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Cocktail Arcade Cabinet: Software

2009-12-13T03:21:00.000-08:00

I recently built a cocktail arcade cabinet from scratch. I talked about fabrication previously, and I'd like to outline the software I've got on it for those who are interested. It wasn't an dead-simple setup since emulators all have different interfaces, but I ended up with a setup that's relatively streamlined.

Goals

It's important to figure out what emulators you want. I had decided that I wanted the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, as well as MAME. I don't have any analog controls, so anything requiring that was out of the question. My primary goal was a cabinet that would play Donkey Kong, but I wanted the ability to play other things as well. My final list of emulators was as follows:

MAME - MameUI
SNES - ZSNES
NES - FCEUX
Genesis / Megadrive - Kega Fusion
Atari 2600 - Stella

Hurdles

I ran into a number of problems, but figured out hacks to solve them all. The big problems I faced were:

Running emulators on a vertical monitor. Mame is good about this, since a lot of classic games were designed for vertical monitors. However, almost all the other emulators encounter a DirectDraw error when you try to go into fullscreen mode on a vertical monitor. Whatever could the solution be?
Hiding menus. This is a result of not being able to run in full screen mode. I wanted to make sure it wasn't obvious I was using Windows. This meant no title bars, no Windows sounds, no Windows boot stuff, and no Windows menus.
Doing everything from the arcade controller. It was most helpful to have a shift key built into the controller I bought. If you're hacking a keyboard to make your controllers, keep in mind that a shift, control, or alt key could be very useful. Barring that, key combinations can be used, but you'll have to be sneaky since you'll be pressing all kinds of buttons while you're playing and you don't want to accidentally run a script or something. For my setup, all my hotkeys use the Shazam (shift) feature of the KeyWiz controller. I have a magic Shazam key that is only used when hotkeying (see a photo here).
Quick startup. I didn't want to wait for my cabinet to boot every time I decided to play. System standby is quick to shut down and quick to start up, but Windows doesn't have any good built-in "do this when coming out of standby" functionality. I found a solution for that, though.

Support Software

When all was said an done, I had installed the following software on my cabinet:

Atomic FE Ultimate - for my main menu. Atomic FE is really quite slick, but a little touchy. I tried to set it up from scratch, but ran into too many problems. Luckily, LaDite over at the Atomic FE site has put together Atomic FE Ultimate, a pre-configured version of Atomic FE with everything you need to build out an arcade menu.
AutoHotKey - Simply the most awesome piece of software you can get for making magic happen at the press of a key.
DropBox - If you don't know about it, get it immediately. It takes a folder on your computer and syncs it with all your other computers. I configured MAME to save screenshots in my DropBox folder. I've been having a Kong-Off with a friend, and we email screenshots of our latest high score to each other. DropBox is really useful for this since all I do is press the screenshot button and a screenshot is essentially sent to my other PC.
KeyWiz Uploader - for setting my arcade controller config. I use the "B" configuration.
ATI Catalyst Configurator. I use this to rotate my display in cases where I can't do it with other software. It gives you the ability to rotate using hotkeys, and this was very handy. I used CTRL+ALT+[0,1,2] to rotate between landscape mode, facing 1st-player vertical, and facing 2nd-player vertical. More on that below.

The Configuration

The first step is to get Atomic FE running. Working with Atomic FE can take a little getting used to, so I ended up configuring a single emulator completely to learn about Atomic FEs idiosyncrasies, and then I configured the rest of my emulators. I suggest starting with MAME since it doesn't require any tweaks to get working. It "just works". At least, compared to the rest of the emulators I used.

Configuring MAME

Run MameUI from windows. Play around in the menus until is is configured such that when you run a game you can just play (no menu navigation required). I had to set the following:

Monitor rotation by 90 degrees.
Automatically save state on exit (this also automatically loads it).
screenshots saved to my DropBox folder.
Cocktail mode dip-switches for two-player mode. I didn't know about this until I started this project, but most older arcade games have a cocktail mode that will automatically rotate the display for the second player when it's their turn. You can set this in the dip-switches section of each game, accessible while you're running the game.
Configure a proper exit button. I didn't use escape because it is too generic (more on that later). My MAME installation is configured to exit when I press F10, which happens to be the Shift-COIN button on my arcade controller.

Create a main menu in Atomic FE. This is where I list each emulator.
Create a MAME option in the main menu you just created. Selecting this option displays a list of MAME games on my system. You can devise any arbitrary menu tree through Atomic FE, but I chose to go with a simple list of games for each emulator. It's easy enough to change later if needed. I think a lot of people end up sorting by genre.
Make sure Atomic FE displays vertically, and your controller buttons are configured to step into and out of the Atomic FE menus.
Try it out. Play with it. Tweak til it's perfect.

Dealing with Windows

After I got my MAME set up, I dug into hiding windows and working out how to put the system to sleep and have it start up Atomic FE when it woke up. Hiding Windows is relatively easy, and there's a very nice "Hiding Windows" document over at BYOACWiki. Now that I'm thinking of it, this information might be useful over there. Another time, I suppose. Anyways, I went with the following tweaks to hide Windows, and it took me less than an hour to do it all:

Change the "Microsoft Windows" loading screen to a black image that says "Loading Arcade..." in retro text.
Hide the desktop so no icons are shown.
Turn off ALL sounds. The windows startup sound was my specific issue, but I figured I'd shut everything off while I was in there.
Make the taskbar auto hide.
Configure Windows to automatically log in to my main user account.

Now for the hard part. How do you get Atomic FE to automatically start up when the PC comes out of standby? AutoHotKey is the answer. You can script ANY user actions with AutoHotKey. The key, though, is that you can have it listen for a "coming out of standby" event. AutoHotKey runs a master script when my system starts, and that listens for standby events. When the PC comes out of standby, I do a few things:

WAIT a little bit. I have my script wait 5 seconds before doing anything. When the system comes out of stand by, it takes a bit for everything to settle down. this was particularly problematic with the next item...
Write the key configuration to the KeyWiz controller. If I didn't have the 5 second wait, sometimes KeyWiz Uploader would choke. Also, you might expect that the KeyWiz would be able to preserve its configuration through shutdown and standby, since the documentation indicates that this is possible. In my experience, though, I wasn't able to get it to save itself. Instead, I have AutoHotKey run KeyWiz Uploader in silent mode (no menu is displayed) and it's all the same to me.
Finally, start up Atomic FE, which DOES remember its configuration. All you have to do is run it.

