Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge and The Final Table

Competing as teams!

Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge (Season 1)

I've never seen the original Spartan games, but in this format three squads each made up of two men, two women and one ranked spartan (from the solo version) race through an obstacle course using fitness and teamwork. Three races take place each episode, but they only show the "featured" race followed by the finals race where the two winners of the earlier races are joined by the 2nd place team with the fastest time. I guess even the producers realized that showing people doing the same things over and over could get repetitive but thankfully the teams have enough charisma to keep viewers engaged for eight episodes. Netflix doesn't have season two available so maybe they too thought "eight episodes of this is enough for anybody".

The Final Table

In this show 24 established chefs from around the world work in pairs to prepare the best dish based on whatever cuisine the current episode is focused on, judged by celebrities and foodies from that same region. The three worst dishes then compete using the selected featured ingredient of the region and makers of the worst dish are eliminated. It's a fast format which is pretty neat, but its only the final four that ever have to compete individually. Recommended for Masterchef fans but as the episodes are on the longer side, I suggest watching at 1.25x speed (it makes their knife skills superhuman too lol).

Masterchef Australia Season 12

Back to win.

I've been a big fan of Masterchef Australia for a long time now, as its usually nice, wholesome and uplifting emotionally despite being a competition.

The end of Season 11 also saw the departure of the beloved judges Gary Mehigan, Matt Preston and George Calombaris leaving some pretty big shoes to fill for the new comers - previous guest-chef Jock Zonfrillo, articulate foodie Melissa Leong, and season 4 winner Andy Allen who went on to become a One Hat chef (only two more to catch up to Jock)!

The new judges: Andy, Mel and Jock.

While initially wary, I find these three to be quite good at the job - but the real masterstroke was from whoever decided to bring back the best non-winning contestants from previous seasons meaning there's plenty of familiarity around for long time fans.

It's quite interesting too how they manage to continue through COVID which necessitates the removal of public outdoor and service challenges; rules that are retained for the 3rd Junior season of the show (which coincidentally had the epic idea of having a live orchestra play music during the final cook). I'll be continuing to watch if Season 13 rolls around. :)

Blaugust Topic Idea: Future Tech

I am always interested in learning about new technologies and devices, hard ware in particular. So while you can talk about the new OS of your phone, I'd be much more interested in hearing about exoskeleton power armor advancements and electromagnetic levitation.

Yep, that last one came to light for me during the Masterchef Australia 2018 finale when Heston Blumenthal had food on a floating pillow. I know he used a floating plate in a previous season but it wasn't as visually stunning as this.

No strings, just the magic of magnets.

Turns out you too can get your own levitating items from Levitating X: Levitate Everything. Their "how to" video is particularly good, you should go check them out. :)

Today I Smiled: Kept Busy!

While I admit it's kinda nice to take a break from not blogging for awhile, it's also slightly annoying as I've got lots of stuff I want to post (regardless if people read it, haha)! Busy at work, busy in the Siege of Neverwinter, busy in Skyrim, and busy watching wonderful TV shows (like Masterchef Australia)!

Still, I thought I'd at least put up some filler content! Have you heard about "Judas goats"? Marked and GPS tagged the feral animals are released and followed back to their very sneaky herds where hunters would promptly kill all but the marked ones, who would then lead the hunters to the next herd (social animal instinct). Their reward? To die alone. And you thought I was cruel!

Still my favorite comment!

There's also another type that has the dubious honor of being made extinct; twice. Yay for cloning! On the topic of killing, how about that new Philippine President who is keen on turning up the death count? Keep in mind he won via an election. I'm not sure if that's progress or going back to the dark ages, but I definitely found a time machine (one I had forgotten about actually), in the Wayback Machine - which had archived bits of one of my first websites: The Hellsing Crucifix.

Ahhh, I loved than anime. Judging from the text, I also loved smileys.

Ok, I still do. :P

Roll of the Dice

Really been "off" lately by not being drawn into any of my usual games for prolonged periods of time. Maybe I'm just burned out, or it's the lack of Masterchef on TV, or simple procrastination (from games, what)? Whatever it is I'm going to try fight it using ... a six sided die.

Yerp! At least for the next week or so to see how well this system works. The idea is whatever I roll on the night is what I end up doing, but all results can get trumped by real life stuff or if my guildmates call for my aid somewhere, which rarely happens these days (they're pretty powerful too).

So, I'll see how I go with these:

1 - Guildwars 2
2 - Neverwinter Online
3 - Wizardry Online
4 - a Single Player Game of my choice
5 - Write guild related stories
6 - Anything else, NOT in the above!

Mabinogi isn't there on the list because it still doesn't want to update for me. I guess a total reinstall for it could happen on a roll of 6, so let's just see how this plays out...

A Quick Respite... of Madness!

