Happy holidays!

I hope everyone out there is having a great Christmas and New Year (and/or whatever middle-of-winter-oh-it's-SO-depressing-let's-have-a-party holiday you celebrate).

I made out like a bandit this year, pretty unexpectedly.

Just a few highlights.  Game nights with the family were great.

Magic the Gathering something something something...
my least favorite of the games we played.

For Christmas I got a Steam Link and a Steam Controller.  Expect a whole other post on them later but let me just say: YAY!

And then I got this: a bronze statue of a dancing faun.  I adore him.

Happy New Year, all!

Ingressination

I've been playing around lately with a little mobile game called Ingress.  It's basically a global capture-the-flag sort of deal with two teams, Green, the Enlightened, and Blue, the Resistance.

I chose the Resistance at set up (because, let's face it, I'm nothing if not resistant), and it's been a bit entertaining because my neighborhood is in constant flux. I don't know how many players this game really has, but it's active to say the least.

It works a little like this: Sites important to human culture -- statues, plaques, fountains, landmarks, &c. (and businesses which pay the game maker to be one of those sites) -- are portals through which leak exotic matter (aka, XM).

As an agent for the Enlightened or the Resistance, a player's job is to capture those portals by placing resonators around them (each portal can take up to eight resonators).  A fully resonated portal can then be linked to other fully resonated portals by someone who has the proper key.   Links that fully enclose a space then cover it in a field.  Fields control the mind units (MUs) of the people within that field.

You gain portal keys, resonators, and various other things (such as the XMP bursters and the ultra-strikes with which you attack enemy resonators or the portal shields with which you protect your own team's portals) by hacking the portals.  You hack by getting within a certain range of the portal and tapping the "hack" button in the game, or you long-press the hack button to glyph hack (play a short memory-based pattern-drawing game for extra effective hacking).

Alternately, it works like this: you wander around town attacking enemy resonators and setting up your own, and growing increasingly suspicious of anyone else that you happen to see meandering about poking at their phone.  Usually for no good reason, but you never really know ...  And because your attacks are most effective when you're (GPS-wise) standing right atop your targets, you end up wandering into courtyards, street car tracks, parks you've never visited before, and the odd cinema lobby (no, really).

If nothing else, Ingress has me walking a little further than I usually would - like, instead of making a bee-line for the subway station after class, I might go a block north or so to just check up on a portal and see what I can do.  Note though that my dog has no patience for standing around while I hack or attack portals, so at least she's still sensible.

My only real complaint with the game is that it makes my phone super hot -- enough that on cold days it doesn't matter that I have to take my gloves off to get something done -- and it uses battery like crazy.  Like crazy crazy.  I left it running while I walked around going to three shops today so that I could collect XM (because XM powers your activities and you gain it by walking around), and when I got home a mere 2.5 hours later, I had only 45% battery (and it had been full when I left).  Yeow.  Under normal usage, my phone only has to be charged about every three to four days, so that's quite a power suck.

But the game is at least a bit fun, and I'm learning some of the who's who of my local agents, both the friendlies and frustratingly aggressive greenies who keep tearing up all the lovely fields we make.  And I'm seeing the backs of buildings I've never before bothered to look behind.

Busy is as busy does?

Long week here: group project, two big exams, dental work, sick dog.  I'm sure there were some other things, but that hits the main highlights.

You know, I don't know anyone who likes group projects.  I talked to someone this week who actually switched programs because their former course of study had far too many group projects to cope with.

The absolute uselessness (and potential harm) of group projects is something for another post, though.  This is just my bitch-moan-whine post about this particular one.  (Self indulgence!)

If you'd asked me two weeks or so ago, my own project was going swimmingly though still irritatingly since, as has been (sort of) observed, "hell is other people."  We had six questions our paper had to answer in five to seven pages, and there were five of us, so that seemed like a kind of light load for all, in general.  (Though, truth be told, I could have written it myself in a few days with much less time and energy wasted, as could have any member of my group.)  But now I also feel like a nagging monster.

In addition to my question, I also took the task of  writing the intro and collating all the various other pieces into one whole, and making sure it was formatted, printed, and handed in on time.  (That's just the control freak in me making sure that stuff gets done, you know.)  There was only one group member I had to write to to ask "where's your page of the paper?" so that's not bad.

Then came the last class before a week-long break with the paper due when we returned, and we were supposed to get together and exchange email addresses with one another.  Except in my group of five, only one other member of my group showed up for class that day, and she and I were the only ones who'd already exchanged email addresses.

