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TV Shows, Video Games And Baking Bread

I recently started watching the new Hunter X Hunter anime, it’s quite an enjoyable show. Even though I already know the story from the manga, it was still nice to see it again. I like hearing the characters thoughts and reasons for the things they’re doing, and how the characters change throughout the series. Not just the main characters, even the enemies are (sometimes) shown as more than just “people to defeat”, but as people with various goals and doubts.

Hunter X Hunter

On Netflix I’ve been watching Suits, Breaking Bad and House of Cards. My brother was saying how House of Cards is basically the same type of show as Breaking Bad, and I guess it is not a bad comparison. I found both of these shows enjoyable, but rather depressing to watch. But then again, some of my other favorite non-sitcom shows, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones are really quite depressing too, and Dexter isn’t exactly a happy show either.

I guess watching sitcoms once in a while is at the very least good for giving a bit more positiveness than those other shows do. I do enjoy watching How I Met Your Mother and Modern Family once in a while, and Sket Dance on Crunchyroll is also more of a feel-good show, though it does have some sad episodes, in particular the ones about the main characters’ background stories.

 

I’ve been experimenting with baking bread using the “no-knead” method, where you basically just mix together the ingredients and then let it sit in the bowl for a long time (12-18 hours) before folding it together with some flour with a spatula, proofing for another hour or so and then baking it in the oven. Some of it turned out well, like the following photos. I think they’re from the first time I tried it, if I’m not mistaken!

Mixing the bread ingredients

Mixing the bread ingredients

Folding the dough together

Folding the dough together

After baking the bread

After baking the bread

Finished bread

Finished bread

Other times the bread didn’t really rise properly, and I’m not 100% sure why. It could be either because the temperature in my apartment is too low, or I mess up some of the ingredient proportions (in particular the amount of water compared to flour), or it could be because the dry yeast I have is actually expired. I still use it because in general dry food should be okay even after expiration. Though the other problem with the dry yeast is that the box states that each sachet is supposed to be used within three days after opening, but this recipe uses so little that it takes many weeks or even months before I can use up even one sachet. Still, the last bread turned out OK after I added a bit more yeast and also put it on a lukewarm stove so it would rise more properly… Will have to experiment a bit more!

 

I’ve played quite a few games since last blog update:

  • The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 – Still no closer to finding out who the killer is, though the end of the episode featured a rather shocking relevation! Looking forward to the next episode. Reminds me that I haven’t bought the latest issues of the comic.
  • The Room Two (Android version) – A puzzle game of the “escape the room” variety, with quite high production value for a mobile game! Just as good as, if not better than the first game in the series. Also available on iOS.
  • Lightning Returns – I enjoyed this game, possibly more than the previous two in the Final Fantasy XIII series! The combat/equipment/skill system felt more customizable and action-oriented than the first two games. It felt slightly ridiculous how many “garbs” (armor) are paid DLC though.
  • Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc – A visual novel type of game which really feels like a mix between 999/Virtue’s Last Reward and Phoenix Wright. You play as one of many students who are being held captive in a locked down school building. To be allowed to escape, a student has to kill another student without being found out by the rest of the students. So when a student is killed, the rest of them has to investigate the murder, and then have a “class trial” to try and find out who the real killer is. The thrilling part is that you don’t know who is the next to die or who the killer is, and also finding out the reason why the students are being held captive. Don’t want to spoil too much, though if you don’t like playing visual novels, they have also made an anime based on this game.
  • The Walking Dead: Season 2 Episode 2 – Still a great adventure game. I feel like I regret some of the choices I ended up making in this episode, but I’ll stick with them till the next episode.
  • Bioshock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 2 – In this one you play as Elizabeth, but without her rift-opening powers. So you’ll (she’ll) have to sneak around most of the time, and climb through air ducts. Kind of felt like the sneaking parts of the Batman: Arkham series.
  • Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright – Two of my favorite game series in the same game! It’s awesome! I’ve only gotten to the second chapter so far.

