GASPERS JOURNEY 3: RIZE OF THE BLOOD DUCK

screenshot102

Microsoft Computers™ Exclusive Download link-GASPERS JOURNEY 3: RIZE OF THE BLOOD DUCK  Version:BETA S.1 

“Blood is constantly dribbling out of your duck head.You can’t stop the blood from leaking out! But you can with the action button hold your mouth closed, building the blood up in your beak, expanding and then releasing to force your shots forward. More charge=more damage and size but also less distance, UNTIL your mouth fills up beyond bursting and blood squirts everywhere.”
The attacks you lay down are complex, weird, and analog.
The boss fights in this game are less about reaction time and more  about being clever.
Though if you are fast and clever I have a second mode called turbo I recommend for you.

Controls:

ARROW keys to move around
SPACE to move gaspers beak
SHIFT to move gaspers upper eyelid
CTRL to move gaspers lower eyelid
hold CTRL+SPACE and SHIFT+SPACE while holding duck coins to do SPECIAL ATTACKS
escape to ESCAPE and skip cut scenes
p to PAUSE
r to RESTART
F4 TO TOGGLE FULLSCREEN
F9 TO TAKE A SCREENSHOT

Gasper does not have built in gamepad support but this external program works great: http://joytokey.net/en/

F.A.Q.

Q.Where is Gasper journey 1 and 2?

A.In a parallel universe!

I realized when I layed out the design documents for Gasper 1 ,2 and 3 that I wouldn’t have time to make them all. So I rolled a die. Someday interdimensional internet will be possible and you can download all 3 episodes of the epic series.

For now please be satisfied with the final chapter of Gasper journey.

Q.I found an error! What do I do?

A. Congrats, you’ve done something in the game nobody else ever has, and I didn’t think was possible! If you get an error message, copy it and send it to me! Try hammering the ignore button to get past it, if that doesn’t work you’ll have to hit abort and restart. I’ll fix it ASAP!

Q.  How long is this game?

A. Average play time for a single run is currently 30 minutes or 15 depending on whether you play chill or turbo. The final game will be no more than 45 minutes to 22. But much of the game is randomly generated or open to many different solutions, and there will be a score attack mode so the game is designed to be replayed over and over again.

Q. How do I transfer my save file?

A. Easy! Just copy your settings.cfg and RECORDS.sav file to your folder.

 

PROGRESS INFO-

The difficulty settings are kind of a mess, I recommend starting with the defaults(chill hard) and if the game feels too slow for you moving to (Turbo Normal) Score Attack is a work in progress, don’t even bother with it right now. Hopefully that will be the next update I come out with.

GUIDE IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!

THE CHALLENGE FAIRY IS MISSING!

INTRO SCENE IS ENABLED

DIFFICULTIES ENABLED

SCORE ATTACK NOT READY!

Average play time is 30 minutes.

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!

introduction storyboarding, title screen and duck voice credit goes to Cassidy Rae Henry
narrator voice credit goes to John Mawhorter

Special thanks to Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) for the royalty free music!

 

Maturity

Today after playing hide and go seek with my brother Aaron, sister Sara and cousin Ryan, Ryan told me I was immature, for the way I behaved. This made me think, am i immature? What is mature? I’m almost 25 years old and I’m still playing with kids, like a kid. I act silly and do things most grown men wouldn’t. I am sure lots of people would see that as immature and they may be right. Let’s talk about it.

Its easy to say what maturity is, its something fully developed. If you are still growing in height you could say your body isn’t fully matured. To be mature is to reach your peak of development.

I try my best every day to seperate myself from social norms and to question everything, and decide for myself what is the right thing to do. This inevitably leads me to become a outsider from society who will be viewed as odd. I’m fine with this, why I decided to live my life this way can be saved for another time. But I have concluded that I didn’t play enough. That most people don’t play enough.

I’m a poor example to society, I don’t do any work, but there are lots of other adults I know who actually do work hard and make time for play. There’s this idea that as you get older you have to stop playing, but its not true.

I think that play is something we should continue doing our entire lives.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-lost-art-of-play-reclaiming-a-primal-tradition/
If you’ll indulge me and read this article on the important of play perhaps you’ll believe me more when I say it has serious benefits. Its only after you stop playing that you halt certain cognitive developments. So yes its true that I am not mature because I play, and I hope I never mature.

I hope I continue to grow and develop myself forever and I hope you the reader understand that sometimes being immature just means you are continuing to grow.

Perfect Peppermint Hot CoCo

For the holidays I wanted to give out gifts but I had no money! I decided I’d try to make something yummy with the things I already had.

I decided to make Peppermint Hot Chocolate.

Perfect Peppermint Hot CoCo

My first steps were to make a batch of the stuff, and it had to be perfect. I would mix ingredients together and try 4oz cups.

