Yesterday was nice. I had a short work day, came home and made some cherry blossom green tea with a plan to clean bedding. While doing that I decided to cook up a homemade bowl of miso ramen using dashi granules and the white miso paste I got the other day. Firstly, I used granules (which some would consider a sin) because I didn’t want to make an entire thing of soup stock, it’s ok in a pinch but I think it tastes better when prepared from scratch. Then I threw in some mirin, sake, soy sauce, the miso paste, wakame and baby portabella mushrooms. I didn’t think to take a picture but it turned out really nice, served it in a large ramen bowl and everything.
I also prepped dinner yesterday. I read about a brilliant idea to marinade steak in Chinese black bean sauce, so I started marinading early in the day so it would have a nice taste later at night. I also sliced up three colors of bell pepper, a small onion and threw in the remaining of the morning mushrooms. That all tasted good with the jasmine rice.
I’m surprised, the bean sauce gave the steak a nice dark flavor. Then I finished off the meal and had some sake before retiring to nice clean sheets. Definitely started off my weekend much nicer than last week. It was also kind of the sun to show up, I almost forgot what it looked like. 😛 I was gently woken by it today. Finally nice to have some weather during the day that isn’t completely freezing.
Motion sickness isn’t something I’ve had in a long time, not even after hours of playing an FPS while knocking back lots of alcoholic drinks… I think the last time I had felt sick during a game was when I was playing the original Doom for an entire day, sometime during all the custom wads I cycled through I suddenly had to lie down and hope I wouldn’t throw up… at least until yesterday when those unfond memories of holding back the urge of throwing up surfaced, and who knew it would be while playing the original Spyro?
I never had access to the game when I was younger, the closest I could get to it was a Playstation Pizza Hut demo disc. I played the hell out of Spyro and some other demos on the disc always hoping that someday I’d get the full thing, sadly that never happened until years and years later when I started to play with emulators. I found roms for the first trilogy and thought “awesome!”, and so I began playing for quite a bit actually. Then after awhile last night my stomach started to turn. I didn’t want to stop playing because I was so close to finishing the level and finding all the gems, so I pressed onward a bit longer and called it good when I rescued one last dragon.
I was kinda bummed, the game itself is a lot of fun… but I can’t seem to play it for very long like I can with other games. I tried again a bit ago after getting the Playstation emulator to work through screen so I could take screencaps, and once again I had to stop after a short while of play… which pisses me off because I found an annoying boss battle and didn’t want to quit.
I wanted to do a livestream of this at some point, but it looks like I’ll have to shelf the idea. I feel the need to experiment though, maybe if I play this distanced away from the TV in the living room… could that solve my problem? Or would the larger TV make it worse?
Felt better today, work was short and calm. I have another short day tomorrow, will probably conjure up something for dinner tomorrow night and the next. Since Mom will be working late, and compared to everyone else in the house my dinner menu is a constant changing palate. I might start sharing pictures of what I create, tomorrow I’m thinking something simple like Mac n Cheese with sausage or tuna, and maybe something from my Shanghai cookbook for Friday. I’m pretty much the one the family goes to whenever we want anything Asian made I’ve noticed. After all my years of studying various cuisines from China, Japan, Thailand, etc I seem to have developed a taste and look for what goes in a dish, like what noodles to use for what dish, what sauce to make to go with what meat, how to make a nice miso soup stock, etc. I know I can never beat anything authentic, but it’s nice to have a good substitute for nights when you don’t feel like going out for the real thing.
Sorry for lack of absence lately, but this does make for a good story. I’m getting over a cold that started on Thursday, right? It got really bad on Saturday, so after getting off work I decided to take a nap… and I didn’t wake up until Monday. Ok ok I did get up and use the bathroom and maybe get some medicine and chicken soup, but yeah… All I did was lay about sleeping off the cold, and for the most part I do feel better. I still have a dry cough and my nose randomly flares up, but overall I feel far better than almost a week ago.
I like the concept, as someone who runs with dual screens when I’m at home, and I think it would be pretty sweet to have multiple screens for a wider view or even extra places to put chats and recording programs, but that design… The motor that deploys the extra screens will wear out eventually. If they came up with a way to connect the displays to one another as optional pieces. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about another set of failing components down the line.
Another problem I have with it is the keyboard/touchpad layout. It makes sense to me to have it in the center to make room for the numpad, why did they take it out and put the touchpad there?
Overall I say Razer has a good idea with the displays, but the implementation… I guess in due time we’ll see how it holds up.
