Matthew Supert

The winter is always a good time to sit-down and find some books to read. Some people think summer is to time to read, but for me that is the time to get outside and do something active. The winter weather though is a great excuse to read some good books. 

As I previously mentioned, Megan bought me a Kindle Voyage for my birthday and I have had a great time reading some books on it over the past few months. 

I was able to finally polish off "Toll the Hounds" which was the eighth book in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen Series.  As I have noted a few times before, those books are huge. This one in particular was 800+ pages and it took me a better part of 2015 to get through. It was difficult in part because I just wasn't that into the book. I am going to continue to soldier on through though and finish that series here in 2016. There are only two books left to go.

Once I finished that I needed to find something that was a little bit lighter in reading. I picked up "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" from the Kindle Lending Library to read over the Thanksgiving and winter holiday. No surprise, I loved the book as I have with all of the Harry Potter books I have read thus far. At the same time I also picked up an audio book from Librivox to listen to.  That book was "The Double Traitor" by E. Phillips Oppenheim. This was a nice, low key spy novel. It didn't have much action in it, but it was more about deception and double-crossing by the characters. There was a lot of exposition in it, but it worked out in the end as a good book. 

I am now working on another "light" novel and reading the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". This is a great book so far. Very light stories and this particular novel is a collection of short stories. I didn't realize that it was actually the third Holmes book, so I will have to definitely pickup the other two. These books are all in the public domain so you can get them for free over at Project Gutenberg or on most of your ebook reader stores. 

The most recent music purchase i picked up over the past week is David Bowie's latest (and last) album titled Blackstar. As most of you probably know by now, David Bowie passed away this past week from an 18 month battle with cancer. There isn't really anything here that I can add to that conversation that hasn't already been said. 

I had this album on my radar for a couple of weeks leading up to its release. David's passing only solidified my purchase and I am certainly glad that i did pick this album up. I don't own any other Bowie albums, but I have always appreciated his songs. This album is very much crafted as a whole piece, a true album. I don't really think there are many radio hits that come off of this album, and perhaps Bowie is not looking for radio hits at this point, but when you sit down and listen to this album from start to finish it really does present a fantastic piece of work and one that is poignant against David's death. 

It is impossible to look at this separate from his death, but the music here stands on its own. There is a beautiful blend of avant-garde jazz and even some elements of electronic music mixed in with the signature Bowie vocal. This is the perfect sort of album that you can both sit-down and listen to, but also put on as a quiet background sound while you want to relax. In fact I find that the impact of the music here is most aptly felt when the album is played quietly. 

This is something I picked up just as a digital download, but also an album I want to now follow up and pickup on vinyl. There is some great music here. 

New track recorded from the past couple of days. If you have been watching any of my Twitch Streams you would have seen me working on this one for a while. The video is captured from the Twitch stream and unfortunately has a couple of audio artifacts. A cleaner copy of the recording is above from Soundcloud. 

This track was incredibly difficult to record. I am not sure if it was just mental or what but I had a countless number of takes on this one before i got it right. 

I put together this little (and it is tiny) metal model kit yesterday. Some of you may have seen these before at B&N or other stores. They are great little model kits made of metal from a company called Fascinations.com. The kits require no glue to put together. Some of the pieces are insanely small but I think just about anyone from 10+ can put one of these together. They are amazingly well designed and very intricate. 

It took me about two and a half hours to assemble this kit. Needle nose pliers are a must and the narrower the tip the better. I would also recommend a pair of wire cutters and if you have it a thimble. 

This was a blast to make and I hope to get a couple more of these in the future. The final product is only about 2" in all directions. 

It has been a while since I posted a cookbook series one. This was from two weeks ago when we were doing brunch with Megan's family. This is Râpée Morvandelle, which is described as Gratin of Shredded Potatoes with Ham and Eggs and Onions. The photo here unfortunately doesn't do the dish justice and this is an amazing brunch/breakfast dish to make. It is also surprisingly easy. It bakes for about 40 minutes until golden. 

You can find this recipe around online if you look, so check it out if you are looking for a brunch dish to make. 

It has been way too long since I have posted a video game update. This fall has been a bit crazy, but I have thankfully gotten some good video gaming in. 

My gaming has been spread out all over the place so let's take a look at what I have been playing lately. 

Over the summer I have put a lot of time into my Nintendo 3DS. I got in on the Humble Nindiebundle and picked up a bunch of games for the 3DS and WiiU. SteamWorld Dig, Retro City Rampage and a few other games took one some great hours. I have really put a lot of time into Fantasy Life though. I am clocked in at around 37 hours on it right now and I still haven't beat the game. It is a fun, light RPG that has many of the same charms that Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon would bring to the table. It also has some excellent multiplayer so Megan and I have been playing that quite a bit with a little couch co-op. Personally, I think it is a must have game for the system.

The bulk of my gaming over this past summer has probably been on my Wii U. A lot of Splatoon has been going down along with some Yoshi's Whooly World over the past couple of months. Yoshi has an excellent multiplayer game, but let's talk about Spaltoon. This game is really an amazing home run for Nintendo. They nailed a competitive multiplayer game in only the way that they could and in doing so may a game that is fun, charming, fast and intense all at the same time. It also makes great use of the WiiU gamepad. 

But, all of those other games have now taken a back seat to my most recent obsession. Xenoblade Chronicles X. This is a huge open world JRPG released for the WiiU about a week ago. It has been a long time since I have played a full on JRPG so I was itching for some of those old story tropes again. This is another one of those games out for the WiiU that define the system. Not only is the game huge and immersive, but it makes great use of the WiiU hardware. It really in a lot of ways is what I wanted the Monster Hunter games to be. There are simply huge monsters in this game set in incredibly gorgeous environments, but you don't have the deal with a slow and pedantic combat mechanic. 

Lastly, but certainly not the least is the Xbox. There have been a couple of great games that have caught me this past fall. First up is a game called Valiant Heats which was released on Games with Gold I think in October. It is a heartbreaking story set during World War I that follows a family that is torn apart by the war. This game really touches on some emotional and tragic topics and it is accompanied by really in-depth diary logs that explain some of the horrors of the war. It is out on just about every platform so if you have a chance to play it, please do. It is remarkably well done. 

Then we have Elite Dangerous. This is a very pretty space "simulator". It is one of those games that does not hold your hand. The galaxy in the game is rendered in real size to our own and there are millions of systems to discover in the game. It is big and the world is set before you to basically just explore on your own. There is no story and no right or wrong way to play. You can just go explore, or you can bounty hunt, or deliver goods. It is up to you and one of those games like the Golf Cub that I will keep on my hard drive and go back to periodically for probably the life of the Xbox One. It also has some of the best sound design I have ever heard and is the sort of thing you can just put on to listen to the sounds of your ship's engines and space to calm you. It is incredibly relaxing in that way. 

Finally, we have Halo 5. Probably the biggest game release this fall. I am a huge Halo fan. So much so that I have even read some of the books. The game is flat out gorgeous and the multiplayer is as good as ever. It is a fun game and it will likely share the top spot as my goto multiplayer game with Splatoon over the next six months or so. 

I have made it a purpose over this past year to purchase new music every month. Not quite sure why I haven't thought about blogging about it all year, but I figured I might as well start doing it now and perhaps I'll even take a look back at some of the other albums and music I have recently picked up. These recent purchases range from vinyl, to mp3's to even sometimes just some CD's checked out from the library. While most people seem to be going the Spotify route for their music with a subscription, music is one of the few medium I still feel like fall on owning myself. 

My most recent purchase was Phases of the Moon - Traditional Chinese Music from the CBS Masterworks collection. This is a really interesting collection of music. It was assembled as an orchestral collection of Chinese styled music from the 1950's and 60's. The music is quote good, but has a distinct "western" flair to it since the orchestral arrangements future a more traditional orchestra. 

The inner cover of the album has some really nicely done narrative that discusses each song and there are certainly some gems on it. I was hoping for a more traditional Chinese musical arrangement, but I am glad I picked this up. 

I hope I'll be able to find some more foreign music 

I had some good work over this past week with music. A couple of new songs recorded and a couple more ready to be recorded this coming week. I hope you guys enjoy them. 

With the upgrade to OS X El Capitan over the past couple of months my old sound card is unfortunately no longer supported. My M-Audio Fast Track 2 has served me well for years. It really has been a great sound card, but M-Audio has recently changed owners a couple of times over the past couple of years and it now seems that the FastTrack Pro line may not be receiving updates anymore. 

SO I was left with trying to find a new audio interface for my Mac. After asking around on Facebook I was recommended to check out the iConnect Audio4+. I honestly had never even heard of that company, but upon further research it came back with nothing but positive reviews. 

One of the strongest features is that it is a "class compliant" device which means that it does not need any audio drivers on Mac. It also has some wonderful internal bus routing features in the box, which allows me to route the audio input devices to both my monitors through direct bypass as well as my Mac, while still have the audio coming out from the Mac via USB to the monitors. It is a very cool feature actually. 

I miss the digital inputs that I had on the Fast Track Pro, but it is a small sacrifice to make for the new features. I also picked up a second camera for recording my studio work and this weekend I put it to use with a new configuration. Overall I have to say that everything has worked out surprisingly well. 

I had some people ask me about the golf bag that I received.  It is a Jones Golf Bag, which is a simply old school styled carry golf bag. It has some nice leather components on it along with the dark blue nylon so I feel it will last me a long time. 

I had my previous bag for years, since junior high school actually, but it has begun to fall apart. Two years ago I bought myself a new set of golf clubs but I figured it was time I got a new bag as well.