Category: Grilled Cheese

Chess as a bellweather

Posted on By Liquid Egg Product 2 Comments on Chess as a bellweather
Chess, Grilled Cheese

It’s been 5 years since my last rated game. I only play lightning or blitz occasionally on chess.com and lichess.org nowadays.

(And I STILL cannot consistently spell “occasionally” correctly the first time).

On days that I feel particularly sharp or dull, my chess performance seems to reflect it. So on days when I’m just not sure about how well the brain will function that day, I play a few games to figure it out.

Of course, this method does have some problems:

1. Do I selectively remember those days which support this hypothesis?
2. Did I control for the strength of my opponents?
3. Is my sample size even big enough?
4. [Other stuff I’m not thinking of]

Naturally, the answers for 1-3 are probably “yes”, “no” and “no”, but the hypothesis sounds good enough to me.

Age of Empires

Posted on By Liquid Egg Product 4 Comments on Age of Empires
Gaming, Grilled Cheese

Over the course of 2014, I have been playing the original Age of Empires (plus Rise of Rome expansion!).

This is an official announcement that I have, as of tonight, defeated all the campaigns on Hardest difficulty.

A handful of the maps were quite memorable because they were so tough, but some were surprisingly easy. (“Easy” meaning I had to restart at most once.) The penultimate scenario in “Enemies of Rome” was a worthy challenge, although it was short and only took a couple restarts. The final map was, sadly, a relative laugher. Maybe I deserved a cakewalk for the final night.

Kudos to the campaign designers for thinking up enough unique challenges to keep the campaigns interesting.

Clearly, there’s no way my mid-30’s self could do decently in multiplayer, though. Muttering “macro, macro, macro, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade” after a fight indicates my poor ability to multi-task.

Does this mean moving on to Age of Empires 2? You bet!

New Year’s Resolution still pending

Posted on By Liquid Egg Product 8 Comments on New Year’s Resolution still pending
Grilled Cheese, Patently Ineffective

For those of you who don’t follow me on Facebook (shame on you!), I made a New Year’s Resolution to be able to list the names of all four Beatles without assistance or prompting.

There’s a billboard by the Hard Rock Casino in Miami announcing that Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band playing. (The over/under on how long it took them to think of “All-Starr Band”: 4.5 seconds.)

My rough train of consciousness:

“Hey, Ringo Starr is a Beatle! Let’s see if I can get all four of them this time.”
“OK, Ringo Starr.”
“George Harrison.”
“Ha, this is going to be easy. The other two are the most famous.”
“Um. um.”
“John McCartney.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Wait, that sounds wrong.”
“…”
“…”
“I should probably give up.”
“…”
“…”
“Oh, the other guy’s name is Paul something.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“OK, I give up. Two-and-a-half out of four isn’t bad.”

The best pizza ever

Posted on By Liquid Egg Product 4 Comments on The best pizza ever
Grilled Cheese

Katrushka makes my favorite pizza ever:

So the picture doesn’t do it justice.

But what’s special about it? The crust is made completely out of cheese. No grains. No carbs. No gluten. Just perfectly crispy chess. If you weren’t told, you’d be fooled into thinking it was a thin crust.

And it’s a quick dish to make. There’s no excuse to order Papa John’s again.

By the way, the perfect pizza is topped with Italian sausage, mushrooms, and jalapeno. Any other combination is inferior (except if you wanted to substitute pepperoni for the Italian sausage).

Happy New Year!

Posted on By Liquid Egg Product 7 Comments on Happy New Year!
Grilled Cheese

It’s a new year, even here at Liquid Egg Product, and you know what that means. Promises of more frequent updates that will not be forthcoming!

For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you are already aware of my New Year’s Resolution: to be able to name all four Beatles without help or prompting (really, that’s about as much energy as I can muster for the time being)

Katrushka and I have started a low-carb diet. While I’ve never been overweight, an extra bit of fatness around the stomach has become more noticeable. (Technically my BMI is borderline overweight, but anyone who sees me knows that should be taken with a grain of salt.)

There are a few specials we are excited about. Since Robert Pearson has taken over the Chess Blog Carnival for 2012, it seems appropriate to help him start things about with a bang! Stay tuned, chess lovers.