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!
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
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 – 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! (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
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.
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
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!
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
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!
