Big Fat Ostrich

Hey! It’s a cereal review!

Well I gave this breakfast cereal a try a little while back and no matter what I did to it, the result was disgusting. I added milk (duh!), strawberries, mango, and raisins on separate occasions. I even added a blueberry like on the box. I was thinking, “maybe this cereal is meant for blueberries only?” But no. No matter what I tried, the result was the same: bland, healthy, soggy-too-fast cereal.

Nature’s Path Organic Flax Plus Multibran Cereal is totally good for you. The ingredients are all-natural, non-chemical, and without pesticides. It’s just that the texture and taste is so…just so not there. I gave it a bunch of chances but only made it through half the box before giving up on it.

I really love cereal for breakfast in the morning. On some days, just the thought of a simple bowl of Special K could be enough to get me out of bed. The thought of Flax Plus however, makes me want to dump the contents of the box onto the balcony for my resident pigeons. I feel they deserve a treat for so lovingly repainting my balcony with their excrement. Hey you guys missed a spot!

I’m half tempted to set up a taste test: I’ll fill one bowl with Organic Flax Plus, and then fill a second bowl with shreds from the box itself.

“Can you tell the difference?”
“I can’t tell the difference.”

Well as they say, eating healthy doesn’t have to taste bad, but like I say, sometimes it does. For your information, here are the ingredients:

Organic Whole Wheat Flour, Organic Wheat Bran, Granulated Organic Sugar Cane Juice, Organic Flaxseed, Organic Oat Bran, Organic Barley Malt Extract, Rice Extract, Sea Salt, Tocopherols (Natural Vitamin E) Added to Enhance Freshness.

A few years back, I walked into a used guitar store in Montreal, Quebec intent on buying a Fender Telecaster. I always loved the tone and versatility of the Tele and it’s shape fits me well. Plus, it’s the perfect weight for me, unlike those Gibson Les Paul’s which are known to be back-breakers. So I tried out a few vintage Tele’s, but they were between $1500 and $3000, which was slightly out of my budget. Yeah, just slightly

Then I spotted a couple of Silvertone‘s which caught my eye due to their black/white retro look (retro today, modern in 1960). I had sort of heard about Silvertones, but never really paid much attention to them. 90% of us guitar players have our hearts set on either a Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul from the first time we saw Eric Clapton (that racist!) slowly stroking them notes, or Jimmy Page going tone-crazy on Whole Lotta Love. The truth is, these guitars are their most photographed showpieces, where their studio instruments vary greatly. Anyway, enough about that. Let’s get to my Silvertone.

The first thing that surprised me was the weight of it: light as a feather. The body is hollow and was made from the cheapest materials at the time, like masonite and poplar wood. When I first held it, I thought that it really is ‘this close’ to actually being a total piece of crap, but the Silvertone I played (and eventually bought) just felt right and sounded great.

Pickups
Just about anyone who knows anything about Silvertones have heard about the pickups. As a budget guitar (back in the 60′s), the guitars were sold for like 19.95, and were built cheaply. The pickup casings are used lipstick tubes which have a really nice warm tone. The pickups are now highly prized, and many artists have been known to buy old Silvertones just to transplant the pickups into another guitar. Check out the history here

The action is also high and the strings are quite tight. Don’t ask me what gauge I use since I’ve left the original strings on. I’m too scared to replace them for fear of losing some of that sweet, sweet tone, but I’ll get the gauge measured at some point. Slide guitar sounds awesome on it, whether I use an amp or not and thanks to the hollow body, this Silvertone resonates well as an acoustic guitar.

The tone switcher is actually quite limited. You can barely hear an audible difference no matter what position the switch is in, but no matter. I have a number of guitars in my collection, and I’ve designated the Silvertone as my ‘openly tuned, blues/folk guitar’. If you want to know, I have it tuned to DADGBD.

The Specs (I don’t know anything about it except the year, so let’s make up some specs)
1960 Silvertone
Tone: awesome
Strings: I have no idea
Used for: Blues and Folk

So there you go. I have since picked up a nice Japanese Tele which I may or may not review here. For now, keep on pluckin’!

m.

