The Pitch Neutralizer

I’m not normally a dream-recounter, but this one I had a bit ago keeps popping back in my head, so I’ll go ahead and share.

In the dream, at work, there was a large device called the “Pitch Neutralizer.”  If you had an idea for a feature for the game or a solution to a design problem, you would speak it into the pitch neutralizer through a telephone-tube device like you see at the playground.  Everyone would have a turn proposing their ideas.

Then, the Pitch Neutralizer would present those ideas to the whole room, the trick being that each idea was now coming from one voice and source, so you wouldn’t be biased against a particular person’s idea based on how good/bad he was at presenting it.  Thus, neutralizing the pitches (awake brain thinks that “Pitch Normalizer” would have been a better name, but asleep brain says “I DO WHAT I WANT,” so there you go).

The quirkiest bit about this whole thing was the voice and personality the device would use to re-present all of the ideas.  It was none other than Oprah Winfrey.

I have no idea.

Indiecade 2012

I was starting to think that I had been cursed to never again attend Indiecade, as 2 years ago I came down with the flu this time of year*, and last year it was Nick who was let's-go-to-the-hospital sick right over Indiecade.  But this year we were both in good health, and ventured down to Culver City to check out all the games.  There was lots of cool stuff, but here are some of my favorites:

Unfinished Swan
I'd seen this ages ago and forgotten about it completely, and was delighted to find it again.  The basic idea is the world is completely flat white, so it looks like a blank screen.  You throw blobs of black paint to splatter and reveal the geometry so you can find your way around.  But be careful not to over splatter paint, otherwise you'll end up with the same problem as no paint at all!


Guacamelee
This game has an amazing, delightful, and whimsical art style that reeled me in right away.  The combat is kind of quirky and unusual, but fun, though the transitions can be a little awkward, especially in co-op.  But you get to play as a luchador (or luchadora) AND can turn into a chicken!  What's not to love??


Super Space
In this 4-player asteroid-shooter, every player is attached to one ship.  The only way you can move the ship is how you propel it by your shooting.  Also you're competing to steal asteroid shots, but still have to be careful and keep the ship from crashing into the sides.  Competitive cooperative game that will instantly reveal the true nature of your friends.


Against the Wall
You pull blocks out of a wall to make platforms to get to a place.  I would have played this all day if Nick hadn't dragged me away.


Hundreds
A simple yet surprisingly intense ipad game.  Circles with numbers, press and hold the circles to make the numbers go up and the circles grow bigger.  Try and get the total from all the circles to 100.  Obstacles bounce around and will run into the circles and reduce them to 0.  The bigger the circle, the more vulnerable it is to hazards, so you have to get your timing just-so.  If I had an ipad I'd get this game in a heartbeat.  I couldn't find any video footage, but there's an old browser version of the game running around.

We also bumped into Jake Sones, who showed us his iOS prototype of a sort of match-3/defense game mashup.  It was quite fun and looked promising!

Anyway, Indiecade is lots of fun and I'm looking forward to next year.

*As a metric of how sick I was at the time: I was laying on the couch right under the A/C hoping to bring my fever down.  On the coffee table were some fries from In-n-out brought by Nick (I was in the "demand comfort food" stage of the flu).  Mr. Davis had been sitting with me, but jumped down and started to pull fries out of the bag, one by one, and eat them.  I was too weak to move.  I couldn't even raise my voice to shoo him away.  So I watched in a fevered stupor as my cat ate each and every one of my fries.

10 years!

Holy crap, it is the 10th anniversary of my blog!  I started writing 10 years ago today in my Livejournal, chronicling random thoughts and college adventures.

And here I am today, continuing to chronicle random thoughts and adventures.  And also recipes.  Lots and lots of recipes.

What will this blog hold 10 years from now??

Lost Blanket

This morning when I got out of my car, I saw a crumpled up little pink blanket in the road.  I picked it up and shook out the dirt and debris it had collected, noting the torn satin edges and little embroidered bear on the front.  Now, it could have been nothing.  It could have been something someone snagged from Goodwill to pad some furniture they moved.  Or maybe it did belong to a baby and fell from a car while he was being buckled in, and the baby was too young to care or even notice.

But in my mind, all I could think about when I was little and forced my Dad to drive 2 hours back to the lake after our vacation because I had discovered, to my horror, that I had left Doggy behind.  And I’m pretty sure I cried desperately non-stop until I had Doggy back in my arms (thank you, Dad!)

So, this blanket…I was unsure of the best course of action, so I just folded it up and left it on the back of my car, so that it would be in easy view and out of the road.  When I left work, the blanket was gone.  Sure, anyone could have just strolled up and taken it, but in my mind I like to believe I saved a panicky parent from facing a child with the possibility that Blankie was perma-lost.

