Edward's March 2019 Mix

 
Sort of more of the same from last month, it’s been a busy March. It’s ranged from books to PC games to board games. And music. Lots of music. I upgraded my digital audio player and it’s truly like hearing every song in my collection for the first time. I wrestled with the idea of high resolution music being better than the old CD standard (44.1 kHz/16 bits) and came to the conclusion the money I’ve been spending on higher resolution files on sites such as ProStudioMasters and HDTracks was probably in vain. There is nothing wrong with CD resolution. Vinyl diehards will tell you differently, but in truth you’re comparing fish to bicycles. CDs are digital, vinyl analog. The one sticking point, however, is the modern mastering of CDs that involves “crushing” the sound. This is why it is always better to buy pre-1990 CDs. If this sounds interesting to you then simply google the phrase “loudness wars.” The way you look at music forever after will be changed. I promise.   

1.      Wing Commander II on PC: The game beat me. I hate that I got 18 hours into it and the difficulty was so much that I just couldn’t beat the game. Now, after all these years I remember why I never beat it back in 1992 when I purchased the big box game out of my local Babbages. I even looked for cheats and workarounds. There is one workaround involving altering command lines in the start up file, but alas, they no longer work! I really dislike this because it quells my desire to play the rest of the games in the series, but knowing me, I’ll end up picking them up anyway. Doh! 

2.     Gretta Van Fleet “Anthem of the Peaceful Army” on FLAC 88.2 kHz/24 bits. I picked this up on ProStudioMaster.com to test out my new high res DAP. Still retaining their Led Zeppelin type sound, I think they are starting to find their own sound. Josh Kiszka has a great rock and roll voice. My favorite will always be Joe Elliot, but Kiska has my utmost admiration. I’ve read he’s been having troubles with his voice. I hope it holds up. It’s refreshing to discover a new band, especially a rock band and acquiring their second of two full length albums. It reminds me of first discovering Van Halen when I was a kid and saving my money to buy their cassettes.


3.   Total Recall on Blu Ray: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie I haven’t liked. He’s not an Academy Award winning actor, but he puts his all into his movies while still having fun. He’s come a long way since his first appearance as a dubbed over Hercules. Total Recall is equally as good because it co-stars Michael Ironside, one of my favorite bad guys. Oh, and there’s also the Philip K. Dick thing. I keep forgetting this was based on one of his stories. This movie is clearly a product of the 1980 action movies complete with the one liners, despite it came out in the 1990s. And Arnold delivers them with aplomb. The transfer to Blu-Ray is clean and crisp. Well worth picking up if you’re a fan of Philip K. Dick, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Michale Ironside.  

4.  All of the Pretty Horses  by Cormac McCarthy on Amazon Kindle: The first of a trilogy by this Pulitzer Prize winning author. This is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself.  It’s 1946, the aftermath of WWII. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to seek his fortune. I once deemed McCarthy’s “The Road” to be the most depressing book I’ve ever read. But there’s no denying this guy can sure write. This book is very reminiscent of Larry McMurtry’s western writing. It’s a serious book despite such passages as roasting a jackrabbit over a campfire and pulling it out of the flames, looking like a desiccated effigy. I’m not far into it, but it’s been fun so far.  

5. Formula D by Asmodee Games: My daughter and I set out to play one game just to get a feel for it, and ended up playing three games straight. It’s a race car game played on a board. Yeah, yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound like fun, but it’s a blast. And we’re just playing on the simple rules. As we become acquainted we’ll up the difficulty (and the fun) with the advanced rules. Thank you, James Champion, for turning me onto this game. Unfortunately, the game is difficult to find for under $50. I got lucky and made a good eBay find. 
  
6.  Independence Day on Blu Ray: I hadn’t seen this since its release in 1996. It’s a summer type over the top popcorn action movie, but still fun to watch. Bill Pullman does a great job as the President. The story goes he did so well that people on the set humbled themselves around him as if he really were the President. This is a great film to watch on big screen with a sound bar. It’s amazing that special effects have come so far in twenty years to the point the effects in this movie look almost cheesy, but I think they serve the perfect purpose for what they are. The Blu Ray version looks much cleaner than the DVD version. I just found out it’s been released on 4K Blu Ray. I’ll probably pick it up on that format and rewatch it, the movie is that fun to watch. 