After much experimentation with many different ingredients such as condensed milk, vanilla extract, peppermint extract and dozen of test tastes until my tongue literally went numb and I had to take a break before starting again, I’ve made the perfect peppermint hot coco. Combining the soothing aspects of peppermint leaves with the comforting effects of chocolate. Peppermint hot chocolate is one of those things that I’ve always had a love affair with.   Combining Organic Raw Cacao powder, Soothing peppermint leaves, and German Rock Sugar makes for me the perfect cup of Chocolate Tea.

I then went threw several revisions for the Instructions looking for the best way to make Peppermint Hot CoCo.  All in all I ended up drinking most of the coco that I had tweaking the ingredients and trying to find the perfect mix.

My final Instructions for Cup:  Bring one cup of water to a boil.
Mix in  1/2oz coco while stiring vigorously.
Wait 1 minute then add 2oz milk. Final product should be the color of chocolate milk 

 

Here’s a picture of my test lab:

IMG_4640s

Next steps: I need to find a cute inexpensive way to store packets of it and print out labels while portioning it out to a average serving.

IMG_4651s

I used my vacuum sealer to package them into servings for 1 to 2 cups of coco. 

and made labels

Coco-labelv2

 

And here it is! IMG_4724s

I put easy tear cuts in the sides of the bags and taped the labels on.

This was a fun project but it was also really stressful at times. I made 12 packets of CoCo ranging from .60-1oz or 3-5 teaspoons all in all I wish I had made a larger batch of coco, but that would have involved going to the market and buying more than I should be spending.

Hopefully everyone will appreciate these single serving drink packets.

TEA

I hear a lot about what’s the right temp to brew tea but I never hear anything about drinking it! After sipping on tea too hot and burning my tongue yesterday, I decided to finally set down and take the temp of the tea as I drank. My intentions were to determine at what point tea is safe to drink and at what point its lukewarm.

Here’s what I found:

135 F+ is burning I can drink it past this temp but doing so will burn the inside of my mouth ever so slightly.

130-134 F is ideal if I SLURP it.

125- F is a great temp for tea, its cool enough to drink without slurping but still feels hot and nice. At 120 F- the tea’s becomes lukewarm and I would prefer to have it iced at this point.

This was tested on my mouth only, what I’d like is to hear from others. Brew a cup of tea or hot water and take its temp as you drink it.

Try to find: The range that slurping/sipping is bearable Your favorite temp The temp at which point it becomes lukewarm

UPDATE:

I’ve surveyed a lot of people and I’m concluding that you should to be safe try to wait until the tea is 130 degrees before you start drinking it.

I’ve found people who drink a lot of hot tea build up a tolerance to it, if you need to drink tea at a dangerously hot temp in order to enjoy it that’s fine fine the temp that you’re comfortable at but don’t drink higher than that. There are serious health concerns linked with drinking tea at extremely hot temperatures.

Sources:

http://www.accuratebuilding.com/images/services/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_lrg.gif

http://azdailysun.com/news/drink-tea-when-temperature-s-just-right/article_7dc9a472-8dcf-52fd-a10c-ba4fd5f13537.html

Tea Tips with Jonathan Daar

  • If you want your tea cup to stay warm longer pour some hot water in the cup first and swirl it around, once the cup warms dump the water out and use the cup for tea.  This is important if you want to brew the tea in cup
  • Green and White tea will be burned and turn bitter if you cook them at a boiling temperature. I recommend soaking them in water at 175 F
  • Slurping tea is a way to oxidize and cool the tea when its normally too hot to drink. Try it, professional tea tasters do it, and its fun.
  • If your looking for a caffeine boost eat the tea leaves! Tea leaves have significantly more caffeine than coffee beans per ounce. The reason why tea has reportedly less caffeine is because the leafs are normally discarded, while in coffee the beans are ground up and consumed. Really you can eat tea, with high quality tea this is especially enjoyable.
  • The Sky is the limit when you are making tea. Try making tea out of garlic! You’d be surprised what you can put in hot water that will still be edible!

Here’s my tea collection:

IMG_4621s

Above: Left top to right clockwise: Airtight and dark canister for keeping tea fresh longer, electric tea kettle with variable temp control, stainless steel teaspoon, and a lot of tea.

Tea is best kept in a cool dark airtight place. I keep mine in the freezer section of the unplugged minifridge I use for console gaming.IMG_4625IMG_4623

Bark in the distance

Yesterday I biked up into the Cobin Canyons and hiked up to my favorite place of solitude to get away from hustle and bustle of the city. The place is desolate and dry, rivers bone dry, the plants a sea of golden brown uniformity with specks of steel-blue sage poking out from the dead grass. I was hoping to wind down a little and get my priority’s in order.

But when I squatted down by the dry river at the end I started to hear a bark.

ARF BARK WAAF

The barks were unsteady and strange, varying from Deep and shaking to high and piercing, Always loud and always in my direction.  It sounded like it was getting closer but the woods were so thick I couldn’t see the beast. What did it want? Was it wild?

The irony did not escape me.

Here I had come to escape the noise of the city, thinking the sounds and smells of nature would calm and cure me of the stress I’ve been experiencing only to be hit at the end by something far more annoying, the droning of a mutt yelping on and on. 

