, and yet he can sing these songs and sound like they did on the albums, which even Steve Perry(the original singer) had/has trouble doing.  The most amazing thing is that Arnel was in a cover band and he could mimic SO MANY distinct voices.  They show him singing Bon Jovi, which is pretty impressive, but then he starts singing some throaty "never mistake him for anyone else" Steven Tyler Aerosmith that I would have thought no one would be able to do.  The unfortunate reality is that even though the band is making good money on their tours with him, their original albums with Arnel are not.  Still, the tours are pulling in over $30 million a year, so it is a really awesome success story.  A side note: it is HILARIOUS to see the pre-Steve Perry Journey footage of all the white guys with afros.

If you grew up in the 1990's, you know there was a large amount of Mortal Kombat alternatives.  They were all violent and none of them really had better combat than Mortal Kombat(which is saying something), but they all had their gimmicks... and they all looked better in magazines than in actual site.  One of the most successful was Primal Rage.  It was a game built around using claymation of dinosaurs and prehistoric inspired beasts to make a fighting game with lots of blood, guts, et all.  The little known fact is that there were a few test arcade machines made for part 2.  One of maybe 2 or 3 has surfaced at an arcade in the US that you can go to and play.  The game kind of looks horrible, which is I'm sure why it was canned.  In it, instead of dinosaurs you play humanoid characters that can morph into the dinosaur characters for attacks and finishing moves.  I was a video game magazine junky and a fighting game fanatic in the years this was the top thing(equal to the FPS frenzy we had in the Xbox360 era), so seeing this is actually kind of cool.  You can take a look at it: here

One of the things that I dislike about cooking healthier is substitution.  I don't like the word substitution, it brings to mind a compromise that no one is happy with.  I am notorious for wanting what I want and changing it means I'm having something else.  This is why I have enjoyed experimenting with cauliflower.  Look, I'm not going to tell you that cauliflower will fit right in with every rice dish and that you should do it because its healthier or some such like that.  I love rice.  If treated with respect, it is absolutely a health food.   But these experiments my girl has been doing with cauliflower as rice has lead to some really good dishes.  First she did stir fried rice, but with cauliflower.  Over the weekend she made spanish rice to go with shredded chicken done in a mexican style.  Now I want her to try dirty rice with sausage.  Again, I'm not saying "they this is a good rice substitute".  I'm saying that asian fried cauliflower, and Spanish style cauliflower are damn good food.  Consider chopping cauliflower down into rice sized bits and experimenting.

I'm close to finishing out my current media block and also I'm done with my last music journey, so I'm looking at some options.  My music choice I will leave for a later post, but my movie/show list is starting to get some potential choices.  I am thinking about watching all the James Bond movies as I've seen maybe 75% of them but only remember about half(the Connery, Brosnin, and Daniel Craig ones).  I am also thinking I might go through all the Godzilla movies, which I've tried before... but when you get to bad Godzilla movies... they are REAL bad.  Another set of posts I have thought about doing is that of pricing out and listing a home arcade.  I have this strange need to occupy my mind with research, organizing and presenting data; its one of the reasons I do the top posts in my daily blog.  This leads me to pricing stuff I'll never buy or own, but I have fun doing it and it serves a need of mine.  The games are kind of the easy part for a home arcade, the hard part is getting the look and feel of what is an "arcade" to you.

ACDC Conclusion and June 26th, 2014

ACDC Retrospective: The List

(Longer Post at my music blog)

The entire time that I have been listening through all these albums, I have been keeping a list of "good" songs.  Well done, listenable songs.  In the end, not including duplicates or live versions, I came away with over 80 songs.  So the first cut, I went through the huge song list with a quick listen to each song, lingering only with songs that I knew less of.  I got rid of some of the very similar songs between "Ball Breaker", "Stiff Upper Lip" and "Blow Up Your Video".  I also got rid of a few of the sleazier and sillier songs from the Scott era, its just not what I listen to ACDC for.  Next I went through and substituted the "Live" versions of songs like Back in Black, Thunderstruck, and a handful of others.  When I came to a point, such as "The Jack" where the Scott and Johnson songs are different enough, or both had their own merits, I went ahead and doubled them up.   I came out with a "Mega-list" of ACDC that is 60 songs long.  I will keep this list for its uses, I like every song on it.

I realized that I had songs on there that I do not necessarily consider my personal favorites, but are so iconic I could not leave them off.  Songs like "Sink the Pink" and "Riff Raff" are used in tons of movies and you might not even know their names, but chances are you've heard their riffs.  I wanted to have an even more personal list of favorites that I never get tired of, and I'd never want to skip ahead to a "better" song from.  I will share that list of 35 songs here in album release order:

*denotes a new song I learned or only learned to appreciate from doing this adventure

Its a Long Way to the Top
TNT(Live version)
Dirty Deeds(Live version)
Let There Be Rock
Hell Ain't a Bad Place To Be
Whole Lotta Rosie(Live Version)
*Rock "N" Roll Damnation
*Gimme a Bullet
Highway to Hell
*Girl's Got Rhythm
*If You Want Blood
Hell's Bells(Live Version)
Back in Black(Live Version)
You Shook Me All Night Long(Live Version)
*What You Do For the Money Honey
Have A Drink On Me
Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution
For Those About to Rock
*Let's Get it Up
*Rising Power
*Stand Up
Who Made Who(Live Version)
*That's the Way I Wanna Rock
*Meanstreak
Heatseeker(Live Version)
Money Talks(Live Version)
Thunderstruck(Live Version)
*Let's Make It
Hard as a Rock
*Cover You In Oil
*Honey Roll
Rock 'N' Roll Train
*Skies on Fire
*Stormy May Day
*Decibel

And there we go... that concludes it, my ACDC adventure is over.  Thanks for putting up with my constant posts on the subject and for taking the journey with me.  I do already have a plan on the next band I want to do this with, but they do not have even 1/2 the albums, so it should be quicker.  Remember, have a little Rock and Roll in your life, whatever that means for you.  So get off your ass and come down here, Cause rock 'n' roll ain't no riddle man.  To me it makes good good sense

June 26th, 2014

I know a few of my readers are JRPG fans.  I want to give a general PSA about a couple of games coming to PSN's PS2 collection recently.  Digital Devil Saga 1 is out now, and so it is sound reasoning that Digital Devil Saga 2 will as well.  The key here is that when Digital Devil Saga 1 was released, it already had the "1" in the title.  The reason is because it was set up from the start as 1 story spanning 2 games.  DO NOT buy part 1 unless you can get part 2, because you're going to have an incomplete and unsatisfying gaming experience with just part 1.  This happened for several reasons; this was a side project that the development company was not exactly sure about, and also because there was a trend of splitting stories among several games in Japan at the time(look at .hack for a series that got brought to the USA that did this).  The games are novel, as you play remorseless monsters that eat humans and cause destruction.  Only... the characters start exhibiting emotions they never had before.  Its an interesting story, but I have to warn that they did not have much money when they made this game, expect to see dungeons 3-4 times, and monsters to be recolored and stats increased with no other real changes.  It was an interesting experiment, and one I enjoyed, but a masterpiece it is not.

The new Mad Max is a reboot instead of taking place between the 1st and Road Warrior.  I feel weird about this.  See... I've never cared for the first Mad Max, it was Road Warrior that was ground breaking for me, but the series just is not right without the first Mad Max.  I assume the tragedy that propels Max will just be a small intro at the start of the new movie, but with the original we did have that first film for that.  Even though I did not care for the first film, it was integral for the series.  Mad Max is a very formative thing for me, I love the later two films so much that I'll watch entirely awful movies or design entire table top RPG games for hours just to get that feel again.  Hell, when I played Fallout 3, I was "living" a Mad Max fantasy for a few months.  I am willing to give this reboot a chance though, because of some very good reasons.  George Miller is still directing it, he still wrote it, and Hollywood, by and large, has fucked off from the movie.  Plus, Tom Hardy amazingly looks awesome as Max.

