Snapped a pic of this cute little guy over the weekend.
Haunted By My Own Echoes
I played ECHO over the weekend. It has been on my to do list of games to play for quite some time. I bought it during one of many sales, as the gameplay footage and trailer intrigued me. Here’s the rundown of what I’ve experienced thus far:
You (or En as the character is called) wake up inside of a spaceship after a looooong rest; greeted by a soul(?) within a cube that doesn’t particular care much for you. After a walk that feels like an eternity we begin the game!
En lands her ship on a strange palace planet in search of another one of her companion cubes. Armed with only a cybernetic stealth suit, a disabled pistol and an annoyed companion cube attached; En makes her way further into these ruins that seen to go on forever.
Eventually En finds her way inside the palace and discovers there is no electricity. What follows is a lot of wandering around in the dark and random tuning forks she calls “Voices”. Your suit is able to decrypt the message contained within each one you find.
Eventually you are able to get the power to come back online… sort of. The power keeps going out, and your suit freezes every time it happens. Each time the power resets things in the environment change. Flowers are suddenly decorating your surroundings, more elegant furniture appears, and eventually you start to see more and more of these strange melty beings. With each rolling blackout they start to look more and more like you. They first appear to be dead, but then another blackout rolls around and their standing up just to fall down, then another blackout, and eventually they go from staggering around like a bunch of albino drunkards to being quite nimble but afraid of water.
It’s important to stay out of their site when you can. You leave imprints of your movements around the environment that your echoes mimic every time the power resets. In other words if you’re not careful you could be done in by your own past movements. It’s quite a trippy concept. It should also be noted that ECHO runs on Unreal Engine 4, just like Death Stranding! Somehow this looks more promising though… you at least get the walking simulator part out of the way eventually. :trollface:
As of writing this I’ve only put two hours into it. While I think the intro into the game felt longer than it should have been I am really intrigued by the stealth mechanic, and I want to see what more lies to this place, these copies of En, the rolling blackouts, and what lies within this planet sized palace. Sadly this is where my journey ends for now, or until another weekend rolls around.
Transforming leftover breakfast into more breakfast
I took the last of yesterday’s breakfast bake and turned it into an egg, ham and turkey cheese breakfast sandwich to power me through the day, mainly getting things in line for another week in the hole, and making some blog posts ahead of time to auto post over the next couple of days, as I plan to be very busy with real life stuff and a couple other things. I also made a few yogurt parfaits. I have a nice cherry matcha parfait to look forward to tomorrow. I threw together some vanilla yogurt, matcha, chopped frozen cherries, some maraschino cherry juice, and some pulverized oats with crunchy honey almond and fruit granola.
Open Thread!
Hōjicha!
Finally got around to brewing one of my Christmas teas! I would have gotten to it sooner, but for me every tea has its day. I always wanted to try toasted green tea, they say that it has a hinted taste of toasted brown rice. Little did I know I actually did have some before, and drinking this brought back that memory. It was actually when I was flying to Honolulu with the very same friend that gave me this tea. I remember it being the first drink I purchased once we landed and got settled in on the Island. I wasn’t happy with it then, mainly because the brew tasted really really strong. The scent of the tea found its way to my nose, and next thing I knew I was keeping a close watch on the brew to make sure it didn’t over-steep. This is definitely not a tea you would want to begin preparing and then forget about, as it can become bitter fairly quickly making even a long over-brewed black tea seem more tame by comparison.
When prepared properly this is really good though. I made some to go along side stir fry the other night instead of Oolong. If anything this kinda tastes like a stronger Oolong with a hint of toasted rice, and even seems to have chocolatey, almost caramel like undertones. Interestingly enough due to the roasting process it has a lower caffeine rating compared to regular green tea which is commonly steamed instead. That’s ok, the flavor alone pretty much powered me for the entire day. I made two full brews of it the entire afternoon to give you an idea of how much I liked it. I’ve even discovered the existence of Hojicha powder, though I haven’t ordered any yet. I want to experiment with this Christmas gift first, maybe even try and make my own lattes with it. I feel like it would taste good mixed with some milk and certain sweeteners.
Wake & Bake Some Eggs
I woke up this morning and wanted to try a recipe from one of my many cookbooks. I haven’t made many baked egg dishes, but became intrigued after reading some recipes awhile back. Considering how bloody cold it has been all winter (easily the coldest winter I’ve ever had here in town) using the oven to warm up the morning sounded like a good idea.
First I preheated the oven to 425F (220C). Then I oiled a baking dish and covered the bottom in slices of medium cheddar.
