I joined Steph’s family today in a Qingming, which is paying respects to dead ancestors by burning items for them to receive. The items are representations made from paper. They burned lots of money and clothes. We then went to Golden Wok in San Mateo and had some tasty food. Most of the Bay Area based family was there.
While I really like this game, it goes way too slow if people are trying to optimize, they are new, and there are five people playing. This is what happened on Thursday making a game that should have taken 1.5 hours take 3.5 hours. We didn’t get to sleep nearly early enough, and it made the game not as enjoyable when there was 20 minutes between your turns. I think a more synchronous style gameplay is needed for this game to work. That or faster players.
I really enjoyed this book, especially once all the main characters got together in the same place. The interactions of the main characters and getting to hear parts from both sides was hilarious, and incredibly well written. I can’t wait for the third book to come out.
Steph and I went to SF on Sunday to meet with lots of people. The first group we met with was one of Steph’s friends from her robotics team. We had a tasty lunch of east Asian style sandwiches and then went to the Asian art museum to see the exhibit on yoga. The exhibit wasn’t what I was expecting as most of the history of yoga is a mix of Buddhism and Hinduism, without much in the way of taking care of the body. Most of the history of yoga was in fact focused on acetic life, and not having a particularly well maintained body. The body part of yoga came about from a westernization and reaction to scientific thought. This was almost completely separate from the religious part of the practice. The westernized yoga was then taken back to the west and westernized a second time to get what we would think of as yoga. This big change was unexpected, and there was surprisingly little about why it changed. I was a little disappointing at the lack of historical context given to most of the exhibits at the Asian Art Museum. Most of the time there would be a sentence or two on the wall when entering a room, and a description of each item that amounted to “this is a vase from the Han dynasty.” I was hoping for something more along the lines of a read documentary where it would say what things were used for, how they would be seen in daily life, what kind of person would have them, and so on. I still enjoyed the time.
We then went to an ice cream place and met up with Jeremy. This liquid nitrogen ice cream was from a small stand by a park, called Smitten. It was tasty, but there wasn’t as much choice, and a much longer wait.
We then went to Nick’s place to watch some Game of Thrones. It was nice to see Simon again, and I really enjoyed watching more Game of Thrones. The story did a lot of re-introduction, but that is to be expected in a season opener. I brought up the series over time breakdown of ratings, and we had fun pulling up different series, and seeing how they changed over time. Breaking bad had by far the most impressive point, with a 10.0 on an episode with 48,000 votes. Nothing else came close.
We drove over to Rileys and met up with Jeremy there. Wit and his gf stopped by, but didn’t stay for the festivities. We watched Startrek: Into Darkness and played with the expansion of FTL. I did pretty well, getting to the final boss on hard mode. My strategy of choice in the expansion was area control boarding with the crystal ship style b. It was very powerful, except if running into an automated ship early on. Luckily the failures made for some early deaths, so I didn’t have to deal with terribly annoying deaths mid game. I made it to one jump away from the final boss, but the regular ships in the last stand were able to take me down on hard mode. I should have used the cloak more often, but it kept slipping my mind.
Steph and I decided to sleep in on Saturday, so we hung out in bed. The kitties didn’t really let us sleep since they started asking for attention at 9 am. They were still very cute. I cooked some breakfast and we went to Beachhead to hang out with Jeremy. Steph and he painted some minis and I worked some. Then we went into Palo Alto to get some liquid nitrogen ice cream at a place called scoop. it was pretty tasty, and we shared a triple scoop bowl.
This is another book in my Brandon Sanderson reading spree. He is a really good writer in that he can make a captivating universe, with complex histories, and developing characters. I appreciate the detail and complexity his characters show, and how they act consistently and understandably.
This book especially shows it off, with several of the main characters being of very different mindsets. This story is very intriguing, and I prefer the story of Kaladin being my favorite. He is such a tragic hero that comes back from the tragedy.
I really liked this book, and especially the mythology that came from the earlier books in the Mistborn series. The modernization of the book did not make it lack at all in the magic category. The introduction of guns certainly changed the uses of the magic, but didn’t change the interesting parts. The new speed bubbles were a little strange, but they were still pretty neat.
I like the movie, and while they mention some other super heroes, the did like all the other super hero movies and mainly ignored their existence. The new hero introduced was a little underpowered, except his ability to survive massive g-forces without blinking.
It's an Exciting World 