Category: Uncategorized

Despite what the weather is doing right now (acting as if it is summer) my calendar confirms that Autumn is in full swing…  Since that is the case and my garden hasn’t produced much in the last few weeks I spent half an hour last week tearing everything out…  It looked something like this:

 

 

The evicted plants looked like this:

 

 

Once the old garden was out the soil had to be turned over and new nutrients put into it.  We have a composter and after about a year of use it’s actually produced some compost and that went into the garden:

 

 

Once the bed was prepared we had to get the plants put in.  This is our first time with a winter garden so we didn’t have any experience to build on, so we looked at the winter crops we enjoyed eating and bought a little of everything:  cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, spinach, chard, lettuce, celery, onions, arugula, and bok choy.

 

 

When everything was put in (including the slug traps and the cages over the seeds (arugula and carrots) it looked like this:

 

 

If the winter garden is a productive as the summer one I’ll consider this year of gardening a smashing success!

I had just started posting again, excited to be returning to the blog with bi-weekly updates when it suddenly halted.  This seems to be a pattern in my life as soon as some normalcy, some measure of predictability *BAM* it goes all to hell.  This phenomenon probably isn’t restricted to my life…

Anyway, the videocard (one of those fancy ones made by Nvidia or GeForce) melted.  Plastering scratchy horizontal lines all across the screen when it was a good mood and when it wasn’t?  blank screens.  This is the exact same thing that happened to my last high-end laptop too.  Lesson learned:  don’t buy high performing laptops, they get too hot and immolate themselves.

I spent most of September sans computer and then once a new computer was purchased I went on a much needed vacation (don’t worry I’ll be boring you with all sorts of pictures from that later! Lucky you!)

The think the point of this post was to let you know that I’m back and articles that might interest you should be coming in the nearer rather than farther future.

PS – What kind of computer did I get?  A cheap little netbook, the Toshiba NB 305.  This is a picture of it:

I think the last time I mentioned the garden things were starting to happen and the plants were growing  but beyond some zucchini nothing much else was going on.  That isn’t the case anymore.  In fact, the garden is producing crazy amounts of fruits and veggies.  The tomatoes that  had been planted in the front, the ones that spent the first 3 months looking sick?  I had given up on them too early it seems as now their producing tomatoes by the basketful.

The two heirloom tomato plants which are now over six feet tall are now starting to produce.  They were flowering but the flowers kept dying.  In the hopes of forcing the plant to germinate and produce some fruit I began cutting the plants back and sure enough fruit started showing up.  So lesson learned, next year I’ll trim them back much sooner, certainly before they become larger than me.  Everything we’ve planted so far is producing, some of it not as much as we’d like (beans)  but I that’s partially how we layed the box out.  I had no idea how large the tomato and zucchini plants would get!   Next year, tomatoes will be restricted to the front yard where if planted at the right time do fine, which will save room in the box for the beans, cucumbers, and peppers to have a chance at getting some sunlight.

Anyway here’s what I took out of the garden the other day and this is usually what we get out of it every few days or so:

That’s some onions, red chili peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, Japanese eggplant, pole beans, and some basil.  It all went into a delicious couscous salad which the recipe for will show up sooner or later over at Origins of the Cook.

Here we are with the sequels to Contra and Probotector.  I’m going to come right out and say that once again the big difference here is going to be the near gibberish that someone, being vastly underpaid, threw together to put into the game manuals.  Let’s find out if I’m right?