7. The Trail of the Fox by David Irving: I’ve muddled into the halfway point of this tome. Erwin Rommel definitely burnt the candle at both ends, but pulled it off surprisingly well. I’m currently reading about his adventures in Africa. I think what truly defeated him was Enigma which enabled the Brits to sink the ships carrying petrol to his forces. The book started out with Rommel admiring Adolf Hitler, to one of his aides witnessing him pacing back and forth near his command vehicle and stating that Hitler was crazy. As early as 1942 Rommel wrote to his wife and said “we’ve lost the war.” He even sent her an English dictionary and instructed her to learn it because she was probably going to need it. He was definitely Brit general Montgomery’s thorn. He tried several times to flank Rommel and shut him down, but each time he tried he came up empty. Rommel outwitted him. Oddly, he had an uncanny sense of an enemy’s approach. He would look out over a bare stretch of land and say, “In ten minutes the enemy will be upon us.” Sure enough, ten minutes later dust clouds would appear signaling the approach of British forces. Unfortunately, the paperback I’m reading truncated about forty pages right at the prelude of what happened at El Amien. The book picks up again at Rommel’s retreat. I take it things went south there.  

8. BGVP DMG High Resolution Ear Phones. I wanted portable buds for going outside and taking to work from time to time. And I think I found the ultimate. I watched numerous reviews of these on YouTube and they seemed to steal the show, some reviewers stating they sounded as good as or better than $500 and $600 sets out there. Honestly, I’ve never listened to a $600 set of ear buds, but these bad boys with their six drivers sound pretty amazing. I hit a speed bump selecting the right size buds (I thought I was going to have to return them because they wouldn’t fit.) But once I affixed the right size buds I was in aural heaven.

9. Hitman Codename 47 on PC: I’ll never know why I’m drawn to hard PC games, but the masochist side of me craves them. This game came out in 2000 and was credited for being one of the more difficult games out there. I’ve only gotten through the tutorial and the first mission so far, but oh man, the rewarding feeling I got when I beat that mission. The truth is, I want to play the newer renditions of the game, I’ve heard nothing but good stuff. But being the purist I am, I can’t bring myself  to do that, not until I’ve played through every game leading up to it. The controls are wonky and the graphics look like a purple baboon butt, but I’m in for the long haul. We’ll see how far I get. 

10. R3 High Resolution Music Player by Hiby: I had a nice HD music player, but I felt the need for an upgrade. I spent the month doing research. They run the gamut from $12 cheapies from SanDisk all the way to $2600 Sony Walkmans. I found a sweet-spot in the Hiby R3 at $200. What sold me was the album artwork that depicts when a song plays. And I have to admit the music sounds pretty damn good. Pick one of these up and you’ll give your iPod away. 

Edward's February 2019 Mix

February is upon us as we plunge headlong into another year. I’m still looking at new PCs. I’m wanting a beast of a rig, we’re talking an I9-9900K with a Geforce 2080 video card. My blessed old I7-3770K is still holding its own quite well, but sheesh, it’s six years old! I used to build my own rigs, but NZXT BLD will build you a state of the art machine with a two year warranty on all parts for $99. The total price is as cheap as if I built it myself. I think it’s worth it. Ironically, I’ve not been playing PC games as much. I’ve been catching up on my reading, engulfed in my guitar and discovering the joys of board gaming. And I’ve inserted the time to discover some cool new music as well. 

1.  Wing Commander II on PC: I played the original almost 30 years ago but didn’t get very far. There were no difficulty settings on these old games, nor were there any cheats back then. I picked the game up on Gog.com for under two bucks on sale and it’s been tweaked for modern rigs. I remember this game was lauded for its “amazing graphics!” and this along with its predecessor Wing Commander is what made Soundblaster a household name. Today, despite the wonderful tweaks Gog implemented to ensure the game runs well, the game looks like utter mud. And the sound that seemed so stellar back in 1991 is simple 16 bit midi tones that sound slightly better than old NES game tunes. Still, this series is regarded as one of the best space flight sims ever and it’s worth a play through. Completely innovative for its time, it featured a branching story line depending on whether you were winning or losing the great war between the factions, the Terrans or the bipedal feline aliens known as The Kilrathi. It was one of the first games to feature a dynamic soundtrack that pepped up as you headed into battle, or softened to a melancholic dirge if your ship was destroyed. The original game actually prompted me to upgrade my 286-12 mHz to a blistering quick 386-25 mHz. Ah, those days! 

2.  Wes Borland “Crystal Machete” on Amazon Music: I was never really a fan of the band Limp Bizkit. I always harbored an aversion to Fred Durst’s lack of vocabulary. And to attempt to overcome it with profanity, to me it’s just dismissive. Limp Bizkit’s guitarist, Wes Borland, on the other hand, I’ve always had a certain fascination for. From his humble beginnings of learning guitar from his church pastor who believed in chords to the max “Wesley, let me teach you another Merle Haggard song,” to his crazy on-stage costumes. With his Will Robinson spitting image looks he’s no shredder and he’s certainly not a Jimmy Page or Eric Johnson technician, but boy is he a “soundscaper.” Did I just pen a new word? I picked up his recent “Crystal Machete” and I easily inferred it as a labor of love. I’ve been going crazy on auto repeat on the album. If you’re a fan of ambient music you owe it to yourself to check this out. Listen to “The Cliffs.” 