The script that does this is here. You'll most definitely have to tweak it to get it to work with your system, but it's a good starting point at least. The actual script looks like this, though

OnMessage(0x218, "func_WM_POWERBROADCAST")
/*
   http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic21697.html
   Source: http://weblogs.asp.net/ralfw/archive/2003/09/09/26908.aspx
*/
func_WM_POWERBROADCAST(wParam, lParam)
{
      ; wake up event

      If (lParam = 0 && wParam = 18) 
      {

      Sleep, 5000
      ; run keyWiz to write default key setup to arcade controller
      Run "C:\Program Files\KeyWiz Uploader3\KeyWiz_Uploader3.exe" /A /S /P B, C:\Program Files\KeyWiz Uploader3

      Sleep, 2000
      Run "E:\AtomicFE_v020Ult\AtoMic.exe"
   }

   Return
}

I determined the lParam = 0 && wParam = 18 part empirically on my system. You'll note if you go to the link the my script that the original script watches for wParam = 8. This didn't work on my system for some reason (I'm running Windows XP 32-bit... I dunno).
The script I linked to above includes the rest of my tricks, except for how I get all my emulators to run on a vertical monitor in full screen mode. Each one is different and I had to configure them all manually. All the emulators I've worked with restore their state when they load though, so once you've got it configured, it should stay that way.

The only problem is that Atomic FE bugs out when the monitor is in vertical mode. If you run it when the monitor is in vertical mode, Atomic FE enters an infinite loop and all you get is a black screen. So you have to run Atomic FE in landscape mode, and then switch to vertical mode when you run your emulators (none of the ones I used had an video rotation feature. That would have been a better and easier solution).

I rotate my display by having Atomic FE run a batch script for each emulator instead of the actual emulator. In the main folder for each emulator I used, I create a file called "run.bat" that contained the command to rotate the monitor, the command to run that emulator (with command line arguments, as Atomic FE does), and after the emulator exits, a command to rotate the monitor back to landscape mode. For example, this is what my SNES script looks like:

@ECHO off E:\scripts\rotate1p.ahk call zsnesw.exe %* E:\scripts\rotatenormal.ahk exit

The "@ECHO off" line makes the commands execute silently in the command line (where the .bat file gets run). "rotate1p.ahk" and rotatenormal.ahk" are scripts I wrote for AutoHotKey that handle rotating the display. On my system, all those scripts do is send Ctrl+Alt+[0,1, or 2]. You can get them at the bottom in the master zip file. The part that runs the emulator is the "call zsnesw.exe %*" line. "call" is used so the batch file waits for zsnesw.exe to finish executing before continuing, and the "%*" business is used to pass whatever parameters Atomic FE gives to zsnes. Finally, after everything is done, "exit" makes sure the command prompt window gets closed.

It's pretty complicated and a bit goofy, but it gets the job done.

How to Exit Anything

Ok, so I've explained how to get Atomic FE to run things, but having the emulators exit is a bit of a different matter. Some of them can be closed with Alt+F4, some require you to use Escape, others require something completely different (like Stella... Ctrl+Q? Seriously?). My solution for dealing with that is one master hotkey defined in my main AutoHotKey script. In my script, F10 is the master hotkey (look for the "~F10::" line). I do a quick check of which processes are running, and that determines with keypress to send. Atari running? Send CTRL+Q. Other things besides MAME running? Send Alt+F4. MAME running? Don nothing and let the key pass through the script (I configured MAME and zsnes to close on F10).

The really cool part of the script is that I can also check if Atomic FE is running. If it isn't running, the script will run it. If it IS running, and no other emulator is running, then the script will put the system to sleep. Pretty amazing stuff, and one of the many reasons AutoHotKey is so awesome.

In the end, the software all flows like the following state diagram:

Finishing Touches

So things can be run, things can be exited, and things can be played. But I ran into a couple errors here and there and added some hotkeys to my main script to handle them.

I added to my main AutoHotKey script the ability to trigger the KeyWiz command to write the arcade controller configuration. Once in a while KeyWiz fails to write the "B" configuration, and I'm left with an unconfigured arcade controller. It just so happens that the first three buttons of my controller are Alt+Ctrl+Space in this default mode. So I added a hotkey to my script that manually runs KeyWiz and uploads the "B" configuration when Ctrl+Alt+Space is pressed. The "B" configuration doesn't use these keys, so it can only be run when the controller is in its default mode.

Additionally, I added two hotkeys that send Alt+Tab and Alt+Tab+Tab for any cases where Atomic FE starts up, but doesn't have focus. This happened a lot while I was configuring it, but doesn't seem to any more. I think it was because I had other things running while I was testing. If only Atomic FE is running, it always seems to get focus.

And that's it! I'm sure I missed something, so feel free to comment here if you have questions (best for everyone), or email me at lukerymarz-at-gmail.com.

If you're interested, you can grab all the AutoHotKey scripts and batch files I used here (50 KB).

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

2009-12-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

I had a really good time with Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. Puzzle Quest: Galactrix is very similar, except for one game-breaking issue.

In Warlords, the gameplay is largely strategic, except for the fact that you don't know which pieces are going to slide in when you make a match. This was the only real flaw in the game for me. I'd make a match, then a bunch of attack pieces would slide in and the computer would get a free strike on me. The good news was that you could mitigate this frustration a bit by matching pieces in areas where there weren't attack pieces. As long as a full match wasn't randomly inserted, you'd be ok. A bit awkward, but the rest of the game was so good I could overlook this little flaw.

Galactrix goes with hexagonal pieces instead of square. This make for more possible moves. The problem is that the pieces can now come into the board from all sides. With the board being so small, it amplifies the issue from Warlords. If there are attack pieces on the board, chances are any move you make will result in a random attack piece coming in and the computer getting a free strike. What interesting is the better you play (the longer your combos), the more random pieces slide in, and the more chance you have of giving the computer a free attack.

I played Galactrix for a few hours over the course of two days. My final 10 games were against the same ship that kept winning because of random pieces. After that, I quit and uninstalled it. I really really really wanted to like it but based on the number of swear words that came out of my mouth, I wasn't enjoying myself.

I'm still in on the next Puzzle Quest, though. Hopefully they'll come up with a way to remove the randomness so I can strategize a bit more.

Halo: ODST

2009-11-28T12:50:00.000-08:00

I just finished Halo: ODST. It's a short experience (about 6 hours or so), but the atmosphere of it was really interesting. Nice music, too. I'd definitely recommend it at the Black Friday prices I've seen (30 bucks).

I like that it came with an "All the Halo multiplayer stuff" disc, too. I think that'll probably just be the disc that sits in my Xbox if I'm not playing something else. You never know when you'll want a little Halo Multiplayer :D

Cocktail Arcade Cabinet: Fabrication

2009-11-23T13:02:00.000-08:00

I recently posted some photos of a cocktail arcade cabinet I built, and I thought I'd go over the fabrication for those interested. A series of photos taken during the process is available here. I also took some photos of a Revenge of Doh cabinet for research purposes, and those are available here. I've detailed software in a different post since that was a significant undertaking in its own right.

I was inspired to make this cabinet after watching a documentary called The King of Kong. It's about a guy's attempt at beating the high score record in Donkey Kong. It made me try Donkey Kong on MAME, and snowballed into wanting a proper arcade cabinet to enjoy classic games. I was also in need of small table for a corner in my apartment, and an arcade cabinet was the perfect fit.

The Plans

My cabinet is a modification of the plans from Kyle Lindstrom at Mike's Arcade. If you're planning a project like this, you may have come across it. He's got the most detailed plans for a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet you could ask for. Note that there are two sets of plans at Mike's Arcade. I followed the Ms. Pac-Man plans since they are much more thorough than the Pac-Man plans. That being said, I also read over the Pac-Man plans for more general info.My changes to the Ms. Pac-Man plans are as follows:

I used 3/4" thick birch plywood for everything.
My tabletop is 25"x37" and 3/4" thick, while the Ms. Pac-Man plans call for a tabletop that is 22"x32" and 1" thick. I wanted something slightly larger, and I made some subtractions in other places that allowed for this increased size on the same 4'x8' piece of plywood. I used the same corner radii as the original. This is item #10 in the plans. Also, making the tabletop 3/4" thick means I didn't have to buy 1" T-molding.
I wanted room for my legs under the table, and I have no need for a coin box, so I completely changed items 1 and 3 to 9"x20x1/4" U-shaped pieces. You can see the U-shaped piece in this photo:

The U-shape is to allow you to run all the necessary wiring to the control panel. It measures 3"x14".
I wanted my table to be slightly taller, so I made item 2 30" tall.
Since I removed a large part of the volume in shortening items 1 and 3, this forced me to use an LCD (what I had planned on). Because of this, items 4 and 5 were not needed, as comprise the hinge for lifting the top of the cabinet, monitor included. As such, I replaced items 4 and 5 with a duplicate of item 2. This was a really useful simplification, and made construction of the box a lot simpler.
Item 6, the bottom is much different because of the change to allow leg room. It is now 9" from the top of the cabinet, meaning you have to route the groove for it in a different place on items 1 and 3. I also adjusted item 6 to include the base of each control panel, resulting in a big plus sign:

This piece is cut out of a rectangle measuring 30 1/2" x 20 1/2". The 20 1/2" width leaves room for a 1/4" tongue joint. I then cut a 3 1/8"x7" rectangle out of each corner to create the two control panel bottoms. The area for the control panel bottoms measures 7"x14".
I contructed my control panels out of wood instead of buying pre-cut metal ones. This allowed me to customize the layout to my own design, and I think it looks better. More on that later.
The hinge for my tabletop is attached to to top itself, making for a bit easier fabrication. This makes for a flip-top lid that is much easier to open up if you need to make an adjustment to the guts of the thing:

Tools

I didn't have woodworking tools to start. I bought a used Ryobi One cordless kit including a drill and a circular saw, and bought a Ryobi One Router from Home Depot (note that Lowe's doesn't stock Ryobi). I also bought a Milwaukee Router off Amazon when it was $108 as well as an edge guide for it for $30. I bought a 1 1/8" hole-drilling bit from Amazon since I had trouble finding one at Lowe's and Home Depot. I already had other things like screwdrivers, wire-strippers, pliers, a hammer, X-Acto knife for cutting the T-molding, etc.

Materials

With my adjustments to the plans the whole cabinet, including the top, was constructed from a single 4'x8' piece of plywood. I had the Home Depot guys cut it into three manageable pieces before taking it home since my hatchback can't fit a 4' wide piece of wood. So I didn't need the 1" MDF/T-Molding from the list in the Ms. Pac-Man plans, but everything else still applied. I skimped on the following, though:

I didn't buy anything to lock my tabletop down.
I didn't need a coin door.
I didn't buy control panels. I made my own.

Speakers -- I used some trashy dell speakers for my cabinet. They sound better than I expected since they have a lot of volume to resonate in. I attached them just above the control panels on each side of the cabinet, as you can see here:

The metal screen came straight off the speaker. I cut it to fit with a pair of scissors, which are now a lot less sharp :). Note that this is the player 1 side, and it has a volume control. The player 2 side does not have a volume control. From the inside, the player 1 side looks like this:

Buttons/Controls -- Arcade buttons and joysticks all came from Groovy Game Gear. They have Suzo-Happ buttons (which seem to be everyone's favorite) for a lot less than the Suzo-Happ site. They also have T-Molding and wiring supplies. For my controller, rather than soldering a keyboard, I bought a KeyWiz40-ST from here as well. It made the whole controller-wiring process really easy, and I recommend some sort of controller over soldering (unless you love soldering). I'd like to note that I didn't have to do any troubleshooting with my controls with this thing. I wired it up and it worked. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

Plexiglass -- I went to a place called Tap Plastics for the plexiglass top. I had planned on ordering something online, but they have a store near my house so I stopped in to ask a few questions. It turned out they could cut my 1/4" plexiglass with the rounded corners (3.5" radius) for about $60. This was incredible considering some of the quotes I had gotten online. They had it ready for me in about 5 minutes, too. If you have a Tap Plastics near you, I highlyrecommend them. They have a website, too, so you may be able to order from them online.

Leg Levelers -- Leg levelers were a pain to find. Home Depot and Lowe's have a terrible selection, but I have a wood specialty store called Southern Lumber near me, and they had leg levelers. Your mileage will vary in this case. If there's a Southern Lumber near you, I recommend it as well. They have some really amazing wood to look at if you like that kind of stuff.

Monitor/Computer -- I had an old computer from college, so that was a given. The monitor took some time to pick since I needed really good viewing angles. I settled on a Dell 2001fp, which can be bought on ebay for a little over $100. It's an S-IPS panel, which essentially means kick-ass viewing angles from ALL angles, not just the sides. It's 20" and 4:3 (rather than 16:9 or 16:10), and it fits just about perfectly in the tabletop. For games like Donkey Kong, a 4:3 display in vertical mode fits the game almost perfectly. There's more wasted space with a widescreen monitor for all games, so 4:3 was the way to go for me. Home Depot and Lowe's are your friend for the rest of the supplies. I bought plexiglass for my control panels there, as well as screws, wood glue, and other various necessities.

Contruction

Contruction was a bit ad hoc for me, but I suggest following the Ms. Pac-Man plans as closely as you can. You're basically making a box, and then adding some things to the sides. My control panels were custom, and all wood. I made a prototype control panel to test my hole-drilling bit, and to get an idea for what kind of layout I wanted:

Once I had done that, I did 5 control panel prototypes in Visio. A single player control panel layout can be printed to-scale on an 11x17 piece of paper, so I created some life size layouts to put my hands on. My final design can be had here ( PDF| VSD). I printed it on an 11x17 sheet of paper and drilled guide holes through each of the button centers. After doing that, you can go at it with the hole-drilling bit. I did this for both the wood and the 1/8" plexiglass. Even unfinished the panel looks nice. Take note of the edge routing for the T-Molding.

The front face of the panel is connected with a tongue and groove joint, which would come apart if I routed all the way around the side pieces. So I had to route like this:

My T-molding doesn't have a groove to fit into on the front face, but it is still held in place by the rest of the grooved edge. I used an X-Acto knife to trim my T-molding.

The actual control panel is held up by the pieces of 1" square dowel I've screwed into the side faces as well as a very deep route in the front face. I also used 1" square dowel to make the whole control box sit properly on the base. In a perfect world, a nice joint would have been better, but this makes for a detachable control panel if I need to do some adjusting.

I then applied some finish.

The final product with plexiglass on top looks quite snazzy.

I then pounded the T-molding in. I recommend a rubber mallet for this rather than a hammer, as a hammer can dent the T-molding a bit. It's not terrible if you're careful, though. Once the T-molding was in, it started to look really good.

Then I mounted my leg levelers, which are useful for protecting your floor and making any minor height adjustments you need.

I saved the tabletop/monitor details for last, since having a big piece of wood hinged to the top made the whole thing a lot less easy to move around. I cut a hole for my monitor after I finished the wood, but I recommend cutting the hole first. I got excited and wanted to see some finished wood. If you cut the hole first you will have completely finished wood to work with. As a result of my excitement, I had a few small chips in my tabletop that I had to cover up. The hinge for my tabletop came from Home Depot, and was a 30" long hinge that I cut-to-fit with a hacksaw.

I "mounted" the monitor by cutting a centering it on my tabletop, tracing it, and the cutting a hole for it with a jigsaw. It is held in place by some L-shaped metal pieces and wood that came from the electrical section at Home Depot. I used the same principal here as I did for the control panels; the monitor is resting on a makeshift shelf made from pieces screwed into the larger structure of the box.

Electrical

The final bit was getting all the electrical stuff sorted. I massacred the aluminum case my old computer was in. I saved only the metal underneath the motherboard since it makes a nice platform for the mobo. I didn't have shears, so I just bent the aluminum until it broke off. I'm pretty sure you can pretty easily crack your motherboard doing this (if it's still attached), so I don't recommend it. The end result was this:

I rigged the power supply on the side of the box with some string. It's pretty wacky, but it works :D. I had some styrofoam handy, so I used that where I could to protect against vibration noise a bit.

I had a 2.5" drive handy, so I used that, and screwed it into the side of the box. I also hand cut some fan vents, one for in, one for out. I routed the plywood out so I had the wood was thin and used an X-Acto knife and a hammer to cut out a nice pattern.

I had planned on doing this for the speaker holes as well, but plywood of this quality can only take so much hammering before it just shatters. The fan holes look like this from the inside:

The final piece was the control panels. This is a lot simpler that one might expect. I bought a KeyWiz40-STfrom GrooveGameGear to make it easy on myself. Ground connections are daisy chained each button only has one wire going to the KeyWiz. What I ended up with was a bundle of wires coming out of each control panel and going to the center of the box where they are all connected to the KeyWiz.

After I had done that, I realized the need to make use of the Shazam! button (essentially a shift button) on the KeyWiz for system functionality. So I drilled a hold in the side of each control panel for a shift button, and ran a standalone pair of wire from each of those.

I use this button extensively on the software side of things.

After that I ran some power (which could be sorted out a bit better on the inside of the box) and I was done building! I could probably sort out the power button for the computer in a better way, but my software solution circumvents it using system standby. Plenty more photos of the whole process are available here. I also took some photos of a Revenge of Doh cabinet for research purposes, and those are available here.

A write up on my software is coming soon.

Cocktail Arcade Cabinet: The Unveiling

2009-11-01T20:10:00.000-08:00

UPDATE 2009.12.12 - I've detailed the fabrication here, and the software here.

It's time I let everyone know what I've been working on over the last month. I bought a bunch of woodworking tools and have been very secretive about it, but the physical part of it is done now. So here it is:

That there is a cocktail arcade cabinet, which I built for 1. Retro-Gaming and 2. Breakfast-Eating. There's been an empty corner in the apartment for about a year now, and I figured it was time to fill it. So there ya have it.

This is just The Unveiling, though. I've posted a short gallery here so y'all can take a look, but I've also taken a bunch of photos of the whole process, and I'll go in depth on it all next week (hopefully).

SF Bay Area Chinese Food (and hand pulled noodle) Class

2009-08-09T23:03:00.000-07:00

I've just gotten word from my friend Chef Tomm that he'll be teaching a Chinese Cuisine class November 21st at the Professional Culinary Institute in Campbell, CA. This will include how to make hand-pulled noodles. Check out the November class schedule at the PCI hobby classes page for more info. I would highly recommend this class regardless of your hand pulled noodle skill level. At the very least you'll get a hands on session with some primo noodle dough (he makes some awesomely stretchy noodle dough).

You can get yourself a 10% off coupon code if you drop Chef Tomm an email (cheftomm-at-hotmail.com) and mention my name.

Also check out Chef Tomm's website. He's got hand pulled noodle recipes and videos there, too.

Bonsai update

2009-06-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

I went through a couple weeks ago and took photos off my current "Bonsai" collection. They're still quite young, but growing very nicely. The gallery is here. I think a couple of my other plants snuck in there, too. I've got a spicy pepper plant that's doing really well this year.

Notable plants include this Jacaranda, which is one of a family of around eight that I have:

It has some really nice growth along the trunk that's hard to get going on a Jacaranda (in my experience).

Then there's the Oak I bought at a bonsai show last year. It was on the bargain/junk rack, and I liked it. It's coming along nicely:

I'm fond of my Dwarf Pomegranates, as well. I've grown them from seeds, which I got from the fruit of a co-worker's tree. I have five of them, but this one has been outside most of the time, and is looking quite strong:

I've got some nice Lilikoi growing (that's Passion Fruit), too. I got the seeds in Hawaii over Christmas, and I was unaware that they are actually a vine. So I put in some effort and planted them in a nice planter with a small trellis to climb up. I'm working on a Japanese Boxwood that I bought at Lowe's, too, but I haven't quite figured out what I want to do with it yet.

At any rate, it's starting to be a pretty big collection. I'm gonna need a more space pretty soon!

