Matthew Supert

So Megan and I went to the motorcycle show again this Saturday. This has sort of become an annual thing for us each year. I have to say that there wasn't much that really caught my eye this year, with the exception of the new Yamah Bolt crusier. That bike looks really nice and has a great, gritty urban feel to it. I think it is positioned really well to give the HD 883 a run for its money. The specs as with most cruisers won't blow you out of the water. It only has a single disc for the front break and the engine is rather low for overall HP with only a 9-1 compression ratio for a V-Twin, but it makes up for it with some nice touches on the pipes and engine. It also has all LED lights that are positioned in a very modern looking setup. 

I am not normally into cruiser style bikes, but if I had to pick one, I would probably take the Bolt. Spec'ing the whole bike out with the "R-Spec" accessories and the brass finishes brings the base price to $8,999 up to just over $10,000, but overall it has a great look as you can see from the customization site. 

I also had a chance to check out the new BMW R Nine-T which everyone seems to be losing their minds over. I of course didn't have a chance to ride it, but my initial look was rather disappointing. For the price of the bike, there didn't seem to be much there and the comfort wasn't super apparent. The handlebars and seating position was leaning much more forward than I would have initially thought. the engine seems to be pretty much the same as the other oil/air cooled BMW twins, so I would expect there performance to be pretty well known. The lack of a a tele-lever though was obviously apparent and after having one of those for a few years now, I sort of find it hard to live without it. May be I will get to actually ride one later this year at a demo day or something.  

The other thing that I really noticed at the show this year was the amount of "booth babes". They seemed to be all over the place and they never seemed to be prevalent in years past. 

So last week I picked up and Xbox One in a whim. The console is pretty cool and honestly the Kinect works much better than I thought it would.

While plugging everything in I had to relocate my existing 360 to the other side of the entertainment center. My wife had the suggestion that I pull all of those consoles I had in a tub in the basement out and set them up as well.

It is awesome having a wife who is as nerdy as me.

So this past Friday I had my second role playing adventure with the Pathfinder Society. As with the first time, I had a blast and I am now starting to get a handle on how the game works a bit more. Our group was thrown for a bit of a loop at the beginning of the game as the GM who was hosting the game asked all of our characters to introduce themselves to their fellow companions and state why they decided to join the Pathfinder Society. I had to on the spot think up of a a background story for my character, but I think I did a pretty good job. 

I think I may start a little sort of side blog posts going forward that summarizes these adventures. Could be sort of fun. In the mean time, I will do a quick summary of the introduction I did that evening for my character. 

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So we are a couple of weeks into the new year and already I am beginning to just feel a bit worn down by everything. This often happens to me. I work in the basement of my building so we don't have any windows. This time of the year is actually a sort of slow time for me as well, which normally would be a good thing because it allows me to work on some of our longer term projects. These past couple of weeks have been a bit hectic thought with the weather and this week as followed up with people coming out of the woodwork with complaints. 

It is sort of exhausting to an extent and I feel like I am constantly putting out little fires, without getting any real work done. It is all really making me itch to get out of the house or something. Get on my motorcycle or go paint-balling or something. I was able to get out and go cross country skiing a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately I haven't had an opportunity since the weather was too cold to go outside here. 

Let's hope things open up here a bit over the next week or two. 

So, Nanowrimo is long gone, but I am still slowly chipping away on my book. I have absolutely slowed down over the past month, a lot more than I had initially planned, but it was probably good to step back from everything for a bit of time to catch my breath. Nanowrimo was a mad sprint in November and nothing I have ever done before. It was exciting, but it wasn't really something I could keep on doing since I was basically neglecting other parts of my life. 

That being said I hope to get back into the writing part a bit more through the month of January. I am amazed at how much of this story I am discovering myself as I write this book. I am sort of just making things up as I go along and writing what feels like what would naturally happen in a scenario. I have found myself and my characters going to places I never imagined, wondering why we were all here and acting upon motives they never would have at the beginning of this adventure. 