 

As for socialization I guess the last few months I haven’t really spent as much time as I could have on socializing, though I still go to church twice a week. I invited Vilhelm over to play Mario 3D World last Sunday, trying to get all the stars and other collectibles, that was quite fun! We also had a “boys’ night” with the boys from church. Made a big burger. (That we cut up and shared.)

Boys' night

Boys’ night

Unfortunately had to skip out on the swimming trip and the ski trip because my operation wound hasn’t fully healed yet. But it feels like it’s almost there! Hopefully this time it’ll stay fixed so I don’t need another operation and no longer need to clean the wound twice every day.

 

Posted by on 2014-03-29 in Rambling

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Busy November month

Haven’t had time to post anything in November because I’ve been busy almost every weekend! The first weekend in November was the only weekend I didn’t have any plans. And the last weekend in October I invited some friends over to play Nintendo Land and also a bit of Wii Karaoke U, had a great time! Also we made dumplings.

Dumplings with colorful noodles

Dumplings with colorful noodles!

The second weekend in November I went to SpillExpo, which was way too packed on a Saturday. I originally wanted to go on Friday, but my brother didn’t want to go, so we went on Saturday instead… Meh, last time I go on a Saturday, next year if I go I’m going on a Friday, so maybe I don’t have to stand in line for an hour to try things. Nintendo didn’t come to SpillExpo either this year, but I guess I already know which games from them I am looking forward to anyways. We ended up staying at the expo almost all the time it was open, but a lot of the time was spent waiting in queues.

Some stall at SpillExpo with retro (and new) consoles

Some stall at SpillExpo with retro (and new) consoles

The best part of the expo was actually the indie stalls, where I could try out some cool games that I haven’t really heard much about before, and where there were almost no queues! I didn’t try all the games though, but I tried these:

  • Amphora by Moondrop – A physics puzzle game for PC where you can move things around with the mouse and also draw threads that can be connected to objects. In each stage you have to figure out what you need to do by looking at the characters and objects that are in the stage and how they react to your movements.
  • Little Big Mansion by Krisjet Game Design – A puzzle game for iOS where you control two magicians with different abilities: One of them can swap the location of two items, while the other can swap the sizes of two items. You have to move one or both of them to the exit. I guess it is somewhat similar to Escape Plan on the PS Vita.

Also got to try the Oculus Rift in a few stalls, but I feel like they probably had lowered the 3D depth/effect, because in my opinion the demos we got to try felt quite “flat”, things didn’t really pop out much. Since I’m used to setting the 3D setting to max on my 3D monitor at home when gaming, I was kind of disappointed. Still, I’ll most likely buy the Oculus Rift once it’s out, so I can actually adjust the settings myself.

Oh and on Sunday I made a “Father’s Day” meal for my father/parents. Fried chicken and baked chicken. Also an ice cream cake, but they said they had eaten a lot before so I saved the cake for later.

Father's Day meal

Father’s Day meal – Fried chicken, baked chicken, salad

Third weekend in November I went to Gothenburg to visit some friends. I also played through Heavy Rain, which had really quite an impressive story! I didn’t even notice that I had played till 2 at night when I finished the game. Besides that, I played badminton, ate at Super Rullband, went to church and the Science Fiction Bookstore. The food at Super Rullband isn’t really superhigh quality, but they had enough different sushi, Asian dishes, cakes and ice cream that I got super full after eating there! At the Sci-Fi Bookstore I bought Guild Hall: Job Faire, a stand-alone expansion that can be played without the original Guild Hall cards. I kind of like this game! Though I lost a few times when playing against my brothers…

All the caaaaaakes!

All the caaaaaakes! (At Super Rullband.)

Fourth weekend I had my birthday party at my house. I made almost the same food as for the Father’s Day meal, but also potato gratin, and I served the cake I saved, an coconut ice cream cake with chocolate pieces!