Making Soft Pretzels With Lye

2009-04-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

That's right. Lye. It's the traditional way to make soft pretzels, but for liability reasons, cooking shows can't tell you to use lye (I guess). It's also kind of a bit of work to get ahold of. But without it, your pretzels will taste like they're missing something. It also gives them that gorgeous golden color:

The recipe to use is the one from Alton Brown (of Good Eats fame). Instead of using baking soda as he suggests, use 1 oz. of lye crystals to 1 quart of water. I used double that because I had a big pot. Get the mixture to a boil and drop each pretzel in the solution for 30 seconds before you glaze em and bake em.

A couple other things of note I came across while making these:

Don't forget the melted butter in the dough recipe! I forgot it in my second batch and the pretzels just weren't the same.
If you love butter (like I do), use it to glaze the pretzels instead of the egg mixture. It's oh so yummy!
Once you're done with your lye solution, don't leave it in the pot! I made the mistake of leaving it in a non-stick pot overnight, and it made the non-stick coating... unstick itself!

Anyways, I gotta give it to Alton Brown. His recipes are always a delight.

Dragon Beard Candy Recipe

2009-04-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

I recently made dragon beard candy (view my photos). It turns out it's a lot easier to make than hand pulled noodles, but the general process for both is the same. The reason dragon beard is easier is because you can really take your time while making it, and it is very forgiving about mistakes.

So I started by watching this video. Then I did a bunch of research on candy making. There are a few things to watch out for:

When heating to a specific temperature, accuracy is very important. A 5 degree (Fahrenheit) difference can change your candy completely.
When cooling your candy, it is in danger of crystallizing. Stirring it or bumping it can cause it to crystallize, so be careful.
You can protect against crystallization by adding vinegar or corn syrup (or both) to your recipe.

Then I experimented a bit with the recipe in the video. I found that:

You don't need that much water. The goal is to boil it off anyways.
Cooling the sugar to 100 C (212 F) before pouring it is a good way to crystallize your sugar and ruin the batch.
It's easy to crystallize the recipe anyways. Because of this, I modified it a bit by adding some extra corn syrup.
Finally, the recipe is WAY TOO BIG.

So following all that, the recipe I had the most success with is this:

Dragon Beard Candy

50g Maltose
500g Sugar
250g Water
1/2 tsp White Vinegar
100g Corn Syrup

Combine all the ingredients in a large pot, and boil. Once the temperature reaches 266 F, remove the mixture from the heat. Allow it to cool enough that the bubbles disappear and it becomes transparent. Rather than letting it cool to 212 F and risking crystallization at a low temperature, pour it into small cups immediately. I used little paper Dixie cups, and they didn't burn or melt. Be careful in your cup choice though, as I used some with a plastic coating that made things a little more difficult.

Pulling the candy is pretty straighforward. Youtube videos are a great help for learning how to do it. Remember to take your time, because the candy CAN break. If it breaks when its still a large diameter, most of the time you can just stick the broken pieces back together by pressing the ends together (sugar is good at sticking to itself). If it's really thin and you get a few broken strands, don't worry about it. If you just keep pulling it will work itself back in.

For the peanut mixture, I used peanuts (toasted and ground in a blender or food processor), sesame seeds (to taste), and a little bit of corn syrup to help it stick together nicely. The corn syrup allowed me to get a big pile of peanuts in each dragon beard candy. I like lots of peanuts :D

Again, here's a photo gallery of the pulling process. It was really a lot of fun to make, and it was A LOT easier than making hand pulled noodles. So if you're getting stuck trying to make noodles, take a break and make some candy for a while.

The Hand Pulled Noodle Webpage

2009-02-08T23:06:00.000-08:00

Since there's been a lot of traffic on my Hand Pulled Noodle Posts, I've put together a web page with all the info in one place. I'm probably going to move on to another project in about a month, so if anyone has an feedback or requests for what should be there, let me know. After that I'll be available to answer questions (which I'll probably put on the AQ page) through email or on my blog posts.

Check out the webpage here.

Stand Mixers

2009-01-30T09:36:00.000-08:00

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

I finally did it. I bought a Kitchen Aid Pro 600 stand mixer. I got it for a sweet $320 from Bed Bath and Beyond (I finally found a use for the 20% off coupon they keep sending me).

I recently gave a noodle pulling demo at a nearby culinary school, The Professional Culinary Institute in Campbell, CA. The folks there had used my dough recipe to get something pullable, but they wanted to see the pulling live. So I headed over on wednesday.

Now up to this point, I had been mixing my noodle dough by hand. I'm an old-fashioned guy, and doing it by hand has always suited me. But as anyone who has actually made the dough knows, it takes a lot of work to get it pullable.

So I showed up at the school, and they had already mixed the dough up using their mixer. I expected dough on the order of what I have at home. Instead I was surprised with the most stretchy noodle dough I've ever played with. Totally amazing. With this kind of thing, I can actually see myself pulling a giant wad of noodles instead of the current single/double serving of noodles you can make with my 300g recipe.

So I bought a mixer yesterday, made some dough, and here's what you need to know:

1. I quadrupled my noodle dough recipe. This made a lot of dough, but I'm not sure what you'd end up with running the 300g recipe in a 6 quart bowl. It just seem like too little.

2. I put all the dry ingredients in the bowl, turned the mixer on low, and slowly added the liquid ingredients.

3. While it was running, I added a little extra water.

4. I ran the mixer on about speed 4 for 10 minutes. Felt the dough, and then ran it for another 3 or 4 minutes. After that it was pullable.

5. I had to use some extra flour at the end to get the dough to a consistency that didn't stick to my fingers.

The resultant dough was so nice that I was able to show my girlfriend how to make noodles, and she actually made some even ones. To be fair, she sees me pulling a lot, but it only took her and hour and a half of getting her hands in the dough to end up with something edible. Pretty good if you ask me.

Anyways, what I'm saying here is if you have a stand mixer, making hand pulled noodles will be a lot easier for you. If you don't have a stand mixer, think about it, but try to do it by hand first if you're going to buy one. That way you'll really appreciate the time and work the darned thing saves you.

A New Noodle Recipe

2008-12-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

So I went over the translations I got for a post I made about a chinese video I found (special thanks to Rusty), and I came up with another noodle recipe that's a lot easier than the two previous ones. I did two test batches (the first was too dry, and I botched it with too much baking soda). Here's what I came up with:

-158g cake flour
-26g regular flour

-110g water

-6g vegetable oil or sesame oil

-2g salt

-1g baking soda

UPDATE 2009-01-29 -- I've changed this recipe because it was a little dry. The previous recipe had no oil.