I had to write my first love scene, which I admit was a bit awkward because all I could think about was if people reading this would just think it was my own sexual desires coming out. I had one of my characters commit a horrific crime out of pure impulse upon the moment. Everything is just sort of falling around me in this story, but I think I will get to where I need to be in the end. Ideas about solidifying the world seem to be coming together around me. I hope to keep plugging along with this. Eventually I may even allow people to read it. 

Well, it is that time again, when we look back upon the year we had and then think about what we want to do moving forward.  This past year went pretty fine for the most part, but for some reason I wouldn't really call it a satisfying year on the whole. I took two wonderful vacations this past summer to Yosemite and on a cruise. Apart from that though I didn't feel like I had much else from the summer that really stood out for me. 

My biggest personal accomplishment was probably my participation in Nanowrimo this past November. I found that I actually enjoyed writing quite a bit and I hope to continue going forward this year. My biggest disappointment was that I really did not get to ride my motorcycle as much as I wanted. I didn't participate in as many group rides as I would have liked and I did none of the weekend trips I wanted to. Somehow my weekends felt really full with other work. 

This year I think I want to keep my goals a bit simpler. 

1. Music Mondays - I should use Monday evenings to work on more music 
2. Continue to write at least once a week. Perhaps even get a book finished. 
3. Ride more Motorcycle. 

I am not sure if I posted this earlier, but back in November I decided to pickup a Wii U on a sort of whim. I figured now would be a good time to get one and the system had a new package deal out that had the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD packed in. The Wind Waker Zelda is my favorite game of all time so it was pretty hard for me to actually pass up on it.

I also decided to get into Skylanders and bought a package of that game on sale over the holiday break. That game is incredibly well produced and truth be told, those little action figures are incredibly addictive to collect. I know that game is supposed to be for kids, but I can't help but have fun while playing it. This Penny Arcade Comic is not too far off from the truth of these things. 

After playing Skylanders and Zelda the past few weeks i have to say that they overall felt really refreshing. Both games are just really well made games and not just "kids" games. The overall atmosphere and feeling while playing them was completely different than most of the games that I found while playing on the Xbox. I didn't have any of the stress or tension around my gaming sessions that I normally had with other games. 

Case in point is the latest Tomb Raider game. I also started playing that game the past few weeks. That game in its own right is really well made and is probably my favorite game that was made this year, but the whole environment and atmosphere while playing it is obviously quite different than the Nintendo games I am playing on the Wii U. The game is gritty and intense. It is fun but also to a point stressful. I don't exactly feel relaxed while I play it and while i do enjoy the story and the game immensely it doesn't quite put a smile on my face like Skylanders does. 

So, over the Thanksgiving weekend, Megan and I went to our new favorite small business, the Wandering Dragon over in Plainfield to support small business Saturday. I think we are going to start a tradition of buying a game or two every small business saturday there. Browsing around the store I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to pick up. Then I saw sitting on the shelf the Pathfinder RPG starter kit. 

This is an RPG I have heard a lot of people talking about over the past year. For those who don't know, it is an RPG just like Dungeons and Dragons. There is a dungeon master who leads several adventurers on a quest to go and do something. Paizo created the RPG back in 2009 after Wizards of the Coast decided to change their publishing rules. Forbes of all sites actually has a really good review on the box and an interesting insight on how the whole thing got started. 

So I picked up the starter kit and spent the weekend going over the box and I really found the whole system interesting. Call it luck or call it good planning, but I noticed that the Wandering Dragon that very next Thursday was having a Pathfinder Society night. The Pathfinder Society is Paizo's world wide sort of story following the RPG. Players around the world in the society all play the same modules and stories together and then report their stats and details online to the site for tracking. It is sort of like and MMORPG but on paper. 

Suffice to say I had an absolutely blast last Thursday playing the game. I just loved every minute of it and everyone else who was playing was really cool with me and made my play time really fun. I have to say I am hooked. 

It is really a shame that I didn't get into this stuff more when I was growing up or even in college.

So the past couple of weeks saw the advent of the next generation of gaming consoles. I went out and decided to buy a Wii U with the new Zelda Wind Waker HD remake. Ohh, I want one of the new consoles, but I cannot decide quite yet what to get. Anyways, I will get to that next week in another post. 

This week I am going to post though my favorite games of this last generation. These are in no particular order, but simply the games that left me with the best impression. 

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