Minicular!

Was in Paris last weekend with my brothers and some other friends. It was surprisingly cold! While the temperature itself wasn’t that much colder than Norway, it felt colder, might be because Paris is more humid than Norway…? But the weather was clear, so we got to see the sightseeing spots pretty well at least!

The Eiffel tower, also a lamp post that I now see stands out kinda prominently in this photo. Meh.

I found out that my Galaxy Nexus has a panorama mode, it is pretty neat! Got some cool panorama photos from the Eiffel Tower. I guess a good thing about going to Paris in winter is that there is probably a lot less tourists. We still had to queue to get up the Eiffel Tower, but I’m sure the queue must’ve been much shorter than during summer. Probably. Or it could’ve been negated by the fact that they only opened one eleveator instead of multiple ones. Anyways we had also bought tickets beforehand so we could take the shorter queue.

I probably didn’t hold the phone straight enough when panning, so the last two panoramas ended up unstraight. To my defense my hands were cold and numb.

We had a few nice meals, although on the three course menus we generally didn’t like all the courses. Foie gras wasn’t really to our taste, but I guess it could’ve been the restaurant we chose that didn’t make it well? I wouldn’t know, probably won’t try it again. I did like the Chinese style frog legs I had at the Chinese restaurant which Beyoncé visits when she goes to Paris (according to the owner, he had a photo on the wall with him, his wife and Beyoncé). Don’t remember the name of the restaurant though. Other than that I had pretty ordinary food. Oh, I did try "Sliver of kangaroo" at a hotel, but it tasted so much like normal beef that I’m still not sure if I just got an ordinary beef steak. Oh, had one KFC lunch. Just because we can.

  
From left to right: Chinese style frog legs, lamb shank, dumplings (xiao long bao)

  
From left to right: Skewered scallops, dessert (macaroon, chocolate fondant and vanilla ice cream), sliver of kangaroo

Unfortunately our flight back on Sunday was cancelled, and while we did get a new flight on Monday and also free hotel for the night, we ended up waiting at the airport almost the whole day to get our hotel rooms, so we couldn’t go for more sightseeing. Also the sucky Formula 1 hotel didn’t accept the first voucher we got, so we had to go back to the airport to get a new voucher for another hotel… Additionally, it was very difficult to get taxis because most of them wouldn’t drive in the snow, so we had some trouble getting around. On Monday we went to the wrong bus stop and almost couldn’t get to the airport in time, but eventually we managed to get a taxi. My brother (who ended up in another hotel) said that the bus was almost full anyways (because so many people got their flights cancelled and were staying at hotels around the airport), so even if we were on the right stop, we might not have gotten on the bus!

Eventually we got back home.

I spent most of this week getting all the Riddler’s trophies/challenges. Finally got 100%, though it was kinda disappointing that the Riddler sidequest was finished before I got 100% of the trophies… but I can understand the choice to make it easier to finish the sidequest for those who don’t want to spend all that time doing all the trophies and challenges. I probably won’t try to play through all the challenge maps, probably I’ll play another console game now. Hmm…. Dead Rising 2? Mass Effect 2? I think I kinda feel like playing some short action games first though.

I bought The Secret of Chateau de Moreau on my iPad, Enoch told me about this game. It’s a point and click type of adventure game with some puzzles and visual novel elements. The handdrawn graphics and music style is very similar to Hotel Dusk, and the "present evidence and explain alibis" part of the game resembles Ace Attorney (Phoenix Wright) a little. Plus there are a number of different puzzles, kinda like Professor Layton (and a lot of other adventure games too I guess). The Secret of Chateau de Moreau doesn’t feel quite as polished as the mentioned games though, the interface sometimes feels kinda "simple" and not as smooth as console games, and there are noticable spelling errors in the game text. Also the music, while good, seems to consist of rather short tunes, so you’ll notice that the music is looped after maybe roughly half a minute.

The story follows an adopted son of a rich family, who has recently returned after studying abroad, because his adoptive father has just died. It is then revealed that the father was poisoned, and you get four days to find out what happened. Each day (at least as far as I’ve played) plays as a regular adventure game where you have to walk around, talk to people, pick up items and find out where (and how) to use them, solve puzzles to get more items, etc. At the end of the day the main character have to explain what he’s found out to the his siblings, trying to prove people (and himself) innocent (or guilty).