I dropped 4 eggs over the cheese. The recipe originally called for a light cream, but I only had half n half and milk to choose from, so I opted for the former. I also added salt, pepper, and the recipe didn’t call for it but I added some paprika on for extra flavor. Then finally I added grated cheese on top and baked it for 15 minutes.
It tasted like a giant poached egg. I’m thinking next time I go to make this I’ll try adding and changing some things depending on what ingredients I have on hand. This kind of recipe is like a canvas asking for other items to be added to it. Like caramelized onions and brie, or sun dried tomato and feta. I’ll also make sure there is bacon on hand next time…. Woke up and didn’t realize it was all gone! The one day where I decide to make a bacon egg breakfast and poof! Gone!
A Wild Stewie Appears
Don’t often get a chance to catch Stewie doing funny cat things. Today he was nice enough to expose kitty belly while I prepped my breakfast for tomorrow. He can be a little dick at times, but he’s an adorable little dick when he wants to be.
New Mic Stands!
My father and I went halvesies on a Blue Snowball mic recently as a birthday gift for my bro. Unfortunately the mic only sounds awesome if you pick it up and hold it to your face or move closer to it, the problem lies mostly with the shitty stand that ships with it (as quite a few USB pro-ish mics come with those). You really need a proper boom to get the best out of this particular mic. I did some research and got him a Pyle desk mount. It didn’t come with any instructions, however it wasn’t hard to piece everything together. I thought of getting this particular model to replace my current mic boom, as I would benefit from an articulating arm type. Alas, I have a dummy thicc desk…
So I needed to get something with a dummy thicc base. This will work faaaaar better for both sitting and standing while recording voice lines in future projects. My old one kept losing its grip, and eventually the mic would sag down too far, and with this I’m happy to be able to keep it at any height whether it be having a voice chat, voice recording, and it even reaches the perfect height for me to set in front of my bed for those days where it’s too cold to get out of bed in the morning and you want to play a game to warm the room up enough to escape AND annoy your friends with the sound of your voice at the same time!
Looking forward to future endeavors. :zorak:
Right, so this happened
This is one of the most beautiful poems to have graced my eyes recently.
Back in the day, you really had to work hard to pull pranks in Google search results by planting Google Bombs and such. These days, now that the Internet is run by deranged robots made of clouds, it seems Google will happily prank itself. Case in point: today, searching for Steam on Google could return a listing describing Valve’s digital store with the words “FUCK EPIC GAMES STORE” and fragments of broken ASCII art. It doesn’t seem to be the result of a hack, prank, or corporate warfare, just some robot seeing a Steam user’s review of Metro Exodus and thinking “Yeah gwan that’s probably important” in its vaporous little brain.
Open Thread
Taste The Melon Rainbow
I’ve been partaking in different watermelon related teas (when I’m not partaking in tea in general) and came upon a nice calming combo.
Juicy watermelon and fresh mint come together for the ultimate in zingy tea bliss. Watermelon Mint Agua will have you daydreaming of a Mexican beach resort getaway. Say adiós to the stresses of the day!
Once steeped, Watermelon Mint Agua Fresca has a pleasant minty sweet melon aroma; and at first sip, the rich, sweet, juicy watermelon taste is quickly followed by cooling mint and sweet fruit juice taste. You can almost hear the waves of a beach resort getaway in the distance- with each sip of minty freshness bursting with juicy fresh watermelon.
Watermelon Mint Agua Fresca is delicious prepared hot, but it also makes a fantastic iced tea (or iced tea base for a tea cocktail!). Sombrero and maracas are optional.
Sombreros… it’s like they already know.
Weekend Food Diary: Vegetarian-ish Edition
I’ve been having a nice weekend. I started it off after work on Saturday by making myself a creamy primavera lunch. I made a white sauce and added some Italian herbs and mascarpone cheese with some salt and pepper. Then I used all kinds of vegetables that most people I know would find vile and ungodly. I used asparagus, broccoli, zucchini, green beans, green onion and snow peas with a spinach salad on the side with homemade raspberry vinaigrette. I’m going to have to make more of the vinegar sometime in the not too distant future as I’m nearing the last of it; though it has lasted me almost a couple years!
I took all the leftover vegetables I had, added some carrot and red bell pepper and made a brown jasmine fried rice with egg for breakfast, and again for lunch with added cashews on top. It’s really good, but next time I’ll just keep it in mind for use as a light lunch item best paired with salad or a light soup.
Then today rolls around and I STILL have an assload of vegetables to get rid of, so I make a green breakfast curry over white jasmine rice. I think I have enough to last me the week or so. Lotsa leftover pasta too, should be good for an after work lunch tomorrow. :v: