Is Dollhouse Structurally Sound?

The TV show Dollhouse premiered this past week with many a wary eye paying attention. After seeing a trailer some time ago, I wasn't that enthused. It seemed to be just another throwaway show I'd never make time to watch. But when a new series comes out from the creator of Firefly, my favorite series of all time, you need to pay attention.

Joss Whedon creates 'verses all his own (see Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly). The greatness in his works is the scope and detail that goes into his characters. So I'm giving Dollhouse the benefit of a doubt.

The first episode was intriguing, but not totally amazing. It's misogynistic to an extent, but leans on satire. The main character is Echo, played by Eliza Dushku. She's the biggest hurdle in letting me like the show more. She's not completely talentless, but there's some distraction keeping me from becoming engulfed in the ever-changing character.

But as I mentioned, it's intriguing. I'll watch it a few more times hoping for the wow-factor of Whedon to come forth.

-- "I'm sexy...I'm a scholar...people like me."

Fried Dill Chips

So awhile ago, I had a hankering for fried sliced pickles (like the one's you can get at Scotty's Brewhouse). After looking up some recipes, I found one worth trying and made them yesterday.

They were easy enough to make once I got the oil cooking at a high temperature without boiling. And then after the first few, I got into the hang of letting them fry enough to be a dark brown instead of the early light browns.

I only got some hot spatter-batter on my fingers a few times, but it was tasty. The final product was even tastier, though a little unlike the restaurant. The pickles were still rather crisp, but the batter was not as much.

And the house still smells a bit like vegetable oil, but that will dissipate eventually, right?

-- "Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color?"

Squad Castle Dos

What would happen if we had a fast internet service back in the time of Atari 2600s? Could you imagine some of the online gaming possibilities? Maybe an online versus mode of Spy Hunter, playing Pong with someone from another country, or an MMO the likes of Elder Scrolls: Arena would've been made. Well how does an 8-bit Team Fortress 2 sound?

Introducing Gang Garrison 2. It's an awesome 2-D adaptation of a pinnacle for team-based multiplayer. The movement may not be too exact and jumping can be hard, but the nine classes still feel unique (the Spy, er Infiltrator, is even more fun to play). The other classes have been justly remade in the Runner, the Rocketman, the Firebug, the Detonator, the Overweight, the Constructor, the Rifleman, and also the Healer.

The homages are all over the small game, down to the loading screen using the "Faucet's" "Smoke" service. It's nice and kitchy to see games like this get some steam in their sails.

-- "You lost your money. You keep this up, you'll lose something else."

New Riddick Gameplay Footage!

I can always look to Gametrailers for some inspiration, and today made me giddy with anticipation.

Starbreeze Studios has been hard at work with a followup to Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and making Assault on Dark Athena. It includes the original Xbox Butcher Bay updated for the 360 and adds more story and gameplay to the mix with Dark Athena.

Five new videos were released today and look great. The best of which is the melee gameplay vid. I played the first game a long while back and can attest to its surprising splendor. Starbreeze has quite a reputation to live up to now, and I really want to see them do well. Doing your best in some pretty tight situations doesn't bode well for many people, and they seem to have weathered some of them already.

-- "There's a new daddy in town. A discipline daddy."

Mod Rock...Band

So awhile back, my Rock Band 2 drum kit start having some issues. It didn't prevent me playing because of cross-talk between the yellow & blue pad or the drum pedal not working. The red and green (and eventually yellow too) pads started forming rising bubbles in the middle. Maybe I should've followed the advice linked from the picture, but ended using some other methods.

To fix the bubbles, I eventually found a forum post (sorry, can't find the link to where) about taking the heads apart to reapply adhesive. So I got some adhesive caulk (heard super glue wasn't nearly good enough, though could've also tried epoxy) and pulled the plastic underpart from the rubber and the velcro-like surface between the two. Seeing the results a couple weeks after applying this method to the red pad, I adjusted the application when doing the green pad. Instead of not ripping the velcro-like surface all the way from the rubber, I only made an incision to the center and applied the adhesive mainly there. It didn't turn out nearly as well as I hoped. So with the green pad, I applied a very generous amount to the whole of the rubber underside before reapplying the velcro and then to the plastic head.