3.   Extraordinary Tales on Netflix: A collection of animated tales based on the works of Edgar Alan Poe and coming in at one hour and fifteen minutes, this is a short film worth watching. Each story is a showcase for modern animation. And the tales are narrated by some heavy hitters. Bela Lugosi tells “The Tell Tale Heart.” Yes, THAT Bela Lugosi. It’s eerie to hear his voice transcribed from a scratchy old record album recording paired with such modern animation, but works beautifully. Giullermo del Toro is also cast as a narrator. I remember skimming and skipping over Poe in high school because it seemed like boring writing to me. But in truth he’s paved the way for Lovecraft and King in future years. This show makes me want to revisit those stories in book form and take them seriously this time around.

4.  Band of Brothers: Hell’s Highway on PC: I finally finished this, the third game in Gearbox’s strategy/shooter WWII series. The story involves Sgt. Matthew Baker and his men fighting on the sidelines of Operation Market Garden September 1944. In actuality this is the story of a man’s journey into madness brought on by the horrors of war. The set pieces and game mechanics still hold up despite the game’s age (2008.) Gearbox put their all into this one, making it the best in the series. Perhaps the most compelling thing about WWII stories, whether they be books or the great movies that have been made in the past two decades, is the camaraderie depicted. It’s enough to make any of us envious, wanting to travel back in time to be a part of that “brothers in arms” concept. I served in the peacetime military myself, and I never experienced that. Maybe it’s something only truly felt in war. This game seems to nail it. 

5. Pandemic by Z-Man Games: My daughter and I have been playing this board game, and it is as addicting as chocolate crack! It’s a co-op game pitting the players against the board game itself. You play as agents of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta battling an outbreak of four different diseases taking over the world. And the game shows no mercy. We played six games straight and won two of them, and that’s not even on the highest difficulty.   

6.  Gretta Van Fleet: “From the Fires” on CD: One brother plays guitar, one brother plays bass, and one brother sings, and oh man can he sing! This band has been lauded and hated for sounding eerily (and almost identically) to Led Zeppelin. They took a Grammy this year for best new Rock band, and I can see why. Even Robert Plant approves. It is strange, but in a good way to see this band surface. I remember as a kid hearing Led Zeppelin on the radio. My brother still has to have his dose everyday on his way to and from work. It's as if listening to this album conjures up memories of me in an alternate universe since Zeppelin never sang these songs. If you miss or are nostalgic for 1970's rock but with a slightly newfangled twist pick this CD up. I really think you'll enjoy it.

7. The Trail of the Fox by David Irving: I’ve only started this fabulous biography of Germany’s revered WWII general, Erwin Rommel, but so far I can’t put it down. He was so universally respected that even British officers hung his portrait in their tents and quarters. Eisenhower and Montgomery were fond of such sentiments as “The only good German soldier is a dead German soldier.” Rommel never said such things. He always admired his enemies, and even instructed his invading German troops, “there is to be no pillaging, raping or looting.” Rommel’s sweetest victories were those in which he totally confused the enemy, outflanked them or came from behind them and caught them in complete surprise. Rommel was one of the early supporters of Adolf Hitler simply because of how Hitler put the military in such high esteem. Supposedly this book, a genuine tour de force, is THE Rommel biography for the ages. I’m looking forward to delving deeper into it. 

8. Memoir ’44  by Days of Wonder Games: I’ve written about it before on here, but this game is truly the entrance down the rabbit hole of board games. Depicting the invasion at Normandy on into the glider landings and the failed attempt of Operation Market Garden, this game uses cards, dice and figurines of soldiers, armor, bunkers, sandbags, and bridges to mimic every battle and skirmish that occurred during this time. Taking only a few minutes to learn,  this game is a blast to play. I just introduced my oldest daughter to it, and now she’s hooked.  

9. Dragon Age II on PC: I’m still continuing my journey in this wonderful EA game, the second of the trilogy. I survived my jaunt through The Deep Roads. I lost a sister through it, but gained a level or two with my rogue, Edward Hawke, finally acquiring level 12. This game is right up there with The Witcher as far as enjoyable RPGs, and honestly, this is perhaps the most fun I’ve had in any RPG. Every quest is a blast to play through. Critics panned the console-like mechanics of the game, but to me the game is highly polished and plays just fine. I don’t even have a problem with the confinement of playing basically a pre-made character. I’m probably half way through the game and still each time I sit down to play it is a great experience.