.the gpb kids.

Shopgirl

Posted by Mike - September 30, 2007 at 07:09:54 pm

I’m on a Claire Danes fix at at the moment so I watched Shopgirl on Friday with Jules. I thought it was pretty good but I’m not sure if it’s the Danes infatuation or not. Hm.

Hdd and Oxtail Soup

Posted by Jules - September 29, 2007 at 10:09:28 am

My old PC died over over 1.5 years ago, but I’ve only begun to back up the pictures on my two hard drives this week. At the prodding of Mike, I bought a external enclosure thing for my internal hdd, and wah la! It’s nice that I have my pictures back from the last three years. I’m glad my hdds were still okay.

I didn’t have time to buy mooncake before the mid autumn festival this year! T_T No white lotus single yolk for jules.

On other fronts, I made oxtail soup by myself for the first time, and I think it turned out pretty well. A trip to 99 ranch netted me oxtails, carrots, ginger, dried medlar berries and dried longan. I thought I would have to make it without dried orange peel, but then I remember my packet of half eaten Jiaobao mandarin peel hanging out in my backpack (I used to get airsick all the time, so I would alternate between scarfing Jiaobao mandarin peels and Mentos. Don’t worry- the packet I used wasn’t as old as that). I started off on the stove, but then decided I wanted to try it in a crock pot because I didn’t want to live in a sauna for four hours and dumped everything in. I’m rather pleased with that.

Picture courtesy of efooddepot.com

Mountain Mike

Posted by Mike - September 26, 2007 at 10:09:39 am

The last time I grew out my facial hair was when I went backpacking at Mount Whitney. And that was only a week. Behold!

This is closer to a month. Maybe three weeks. I don’t really remember. It’s a little sparse yet and Jules doesn’t particularly like it, but it’s a growing experience that every man should have.

Let’s all go to the movies

Posted by Mike - September 24, 2007 at 09:09:09 am

Jules and I went on a pseudo-date on Friday to the Parkway in Oakland to see Stardust. We didn’t eat there this time because we were too hungry to wait. We ate at our local favorite Mijori before heading over. So I only had a beer while I was there. But back to the movie. I thought it was fantastic. Here’s the trailer for those of you who have never heard of it. And I have to agree with what the LA Times had to say about it.

Floating in on an airy breeze of dreams and true love, the lively adventure-romance Stardust offers that elusive quality summer movies are supposed to possess but rarely do — total escape. - Kevin Crust, LA Times

It didn’t get great reviews all around though with a Metascore of 66. But I’m a sucker for those kinds of movies and it’s been a while since I’ve seen one. So of course on the way out of the theater I began planning for my inevitable purchase.

Another movie I want to see is 3:10 to Yuma. I think my Dad and brother liked it… I think. And I kind of feel guilty for wanting to see The Nanny Diaries (yay Scarlett Johansson), Shoot ‘Em Up, and War. And I’m sure Jules wants to see Tony Leung in Lust, Caution.

That’s it for this movie update. What are you guys watching?

Team Fortress 2, World in Conflict and more Medieval 2

Posted by Mike - September 21, 2007 at 05:09:34 pm

I’ve been staying up playing a lot of video games this week. The Team Fortress 2 Beta came out this week after an initial delay for those who pre-purchased the Half-Life 2 Orange Box. Artistically it is excellent and it seems to have stuck to the core game play of the original Team Fortress faithfully. It’s integrated really well into the new Steam community features as well. So while you’re playing you can shift+tab to get the Steam Community overlay where you can chat with your friends online. It makes it really easy to join a game that your friend is already playing in. And the stat tracking is nice as well.

Since the engineer is my favorite class, I thought I’d share this little introduction with you.

I also picked up World in Conflict, the game I’ve been raving about for months now. Unfortunately it kept freezing on high graphical settings. It would run with a decent framerate and then suddenly freeze. I downloaded all of the new drivers (one of which came out yesterday) and some hotfixes for Vista. I went through four or five tries of changing graphical settings. And then I changed everything to medium quality. At that setting you switch from DX10 to DX9, and it worked. So that sucked. I mean, great that it stopped freezing in the middle of the game, but sucks that I can’t play it at a higher setting. Hopefully a patch or something will come out that fixes it.

And of course there’s the ever present Medieval 2 which I’ve been avoiding for the past couple days. My ally attacked my practically undefended castle and I don’t want to fight that battle. Not only does my castle have a small garrison, but the attacking army is probably the biggest I’ve ever seen. They have all kinds of catapults and trebuchets and things. I must think on how I’m going to retaliate and crush them!

