Let's see...

Books to be mentioned/commented upon:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Gaiman's latest novel has a quiet, haunting quality to it. It focuses on events that happened during the childhood of the narrator and features Gaiman's usual blending of mythology and reality into an enchanting dream-like musing on the events that shape us and the choices we make in life. It's relatively short, but I think that just means it's easy to read again. Which I can see myself doing as I think there is indeed more depth to be found. Much like Lettie's titular pond/ocean.

5 Centimeters per Second by Makoto Shinkai. I first ran across Shinkai when he did the film, Voices of a Distant Star, which was both beautiful and heart breaking. This is a graphic novel version of his newest film. It is also beautiful and heart breaking. I really like Shinkai's work, but dude needs a donut. And a happy thought.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve, by Mark Twain was a lot of fun to read. Definitely worth tracking down. It's a wry look at the first couple and how they came to know and love each other.

Vader and Son was the first of this series I believe. It's more cute comics about Darth Vader, this time raising Luke. Worth flipping through.

Not books:

Mama was pretty good. I didn't find it to be very scary, but it's definitely got some creepy moments and was a really nicely told tale. I especially liked the montage during the title sequence where they illustrate the girls' first few years through a series of childish drawings.

The Imagine Dragons CD is downstairs waiting for me. I am looking forward to listening to it. I just might have to play Radioactive very loudly on my way home...

I really need to get Space Cadets back to the table...

Formula D and Wallflowers

Got in a game of Formula D tonight. Let's see if I can get this link to work so you can see the pictures.

It was a pretty fun game. I managed a pretty steady lead thanks to some smart gear shifting and some decent rolls, but there was a lot of position jockeying for the rest of the spots.

In more depressing news, we watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower last night. Reminded me a lot of high school. Minus the abuse and institutionalization. Most of my friends my freshman year were juniors so I didn't have to deal with the bulk of people leaving, but a lot of those experiences were pretty similar. It was kind of rough to watch even if it was relatively happy at the end.

Enjoying the silence

The house has been pretty empty these last couple days. The girls are off at camp and G has been in and out with friends. Ah blessed silence. Lovely wife has managed to tidy up G's room to some extent. Who knew he had a floor in his room?!

We've watched a couple B grade action movies these last couple days. The Numbers Station with John Cusack and The Double with Richard Gere. They were serviceable action/thriller movies. Not great, but not horrible.

I finished reading You by Austin Grossman. It was a lot of fun. Similar in some ways to Ready Player One and different in others. It tends to cover the history of video games as opposed to the future, but they both deal with people that let their lives revolve around them or the industry. Pretty fascinating. I've read some negative reviews by people that had issues with the point of view changes and so on. I think they're idiots. It's not that confusing. Admittedly 2nd person does take a little getting used to if you've never read something like that before, but it makes perfect sense in this context as Grossman is discussing a medium that is all about player interaction.

Apparently G is scared by Betrayal at the House on the Hill. This could have had something to do with the fact that he ended up getting selected as the traitor, or it could be that he just finds the game spooky. Not sure. The girls still love it though.

Random things we've noticed recently: chocolate chips make pretty much all breakfast foods better, home made ice cream is still really good, grilling on a serious bbq grill is pretty awesome, serious bbq grills still have problems with odd hot and cold spots.

I should also mention that I rode a zip line.

Vroom Vroom

Formula D is pretty great. G and I played a quick game once we got back from the camp out just to give it a go. We then played a big game Sunday with Lovely Wife's Mom and the whole family. We had a pretty good time. Although G started to lose a little interest about 2/3 through the course. I think selecting gears and optimizing your lane selection might be a touch above him. Although not much. It's definitely a better game with more cars on the track as you really do get to jostle for position and fight for corners and so on. Definitely a fun game and I highly recommend you give it a go. (And there are more tracks you can pick up and beginner's rules and advanced rules and...)