Just combine all the ingredients together in a bowl until it's pretty well mixed. Then dump it out and knead it til it's smooth. Give it a short rest (10 minutes), and then the real work starts.

Put a little oil on your hands and knead start working the dough (follow the tips I give in my kneading video). If you knead it without oil, it will seem a little dry, but if you add oil it makes it feel like it could really end up stretching into some nice noodles. You'll notice a big difference. Try it if you like. You won't hurt the dough.

Anyways, if you spend some time watching the Chinese video I posted, you'll notice that the way they knead the dough involves twisting it. I found this to be really useful in giving the dough a little exercise. Basically, roll the dough into about a 10 inch hotdog, hold a section of it in place with one hand, and then press the heel of your other hand into the free part of the dough closest to the part that's being held. I made an illustration to help out:

I Hope that makes sense. The goal is to cause a tear in the dough between your hands. At any rate, I think this recipe is probably the best and easiest to understand. Flour for dough. Salt for flavor. Baking soda for texture. Oil for workability. Good Luck, everyone :)

Fable 2: Unplayable

2008-11-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

Literally. I got to the end of Fable 2, and was working on getting the rest of the gargoyle heads, when I dropped into Archon's Knot, where my LAST gargoyle head was. As I swam out of the water, my character bugged. I could shoot a single bullet, so I got the gargoyle, but I can't swing a weapon, and casting a spell acts like I never release the spell button. The big hurt, though in this bugged mode, I can't get into the menu to save (you know, because I got all the Gargoyles!). So I wandered my way (no fast travel if you don't have the menu) to a game master, loaded up spinnerbox, and exited so it would autosave. Then I reset my Xbox.

Well, in saving my progress, I also saved my bugged character. I'm locked in a mode where I can't attack, can't equip items, can't save, can't fast travel.

So I guess I'm done playing Fable 2. Shame it had to end this way.

Seeking Translation

2008-10-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

I had the idea to check out google.cn today to see if I could find a lamian recipe. Well, I found video of a cooking show in which it looks like they explain... everything? I'm not sure, but there's information about alkali in there. I can't read it, however. I'll have to get some translation done.

The website is http://www.zuiya.com/play-2047.html.

Here's some screenshots of particular importance. I need to call my chinese friends to see who can read it :D

Braid

2008-10-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

I had 6 hours of free time yesterday, so I decided to take some time to catch up on Xbox Live games. I was figuring I'd land on Bionic Commando, but I tried the Braid demo first. If you haven't played it yet, and you're like me, you probably look at the screenshots and go "meh". It looks a little... bubbly, I guess. The name and the graphics don't let on to how cool it is. I immediately bought it after getting to the end of the demo. Bionic Command will have to wait.

Maybe the reason I didn't know what Braid was about was because it's kind of hard to explain. It's sort of like Mario Bros. in that they have a princess and she's "in another castle", but the game is really about puzzles. At any point in the game you can reverse time. If you die, rewind. The puzzles come into play largely by having objects that aren't affected by time in the same way as your character. There's also an interesting story to tie it all together. You get a little story at the beginning of each or 6 worlds, and then jump into puzzles.

From a technical standpoint, Braid is amazing. When you rewind, everything goes backwards, exactly as you played it out, even the sound, which I'm really impressed by. Playing things backwards is not something most software is designed to do, and the software geeks behind Braid have done a really good job. And the thing about being able to play back your gameplay is that you automatically have a nearly perfect bug reporting and reproducing system, which makes debugging easier. The game is smooth.

I don't know. After writing this I realize it's really hard to explain Braid. I bet they're losing a lot of sales because of that. If you're a details type person, you can notice that they took a lot of time balancing the puzzles, working out the gameplay, and making sure it was technically perfect. As far as Xbox Live games go, I think it's one of the best (but I haven't played Bionic Commando yet). If I had a rating system, it would receieve 13 out of 14 bacon strips.

The Kingdom of Loathing

2008-08-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. I don't know how I missed out on this one all these years. I was reading last week's escapist issue, and came across this article. "What kind of a name is 'The Kingdom of Loathing'", I thought.

I checked it out. It's awesome.

The Kingdom of Loathing is a browser based pseudo mmo. Let me clarify. By browser based, I mean it runs in your browser, but it doesn't use flash or fancy graphics. It's all framed html, img tags, and a bit of javascript. A very plain UI. By pseudo mmo, I mean that you are playing alongside many other people, but they may as well be in parallel universes. You can communicate with them, give each other items, and apparently PvP (i haven't checked it out yet), but on the whole you just play it alone.

All the graphics are hand drawn stick figures, and the humour in the writing is a lot like Douglas Adams; the humor is all in how it's written on the page. For example, in the game, one of the quests takes you to The Misspelled Cemetary, where you fight Ghuols, Skleltons, and lihces.

And since it's free, you should check it out. No, read the article, and then check it out. The guys behind this make their living purely on the donations, and they have an interesting story.

Proud Father of Four

2008-06-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

I've been learning about Bonsai lately, and I planted some seeds about two weeks ago. On Friday after work, I was delighted to find that some of my seeds had started growing. A chinese wisteria came up:

As well as two Jacarandas:

Now that was enough, but today (sunday), I also found that one of my giant california redwoods has also sprouted:

Now here's the interesting thing. The Jacarandas have been growing like I'd expect them to, but the Chinese Wisteria is going wild. 72 hours after the first picture, it now looks like this:

Simply amazing.

How To Make Hand-Pulled Noodles: Overview

2008-06-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

UPDATE July 19, 2009 - If you live in the San Francisco Bay area, Chef Tomm will be teaching a Chinese food class at the Professional Culinary Institute on November 21st. This will include hand pulled noodles! Check out the November schedule on the PCI hobby classes page. There's more info (and info on a 10% off coupon) on my blog post here.

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

I've made three posts now going through the process of making hand-pulled noodles. Here's a quick recap:

An image of the final product

Information on ingredients

Recipes and mixing instructions
UPDATE December 6, 2008 -A better and easier recipe

UPDATE January 30, 2009 - Notes about stand mixers

Kneading and pulling technique

I'll update this posting with any links to posts I make that have more information.

If anyone discovers this and is successful in making noodles, link some photos or make a comment about your success. I'd love to hear about it!

UPDATE June 25, 2008 -- I modifed the description of note 1 on the kneading and pulling post. It sounded like you had to throw your dough away after your tried to pull it ONCE. In actuality, you should be able to practice on the same ball of dough repeatedly for upwards of an hour. My point with that note is that the dough acts a little different if you put it in the fridge and try to knead it the next day.