Not your grandpa’s farm

Posted by Mike - September 19, 2007 at 08:09:45 am

Is that not the coolest farm you’ve ever seen? Apparently it’s a design for a downtown Seattle plan to integrate urban farming. The design is by Mithun, the makers of the REI flagship store in Seattle. You can read more about the farm at An Off-Grid Vertical Farm for Downtown Seattle or just check out Mithun’s fancy proposal.

West Side

Posted by Mike - September 18, 2007 at 08:09:14 am

I’ve been meaning to post about this Oakland Crimespotting website for a little while now. They gather information once a day from Oakland’s Crimewatch and then put it on a fancy map. It looks like my area has been relatively safe over the past month. But I think I’ll still try to get home before dark.

Come to think of it, they should have a time of day filter so I can see when the killing hour starts.

In Search of the Banana Flavored Olive Oil

Posted by Jules - September 17, 2007 at 08:09:08 pm

It all started with Mike’s older brother’s birthday. On saturday, I went out with Mike’s family to celebrate his brother’s birthday at Luna Ristorante in Concord, CA. And the first thing they served us was bread and olive oil. They forgot the balsamic vinegar, but I’m not complaining because the olive oil was great. It had notes of banana to me- while this sounds weird, it was deliciously fruity olive oil. The rest of the food was also really delicious. Mmmm… anyways, back to the olive oil! I only had Costco brand extra virgin olive oil left at home, and it’s definitely a “cook with” oil, and not a “dress with” oil. So I called up the restaurant and asked for the name. The person who answered the phone was very helpful, but cautioned me that I would not likely find it for consumer use, as they buy it through a source solely for restaurant bulk orders. Martinis, made in Greece, ROKAI.

So what is the first thing that I do? I google it, of course. Unfortunately, Martinis is also a common name for an alcoholic drink of perhaps greater notoriety. And adding an “olive” to that search? These alcoholic drinks also come with olives. Extra dry. Luckily there is one hit, leading me to http://www.iloveoliveoilblog.com/. Sounds promising eh? In their review, they say,

I almost forgot to mention: we found Martinis olive oil at the local Trader Joe’s. It was a steal at under $10 and it was by far the best store-bought olive oil I’ve found in years. It had that robust flavor that really seems to typify Kalamata olive oils. And it comes the closest, in terms of taste, to the olive oil my grandfather produces each year on a small scale at his farm outside Kalamata. These are oils that want to stand on their own and demand your palette’s attention. They should enhance and magnify the underlying flavor of the (hopefully) fresh ingredients you drizzle it on..

So off to Trader Joe’s I went. And now I am a proud owner of a 1 Liter bottle of Martinis EVOO, made from Kalamata Olives. And at 8$, I think it’s a pretty good deal. And yes, I tested it as soon as I got home. I made Mike try it too (^__^)

Tonight’s menu: Linguine alla bolognese + ciabatta + banana flavored olive oil + 1 green tea mochi

Pen Rev[i]ews

Posted by Jules - September 14, 2007 at 03:09:45 pm

I’ve been switching back and forth between two pens while writing in my notebooks at class and in lab to see which I liked better. In the end, the Itoya won out. While neither of these pictures are the exact size that I have, you get the idea:

The Itoya Finepoint 0.2mm writes crisply on notebook paper, with no bleeding. I like the textured grip around the, well, gripping area. I also liked the feel of the non glossy pen body. The labelling rubbed off within the first week of use, so that all I can make out is “STEM” and “0.2″.

I had high expectations for this Primacolor pen, but it failed miserably. Okay, perhaps not miserably- but there was noticeably more bleeding, which interfered when I tried to write numbers and letters in the mm range. How can I write in small letters when there is bleeding?? I might as well have bought a sharpie. I admit I’m a little obssessive.

Itoya:1 Prismacolor:0

Mugello

Posted by Mike - September 10, 2007 at 08:09:50 am

One of the editor’s at GameSpot, Guy Cocker, posted about a visit he had with System 3, the developer of a Ferrari racing game. He mentioned that he got to go for a ride on the Mugello circuit in Italy. (Actually he called it Mugalo.) I thought the name sounded familiar and after seeing the map I recognized it instantly from Forza. I can visualize the course in my head. All the turns, when to accelerate and decelerate. The parts where I lose traction the most often. It’s kind of creepy actually. Anyway, here’s the map.

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