And then we played Wii U Party, more Nintendo Land and also some quiz games on Kahoot!, which was also kind of fun, because everyone can join as long as they have a smartphone and internet connection! But there weren’t that many “good” quizzes to pick from, and people also generally replied so quickly that it was hard to catch up once you were lagging behind in score. Anyways, had a lot of fun and got some nice clothes and other gifts! What I regretted most was not taking a photo with all my friends, oh well. I always forget…

Grilled and fried chicken, potato gratin, also salad

Grilled and fried chicken, potato gratin, also salad

The fifth and last weekend in November we had a costume party at church, the theme was “Superheroes and supervillains”. I actually ordered an anime costume from China, but it still hasn’t arrived as of now… So anyways I threw together a costume from mostly normal clothes, except I bought a costume hat and glued together some plastic and textile into a pair of goggles. The party was fun, we had food, a superhero quiz and some games, and took a bunch of photos that I will refrain from posting here in case anyone are embarrassed of being seen in their costumes, so I’ll just post my own selfie here.

My half-assed Spider-Man Noir costume.

My half-assed Spider-Man Noir costume.

Besides all of the things I did, a lot of great games came out over the last month! I bought Pokemon Y (which I still haven’t beat because I got into all those other games), Ace Attorney 5 + DLC, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Super Mario 3D World, and Vilhelm said he would buy Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, but I don’t think he has yet, which is fine by me since I still have all those other games. I even bought Assassin’s Creed 3 (Limited Edition, came with a coined medal/coin/thing) for the Wii U because it was quite cheap by now, but I don’t know when I will have time to play through that. Only played through the first chapter or so to test it out.

Pokemon X & Y and Assassin's Creed 3

Pokemon X & Y and Assassin’s Creed 3

And for fun I bought Pokemon Typing Adventure, a DS game which comes with a keyboard. The keyboard can actually be used as a normal Bluetooth keyboard with f.ex. your smartphone or your tablet, so if you find this game cheap somewhere it’s actually not a bad deal! As long as you can live with an English keyboard layout.

 

Learn With Pokemon Typing Adventure!

Learn With Pokemon Typing Adventure!

 

Ah, it doesn’t seem like I wrote this in my blog before, but I bought an ice cream machine with an actual motor for freezing so I don’t need to waste space in my freezer to pre-freeze a cooling bowl. This also means I can make bigger batches of ice cream at the same time! Anyways I’ve been using it almost every week after I bought it, and I’ve tried making various ice cream types.

"Chinese Triple Ice Cream" - Black sesame, green tea and coconut ice cream

“Chinese Triple Ice Cream” – Black sesame, green tea and coconut ice cream

Norwegian "gløgg" ice cream with raisins and almonds

Norwegian “gløgg” ice cream with raisins and almonds

In addition to those two examples I’ve also made:

  • Pineapple sorbet
  • Apple sorbet
  • Pineapple and cinnamon ice cream

And just to point it out: Making ice cream yourself is most likely not going to get you “cheaper” ice cream, especially when making it with actual cream, which in Norway is quite expensive. I guess making sorbets can be quite cheap if you buy fruit that is on sale. Anyways I’ve mostly been trying to make the kind of ice creams that you can’t easily buy in Norwegian supermarkets. Not all of them turn out all that well, but nothing has turned out inedible at least till now!

 

Posted by on 2013-12-05 in Rambling

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Gourmet Sandwiches and Games

I recently saw someone posting the “A Sandwich For Every Day of the Month” poster on Facebook, and decided that I wanted to actually try each one of them (or at least as many as I can). Because reading all kinds of great ideas on the internet is of little use unless you try at least some of them right? So far I’ve tried 6 of them, though not all the attempts turned out looking as good as on that poster. But they did mostly taste great!

Grilled eggplant with mozarella, tomato, parmesan and basil

Grilled eggplant with mozarella, tomato, parmesan and basil. One of my “better-looking” attempts.

Watched Iron Man 3 a few weeks ago. It was a great movie and I think better than the first two Iron Man movies, though not as spectacular as The Avengers. Two of the movie trailers before the Iron Man 3 movie was for other Marvel movies, The Wolverine and Thor: The Dark World. With that, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 coming up, I must say that Marvel is doing rather well lately. Kind of curious whether DC Comics will be able to “catch up” at all, with only the new Batman movies being successful. I haven’t really heard much hype for the Man of Steel movie, and I’m not even sure if their Justice League movie project is dead or not. Oh well.