The story is interesting if not very unique. I do feel like I want to find out who the murderer is, and also finding out more about each of the siblings! And there are a few comical characters and scenes to break up the seriousness in the rest of the game, which makes it not as "heavy" as Hotel Dusk. I quite like this game so far, I only wish it was available on the Android (since I had mostly stopped carrying my iPad around after I got my new phone). Hopefully similar games will be released for Android in the future.

I also bought the Humble Bundle for Android, although I already had finished a few of the games (finished World of Goo on the PC and Osmos on the iPad). Well it’s partly to support charity, so it’s fine. Anomaly is a decent game at least, and Toki Tori seems interesting (waiting for them to release a version which will work on my Galaxy Nexus). Edge was not that interesting in my opinion, it’s pretty much just running around and trying not to fall down before you reach the exit. (From their trailer it seems like it might get pretty difficult later on, though I haven’t played that far yet.)

I spent my Christmas and New Years in Hong Kong this year too. Kind of nice to meet my family again, but this year I think I spent even less time travelling around Hong Kong than before. Partly because we live so far out on the countryside that going anywhere further than Sheung Shui and the few closest train stations is a hassle, but also because I feel like I’ve been most places already.

Cousins

Though this time we went to Taiwan, first time I’ve been there! And first time trying a hot spring, which was quite enjoyable!

I want one of these! Also a sauna.

This time I tried to not hesitate as much when shopping, trying to buy things if I thought I wanted or needed it. I think I was quite successful because after two weeks my luggage was already almost too full to close. Which made the last week of the trip kinda boring since I almost couldn’t buy anything anymore, so I almost didn’t bother going out.

I did buy more stuff after this.

I enjoyed building the Space Rail, kinda want to buy a bigger one! But after using it for a while, the rails started moving around making it not work so well, so I had to adjust it. I guess I didn’t build it well enough.

I also bought a PS Vita, originally for a friend, but I couldn’t find a cheap one and he didn’t want the kinda expensive one I bought, so I just kept it. It does have nice graphics! Though I don’t have any other games to play on it once I finish Uncharted: Golden Abyss. Maybe I’ll try creating a foreign PSN account and see if I can buy any games. But I’m still trying not to buy new games before I finish more of the ones I have at home. Oh, I did beat Arkham City, although I didn’t finish all the sidequests yet.

So many gadgets! The PS Vita is indeed bigger than the PSP.

I must say that after I got used to the 3DS, I always feel kinda disappointed playing games on flat monitor, even when playing TV or PC games. Although I do agree that the 3D on the 3DS isn’t all that good either, sometimes it’s not easy to keep the “sweet spot” for watching 3D, making the screen a blurry mess. I consider buying a Sony Personal 3D Viewer, which would completely eliminate the problem of crosstalk by putting a full 720p monitor in front of each eye. But it’s apparently more expensive than a cheap 3D TV and not nearly as sociable. And I’d probably get even more nearsighted. But it would give cinema-size 3D display without crosstalk! And I wouldn’t need to figure out what to do with my current HDTV, which is part of the reason why I haven’t bought a 3D TV already. Don’t want to throw it away so quickly, and having a TV in my room in addition to one in the living room seems a bit excessive. Oh well, I guess in the end I’ll just wait more… I’d have to buy a new PC to be able to play 3D content smoothly anyhows.

Speaking of 3D, I made a 3D video with the food photos I took in HK.

I got a new phone at work, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus! It is great, and now that I have free mobile data traffic from One Call, I can at any time surf the web when I want to lookup anything, which is really nice! I could surf the web with Acer Liquid, my previous Android phone too, but it was slow whenever I installed more than a few background apps, so I didn’t like using it as much. But the new phone is a lot more responsive. I don’t even use my iPad so much anymore, leaving it at home most of the time.

Nowadays I feel like I just want to stay at home more, and take a break from travelling… Maybe try and finish more of my games. Although I will be travelling next month too. Anyhows I should be heading to bed. I still suck at updating my blog with small updates instead of big updates. Oh well.