I had to leave, I went back the way I came but I felt the barks turn and follow me as I went. What did it mean? Was there something I was supposed to learn from this? I climbed out of the canyon and into the hills but still could not locate the animal.

I sat there for a little bit until the noise died down and then continued further down back from whence I came and I crossed paths with a Caucasian man in a black shirt and tan shorts carrying a huge pair of gardening sheers with him.

Could this be what I thought it was?

I stopped him to talk and he introduced himself as Jared, a local who along with his friend cared for the paths everyone was using. They were the ones who kept the plants in check.

Who keeps the trails trim was a question I had always wondered but never found a answer for. But it was so simple, a few truly nice people anonymously cared for the trail.

I wish I could give back to the community like this, I don’t work well with people but here was something even I could do. This act of routine kindness really touched me. I’m still trying to work out what it means to me but I’ve always wanted to feel like I’m making the world a better place but I thought I’d have to do  something big or it wouldn’t mean anything.

Clearly even little things like cutting down weeds while you hike matter.

Daartopia: The expedition

Some time ago I learned my grandfather acquired a plot of  40 acres of land in California! So the story goes a client of his couldn’t pay his legal services and traded him land for it instead way back in February of 1973. Land in the middle of nowhere miles away from any roads, or any civilization for that matter. So it goes that although he payed taxes on the plot my grandfather didn’t know where it was.

But I knew, my keen instincts told me something great was destined for that land and so the dream of a utopia was born. A utopia for Daar’s everywhere! DAARTOPIA the promised land of my people.

But first I had to locate where it was. Well it took a while, I made phone calls, I googled and narrowed the location down. Here it is:

 

Fullscreen capture 10312012 33301 PM.bmp

Among a set of plots deep in the Mojave Desert by the city of Needles

Fullscreen capture 10312012 33256 PM.bmp

Was Daartopia  four and a half miles away from this road:

Fullscreen capture 10312012 95219 PM.bmp

with a gradual sloping in elevation of 100ft per mile the journey will be too far to complete on foot. That’s why we’ll be using Dirtbikes

9099280-300x225

To travel to and back.

Yes that’s right, I’ve located the place and now I’m planning a Expedition to Daartopia.

What I know of the land is little.

  • Although technically on the side of the mountain elevation reports show that its fairly level varying in 20feet from lowest to highest point gradually over the quarter mile property which follows the same curvature of traveling there.
  • These pictures taken  three and four and a half miles away look majestic and amazing.
  • There appear to be dry riverbeds with clusters of plants running along the property.  They could also bee small hills. Or a optical illusion, what I do know is coursing under these veins of the earth is enough oil to make up for the loan I’m taking out to buy the dirt bikes.
  • The creatures that live there have never seen the skin of man and will be easily hunted. 

To learn more we’re going to have to survey the land and plant the seeds of a new civilization.  Here is

My Grand Master Plan

One. In the center of the land a flag will be planted. Designed by We the people and made by someone in China.

dartopiaflag

I’m willing to drop a hundred dollars and carry a flagpole on my back for 4 and a half miles to plan this sucker. This will be the SYMBOL of our land. So that we know even when we return home that somewhere this flag hangs high flapping majestically in the breeze and reminding the beasts of the land who their Royalty is.

 

Two. A fortress will be constructed

fig5-14-below-ground-desert-shelter

We’ll start small, create barracks like the one above, but later this will be abandoned and given to the snakes as we construct a towering fortress to to separate us from the commoners and to provide defense in battle.

The fortress of solitude will have:

  • solar panels charged on the roof
  • a single kindle with all the worlds literature
  • a outside garden of lovely dessert plants
  • a iceplace (its like a fireplace but you put dry ice there instead)
  • two poles rising up, hammocks tied to the side every 3 feet up into the heavens
  • a cool lizard manservant who tends to the grounds but never speaks a word

 

Three. Mark the land as ours

Fullscreen-capture-10312012-33256-PM

When the Aliens come they’ll take away everyone’s land just like we did to the Indians. The only way we can stop them is by salting the earth with a message so huge it can be seen from outer space. A message that says:

HEY This is daartopia! Hands off Martians!

Other ideas:

Fullscreen-capture-10312012-33256-PM2

Mark our waste disposal point and dare people to travel out there to find our buried treasure.

 

Fullscreen-capture-10312012-33256-PM3

Make a political Statement!

 

Fullscreen-capture-10312012-33256-PM5

Draw a picture of a cat thinking about tuna

I’m also thinking about taking acrylic paints and painting the large rocks we find with faces so it looks like we have a army of stone golems patrolling the land. To scare away pirates.

 

 

That’s my plan! I’m looking for bold courageous innovators with moxy to join me on this trip.  The official song of our Journey will be “America” covered by YES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU1Fi2tYito

Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies
And we walked off, walked off, walked off,to look for America Daartopia!
Kathy, I said, as we boarded the greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
Took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
They’ve all gone to look for America Daartopia!
All gone to look for America Daartopia!
Laughing on the bus, playing games with faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said be careful, his bow tie is really a camera
“Kathy, I’m lost”, I said, although I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why I’m
Counting the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
And they’ve all gone to look for America Daartopia!
All gone to look for America Daartopia!
All gone to look for America Daartopia!

