Trinchado @ Braza

I am a big Trinchado fan, so I order it almost always as a starter when and if the restaurant has it. What I did find is that every restaurant makes Trinchado different.

I decided that I will take a photo of the different Trinchado that I come across and blog something about it. First up is the Trinchado @ Braza in Menlyn Park.

First off the bread that comes with the Trinchado was a standard Portuguese roll, so nothing fancy but it was fresh and very soft. So a very nice Portuguese roll.

The Trinchado itself was also very nice. It was not hot at all. The Trinchado is made from little squares of beef in a nice white wine sauce, so nothing hot. If you are in the mood for a nice chilled out Trinchado I would say the Braza Trinchado is the way to go, if you want something more spicy this is not the Trinchado for that specific day then.

So I would rate the Trinchado 7/10, very enjoyable.

Killzone 2

I rented Killzone 2 the other day but I just realised again that I am not a pure FPS fan at all. I loved Bioshock which was from a first person angle but it had a compelling story. Killzone 2 on the other hand has no story to it other than the normal thin FPS back story.

So I played it a few hours but I am now so bored with it that I am going to swop it out as soon as I go past the store again. Hopefully they have the new Wolverine game available.

Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles

I hate watching a TV series and there are two reasons for this. The one is that the series might suck and if it is based on a movie then it just ruins the movie. The other is the series might be great but they run out of budget and you are left in limbo.

Thankfully TSCC is in the second category. I just finished watching the 2nd season and it was brilliant. The last five episodes or so with the new added twist really makes the whole Terminator universe grow.

The story was so good that I am scared to go and watch T4 in a few months time because that movie might miss the whole universe and what it is about and just focus on the action turning it into just one big dumb action movie which would be sad.

I really hope they continue with TSCC because I hate being left in limbo and if they do not make season 3 then I will have the same feeling that I had with some other shows that were just stopped.

BSG was great in the sense that they decided end of season 4 will be the end, so they gave a good ending that brought closure and that is what I hope TSCC will do as well. I am a big Smallville fan but I am really thinking they are pushing the limits, 8 seasons and no ending in sight, I would hate it if Smallville had no ending and is just canned.

So on the whole TSCC season 2 was very good and I feel it really made the Terminator universe grow a bit more from the the standard Terminator wants to kill John, they run and run and run, kill Terminator, the end.

Wolverine

I had no idea Gavin Hood was directing Wolverine. Now this is one of those rare South Africans that really made something for himself out of nothing. Much like Charlize, not a big fan of her, but I have respect for what she accomplished.

So hopefully Wolverine does very well, I will be one of the people going to watch it on opening weekend.

Toshiba Portege G710

I recently decided that Vodacom is over charging me, so I downgraded my contract and opted not to take a cell phone at all. I'd rather use my current Palm 750 until it dies, if that happens I have my eye on this little smartphone from Toshiba. It is not full of features as the Treo 750 but I found that I rarely use those features, so for the price this smartphone is on the money.

Tekken 5

I am a big Tekken fan. I lost out on the Tekken 5 for PS2 but luckily they made a Tekken 5 for PS3 with online play.

I even downloaded it with South Africa's crippled broadband.

I am really impressed with this game. The Online play is brilliant, even with my slow internet connection.

All I need now is a FightStick but they are all out of stock because SFIV was released the other day and the whole US wanted to buy FightSticks.

Tomb Raider Underworld

I always loved the Tomb Raider series, even in the dark days when the critics seemed to hate it.

Tomb Raider has been developed by a new company for the last 3 releases and they are doing a good job.

The latest release Underworld was really good, was old school Tomb Raider, but it seems I am in the minority when compared to newer games like Drake's Fortune.

I still need to play Drake's Fortune and maybe then too I will not be satisfied with Tomb Raider anymore, but I doubt it.

Assassin's Creed

I finished Assassin's Creed on the PS3 yesterday.

The game was very good. I liked the story line but the missions could get a bit repetitive at times.

The Informant missions was dumb as hell, didn't like them much.

The fighting engine was especially good.

Bioshock

I finished Bioshock for PS3. Took me a few days but being on leave I can play almost 8 hours a day now.

The game was really good. The story was very rich and I haven't had this much fun playing a game since Fallout 3.

So a game worthwhile investing my time.

My Playstation 3

I have been wanting to buy a PS3 for a while now, but I never got to it. I bought one today and I am very happy with it. Already I am streaming my media (movies, videos and photos) over the LAN to the PS3 to display on my new LCD TV.

I have no games yet and with South Africa's horrible broadband costs I also can't download any games. So Take2 will be my next stop for some games and maybe a Blu-Ray movie.

It seems to have been a worthwhile investment. No more ugly PC's in my living room.

I am a dad at last.

Alexis was born today. 2.85kg and 45cm tall.

Geat stuff.

Sinotec 42" Full HD LCD

My 84cm CRT TV broke for the second time, so I decided to buy the Sinotec 42" LCD TV.

Works amazing sofar. It even has a D-Sub input and can do 1360x768, so 720p movies on my hard disk can be displayed at great detail.

Video streaming wirelessly 2

Ok so I invested in the Ellies wireless AV sender / receiver. So far it works great. Only problems so far is when a heavy Thunderstorm is raging, the signal is very weak then, but other than that is seems to work great.

So now I can record my DSTV shows without the need for my PC in my living room.

Pinnacle Studio

So I tried a few things to get Pinnacle to record my shows in MPEG2 correctly but I failed. Now I just record the shows in DV quality and the use VirtualDub afterwards to encode it into DivX format. So no more sound sync problems and DivX is supported by most hardware these days anyway.

DarkStar One Cheat

I started playing DarkStar One and it is a very nice game but the level system sucks. You have to collect stupid crystals and that becomes boring very quickly.

So I used Artmoney to find the memory addresses for money and the crystals. So now I can set the crystal count, collect one more crystal and then levelling is all sorted.

The downside is the higher the ship level the more difficult the enemies become, but that is fine, I like the fighting part it was just the mundane crystal hunting I didn't like. So I added these 2 cheats in the .amt file.

Artmoney

I found a new way of cheating in my games. Some games are just so boring or mundane that cheating is the only way to enhance the experience. Low level cheating of course, just that little extra to take the boring out of it. This usually boils down to cheating with money. I found this nice tool to help. It is called Artmoney and works well.

American Road Trip

I decided that starting 2009 I will start saving for my American road trip. The current draft route is quite long but I would manage to see all the stuff I want to see.

We will have to do some miles in South Africa first before we attempt this one. Maybe a nice Southern African tour as soon as Bob is out of the picture.

94.7 Mountain Bike Challenge

So I did the 94.7 MTB Challenge, 40km. Finished in 3 hours and 20 minutes. The route was very muddy, so maybe I will have a faster time next year, but still I am happy with the time I did.

HTML Signatures in GMail

I always wanted an HTML signature in GMail but could never get it right. Now with some Firefox magic I can.

BlackCanvas has a plugin that does just that.

So now I can have this as my signature

Ubuntu 8.04

So Windows Vista kept on complaining about me not buying it yet, so I decided to get legal and get rid of Vista. My previous experience with Ubuntu on my laptop was good but I had to do a lot of tweaking.

I decided that this time around if it does not install out of the box I am not installing it, will get Vista or XP instead then. Much to my surprise it worked out of the box first time. Even Compiz works in Ubuntu 8.

So all in all a very good experience.