Saturday, June 28, 2014

Saying goodbye to your castle

A man's home is his castle, or, so the saying goes. At the end of this month I will be moving. I've lived in my current residence for nearly nine years, which is nothing to brag about, but it feels like a long time now that I think about it. Over those years all of my friends have moved, oftentimes repeatedly, but I've been the one staying put and watching the community morph around me.

When you live long enough in one place, you start to feel like you've always been there and you'll never leave. To be uprooting now and moving to a different part of town seems so foreign. The move is only a few days away, but I almost feel like I'm in denial about this. Change is a naturally scary thing, and I can't deny that I'm a bit nervous about everything that will change with this. But change will come. It must come. I will gather my things, close one door and open another.

It's time to leave. It's time to go. Goodbye, my castle.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Sprite soda

I have a strange affinity for Sprite soda. It's not my favorite soda, and there's plenty of other sodas I would pick over it, given the choice, but I'm ok having a Sprite if there's nothing better to choose from. The problem is, even though I sort of like the taste of Sprite, it leaves a terrible aftertaste in my mouth. The nefarious thing is, the quickest way to get rid of that aftertaste is to have another sip of the same Sprite soda I just sipped a minute ago. I believe there's a name for this sort of thing; whereby the consumption of something gives a benefit but also causes a problem that can only be solved by more usage of said thing. I don't know what that's called, but whoever invented Sprite has done exactly that. I feel like I should be upset, but I just can't deny the evil genius of Sprite. Congratulations, whoever invented Sprite. You have created the perfect commercial product.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Homefront Sequel Announced

Earlier this week it was announced that a sequel is being developed to 2011's video game Homefront. The game is titled Homefront: The Revolution and is being developed by the UK division of Crytek, who acquired the rights to Homefront after developer Kaos Studios went under in 2011. The original Homefront told the story of a future where a unified Korea invaded and conquered much of the United States and you played the role of a resistance member who helped fight the occupation. Although Homefront's premise was wildly implausible, it was still interesting and made the final product all the more disappointing in its failure to fully capitalize on its potential. At about only four hours long, the singleplayer campaign was woefully too short and felt like it needed another year in development. There was a small multiplayer suite that played well enough, but it could not make up for the half-baked singleplayer experience. I had originally planned on doing a post on Homefront in my Games Deserving Sequels series, as I thought the concept behind the game was worthy enough of having another studio take a stab at it. Instead, Homefront will at some point in the future make an appearance in my Gaming Disappointments series, where I'll give a little more depth to how it demonstrated that a good concept means nothing if the execution is flawed. (UPDATE: No it won't. I discontinued that series, as you can read about here)

As for the sequel, I'm hopeful that Homefront: The Revolution will learn from Homefront's shortcomings and deliver a stronger experience than what we got in the original game. I am a bit concerned that it is being developed by Crytek, a company that has a mixed record with storytelling in their games. Granted, this is Crytek UK, which is not the same team that made the Crysis and Ryse games, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and remain cautiously optimistic. At the very least we know it will be a good looking game; if there's anything the Crytek guys are good at, it's graphics.


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Infamous Chocolate Chip Cookies aka Ricardo's Fitness Sabotage

It's official, I've made it to 100 posts. Thanks to those of you who've checked in from time to time to read my writings. To celebrate, I've posted below a recipe for absurdly delicious cookies. I got this recipe from a friend of mine awhile back. These are officially known as Infamous Chocolate Chip Cookies, however I've made a few slight adjustments to the recipe, which makes me feel somewhat justified in renaming them. From here on out, this recipe shall be called Ricardo's Fitness Sabotage.



Ingredients
3 2/3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (coarse, if possible)
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
10 to 16oz* of your preferred type of chocolate** in your preferred format***
sea salt for sprinkling
1/5 cup water (optional)

* This depends on how dense you want the chocolate in the cookies. I would suggest starting towards the upper end of your first time making these and then see how you like it. Go even higher than 16oz if you want.
** I have made this recipe with semisweet, bittersweet, white and milk chocolate. All are good, though my personal favorite is semisweet chocolate. Try to go for higher cacao percentages when using semisweet and bittersweet chocolate.
*** I have made this recipe with chocolate chips, discs and chunks. All work, though chunks can be a bit trickier just because of their shape.

Equipment
2 large bowls (and maybe one or two other smaller bowls)
Mixing spoon
Measuring cup(s)
Measuring spoons
Large plate
Plastic wrap
Baking sheet
Oven mitts
Cooling rack(s)
Tupperware or something else airtight to store the cookies in
Small ice cream scooper (optional)
Electric mixer (optional)

The ingredients and most of the equipment.

Let's get started

In one of your large bowls, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix it all together for a minute until you have everything combined as best you can.

The flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt mixed together.
In another large bowl, cream together your butter and sugar until light and fluffy. If you have an electric mixer you can use it here to speed things up, but be sure to either use the lowest or second lowest setting. If you don't have an electric mixer, then a regular cooking spoon will work too; it will just take you a few extra minutes to make sure everything is mixed together evenly. One thing that I find helps with this is to have the butter warm and partially melted. Be sure to scrape down the bowl as needed while you mix.