Thanks for listening. If you want to be apart of my crew come speak to me, although my body will be here in los angles my heart will be gone to look for Daartopia.

-Jonathan Kalman Daar

Additional ideas-

From Cassidy Henry-

You should build a giant solar powered electric fence around the land that plays death metal when people touch it so it looks like anyone who’s being electrocuted is just head banging to the music.

From Daniel Bradford-

I just want to ride dirt bikes.

Secret stuffs

Towns:

Esmerald-

Once a large and bustling city and a major mountainous trade outpost a better route was found and now Esmerald is a dying city. Most of the buildings are abandoned or were sold and bought up by neighbors. Those who stayed have turned to small farming and production to save on the high costs in importing. But there are still some makings of once a great town.

Features:

Two Taverns-A huge two story tavern and a wide one have remained, the owners bitter rivals trying to one up each other even now that everyone else has left. There’s not enough busness in this town for the two of them and they’ll fight for the Players loyalty One offers blackjack but the guy cheats(actually play blackjack and try to cheat! keep a list of when to fold. )

The Tavern of Drink- named The Drinking Donkey- Eolert a Lazy, drunk tavern owner with a beer belly builds exquisite woodcraft, when the he is in the mood. Eolert has silver hair and sharp brown eyes. Eolert is compassionate and forgiving. His barhall is one story and wide, with exquisitely carved and detailed tables and bar with various intricate carvings of men fighting. He serves a stronger tasting mead than the lucky goat+ has some wine and berry crushed flavored mead for a extra price. He’s a widower. His spirit is crushed after his wife divorced him and left the city after things started to dry up. A Blind musician named homer who dreams of ghosts hangs out during the day and gets free drinks for preforming from the owner. He carry’s a lute and as a spell can cast bard like bonuses.

The Tavern of Luck- named The Lucky Goat- Jerry- A small almost gnomish Confident fellow, likes to ask lots of questions- runs the tavern, he’s sociable and hardworking A bit of a heckler with a quick wit but becomes deeply offended if anyone teases him back. The building is two stories with a blackjack tables up  top, Barstools down below. Offers a Barley mead, will deal the players blackjack upstairs.  His wife- Fantana The flirtatious barmaid’s decolletage and short skirt do nothing to dispel her reputation for promiscuity. She’s a leggy tall brunet with big tits is the only other one in the bar during the day. Jerry will take any opportunity to trash talk the other tavern.

 

Schoolhouse- In a red roofed white building with a bell tower out front resides a tiny classroom where A older woman with bundled up grey hair remains to still teach the children, her name is Elizabeth. she was a quite accomplished magic teacher and craves students to go over the more challenging matters she’s mastered. She will off handling mention that andrew is the greatest mage in the town, but he’s not too friendly.

Andrew’s House- A black painted building of some size that  goes deep underground into the sewers. The door is locked and a huge earth golem stands by the door, linked to andrew, he’ll look at the players and tell them as the golem that he’s busy and to go away.  The golem has a single blue gem in its chest that’s its weakpoint.

If they break in the’ll find among lots of beakers books and cat towers and toys a tunnel leading deep down into the earth that was dug by his golems that reaches down to the final room in the sewers. Andrew-A powerful arch mage is incredibly nervous around people, and for all his power feels intolerably lonely, considering his black cat barthalamew is his only true friend.- the villan! when the players try to visit him he dismisses them without opening the door. later deep undeground he starts sucking the souls of everyone in the village to power his cat(and or him?) into becoming a demi-lich-cat-man! Everyone will feel on a failed vigor roll violently nausious and on a success sick and weak(0 on raise, –1 on success, –2 fagtude on fail) In reality nobody will die, he’s just drawing as much magical energy as he can for the ritual and didn’t intend to harm anyone.

He will protect barthalamew before himself and is actually going to use the power to save his cat’s life. Its old and dying of cat-lukemia.

Weaponsmith- Now turned to producing farming tools for the budding community he’ll happly go to work making weapons for the players. Darby the Autistic blacksmith has an odd accent, but can identify anything by sense of smell alone. He can appraise and identify magical items. His autistic behaviour is actually because he’s little more than a puppet for a magic item. A silver spoon he keeps exposed in his breast pocket and will take control of any player who picked it up by returning it to Darby. The spoon likes darby and will only find a new body in darby’s death. He’s thousands of years old and extremely knowlegable, remembering everything. He was once a normal boy but a experimenting mage trapped him like this. The one thing he doesn’t remember is his life as a boy.  Darby is just a shell now, and will go comatose if he loses the spoon. He has on stock some of the basic weapons from the armory.

