In Which I Become a Pirate

Originally posted Sunday, 21 January, 2007

This blog entry is for Gabe and Jeremy, or it would be if I had any reason to believe either of them ever reads my blog. Read it and weep, boys.

We brought our PS2 to Thailand from the US. We use a transformer for the power, and it all works nicely on our multi-system (NTSC and PAL) TV set. We were wandering around in the basement IT area of The Mall one day and we ran across the Game Shop. At least I think that’s the name of it. We looked around a bit, and were unable to resist the siren call of Final Fantasy XII. We bought it. For $3. 

After taking it home we discovered that it would not play. This was not unexpected. So a week or so later, back at The Mall, I managed to communicate our difficulty to the shop owner. It was quite helpful that his limited English included the words “no play.” When I told him that our PS2 was from America he knew what the problem was. Our PS2 would not play a copied Playstation disc. 

Since nobody will ship games to Thailand, all you can buy are pirated games. We needed a modded chip put into our Playstation to play the copied games, he explained. But there were two kinds of chip. The cheap one would only play copied games, not any of our original games. That would cost us $22. The expensive chip would play all the games, and was a whopping $28. 

We brought in our Playstation the next day. The day after that we picked up our Playstation, paid the man $28, and on the way out picked up Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007. For $2. 

All our games, even our PS1 games, play just fine.

I Make Pizza

 

Here in Thailand Pizza Hut has a nice salad bar. They have delicious pasta, too, my favorite being the ham and mushroom in alfredo sauce over spaghetti. They have tasty wings and pretty good garlic bread. 

What they do not have is decent pizza. We’ve tried to eat it, but it’s never been a satisfactory pizza experience. 

I was forced to make my own pizza, but first I had to acquire the essential ingredients. I can make the dough in my bread machine; check. I found some mozzarella cheese last time I was grocery shopping; check. I had the presence of mind to buy a couple cans of tomato sauce last time I was in Bangkok; check. I have some mushrooms and onions for toppings; check, but there is no pepperoni. It’s not pizza to Jimmy without pepperoni. A special trip to the store and we acquired some of the very hard to find pepperoni. Check. All systems are Go.

I made the dough in my bread machine like I planned. The recipe makes enough for two 14 inch pizzas. I tried the recipe as given this time; next time I will add garlic powder, basil, and oregano to the dough. That’s a lot of dough once it rises!

Then I put on the toppings. I used sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms, diced onion, and pepperoni. I believe the toppings go under the cheese, unlike some pizza places. So I put on piles of mozzarella and a sprinkling of real grated parmesan (not the stuff in the green tube) over that. Here it is ready for the oven!

 

It’s definitely looking pizza-like at this point. See the nice round pan it is in? That’s the turntable for my convection oven. This is a bad idea, as we shall soon see. I baked it for 25 minutes in a preheated oven sitting on the rack. The rack is supposed to sit on top of the turntable so the food rotates. 

 

In order to use the turntable as the pan, and get it at the correct height in the oven, I lost the rotation. It mattered. The back of the pizza was overdone while the front was underdone. I rotated it manually and let it go another 5 minutes. I got a pizza that was a bit overdone everywhere.

Compared to Pizza Hut pizza it was ambrosia. Jimmy said we could have this every week. I wish we could, but there is a serious lack of tomato sauce here. I can buy all the tomato paste I want, though. Anybody know how to make pizza sauce from tomato paste?

 

 

 

The Sims 2, and Programming

I don’t blog about The Sims 2 much, although I play, recolor objects, and have even created a new object with an original mesh. I had to learn to use some 3D CAD software to do that, and a UV Texture mapping program. I have a website, Cat and Susim’s where my sister and I post our creations for free download. But that’s not of much interest outside the Simming community.

Now, though, I am writing a program that will be a tool for Mac Simmers. It will be the Mac analogue to Numenor’s fabulous Base Game Starter. In order to do this I must do three things: code in a new programming language, Objective C; code using a new graphics framework, Cocoa; and code in a new development environment including a new and slightly unpredictable debugger, gdb. So far, so good. I am about 1/3 done, and the next third is straightforward enough that one good long session will do it.

So I alternate between periods of playing the game, and working on the program. Right now I’m more playing. I’ll get back to the coding.