Rampaging Connections

            King Arthur’s Gold is a multiplayer only game where players build castles, tools and vehicles of war before setting to hacking each other apart.  Gameplay is divided into two parts, during the first players are restricted to their half of the map and are able to mine and build to their hearts content. The second part of gameplay releases the players from their isolation and commences the hacking and slashing, however the players are still able to mine and build.  The ability to build and use explosives adds another level of interaction to the game since all terrain is destructible.  There are a variety of game modes but all of them pit two teams against each other.

King Arthur’s Gold uses UDP for game connections and communicating with clients, however it uses TCP for automatic updates, API server communication and remote administration.  The distinction between running a server while playing which uses UDP and remote administration which uses TCP is something I find interesting, since remote administration consists of running a server but not playing on it.  The networking model for King Arthur’s Gold is inspired by Quake 3, though it differs in its ability to handle the large and variable number of objects in King Arthur’s Gold.

King Arthur’s Gold does on occasion suffer lag, however it does not have a greater issue with lag than most other games do.  The lag that I have encountered while playing King Arthur’s Gold seems to be mostly due to local computer issues. Most reported instances of lag that are reported by the player base also seem to be due to local computer issues rather than connection protocols or game code issues.

Fourth Food Blog - Out to eat in Ottawa

This last weekend I visited the city of Ottawa.  While I was there I ate at several interesting places.

The Smoque Shack
We visited the Smoque Shack the first night we were in Ottawa.  There was almost nothing on the menu I was averse to trying which made me happy.  Unfortunately I knew my stomach was so empty I opted to go for a smaller portion of pulled pork.  The pulled pork was delicious, it was firm without being tough, it was very spicy for me and combined with the root beer I was drinking forced me to back off between bites.

Jail Hostel Breakfast
For breakfast we ate at the hostel.  I went with a whole wheat bagel and orange juice.  As I ate the bagel I wondered again why whole wheat tastes so gross.  The orange juice was a good sweet orange juice, it had no pulp but that was only a minor disappointment.

Pizza
The pizza place was very fancy, I got a pizza covered in sausage bits.  The pizza was very savory.  The sausage bits were chewy but a bit crunchy they had that Italian sausage tang.  The cheese was simple none of the usual fancy tricks, it had a sweet aftertaste. 

The pizza place also had very good service. The meals were quickly cooked and delivered straight to the people who ordered them.

Thai
 Everyone ordered food for the group at the Thai restaurant.  I ordered chicken sauted with snow peas.  The sauce made everything extremely sweet.  The chicken was least affected, it was well cooked and the interplay of sweet and savory made the chicken delicious.  I wasn't feeling so well so I mostly enjoyed watching everyone else have fun eating.

Brunch
I had Cranberry French Toast at the fancy brunch place we ate at.  The cranberries were extremely tart, which would disturb the savory taste of the french toast covered in maple syrup.  In spite of the discord of the various food types, the meal was delicious.

Third Food Blog - Exploring Snowdon

      My stomach was growling again as I left the Gamers Vault in Snowdon.  I hadn't had anything to eat for most of the day while I had been tramping around the city, taking the metro and generally burning energy.  As I had searched for the Gamers Vault I had passed this little place called Ella's Deli and thought it looked like a good place for a meal.  When I entered the deli was a grocer focused on sandwich makings, while I was disappointed that dinner had disappeared I took the opportunity to grab sandwich fixings.  With no plans I walked back in the direction of the metro, I saw nothing that I hadn't tried before so I journeyed another couple of blocks down the street.  When I finally decided to turn around my eye caught sight of a hole in the wall pizza joint named Pizza Rodi, hungry and not exited by my other options I thought I was ready for anything.
      I wasn't.
      I ordered a slice of chicken pizza and some poutine, both of which looked quite tasty.  The pizza was savory, the first meal I have had in a long time where I did not care if I was eating dark or white meat. The inclusion of tomato slices on the pizza also added another aspect to the slice, not simple dry chicken but chicken draped by tomato.
     There was no fork. 
     This conundrum reared its ugly head when the man at the counter handed me a medium size take out carton of poutine and no fork.  A quick inspection suggested that there were no forks to be had.  Talking with the man at the counter revealed that indeed there were no forks. Stymied I ate my pizza, drank my coke and nibbled at some fries that were not drenched in delectable, savory, non-finger-foody gravy or sweet melting cheese curds.
     Thankfully the Rodi's didn't manage to screw up the coke.
     The ride home my stomach growled at me. I did not end up eating the poutine because I discovered that it reheats very poorly.

Second Food Blog - My First Poutine

After coding until our brains were dribbling out of our mouths, Joylee and I decided to grab something to eat before another programming class. We walked down to Frite Alors! I decided to try out a pulled pork poutine, and did not regret it.

The pulled pork meshed very well with the cheese curds and fries. The textures, which are often a sticking point for me when I try new foods, blended together with a focus on the pulled pork. The taste however was almost too spicy for me, the combination of the BBQ sauce on the pulled pork and the spices in the gravy was exacerbated by the fries and almost was too much.  However, I loved the taste, I have found that if a food rides the line of being almost too spicy for me I highly enjoy that food.

I will probably go to Frite Alors! again in the future, no matter how bad for me poutine is I find it a highly enjoyable food.

First Food Blog - Adventures in Tim Hortons

I am going to start putting up Food Blogs about the food I find and eat in Montreal for my Food Writing Class.

When I first entered a Tim Hortons I had just had an exhaustive instruction in the details of the Du Parc Bus route. I was tired and ready to head back to the dorm, but I decided to try out the Tim Hortons that I saw down the road. Inside there were fewer pastries than I had hoped but more than I had feared there might be, I ordered two cheese croissants and one hot french vanilla and sat down for a breather.  That brief breather caused a revaluation of the value of food in Montreal, before hand I had been not sure if I was happy with the prices of food up here but afterwards, I decided that at the very least Tim Hortons was worth the cost.

The hot french vanilla is the primary attraction for me and though I cannot fully describe its taste from memory, it has a stronger bite to it than hot chocolate does.  If I find myself on a long walk I will often drop by a Tim Hortons to grab a hot french vanilla before I continue in order to warm myself on the walk (as well as having a tasty drink).

Thoughts on Montreal

I've been in Montreal, Canada for about a week now and it has been a lot of fun.  I am still waiting for the school work to start pouring in but I'm happy with how I'm spending what time I do have. The dorm is decent, a step up from Spinner Place in some ways and a step down in others. 

This is the first app I made for the Android, and it was/still is laced with bugs and issues, I am still developing the app though due to school work the progress is slow.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.halfbeard.androidbusfinder

The second app I made for Android and much more of a game. This is a simple time waster, you tap the smiley face and it bounces up and down. What makes it entertaining is that the smiley face hits the ceiling it speeds up.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.halfbeard.balljuggler