General store- Packed rat- image of a rat packed almost to bursting with squarish objects More like a mega store! This store has become huge as its absorbed many of the abandoned buildings. The owner is a massive packrat  and has a huge selection of goods. Sorting threw crap such as wodden figurine carvings, pieces of furniture, gnome statues, used hairbrushes, ect on a high notice roll of a declared object a player may uncover a gem, such as especially handsome suit, a fine wooden chest, even on a high enough roll items of some unknown magical value! The owner is a squat fat dwarfish female merchant with heavy wrinkles, named Shirly. She’s hedonistic and has a strong love of sex and chocolate. Flirtatious.

The Farmlands- Out of town there is a clearing where some farming is attempted. There are many goats, the town’s main source of milk and food eating the wild plants. Chicken is available as a coup is kept but eggs and chicken is more rare.

Market- a butcher collects and resells all of the towns goods. He’s got an ice spell running and keeping the metal ice cold. He has a display case with chunks of Goat, Young and Old meat and chicken. A bowl of eggs, a jar of pickled eggs, a bushel of barly, Tomatoes, Lettuce, Garlic, Rosemary, thyme, Carrots, onions, sweet potatos.

Butcher-Tane: Male Tane is athletic, with blond hair and large gray eyes. He wears chain mail and wields a Butchers Knife.

Guard post- two guards go about the town, mooching off the farm, hanging around the bars and night. The guard tower is facing the entrance to the town and is a lookout box. suspended high up on stilts with a ladder going down. The two guards are:

Wulfa: Male Human Soldier, Neutral. Wulfa has matted black hair and soft blue eyes, and numerous distinctive tattoos. He wears studded leather and wields a mace and shield. Wulfa compulsively plays with a steel ring. Used to be in a dirty gang of thevies and after killing a man and getting in trouble fled to this town.  His steel ring is actually from the man he killed, his own brother in a heated argument.

Douglass-A retired hero of remarkable strength, he is now extremely obese but set on regaining his physical fitness and glory of old after a sucessful misson with the heros. A muscular man, thinking he is a mage because of his powerful ‘on touch’ sleep spell.

The town keeps its prices high but lowers them for locals. Barganing is expected and thus they will ask for more than they really want.

At somepoint a scruffy man in a cloak will run up to the players and raise his hand and smile, Gyra(real name Alex) will strike a scruffy man with a with a bolt of lightning knocking the man laying on the ground helplessly shaking. He read the mans mind and he was a thief who was going to steal from the party. If the players search his body they will find his other hand was wraped around a curved dagger. He was going to cut a backpack and run off with its contents. He was a man who the depression hit especially hard, he had gambled his money away, lost his job and now, now he’s desperate to earn enough to buy passage for him and his wife. Gyra will ask the players, what they think should be done with a thief. His name is Artin has braided black hair and green eyes. He wears worn clothing and riding boots.

Sewers-The town has a large complete sewage system. When the calamity starts to happen rats will scurry out from the main sewerentrance. The players can crawl in there.

 

Spare Characters- People who may appear at night, in taverns or when the town gathers together. They are Farmers.

Cyne: Male Human Chicken Farmer Cyne has messy brown hair and sharp green eyes, and is pleasant in appearance. He wears travel-stained clothing and a wide-brimmed hat. Cyne is devout and pious.

Leony: Male Human Goat Hearder,  Leony has messy brown hair and narrow purple eyes, and is fey in appearance. He wears worn clothing and carries a Large Staff. Leony suffers a deadly allergy to eggs.

Tom: Male Human Field worker. Tom is young, stout, with blond hair and blue eyes. He wears travel-stained clothing and an amulet of luminous crystal. Cyne has a companion, a silver rat. He can telepathically communicate with the rat who can communicate with other rats thanks to his amulet. He’s a knowledgeable expert on a great many things, but lacks the vocabulary to express what he has seen, leading to a reputation as a moron. He speaks like a retard, stutters lips hole deal

 

 

Conservative lady who loves animals but is forced to prostitute her daughters to keep the luxurious lifestyle her former husband provided her before his untimely death. runs brothal

A beautiful, nubile girl, with a flirtatious conversational style, is actually an eons old immortal in human form.

A blind martial artist obsessed with training and a fear of weakness.

 

Someday-The young person who just took to following one of the PCs around is actually a polymorphed spy for one of the PC’s enemies.

A lone detective appears to town folk as a dark stranger with purpose unknown, and is frequently seen in areas where a murder has just been committed.

 

 

The seller of quaint, curious, and forgotten lore is a benign lich in disguise, seeking to fund its own esoteric research interests.

A candy-eyed waif is possessed by a powerful demon, and uses her innocent demeanor to win her way into the confidence and protection of heroes.

A fortune teller who knows the day of her death, but not the manner, and is desperately searching for a way to survive. tons of ways to kill her on one day challenge the players to stop it

 

 

 

 

Wearda: Male Human Merchant, Neutral. Wearda has matted blonde hair and green eyes, and is fey in appearance. He wears travel-stained clothing and a green cloak. Wearda compulsively cracks his knuckle

  1. Gare: Male Human Craftsman, Good. Gare has gray hair and green eyes, and a distinctive tattoo on his face. He wears worn clothing and numerous rings. Gare is perceptive and pious.