Then a reminder was posted mid-week, the last week before the turn-in, that our student numbers needed to be on the title page.  OK, fine — that wasn't in the information we'd been given to date, but that wasn't a big addition.  I posted to the group discussion board asking them to either email me their ID or edit it into the shared draft and got … nothing in return.  It was Thanksgiving weekend here, but by Monday afternoon I was concerned (especially since the paper was due Tuesday at 10 AM), so I blasted out an email message via Blackboard.  By midnight I'd gotten everyone's ID for the title page except for one group member's (the same person I'd had to nag earlier), so mostly good.

Then in class Tuesday, the instructor announced we'd be presenting our papers on Thursday.  Muh. Short notice.  It wasn't on the course outline.  I hadn't missed a class so far or been late once, and this was a new surprise for me.  There was no indication of what it was worth for our grade.  And with two midterms to write on Thursday, a vet appointment for my dog that she badly needed, and a dental appointment for myself (lost a filling and really needed to have that repaired), I had not been planning to attend class on Thursday morning.  I stewed about it all morning and on my commute home, and decided I just could not make the presentation myself.  But fine — there were four other people in my group, right?

So I posted this all up to our group discussion Tuesday afternoon when I got home.  No reply.  Wednesday afternoon, I sent out a Blackboard email about the presentation and added that I'd be happy to put together some slides or even print-outs they could use, but I doubted I'd make it to class for the presentation itself.  No reply.  Yesterday came and went (tooth is fixed; dog is medicated; got a 90% on one midterm; and I'm fairly sure I did even better on the other, yay me).  But not a single peep from my group.  Nothing.  Radio silence.  No idea how the presentation went, or if any of my group showed up at all.

The worst prospect: We have YAP (yet another project) to do together in a couple weeks.  The thought makes me feel tired already.

What is this experience supposed to be teaching me except "avoid, like the plague, any instructor who assigns group projects"?

I suspect my groupmates are tired of seeing posts and emails from me.  Seriously, there are 37 posts on our group discussion board and I wrote 22 of them.  Many of my posts are asking my groupmates for information (such as, could you provide the source for this? Can you add a sentence or two that defines that term? What is your student ID?) and getting no response at all.

I'm finding it hard to care: I'm way too exhausted at just having to deal with other people, period.

So where the hell have I been, anyway?

Good question.  Glad I asked.

So, in the last month, I moved, and that took a seriously unreasonable amount of time.  Since we moved just down the hall, rather than even to a different building (I'm a creature of habit and comfort, after all), we thought, "Hey, we can do this all ourselves."

Here's the problem: we lived in the same apartment for nine years. You tend to gather a lot of crap in that time. I felt like I spent far too long just throwing stuff away, and it was insane.  I think we both have hoarder tendencies.  There were at least three bags of empty glass jars that went down to recycling.  I finally got rid of a large amount of cotton ticking I was never, ever going to manage to use, plus a whole lot of fabric odds and ends (for the same reason).  Old shoes.  Old clothes.  Old curtains.  Old sheets.  Spare computer bits.  Worn-out pajamas.  Stashes of bubble wrap.  Old electronic parts.  Gone, gone, gone.

I did the bulk of the moving myself, me and our trusty Canadian Tire dolly.  First: that dolly was freaking awesome and it made it totally possible; second: never do this kind of thing all yourself if you're older than like 20 and you have actual furniture and stuff.  It took us a long time; it was hot and swelter-y the whole time; and, damn it, I'm too old for this shit.  I smashed way too many fingers and toes, and I swear, by the end, I seriously thought I'd broken both my feet they hurt so bad.

But the good news now: we're fully moved and we cut down on our material possessions in a glorious way.  The new place is fine.  It's sort of a mirror image of the old place (which makes navigating in the dark and finding light switches amusing), and the kitchen and dining room have switched places so now, instead of the dining room and living room being up against each other, the kitchen now abuts the living area, which was weird at first, but I'm used to it.

The other thing is that, since September 8th, I've been going to school full time, and it's been a lot like nearly drowning while trying to look like "No, no, I got this."  I'm finally starting to tread water, hence the time to write here.

School has changed a lot since the late eighties, let me tell you.  Blackboard is the bane of my existence, partly because many instructors don't use it as well as they think they do, partly because it's surprisingly stupid and pervasive at the same time, and partly because, if it was the only place I needed to go online to work through my courses that'd be one thing, but each textbook also has a wholly separate "companion site" and they're not integrated with Blackboard.  Bouncing back and forth between five different textbook companion sites and Blackboard all the time leaves you continually wondering what you've forgotten to do.

Additionally, instructors these days seem to think themselves half instructor and half babysitter, and I'm really not used to being addressed in that "you silly kids need to learn some responsibility!" tone (especially by people younger than I am).

