Chilly

Five year old kid writes a story, 29 year old man animates it.

The result is the greatest story ever told by mankind...

Axe Cop.



Edit: If you want to follow the action it's here: http://www.axecop.com

+ Show Spoiler +

One year ago, almost to the day, I made this post:

Ever since I left Korea, I've had Korean food withdrawl. Really bad. I've tried to get this food at Korean restaurants in Calgary, but it's just not the same. You can see it's close, but not close enough. And it's expensive.

Yesterday Zatic said he was planning on making a dish he found a recipe for online - 순두부 찌개 (Sundubu Jjigae - Spicy tofu stew). It seemed like a good time as any to try cooking Korean food.

Here's the recipe: http://www.maangchi.com/recipe/soondubu-jjigae
It's got a video showing you exactly what to do. Because of that, I'm not going to detail the recipe, just mention some things I noticed while making it and any substitutions I made.

In Calgary at least, you should get everything you can at a "real" supermarket. Get the stuff that's specifically Korean at an asian supermarket. Everything is so expensive at the Korean market that I would never buy something like peppers there.

Korean Market: 순두부/Sundubu (Tofu), 고추가루/Gochugaru (Hot pepper flakes), 김/Kim (Dried, toasted seaweed). Everything else I got at a normal supermarket. I'm pretty sure you are supposed to use 다시마/Dashima (Kelp) but kim is more versatile for me so I bought that.

I couldn't find dried anchovies that weren't in a 5 pound packet or something ridiculous. As such I substituted anchovie paste.

Here's the pics and description:

Here's all the shit you need. I've heard stupid people saying they don't need a rice cooker because they can just make rice on the stove. You are stupid. Buy a rice cooker. If I was a real Korean I would have a stone pot or something but I don't so I used a normal pot. The kimchi is just simple store-bought stuff and it's pretty decent.


Close up on the ingredients. Mushrooms are shitake, pepper is a jalapeno.


That brick of ice is a "seafood medley". This is pretty key as you don't wanna spend $20 buying all this fresh seafood. This just has random clams, squid, octopuss, etc. that will help add some base to your stew. I also got cooked (I'm lazy) shrimp and fresh pacific clams. The clams are a nice touch and I really recommend you buy just a few.


Here's the sauces you need. You should have sesame oil but I couldn't find it / it's not usefull to me so I subbed olive oil. Kimchi isn't necessary it's just a side.


Rice cooker. If you don't have one and eat rice more than twice a year you are stupid. Go get one.


I use Nori because all Japanese products are superior to their inferior Korean counterparts. Substitute Japanese products for Korean whenever possible, including women.


Okay, got the stock boiling. I was supposed to add the Nori now but I forgot. It's probably better since kelp is thick and takes time to develop flavour, while nori is thin and would probably fall apart if I left it too long.






Ok, at this point you're supposed to use a stone pot and add the broth later. Because I just wanted to use the same pot I moved the broth to a bowl and it was business as usual.


Ok, rice time. Put the rice in, wash it if you want (the more you wash it the stickier it will be). Put your hand in and put the water up to your knuckles. Done! I learned this from an Asian and you know they make good rice!


You are supposed to just put the mushrooms and pepper flakes in by themselves, but I was worried it would burn up since the heat was so high. In her recipe she had the fat from the beef to stop the flakes from burning. I didn't use beef because it has no place in sundubu jjigae (for reals!). So I ladelled in some broth to keep it from burning. The recipe calls for 2-5 tsp of pepper flakes. I used 2 tbsps (6 tsp) and it seemed genuine (which is pretty hot). Adjust for how spicey you like it, but the stew is supposed to be spicey.


Terrible picture but it's trying to show I put in the clams at this point because they need actual time to cook. Don't eat a clam that hasn't opened from the boiling heat, obviously. Kim/Nori went in now too.


When the clams opened, I dumped the rest of the seafood in.


Boil baby!


In goes the sundubu. Just dump it in and slice it up in the pot with a spoon. Doesn't need to be fancy.