I’ll admit, I haven’t really been into the whole smart vehicle buzz that people have been interested in, but I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t want my own pet motorcycle. 😛
Not much to report. Quiet work day, cold weather, pizza and Serious Sam. Yesterday wasn’t that much different. Tomorrow I have work and a hair appointment. I’ll probably nap for awhile or cover myself under blankets with hot tea and the steam controller. Oh! And scented fucking candles. I’ve been making a habit of burning more of those, they have done a good job of keeping me calm, sometimes they work a little too well though as I’ve been falling asleep without keeping track. One moment I’ll be reading at the computer and then the next minute I’ll be waking up hours later.
If more of these cold days keep piling up I may have to invest in a space heater. I’m getting sick of leaving my computer on to stay warm!
Teh Interwebz are abuzz about CNN using hacking footage from the Fallout series to show how Russians are hacking.
This is right up there with Russians using pictures and from games to make their cases about how evil we murican’s really are.
Well, I guess if I ever get Fallout 4 to work properly on my laptop I can use the hacking terminals and scare people in the breakroom.. Oh wait, most of the people in my area voted for Trump, they’ll probably praise my Russian American patriotism.
The Steam Winter Sale brought forth lots of fun investments and gifts, I decided to venture into one that was gifted to me recently called Samurai Warriors 4-II. It looks promising, the art style is really beautiful and the dialogue is in Japanese, so you’ll want to use subtitles unless you’ve mastered the language. The characters themselves look pretty awesome! You even have the option of making your own to play outside of story mode:
It was bound to happen.
The gameplay looked like a lot of fun from what I’ve seen in videos. That was until I had a look at the control scheme:
Bit of a problem here… The mouse is non-existent in this game, as in it doesn’t even exist as a cursor. Pretty shitty considering other hack n slashes give you a keyboard and mouse option. Seriously, who thought these controls were a good idea? For example if you want to rotate the camera around you have to press buttons… I tried plugging in a controller, not my Steam Controller but one of my Logitechs, since this game is a port from Playstation I figured I’d try something close to its native control, but even that felt awkward. And the camera wouldn’t move with the right analog stick, fucking really? When that didn’t work I looked into Steam Controller configs. Some of them came pretty close to working out ok, but I think I’ll have to make my own from scratch.
This is a Japanese game, but for the love of Bob look at some other Japanese ports to PC for inspiration. The Devil May Cry games (excluding 3 because that was a shitty port) and Metal Gear Rising did a good job porting the game to work with both a controller or a keyboard and mouse setup. There really is no excuse for this.
I’m hoping the Steam Controller can fix this game up good with a special config. I really want to like this game, it’s pleasing to all the other senses, but play-ability thwarts appearances. The game has such positive reviews, so I’m hoping there is some sort of workaround.
Ordinarily I’d post about the game or games I finished in 2016, but I think I’ll take it in a different direction. Not because I didn’t finish any games, in fact I did finish one (Hard Reset Redux), but I’m playing it on a harder difficulty and making sure I collect some more info on it before I post a synopsis on it (and maybe play the original for a comparison). I think it would be more memorable to reflect on the total shitfest that was 2016.
How 2016 felt for many.
We watched celebrities and well known people meet their ends in one way or another. All tragic, though I think the most tragic of them all were Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. I know people my age may look upon this as a bunch of old people kicking the bucket, but the way they went seemed so surprising to me. I’m really at a loss, like anyone else I feel sorry for their families. We’re all human and I know what it’s like to lose someone you really care about.
Then we also had the election from hell, with two candidates that were pretty undesirable, even the primaries were rather pitiful. I definitely didn’t feel like I missed being a small (i) independent. Though after the election I’m finding it harder to remain that way, one party is a bunch of spineless cowards and the other won’t welcome you unless you’re a straight white male. On second thought walking my own path isn’t that bad. Nonetheless this doesn’t change any outcome. The electoral college and Russia spoke for most of the country. Idiocracy is in full motion, and having listened to these idiots at work bitch and complain about the Obama Administration not doing a single valuable thing I look forward to the looks on their faces when their state provided healthcare gets revoked, or when their young adult children get dropped from their insurance plans. Some might call it heartless, but I think it’s time to play this game at their level. Some of these changes are already going to have effects on my family, and they could care less with their IGMFY attitude.
Reading and dealing with peoples attitudes since the election ended has been about as painless as a root canal with no drugs, and I’m not the only one who seems to have noticed. I only follow a handful of blogs and websites as going to official news sites or watching it on TV only serves to make you less intelligent when you’re done watching. They either post false information, or they leave out important details. The conservative owned liberal biased press is a total clusterfuck and needs a full blown enema. I’m trying not to pay much attention as it doesn’t seem to be good for my health. I expect I’ll be ranting more on the blog about this kind of shit when I have the time and energy to, have to keep my blood pressure low somehow apart from the occasional FPS or Hack n Slash.
I should probably quit on this post while I’m ahead. It’s difficult to think of positive things right now, well… I’m alive. Though for some that’s going to be debatable. I’ll try again next year.
