Zombiepirate

I've been slowly working through Kurosawa's movies, and I thought this could be an interesting discussion since there are so many of them.

I just finished Yojimbo, and it was fantastic. It pulls you into the story of a ronin who comes to town where two rival gangs are feuding, and he plays both sides off of each other. I really enjoyed how the relationship between the tavern owner and the ronin developed through the movie.

I think my favorite that I've seen is Seven Samurai. Even though it's been copied to death for other movies, this is still the best version. Kikuchiyo is such a compelling character, and Kambei is great to watch as the leader who you hope can rise to the occasion.

I've also seen Ran (which I loved as an adaptation of King Lear) and The Hidden Fortress (which I loved as an adaptation of Star Wars [jk]).

Which should I watch next? I'd like to get into something set in contemporary times, so maybe Rashomon?

I've been getting dried wood ear mushrooms at an Asian grocery to add to ramen for a while, and it's a game changer. I just put it in a mug of boiling water for a few minutes and then add it into the soup.

I recently got some dried shiitake, and that's an ingredient that I wish I'd known about before. You rehydrate them in boiling water and leave them for a few hours. After that, squeeze them out and prepare them like fresh mushrooms. Retain the water that you soaked them in and you can use it to infuse that mushroom flavor into whatever you're cooking. I made a mushroom gravy over rice yesterday, and it was great.

I think even people who don't normally like the texture of mushrooms might enjoy them; they've got a bit more of a "meaty" texture than fresh ones, not quite so spongy. You can also grind them up while they're dry and add savory mushroom flavor to anything.

It's a great way to always have mushrooms on hand. Do you have a way that you like to prepare them?

Obligitory "I have to use it for my job," so let's commiserate.

It's the worst program in all of the Office Suite. MS wrote the goddamn OS and email client, but for some reason if I have two instances open for two different inboxes and try to pull one up on the taskbar, the wrong instance will pull up every single time without fail.

My runner-up complaint is how when I use the search bar, sometimes it'll forget what I'm doing and when I hit enter it'll open some email instead of executing the search.

Every update makes it worse, so what drives you crazy?

In the tech sense- what is your favorite way that someone has used systems in unintended ways to do something cool?

I like the one where a guy used a wiimote for head tracking.

I've been getting back into the classic Close Combat games, and they're some of my very favorite of the wargame genre.

I'm curious what retrogaming's favorites are. I'm not too particular on what constitutes a "wargame," it could be anything from Final Fantasy Tactics to Steel Panthers.

To throw a couple more out, I really enjoyed Rome: Total War for the 4x strategy and the Combat Mission games for their simulation systems as well.

I've been playing some games through ScummVM, and there's a cool feature that lets you load the game using whichever graphics mode the software originally supported. It also lets you use shaders to simulate a CRT, because these bare pixels were never meant to be seen with human eyes. I thought it was fun to compare the art from the different versions.

The posted image is from the EGA version

Here is the CGA:

And Here is Hercules(Amber):

[...] fans began throwing the uncollected disco LPs and singles from the stands. Tigers designated hitter Rusty Staub remembered that the records would slice through the air, and land sticking out of the ground. He urged teammates to wear batting helmets when playing their positions, "It wasn't just one, it was many. Oh, God almighty, I've never seen anything so dangerous in my life." Attendees also threw firecrackers, empty liquor bottles, and lighters onto the field. The game was stopped several times because of the rain of foreign objects.

The Entangled Worlds mod is so well done that once you're in the game it feels like the engine was designed to support multiplayer.

One interesting aspect is that when one of the players dies they turn into an enemy with all of the same inventory; the other players must kill them to revive.

Even if you never got into Noita, it's a lot of fun to play it with friends.

I'd dice a russet up fairly small, then pan fry it in avocado oil. Add rosemary, salt and pepper. Remove and cover, then fry an egg in the leftover oil. Shread cheese on top and serve with salsa.

I'm a fan of braunschweiger on butter crackers. Top-tier snack food.