I truly, honestly, really was not going to write about Mafia Wars anymore. I swear. In fact, I was starting to distance myself from the game since I’d seen just about all there was to see once I got to level 90. But they’re crafty over there at Zynga, oh yes they are, and they just keep reeling you in. So welcome to a little post about the latest Mafia Wars expansion: Cuba

After doing most of the jobs in the original New York tier, many of us started to wonder what would be next. After all, you can’t just do the same old jobs over and over again. There isn’t a lot of fun in just getting experience. The fun is in how you get there. So, like most role playing games, an expansion was in order. Mafia Wars has had occasional add ons, like Robbing, and special loot. With Cuba, this is the biggest expansion I’ve seen in my time playing the game. It’s like, Mafia Wars x 2.

Without going into a huge amount of detail (yeah, I know 4 blogs on the subject already), let’s just say that Cuba offers a whole new range of jobs to do, new Cuba-centric weapons and loot, as well as new collections like tropical drinks, fruit, and beards! Yes, I said beards. There really is a Beards collection which is perfectly logical since cool beards go hand in hand with revolutionaries and badasses. I mean, just saying the word ‘Cuba’ conjures up images of Fidel pensively stroking his pubic beard while sucking on a Perfecto.

Mafia Wars Cuba also offers Businesses to ‘take over’, which you’ll need in order to generate some income. The income in Cuba is in Cuban Pesos too, which are kept in a separate bank from your Yankee dollars.

These businesses function differently from the New York properties in that they produce a product, whether it’s Sugar Cane, or Tobacco. Once you take over a business, you can invest in it so that it produces more output, which you can then cash out into cold hard worthless pesos. Like New York, you’ll need the cash to buy items for jobs. The jobs in Cuba require items not found in New York, so save your pesos for that CM Venga.

With this expansion, I think that interest in the game is somewhat renewed. I can only guess at future expansions like Mafia Wars Monaco, Las Vegas, Italy (Sicily), or Japan. Hmm…Yakuza Wars anyone? Zynga should totally hire me as an idea man.

P.S. Since this was first posted, Mafia Wars expansions have included Moscow and Bangkok (get your passport now!) with Las Vegas coming in 2010. New collections to vault have been added as well, including the ever elusive Money Laundering collection. Money Laundering is available in the New York tier and is dropped rarely. You’ll need to ask your Facebook friends for help looting it. Good luck. Or you can cheat and use one of the many greasemonkey scripts.

Update – Achievements in Bangkok: When you fight against either the Yakuza or Triad factions, your status will increase with one, but decrease against the other. Now there are 3 new achievements related to this: Dead or Alive, Hard Boiled, and Bangkok Dangerous. You only need to concentrate on Bangkok Dangerous which is to gain Allied Status in both factions at the same time. Here’s a tip on how to get it:

When fighting, see saw your attacks between Yakuza and Triad. Since each attack is based on the simple formula of +2 points for the attacker and -1 point for the defender, simply alternate your faction attacks and your status will increase in parallel with both factions. Eventually, you’ll hit Allied Status for both Yakuza and Triad, at the same time. This way, you can get all three achievements around the same time.

Welcome to another installment of Ostrich News!

Ostrich News is a periodic feature where we run a magical Google search for the word ‘Ostrich’ and see what comes up.

Well it looks like our feathery freaks are out in force helping the world survive the H1N1 ‘outbreak’. I’m still not sold on this whole ‘pandemic’ thing, so for this article I might be using quotation marks alot.

Back to more important matters. This dude in the most germophobic nation of the world, aka Japan, has found that face masks lined with ostrich antibodies are actually more effective  than regular facemasks. How do they know this?

Well, Yasuhiro Tsukamoto, a Japanese researcher, found out that ‘H5N1′ infected birds (not to be confused with H1N1 or Swine Flu) survived after being injected with ostrich antibodies. The group of birds not injected with the antibodies bit the dust.

So based on that research, Tsukamoto started producing face masks lined with ostrich antibodies, of which he’s sold around 12 million or so since last year. Now don’t think this is just one guy making all that money. They’re selling them through Ostrich Pharma Corp. Check out their website here if you can read Japanese.