When I was last in school, you went on the first day, gathered up the syllabus which said, "This is what we expect of you," and then you did your readings as you had time, showed up for the lectures if you felt like it or you needed some clarification on what you'd read, and took the exams in the classroom on the appointed time and day, and tra-la-la-la-la, that was it.

Students these days should be so lucky.

The online thing lets instructors track everything a student does, and boy do they.  "You didn't spend enough time working that problem!"  It really should be OK to respond with, "It wasn't a difficult problem — get off my back, you square!"  So many lessons have podcasts or Quicktime videos that would be absolutely just as effective as a simple piece of text, but no, there's no text available to read, so instead I have to spend significantly longer listening to it than I would if I could just read it.  And someone needs to teach some of these folk how to use a microphone so that every "p" they utter isn't a minor 'splosion in my earbuds.

But um, yeah, I'm back in school, working toward my (eventual) CPA, and trying to remain mellow in the mean time.  Wish me luck?

Yeah, that's what happened.

Luxury in the Modern Age

I hate to come back from a hiatus just to start complaining but …

Lately we've been thinking about moving.  This is difficult because we like our current place, but there are Reasons, and over time those Reasons have tipped the scale from "probably not worth the pain in the arse of actually moving" to "probably worth it, if we can find a place we like as well, or which is much cheaper".

So that's led us into the dark and terrifying world of trying to find a place in the downtown Toronto market.  This is complicated by the list of things we really want (no carpeting; functional kitchen; dog friendly; sane walking distance to certain locations), and things we'd like to have but might be able to wiggle on (not-horrible view; quiet building; hands-off landlord; separate room for a home office; on a low floor but not the ground floor; not overlooking a construction site).

It's further complicated by Toronto's ridiculous condo market.  Over the last several years, more and more optimistically-termed "luxury condos" have been (and continue to be) built and come onto the market, but the definition of "luxury" can be shamefully low.  For some places it really is about the quality of fixtures and surfaces (excellent) or the building amenities (great if you're into them); for others, it's a term of art and owners and real estate agents look like fools for using it.

So, for those who bought some of these "luxury" condominium units as investments and are hoping to rake in thousands of dollars of rent per month from them,  I offer you some wholly unwelcome advice: get out of this sucker's game while you still can.  From the looks of things out there, a lot of you were sold a bill of goods, and now you're looking to pass that bill on to some tenant somewhere.  It makes a lot of sense, frankly, that so many of you have had places vacant for months and I'd be surprised if you ever manage to rent them at the prices you're asking.

As sort of a PSA to those who've bought investment properties in many of these new luxury buildings, I wanted to just put this out there.  Your property doesn't qualify for the term "luxury" if:

• The "master bedroom" isn't large enough to have a full- or queen-sized bed in it.  Being able to wedge it in a corner so that two sides of the bed are fully against the walls doesn't count.
• The master bedroom doesn't have a window.  Making one whole wall of that bedroom glass so that it has exposure to a room that does have a window doesn't really mean the bedroom has a window.



Ahhh, the lap of luxury!  Where's the
sink?  A bit far away, really.

• You can't cook a proper meal in the place.  This runs the gamut from tiny, pokey kitchens with no counter-space or ventilation to the extreme ridiculous such as: the kitchen is strung out along the back walls of two different rooms and the stove is not only smaller than normal but actually part of the living room?
• The "den" or "+1" has two (or fewer) walls.  Having a space in your living room large enough for a desk in does not mean that you have a "+1", a second "substandard" bedroom, or a den.
• You don't allow pets.  It's hard for me to imagine a "luxury lifestyle" in which my tiny dog is not welcome.  It's harder yet to imagine paying you $2,000+ per month for that dubious privilege.
• There is no storage other than a single, small sliding-door closet.  Where are people's clothes, shoes, coats, towels, cleaning supplies, extra toilet paper, and assorted other daily-living crap supposed to go?



Itsy bitsy, teeny weeny.