Now all that's great, but the bubble really returned to the red pad and just now appearing on the green pad after only a week. And with the yellow pad, I didn't want to rip anymore apart since it didn't ever really work on the red. So now I've resolved to just apply electrical tape to the surface of each head to flatten out bubbles. It works well enough and takes practically no time.

Also while opening up each one, I applied this coin mod (the video is lengthy, much like this post) to put nickels beneath and increase responsiveness. It's worked really well so far on the green & red pads, but the yellow (and presumably blue) didn't work out at all.

This is convoluted enough now.

-- "Lata, sweetheart."

Wishful Thinking

I bet there are plenty of PS3 owners without 360's wanting some Xbox Live Arcade games available to them. Well soon there'll be some great games all exclusive to a Playstation Network I don't have.

Noby Noby Boy - I have as little clue as you do what's really going on in the attached video, but that's to be expected from the creators of Katamari Damacy. They definitely have a way of creating unique gaming experiences with a signature style. From previews I've heard, I bet I'd like it like I do Peggle.

Flower - How much do you expect from a game of this title? It looks like a fascinating, gorgeous game where your mind can just unwind. It's a successor to Flow from That Game Company including even more visual stimulation and looks to even have less game-ish qualities. No death. No time limit. Just relaxing in the breeze to its soothing sounds.

Fat Princess - The name of this game makes me think it's some crappy Nintendo trashware never worth playing, but it looks like a ton of fun. Think Team Fortress 2 capture the flag from a different perspective. The classes are a nice mix but not too much, although the inclusion of a resource-collecting class seems odd. I wonder if they thought of making them AI teammates at some point, but reconsidered. Anyway, follow the link to some recent walkthroughs of the gameplay. It looks like a lot of fun and generally full of win.

-- "Brothers don't shake hands. Brothers gotta hug!"

UFC 94

So I've been into MMA (mixed martial arts) sports for over a year now and recently watched UFC 94 live on pay-per-view. Apart from the bar atmosphere complete with tons of smoke, it was a great night of fights. Only 5 of the 10 fights were televised, as all but the last two went to decisions and took up a lot of time. But the excitement was intense as usual when two warriors battle it out without surrendering/tapping out.

Starting the night out was Clay "The Carpenter" Guida vs. Nate Diaz. Guida is a fan favorite with his long hair, menacing scowl, and lively attitude. Because of his inconsistency at winning, he's considered a hurdle or litmus test for the 155-pound Lightweight Division. Nate Diaz tends to be a cocky showboat, so I'm not a huge fan of him though I recognize his very good skills, especially for being only 23 years old. But thankfully Clay edged out a split decision (two of the three referees scored him higher than the other contender).

Karo Parisyan, an Armenian Judo specialist, squeaked out an even closer split decision against a newcomer to the UFC in Dong Hyun Kim, a Korean Judo champion. My scorecard would've given it to Dong. The fight after with Stephan Bonnar, a season one veteran of the Ultimate Fighter series, and newcomer Jon Jones wasn't nearly as close with Jones winning impressively with a unanimous decision.

The next to last fight had me dancing in my seat as two undefeated Light Heavyweight contenders (205-pound division) fought for, presumably, a title shot against the recently crowned champion of "Sugar" Rashad Evans (king of the cocky showboats mentioned previously who unfortunately has backed it up). But this fight saw 13-0 Thiago Silva up against 13-0 and one of my new favorite fighters Lyoto Machida. Machida's superior striking eventually overwhelmed and knocked out Silva with one second remaining in the second round! Hopefully we'll see him repeat this performance against Rashad.

And the main event for the evening pit the Lightweight champion BJ Penn putting on some extra weight to fight the Welterweight (170-pound) champion Georges St. Pierre. BJ's astounding flexibility and Brazilian Jiujitsu mastery only served to delay the onslaught of GSP's takedowns and superior wrestling until the end of the fourth round when Penn's corner threw in the towel. Capping off the victory, Georges exited the ring with his signature backflip.

So it was a great night of fights, even promising better ones to come throughout the year with my personal favorite fighter Anderson Silva defending his Middleweight (185-pound) belt in the coming months.

-- "That guy's being awfully forward with that donkey."