Managed to survive another year of Fathers and Sons camping. The hike wasn't too bad (although the short way down in near dark was not the best of ideas). Breakfast was good. There was absolutely no sleep. I need either a cot or one of those self inflating/deflating pad things. Something...

If you're following E3 at all you're aware of the new consoles coming out and how Sony stomped all over Microsoft in their press conference when it came to privacy rights and consumer rights and a few other things. It'll be interesting to see how things play out once Fall comes and people actually buy the things. And if you haven't seen it, this is hilarious.

McK has started volunteering up at Timp Caves. That's a little fascinating to me. M has had Day Camp for Girl Scouts this week. And G has Day Camp for Cub Scouts this weekend. I think lovely wife thought that Summer would be less busy. She was wrong.

Father's Day this weekend. Too bad Dad is far away. Will have to get him to actually use his iPad and video chat. And maybe play some Ticket to Ride.

Our love is like a golf course

If you substituted holes for years. Or something like that. (This is just a ridiculous way to say we hit 18 years this past week on our anniversary) In a lot of ways it doesn't seem that long, but then McK decided to go to the DMV and get her learner's permit (in spite of the DMV guy telling her she had to be at least 5 feet tall). And yeah, that and two other kids and other assorted parts of life chimed in and it's actually not that hard to realize that it has indeed been that long. But they have (for the most part) been great years and lovely wife is as lovely as ever, so there you go.

She even bought me a game for our anniversary. In spite of all the other games we've gotten recently. True love folks. I got Formula D the racing game and I can't wait to try it out. Little cars and lots of dice and fun race tracks and... Heh.

We've been having a pretty good visit with lovely wife's Mom while she's in town. So that's been fun. She had a birthday and my Dad had a birthday. It's kind of an event filled week.

Alas there is camping waiting at the end of it. I guess it goes to show that nothing is perfect.

A little of this, a little of that

I finished up Nos4a2 by Joe Hill. It was pretty darn good. It's the most Stephen King-like book he's written (in my opinion) but that's not a bad thing. I liked all the little nods to his previous books. I always find it interesting when authors build their own world over the course of their books and put little nods here and there. I also found this one to be pretty spooky and certainly horrifying in lots of places. Definitely some characters you wouldn't want to run into. So if you like horror/fantasy stories, give this one a go.

Waiting in the Summer was a sweet little anime series. And that's really all I have to say about it. It almost had the most depressing ending ever, but fortunately they fixed that.

We've been watching more Hemlock Grove. I think it's growing on me some. It's not bad, I'm just not convinced it's good either. Of course, I'm pretty sure I had that same impression of the book.

We had a pretty good holiday weekend. Games were played, managed a nap here and there, other games were played. It was nice.

G managed to place third in the Writer's Olympics with a story featuring a squid and unicorn doing battle to see who would win and who would be lunch. I ... actually have very little to say about this as well.

M decided to use her head as a mitt the other day during the teacher/6th grader softball game. She claims to be fine.

Is summer over yet? What do you mean it just started?! Ugh...

Playing around

Mostly wanting to try out a blogging tool I ran into. Technically this is attempt 2, but the first was lost due to my own ineptitude. Alas.

As an addendum to the previous post, I should point out that teenage girls are very loud. You wouldn't necessarily think that five teenage girls would be that noisy, but you'd be wrong. They are very noisy. And only some of it was game related. This is really just an observation, but if you find yourself in the midst of a rampaging group of teenage girls, hope,that you have some earplugs. 

Went and saw the new Star Trek today. It was fine. Lovely wife liked it a touch more than me, but I suspect that's due to the Cumberbatch factor. It's interesting to see how they are creating this new reboot universe. Little twists and so on. I wonder what people that have never seen the originals think.

Urge to play games rising. Very glad of the three day weekend.