Iron Man 3

Bought a few games last month:

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

This one is really quite an enjoyable game! Nintendo has a quirky sense of humor in their RPG-style Mario games that is fun to read. And the game is also surprisingly difficult, there are a few puzzles that took me a few plays to get. But it’s also a good thing, it does mean that the stages are actually quite varied. Even though the game is set up with a world map with stages (like Super Mario World), not every stage is just about running from one end to another.

One stage makes you find your way through a forest where some of the exits takes you back to the start of the stage, kind of like the Lost Woods in the Zelda games. Another one is set up like a game show, where you have to answer questions and solve challenges quickly to not lose all your health.

You don’t need to play the stages in a strict order either. Three of the levels are available after the start scenes, and you can to a certain degree play them in any order. Though some of the stages require you to find special stickers in order to progress. In any case, I am enjoying playing this game.

Persona 4: Golden

The PSVita really feels like it has dried up when it comes to games. This game is actually a remake of a PS2 game, but I’ve heard lots of great things about it (and about the Persona series in general). Will probably play it once I finish Sticker Star.

Persona 4: Golden

Assassin's Creed: RevelationsAssassin’s Creed: Revelations

I didn’t actually buy this game, just borrowed it from a friend. It’s not a bad game, but as with the previous games, I still kinda feel like the side quests end up distracting from the main story. And I’ve also found out that I really, really hate tower defense by now. (I suck at that part of the game…)

The PS3 version have 3D support, but it’s some kind of “fake” 3D, where they just render the graphics “flat” first, then add 3D with post-processing (using the depth information in the game, so it’s at least somewhat accurate). Still it doesn’t look nearly as good as when the graphics are actually rendered once for each “eye”.But it’s not a bad game. I do like the battle system/mechanics in the game, and it’s mostly enjoyable whenever you manage to complete a mission by using some cool maneuver. I still am not very good at using every gadget that he has though.

Darksiders II

The first game wasn’t good enough for me to really want to play the second one, I only bought this because it was on sale on Humble Bundle. The 3D works all right though it still has the problem with the sides of the screen not fully rendering. Just played through the intro and left it on hold for now.

Tomb Raider

I bought the collector’s edition of this game, I must admit mainly because it comes with a Play Arts figure. So the limbs can be moved for making poses, and the figure comes with various weapons and replacement hands for holding the weapons. Which makes this collector’s edition at least somewhat more interesting than the previous collector’s editions I’ve bought. (I guess the Skyward Sword’s special edition Wiimote is still the most useful one though.)

Anyways, I must say the game has gotten quite cinematic. Yet it is less linear than say Uncharted, because you can actually go back to the old stages to look for collectibles, in order to get experience for unlocking skills and upgrades. While the story isn’t original enough to make me want to play just to get the rest of the story (like Bioshock Infinite), it does have some mystery elements.

The game looks amazing and works great with nVidia 3D Vision! It has “native” 3D support, so unlike games that just rely on nVidia’s own 3D support, the game is mostly rendered correctly and fully even in 3D mode. The movie cutscenes are in 2D, but regular rendered cutscenes are in 3D and there are more of those so far. In any case, I’m happy to have a game that works great in 3D!

Tomb Raider Collector's Edition

Cut the Rope: Time Travel

I do quite enjoy the Cut the Rope games. The stages are short enough that you can play the game whenever you have a few minutes, yet each stage is varied enough that you don’t feel like you’re doing exactly the same all the time (*cough*Angry Birds*cough*). So when I saw they had a new game out, I bought it for my phone this time. (The previous ones were bought on the iPad, which I don’t really bring with me much anymore.)

Cut the Rope: Time Travel

 

Man, it’s quite a list once I start listing them up. I must admit I just buy humble bundles without even considering what the games are, just to get them on Steam. So most of those games I don’t really plan to play unless I somehow “run out of other games to play”. Which is probably never. Hmm did I already write that earlier? Meh.

In other news, I “modded” an old wall lamp into a Bioshock Infinite lamp.

Bioshock Infinite lamp

My cheap Bioshock Infinite lamp

Oh also today after church we went to a friend’s place to make dumplings. Making dumpling doughDumplings!

 

Posted by on 2013-05-12 in Rambling

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