ACDC Retrospective: Album reviews and June 25th, 2014

ACDC Retrospective: The Albums

(Super extra longer post on my music blog with all albums)

On my music blog I go through every album, give a star rating, and post the predominant genre the album overall has.  I did not want to flood this post with all that, so I'll be doing it a little different.  I set up some special categories and list what I chose for that category.  I only have my "Ultimate Playlist" post to go and then, aside from talking about music I'm learning to play on guitar, you'll get your reprieve from ACDC.

Best Bon Album
Dirty Deeds(4 stars), Blues Rock
-A direct continuation of High Voltage.  The mature parts got more mature, and the raunchy parts got even more raunchy.  They tried to up themselves and in general I feel they did.  My favorite is a hard choice... but Dirty Deeds is just iconic.  With Dirty Deeds we start seeing Angus take center stage in solos.

Best Surprise Album
Ballbreaker(4 Stars) Rock and Roll
-Really good.  The group revisits what they tried with Blow Up Your Video, but do it much much better and more successfully.  My favorite ends up being Hard As A Rock because the riff is so simple and memorable, like older ACDC.

Least Liked Album and Best Album Cover
Stiff Upper Lip(1 Star) Rock and Roll
-The only album I was disappointed in.  Its the closest thing to phoning in or doing the rock version of elevator music.  There is almost no change in the songs throughout the songs.  The problem of repeating chorus lyrics is finally matched by repeating instrument parts as well.

Best Album
Back in Black(5 Star) Hard Rock
-Duh.

June 25th, 2014

Delver was a game that came out a few years back.  It took procedural world creation and combined it with "Minecraft-like" pixel art to make a rogue like dungeon crawler.  That means that when you die, the world is erased and you have to make a new world.  Anyways, it recently got a HUGE update and barely looks like the game I bought a while back.  The update is free, so if you bought this for your phone or tablet, re-download it and give it a go.  The graphics are closer to "Hexen" quality now, but still cartoony.  There is an outside area with a camp full of "friendly" npc's.  The enemies got lots of new artwork and sound effects, and the world has tons of vegetation and way better artwork.  I miss the style of the older game's art a little, but the new one is much more varied and impressive.

The Dungeons and Dragons Basic PDF that will be free for everyone has been a little misrepresented, and Wizards of the Coast have kind of, sort of worked to get the actual info out.  The Basic version will still be free, and will indeed be a full game, but it will only be released pieces at a time with each core book that rolls out.  What this means is that character creation will come when the Player's Handbook will be out.  The DM's section will come with the DM's guide, and the monsters with the Monster Manual.  This means that it will not serve as a sneak preview to the premium game.  It delays playing Basic for a while, but after the initial few months I'm sure people will forget(just like they forget the books have always been released staggered style except for 4th).

I saw a post someone made about all the flavors of M&M's ranked, and I saw an ommision.  Crunchy M&M's are no longer made.  You can order them from Germany, but I hear those are old stock.  For those that never had them, they are M&M's with a rice crispy like center.  While the pretzel M&M replaces it and is great, I have a soft spot for crunchy M&M's.  See, I worked at a theater for 5 years through my late teens and early 20's, and when it came to bulk candy snacks that we were allowed to have a bit of, crunchy M&M's were my favorite.  It occupies a place with Surge soda as being essential to my memories of working at the theater with all my friends.

ACDC Retrospective: Why and June 24, 2014

ACDC Retrospective: Why

(much longer post at my music blog)

Over the past few months I have taken an ACDC record one at a time and given them several listens.

I guess the first question is ask and answer again is "why".

ACDC was very integral to my formative attitude towards things.  It was a constant reminder of what it means to have a little "rock and roll" in your life.  "Highway to Hell" was one of the first records(in actual record form too) that I remember, that and some Muppet Christmas record my mom owned.  I grew up on the essentials, and remember when Razor's Edge was new.  I remember when the videos for "Shook Me All Night Long" were done.

But not just that.

I have finally, REALLY, started on the road of learning guitar in a meaningful and lasting way.  While Angus was not the soul reason that I chose to get a Gibson SG, he's easily 50% of it.  I have all my life wanted to be able to play "Highway to Hell", "Back in Black" and "Shook Me All Night Long".  The guitar of Angus and Malcolm is a pure blues-rock style guitar that I have always enjoyed and thankfully is one of the first genres you can learn competently as a guitarist.  Even Angus' advanced soloing work is fun variations and tricks within the pentatonic and blues scales.

Then there are my black-out areas of which I did not have much listening experience with ACDC.  My Bon Scott era knowledge was larger than I had believed when I started this adventure, but it was still greatly expanded by listening to the era.  My biggest surprises came from listening to early recordings.  The "Fly on the Wall" and "Flick of the Switch" era was another blackout section, and to tell the truth I did not know much about the album before those two, or after those two.  Finally the last black out era was everything after the release of "ACDC Live", other than Harder than a Rock, Stiff Upper Lip and Rock and Roll Train.  That's 3 of around 30 tracks I had never heard.

June 24, 2014

I finished "SORCERY!" on my tablet a few times today.  I had always heard that there were some "single player" Dungeons and Dragons modules, but I never realized there was an entire set of "Choose Your Own Adventure" style books done throughout the 80's and 90's.  They were done by Steve Jackson(of Warhammer fame, not GURPs and Munchkin) and Ian Livingston.  I now want to collect these books, as they never sold extremely well, many are hard to find easily in legal purchasing circles.  The series of books are called "Fighting Fantasy" books, and are classified as "interactive fiction" if you want to search for some on your own.  Be warned, many are multi-book anthologies, like the one they based Sorcery! on, its a 4 parter, just like the "video game" is planned to be.

I worked on some new adventures in my "Tiegel" world today.  Last week I was doing the set up adventure in a "Trilogy of Trilogies" style adventure that I favor doing.  A Trilogy of Trilogies just means that there are 9 parts, each meant to take around 1 session(your times will vary of course).  This one is based around a group of players hired to be gatekeepers for a remote part of "The Wall" that is too far to officially garrison, so its generally manned by mercenaries.  It involves making judgement calls, and a dispute among bitter rivals leading to a race for an ancient artifact.  Today I made several puzzles that I am quite happy with.  Instead of doing the "3 answers" method, I went for a very theatrical "trial and error" system where if the answer is not very obvious, the players can get by with simple trial and error actions.  The puzzles really fit the themes of the areas they appear, and were pretty fun to come up with as well.  Any time I can make beer the focus of a puzzle, I'm happy.

I watched "Silent Running", an early 70's scifi movie starring Bruce Dern(Laura Dern's father and a well respected actor in his own right).  It was directed by the lead special effects maker from "2001: A Space Odyssey" and its quite apparent that more effort was put into the stage and set than the story, but the story is still ok overall, if a little heavy handed.  The COOL part about this movie is realizing just how much it has influenced people.  I pretty much made a list of movies this one reminded me of, and sure enough most of them cited "Silent Running" as big influences.  In particular the wonderful movie "Moon" directed by Duncan Jones, and the TV comedies of "Red Dwarf" and "Mystery Science Theater 3k".  If you enjoyed "Moon" you owe it to movie history to watch "Silent Running", its on Netflix.

June 23rd, 2014

June 23rd, 2014

The day I look forward to all June has finally come and gone... Summer Solstice.  I do not celebrate it or anything, I just want the days to start getting shorter again.  Less Sun means less heat, and screw summer weather.  I am not one of these people that bitch and moan about Summer weather and then complain about the winter, and cry about no rain until its raining all the time.  Give me rain 24/7, I love it.  Give me Winter, I'm fine with it.  I hate the Summer, I hate the beach, and you can keep your nasty sunshine in California.