The dice, they mock me

Finished the 4th Reacher book. Enjoying that series quite a bit. But I am taking a break while I have lots of other things to read. I'm getting close to the end of NOS4A2 and You by Austin Grossman is pretty interesting too. So many books... (There's a new Hex Hall spinoff that's out as well!)

Watched the Persona 4 anime series. Mostly as I knew I'd never get around to playing the game (I'm still lost somewhere in the midst of 3) and wanted to know a little about the story. It was actually a lot of fun to watch. And I felt it said some really nice things about the ties we have with those around us.

McK had her birthday party and unleashed some board games on her friends. Escape: the Curse of the Temple was enjoyed by all, although I believe it did stress several of them out. We later tried out Dungeon Fighter - a dexterity game where you have to throw dice at a target on the table in order to fight the monsters found in the dungeon. The trick is the dice have to bounce at least once before it hits the target and occasionally you have to throw them in strange ways as you encounter certain types of monsters or equip certain types of weapons and so on. So basically it's an excuse to look silly in front of your friends while having a good time and losing badly. I rather enjoyed it. But the dice in both of those games are quite merciless.

Lovely wife will probably tell you that she's very glad school is out next week. Mostly as I think she needs a break. It will be interesting to see what mischief the kids get up to this year. Sadly far too much of it will probably involve a car...

If you're expecting something other than movie or game commentary, you're in the wrong place

Got to see John Dies at the End finally. It was good fun. I liked it quite a bit in spite of the large plot chunks they left out. Of course the movie was never going to contain everything, so I think they did fine. It managed the humor and the horror pretty well. Plus the weirdness. Can't forget the weirdness.

Cold Prey was a perfectly serviceable slasher film that suffers some in a post Cabin in the Woods world. It's Norwegian (I think). I liked it.

Les Mis was Les Mis. Unless you have absolutely no exposure to the musical, you know what you're getting.

For grins and chuckles I watched From Beyond again to relive some of my misspent youth. It's still an enjoyable Lovecraft flick from the Stuart Gordon/Jeffery Combs era.

McK decided she would be perfectly happy with a trip to BGR for her birthday gift. So she got a copy of Escape: the Curse of the Temple. It's a real time co-operative dice game. Each game lasts exactly 10 minutes. In that time you roll dice like mad to try and explore the temple and activate gems. Twice over the course of the game a gong will sound (there's a soundtrack) and you have to make it back to the starting chamber or you will lose one of your dice. And that's bad. At the end you have to find and make it to the exit and then roll more keys than there are gems left in the vault. And if one of the players doesn't make it out, you all lose. So it's a tight little game where you have to weigh sticking together (you can help each other unlock some of your dice if they land on the evil black mask side) and getting around and exploring tiles so that you can find the exit and free up the gems. Lots of fun to be had here. Plus it plays up to 5 and you can play it with kids pretty easily.

Other than that it's been a week. I'm ready for some form of vacation. Sadly that is not in my future.

Hitchcock and Pi

Hitchcock, the film detailing the making of the film Psycho, is pretty brilliant. I found it to be funny and sweet and pretty amazing as it showed what Alfred Hitchcock and his wife went through in order to make that film. Of course, now I want to see Psycho again...

Life of Pi was very beautiful, but also a little odd. I think I'm still coming to grips with the story and what it entails and how it fulfills its central conceit (a story to make you believe in God). I think I've finally wrapped my head around bits of it. So it is worth seeing, but also know that it's one of those films that requires some investment and will stick around in your head for a bit afterwards.

Had a great visit with Dad. Got to see McK in Pirates of Penzance, which was quite good (especially for a middle school production). Ate far too much good food. Failed to fix the sprinkler line, alas.

Introduced Dad to String Railway. Still thoroughly enjoy that game. Didn't manage a game of Space Cadets though. Did get in some Ticket to Ride Europe however as I managed to get him set up on his iPad. Now we can play long distance.

And finally a happy birthday to McK. She seems to think she needs to learn to drive soon. I have my doubts about this...