• The entire place is less than 500 square feet, even when you include exterior space in the measurements.  Part of me believes that small spaces can be quite luxurious, if done right, but that's not what's happening here.
• You, as landlord, leave your unwanted things in the place but say you're "generously allowing the tenant use of" the stuff.  Seriously.  "Generously".
• You're not renting the whole place.  If you're just trying to rent a single bedroom while you live there too, get thee to Craigslist — you're looking for a roommate, not a tenant.
• Residents have to share the building with transient strangers because it's a hybrid condo-hotel or some other nonsense.  People who are just there for a week or a few days are noisy and irksome, and no one wants to have to live near them, and especially not at "luxury" rent rates.
• There is no parking or storage locker.  People living downtown at exorbitant rates simply expect to have a single parking space and a storage locker.  If you, the landlord, are using these, you need to seriously discount the asking price; if you bought a "luxury condominium" without these as an investment property, perhaps rethink your ability to invest.
• Normal waits for an elevator in your building are longer than 8-10 minutes.  Do you enjoy standing around on the 35th floor wondering if the elevator will ever show up?
• The only view from the place is of an elevated expressway less than 3 meters from the window.  That's not just ugly and noisy, it's unhealthy.
• The "condo" is actually a poorly converted storefront or former office.  Bonus points if the shower is just a drizzly spigot in the ceiling of the bathroom, right up against the toilet (with no separation), and there's just a sad serial-killer style drain in the floor.
• I don't have to look very hard to find news of police raids and double murders in your development.  You know who you are.

Consider this my weary sigh.

It's hard not to get fed up with a market that, in every single ad, breathlessly announces "ELFs included!"  And no, that's not mischievous wee folk who help you with your chores if you're good to them (I'd definitely pay extra for that).  It means that in the kitchen and bathroom, when you flip a switch, the lights come on.  That is considered an "extra" in many of these "luxury condos".  One worth five asterisks on either side to highlight the awesome luxury of electrical light fixtures being included at no extra charge to you.  Though you probably do need to pay the hydro bill, so that's a mixed blessing.

Ah, Toronto … you make me so tired sometimes.

A Game of Dwarves

I recently played through (and wrote a guide for) A Game of Dwarves released in 2012 by Zeal Game Studio, published by Paradox.

PC Download

The game is something of a builder/manager game: you control a settlement of dwarves and guide them in both mining out the area around their settlement and building the things they need to be happy and do well.

I really liked the potential of this game: I find it a fun thing to occupy myself with while watching TV or just winding down in the evening, and there is some challenge to it too — more than once I restarted a scenario to come at it from a better angle.

Overall, I'd say it's a decent enough game when it's available at a reasonable price.  Less than $10 is certainly OK, but around $7 might be more appropriate.

Why would I want to knock the price down further?  Well, the game certainly has its flaws.  For one, while there are Steam achievements for the game, some simply cannot be earned because some of the levels won't give you full credit for completing them.  (Paradox knows about this bug but has said that, with Zeal no longer in existence, no further development will be done.)

There are several other little problems that, while they are not game-breaking, can be annoying as well.

• Dwarves have problems climbing staircases, and sometimes repeatedly fall through them before navigating them successfully (this can be particularly annoying when they're starving and need to get up those stairs to eat).
• Pathing is generally pretty good, but, for some reason, when some dwarves are attacked, they just stand around instead of fleeing and you end up needing to move them manually or watching them die.
• If you happen, at some point, to spend all your money, no new wealth tally shows up when you get more (until you restart the game).
• There are a lot misspellings and grammar mistakes in the game text — anywhere from repeatedly misspelling "environment" to sentences that make no sense whatsoever and game missions being called different things depending on what piece of text is referring to them.
• I've had a lot of problems with camera angle.  Sometimes about midway into a level, it just decides the only view I want of the dwarves is at the level of their feet, and nothing I can do can get it to reset or take a better angle.  The only solution is waiting for it to get so bad that, when you load the game the game corrects it.
• Level design leaves a lot to be desired: sometimes the monsters right by you are level 10 or better, while the ones far away and deep underground are level 2.  It seems somewhat random.

I'll also say that, tone wise, I'd have preferred fewer puns and pop culture references (example: one resource is "dragonforce", with the tooltip, "the hardest metal") and dialogue that was worthwhile reading — instead, it pauses your game mostly to waste your time.  Some of that is, I think, poor translation work (or non-native English at the very least), and it tended to annoy me to some degree in that I generally expect a bit more polish from a game I've paid to play.

Hapy Dwarves Doing Happy Dwarf Things

Yet, all that aside, I really did enjoy the game itself.  That is, despite its slap-dash feel and poor finishing.

There are some DLC available for A Game of Dwarves, both add-on packs (Pets, Ale Pack, and Space Dwarves) plus some in-game purchases of furniture available.  I got a few of the in-game furniture packs, but they seemed a little overpriced (about $0.99 USD for three pieces of furniture on average).  

Overall: the game can be fun, and I can entertain myself for an unreasonable amount of time laying out settlements and making attractive rooms for my dwarves to enjoy.  Just know that the game is not really "finished" in a sense, and try not to pay full price for it.

Happy Vernal Equinox!

Friday at 18:45 marked the vernal equinox here in Toronto, and my (false) shamrock is catching up with the times and deciding to bloom.