Helry: Male Human Slave, Good. Helry has long blonde hair and light amber eyes. He wears modest garments and carries an elder staff. Helry seeks to discover the lost dwarven kingdom of Zarazar.

local specialties

Chicken cheese- A goat cheese with a marbled black and white shell(chicken crap)

goat nuggets-beer batter fried chunks of goat

The Oaks Gourmet Market- Hamburger Review

I don’t see the point in going to restaurants for anything that exotic or unusual.  I’ve perfected my cooking styles for all my favorite foods. I feel like I’m just throwing my money away.

“Yeah well try this”

I remember my cousin casually saying more than a year ago, linking me to a little market/restaurant down in Hollywood.

Fast-forward to yesterday night, I’m looking over my phone’s google maps, riding through Hollywood

“I mark a star over every destination on google maps I want to go to, but the problem is I can’t label them.” I say to my roomate

“So the result is as I travel across areas I‘ll see stars, like this one in hollywood and have no idea what it means. Is this a friends house? Was this some place I said I would visit? Why the hell would I want to go to a market in Hollywood?”

My roommate starts laughing while I open up the reviews for the place, hoping they’ll lend me some vital clue.

“Oh I know this place, this is the place with the amazing burgers my cousin Travis recommended. Lets go”

So I’ll cut to the chase, here’s where I review the burger. I don’t have a picture so I’ll try to be descriptive as possible from last nights memory and a picture taken from their menu.

menu

The bread was a golden brown Brioche about as thick as the burger itself, I have no idea what a Brioche is but it was especially eggy and buttery for a bread, giving it a rich taste worth eating on its own. It reminded me fondly of Halal a jewish bread I haven’t had in quite a while.

The bun was cleanly sawed open freshly with a bread knife, giving its insides that fresh doughy texture of unexposed bread.

On my first bite I got just a taste of that great bread and bacon, Black Forest it was dark and red in color, burned dry and crispy but thick enough to have a little chew to it as well.

then I worked my way in to the burger, which was half a pound of a “Dry Aged Blend”(their words) which was well charred on the ouside like the bacon and seemed at first to be well done, despite my asking for Medium rare, it was dry but had a fairly complex flavor. This burger was pretty good, as I worked myself in deeper I found the burger was convex! The middle was much thicker and was red and soft like I wanted, and that’s when I got m first bite of the Red Onion, Tomato and Baby Arugula leafs with their Smoked Jalapeno-Pineapple Compote sauce. It was so good, the Tomato and Arugula tasted like they had come right from a farmers market, and the Compote sauce complemented the red onion amazingly, and gave the burger a sweet start and a spicy aftertaste. As I worked my way further down this sweet savory spicy and buttery burger I finally hit the cheese lopsided on the far end of the burger, a Taleggio, it was soft and sweet, complementing the burgers indulgent dessert like taste.

I really enjoyed myself, the ingredients were good and Worthy of a B+Grade, I got to try a cheese and a bread I never had before, and learn that a desert like Compote could be paired with hamburger.

The pep and cooking was sloppy, with the burger being poorly shaped, leaving the outside overcooked and the ingredients pushed around the burger somewhat randomly. The bacon and Burger were both dryer than I would have liked and charred very well.  C Grade

I really enjoyed myself, but still I would have rather shoved the cook aside and done it myself, Just cooking the burger at a slightly lower temperature could have done wonders.

Could I have made a better burger myself? Yes, but as far as burgers not cooked by me go, this is one of the best I ever had, and I strongly recommend it.

 

http://www.theoaksgourmet.com/

How to make a good computer game in 48 hours or less

Lets get right to business, coming back from the Global Game Jam I got to see a lot of people make games in under 48 in teams, and I made a game in under 24 by myself on the side of working on another project, so I think I’m reasonably qualified.

Find people to support you– This is a no-brainer, having others pick up tasks for the game is going to save time and it’s a great motivator. Even though my game was a side project to something else, the support and attention of others not only gave me motivation, but their feedback helped me quickly understand what steps I had to take next.

Make a game not a game engine-Unless you are a professional programmer with a pre-built framework you’ll need to pick something like Game Maker, MultiMedia Fusion 2, Unity, or Construct 2 to work with… these are all great high level languages designed specifically for making the process of creating games as simple as possible and simple to the experienced means fast. Someone with a solid grasp of any one of these tools can get a complete game running in mere hours. Personally I love game maker, a solid review of it can be found here

Take breaks the right way– Eventually you will get tired and you will get hungry. If you need a break go on a walk, sit in the park just get away from the computer and relax yourself, don’t surf the internet or play video games. If you are hungry go out and eat something healthy. If you’re tired sleep, don’t try to force yourself to wake up if you are going to end sleeping later on, you’ll only be more exhausted. This is supposed to be fun, you can work hard and finish without feeling like you beat up your body, I did. I actually found the simplicity of the game jam to be rejuvenating, I didn’t have to worry about anything other than making games, and the times I spent sitting in the park relaxing gave me my best ideas. 