String or nothing

So we watched The Hobbit. Peter Jackson needs to step away from the franchise. I've seen Lord of the Rings and it was fine. Good even. He is ruining The Hobbit. It's my favorite book of the series and I don't need all the extra stuff shoved in and three movies. Guillermo del Toro should have done this film. So yeah, not really a fan. When it actually was The Hobbit, it was good. The rest of it is really unnecessary.

Still reading the Reacher books. Still decent (if silly) fun.

I think I've read some other stuff, but I have no idea what it was now. I've been bad about throwing things in Goodreads lately. Alas. I am, however, currently reading Nos4a2, the new book by Joe Hill. So excited.

We picked up String Railway and the expansion for King of Tokyo. Looking forward to playing both. Dad is in town and I plan on making him play String Railway. I think he'll get a kick out of it.

Life continues to be a muddle of kid centered activities and the occasional random form of entertainment. G managed to score a goal at his soccer game the other night. That was fun. He also managed to kick the ball into the face of one of his team mates. That was slightly more fun (for the adults watching).

Maybe it's time to make some ice cream...

Holistic Detectives and Chinese Cinema

We watched the first season of the BBC Dirk Gently based on the old Douglas Adams books. It was fine. Sort of a quirky Sherlock that couldn't ever quite get out from under that shadow. And it was a little odd seeing how they chopped up the books for the episodes. But it was relatively fun to watch and that counts for something.

I've also been watching a lot of Chinese films lately. The Great Magician was a rather fun little movie with some pretty good magic performances scattered throughout. But Let the Bullets Fly has probably been my favorite. Sort of a Chinese Western in the vein of Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars. You have your bandit pretending to be the mayor, his potentially traitorous adviser and the crime lord that runs the town. Lots of things ensue including some hilarity, some drama and lots of twists and turns. And bullets. There are those too. It's currently on Netflix so give it a go.

I've been wandering through the Jack Reacher books. The first two were pretty decent, I currently have the third and I'm reading some random one in the middle as I snagged the ARC for it a while back. (2010 I think?) I may have to pick up the movie here in a couple weeks.

Courtesy of the Flip the Table podcast we played a round of Wrong Scattergories the other day. It was rather amusing. It's basically madlibs with Scattergories. We also played Castle Panic which is a fun little cooperative tower defense board game. Lovely wife had a pretty good time with that one.

I broke down and picked up the 1910 and Switzerland expansions for the Ticket to Ride: Pocket iOS games. That Switzerland map in an odd little beastie. It didn't keep me from thrashing lovely wife in a game, but we're pretty new to it, so I suspect there will be lots of ups and downs there.

Oh. We watched Pitch Perfect as well. Really great music. Plot was a little cruder than I expected, but it was still pretty funny. Apparently they're making a sequel.

Have I mentioned that Tabletop is back with Season 2? It is. Today is an episode about the game The Resistance.

Lovely wife and I have also been watching Strip Search over on the Penny Arcade youtube channel. I am amused by how much she likes it. It's reality tv with webcomic artists. I tolerate it because of the art and the Penny Arcade vibe. (It's a pretty good show)

Zoned out

Well, Spring has managed the first blow with a lovely sinus infection. Remember kids, Mother Earth hates you and will do her best to kill you every chance she gets. Fortunately antibiotics seem to be doing their job. Mostly.

Tabletop day was last Saturday. Hope you all managed to play a game of some sort. McK and I managed a game of Cargo Noir. Interesting little bidding game.

I also managed a good chunk of the new Tomb Raider when I wasn't trying to claw my throat out. I like it. It's certainly darker than some of the previous entries. Well, maybe grittier is a better descriptor. But I enjoyed traversing around the island and looking for things while fighting off the creepy cult.

I finished Darksiders as well. It was pretty fun and I look forward to the sequel. It might indeed be a shame that there may not be more of them.

The first Jack Reacher book, Killing Floor, was pretty good. I'm reading the second one now and am enjoying it as well.