Thought I'd give you a breather from all the Mabinogi classes I've been posting. Don't worry though, there is still more of that to come - and more adventures in the Shadow of Chernobyl too! Not yet for the Skyrim journal though, at least not until I get around to getting Dawnguard. :)

So what have I been up to? Well, playing Mabinogi as one may have guessed but I switch it out with other things too like watching Masterchef Australia (season 4) which is about to head into it's final week! While that's a bit sad I'll get 3 weeks more Masterchef with the All-Stars version starting up right after. Probably gonna watch some Olympics too since that's about to start up shortly, but it will have a tough ask as it needs to beat Fringe which my wife and I are currently watching. Damn it's a good series, and I highly recommend it.

Also been playing the Walking Dead game (hey I think the next season of this is going to start up soon too), which is pretty cool but as of now still unfinished. Getting killed left right and center in Arma II as well, but I haven't put too much time into that yet - no, my recent adventures have all been in a little game called "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth". It's a little dated but is still very awesome, engaging and immersing. Almost like a single player run of the board game (which I am also a fan of). Alas it isn't quite open-world though so I won't be doing write ups for that one - it is better if you experience it for yourself! Nothing quite like being chased by a shoggoth or being driven mad by the great Cthulhu. ^_^

Got myself a newly forged "Beasts of Iron" novel from my buddy Paul C. Goosen too, and being a friend of his thought I should pimp out his work! Go have a looksie for yourself!

Anywho, been awhile since I put up random links for y'all so here's some stuff that's caught my interest recently:

Ultima Forever - because the Avatar can never die.
Deadpool vs the World?
PC Game Evolution - Brings back some memories!
Dirty Laundry (courtesy of Juris) - a cool Punisher short

All over the place

Whoa, I totally missed the update last week in more ways than one. Moving office is tiring... Ofcourse this means I am again behind in where I had hoped to be which is annoying but I've no one to blame but myself. This week I finished colouring the bad guys for flash game #1, next up is backgrounds then AI/gameplay I think. Still managed to pull off two more Mabinogi drawings too, and I am planning to participate in another Mabi-related comp in the next week or so:

As a reward for the second one I received the cutest version of my character ever (drawn by Emeris)! :P

Seems everyone on Mabinogi NA is getting premium service for the next month or so as well so hopefully this means my guild can finally setup a stone in-game somewhere. I don't think I've spoken much about my guild here have I? Well, we are a small group called Dragonarm and we traverse many games. You can find out a bit more in an old interactive movie I did here - Dragonarm: Chapter 1. :)

Also, if you enjoy Neverwinter Nights my brother made this campaign for our guild but it's free for anyone to download and play. Be warned it is designed to be played in a (large) group and uses the hardcore ruleset. Porting in a high level character to solo is possible but could be frustrating if you use a mage as it isn't geared for that.

As for the mysterious book I'm considering trashing what little work I've put into it and starting again (changing first POV character). Sigh.

Lastly, Junior Masterchef has started up showcasing another load of talented kids in the kitchen! It's really good stuff. For those who feel this isn't mature enough for their tastes may enjoy this hilarious Nigella Lawson mix instead (warning: not for kiddies :P).

Project Status:
Flash game #1 - 13% (enemies all coloured)
Mysterious book - 0% (restarting)
Mabinogi: Forum Signature comp -due Oct 8th: 1% (have an idea, need to study reference)
Mabinogi: Keenejl art comp -due Oct 20th: 100%
Mabinogi: Emeris silly sprite -100%

It's all about the cooking!

There are very few "reality" shows I get into, and Masterchef Australia is one of them. This is really strange since I don't cook at all, but am slowly being encouraged to try. Prior to watching it, I didn't know who Heston Bummenthal was, nor Nigella Lawson, Tetsuya, Adriano Zumbo, Matt Moran, Gary Mehigan, George Calmobaris and certainly not Matt Preston among a host of other names. I didn't know that there are people who can hold hot pieces of iron and meat straight from the oven with their bare hands, or that something called a croquembouche was a desert. I didn't know what the terms molecular gastronomy, shucking, and caramelisation meant. I didn't know there were an almost infinite amount of ways to prepare food, and that there were crazy chefs who worked out things that needed to be cooked then baked then frozen then cooked again then fried - what the hell man, was that just trial and error? O_O

And then came Masterchef Australia. A spin-off of the original Masterchef UK (some of which I also watch now), the Australian version focuses quite a bit more on the amateur cooks themselves rather than the cooking. This makes it somewhat less impressive for foodies sure, but I think grabs quite a few more of the non-cooking demographic like myself. The format is ye olde contestants facing a variety of challenges which sees them depart one at a time and the last one standing wins. It's a formula that seems to be working too, as it is now in the 3rd season of the show, with a very awesome Junior Masterchef season thrown somewhere in the mix as well. It also airs 6 nights a week during primetime which gives you an idea of how much pull this "little cooking show" has.

While there certainly is a lot of cooking - there's quite a bit of this too:

If you haven't seen any of it yet, you can find all their episodes online on the main MasterChef Australia site.

Just as amusing as the show itself are the forums that recap it daily, giving their own (usually hilarious) spin on the transpiring events. The two I visit most often are Reality Ravings and Shuckittome. Definitely something to have a little taste of if you haven't already! ;)