Yeah, it's been a while, but the week before last was hell:
First, on Wednesday, I decided to bake a loaf of bread using the Bake-A-Round that my parents gave me from the attic. There was a tiny ding in it, but it looked fine to use. Of course, being stupid, I tried to remove it from its metal holder while still hot and a chip came off, so I had to toss that out.
Second, on Friday, I thought that I would broil 2 italian sausages that I had in the fridge, using my toaster oven. After about 20-25 minutes, I heard a noise from the kitchen. Thinking that it was one (or both) of the sausages popping, I rushed out, only to discover the glass door and handle to the toaster oven shattered on the counter. Checking the warranty info in the manual informed me that glass parts are not covered.
Third, again on Friday, I went home. Once I parked in the driveway and turned off the car, I heard a gurgling noise. When I got out of the car, I noticed that there was a good amount of antifreeze on the driveway. This had happened once or twice before, so I didn't pay it much mind, and took the car down to the garage later. On Monday, the garage called and said that it was probably a head gasket, or one of the heads, and that they'd have to take the engine apart. In the end, the gasket looked bad and the head was warped. All in all, the repair bill came to $2345. Luckily for me, my parents are awesome, and are covering half the bill for me.
Finally, my dad got home from a fishing trip in Canada on Friday (after I got home). It seems that on Monday, he banged his shin getting out of the boat, and along with some bug bites (most likely) he not only had a large bruise, but also an extensive infection. Naturally, he went to the hospital on Saturday, where he had to stay until Tuesday or Wednesday. Again, luckily the infection didn't get into his blood, and he should be fine once he's through the antibiotics they gave him.
In other, non crappy, news, I have finished the first trilogy that was written in the Eberron world. It's an interesting universe, and makes a nice change from the Forgotten Realms, although I'm not giving up the realm quite yet, although it may come to that if the planned changes don't work out well.
Monday, June 23, 2008
It's me!
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Various Items
So I made another loaf of sourdough bread today, and I think as far as texture and consistency go, this is the best yet, although the flavor is a bit milder than my previous loaves, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I also recently bought some yeast so that I can try to make some regular white bread, or any of the sundry variations on it. So far I've made one loaf of white, using a recipe from my regular cookbook, which took about 1.5 hours from start to finish. All things considered, I think it came out quite well, although I think I'd like to try a recipe that doesn't rush the dough.
On the schooling front, I've received all of my grades from this past semester, and it turns out that I earned A's in all 3 classes (Advanced Quantum, Particles, and Qual Prep). This is, I believe, the first time I have earned a 4.0 for a semester, so yay for that. Now, all I have to do is pass the Quals in August, and I'm home free.
Finally, I have decided that on those (fairly rare) occasions that I complete a game (computer, video...) I think I'll attempt to post a (hopefully) smallish review of said game here. I'll hide them all behind the expanding post thingy that I have so that they don't bloat the post lengths though. With, that, let's start things off with a review of The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass.
The Phantom Hourglass is one of those few Zelda games that is a direct sequel, in other words, it's easy to set the game in a definite time line, in this case, it takes place at some point after the events of Windwaker. Because of this, Nintendo decided to use similar art for this game, which makes everything, even the scary monsters, look adorable. The visuals are about on par for what I expected from a Gameboy game, although it's been a while since I've played GB.
This is the first DS game I've played (aside from about 5 minutes of Brain Age), so it was interesting having the main game window in addition to the top screen. Which brings me to the first complaint that I have, even though it's a minor one: the entire game is played with the touch screen. Everything you want to do, from moving Link and attacking, to using items, is controlled with the tiny little stylus. There are a few "hotkeys," such as pressing right and left on the d-pad to open the main menu and the item menu, and pressing (and holding) L to ready an item, but you're still spending the whole time gripping the stylus and tapping or swiping the screen. I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem for many people, especially the younger players out there, but after playing for a while, my hand would start to get sore and cramped, since the tiny stylus was clearly not meant for my long fingers/hands. That issue aside, the control scheme is fairly nice. Sure, it takes a little getting used to, but once you do, it seems almost second nature, and with the hotkeys you can quickly and easily ready an item for use, even in combat.
Having two screens is cool, and I can't imagine the game using them better. While most of the action occurs in the bottom (touch) screen, the top screen shows a full map of the area or room you're in. This is nice to see in a Zelda game, since in general, the on screen maps tend to be limited, making you pause the game to figure out where you need to go. It's also good on the collection screens, since it let's you see more of your inventory at a time, which means you don't have to cycle through 3 or 4 different screens to find what you're looking for.
Since this is a sequel to Windwaker, the land is covered in a great sea, with numerous islands that you travel to. The sailing was pretty fun, some of the enemies get old after a while, but they help to break up the monotony. There are two minigames that you can play while sailing, salvaging and fishing. Fishing is fun, although I quickly gave up on catching anything other than the two most common fish out of 5 or 6 types. Salvaging is also a fun pastime, and is the most common way to get different parts for your ship. There are a number of different "styles" that you can make your ship, though you have to find different parts to do it. This almost turns into a game of Pokemon, where you want to collect all of the different pieces so you can make your ship look however you want. There is a bonus to finding other pieces in addition to the aesthetics: if you use a style other than the starting one, and match multiple parts from that style, your ship's health will increase, which is useful if you find yourself running into sea battles often.