Anyhow, that’s all I really care to say on the subject, but check back often for more Ostrich News. Hopefully next time it’ll be more entertaining, like about some jerk getting a beat down from an ostrich at the zoo because he didn’t show any respect for an animal 5 times his size. Some people eh?

Well, well. If it isn’t me again, Dr. Dobson. I’m here to chew your ear off about something that has REALLY gotten under my skin. If you thought I was angry in my last post, well this time I’m fuming. Last time I may as well have been talking about a lovely springtime picnic with fruit baskets and frolicking. Today I’m going to talk to you about darkness, corpses and scorched earth. That’s right. I’m here to talk about Archie proposing to Veronica.

I am truly pissed at these developments. If you haven’t heard the news, after like 60 years of being treated like crap, Archie Andrews has proposed to Veronica Lodge, aka, That Bitch from Riverdale. She’s so totally a bitch and always has been and like, I don’t know what Archie ever saw in her. And believe me, I’m sure poor Betty is thinking the same thing.

Bah! Veronica Lodge…and her Dad is such a jerk ALL THE TIME. He flies off the handle for the most insignificant things, probably because Mrs. Lodge “‘cut him off” years ago. He probably has erectile dysfunction too, cause no guy with that much money is that much of a dick all the freaking time.

So Archie proposes to a big wad of cash, leaving Betty with a bankrupt heart. She was always so good to him, while Veronica (that bitch) has nothing to offer. Who could put up with her crap for so long? Mark my words, the most used phrase in the Archie/Veronica union is going to be, “not tonight, I have a headache”. Then, a frustrated Archie will go cool his heels on the Lodge golf course where an errant ball will hilariously smash the window of Mr. Lodge’s limousine or something. Yeah, I’m sure the storylines are going to be FAN-tastic. Maybe that snooty butler of theirs will get a golf ball in the crotch once in awhile just to keep things interesting. Always hated that guy!

I haven’t actually read Archie comics in a long, long time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about. Anyone with half a brain could see that, over the years Betty was the one who’d be true. So what if she doesn’t sleep on a cash-filled mattress! Has Archie become that materialistic? What happened to his modesty? Remember the old Jalopy? Does he need to marry That Thing to prove to himself that he’s moving up in the world? Come on.

Veronica is never gonna be there for him. Never! When Reggie kicked sand in Archie’s face that time on the beach, who was there for him? Eh? Who? Betty, that’s who. Where was The Big V, huh?  Well I don’t remember either, but she definitely wasn’t helping. That bitch.

This is my last post about Zynga’s Mafia Wars on Facebook. You can check them all out here if you want. But man, there’s a lot to say on the subject. Hopefully with this post, I think I’ve covered it all, for now (note the non-committal tone).

Ah…the good old Mafia Wars Hitlist: the sole place where fighting match-ups are at their most unfair. Where else but the Hitlist can you (under normal gameplay) pit a level 15 Street Thug against a level 327 Master Boss? That place is indeed The Hitlist.

I love The Hitlist and I’ll tell you why in a minute. It’s true that there are a couple of reasons to hate it, but honestly, the worst thing is a bruised ego. But it’s a game, so even that should be a minor point.

Why it may suck to be on the hitlist:

• You’re at a low level and someone keeps putting you there, where you die.
• You lose uh…6 experience.

Like I said in my previous Mafia Wars post you’ll end up on the hitlist if you attack somebody over and over again, day after day. One word of advice here: If someone puts you on the hitlist, the best way to retaliate is to do nothing. Ignore them and eventually, they’ll move on. Sure, they might be persistent and keep at you, but as you grow stronger (be patient, it will happen), you’ll soon be winning more fights than you lose, and the Hitlist will actually become a blessing in disguise.

Why you WANT to be put on the hitlist:

• To gain extra experience
• To get some extra cash

True story and ongoing saga.

A few weeks ago, I was playing my Mafia Wars dude, leveling up, doing some fights, etc. After you’ve done a few thousand fights, you kind of stop looking at your opponent’s name. You check out their level, and mafia size, attack them and move on.

Well I guess Don Copeland got insulted. It’s possible that I killed him in the fight, but I really don’t remember. All of a sudden, I’m being attacked. Over and over again, Don Copeland is putting me on the hitlist, where indeed, I die.  Remember: no matter how strong you get, there’ll always be someone bigger and stronger than you. If you’re on the hitlist, sooner or later, someone will claim the bounty.