Happy spring!

The Bow of Heaven Trilogy

The Other Alexander: Kindle | paperback
Blood of Eagles: Kindle | paperback
A Mixture of Madness: Kindle | paperback

Over Christmas, I read the Bow of Heaven trilogy by Andrew Levkoff.  (Late review, I know, but things have been hectic!)  The trilogy consists of The Other Alexander, Blood of Eagles, and A Mixture of Madness, all available as Kindle or paperback books (see the links to the right).

The books are, obviously, historical fiction, but they are exceedingly well written for the most part, and I enjoyed them thoroughly.  Even my harsh eye only caught two anachronisms, often a great game for me with historical fiction  (vanilla as a perfume one book, and tobacco being smoked in Parthia in another).  The narrative style takes some liberties with things such as forms of address, but that simply makes the reading far less awkward to modern readers than contemporary writing would have done.

The title character begins as a young student of philosophy, but ends up captured by Sulla's troops during the sack of Athens in the First Mithridatic War.  Taken to Rome, Alexander is given as a gift to Marcus Licinius Crassus, and soon establishes himself within the household of one of history's wealthiest men.  We then see the next thirty years unfold through the eyes of Alexander as he recounts his life and times — and as he struggles to accept his enslavement.

Alexander has a strong voice, and he ruminates on the inhumanity of slavery and war, and he carefully shows us how one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in all of history dies ingloriously on a battlefield far from home in his blind attempt to avenge himself upon a hated foe.  Even though anyone familiar with the history of the end of the Roman republic knows what's going to happen in this tale (in a general way) this is a novel re-telling that is well worth your time.

This book has lending enabled on the Kindle.  If you actually know me and you'd like a loan of it, get in touch.

Sesame Dressing

It's late winter, so here I am craving salads and other green things to eat.  This week, the craving came with a strong desire for sesame, too (probably because I have no steady supply of halva as I used to).

This is the dressing of the week, then, is a Japanese-ish sesame dressing.  So if you're also craving green things, this might come in handy.

3 Tbsp sesame seeds
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1½ Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp sesame oil

Toast the sesame seeds in a pan until they are dark golden brown, then grind them using a mortar and pestle (a suribachi and surikogi is very handy for this).  Meanwhile, combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and whisk them until everything is smooth.

Combine the sesame seeds with the rest of the dressing, mix well, and enjoy.

This is not only good on salads, but it's great on steamed green beans and steamed asparagus.

The Sims 4

I took advantage this week of Origin’s Game Time event for a 48-hour trial of The Sims 4.

I should say that I did not expect to enjoy it very much given the “word on the web” circulating about the level of execution and general game play.  Nevertheless, I did enjoy the game for the 48 hours that I had access to it.  (48 hours was basically enough for me to play it an actual 4 to 5 hours, after dinner, two evenings in a row.)

Game play was very smooth, and the game ran unexpectedly well on my desktop.  It’s a good, stock, Sims base game with an updated look and feel to the interface and the graphics.

Some have complained that the graphics are worse than in the Sims 3 but they aren't worse so much as different.  For me, the oddities that things were so very stark, and that the ceilings were so damned high that your Sims end up with a lot of wall space.  (I’ve never personally seen ceilings this high in any house anywhere ever, though they could exist, I suppose.)  I kind of felt as though my poor, lonesome Sim was knocking around a large, echoing space all the time.

Deja Vou mixes up some mac and
cheese in her enormous beige kitchen.

Outdoors, the scenery all appears larger-than-life too, though this may be that it’s finally something like normal sized and fleshed out a little.  The landscapes were far more natural and appealing than those I’m used to from Sims 3.

Deja Vou tries her best to annoy a neighbor.

Still, the game wasn’t completely bug free.  Old glitches evident in Sims 2 and Sims 3 still reared their heads here in Sims 4.

Deja Vou and a neighbor get a little too close in her kitchen.

Pools were in.  I say that because I’ve seen a lot of hand wringing about pools being excluded from the base game and how this is a crime against the very nature of The Sims franchise, but there they were.

Small lots mean really small pools.

What adding the pool did emphasize to me was just how small most of the lots were.  I looked around but could not find a way to add more lots to any neighborhood so, at least for now, it seems a Simmer is stuck with whatever the designers of the default neighborhoods think is appropriate for them to have.

The game also announced to me after a little bit of play that Sims can multitask now.  This seemed to mostly mean that they could carry on conversations while cooking, and while doing other things.

I hate to think about how much this happens in the real world.

Gardening seemed to be improved in that the plants looked better and there were new options (such as “take cutting” and “splice”)  and the ingredients were better integrated into the cooking skill.

