CoD:MW3 and FFXIII-2

These games have really long names, ha.

MW3 single player campaign is as short as it was criticized. I started it around 1pm and finished it at 1am. Total play time should be less than 8 hours. In fact it was a very nice experience, to fight in NYSE building, watch Eiffel tower collapsing and shoot enemies with super modern weapons. I can imagine some player would be pissed off if they bought this game for single campaign. This is a game designed for online play.

I tried it on Xbox live the next day, and found it wasn’t a game for me. It is so easy to kill or be killed in this game, 3~5 bullets, less than 1 second. Usually even before you realize which direction you’re being shoot, you’re gone. It’s very different from GeoW3, in which those “Gears” are much more tough and can eat more bullets. I’m not a CS lover so I’ll just return this game and continue my FFXIII-2.

I’ll talk about FFXIII-2 later after I beat it. So far it’s better than I expected. Time travel plot is always attractive to me, though I’ve prepared for a broken ending because it’s quite difficult to make a time travel story logical.. The battle system is OK, and Sera is good-looking. What else do you expect from a “FF*-2”?

Super Mario 3D

最近通了3ds上的mario,总的来说相当失望。个人认为是敷衍之作,跟ds和wii上的mario正统作品比相差太远。

手感应该说还是保持了水准,3d操控方式,视角转换也没什么问题。致命的缺点就是几乎毫无新意。依靠3d特性做出来的机关都相当无聊,关卡里面视觉效果是更加3d了,但玩法没什么变化,感觉就是在玩一个有3d效果的旧mario。而且由于3d的原因画面还没有以前的作品亮丽,我感觉是得不偿失。

再说游戏内容,整个游戏几乎只有狸猫和乌龟两个变身,远逊于ds的巨人和小人变身的乐趣。马银里面奇思妙想的关卡和boss战也不见踪影。更不要提wii上的多人配合。3ds上第一作正统mario只有这个水平实在让人失望。我要考虑把3ds出掉了。

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First Dental Experience in US

My top wisdom tooth was broken 2 weeks ago, actually right after I had that wonderful pizza. A small piece of it fell off. Then the sharp edge at the broken place had been bothering me until this morning.

I found a list of dentists on AETNA(the insurance company) website, then picked a close one based on reviews on Yelp. On Tuesday I called them and made an appointment on Thursday.

The treatment experience was better than I expected. I got the broken wisdom tooth extracted, then took a teeth cleaning. I had been worrying if it would be super expensive or the doctor/hygienist would be inexperienced. It turned out those worries were nonsense. They have very good manners and skills. No pain at all when the doctor took out the tooth. And the cost is just about 60$ (teeth cleaning covered by insurance).

Grimaldi’s Pizzeria

补记一下上周末的觅食。

NYC在经历了一个几乎没什么雪的暖冬之后,上周末气温突然跳到20多度,于是大家纷纷出门去玩。riki夫妇来和我们Prospect Park小逛了一下,看了看鸟之后就前往传说中纽约最好的意式烤炉pizza店Grimaldi’s。

这个店我在各种地方看到过好几次了。在Yelp上的评价来看大家也都是冲着这个店的名气来的,似乎还看到了“不知道是Brooklyn成就了Grimaldi’s,还是Grimaldi’s成就了Brooklyn”之类很狗血的评语。其实Yelp上的评价还挺分化的,很多人说名副其实的好,best food from fridge(冰箱里保存过的最好的食物);也有很多人说完全不怎么样,不值得等那么久。而且这地方也是以排长队著名,所以去之前我们还是有点忐忑的。

我们是周日晚上大约六点找到这个地方的,基本上就在Brooklyn桥下面,附近好几个地铁站。一到那儿就看到巨多的人站在门口,几乎得有六七十人……还好后来发现这里面大概有一半人是个旅游团,很快就上车走了。于是我们就排在三四十人的后面吧。。这地方够屌的一点是takeout(外卖)跟dine in(堂食)是一起排队的!你说排一小时的队谁还takeout啊?后来发现还真有人takeout!而且这也是有原因的。因为即使排到了第一名,轮不到合适的桌子你还是进不去。比如我们四个人就在队首等了半天四人桌,后面好几个2人3人的group都先进去了。然后进去落座点完之后还得等个二三十分钟,因为都是现做的。于是从开始排队到吃上pizza,我们大概等了一个半小时吧。更离谱的是等我们吃完了出门的时候,大概晚上八点多,发现队伍是更长了!这些人吃上还不得十点啊。贴张排队的照片,真是没见过美国的pizza店这么排队的,中国的pizzahut可以笑了,嗯。。。

说完了排队还是说说这pizza到底值不值吧。一个字就是值!跟常见的pizza最不一样的就是那厚厚一整层mozzarella cheese,不仅仅是能拉出长长的丝,还有一种有点弹牙的口感,十分香浓。如果是一般的pizza上面cheese的感觉是一层金黄色的糊,这个就是一层乳白色的胶质,很不一样。饼底是分成tomato sauce和garlic的两种,然后topping自选,可选项很有限,肉类似乎只有pepperoni, ham和sausage三个选择,素的是onion,pepper,dried tomato和mushroom等几种。但吃过之后我是想说,那些北海鳕鱼羊肉串之类的花样都可以歇了。意式pizza这些经典口味太强大了。尤其是pepperoni,比常见的要小不少,而且都有点像回锅肉那样稍微拢起来一点,成小碗的形状,味道很浓郁。我们四个人吃了两个大pizza,基本上是吃得很撑了还是忍不住继续吃,最后剩了两块实在吃不动了打包带走。xw由于吃得太努力,第二天抱怨腮帮子痛。

最后要说的是这地方着实很便宜。。两个大pizza加饮料,加税和小费一共才70多。注意是cash only。

哦,还有一个重要的tip是这家店旁边的Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory是个很赞的冰激凌店,里面卖成桶的冰激凌,一加仑20多,好吃实惠。

Watching NCAA March Madness Online

Due to work reason, I was watching NCAA basketball match on iPad, iPhone and Nexus S, at the same time…

iPad and iPhone have HD streams. Video quality is awesome on these 2 platforms. The experience of watching it on iPad is almost as good as watching on TV, thanks to the nice screen. But the quality on Android is really poor. It is so pixelated that you can’t even read the scores!

In the online video streaming market, iOS devices are absolutely dominating. Android hardware and OS are too fragmented, and most Android devices are low-end. So no one wants to spend much development effort to build video streaming service for Android. This NCAA Android app is built on Flash. Even on Nexus S, a model pushed to market one year ago, its performance isn’t good enough to support HD streaming.

A few days ago I tried YouTube Android app on Acer ICONIA A500 tablet. It crashes and hangs very often, though this is supposed to be the best video app on Android.

In conclusion, if you want to watch some video on mobile/tablet, stay away from Android for now.