Rant 361 / \ 163 tnaR

We want YOU in our basement!







Went to Cold Storage at Holland V to get some prosciutto ham and streaky bacon yesterday and noticed the Ben & Jerry ice creams were on "2 for $22.85" offer. Also got some salsa sauces and Pringles.

Coincidentally I just remembered to watch Naruto and when I checked my notes, I realized I had 11 episodes to watch (well 10 because the most recent episode isn't available for free on Crunchyroll). And 11 episodes of Bleach.




A picture speaks a thousand words. Here are two thousand words then.








I'm amazed. After two months away from Empires (the HL2 mod), I returned to find that there is now a... SIXTY-FOUR-PLAYER SERVER!! It was glorious! When the server is full, the action never stops. The chaotic mess of tanks, mortars and bullets covers the entire map, not just certain hotspots.

The graphical lag is worse when there are many players too, but I don't mind. Other players seem to mind though, plus (probably due to its geographical location) its ping is worse than the normal American servers I play in (400ms compared to the usual 200ms). So this server don't fill up very often.

One other server is always full, but is slightly smaller. At a max capacity of 42 players, it is still a fantastic experience.









North Korea was seen moving another ICBM from its main factory to a launch site. Some say Kim is doing this to consolidate his power within Pyongyang. Others guess he is trying to instigate hostile reactions from foreign countries to justify his huge expenditure (of his government's budget) in his military forces.

He needs some huge justification just to produce a nuke because North Korea's GDP only makes up 3% of the country's economy. Everything else is from things like free supplies from China.

The economy is bad enough as it is right now, but N. Korea just has to make things worse by creating instability in Asia. Fuckers.







Finally cooked something decent. My mum was ill so I decided to make dinner (bro wasn't around the whole day so lunch and breakfast was simple - bread with whatever). Nothing complicated, just used a packet of spaghetti, a jar of carbonara sauce and some frozen de-shelled prawns.

The frozen prawns were the main problem. I had to rinse them under the tap until they are mostly thawed. Didn't want to wait till they thaw naturally and didn't want to microwave the chunk of ice because it doesn't do it evenly.

After that it was just mixing the prawns in some starch, stir-frying them till they were barely cooked and pouring in the sauce. Simmered it while I waited for the spaghetti to cook. Then I threw in some shredded parma ham to improve the flavour of the sauce.

Really, it's nothing big; I had to use pre-made sauce. But the prawns were good. They were definitely not inferior to fresh prawns from the wet market and they have about the same prices. And the parma ham's flavour goes well with the carbonara sauce too.







I was once asked what alfredo and carbonara meant, and I was stumped. I'd always thought of them as just names of flavours but never really went any further than guessing.

So after a little Wikipedia search, I found that they really aren't anything complicated.

The white carbonara sauce is really just egg whites, cheese and some sort of fats, either lard or olive oil. The cheese can be anything and cream isn't part of the traditional recipe. Neither is bacon, but the jar of it I bought had bacon bits inside.

Alfredo is even simpler. The sauce is really just parmesan cheese and butter! Anything else added in there are mostly due to American influence. In fact, this is more of an American food than Italian.

Perhaps I should make my own Fettucine Alfredo...