Understand your priorities– This is the most important lesson I can give you, what order to take things when you make a game. The core of every game is the gameplay, a game is still a game without art, without sound, without a story, but without a gameplay you don’t have a game, as such the first thing you should do is:

  1. Decide on what kind of gameplay you want and plan out how you can achieve that. I decided I wanted to make a game about the thrill of throwing a boomerang while moving around and using it to fight off enemies. I decided I needed in terms of art a image of the character holding the boomerang, one of them throwing it, and images of the boomerang rotating. For the sound I needed one that played, on the throw and one on the catch. For the Programing I-this is getting too long to write!
  2. Implement this basic core idea as quickly as possible, just get it to work. Needless to say I was able to get the basics up and running very quickly. I used every shortcut I could to get to it, even making different colored clones of the player as enemies. 
  3. Congratulations you have a game in a few hours! Now that you got that out of the way its time for the hard part! Making a GOOD game. You’re going to have to decide what direction you want to take with the gameplay and continue to add to it while sticking to the same rules, focus on something, figure out what needs to be done and do it, In my case I wanted to have waves of randomly generating enemies come at the player, then I wanted to create different enemies, then I decided to add health, then power ups, each thing was isolated and broken down, I was careful never to build on anything I had not already firmly established in the game, so if it turned out to be a dud, I could quickly move on to something else. 
  4. At a certain point you may decide that you have had enough adding features you want to polish the game. Polish is a word I like to use to describe those little details that although small and time consuming can bring up the quality of a game or at least make it feel more complete, good examples of this is flashy graphical effects, playing with the friction of the game or in my case I wanted to find a way to teach the player how to play my game. I ended up making a tutorial level that gradually brought the deeper gameplay mechanics to the player. In the time it too for me to do this I could have easily added a series of levels for the main game instead, but it would have meant little if the game’s initial difficulty scared away players.

 

The biggest mistakes I saw at the Global Game Jam was people adding features or even polishing details, when their core was still not functional. Remember make a complete simple game first, build upon it next, and finally polish, fix the stuff that could be better, throw away the stuff that doesn’t add to the game.

Remember its all code-Everything in the game is being stored as 1’s and 0’s and it’s the programmers job to put it all together, all the art sound and good ideas in the world won’t make a computer game.

I hope you found this informative, I highly recommend How to make a game in 4 hours by Cactus. If you are going to watch it open up this write up too which covers the same event:  http://www.tigsource.com/2009/03/23/igs-09-the-four-hour-game-design/

Amendment:

Looking back at this article and thinking about my own struggles I realized I missed something, something so obvious it stands right in the face of everything, but still needs to be mentioned.

The most important factor, this significant integer is SKILL. Nobody just wakes up one day and decides to make a great computer game in 48 hours. They spend years developing and refining their skills and their output in this constrained time is some reflection of that skill. In the above article I merely wrote my observations of what successful groups seemed to have in common. But what really made them successful was the years of experience and skill they had brought with them.

If you are reading this you are probably still not completely satisfied with your abilities, and that’s a good thing. As long as we yearn for more, as long as we see what we could have done better next time, we will continue to grow. A crocodile only grows if it eats, so stay hungry my friends and bite off more than you can chew. 

Cooper Canyon Camp

VIDEO HERE: http://youtu.be/dFIC9tWwK50

Its been  a long time since the day I promised my mom that I could take her camping with backpacks lighter than my laptop. Backpacks so light and so well fitted that she would forget she is wearing it and just enjoy the trip.

If you are unfamiliar with ultra lightweight backpacking you can read about it here: http://jonathandaar.com/science/?p=14 

But moving on, I got a message on my phone on January 05 2012 from my mother that she just got the last of her gear in the mail and she wanted to go tomorrow, I told her that I would run home and grab my stuff, she would then pick me up in an hour and half and tell me, me wearing a super thin shirt, lightweight and breezy boxer sized shorts and my toe shoes: oh Jonathan its going to be cold, oh ok I said, running back in to grab a pair of underwear and a pair of socks, “I’ll slip into these if it gets chilly, I said pointing to the underwear and I’ll slip into these when I go to sleep, I said pointing to the socks.

Its been so hot the past few days, I was looking forward to the cooler mountain air.

I packed everything but food and the next day I headed out with my stepdad Jim to gather supplies.

My mother is doing the whole 30 challenge, that’s 30 days of eating only whole unprocessed foods plus no grains or beans.

Me, already eating pretty close to this due to how great I feel on the drug of good health and my favorite foods am very happy for her.

So We , headed to trader joes and picked up  free range eggs, grass fed beef, Bell Peppers, Avocados,  Carrots, Broccoli, and Brussel Sprouts. Such a fine feast! I’m getting hungry writing this!

But Jim was not satisfied, we had to make a stop off at another market so he could feed his crippling addiction to power bars and M&M’s

Jim's crippling addiction to power bars and M&M's

So We, with all our food started heading out to some place none of us have ever been to before, some place in the Angeles Mountains that my mother heard about from someone working at REI.

Its supposed to be really pretty she said.