The weeding work is never done.

While playing Sims 4, I very much missed the CAS (Create-a-Style) tool from Sims 3.  As in The Sims and Sims 2, with Sims 4 you’re back to being stuck with only a few color options  on any item — anywhere from no options to about eight — and the options are, in large part, bland and unsatisfying: Zero Punctuation summed it up as “chintz and pastels or fuck off back to Call of Duty”, and that does seem to sum it up pretty well.

There are other genuine complaints.  Open neighborhoods are gone.

Get used to this.  You’ll be seeing it a lot.

This meant that when I wanted my Sim to go visit a neighbor, and I clicked on their door, I faced a loading screen while she went to that house.  That house was empty so of course she had to just traipse right back home through yet another loading screen.  There are loading screens between the Sims in the neighborhood and any non-home activity (museum, library, park, &c.) they might want to try, and that loading screen gets old, quickly.

This also means that your Sim just disappears when it’s time for them to go to work, or when they “go for a jog“ or any other activity that takes them away from their home lot.  (So, I guess, no more job rabbit holes, either.)

The neighborhoods themselves are pretty small.  The base game comes with two, and they each have  a few housing zones, a big park, and an area of other community lots (library, museum, gym, and so on).

My Sim’s current neighborhood is highlighted
above, showing its general size.

Of course, leaving the bounds of one of those regions means facing loading screen, which was something I couldn't stomach as often as my Sim wanted to roam about.

Build mode took a little while to figure out and, once again, there were some things missing that fans of the franchise have become accustomed to.  For me, the main one was the lack of any terrain tools: no more raising or lowering lots (all the lots are just level), which for me takes away the fun of L-shaped stairways and the like.  It’s not an absolutely huge thing, but given how tiny some of the lots are, being able to bend a staircase around a corner would help quite a bit.

Overall: The Sims 4 still has much the same charm as The Sims has always had, and it’s enjoyable enough to play for a while.  I can’t say how long my enjoyment would last, though, once I was facing the full limitations of all the loading screens and the lack of being able to customize clothes and furniture as I’m wont to do in Sims 3.  The game runs pretty beautifully now, but so did The Sims 3 before all the Expansion and Stuff Packs were added, so I will just have to wait and see on that matter.

I am not planning to buy it in the immediate future: it’s just too pricey for the content offered and with the other negatives I’ve listed above.  I’m also not considering it right now because of it not being offered on Steam, but that’s a problem I don’t think EA’s management will ever grow up enough to resolve.

A Tale of Two Stollen

While I was home for the holidays, my mom made a great traditional Christmas stollen (that is, a German bread-slash-fruitcake very similar to Italian panettone).   I really enjoyed it as a breakfast food: You see, I’m not really a breakfast person at all but if I do have something, I want it to be light and sweet, and a pastry of some sort really works for that.  (I love, love, love cheese danish for breakfast — don’t judge me!)

Last week, I was running low on cereal and decided to make myself a stollen for the rest of the week’s breakfasts.  So I whipped out my Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Bread (hardback|paperback) and made the Strasbourg variant he detailed.

Stollen the First

The resulting stollen was OK.  Not fabulous, but totally edible and good enough.

I should note that I made a couple changes to his recipe here.  Since the candied fruit I can buy at the local store is full of corn syrup, tartrizine, and other sad excuses for quality ingredients, I gave it a miss and used sultanas and diced dried figs in it, instead.  Also, where the recipe called for confectioner's sugar, I used “instant dissolving” (AKA, super fine) sugar instead in order to avoid the corn starch in the former.

Apart from that the recipe called for a starter of yeast, salt, water, flour, sugar, and an egg with butter whipped into it.  This sat for a few hours, then then more flour was added along with blanched almonds, the dried fruit, a little brandy, and a bit of cardamom.  This sat until it was double, then went into the fridge overnight, and was taken out the next morning, allowed to double again, then put in the oven.  Once out it was buttered and sprinkled with sugar.

The bread was really dense, and I think the cooked figs did the overall flavor a bit of a disservice (at least to my taste buds).  There was a strong yeasty-alcohol flavor to it too, which wasn't the brandy, I don’t think.  It was interesting but, for me, it was “too interesting” for breakfast.

I should say that I often have this “too dense” problem with the Bernard Clayton recipes, and in large part, I believe it’s that this book was first published in 1973 and the flour we get at the store now has a whole lot of additives that were not in the flour then.  It just doesn’t behave as it should in some circumstances.

Stollen the Second

Anyway.  For my second attempt, I started with the recipe from the Ohio Farm Bureau, dropped the figs, then added the brandy and cardamom that I’d liked from the first recipe.