UPDATE July 20, 2008 -- I've gotten some questions recently about using only all-purpose flour in the dough recipe. Unfortunately, this doesn't work. I put together a recipe like this in my trials and the result is something the seemingly never loosens up. I spend 45 minutes or so on it and threw it away. Moral of the story, if you want a recipe that uses one type of flour, you're better of trying to use all cake flour (which loosens up, but a little too much) or picking out a flour from your local asian market. I've had great success just randomly picking chinese and korean flours from the shelf at my local market. They all have pretty low gluten levels.

UPDATE October 20, 2008 -- I've found an interesting video on a chinese website. I need to get it translated, but it's a cooking show where they make hand pulled noodles. Also, in an effort to figure out a dough recipe that takes a little bit less kneading, I've order some gluten relaxers to do some experimenting. If I learn anything, I'll be sure to post it.

UPDATE December 6, 2008 - I've posted a new recipe here. Try it out! It's a lot easier than the previous two recipes.

UPDATE January 30, 2009 - I've posted some notes about stand mixers here, since I've finally bought one to experiment with.

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

How To Make Hand-Pulled Noodles: Kneading and Pulling

2008-06-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

I thought about taking a bunch of pictures to show show to actually pull the noodles, but it's better explained in a video. So I've broken the whole ordeal up into two parts. The first deals with how to knead the dough and what to look for to know that it's time to pull some noodles. The second shows you how to pull the noodles, and how to get the most practice time out of your dough.

Part 1 is here:

You really have to work the dough to get it pullable withing 20 minutes. Don't be discouraged if it takes you 30 or 40 minutes to get the dough there.

And Part 2 is here:

The pulling technique I show here works really well for small balls of dough. I have yet to pull noodles out of a big piece of dough, but I think it requires the whipping technique you see in so many of the other videos on the web.

Some further notes that I'd like to mention:

1. Once you've kneaded the dough to a pullable consistency, it's do or die. If you decide you're done practicing, just throw the dough away. I haven't had good luck with dough I've put back into the fridge for next day. To clarify, I'm not saying you get one chance to pull noodles for each batch of dough you make. Just don't try to pull noodles out of the same batch on two different days, and you'll be alright. The dough seems to lose just a little bit of stretchiness after it's been kneaded and then gets put back into the fridge.
2. I once took my dough to a high elevation on and tried to pull it there. I had trouble with it, and even when I brought it back I had trouble. I don't know anything about dough and elevation, but it seems to have caused issues.
3. Keep at it! It's not easy to get this right, and it takes a lot of practice. Don't try to pull noodles from recipe that are greater than 300g until you're confident in your abilities. Larger dough is quite a bit hard to pull evenly.

Some Cooking notes:

1. The noodles don't need a lot of boiling time. Maybe 3 to 5 minutes max. The first time I was successful, I had them with a little sesame oil and some Magi sauce (close to soy sauce in flavor). The two recipes I've posted have good flavor, but the selling point on hand pulled noodles in the texture. YUM!
2. For summertime, serving the noodles cold is good too. Go to an asian market and get some Somen sauce ( a light soy flavored sauce). Cook your noodles like normal, and rinse them in cold water. Put them in a bowl with a few ice cubes, 70% somen sauce and 30% water. Very refreshing on a hot summer day :)

Best of luck to everyone!

How To Make Hand Pulled Noodles: The Recipe

2008-06-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

I have successfully made hand pulled noodles (la mian, la mien). It's taken me about 35 batches of dough and a lot of experimenting. I talked about the ingredients in my last post, and now it's time to talk about a recipe.

I'll give a couple recipes (one with lye water and one without), and then provide some instructions on how to mix the ingredients together. Should you need more information about the ingredients, I've made a post talking about that.

Note that these recipes are by weight. You'll need a kitchen scale to make these (or you could try converting them to volume measurements). I recommend a digital scale since it's more precise. I've created these recipes by weight because it's the only way to get a perfect mix every time. If you follow these recipes, you shouldn't need much (if any) flour during the kneading process.

Each recipe is 300g total. This is enough to make noodles for two people who like noodles, or three to four people who just want to see you make hand pulled noodles.

Hand Pulled Noodle Recipe #19 - with Lye Water

152g cake flour
24g all-purpose flour
1g salt
25g sesame oil
95g water
3g lye water

Hand Pulled Noodle Recipe #21 - without Lye Water

152g cake flour
24g all-purpose flour
1g salt
28g sesame oil
95g water

Now for the mixing process. I've been successful with the following, but feel free to try your own way. I don't think it makes a huge difference, as long as the lye water (if you're using it) goes in last.

Step 1, measure your flour into the bowl:

Step 2, add salt:
Step 3, add oil:
Step 4, add water:
Finally, if necessary, add your lye water. Be careful here as you only need a little, and I found that my bottle sometimes got excited about pouring itself into my mixture :D.

For the mixing, you can just take a heavy spoon and start stirring. It should look like this as you work:
And finally, when when you've got it into a nice ball, you should be able to see that it is very uneven. You should knead it for a few minutes. There will be oily spots and dry spots. This smooths out very quickly. Be careful when kneading, though, since this dough is right at the edge of being too sticky. If you're quick enough, it won't stick to your hands. If you have to, though, adding a little bit of flour to keep it from sticking to you is just fine. Here's the progression from chunky to smooth, to give you and idea of how to knead it:

and now you've go hand pulled noodle dough. You can stick this in a ziploc baggie for later, or dive in and try to make noodles. I've found that keeping the dough in the fridge overnight makes it a little easier to get the dough to a point where you can pull noodles, but you can still pull noodles from fresh dough. The difference in knead times is about 15 minutes for overnight dough versus about 25 minutes for fresh dough.

My next post will talk about some pulling techniques. I've yet to perfect my ability to pull noodles, but I can pretty much get noodles every time I try now. The good news with this dough is that you can try repeatedly, and you can actually re-wet the dough if you feel like it's drying out a bit. Once you get it to a point where it can be pulled, it's very forgiving. I'll save the details for my next post.

How To Make Hand Pulled Noodles: Ingredients

2008-06-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

UPDATE February 8, 2009 - I've put together a Hand Pulled Noodle webpage with all this info in one place.

I have successfully made hand pulled noodles (la mian, la mien). It's taken me about 35 batches of dough and a lot of experimenting. The pulling part requires a bit of technique, but without a proper recipe, it's possible to have dough that will never reach a point where you can pull it. That's a bit disappointing.

So the first thing to deal with is a good recipe. I went through 21 different dough recipes. The good news is I found a proper recipe that works really well. The bad news is I've done all my recipes by weight. That's a little scary, but it's the only way to get a perfect ball of dough every time. If anyone comes across this and wants to try to convert to a volume based recipe, feel free, but i recommend going out and buying a cooking scale. It will save a lot of time if you're planning on committing to learning how to pull noodles.