At this point I realized I didn't have enough stuff in the stew so I added more seafood medley and extra shrimp. You should have ingredients bursting out of the broth. This is a stew, not a soup.


In goes the green stuff. I left the pepper seeds in to add to the spice. Adjust accordingly for what you like.


Crack an egg (or two if you have more than one serving) into the stew. There's two schools of though here: Stir and don't stir. I have always stirred the egg so I decided not to stir it. To be honest it didn't really change anything so if you don't care about presentation (you're not trying to impress a girl / TL nerds) just stir it.


Tada! The taste is actually very genuine. I always heard Koreans going "I'm so happy! ^_^" (yes the face was in the quote) when they got to taste genuine Korean food and I always thought it's fucking weird. Now I can understand.


Okay, when you get to this point where it's mostly broth left, dump your extra rice in! This soaks up the spice and tastes so good.


Like this!


The end result. If you didn't use something to blow your nose you didn't make it right.

If you listened to my stream on New Years Eve, you would know I've been having car trouble lately. Well, not so much lately, it's been about a year, but it's gotten worse lately. It's something in the power system, be it a bad connection draining the battery, shoddy alternator, or the battery itself being dead.

So coming back from Korea, as expected, I find the battery is dead [Bad luck but expected]. Finally I get my friend to boost it (around the 27th). It so happened that day my neighbour was out (usually her car is there) and his truck could just barely fit so the cables reached [Good luck].

Away I went New Years Eve to do some shopping. After stopping at the first store, I came back to find my car wouldn't start [Bad luck]. All I did was jiggle the connections around and play with the alarm's power connection and she started [Really good luck, I don't know how this worked haha]. After getting to the mall, shopping for a bit and returning, it was completely dead. Not even a sound if I tried to start it [Bad luck]. I fooled around with the connections for 20 minutes and realized nothing is going to happen. Not wanting to deal with it on NYE, I abandoned it and got on the train home, grabbed a six pack and started making plans for NYE (which actually turned out pretty fun).

Today I went to get it boosted and try to figure things out. Being it's still Boxing Week, the mall was completely jammed full. I guess when people parkd in a different pattern on NYE and Jan 2, because there was this little gap beside me. Just enough to fit my friends car. Literally just enough. I mean he couldn't get out once he was parked; it was crazy [Good luck]. So we boosted it, and I commented we should leave it for awhile so I don't die going to the shop. We left it for 20 minutes. Confident I'd be okay, away I went...

... until I was on the road and everything went dead [Bad luck]. It's kind of a harrowing feeling to be on the road with no power. I couldn't even put my 4-ways on to let people know I'm completely fucked, haha. It just so happened I had enough speed to roll around at the next intersection, which just so happened to be a residential street too [Crazy good luck]. And it just so happened to be about 1 kilometer from where I needed to go. So I busted out the wrench, undid my battery, locked the car, and started to treck to Canadian Tire.

Now, if you've never held your car's battery, they are fucking heavy. Heavy enough that there's a handle built into it. Heavy enough that I knew I would never be able to carry it a kilometer in -10 weather [Bad luck] without gloves. I was only about 3 minutes into my journey and dead tired (had just done the first work out of 2010 [Bad luck]), when I saw glory on the horizon. A nostradamusesque hobo had somehow chosen that spot to abandon a shopping cart [GOOD LUCK], and my friends, an abandoned shopping cart has never looked so sweet. You better believe I picked that sucker up and rolled it all the way to the shop, and rolled the new battery all the way back.

I don't know what I would have done if:
a) There wasn't that half spot my friend could fit into.
b) There wasn't that side street I had just enough momentum to roll into.
c) I hadn't run out of power close enough to the shop.
d) I didn't find that hobo's glory-cart.

Even though my car still has problems and I should feel crappy about that, I can't get over the run of luck that let me get a new battery and get home.

I definitely expect some negative karma in the future. I'm due!