Most people I know have only had the green bell peppers for their exposure to the food.  The yellow and red ones have a sweetness to them that lend them to more than just veggie duty in dishes.  Lately at the store they have had various sizes of the colorful varieties, and this week we got a pack of the 1/4 sized ones.  We took tuna, southwest mustard, and chipoltle cream cheese, mixed it all together in bowls and then stuffed the bell peppers with it.  The 1/4 size ones are small enough that they are "bite sized".  It was really really good.  While the red ones worked, I think the yellow ones did best as they are only mid-sweet.  The red ones are good if you like that sweet thai chili kind of thing.

Ok, I'm with my last ACDC album.  Black Ice is sort of a "retrospecitive" and worthy of being "the last Malcolm album" if it is, because the sounds span their entire history, in an amazingly GOOD way.  The big single from this album was "Rock and Roll Train" and it is one of the best ACDC tracks of all time, right up there with Thunderstruck and Hell's Bells.  It gets stuck in my head and I've enjoyed listening to it for the past couple of years actually.  "Skies on Fire", "Stormy May Day" and "She Likes Rock and Roll" slows things down and gets back to the "marching" rhythms of "Back in Black".  "Decibel" "Black Ice" and "Money Made" gives us some of the "Ballbreaker" era stuff, and is welcome. This album was produced by Brendon O'brien, who was one of the biggest producers in the 90's, doing the big albums for Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine.  ACDC has always been easily influenced by producers, and the track "Anything Goes" and "Rock and Roll Dream" really shows them trying something different suggested by O'Brien.  Its ok, but both feels like something best left to less "rocking" bands in the early 80's.  The middle gets a little repetitive but is damn listenable, nothing is obviously horrible like some of the tracks from Stiff Upper Lip. ACDC's "Black Ice" is multi-platinum and the tour was one of the highest earning in all of rock history, and its not a fluke, or people feeling nostalgia for the ACDC that was absent for over a decade.  The album is really great.  Its right up there with % of good as "Back in Black" and "Razor's Edge".  Unlike some recent rock albums, you do not waste your money with "Black Ice", if you like ACDC, you'll get a full album of rock, not just one or two tracks.

Weekend of June 20th

I think I have finally been let down by an ACDC album.  Really, looking back, almost every album has had at least 2 good songs, or at least was rocking enough that I would not turn the radio station.  "For Those About to Rock" was probably the lowest point for me previously, but the title song is such a strong song and no ACDC concert is complete without it.  I've said before that "Flick of the Switch" and "Fly on the Wall" have been treated unfairly.  Well my friends, "Stiff Upper Lip" is about as close to elevator rock music as you can get.  There is no power or enthusiasm in Angus during this entire album.  I actually feel that Brian Johnson is giving his all, and we get to hear some awesome parts of him using his regular voice, which is every bit as awesome as his rockin' voice.  The songs just kind of drone on.  Is there a highlight?  Is Stiff Upper Lip good?  I think my view might be colored because I was blown away by Ballbreaker.  I'm sorry but the guys phoned this one in.  Well, at least the next one, almost a decade later, comes out kicking ass with its first single, which I already know and enjoy immensely.

My girlfriend had 2 giant bugs in her home this week that caused me to have to re-sure up all her windows.  One was Mothra, the mythical God-being that has fought and defeated Godzilla on a number of occaisions.  I was afraid of squishing Mothra with my paper towel, but it was soon apparent that she was not delicate.  I did manage to wrangle her out the door.  The 2nd was a Dobson fly, this one her cat got to before we did, and so it was dead before we could get it out the door.  Dobson Flies are about the scariest looking thing I've seen fly in Georgia except that one time my friend's ex-girlfriend got launched 10 foot into a lake.  I read they are quite docile(the fly, not the ex-GF) and nothing to be afraid of.  Go ahead and look it up, and be prepared for nightmares.

I met my turtle again on Saturday.  It had the same markings beneath it, and sure enough he was walking across the road again.  This area of the road is like the worst to be messing with because its right after a sharp curve AND a sharp drop in elevation.  The problem he had was that he wanted on the other side of the road, but the other side of the road was a fence with so much growth there was no way he could get by.  So I decided to have a turtle transplant.  My brave girlfriend held the turtle as I drove it toward my home.  We have a creek and a rather nice for turtle area near my home, and if he desires to walk across a road, he will find a lake on the other side instead of a fence.  He was a grumpy turtle though and tried his best to poop on my girlfriend, luckily I had a towel and no one got actual poop on them.

And continuing, I find the fact that my weekend revolved firmly around my girlfriend, and I"m fine and happy with that :)  She read Elantris and enjoyed it so much it did not take her even a week to make it through it.  I enjoy talking about books with her and I'm almost sad there isn't more Elantris to read, but then again I would not have read it if it wasn't a stand-alone novel.  Brandon Sanderson is a good author and he's got several series on-going.  He is also fairly young as far as writers go, and he writes like Patrchett and Card, he can write mass amounts of good story very quickly(lucky bastard).  I am thinking really hard about choosing a series of his to read.  If you have not read Elantris and you do things like read, you should give it a try.  There are many characters with great personalities, and the story builds and becomes epic.  It is incredible how much of a world Sanderson creates with only one novel.

Sunday night my mother made a broccoli slaw kind of fruit salad thing.  I can only eat tiny tiny amounts of it, but if you have a chance to try something like it, I'd recommend it.  It uses poppy seed dressing as the "mayo" replacement, and uses peanuts and green peas to give it a nutty flavor.  To add a little bit of sour there was craisins.  So there is a good mix of sweet, salt, sour and savory in it.  It would make a fairly incredible sandwich if you put a scoop of it on top of a grilled chicken breast or some pulled pork.

June 19th, 2014

June 19th, 2014

I have found that when it comes to Wasps, the ones that get inside my house, have no other desire in life but to force me to kill them.  They never seem to want to get "out" of the house, and any coaxing leads to them wanting to sting me.  I have a high tolerance, and no allergic reaction, for bee stings of most types(yellow hornets hurt real bad), so the trick is on them.   They don't deter me, they only make me angry.  Now, Dirt Dobbers and I have been on friendly terms for a long while.  The fact that when they find themselves inside, they look for clean air and try to get the hell out means I like them even more.  This year, without fail, when I opened my door, I don't even have to coax a dirt dobber with a few swats of my hat, they just go instantly out the door with a "thanks for not killing me" look on their face.  Wasps are so inconsiderate.

The first part of Ballbreaker as an album is a weird sort of step back in two ways.  First off, its a step back to the more poppy bluesy sound of the Blow Up Your Video album, with a more successful take on it.  But strangely instead of being blues rock like 70's era ACDC, it goes through ZZ Top and Rolling Stones style honky tonk sounds that was never really a strong part of ACDC's sound.  It is welcome though, because there are some outstanding, swinging rock music in the album.  Hard as a Rock is good, also Cover you in Oil, which both were released as singles.  I really like some of the lesser knowns like Honey Roll.  Its full blown swinging honky tonk rock, but its damn catchy.  Starting at Burnin' Alive we get more into the blues rock and heavy rock we expect from ACDC.  After Burnin' finishes, we get Hail Ceasar which is exactly what you expect from ACDC, and is probably the best hard rock song on the album(though I think Honey Roll maybe my fav overall).  The only real hold back to it is the repetition of choruses near the end, which hurt albums such as Flick of the Switch and Let There Be Rock.  The album ends with a pretty good combo of Whiskey on the Rocks and Ballbreaker.  Solid album overall.

