Umami-box

AB. Alton Brown. You gotta love the man. Even though Food Network is deep in the pockets if the umami marketing machine (there hands are grabbing away at least), Mr. Brown will have none of that. So, after hosting an episode of The Next Iron Chef that was practically a Kikkoman ad, he’ll get right up on a soapbox in his show, Good Eats, and denounce all the marketing fluff that surrounds “umami.”

Good man.

Library déjà vu

I am having such a bizarre moment of déjà vu that I had to stop and sit down to write this down.

I’m sitting at a desk in the Gardner Main Stacks of the UCB library. I can say with absolute certainty that I have never been down here before. But, I did once have a very vivid dream that I remembered quite clearly in the morning, in which I had been running through what was a library at Berkeley within the dream — why I was running we’ll leave to some other time. As you might have guessed, the Gardner Main Stacks look eerily like the library in my dream. The placing of the shelves and study spaces, to the three levels with overlooking terraces, open spaces looking down, the placement and shape of the stairs, and the sky lights in the ceiling. Notably the space in my dream had higher ceilings and more width to the main walkway, as well as more packed shelves and study spaces, but everything else including the lighting and the wood and steel fixtures and general color scheme look exactly alike.

Given that there aren’t exactly too many different ways the interior of a library can look (when I had the dream, I thought it was the VLSB library with some alteration) and the haziness of dreams in general, déjà vu isn’t too surprising, and I do get that a lot, but this was just too eery to not write down.

Microsoft Store? More like Scientology recruiting center.. »

Does this feel really eerie? I’ve heard that the MS Store was going to be similar to the Apple Store, but wow. The huge glass façade, floors, tables, the employees with their bright-colored shirts…

Eerie, yes. But I just couldn’t get past the crazy screaming hordes of Microsoft gurus. It felt like some sort of cult (or, self-help seminar) recruiting session—the opening salvo of brain-washing…

Reading this post on The Brainy Gamer made me realize that I’ve been doing the same thing: leaving new games unplayed.

I’m not entirely sure, but I think Batman: Arkham Asylum is still sitting in my 360 with less than an hour of playtime on it. My pre-ordered copy of Brutal Legend is still in the Amazon.com box that it came in, and of course I’ve held on to this copy of Wolverine: Origins from GameFly for far longer than fiscally reasonable.

I bought Batman and Brutal Legend because I was anxious to play them and anticipated their release. The hype surrounding helped the decision, but for once the hype was right. Yet I have no drive or desire to play them.

It isn’t because I’m not spending time gaming—I still manage upwards of 10 hours each week. That time is, however, almost entirely spent in either Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2, two fairly aged games, and with the same four to ten people every time. I enjoy playing video games as a social activity (let’s not forget that co-op gaming was the largest reason behind my Xbox 360 purchase), but it has been limiting the breadth of gameplay I am experiencing. (Though one could say that I am, *ahem*, “gaining experience” in these two primary games: becoming better at playing them and especially with these people, friends, and teammates.)

I really would like to get back into, and finish, Batman. Brutal Legend I hope to soon play and add to the collection of Tim Schaffer games I’ve fallen in love with. Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, with its expansions, must still be played with the save file which I hope I backed up. And, despite all the recent exposure making it appear as something quite apart from its touted Baldur’s Gate heritage, I am still eagerly awaiting Dragon Age: Origins.

So, to all who keep inviting me to play L4D and TF2 every night: No offense, but I need a break to play some new games!!

Who am I kidding though…I’ll probably be back as Bill or a Demoman tomorrow night. See you then. Reminds me of this tale, let’s call it a testimony.

Hacks, Pruning, and The Point of This Blog : gordsellar.com »

… Korea, which shares with Canada a long history of being peripheral …

Some interesting observations..

IMDb Turns 19. »

IMDb was also one of my earliest contacts with the internet. When I was in the first(?) grade, my mom had printed out and brought home for me an IMDb page of Star Wars facts and trivia. I think I still have that with me to this day…

A Troll Squats On WWWBING.com — Literally »

Unrelated to the story: I didn’t even realize Lycos and Excite were still around… how is it that excite.com doesn’t look like it’s changed more than barely since the mid 90’s??

Cross-eyes

I’ve been watching the new series FlashForward. The premise and opening half hour was was pretty compelling if just for the scale of it. Most of the events following haven’t been nearly as exciting and the questions it tries to pose are fairly cliché. I’ll give it a few more episodes, but into the fourth I’m leaning towards dropping it.

There is a scene in the third episode between Janis and Mark that messes with the eyelines which produces an interesting effect whether intentional or not. Usually scenes are shot carefully so that the actors’ eyelines match during closeups. In this scene, the rapid cuts, the floating/panning camera, the mismatched eyelines is a little disorienting, but since Janis is drinking, gave it an interesting feeling of drunkenness.

If Korean dramas were right...

… and Korean men were actually like this, they’d all be tall, handsome and built. And, they’d all stop the car to get a kitten out of a tree, all the while forgetting that their wife is going into labor in the back seat.

The amnesia that all romantically involved characters have towards one another in the typical Korean drama is not just unbelievable, but plain frustrating. The childish obliviousness to the obvious feelings the characters have for one another can be frustrating, too, but at least we’ve all been there. The constant ruining of relationships because one person suddenly forgets that their significant other is anxiously awaiting their meeting and the apparent under-utilization of cellphones in one of the most cellphone-prolific cultures is just mind numbingly annoying.

It’s as if almost no Korean writer knows how to write drama into a story otherwise. To be fair, maybe most never had an actual relationship to draw experience from. Or, they did, but it is so not-talked about that they have to construct their stories in the purely fantastical world of these shows.

Don’t even get me started on music as a device in Korean dramas. Watching a typical Korean drama is akin to being trained like a dog. [to be continued]