Lovely wife's Dad is in town so he's been treating the kids to all manner of junk food without me. He also took them to the local petting zoo type place and now everyone is screaming about getting a baby goat. Supposedly they are cute. I have my doubts.

Spring yadda yadda yadda

I still hate Daylight Savings Time with the passion of a thousand burning suns. So that's good to know. The weather is absolutely off its rocker today. Snow, rain, blue skies. It must be Spring I guess...

Jungleland, by Christopher Stewart, was a book in the same vein as The Lost City of Z. Take one reporter following in the footsteps of a famous explorer as he tries to retrace the journey of the explorer and find a lost city in the midst of the jungle. It's a fun book. The explorer being shadowed was a pretty interesting person (he also served as a spy during WWII) and the journey was pretty interesting to follow.

The World's Strongest Librarian was written by a co-worker (Josh Hanagarne) and follows his struggles with Tourette's. I liked this one quite a bit as well. Some nice humor along with all the trials. Plus I have similar reading tastes as Josh. His Mom sounds awesome too.

We've watched a lot of stuff (Sinister is a pretty good horror movie) but I can't remember half of it. Played some stuff too. I backed my first Kickstarter project. (A fun looking push your luck dice game with a dungeon crawl theme)

The new TMBG album, Nanobots, is pretty good. I was also thrilled to discover that Poe's album, Haunted, is available on Freegal. I can attest to the first 10 songs being great. Give me a couple weeks and I can tell you about the rest.

Zoning out

Watched Argo the other night. It was pretty good. I have vague memories of the hostage crisis. We lived in PA at the time and one of the hostages was local so my third grade class wrote them letters. A couple of the kids and I got to deliver them one night. So it was pretty interesting to learn about this other aspect of the situation.

Braved a blizzard to watch McK at her archery tournament. It was fun. Except for the blizzard part.

Finished reading Gun Machine by Warren Ellis. I liked it quite a bit. Nice quirky police procedural. Some of the characters were pretty fun.

Haven't managed a game of All Creatures Big and Small since we got the expansion. Mostly because life has been far too hectic in the evenings. And when we do have time I'd rather sleep. So very tired...

I have far too many movies to watch at the moment. And about half of them are of the horror variety. Heh.

How is it basically March already?

Oh and apparently March 30th is Tabletop Day. At least according to Wil Wheaton.

Frogblast the vent core

This will be very short.

Stuff: I have watched it.

Other stuff: I have read it.

Still more stuff: I have played it.

I will mention one thing specifically. If you have an ipod/phone/pad and some friends with access to those devices as well you really need to be playing Space Team. Because it is brilliant. Instant good time. Far too much of it was played over the weekend.

Also, thoughts go out to all the folks affected by the 1up layoffs. I found the site as I followed Jeremy Parish's musings on video games. The podcast was a staple of my morning commute. (And I still listen to Weekend Confirmed which is hosted by 1up alum Garnett Lee) I hope everyone affected lands on their feet.

This is the spooky holiday right?

It's not? Hmm. Well that's too bad because I'm going to briefly comment on Paranormal Activity 4. At this point you either like the series or you don't. This particular iteration was not as creepy as 3, but not as slow as 2. It offered a decent amount of lore for the series, so that was nice. And there were indeed some nice creepy moments. So it gets a "yeah, it's good" from me. Lovely wife merely commented that it wasn't too scary. Guess I'll have to try harder. In spite of her recent comments that we've seen an awful lot of scary movies lately. I blame release schedules.

I also finished Revenge, 11 Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa. It was an interesting series of interlocking short stories that dealt with various and sundry slightly off kilter characters and plots. I liked it even if it made my head hurt.

McK has joined the ranks of the glasses wearing set. Like myself. And pretty much my entire family. Some would say she was doomed. But she doesn't seem to mind. In fact she was a little perturbed that she didn't get more comments on them the first day she wore them. Good on her.