The result was a much lighter bread that tasted sweeter (though I don't think it is) and is much more the sort of thing I was really looking for.  If I’d change anything if (when) I make this again, it will be to add more dried fruit than I did for this one, and perhaps use one less egg.

I know that the crust in the photo looks quite dark, but it’s soft and sweet (and just compare the color to your nearest loaf of Wonder Bread).

The recipe I ended up with for Stollen the Second is:

1 package (2¼ teaspoons) yeast
¾ cup very warm water
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
3 whole eggs
1 egg yolk, white reserved
½ cup unsalted butter, softened and divided
3 ½ cups flour, plus extra, if necessary
½ cup chopped blanched almonds
⅓ cup sultanas
⅓ cup golden raisins
1 Tablespoon brandy
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
3 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon melted butter
instant dissolving or super fine sugar

Combine the yeast and the water in a large mixing bowl. When the yeast is foamy, add the sugar, salt, eggs, egg yolk, the ½ cup of butter, and half of the flour. Beat for 8 to 10 minutes, ensuring the butter is whipped into the dough.

Stir in the remaining flour along with the almonds, sultanas, raisins, brandy, cardamom, and and zest until well mixed.  Cover the bowl with a slightly damp cloth and let it rise in a warm place until it doubles in bulk (usually 1 to 1½ hours).

When double, stir the mixture down, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and store it in the refrigerator overnight.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and shape it into an oval about 12 inches long and 8 inches wide. Spread the butter over it,  then fold the dough in half lengthwise, pressing the edges together firmly.

Place the dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet, cover it, and let it rise until it is double in bulk (about 45 minutes to an hour).

Mix the reserved egg white with a tablespoon of water and use it to brush over the dough.

Heat the over to 375°F (or 190°C), then bake 30 to 35 minutes, until the loaf is deeply golden-brown.  When it comes out of the oven, brush the crust with the melted butter and sprinkle with the instant dissolving sugar.  Let the stollen cool for 30 minutes before serving.

It's not that hard to make, and it lasts a while (I just cover the exposed end with plastic wrap), so a slice a day has been a good breakfast for me.

Parmesan Sesame Crackers

I've been feeling pretty domestic for a few days now, so have been baking, as I do.

Today was sesame parmesan crackers which (with a pasta machine) are pretty easy to make.  The result:

Crispy yum yum.*

The recipe:

1½ cups durum semolina flour
1½ cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp sea salt
⅓ cup olive oil
1 cup water
sesame seeds
grated Parmesan cheese

Combine the flours and the salt, then add the olive oil and water and mix until combined.  Divide the dough into 8 to 12 parts, oil each ball, and set aside.  Let the dough rest 30 to 60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450℉ (about 230℃).  Roll each ball out into a thin strip (I use the second lowest setting on my pasta machine), then layout on a baking sheet atop parchment paper.  Prick each strip with a fork, then brush each strip lightly with water, cut to cracker size (a pizza cutter makes this easiest) then sprinkle with sesame seeds and grated Parmesan cheese.  Bake 7 to 9 minutes, until deeply golden, then allow to cool on rack for 5 minutes.

These crackers are really great for snacking with cheese and sliced salamis.  They keep well in a ziplock bag.

* The crackers in the photo above are paler than the recipe generally makes but I was out of whole wheat flour and used all purpose flour instead.

Castle Ravenloft Board Game

Castle Ravenloft Board Game

Over the holidays I had the chance to sit down and play the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System board game, Castle Ravenloft.

I found it to be a lot of fun in general, however I think the “Adventure System” needs to be a lot simpler to appeal to a broader audience than hard-core D&D nerds like me.

The box weighs in at around seven pounds (oof! that's about 3.2 kg) and includes a lot of stuff, though I should say that a good portion of that weight turned out to be left-over heavy card stock we threw out once we’d punched out all the tiles and other bits and pieces from it.  The set includes a fifteen-page rule book and a similarly sized adventure book of single-page adventures plus a set of interlocking dungeon tiles (to build the board), a twenty-sided die, a large stack of playing cards (monster cards, encounter cards, power cards, treasure cards), several much heavier stock cards for the stats of the PCs (Heroes) and NPCs (Villains) and various tokens and hit-point counters in heavy card, and, finally, dozens of unpainted plastic miniatures (some recognizable from other sets).  A full inventory can be seen on the D&D Adventure System Wiki.

We played with a varied group of experienced D&D and board gamers over the course of a few different gaming nights.  The games ranged anywhere from a solo game to a full group of five with ages ranging from eleven to sixty-eight.