Rise and shine, WelcomeRush You're probably wondering where you are. I'll tell you where you might be. You might be in the game that you lose 100 points in. Up until now, you've simply sat in the shadows watching others play out their games. But what do observers see when they look into the replays? Now I see you as a strange mix of someone angry, yet apathetic. But mostly just pathetic. So are you going to watch yourself lose 100 points here today, WelcomeRush, or do something about it?

Let the game begin.
+ Show Spoiler [images] +

I'm trying to figure out where my next move from Seoul is going to be. I'm pretty sure it's going to be HK since I don't have to wait for a Visa bogging me down.

Is this a good idea? Are there better places around Korea that I should visit instead? Anyone who's been there, please offer advice to a total newb. Specifically:

- Where should I stay?
- What are some things to do that might not be known to the masses? Keep in mind I will stay 4 - 7 days, depending on how fantastic , terrible it is.
- Which HK TL member wants to hold my hand and play tour guide?

Other than HK, my only other plan is Japan. I'd like to go to one more place. Right now I'm considering Vietnam or Thailand. I have no information about either of them, does someone who knows about them (or a better spot I should consider) want to weight in?

Thanks, as I have zero idea whatsoever.

This is the view I woke up to today:


For reference, it is October 4th, and snowing like a mother fucker. What the fuck, nature?

To be clear, I like snow. I like winter. But enough is enough. Last year it was "cold" (consistantly below zero) from November 1st to mid May. One of those months was -40 consistantly. That's too much. I can't take it.

Calgary is pretty far north - it's the farthest north I've ever lived. As a result, this means the winter sun rises around 9 AM and sets around 4 PM, at best. This means for these three to six brutal, unforgiving winter months, I don't see the sun for the five days of the week I am working.

It's so depressing to think we're already back at winter again already. I am so happy that I'm leaving for Korea in a week and can put off the slide into winter at least two more months.

Goes Down
Why? What does this even mean? I can understand using it to signify creating buildings ("With the Stargate complete we now see that the Fleet Beacon goes down, signifying Carriers"), but why things dying? There's so many better descriptive words to use other than "goes down", but still you hear it used about 100 times a commentary, and often in rapid succession. Actually I hate myself for using this term, and every time I feel myself about to say it I consciously hold it back because it's just bad.

Push
Push is synonymous for leapfrogging. That's how it originated and that's how it's always been used. The standard was the Tank push, and we all know how that looks. You can Tank push, because you siege Tanks and then leapfrog them forward. You can Cannon push, because you build them in a successive fashion. You can Lurker push. You cannot however, Zealot/Archon push. That isn't a push, it's just an attack. So why do I hear about Hydra/Ling pushes? Why is someone doing a Marine push? They aren't! Stop saying it!

Barrack
It's not a word. It's Barracks. Yes, even if there's only one of them.

Irradiate
It's not irridate.

Stasis
It's not status.

Timing Attack
Chances are it's not a timing attack, it's just an attack. There aren't 20 minute ZvT timing attacks, for example. Timing attacks are very specifically designed to kill specific builds when they are their weakest. The +1 2 Archon and Zealot attack is a timing attack. Moving out after you research Psionic Storm is not a timing attack.

Shot in the dark. I'll be in Edmonton tomorrow. My day ends pretty early so I figured I'd see if any TLers were around. If any TLers wanna have dinner that would be nice

I'll be staying Sherwood Park a lot, but I can meet anywhere.

This is a personal account of all the great things that I remember from my years of LANing. Feel free to share your experiences below as well. Note that the years are most certainly wrong since I can't remember if something was 4 or 5 years ago, etc.

WCG 2003 Prelims - Toronto
This was the first ever LAN I had been to. I knew nothing of competitive StarCraft at this point; I enjoyed reading the team Canada website where Pride, Testie and a bunch of other big names would post. At that time Canada was fairly dominant in StarCraft and would always put up good results in nation wars. I went more to observe than anything.

At this time I was going to school in Kingston and the tournament was in Markham. My family lives in Whitby, so I went home for the weekend to visit and play in this LAN. I believe the entrance fee was $40 which seemed pretty fair as the organization was pretty good. It was run by the TFL (Toronto Fun League) which I just see now has closed its doors and the images are down from our LAN.