Super C’s backstory:

Sipping cold lemonade with a couple of native lovelies, Mad Dog and Scorpion (Guerilla Warriors Extrordinare) relax on a Rio beach and boast of how they destroyed the vile alien war monger, Red Falcon.  Little do they know that Red Falcon didn’t flee with his pointed tail between his legs.  Instead, he tactically retreated to round-up ruffians of the universe, friends from all walks of war, to mount a second assault on planet Earth.  One of these new recruits is Jagger Froid, a demented alien from the Black Hole Galaxy,  who dishes out punishment with a laser sharp tongue.  Red Falcon has also shuttled in The Babalu Bestructoid Mechanism,  a giant alien attack tank, which was the primary weapon used to disintegrate the innocent solar system of Tralala.  But the genius behind the Red Falcon’s Earth conquering concept is his plan to have thousands of intergalactic warriors seep into the the brains of the U.S. Army.  It’s a mind contamination trick which has already taken command of U.S. Forces at Fort Fire Storm. How do we know that all out soldiers have been brain trashed?  You can see it in their eyes.  Now, if Mad Dod and Scorpion fail to recuperate from their months on the beach in time to destroy Red Falcon’s G.I. fortified Hate Nest, his sinister scheme will  permeate the world’s mightiest power (nuclear missile silos included).  And if that happens, we’ll all be pushing up daisies.

What happened to Bill and Lance?  The two guys who fought and destroyed Red Falcon in the original Contra?  Who the hell are Mad Dog and Scorpion?  Also note the type that made it into the manual “Mad Dod and Extrodinare,” hah!

From Probotector 2’s manual:

The Aliens are back!  In the year 2634, the Earth has finally escaped from the hand of black magic, one year after the end of the war with a mysterious alien army, or has it?  One day, a strange radio message comes in from General Hal of the federation troops as he is heading for the base ruins in South America in preparation for the seventh GX army maneuvers.  “Friendly GX troops have suddenly turned their attack on us.  No, it can’t be!! They’re not human! They must be…”  The message cut off there. The commanding officers of the federation troops feel very strange about this message from the general and so dispatch Probotector RD008 and RC011, the strongest fighting robots in history, to find him. A helicopter carrying the two units is sent out on a top secret mission. When it gets close to the site of maneuvers, it lands, drops off the two units, and takes off again immediately. Just then, from out of the shadows come soldiers on the attack. But they are not soldiers! They are robots! The nightmare of one year ago has returned. The mutant alien life forms that were believed destroyed are alive again.  Now they control the GX army, have built fighting robots and are planning to take over the world!  Once again the fight to the death between the Probotector and the aliens has begun.

Well at least its the same Probotector’s this time.  But what is this nonsense about black magic?  Once again the Contra version wins if only because it uses words like “The Babalu Bestructoid Mechanism” and “Tralala.”  I hope that guy got a bonus!  To the comparisons!

Characters:

The character sprite for Contra has been tweaked somewhat with an attempt at including more detail to the figure.  Some tweaking might have happened with the Probotector but it isn’t as noticeable as the changes on the human sprite.

Enemies (sidescrolling stages):

Not as many enemies with differences here and again some of them seem superfluous.  The flying enemies in particular the one from Super C doesn’t seem any less robotic than the one in Probotector.  Sorry, about the second from the bottom shot.  It seems the game has a hard time rendering that image without flicker.  Alternatively, I stink at screen captures.

Enemies (top down):

Unlike the original titles which had pseudo 3D stages their sequels have top down ones, similar to the classic arcade games Commando and Ikari Warriors.  The first group at the top of the list are the generic enemies which just chase you, the ones that shoot are a simple palette swap.

Bosses and other things:

The only variation in bosses is the first level boss, a chopper.  The one in Super C looks, like something that could have flown in the Vietnam War or later while the Probotector one has sharper lines and no wheels.  The lower image is the chopper that drops the characters off at the beginning of the first level.  Again, the one in Super C looks Huey-esque while the Probotector one has sharper more angular features.

The ending for the games is exactly the same with the player being congratulated for saving the day while a chopper flies into the distance and the credits roll.  While the protagonists remain different the games seem to be getting closer to each other with the differences between the two sprite work being less drastic than in the first one and this trend will continue into the next game in the series Super Contra Vs. Super Probotector where the only difference seems to be the player characters!