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Wednesday, June 30, 2010
[Food Review] Zespri Gold Kiwi
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 5:10 PM --- Post#5041551501309926989

I was never a fan of kiwi fruits as they often leave itchiness on my tongue. But recently the Shop n Save near my house is selling this Zespri Kiwis. I'm not interested in their ordinary green kiwi, rather their Gold Kiwi caught my attention. After some persuasion and good talk from my sis, I decided to buy a packet to try. A packet of four cost $4.35, which is quite expensive.

A packet of four.

Unpacking...

A single Gold Kiwi.

Cut open.

Close up of the fruit.

Verdict: It taste significantly better than green kiwis. The center portion with seeds is sweet, and becomes sour as it gets nearer and nearer to the outside. So you get a combination of sweet and sour in this Gold Kiwi. The camera was custom white balanced prior to taking these photos, and thus the colour is quite accurate. As you can see, it's not as GOLDEN as kiwi images in the sticker on the packaging. It's more like a yellow green. Since it came packed, there is no way that I can test how ripe it was when I purchased them. From what I know, the softer it is, the riper it will be. I believed that if they are riper, the taste would be better (more sweet less sour). Although it is more expensive (green ones are sold at $3+ for a packet of four, I would rather spend that dollar more instead of throwing $3 away to eat super sour green kiwis.

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Yang Sheng Le Review
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 2:13 AM --- Post#2377672331163123760

Maggi and Yu Ren Sheng has came out with this new herbal soup concentrate. Being a herbal soup lover, I needa try it out to see if it's good enough. So I hooted a bottle of it from Shop n Save, and boiled it according to instructions.

Yang Sheng Le American Ginseng flavour.

Opening it...

The bottle of concentrate, a packet of wolf berries and manual.

Other than the bottle of concentrate, you will need 600g of chicken.

Sad to say, I only managed to get around 300g of chicken...

The instructions says 1L of water.

Pour the water into my induction cooker and boil it.

Meanwhile I opened the bottle of concentrate. Looks pasty inside.

Water reached boiling point and the concentrate is added.

Wolfberries added.

Chicken added.

the instruction states that I should simmer it for 20minutes, but I simmered for 30minutes instead.

Scooping a bowl out from the pot.

Close up

Verdict: The flavour is rich enough, but does not taste exactly like American Ginseng. This is perhaps due to the herbs and type of Ginseng they added into their concentrate. It's nice to drink, but you will get sick of it if you drink the 1L in one shot. The aroma could be better, I think I should add more chicken and pre-simmer the chicken to extract it's taste into the soup. Otherwise canned or power chicken stock would do as well. I have not tried the other flavours yet. Considering it's price (including the chicken), I could have drank 2 bowls of herbal soup from my neighbouring coffee shop that was certified by some Channel U food show. One bowl of soup from that stall would easily be around 500ml (soup plus ingredient) and they taste heavenly, far fetch from this Yang Sheng Le soup. I think this soup concentrate would be good in the hands of those with intermediate cooking skills, who can add more ingredients to enhance it's flavour, in turn making this a quick dish to prepare at home.

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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
PS 1 and 2 Controller to USB Converter Review
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 11:00 PM --- Post#6815249835484939464

I wanted a game controller badly, but due to poverty (prevalent in Singapore, anyone without at least $10,000 in back is considered poor) I did not want to blast a hole in my pocket to get one. Not to mention, I am against the idea of playing FPS using gamepad, and no prize for guessing that I am a FPS freak. But that does not mean I play FPS only, I'm fine with other genres of game, just that I enjoy FPS more than the rest. The controller would be useful for some racing, RPG, vehicle simulator and fighting games. I'm sick of playing Street Fighter 4 and Burn Out Paradise with KB and mouse.

I got an old old PlayStation 1 (big one, not the smaller PSone) console with DualShock controllers (with analogue sticks and vibration feedback) collecting dust in my room. Those were the Primary School childhood days where my cousins would come to my house during holidays and play Crash Team Racing with me.

I saw this converter on DealExtreme which converts PS1/2 controllers bus to USB, and could be used as a PC game pad. The converter takes in two controllers at once. But the price was not attractive enough. Being poor, I eBay-ed and found a similar model for around half the price.

A package arrived!

Unpacking...

The converter and driver CD. The converter is upside down to show you the bottom view.

Close up of the converter.

The PlayStation controller port.

My ancient DualShock controller.

Close up to show u the DUST!

How it looks like hooked to my PC on my desk.

Playing Assassin Creed 2 with the controller.

On Windows XP, there is no need for driver to detect the controllers. But I installed the given driver anyway which gave me more options (IIRC vibration feedback and feedback strength could be enabled only after you installed the driver). I tried on TM Nation and Assassin Creed 2, both working well. No problems with analogue sticks (can enable and disable properly with the "ANALOG" button) and vibration feedback. However, the controller would not work properly on L4D2, in which there are some hearsay that only XBOX360 controllers work. L4D2 is a FPS and I'm not interested to use a gamepad for that thus did not research further on.

Guess the price of this converter?
US$ 0.99 + US$ 1.83 (shipping) = US$ 2.82 = S$ 4.23

Pardon my poor photography.

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