Chelsea Handler is a horrible human being that has made her notoriety in the same way Kathy Griffin and Joan Rivers(and her clone spawn) has; sucking the teet of E! programming.  E! is probably my most hated and useless channel to ever exist and when I heard that CBS wanted to replace Craig Ferguson with her, I was sort of relieved because I 'd not have to care about late night television for the rest of my life most likely.  Well it looks like after making her a new studio, guaranteeing a drama free leaving of Craig Fergusson, and a show coming after Stephen Colbert(another Viacom darling, Comedy Central is owned and operated by the idiotic frat boy brother of E!'s snotty stuck up bitch), got them no points with Handler.  She's going to head up Netflix's "Late Style" style talk show.  I wonder where that leaves CBS's group.  For years they've never been able to touch the time slot after Dave because it was in his contract.  Dave continually put stuff there that did nothing but piss off executives for years.  Getting Chelsea would've been a major "win" for "TV" people everywhere that thinks we're all a bunch of dumb assholes that like watching people be snarky and shitty to one another.

The 10th Doctor and June 18th, 2014

The Tenth Doctor

(same post at my Media blog)

When the 9th Doctor came to an end, I was almost ready to call it quits on Doctor Who.  Its the American in me that does not like when "title" characters change on me.  After so many years of cult movies I liked getting different leads to play the same actor and being "shit", I did not like "my" Doctor changing.  Christopher Eccleston was the 9th Doctor and the first Doctor to keep me interested in Dr. Who.  He had a toiled past about him, and no matter how cheery he got, he was a little tortured inside over guilt about something.  Then, when we were finally getting answers, he left the show after only one season.  For those that do not know about Dr. Who, he is sort of like a Phoenix or a Trill(from Star Trek).  The Doctor gets reborn at the time of death into a new personality but with keeping the memories of the previous.  The 9th Doctor was taken far too early for my sense of story sensibilities.

The 10th Doctor came out cheery, silly, and only randomly did bad things.  The companion, Rose, seemed to abandon the thought of 9th Doctor very readily because this 10th Doctor was "dreamy".  I watched that season and I took a good long break.  The loss of Rose was the last link to 9th Doctor and the new companion from the Christmas Episode that year seemed like a real "pill".  If I had known how great the 10th Doctor's 2nd and 3rd year were going to be, I'd have watched them a lot sooner.

The 2nd and 3rd year of David Tennant as the Doctor are some of the best seasons of television I've ever seen.  They rank easily up there with Star Trek Next Gen's best.  The writing started taking into account Tennant as an actor, and Rose was replaced with a caring Martha.  Where as Rose was flighty and ditzy and played  alot of "stupid" and "school girl crush" jokes, Martha was intelligent and not quite so susceptible to closed doors(you Whovians know what I mean).  We got kickbacks to the original Who series with guest actors that played the parts they played in the 70's and 80's.  We got the wonderful Sarah Jane, arguably the most beloved woman on British TV, coming back so triumphantly she got her own spin off show.  And we had David Tennant.

David Tennant was perfect at showing a child-like wonder with Dr. Who.  Everything fascinated him.  In the 2nd and 3rd years, we met the other side as well.  David Tennant could make Dr. Who heartfelt.  This is why 10th Doctor has won me over.  Unlike Eccleston, things that happened with Tennant made me tear up.  Whenever he knew someone was going to die, he would say "I'm sorry, I'm so very sorry" and after you believed that he was sorry, you realized someone in the room was going to die and it would bring up tensions.  They are not shy to have people you care about die in the Tennant era of Doctor Who.  When things are revealed we are only as surprised as the Doctor, and Tennat did this very well.  He was right mix of serious, funny, and just enough Scottish to remind us of a Time Traveling James Bond.  He had the best portrayal of a mischievious person, but just like the Dumbledore you read in the books, or Gandalf being silly in the Shire, there's a hint of "everything is under control, I know what I'm doing".  In this post alone, I've compared Tennant to Gandalf, Dumbledore, and his story to the very best of Jean Luc Picard's Enterprise.  These are lofty places in nerdom, and I think he belongs there.

Oh and that companion we thought we dodged a bullet on after the Christmas Episode?  She was Donna Noble and Tennant made us care about her.  I was determined not to like the woman, and their work together was easily the most emotional of any in the series so far.  Do not even ask me how it happened, but I ended up liking Donna Noble even more than Rose Tyler.

The Tennant Era is one big huge story.  Almost every thing that happens actually is building to something and oh did it end in a wonderfully huge finale.  You might think that each season is self contained for the most part, as each season gets it own resolution and completion, but you're lulled into a false sense of "finish".  Tennant's era finishes with "The End of Time" and this two parter takes every major story line of Tennants era and gives it a send off the likes of which are usually only matched by series finales.  And that's a big difference to what we got with the 9th Doctor.  David Tennant got a send off, he got to say goodbye to everyone, and the show treated his leaving as the passing of a crown, as should befit the passing of a benevolent king.  The lasting quote of the 10th Doctor, "we must look like ants to you"  "oh no, to me you look like giants" is a great summation of the 10th Doctor.

So the 11th Doctor has shown up and like the 10th, he hasn't given me a very good impression.  We don't know what we're getting for a companion and we can't imagine Doctor Who without Tennant.  As I said before in an earlier daily post... that's core for Dr. Who and an experience you have to get used to if you're a fan.  I'm looking forward to finding out if I"m a David Tennant fan, or a "Whovian" in the real sense.


June 18th, 2014

I've already listened and did a write up about ACDC's "Ballbreaker" album when I realized that I forgot to add a bit of personal history that pertains to this era.  This is a blog from me after all, so I need to talk about ACDC live.  When it comes to getting a "Greatest Hits" album when I had money to spend, ACDC Live was about as close as you could get.  In time I came to love every single song on that album, and since ACDC are the masters of sounding like ACDC at all times, the live tracks were as good, if not better, than the album versions.  This lead to a new blind spot for me though; my knowledge of ACDC stopped at 1992.  So even though that ACDC live was a great album, it left a lot of Bon Scott and post 90's stuff out of my view, and is one of the reasons I've gone back to listen to all their albums.  So if you only buy one ACDC album, then ACDC live is a good one to get, but you are missing some Bon Scott stuff like Ride On, and Rock and Roll Damnation.  A few Brian Johnson era hits like "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" slips through the crack as well.

Turning to some video game news.  Some asshole that I'm not going to dignify with naming has popped his head back up in an industry he swears he no longer wants to be a part of.  The issue is about Youtubers and the rights of the game creators to get a piece of the money they make off videos of them playing.  This man called Youtubers "pirates" and "thieves".  Which is funny, because like all hipsters, this developer co-opted other people's hard work and rode a trend specifically because it was the "it" trend to ride, and the easiest to plunder at the time he left his overschooling.  Anyway, I call it bullshit.  He got his cut of the "action" when they bought the goddamn game.  The people who make footballs do not go after broadcasters for profit, the football maker got its profit when the team bought the damn ball.  Its called "Fair use" and its protected in our country.  The fact that this guy, and Nintendo does it too, can't see that Let's Plays fuel their industry with cheap advertisement and purchase encouragement is a real shame, and real "corporate" thinking.  That's right, this Indie darling is acting like EA, so never put your trust in this "poser" as much as I hate the term, it aptly describes him.

I finished book 1 of the Riddle-master of Hed trilogy.  Its a short book, as they all are, but there is a lot that happens in these books.  In the series, the "School" uses Riddles as a teaching device.  I did not catch on to this early, but they are sort of like parables.  For example "who is Sol, and why did he die?" is a "riddle".  When you answer who he was, you tell the circumstances of his death, and then you tell the lesson.  In this example the lesson is "better to tread the unknown than to turn your back to certain death".  I should have been writing these things down instead of the names of all the farmers at the beginning, because ALL the people mentioned in legend are important... and in some cases they show up face to face(its not a spoiler, you'll understand if you read the book).  The negatives of the book... for the first 100 pages you might just be bored.  The reason is, all these things are happening and you don't yet see how it fits.  It seems like whenever a story is getting started, it gets derailed, but after 100 pages of all these derailments you see that maybe this was the correct path all along, and that these derailments have large meanings.  I devoured the last 60 pages in a "quicker than usual" reading fashion since I type WAY faster than I read when I'm reading casual.  So it ended with enough gusto to make me want to read the next book right away.