Anyway, at first I was annoyed. Then I started counting how many people were attacking me each time a hit was put out on me. I was losing in the end, but overall, I was winning some of the fights before someone finally took me down. In Mafia Wars, you gain experience when you win a fight, and you lose 6 experience when you die.

Overall, I would lose 6 experience for dying on the hitlist, but gain around 8 for winning some of the fights. The difference is +2 experience, so I ended up coming out ahead. And since this is ongoing, being put on the hitlist starts being beneficial over time.  And at level 73, it also becomes easier and easier to win fights.

Counting up the day’s hitlist stats, what do we see? (Don Copeland put me on the list 4 times)

Experience lost: -24 (6 XP  x 4 times)
Experience gained: +41
Difference: +17
Money earned: $317,000
Cost to Don Copeland: $32,000 ($8,000 per bounty. I guess I’m not worth more than that )

So thanks, Don C! Highly generous of you for taking the time to remember me and prompt people to fight me. Maybe I’ll return the favor someday, but for now, I’ll take the free ride.

Coming soon: Thoughts and tips on the new Beta expansion – Mafia Wars Cuba!

Hey everyone. I just bought a car! A brand new Honda Civic coupe. I love it to death. I would review it but it’d be a boring read. Absolutely everything rocks about it. EVERYTHING! So I’ll post a great tuna melt recipe instead.

But before I start talking about the recipe, I need to fill the white space to the right of the pic with random stuff, else it looks bad. I been playing Stick Wars on the iPhone lately. A very interesting take on the tower defense genre. I don’t even know if it fits in the tower defense category, but still, it’s fast paced and addictive and funny. I suggest you give it a try.

Ingredients:

1 branch of Celery

1/2 Green Pepper

1 can of Tuna

3 tablespoon Mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Curry

1/2 French Baguette (or equivalent)

3 slices Havarti Cheese

1 teaspoon Butter

1 lime

Preparation:

Cut the celery and the half pepper in tiny dice. Mix the tuna, the mayo, the curry and the freshly chopped veggies together. Cut the lime in 2 and press the juice of both halves in the mix. Stir until the texture is uniform. Cut the half baguette open, spread some butter on it. Put in the tuna stuff. Add the slices of havarti cheese. Pre-heat the oven to 375 celcius. Keep the sandwich open and slide it into the oven for 20 minutes or until the cheese is completely melted. Once it’s out of the oven, let it rest for a minute or so and then enjoy. Mmmmm, it’s succulent!

Variations:

This recipe works well with a bunch of different breads and cheeses. Keiser rolls are great, as well as panini breads. As for the cheese, good old cheddar is also good, as well as Jarlsberg. Hell, even Kraft Singles would probably do the trick…

That’s it for now folks!

Coming up soon: How to add a service to Solaris 10′s SMF, and what to do when it (surprisingly) doesn’t work. Stay tuned.

Last time I talked about GTA4, I was under the impression that there was a TON of excitement ahead. Like, weeks of it! Man was I wrong. Now, I don’t wanna reveal any spoilers, but I’ll say this: Pegorino, you’re a big jerk!

In conclusion though, GTA4 is my personal favorite sandbox game ever. Even after having completed all the missions, I know I’ll come back to the game just to drive around, fly a chopper, kill innocent pedestrians and explore some more. And in a fucked up way, I think I’m gonna miss Niko. Kinda like when you’ve just finished reading a very good novel and you realize you grew attached to the characters, even the bastards.

I wish I had posted a big pro update but there’s really nothing to add to what I already said about the game, except maybe that the ending was challenging to the point of being frustrating. But it’s alright, the game itself is so awesome, I can forgive Rockstar for being a bit sloppy at the end.

Oh one last but very important thing, avoid the PC version. And between the PS3 and the Xbox 360 versions, I’d go with 360 just because of the awesome downloadable content. The first “episodic pack” was called The Lost and the Damned and followed a gang of bikers. There’s another pack coming called The Ballad of Gay Tony, and not much more is known about it at this point. Both packs are Xbox 360 only (so far). I’d really like to know what Sony did to deserve this…