As far as the story goes, it seems a little short, but this could be due to marketing towards a younger audience, which I suppose would make sense for a GB game. This would also explain why, in general, the puzzles were slightly easier than other Zelda games, usually revolving around some form of "hit the switches in x y z order." This is another place where the touch screen was implemented well, requiring you to make notes on your map in order to pull levers or note the path of an enemy. There were also a few places where you can draw a picture on the screen in order to teleport somewhere, or to open a door. The nice thing about the notes you make is that they don't disappear when you leave the area, which is important.
The one major complaint I have is in regards to one out of the 6 or so dungeons that you must traverse: The Temple of the Ocean King. I won't spoil anything about it, but this dungeon is one that you must go through a number of times. Oh, and it's timed, in a way. And there are monsters that can kill you, but you can't kill. And there are traps...that reset when you leave the temple. This is where the note-taking comes in handy, you can trace the patrols of the invulnerable enemies, mark down how to disable the traps, and make other helpful little notes on your map that will be there the next time you visit. There are about a dozen floors to the temple, and you descend a little bit deeper each time you visit it, since you need different items to get past various obstacles. The main problem is that each time you visit, you have to go through the previous levels before you can continue deeper. At some point, you can make a kind of save point so that from the entrance you can skip a few floors while keeping the time you used to get there. The problem with this is that the floors you skip are easy and once you get the save point they pose little to no problem, it's the following floors that are the bothersome ones. I can understand having to go through them once, but by the third time you almost want to just turn the game off.
The sound was on par for a Zelda game, with the requisite effects for finding secrets and unlocking things and so forth, and the expected Zelda theme, remixed to fit the game. Otherwise, I can't remember anything specific about the sound effects or music other than the fact that they seemed fitting. Obviously a Gameboy is not meant to output astounding quality audio, though it was better than I expected.
All in all, I think Phantom Hourglass is an enjoyable game, and I would recommend it to any Zelda fan, though I might not suggest it to someone who wants to get into Zelda, since there are better ones that don't have sections like the Temple of the Ocean King, that annoy you to no end.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Victory
Yes, victory indeed. I am now officially up to speed on the Half Life universe, having completed Episode 2 on Tuesday. Of course that means that I need to find something else to occupy my time with while I'm waiting for Episode 3. It's weird having to wait for the next episode - since I came in late, I've never really gotten a good feeling for the amount of time between releases. I suppose I now have no excuse to finish Shivering Isles, except, of course, for the fact that Oblivion crashes my computer when it gets in a foul mood. It tends to make things rather inconvenient since it's not just a regular crash to desktop where I can restart it again and keep going. No, no, I have to actually restart my computer before it will even let me play more. Ah well, I'll be building a new computer within the next 2 or so years.
The other accomplishment for the week was my successful baking of a loaf of sourdough bread. I've been trying to get the starter to work for the past month or so, and my first attempt at a loaf failed miserably. This time I gave the dough extra time to rise, and I think it came out fairly well. I'll be working on tweaking things in the future, and I might try some regular yeast bread as well. Regardless, I am pleased.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
I'm doing Science, and I'm still alive
There hasn't really been any big developments that I can think of in the past month or so, except for the progress I've made in my collection of video games. Near the end of January, I finally got around to buying and playing Half Life, and found it very enjoyable. So much so, in fact, that I finished it in a week. I had started it Monday night or so, and by the weekend, I was ready to buy the Orange Box. Thus armed as I was, I fought my way through Half Life 2, and loved it even more, despite the fact that I missed being able to execute the scientists as I was wont to do inside Black Mesa. Of course, complicating things slightly were the few errors that would pop up every so often. With the help of my trusty ally, the intarwebs, I was able to prevail, and finished that game in about a week and a half.
Next, it was time for me to take on my next foe, Episode 1. It seemed that this time, the errors were not to be so easily defeated, and that I might be relegated to playing on my laptop (which has a slightly inferior GPU than my desktop). The performance, was of course inferior on my laptop due to this fact, and the slightly slower cpu (2 as opposed to 2.2 GHz), since the Source engine does not, as far as I know, take advantage of multiple cores. Just when I thought all hope lost, the intarwebs rescued me once more, and I just finished off the first episode about 30 minutes ago.
Next up is Episode 2, which should bring me up to date with the series, at long last. Of course, as the title might suggest, Portal did not slip by me either. My first time through it only lasted 4 hours before succumbing to my might. The second time, I was able to defeat it in only 2.5 hours, and my next attempt will be going through with the commentary on, and I might attempt to earn a few achievements as well. And who knows, maybe some day I'll actually beat Narbacular Drop.
The rest of my time has pretty much been taken up by classes, homework, and teaching, although more the former than the latter. This semester my teaching is pretty nice, two classes, the graduate Math Physics, and an undergrad Gen Phys to which only 4 students show. The graduate class is fairly easy for the time being as well, since the class is on C programming, and none of the students have finished any of the programs yet.
Even with the coursework that I've had, I find time to visit Mel every weekend, which is a very nice thing. Also, this past Monday evening, I created my own pet, a sourdough starter. Tonight will be the third day I've had it, and it looks like its pretty much ready to go make me some bread. I'll end up feeding it tonight, then throwing it in the fridge for the weekend, and then attempt some baking on Monday, or Wednesday of this coming week.
Well, I'm off to free up hard drive space and install Episode 2. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, hopefully I'll actually start updating this more often from now on.