June 17th, 2014

Nothing up top today.  Tomorrow maybe.  Lots of daily stuff below though.



June 17th, 2014

ACDC really brought it with "The Razor's Edge".  This was a band at its breaking point, finally reaching the excess that did in Bon Scott a decade before.  Brian Johnson was embroiled in so much court stuff over his divorce that Malcolm and Angus took over lyrical duties.  Malcolm had just finished a stint in rehab for alcohol addiction, an addiction so strong he did not tour the US with the band.  Drummer problems stirred so much that they had to get a session drummer to fill the roll.  ACDC had something to prove, and they brought the decade a great rock album.  "Thunderstruck" is the best rock song to ever start a rock show with.  "Money Talks" is in the runnings for my favorite ACDC song of all time.  "Fire Your Guns" and "Are You Ready" are live show stand-outs that made the cut.  There is not a "repetitive" song in the bunch, no 25 chorus repeats like from "Those About to Rock" eras.  There are no "bad" songs on the whole album, though Mistress for Christmas is close, but because ACDC has that raunchy and silly to it from its old days, it gets a pass.  I think Angus heard someone say "all you can do is rock, we like shred" and had enough of that bullshit.  Angus showed that Rock is a choice, and he had the skills to shred with all the young'uns if he wished.  I loved the album.  New songs added to my play list have to be "Let's make it", "Are you Ready", "Good-bye and Good Riddance".

Intel is celebrating the 2oth anniversary of the Pentium line.  Once the flagship, the term "Pentium" has been regulated to budget status for the past half decade.  Looking at the 20th Anniversary Pentium, you might think "oh, its just more budget line crap", but this is not so.  The 20th Anniversary Pentium has one really really great trick; its unlocked.  This means that like the old Intel Celeron 300a, you can get an under $100 chip and overlock it safely to being really really fast.  This Pentium is reported to be under $80 at launch, so where's the catch?  Its only a dual core without hyperthreading.  What THIS means is that you probably do not want it for video editing or workstation usage, but the truth is that gaming really has not taken advantage of hyperthreading and multi-core gaming in any appreciable way.  So the difference between a $400 Intel chip and the $80 intel chip inside of games like Assassin's Creed is only going to be a couple of frames at the same speeds.  The competing chips at this price are laptop layovers from AMD that are clocked at speeds like 1.2 ghz, but boast hyperthreading as giving them things like 8(bullshit) cores.  This Pentium starts at 3.2ghz and will overclock past the 4ghz range.  For budget gaming, this chip is going to become legendary.

I've made my opinion of Wil Wheaton's show(I don't like it), but I do like Wil Wheaton.  I love reading his blog about dealing with "TV people" as of late, because it seems so alien compared to how people are doing Youtube and being famous in other ways.  It is hilarious how much shit he gets from "TV people" for his twitter account not being all Kardashian, and the "tips" he gets are priceless.  Another way he catches shit, and it might haunt him later, is that he's using links to The Pirate Bay as a ratings evaluation of his show.  The more people pirating his show, the more popular it is.  It is a pretty genius way of looking at things, since Game of Thrones is the reigning king of Pirate Bay.  Thing is, industry people are jumping down his neck, and people on the "inside" are telling him he needs to "alter his approach" because its pissing people off.  I'm all for people taking down the twisted "reality" of what is Television/Hollywood.  Its a creature that's survived by itself for too long and has become weird, strange, and too fucked up to live.  Wheaton gets some shit for doing his Youtube stuff in the same "way" as a television show(inflating costs), but he's no where near how real tv is made these days, not even close to how screwed up it is.

Weekend of June 13th 2014

Weekend and Monday stuff.

On Friday I watched Godzilla vs King Ghidora.  This was the 1991 Godzilla movie, and I think was the first "Heisei era" film that I've sat down and watched.  I thought I had seen some later movies that was a part of this era, but after watching this I am pretty sure I was wrong.  For those that do not know, Godzilla has occurred in primarily 3 eras, and almost everyone knows about and has watched stuff from what is known as the Showa era of the 60's and 70's.  Heisei was a little more serious, though not by much.  Godzilla vs King Ghidora was dreadfully boring at the start, but most Godzilla movies are.  It then went into full blown "wtf?" when white people from the future decide to come back and screw over Japan before it has a chance to become the rulers of the world.  Technically there are 3 monsters that show up in this movie.  Godzilla is like super charged but kind of chubby looking, and King Ghidora ends up looking like his usual self, but with a pissed off face.  The 3rd monster is a surprise and is pretty freaking cool(cool in a sense that Godzilla movies are cool).  I was mildly distracted by the fact that the voice actor for the main badguy is also the voice actor for Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid.  For a Godzilla movie, 3 Godzillas out of 5.  Miniature work was pretty good, including tiny little cars for traffic, but nothing as impressive as the temples and castles in the 1960's "Godzilla vs Mothra".


I have to preface this next one with, this is an ongoing series, meaning not all the parts are available.  It is also rather expensive for a app store game($5).  Sorcery is like a choose your own adventure book that is kick ass.  You are a warrior chosen to hunt down a legendary crown, and how you do it is up to you.  The story is presented with text pages that you have a hand in choosing, and cut outs of figures and illustrations on a beautiful map.  After a few play throughs, you see that your choices change the entire thing, not only in which "branch" of the story you do, but in what "style" things are presented to you.  If you go through being cautious, then the text will describe your choices as careful.  If you go through brutish, then your character will start cussing more, and will have short patience when you interact with PC's.  It is really incredible how much the text changes because of prior interactions.  Instead of being warm and thankful for some stew, you could be insulting about it, and mean to the cook, all depending on how you treated the mayor previously.  Its really neat and worth the money IMO.  Part 2 is out and continues your journey though I do not have it, most say its easily double the time in game.

Sorcery has gotten me to want to play some old school Dungeons and Dragons style games.  I am not a fan of going back to older rules because for players its "fun" for GM's its "work" to do that.  I can, however, set up games with the feel of old D&D.  The 5th edition "basic" rules are going to be free, and take the core classes to level 20.  Seeing as how I generally never get my players to stick around past level 10(the game in 2nd and 3rd become stat-fests past that), I think those rules would suffice.  I have an old "25th Anniverary" box set from TSR that has a lot of reprints of classic books with all the classic artwork.  I'd like to take a group through some of those old modules.

Sunday I had home made southern BBQ eggrolls.  I wanted to do slaw filled eggrolls that were sort of like springrolls. and while they did not turn out as springrolls, it was my favorite part of the meal.  The worst part of the meal was the amount of grease that was able to penetrate the eggrolls.  Typically the amount of outward pressure keeps fried foods from being super greasy if you balance the heat right... stove top, its hard to do that.  For desert we had some no-sugar added salted caramel ice cream.  I made some fried wontons like they serve for soups at Chinese restaurants, and used them as sort of nacho chips for the ice cream.  It was all amazing, and amazingly unhealthy compared to my usual dinners.

Monday, while coming home, I swerved after a particularly dangerous curve because I saw something in the road.  As I went by, i noticed that the thing had colorful markings.  I looked in my review to see that it was a box turtle, a beautiful, hand-sized one.  Last time I saw a turtle I did not stop to help(though someone else did), so I made sure to stop and help this one.  Box turtle colors fade if they are in captivity, and this one was blazing yellow and beautiful.  This was the 3rd turtle this year(the GIANT snapping turtle, and the smooth shell someone else helped across) that I've seen going across roads.  I grabbed the turtle and took it in the direction it was going, but went further into the woodland area and released him.  I really like turtles, and had an urge to take this one home, but there are captive bred turtles that need homes, this one was wild, beautiful, and hopefully will live a long while yet.  Oh, here's a picture.