Ingredients for making hand pulled noodles are relatively simple. You need flour, water, some oil, and a little salt. In addition, you can add some lye water, which I'll talk about at the end.

Flour

Flour is probably the most troublesome of the ingredients because you have to get your gluten levels just right. The gluten is what makes the dough stretchy. In my experience, too much gluten will result in a dough that will never reach the right texture for pulling. It will tear very early. A proper amount of gluten will result in dough that stretches into hair thin noodles.

I started out working with some flour I found at an asian market near my home (it's called Marina Food and it's in Cupertino, CA). Unfortunately, it seems this flour isn't readily available everywhere, and it seems to be sold out at Marina pretty often. For the record though, here's what it looks like:

and the nutrition information:

This Korean flour seems to have just the amount of gluten in it, but a flour mix with more common flours is more useful to people who can't go to Marina to get this. The solution to getting a proper mixture with normal American flours comes from this recipe. However, in my searching, I have been unable to find proper "Pastry" flour, but I've been successful with cake flour. For my recipe, I used Softasilk cake flour and Gold Medal All-Purpose flour. These were available at my local Safeway, and you can see them in the image above. Here's the nutrition information just in case you need it:

for the Softasilk:
And for the Gold Medal:

Now if you can find it, I had really good luck with the Korean flour, but the cake / all-purpose works really well too. If you do go with the Korean flour, just use it as 100% of your flour. The recipe I post will be for the cake / all-purpose mix. Regardless of what you choose to use, your recipe should contain about 59% flour.

Water

Water is pretty simple. Water from the tap is just fine. I generally tried to use warm water, as the dough is much easier to work with when it's warm. In my recipes, I use about 31% water.

Oil

The purpose of sesame oil in the recipe is for a couple things. The first is flavor. The second, more importantly, is that it gives the dough a bit more springiness when you're trying to stretch it. It's almost like liquid rubberband. Thirdly, it helps keep the dough from sticking to your hands. This means we can make a wetter dough recipe and still knead it easily. I've tried recipes with no sesame oil, recipe with a little, and recipes with a lot. I've had the most success with recipes that have 8-9% sesame oil.

You can use any type of sesame oil. I tried a recipe with a sesame /soy oil that did not work well, so i recommend using 100% sesame oil. The green bottle that's generally available in the ethnic section of a supermarket is good. I've also been successful with random sesame oils from asian markets, too.

Salt

Salt is generally for a little more flavor in the noodles. I did, however, try a recipe with 2% salt, and it made the dough very tough (to a point that i couldn't pull it). I recommend about .3% salt (which comes out to 1 gram in my recipe).

Lye Water

If you read through forums about hand pulled noodles, you'll read about "lye water" and "kansui powder". I was unable to find anything called "kansui powder", but i did find lye water. Most asian markets have it alongside the oil and soy sauce related ingredients.

Lye water is supposed to be the secret ingredient in hand pulled noodles. I've tried recipes with it and without it, and it does not make the dough any easier to pull. There's almost no difference in the dough when using lye water, although if you use too much, you'll get something a lot like when you add too much salt. The dough will be too tough to pull. I've come to a happy ground with about 1% lye water in my dough.

What lye water DOES add is a nice bit of chewiness to the noodles. The flavor is supposed to be slightly different, too, but i haven't noticed that yet. I'm always just happy that i was able to make some noodles :D

I'll post two recipes, one with lye water, and one without. You can be the judge.

Hand Pulled Noodles

2008-06-11T23:05:00.000-07:00

So I've been working on getting a recipe and technique together to make hand pulled noodles, or la mian. I'm basically done at this point, and I'm going to make a series of posts that talk about everything. I tried a while back to find a recipe and instruction on how to make said noodles, but came up dry after hours of searching on the internet. I found a few "recipes" that were mostly just guidelines, and the only instructions came in the form of some kind of video in front of a noodle shop. slim pickins. So I decided to put together something that would help the online community, and the picture in this post is of noodles that I pulled myself. So my next post will talk about ingredients, and then I'll go from there.

In videogames, I'm still on a turn based strategy kick. I've picked up Disgaea for the PSP. It's leaps and bounds better than Jeanne D'Arc. The key to why it's better is that it's just really fast. The gameplay is smokin' in comparison to Jeanne D'Arc. Plus, there's all kinds of neat stuff like the item world and throwing characters around. Funny thing is, I played Disgaea for the PS2 when it came out way back when. I beat it, and I remembered it being good, but i guess i forgot.

by the way

2008-05-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

You know how I said I was done with Jeanne D'Arc? Well, something about that game just doesn't bore me. I'm still playing it, even after I've beaten it. Its addictive qualities are not as impressive as Disgaea, but they present some pretty significant challenges after you complete the game and it makes it feel like you haven't really played the game fully. So now I'm working on leveling a few characters to the level cap, and then we'll see if I get tired of the darned thing.

I've also been introduced to Patapon by a coworker. I didn't realize it was made by the same people who made Loco Roco. That is, until I booted it up. The artwork and sound is immediately recognizable. I think that'll be my next PSP game. I loved Loco Roco :D

New Project

2008-05-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

I'm working on something. Something I've wanted to work on for a pretty long while, but never really committed fully to it. I worked on it previously, but was never able to find enough resources on the web. So I went to the drawing board and decided to tackle the problem from the start and document everything so I could put the resources on the web for other people to use. I'll be making a post soon with lots of details. Until then, here's a teaser:

Jeanne D'Arc

2008-04-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

I just got done with Jeanne D'Arc for the PSP. Well, i should clarify. I BEAT it about 3 weeks ago, but there is a bit of gameplay to be had after you beat it, and i was playing with that. I DECIDED three days ago that i was done. I tried pretty hard to level my characters enough such that i could beat the extra Colosseum levels, but the play style i chose for the normal part of the game just didn't work for some of the colosseum levels.

I don't think i play strategy games correctly. I think maybe i don't like them. I know i don't really care for RTS games, but i've always had fun with turn based strategy games. FF Tactics and Disgaea were tons of fun. The problem i have with them is that i don't see how any RTS games are different. Warcraft is the same as Total Annihilation is the same as Starcraft is the same as you get the idea. this definitely hinder my ability to enjoy them. The biggest issue with not seeing the differences is that i play them all the same way, and so i'm always just playing the same game. I don't know if that's my fault or it's the fault of the game designers...

Anyways, the way i play all strategy games is with brute force. If my units aren't tough enough to kill the baddies, i don't go find the kryptonite unit for what i'm up against, i just make more of the unit i've already committed myself to. Maybe i should read some strategy before i play my next strategy game. I bet that would make it a lot more fun.