I hope it found its way home!

Wilderness Survival Class

For yesterday’s adventure, I went to a wilderness survival class with Josue and his wife.  It was essentially a 5 hour hike through a canyon throughout which we were taught a variety of survival skills – edible plants, fire making, etc.

Here is what I learned:

Nightshade berries are delicious – they taste like little cherry tomatoes, but don’t eat the unripe ones or they will make you sick.

Scavenged and ate a salad of watercress, lambs quarter, speedwell and mustard flowers.  Watercress was the most abundant but it’s really spicy, so you need some milder edibles to eat with it.

Identified poison oak.  Red berries and coffee berries are a laxative and will make you throw up if you eat too many.  Cherry holly leaves have cyanide, don’t eat them.  Was shown a few other poisonous plants which I remember by sight but I don’t recall their names

(one is this decorative flowered plant that they use on freeways a lot. They have straight stems that are tempting as marshmallow roasters, but the stems are poisonous too)

The stems and branches of the mule fat plant are really great for making bows and drills and other tools because they are so straight.  Willows look kind of like mule fat, but have medicinal bark.

Ragweed tastes terrible, but if you are starving, you can boil it and eat it.

Learned how to make a twine rope out of yucca leaf fibers.  It ended up coming in handy, too, because my ponytail rubberband broke at one point.  I used my yucca twine to tie up my hair.

Made soap from yucca leaves.  There’s really nothing to it, you just tear up the leaf into fibers and agitate them in water.

Roasted yucca fruit over a fire I helped start.  Yucca fruit are good to eat if you cut one open and it’s still white inside.  They taste too soapy when raw, but when you cook them they taste rather like summer squash or corn.

(If you haven’t gathered by now, yucca are extremely handy plants.)

Ate a prickly pear cactus pad.  It was yummy!

Learned to start a fire with flint/tinder and with a bow drill.  Though I got the coal started with the bow drill, I needed Josue to help me stabilize the bow.  Co-op for the win!

All in all, it was a really fun day and I learned a ton!  The worst part, of course, was the hike back up out of the canyon.  I got a bit too much sun and spent most of the rest of the day asleep.  For all my LA friends, if you’re interested in this sort of stuff, check out this guy’s classes.  They are affordable and good learnins.

Lemon pork stir fry

Stir fry is my go-to default meal,so I don’t usually share recipes since they’re usually just small variants of my standard stir fry.  Tonight, though, my experiments led to a different enough path that I think it warrants recording.  The lemony flavor is quite strong.

Ingredients

• 4 thin boneless pork chops
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 3-4 fresh sage leaves, chopped
• 1 head of baby bok choy, chopped
• soba noodles prepared according to package instructions (I normally make rice or pure vegetable stir fries, but tonight I was feeling noodley.  Feel free to use rice if you prefer it)

For marinade:

• soy sauce
• olive oil
• rice vinegar
• a dash of sesame oil
• juice from one lemon
• (1 tsp corn starch and 2 tsps water for thickening into sauce)

1. Mix soy sauce, olive oil, rice vinegar into a shallow dish (I didn’t measure, sorry guys, do your best guess).  Add sesame oil and lemon juice and stir
2. Cut pork chops into strips and place in marinade.  Marinate for an hour or so
3. Heat some olive oil in a wok and brown the strips of pork on all sides.  Set pork aside and drain out some of the juices in the wok, leaving just enough to stir fry the vegetables
4. Add all vegetables and stir fry for a few minutes
5. Add the pork and stir
6. in the reserved marinade, add corn starch and water and stir briskly.  Add to the wok and bring to a boil until sauce starts to thicken
7. Add noodles, toss, and serve!

Ants and Aphids

There’s a short wall behind my apartment complex where Mr. Davis likes to perch, and there’s often a line of ants coming and going up and over it that I like to watch.  Today, as I watched the ant line disappear under some ivy, something caught my eye.  It was several ants tending diligently to a flock of aphids!

Now, I’d known before about the relationship between ants and aphids, and seen it before on nature shows, but somehow stumbling upon it in my back yard made the phenomenon 100% more awesome.  I watched with wonder as the ants harvested honeydew from their aphid herd in wee little droplets.  Nearby, a large group of baby aphids was clustered on an ivy stem under the shelter of a leaf.  At the base of the stem, two ants were just hanging out, which was weird to see as one tends to encounter ants on the go.  Guard duty, I suppose.

Meanwhile, during my observation, Mr. Davis had hopped down and found where the line of ants picked up through the grass.  He was lapping them up by the tongueful.