The butter by itself.
Butter + regular sugar.
Butter + regular sugar + brown sugar.
A electric mixer can be helpful in combining the butter and sugar, but it's not necessary.
Now add in the eggs into the bowl with the sugar and butter. You can either crack the shells and add them in one at a time, mixing in between, or you can ready the eggs in a separate bowl beforehand and then pour the eggs slowly into the sugar and butter. Both methods work just fine and using one method over the other has no significant impact on the final product.

I usually prepare the eggs in a separate bowl.
With the eggs added in.
Next add in the vanilla extract and mix. Here is where you can also add in the optional 1/5 cup of water. You don't really need it but it can help keep the dough from getting overly dry. If you can, try making these cookies once with the water and once without and see which you prefer.

Now start to slowly add in the dry ingredients from your other bowl (the flour, baking power, baking soda and salt combination). I prefer to pour in the dry ingredients in thirds, mixing in between. You could potentially use the electric mixer again at this point, but it can make the dough flaky if you're not careful.

Adding in the dry ingredients.
After all the dry ingredients have been mixed in.
Fold in your chocolate gradually, trying to get as even a concentration as possible throughout the dough. This is easier said than done, and will probably take you a few minutes. It is here that you'll make your decision as to how much chocolate you add in.

This is about 14oz of chocolate.
After a few minutes of mixing.
After you're satisfied with the distribution of the chocolate throughout the dough, you now have the most difficult part of the recipe; resisting the temptation to eat the cookie dough right now. DON'T GIVE IN! Instead, wrap the dough air-tight in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for 1 to 3 days. I usually refrigerate mine for just over 2 days.

Wrapped up.
There's a bit a chemistry behind letting the dough sit. Allowing the dough to rest lets the gluten in the flour relax, which results in more tender cookies. The flour should also more fully and evenly hydrate and some of the sugar will break down into smaller molecules which improves browning and depth of flavor.

A few hours before you bake, take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it warm up to room temperature. When you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. If needed, grease your baking sheet.

Start putting small balls of dough on the baking sheet. If you have a small ice cream scooper or a well-rounded spoon that can help. I've read a few people who insist that you should not mold the dough before baking and you should just scoop the dough out with an ice cream scooper or a spoon, but I've not noticed a significant difference in the end product (other than the shape of the cookies). For your first sheet of cookies I would suggest trying out different sizes of cookies to see how they turn out and what you like. I personally prefer to make balls of dough that are about 1 to 1.25 inches in diameter. These will result in cookies that are about 2 to 2.5 inches in diameter.

Dough balls on the baking sheet.
With regards applying the sea salt, there are several ways to go about it. You can apply the salt before, during, or after baking. I normally salt the cookies during or after baking because I have a hard time getting an even salting on the dough prior to baking. By "during" I mean that I sometimes bake for about seven minutes, briefly remove the cookies from the oven to sprinkle on the sea salt and then put the cookies back in the oven for the remainder of the baking. As you might expect, the cookies tend to rise in the center while baking, which means some of the sea salt will just roll right off the cookies when you sprinkle it on. The adjust for this, I oftentimes take a spoon and very gently press down on the cookies to flatten them and make the application of sea salt easier.

Depending on how large your cookies are and how you like them, you can bake the cookies for about 10 minutes for smaller cookies and 15 or so minutes for larger cookies. Again, this is where you experiment to see how things turn out and what you like. The cookies I prefer to make are on the smaller side and I like to slightly under bake them (about 8 to 9 minutes).

When the cookies are done baking, remove them from the oven and place them on a cooling rack or something else and allow them to cool a minute or two.

Right out of the oven.
These cookies can either be served right away after cooling or stored for a later time. If you store them be sure to that they are in some sort of air-tight container.


Enjoy

Sunday, June 1, 2014

LOTR Syndrome

Recently I watched through a miniseries on the History Channel called The World Wars. The premise of the series is that many of the major figures from World War 2 had defining experiences during World War 1. Through reenactments and historical footage, the series showed the transitions they went through from their younger selves prior to and during the first war to their older selves in the second. A day after I finished the series, I saw a commercial for a rerun of the series on H2, the History Channel's sister channel, however what was going to be shown was an extended version with extra scenes that did not make the cut in the original showing. This reminded me of how the Lord of the Rings movies had the theatrical versions which you saw in theaters, but when they came out on DVD you could get the extended editions of the movies which included footage that was cut from the theatrical versions. Thus, I have decided to call this phenomenon of showing one version of some sort of media at one time, and then showing an extended version at a later point, Lord of the Rings Syndrome, or, more shortly, LOTR Syndrome. Although Lord of the Rings was not the first film to do this, it is the one that stands out most in my mind, and therefore it gets the honor of having a syndrome named after it.

Unlike DBZ Syndrome, LOTR Syndrome can potentially be a good thing. If the original version was solid, and the additional material is actually meaningful, then an extended versions can be a nice bonus to the experience. If, however, the original version was not so good, then the best an extended version can hope to do is salvage the experience somewhat. I'm still debating whether or not I will watch the extended version of The Worlds Wars, not because I didn't like the series but because I don't know if I want to dedicate the time to it. If I do, I'm hopeful that what I'll get will be the good sort of LOTR Syndrome.