Sounds like littlest sis has managed to complete both seasons of Haven that are currently out on DVD. Now she gets to wait with the rest of us to see what happens next. She too was less than thrilled with that season cliffhanger. Show needs to be on Netflix.

We have acquired Space Cadets as a somewhat belated Christmas gift from sis-in-law. It's a co-operative game where each person is responsible for a station on a starship and has to play a mini-game to achieve goals for that station. It has a timed element that adds to the tension and sounds pretty fun. Will certainly take a bit to play with a new group as you try to explain the roles, but I think once it gets going it should be pretty good.

I drank what?

I finished reading Hemlock Grove last night. I picked it up partially because I heard Netflix was turning it into a show and I thought the premise sounded interesting. It's a literary-ish horror novel with some rather unique takes on archetypal horror icons (vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, etc.). Honestly the story tends to fall on the confusing side of things, but there are some pretty fascinating bits to it. I think I'll check the show out when it becomes available.

Jack Reacher was pretty good. I think I'll have to read some of those books now. I've been meaning to for a while, but this may give me the push I finally needed.

The Total Recall remake was ... interesting. The plot manages to be kind of different while still hitting all the notes of the original. Weird.

Cliffhanging

Finished off season 2 of Haven. It was quite good and that last episode was quite mean. I want to see season 3 pretty much right now... So many niggling questions.

We also finished season 1 of White Collar. Also quite momentous. Fortunately we could watch the episode 2 season opener the next day.

Over the weekend we watched Brewster's Millions (still holds up) and Zorro the Gay Blade (what on Earth did I just watch?!) We were really hoping to watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins but the tape is MIA. We also played Smash Up (some interesting ideas that after a couple plays will probably gel a little better. It seemed to go on a little longer than it needed to, but I think that will tighten up once you know the cards and the factions a little better.) and String Railway (a clever little area control sort of game where you build railroad lines using strings and small tokens. It was pretty brilliant actually.)

G had his first Pinewood Derby. A couple second place finishes and a couple third place finishes. He had fun though so that's great. And he did pretty much the entire car by himself. McK has obtained the role of Pirate in the Jr High's upcoming Pirates of Penzance performance.

I finished off Bioshock. It's a pretty interesting game. Certainly some disturbing themes and moments. Also some pretty unique choices on offer. After I finished the game I watched a couple of the extra videos that were available. I was completely uncreative in my methods of dispatching enemies apparently. I tended to just bludgeon things with my wrench. Less ammo used that way... Figure I'll play Darksiders since it looks completely silly and goofy and then head back for Bioshock 2. (Not so much on the silly and goofy in that one.)

There's a lot of snow around here...

Waffling

So, first things first. If you find yourself in downtown SLC and you're hungry, go to Bruges and have a Torpedo with some creme fraiche and your choice of fruit. It will be amazing. Have some cocoa to go with it. That will also be amazing. Then tell the owner to buy Parker's Drive-in in AF so it's a lot closer ok? Thanks.

(Seriously though, those are some pretty awesome waffles)

Looper was ... honestly I have no idea. I liked parts of it, found the prosthetics they used on Joseph Gordon-Levitt distracting, and the ending made my head hurt. Because I think I'm overthinking something that wasn't really the case, but an argument could be made that it was implied. So, not the best Rian Johnson film (still Brothers Bloom) but interesting nonetheless.

Did have a good visit with littlest sis while she was in town. Introduced her to Ugg-tect and Kingsburg and got her hooked on a random episode of Haven. Heh. Speaking of Haven, where is the new doctor girl? I haven't seen her at all this season, and don't remember her disappearing at the end of the first season. So confused. It's still pretty good though.

Never play Bioshock for an extended period of time. Gave me a serious headache that I didn't realize I had until I stopped playing. I am very close to the end though.

The Uncharted book was pretty good. Not quite as good as playing the games, but a fun little diversion. I would read more of them.