The photo from my camera phone does not do the bright shell justice.  Only wild box turtles keep their almost neon color markings.  The dark eyes means that this was probably a male.

Three E3 "gems" to Watch, June 12, 2014

Three E3 "Gems" to Watch For

(Literally the same post on my gaming blog)

Each year at E3 we get some trailers of new games, and for the last couple of years we've gotten some really good surprises.  Not all of them are indie, but I think it would be hard to deny they are indie influenced games.  Last year we got to see Transistor for the first time, and Child of Light.  This year has the next crop of games to watch and keep interest about.  These are not the blockbusters that get put on billboards and have a mountain dew sponsorship.  These are the little gems that sometimes get lost in the cracks.

DISCLAIMER!
Unlike images, I can not download and host youtube videos to ensure that they last a long time.  If you come and read this many years after I post it, you may not see a trailer or video present.  It existed at one time and I'm sure you can find the video on Youtube or whatever neural network our new robot overlords have created to pacify our synapses while they siphon our energy into their Malto-regeno-cores.

Valiant Hearts

Child of Light was an unexpected jewel from such a large studio as Ubisoft.  This year they surprise us again with a team that uses Child of Light's game engine to spin a tale about soldiers and civilians during The Great War, known in the US as World War 1.  They are writing a pretty large check for this one; not financially, but emotionally.  Let's hope it lives up to what it could be.  It will be released on many platforms.

Ori and the Blind Forest

The makers of Ori: The Blind Forest each site the 16-bit era as their favorite.  One of the biggest influences from that time is Super Metroid.  Lots of western indie devs look to Super Metroid for inspiration(in Japan the games are not nearly as well liked and that's why we get actual Metroids made by non-Nintendo people).  In Ori, the team wanted to make a Super Metroid that had more challenge.  The emphasis on exploration is there, but they wanted to ramp things up to "Super Meatboy" like levels of difficulty.  The game also looks beautiful.  I'm all for Metroid clones as I believe Castlevania did not hit its peak until it became "Metroidvania" as they call it.  It will be released on PC and Xbox.

Titan Souls

While Legend of Zelda did not start the "boss as a puzzle" craze, it was the introduction of that gameplay for a lot of us.  So what if you bring the concepts of Shadow of the Colossus back home to 2D, overhead, Zelda-esque gameplay?  You might get Titan Souls.  Every Titan can be killed with just 1 well placed arrow shot, but figuring out how to make the Titan expose this spot is the whole trick to it.  Each Titan is a different challenge with unique movement, unique attacks, and unique surroundings.  Right now you can pretty much say "Take Shadow of the Colossus and (insert genre here" and I'll be a sucker for it.  Titan Souls was originally a game created in 72 hours at Ludum Dare Game Jam, and they continued working on it to make a commercial release with much more content.  It is coming to PS4, Vita, and PC.

June 12th, 2014

I was ready to get on blogger and tell you all what an amazing album "Blow up your Video" by ACDC was.  If the first 3 songs were any indication I was going to come across a lost gem of rock albums, and I was already getting my blog post composed in my head.  These first 3 songs were ACDC with some "swing" to it.  Its like how Pantera added "swing" and "groove" into heavy metal and became icons.  The first three songs on Blow Up Your Video were like Robert Palmer and ZZ Top of the late 80's were co-opted by the rock and roll side of things.  It reminded me of the best of Clutch in recent years.  But that was about it.  After those 3 songs they started their repeitition and "safe" beats and riffs that had pushed them through after Back in Black.  Heatseeker was the first song, which is featured on ACDC "Live", and so I already knew I liked it.  "That's the Way I want to rock and roll" is the second song, and its very catchy and good too.  The 3rd is probably my favorite of the album, "Meanstreak" is very "modern" bar blues, and the one that most reminds me of Clutch.  I really really wish they could've kept it up through the whole album.

Open Source releases can be about freedom and sharing.  But sometimes they are huge "FUCK YOU" messages from their owners to someone trying to keep them down.  For example, Nvidia and AMD really do dislike each other, it is not a friendly rivalry.  Nvidia is banking on cornering the market with active sync devices, so AMD decided to make its version open source and free to use without licensing.  Recently Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla motors, is getting royally screwed by the established car industry.  Not just by the industry but by the American government being financed by the industry and establishing protectionist laws.  So Elon has decided today that Tesla Motors is too easy a target, that the industry and focus on them too much.  Mr. Musk decided this week to make ALL HIS PATENTS OPEN SOURCE AND FREE.  Every innovation they have fought with, every step they've taken to get electrical cars into your hands is now free to use because he hopes 100 electric car manufacturers will be harder for the government to squash than 1 primary one.  Kudos to you Elon, I hope you make history as the man that broke Detroit's back.

Adblock has been a thing I have used for a long time.  Generally I take off sites that I don't mind ads for.  I watch ads in Youtube, and I allow ads for a number of things I use freely, but I will not stop using Adblock just because some host tells me they never use it.  Its the advertiser's fault, and the advertisees responsibility to fix things that go wrong.  I generally allow double.click because they enable a lot of low budget people to have websites, and I allow Google because I've accepted my overlords.  Anyway, Ghostery is my new one I've added that doesn't seem to hamper performance.  It is a anti-tracking plug in that lets you see who exactly is doing what.  It has already confirmed the slow down at certain places like Proboards and Pandora is a ridiculous amount of tracking and ad services.  Proboards had 7 ads, that's starting to be a concern, but I've seen much worse, but it had 32 trackers!  by far, well over double what the next highest I"ve seen have.  Pandora was the worst with ads and shows why it eats up your ram, they had 22 ads, 3x the amount of the next highest, and 12 trackers.  I got Ghostery because Facebook is starting to keep browsing history to give to ad servers, something Google has done for a while, but I'm much less trusting of Facebook.

Attack on Titan after Season 1 and June 11th, 2014

Attack on Titan after Season 1

(longer post at my Media Blog)

So what is this show about?  Well, Western Europe is full of tales about giants.  From Ireland to Germany, we have fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk or legends about The Giant's Causeway.  Attack on Titan takes place in what looks to be Germany(and uses German language in the story).  Only the "giants" in this show are "Titans".  They are giant, generally mindless, representations of human cruelty.  Taken in a modern context, they are 20-100+ feet tall zombies that devour people without mercy.  To fight back, humans developed a sort of "Spider-man" rope system that sends the characters soaring through the air just like the masked web-slinger.  They then use swords to attack the vital parts of the Titans.

The roughest episodes are the first.  If you can get past the first 4 episodes then you are in it for the long haul.  Attack on Titan is not a DBZ or white washed kids show.  Attack on Titan is a brutal, heart wrenching show that does not flinch when it comes to showing you the gritty details.  People will be destroyed in front of your eyes.  You will see them die in blazes of glory, but you will also see them die begging for their mothers, appealing to an uncaring enemy for mercy, and crying because they are not ready to die.  The show makes you lose hope because of all the horror and tragedy represented, there is just no way you feel like the sun will come up tomorrow.  So why do you keep watching?  Because like the best World War 2 movies, the hopelessness is peppered with inspiration.  You will feel very bi-polar almost every episode, switching from tissues to pounding your fist in "FUCK YEA!" moments in a matter of minutes.  It is epic.

Hajime Isayama is the writer of the manga, and I would give you a big list of his accomplishments if there were any.  Attack on Titan is the first one he's done out of the gate, and he already writes like a seasoned pro. In Japan the comic it is based off of has not ended yet, and I do not know if they intend to ride it out for a decade or if they have an ending in site, but either way the first season is worth watching if you enjoy anime. I rarely like anime, I'm super picky, but Attack on Titan gets my seal of approval, with only my cautioning that it is brutal.