The center was actually really big, through the entrance there was a food area on the left, a huge area of booths with big screens set up for the console games, and all the computers were on the far right. There were hundreds of people there. I remember not knowing anyone except Pride, but obviously I didn't talk to him since he didn't know me. I watched some people play Halo and was surprised to find the dominante strategy seemed to be charging the pistol and then spamming it as much as possible after the charge was fired.

We split up into groups (I was using the ID ImJustMe) at this point, which made things really confusing when they called for me. My group was: HnR)Pride, rS.Exit (DeBiT), H_Paul_Wii, and SoulBrother.

Game 1: Me (Z, 6) vs HnR)Pride (P, 9) @ Lost Temple. Pride did a two Gateway rush with two further proxied Gateways which I didn't scout (they were slightly north east of my natrual) and ran my HydraLing over with Zealots. We shook hands and he said I did well. I hadn't even realized he had proxied until H_Paul_Wii told me the following day.

Game 2: Me (Z, TR) vs H_Paul_Wii (Z, BL) @ Legacy of Char. I didn't know how to ZvZ properly really, and I know Paul's name. In the end he got more Mutalisks, I flew in while he was out and killed his spire but he caught my army while I tried to run. He killed my army then finished me pretty easily.

Game 3: Me(Z, 12) vs rS.Exit (T, 6) @ Lost Temple. I did three hatch Speedlings with burrow. I burrowed them and let Debit move out all the way to my natural (which was adequately Sunkened) and then I ran into his main. I seriously destroyed almost his entire main, but didn't Sunken enough to live the counter attack and died.

Game 4: I can't remember this game. It was against SoulBrother (a really bad player) on Hall of Valhala. He asked if it was an island map and I told him it was. After he said that I knew I had already won.

So those four games took about 12 hours to complete. It was now 2 AM. Considering I was 1-3 at this point I figured I shoudn't come for day 2 since I didn't have a chance of advancing. I didn't even have an alarm at home since I had brought it to school. By the time I got to bed it was nearly 4 AM. Somehow my mental alarm woke me up at 6:30 AM, and I decided to shower and head back to the LAN. To my surprise I had actually qualified (through their crazy system) to advance to the next round.

I played against an unknown player (at the time) named Bulloch, and he cleaned me up pretty quickly ZvT on Jungle Story (what a gay map).

Around this time (1 PM) Paul and his brother (SpiritSoda) arrived. They had been dropped into the losers' bracket since they showed up late to goto church. What good Korean boys ^^;

I had to play Paul next. I can't remember game one but I assume I got raped. Game 2 I picked Hall of Valhala and went Protoss, but Paul massed pure Mutalisks and eventually finished me with Devourer/Guardian/Mutalisk. It was now around 5PM and I had to hustle to get home to get on my 6:30 bus back to Kingston. I barely made it and everything worked out.

Some other fun moments from this LAN:
- Pink was there. She was like 13 at this time I think. I saw her dying to pure Drones in an official WCG match.
- The first game I osberved was Louden[Akuta] vs Bulloch, and it was a sick TvP. Louden eventually won right as he stormed Bulloch's maynarding SCVs and I cheered really loudly (so did everyone else).
- My parents were there at that time and asked why everyone cheered. I said "He stormed his SCVs" to which my mom replied "Haha what a fool!" having no idea what that meant.
- After I lost to Pride my dad said "It's over already?" Haha that sucked.
- 3D.Open had his "crew" (why does it always seem like the idiots bring a crew to LANs?) He was playing against Paul and his crew kept going to Paul's monitor and then walking around and whispering things under Open's headphones. Paul's crew (manner Koreans) noticed this and made a wall around his monitor so no one could see.
- I beat Pride in the rematch after, but it was casuals so it's meaningless.
- I met my SC friend Blatant, and I remember his buddy asking for PvZ builds just before he was about to play - that's how bad we were at this time.
- Around 10PM the LAN center got really creepy. The "restaraunt" side filled up with business men in suits, each in a booth with one or two young asian girls. Weird!