The game plays a lot like the D&D 4th edition games I’ve sat in on, complete with ability cards (At Will, Daily, and Utility powers) and healing surges with the exception that it's totally playable by a solo player — the game’s rule set, essentially, takes the place of having a Dungeon Master in the game, and each monster and villain comes printed with a set of “tactics” to let you know just what they do each turn with no decision making on that level really necessary.  The games take roughly 40 to 90 minutes to play depending on how many people are involved and how complex the chosen adventure is.  A simple adventure might be “you wake up in the dungeons of Castle Ravenloft and that can’t be good, so try to get out before the sun sets” while a more difficult one might be “you’ve got a brilliant get-rich-quick scheme: get into the dungeons of Castle Ravenloft and escape again carrying twelve treasure items”.

Game play is fully cooperative meaning that the players either win together or lose together: if one player's Hero dies, then the game is lost for all players regardless of how well they've done individually.  (This caused some drama during one game when the party rogue claimed their share of the treasure and quickly escaped the dungeon, leaving the rest of the Heroes there to pull their own weight; the rest of us didn’t fare so well so, despite the rogue getting out of the dungeon and having done their “fair share”, they still lost the game.)

The game requires a seriously huge amount of table space to play: not only are you building a random dungeon out from tiles that are fairly large themselves, but you need to have several decks of cards out on the table to draw from, and each player also needs the space to lay out their Hero’s card, their various power cards, their treasure cards, and the cards of any monsters, encounters, and traps they're controlling on the board, all in an organized way so they know the order in which they received them.  We played with five people at a table made to comfortably seat eight and just barely had room enough to see an adventure through.

If I had one major complaint it’s that the game is just too complex: there is just too much to keep track of.  For a full game of D&D it seems sort of normal but for someone expecting a board game, they may feel quickly overwhelmed (or in the case of younger players, bored).  For example, each Hero has some effect on nearby heroes such as giving them bonuses on their attacks or being able to heal them if they themselves do not attack on their turn.  In addition to this, each player may be controlling a monster or three, a trap or two, and an encounter.  Each player's turn then consists of the Hero Phase (them moving their Hero and attacking or not), the Exploration Phase (in which they may turn over new dungeon pieces and spark new encounters as well as causing new monsters and traps to appear), and the Villain Phase (in which any monsters or traps controlled by that player take their turns).

What that results in, when you get all five players going, is a chaotic mess with a lot of people saying things like “Oh wait!  He should’ve gotten a +2 on that roll because of …” and then a lot of back-tracking to try to sort out what really should have happened, if you’d managed to remember all the myriad details you needed to track to make the game work.

As a minor complaint: the rules are extremely vague in some places which either leaves room for argument and rules lawyering, or requires make-shift patchworks to cover those situations the rules gloss a little too lightly.  Example: the rules never say whether the Cleric Hero may heal himself and all the wording seems to indicate that he’s supposed to only heal others — but that really makes no sense in the context of actual playing so we just said “OK, the cleric can heal himself, duh.”  There are numerous “how to play” videos and such around the place, but I'd argue a board game really should not need you to take an online class in order to learn how to play.

The Good: the game can be reasonably paced if you learn the ropes well and just move it along.  We found the best way to do this was to have one person who wasn’t playing a hero, but was really just “minding the rules” for each player and saying what needed to happen next — you know, a DM.  The game materials are generally of very good quality (except that one of our gargoyle miniatures came sans head, which was odd) and there’s a lot in that box to make the game worth the price, especially if you can get a good deal now that it’s a few years old.  The game has got a nice D&D 4e flavor to it, without all the extra set-up of building characters, reading an adventure, lugging around rules books, and getting a DM, and so on.  It comes with a series of varied adventures for you to try, and you can download the rule book from Wizards of the coast if you want a taste of what you're in for before buying.  (Sadly, the extra adventures they published for the game can no longer be found on their site.)  It’d be exceptionally easy to use the materials in the box to write and play your own adventures as well.

I'd recommend the game for D&D fans who can digest complex rules quickly and don’t mind a lot of bookkeeping — it’s really a quick way to have a D&D game without a lot of the usual fuss and muss.  I’d not recommend the game for anyone who wants a quick board game as a simple diversion.  It might be a slightly-simpler-than-D&D gateway for introducing a new player to D&D but, for me, that would miss a large part of the appeal of the actual table-top role-playing games, namely the role-playing, by reducing the game to simple goals and plastic pieces on a board.

Health and Wealth in the New Year!

It's been very quiet here in recent weeks, with the holidays keeping me busy.

But here's your pork and cabbage for health and wealth in 2015:

(We take ours in fried dumpling form, around my house.)

Happy New Year!