By the time we finally got there it was getting late into the afternoon, perhaps 3pm

So here we are setting off!

 

packed!

My mother liked my backpack so much she traded backpacks with me.

and  ready to go!

And so we were off!

IMG_3314

Burnt Trees

IMG_3315

A LOT of snow

There was a lot of of snow!

As we trudged on it got colder and colder, far colder than I, valley boy had experienced in years. But I was moving and generating heat.

Once we got to the campsite my toes were starting to get cold! The ground felt like ice(perhaps because a lot of it was ice)!

But doing my best to tough it out we started the actual camping bit:

Getting dinner ready with Jim

Here is Jim starting to boil up  a cup of water.

IMG_3319

and here’s my mama setting up camp a hundred yards away(you’re supposed to do this for so animals don’t associate humans so much with food). We picked a dip between trees that seemed like it would keep us warmer.

IMG_3320

So we cooked, enjoyed a hearty meal, put all our food in a bag and suspended it in the trees with twine and at 6:30 jumped into our sleeping bags in the icy dark, turned in our headlights and waited till sunrise.

I learned a lot,

I learned that cooking in a pot rather than a pan was much more efficient, and I’ve decided to start cooking all my meals, as soups.  They cook more evenly, faster, use less fuel and you can use your eating spoon for cooking that way. Up until now I would often try to cook conventional foods such as Burgers and even brought a tiny spatula with me. But now I’ll even be poaching my eggs.

I learned how fucking cold my toes could get. I’m going to try going up again wearing thin toe socks but I’m not sure how much that will help. I’ll likely need a special pair of trail shoes for super cold weather.    I’ve heard a lot of great things about innov8 and if I want to go anywhere super cold a pair of minimalist hiking shoes this will likely be what I end up getting.

I learned how important it is to angle your feet downward on even a slight slope.  Slowly over the night we all rolled down off our sleeping pads over the night. It was so freezing cold, and I was taking most of the light but chilling wind for our group yet we all made it threw the night ok in our sleeping bags.

I learned how important it was to plan your trip on not only the weather but the Moon! The moon was almost entirely full, illuminating our sky and preventing us from seeing the stars. Sure we could have hiked all night in that light, but with the cold we weren’t about to!

 

IMG_3321

It was DEAD quiet that night. We heard not a single sound other than the wind as we layed snuggled next to each other in the wind. My mother told me that if there is anything I wanted to talk to her about now as the time, it was too cold for her to read a book, and we had all night to talk. But there wasn’t anything I wanted to say. I was unusually quiet, choosing instead to take all this time to think about my life instead.

IMG_3322

I got up late in the night to take a piss. My shoes were ice cold and I didn’t want to have to take off the thin warm socks I did have, so I tried stepping into my stepdad’s size 11 boots, that’s one size too small and thus I ended up walking about with my feet pointed down and my heels on edge, I felt like a stripper. Tip toeing under the moonlight away from my family I started to get really tense, I kept looking around me, expecting something to start charging at me from any angle, at any distance. As I started pissing I looked down in dismay “ Yeah I’m still afraid of being alone in the woods.” before quickly bringing it back up and scanning the horizon for enemies.

As I snuggled back in to my sleeping bag I thought to myself that this is the greatest hurdle for me, the fear of being alone, truly alone, in nature. I still remember the last time I went hiking by myself I ninjaed my way threw the forest, walking on needles, quietly creeping while looking and listening for hidden foes. I felt that there must be a Rattlesnake, or a Scorpion lurking in wait for me.

In the morning I yelped as I slid my bare toes into my ice cold shoes which due to our rolling was no longer underneath my legs.

We went to check on the food to find that the twine had snapped overnight, dropping everything about 10 feet. We’ll bring proper rope next time but man EVERYTHING was covered in eggs. We cleaned it all off and packed everything back up in our last garbage bag and on my toes insistence headed home. I asked for the car keys because I new I would get there first and charged up the mountain, feeling better and better as my body generated heat. After 35 minutes I was at the top and in the car, already so warm that I was back in shorts and a t-shirt. After 15 minutes my stepdad arrived. 

We waited another 15 minutes and my mama still wasn’t there. Jim wanted to go down to look for her,  I  handed him a comic illustrating the adventures of Smokey the bear I picked up at the rangers station and told him to read it, as I would instead. 

I bounded down the mountain looking for her and cupping my hands  to shout like a boy who had lost his dog. “MAAAMA!” “oh MAMAAA!”

After I traveled down a few turns of the mountains I found her, shuffling her feet and looking exhausted.  I took her light pack off of her, placed it on my back and bounded up some of the slope. I then waited as she slowly walked up: “actually the pack wasn’t slowing me down, I don’t feel any better. Now my back is cold and I need my jacket.” She said. So I gave her a jacket and thought about what I could do.

“Well I can’t carry you up…” I said. but then I realized what I had to do! I gently bent down behind her and  put my hands on her back and started pushing her up the mountain. Now all she had to do was keep her legs moving. We got to a brisk pace doing this and eventually I had her all the way at the top!

Our trip was over, we were ready to return home.