June 11th, 2014

I have a real appreciation for businesses that keep their shit together.  Well run, well managed businesses are so freakin' few and far between these days as it seems management is just a social club where all the people focus mainly on keeping the club intact instead of doing their job.  I recently applied to 7 national chains for employment opportunities of various types, and of those 7, I only got one response.  Now, I took a lot of business based classes in my schoolin' days and I was always told that it is rude to not get responses, that all good companies tell you if the job has been filled, if something was wrong with your application that you might want to fix, etc etc.  Office Depot was the only one that sent me an email when the position had been filled.  It was automated, sure, but in there was actual info as well.  It said that I shouldn't see it as a rejection of my qualifications and that it would be fine to submit the application to other stores in my area.  Next time I go shopping for office products(its a guilty pleasure of mine), I'll be passing up Staples(my usual go to) for Office Depot.

I can't exactly remember the first year I got a CD player, I think it was 1995.  The Christmas of the year I got a CD player I was able to choose a handful of CD's from one of those CD clubs you used to get mailed catalogs from.  Almost all of the albums I got were from 1994.  I had not really developed a taste in music yet, so its kind of all over the pop rock spectrum.  I got R.E.M. Monster and I think I only got it because of the story of What's the Frequency Kenneth.  Blues Traveler 4 turned out to be a great choice as I keep going back and loving that album.  Stone Temple Pilots: Purple was probably the best out of the bunch I got, its still by far my favorite STP album.   Its weird that I never went and made a "Xmas 95" playlist on Spotify and now I want to do that... and make a larger post about it.

Lots more game news out of E3 this year, but I'm still waiting on more of the "gems" news to come.  Gems are the little games that are made seemingly without regard to blockbuster aspirations.  Ubisoft proved that they do not have to be indie to have them as Child of Light was one of last year's games.  Bastion and Transistor is another set of games that would fit in years past.  It takes time for these word of mouth games to trickle out amid all the Call of Duty and Halo news flying out of the "jouralism" caste.  I've got a few, I would like to get a couple of more before I do the whole post.

Shadow Post Mortem and June 10th 2014

Shadow of the Colossus: Post Mortem

(Longer original post at my gaming Blog)

The premise for this game is simple; you want to bring a young woman back to life that has been sacrificed for some reason that we are not told.  The main character, Wander, has taken an ancient blade to a forbidden area, and while there asks forbidden spirits to bring her back to life.  The spirits task Wander with killing 16 colossi that are represented by 16 statues that line the hall.  Each colossus is a level unto itself.  The methods to dispatch them is different with each, and the puzzles involved with figuring them out are mostly ingenious and intuitive.  In between fights, there are no other monsters or puzzles to figure out.  You are given this vast stretch of land with ruins and beautiful landscapes that are just there for you to discover on your own.  You may find yourself adding hours to your gameplay just exploring.

People may be let down by the small amount of story in Ueada's games, but I have always felt the entire world tells a story if you give it patience and curiosity.   We aren't told what the colossi are, we aren't told the relationship between the girl and Wander.  We are presented with ruined cities, dark spirits, and a world to explore.  The ending to the game are likewise vague, and generally if you have not played through Ico, you may be confused as to what a lot of it means.  There are still forum posts that have been going on since the turn of the millennium that discuss what these stories mean, and the vagueness is why there is such spirited discussion.  

Never forget to watch and wait till the end of the credits on Ueada games, you get rewarded.

There's not much I can say about the graphics, sound and technical aspects.  For its time, all of these were the top of their class.  The fact that you could get such expansive views on the PS2 was unbelievable.  The music knows when to hide so you hear nature and the world.  Your "soundtrack" is horse steps, chirping birds, scuttling lizards.  Your "graphics" are a simple horse, a simple character, and a hazy, magical world that opens around you.  Its minimalism at its best, and done better than anyone else has ever done it since.

The work of Fomito Ueda has influenced hundreds of indie developers over the past decade.  You can take a look at games like Journey, Papa and Yo, Monument Valley, and dozens of others and see the elements of the sleepy cult classic Ico and the blockbuster that is Shadow of the Colossus.  People want more of this stuff that works "feel" into a game as much as graphical or technical prowess.  If you want a game that feels and plays wonderfully, then don't miss either of Ueda's masterpieces.




June 10th, 2014

I know I said I'll do a larger post about the end of David Tennant as Dr Who, but I just have to say that I'm a bit bummed.  Now, I have to remember that I was bummed out when Christopher Eccleston left the show after only one season.  I felt like his arch did not get finished, and that it was sudden for the change.  Eccleston brought me into Dr. Who after trying several times to get into the show, and hten Tennant did not have the best introduction.  Well that has come full circle, except that I feel Tennant got his story finished, thankfully.  The next one, Matt Smith, did not leave me with a good introduction, and I feel like I may stop watching Dr. Who all together... but this is... THIS is watching Dr. Who.  You get introduced to a doctor and just when you like him and accept him as The Doctor, he changes.  I guess I will find out soon if I'm a "Whovian" or if I'm just a fan of David Tennant.


I'm still sticking with guitar, playing every day.  Still no new amp though, and so its kind of hard to be creative while stuck in front of your TV with a cord that doesn't allow you more freedom.  So mainly I sit out on my front porch playing some blues and blues rock because that's easy to practice and sound well without an amp.  I love playing outside on my porch the most, the sound that comes when you're outside is just so much more open and you don't have extra vibrations from things around you interfering.  I like to get a mug of coffee, a pipe full of tobacco, and sit out and play.  Running through my practice routines keeps my fingers accurate.  I actually had this funny thing happen, I don't know what it was, but one night after realizing I hadn't played in a couple of days, I started playing and it was like my fingers were numb and didn't want to work all that well.  I knew it was probably me just being sleepy, but I was worried that for not playing in a while that my fingers had lost some of the muscle memory.  Its silly, I know from Bass playing that it doesn't happen, but still I was relieved the next morning when everything was "working" correctly again.

I'm feeling the urge to learn to paint again.  I really really like impressionists.  When I got a PS3 and learned that I could make my own themes for it relatively easy, the first one I did was make one featuring about 5 different artists of the impressionism era.  I've loaded that theme back up on the PS3 for nostalgia's sake and have really been enjoying seeing the paintings in high res on a big screen.  I would love to be able to paint like that, and I know its just time and training that I need, so I could do it when I "decide" to do it for real.  I've had a lot of "decide to do it and succeed" moments in the past year and it helps my confidence in many ways... just none of the succeeding things happen to be particularly useful outside of hobbies.

E3 2014: Sony Press

This is my thoughts on mainly the Sony press conference from E3.  There is zero chance I'll buy a XboxOne, so that's the kind of mentality you're going to come into this discussion with.  I make mention of some games that will be PS4 games but not at the Sony conference near the bottom.

Favorite News:  Little Big Planet 3

Little Big Planet was my 2nd "Next Gen" game when I got my PS3, and it is also the reason I have more than 2 controllers.  Little Big Planet was really fun, and was sort of the "Minecraft" of the PS3 back in the day.  You could get online and play lots of other people's levels, and you could have a room full of people swapping controllers and having fun.  I loved Little Big Planet.  Well LBP3 was shown and it looks great.  The new gimmick this time around is that there are 4 different character types you can play.  Sackboy returns with the ability to climb and use tools, there is a dog that can wall jump like a ninja, a sock thing that can go from large and heavy to small and light with the click of a button, and a lastly a bird that can fly and pick up lightweight objects(like Sackboy).  The bird in particular suits me because when you're playing with nephews or newbies, the jumping parts are the hardest, and so its cool that I can just pick them up if they're having trouble and help them up a ledge.  Now, the coolest thing is that the LBP guys(Media Molecule) hate segementing the community.  If you have LBP 3 on the PS4, you can load up any level and play any content that is hosted on their online servers from the LBP1 and 2, so yes, you can play my Price is Right level that I made years and years ago.

