New Toys

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You know me, always with the big boy toys. Mind you, they tend to be practical rather than superfluous! No different here. Hockey toys. All of em from www.hockeyshot.ca

First up, a hockey net. Not just any net but a foldable net.  2 inch pipes, regulation size, full net mesh and hecka solid.  The beauty of it all is that it folds up to about 4 inches wide.   I can set it up in about 30 seconds, alone and then store against the wall in the garage and it takes up as much space as a shovel.  Best part, about 100$ and the quality of a 400$ net.  Great.  And yes, it does come with the corner pockets.  Great for target practice.  I need more pucks though!

Next up, a shooting pad.  You’ve probably seen these before.  A white plastic pad to take shots on as it mimics ice surface.  Well, I saw one that was 2 feet by 4 and really, all you can do is shoot on it.  I wanted something to practice stickhandling, so I opted for the larger size.  4 feet by 8 feet.  Yes, that big.  I can use a stick (minus tape on the bottom), regular pucks and the thing slides great.  A stick with tape drags a bit much though.  I need to practice with a slightly smaller stick as well, since on skates I’m a good 3 inches higher off the ground.  Still trying to figure that part out.  The good news is it works great.  Bad news is that my arms are not made for stickhandling.  After 15 minutes, my left arm was dead.

Lastly, I picked up some stickhandling toys.  First, Sweedish Wooden Balls.  Stop laughing.  They were like 3$.  They are lighter, so I use them for quick movements and repetitions.  2-3 minutes of it before a game warms up the arms.  Second, I picked up a Green Biscuit.  These things are wicked.  A tad lighter than a regular puck but they work on cement and don’t stick.  They glide like crazy on the shooting mat and exagerate any stickhandling you do, so you have to be more careful with your hands.  Looking forward to trying it out in the spring/summer outside.  For now, the mat will do!

So far, really happy with the purchases.  I’ll try and get 15-30 minutes a day on it and see what happens.  I know it will help my hands out, we’ll just have to see how much.

The Walking Dead

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Zombie TV Show Review!

First, it’s by AMC. They make Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Rubiconn and a pile of other stuff. They make amazing television. The story and character progression is their bread and butter.

So, The Walking Dead appropriately premiered last night. Like the comic book of the same name, it follows a deputy sheriff waking up in a hospital after what appears to be a zombie breakout. Romero zombies, the ones that are slow and dumb. The first 30-45 minutes are about him dealing with the world changing and the latter are about him finding his way through the small town to the big city. Naturally, the big city is infested.

A few standouts. The zombies look amazing – movie quality makeup. Hats off! The main character can act. This isn’t a zombie slasher flick. This is a realistic (hmm) look at how regular people act in extraordinary circumstances. Good exposition. The scenes are well laid out and well shot. Character progression is solid to boot. Emmy winner, maybe not but I will keep watching.

An interesting thought occurred to me while watching. In most movies, there’s an adversary. Man vs self or Man vs Man. In zombie movies, since the zombies are the opposite of characters, I think they represent the basic self. Take away the humanity of a person and you get a zombie. So in essence, a zombie movie deals with characters vs. their basic selves and striving to stay human – figuratively and literally. Don’t know why I didn’t see that before!

Looking forward to the next one.

What's You Playin'?

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Civilization V.

You know that feeling you had when you first tasted apple pie and you were like “damn, this is the best thing ever”?  Then you had an even better apple pie with ice cream?  Imagine they made ice cream out of apple pie, distilled down to its greatness in an easy to eat package.  That’s Civ V.

Everything* has been improved upon.  Hex tiles for better movement.  More land improvements, better politics, better research, more culture, happiness means something, terrain combat means something, military unit improvements, no more stacking 1000 hopplites against a single tank.  (*)The only thing that seems to be worse is the computer AI but I am guessing that will come with a patch.

I picked this up on Tuesday night and put in 6 hours after I downloaded it from Steam.  Time just flies by and all you can think is “I can play another turn”.  That other turn means an extra 50 turns.  This game is crack.

On a side-ish note, you should be using Steam for game purchases.  They have every game you can think of, a log of the games you have so you can reinstall it on another computer (laptop and desktop for me!), many games save their files on the Steam network so you can continue from one PC to the next. Not to mention the games are always cheaper and often come on sale.  Try it out!

Kanye

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Like him or hate him, it’s hard to deny his skill.  Guy is a friggin’ genius.  He has this thing, Good Friday, where he posts a new song up til Christmas.  You probably heard Power.  Amazing though short.

This week, he released Monster, a collab with quite a few players.

Linking Power vid…