Cool News: Japan is coming home.

The PS3 came at a weird time in the Japanese game industry where that industry was being overshadowed.  The money made at the turn of the millenium meant that developers became rich celebrities with huge press, and as a result we have been seeing Japanese games take a decade to get out the door.  Anyone that is a fan of Kingdom Hearts, Shadow of the Colossus, or JRPG's in general can testify to that.  Well, its taken a while but we have new developers that actual develop that are finally doing things for the PS4.

Hidetaka Miyazaki made the hit Dark Souls, which is a darling of the Japanese gaming community, and after several games in that series is making a brand new series called Bloodborne. The Suda 51 guys really don't make games I care for, but I recognize they have a cult following in the same way B movie scifi films have a following. Both the games by these 2 popular Japanese directors are PS4 exclusive as of E3(typically Microsoft throws a ton of cash and this gets reset, but we'll see how it goes since the XboxOne is not ahead of the PS4).




Indy News: Indy Payoff

With all the good press they got last year for their catering to indy developers, we see the fruits of that effort again this year. Entwined is an amazing looking, stylish flight game from a brand new development team and was so liked by the PS4 staff that they gave Entwined its own spotlight feature. A lot of staff from "That Game Company" under a new name of "Giant Squid" made a new adventure game that is being said to be "Journey, but underwater". It looks amazing too. To the non-exclusive indy stuff, Hotline Miami 2 is no surprise. After bitching about Microsoft's treatment of his team, the developer for Hotline Miami is one of the reasons the indies fled to the PS4. Also BROFORCE. I want 4 player, single screen BROFORCE to be a thing that happens.

Guilty Pleasure News: Mortal Kombat

I like Mortal Kombat like I like Freddy movies. There were 1 maybe 2 actual "Freddy" movies that were "films" instead of crap, but I watch them all anyway. I was stupidly excited for Mortal Kombat 1, 2 and 3 back in the day. The new one looks like a new story instead of a retelling of old ones, in the new timeline established in the last. The gameplay looks good, but the really cool thing was one of the new characters. It looks like Jason Vorhees being controlled by a little kid that rides on the back. That's right, a kid in Mortal Kombat. All the really bad, and gory stuff happens to the big monster, so it doesn't look like we get dismembered children(and that's a good thing, we dont want the press going crazy over Mortal Kombat again), and the play style of this character looks so interesting.

Saddest News: No Last Guardian

Look, Mortal Kombat was pretty cool looking, LIttle Big Planet 3 looks like a lot of fun, but no Last Guardian means at the very least another 2 years before it'll be coming out. That's just how E3 runs, if its not going to be this year or the next, Sony generally will not show anything on it(unless its Kingdom Hearts). That really, truly means I probably will not bother buying a PS4 any time soon.


Sony Owned Devs news round up

Sucker Punch is doing DLC for Infamous.  Guerilla launched a Killzone last year so they get a skip this year as they work on new stuff.  Media Molecule is working on LBP3.  Polyphony gets a decade to work on Gran Turismo, so they're probably taking a nap.  SCE Cambridge are working on a Killzone for the Vita.  SCE Japan is reportedly working on Last Guardian, but it looks like they're REALLY working on a Vita game called Gravity Rush.  SCE London, Sandiego, Santa Monica, and Liverpool are all no shows but Santa Monica just released a God of War a few months back, so they get a pass.  So really on the first party front, it looks like they're hanging 2014 on Little Big Planet 3's shoulders.

Other news:

 Destiny still has me cautiously optimistic, but I want mouse and keyboard support. Its an MMO shooter and looks interesting, but I just can't play FPS"s with a controller.  But before I have a PS4 I'll be all MMO'd out on Wildstar most likely.  I'm not a huge FPS player in the first place.

 Dragon Age 3 has good trailers, I'm still to skeptical. Mass Effect's next installment, I will probably ignore. Really, EA stepped in with Mass Effect 3 and said "you can't finish the story, you have to fuck it over so people will buy the new one we're planning, screw your trilogy" and the fans revolted so much that they were forced to let Bioware put in a real ending. Seriously, EA has screwed over the best 2 story based US RPG"s of the last generation, merely by existing. EA stepped in and took these games after the first ones were successful through no merit of EA itself, and tried their goddamndest to run them into the ground. Now that Bioware's top people have left after their contracts with Mass Effect were up, I just don't see EA doing anything but killing the brand. Another Assassin's Creed... I just don't get into that series.

Batman Arkham Knight looks pretty good.  The open world Super Hero thing is really big these days, and finally more than just Infamous looks good.  I have intended on taking on this series since the first day I had a PS3.  The last one was kind of swept under the table since it was done by a different development team, this one is done by the original Arkham creators, Rocksteady.  It most likely will be great.

Really a lot of news about stuff that doesn't interest me, so how could I ever write anything interesting to read about it, so I'm going to wrap that up. E3 2014, not as exciting as 2009 or 2013, but much better than all those in between actually.

Weekend of June 6th, 2014

Well, Friday started out crazy.  If you have seen that some crazy nut tried to shoot up a courthouse in Georgia, then you've seen my local news.  Looks like he had big plans, but made it about 5 foot instead.  My town isn't segmented like some other cities, the jail is a walk from the courthouse, so is all the police deparment... including the SWAT team.  See, the SWAT team was geared up and ready to move, they never said for what, but I suspect a training exercise or something... within 40 seconds SWAT was there, and all the cops that are stationed throughout the courthouse area was already shooting the guy up.  An officer was shot in the leg but he's expected to be fine.  My mother knew the officer, and I probably met him a time or two myself while I worked at the theater(the cops work there on semi-duty on the weekends).

Playing though Shadow of the Colossus, I refuse to look up any info on the puzzles.  Actually, I kind of resent that they give you hints while you're fighting them and there's no way to turn them off.  The entire fun for me is in the puzzle, not in the doing.  I'm confident I can achieve whatever they ask when it comes to skill and mechanics, the "fun" is figuring out what I"m supposed to do.  Anyway, to further this point, some people would hate the ones you get stuck on.  I've had a couple that took maybe 30 mins to an hour for me to get right, and one that actually I stopped and finished the next day.  Those have been my favorites, the ones that challenged me.

I figured out my "unique" thing I want to do with my computer when I build it.  I wanted to have some sort of mod to it and learn how to do some new things.  I loved my old computer case from my last computer build.  It was big, it was massive, it looked like a transformer.  Thing is, it was a MESS on the inside.  There was basically zero way you could do cable management and have it look good, even with cable extensions.  No really.  I looked it up online to see if anyone ever made anything impressive with that model.  The best mod, to tell the truth, was a solid panel instead of a window so you didn't have to see inside the thing.  I want to do something I'm proud of this time around.  My concept will even work if I have a mini-LAN/media center PC, they'll work together and look neat.  When I'm closer to it being a reality, I'll have a lot of updates.

Sunday I made reuben egg rolls.  Its weird how, there is almost no way a kid would ever like the taste of a reuben, but when you get older, you want them to be more tangy, disgustingly pungent and filled with more and more sauerkraut.  I had corned beef, swiss and the kraut inside the eggrolls, then made 1,000 island dipping sauce for them.  They were baked instead of fried, and still came out well.  Having the cheese on the layer closest to the wrapper made all the difference.

Stuff this week:

I should be finishing up Shadow of the Colossus, so I'll be making a post-mortem about that.  Also finished Attack on Titan.  Thirdly finished, me and my girl finished the last of David Tennant's tenure as The Doctor.  So I should have posts on all that eventually in the next week or so.  Oh and Sony's E3 press conference is pretty much the only one I watch, so I'll have notes taken and a big write up about my thoughts on that.