Robot Claw

Vinegar & Salt

October 21st, 2023

That giant stash of Salt & Vinegar chips in our house ain’t eating itself, so let’s dive right back in for some more reviews!

‘Good & Gather’ is Target‘s store brand and these chips were easily the worst we’ve tasted so far. The potatoes used had imperfections, and too many of the chips were overcooked or just burned. The vinegar taste was acidic instead of sweet, and the aftertaste was unpleasant. Compared to the vast amount of other options, these just aren’t worth your time. These barely deserve the lowest end of the rating scale: C.

We tasted a Price Chopper type last time, and it eked out a lowest rating. By comparison their kettle chip offering was better, but still several rungs below the quality kettle chip offerings. While the chips were acceptable, the salt and vinegar taste was so understated it hardly seemed worth eating these. A low R rating.

Utz is a chip maker from here in the Northeast, and I’ve always found their chips to be distinctly average. Their Salt’n Vinegar chips started off unremarkably, although I find the chips a bit too thin and greasy. But the vinegar was sweet and subdued and they became moorish quickly. Unfortunately it wasn’t until I’d shoveled too many down my gulliver that some sort of time-release flavour bomb triggered and I was soon sweating like a gibbon! In summary: a too-plain chip with a too-intense flavour for me, and not something I’d choose again. Another solid R.

It hasn’t taken us long to realize that kettle chips are most often superior to normal ones, and it’s not surprising that most of the higher ratings are kettle types. So perhaps it’s fitting that a brand named Kettle would produce such a fine example! The chips have a delicious potato taste, and are crunchy without being oily. But the vinegar taste (the ingredients list ‘distilled white vinegar’) is unique and quite sublime and gave me nostalgic memories of the taste of fish’n’chips in my youth. A wonderful chip and an easy SR!

Hal’s chips were weirdly cooked – they were almost insubstantial, more like extrusions than sliced potatoes. This made them extremely easy to eat quickly, which is dangerous since the vinegar is strong and the strength seems to increase exponentially as you eat more. It was so strong in fact I couldn’t finish the somewhat small bag! These are for the true vinegar aficionado, and while they were too powerful for me I recognize their quality as I score them SR.

There was nothing notable about Miss Vickie’s – no weird ingredients or surprising taste – but that’s ok since they were just a very high quality chip. Delightful and well cooked kettle chips seasoned with almost-too-strong vinegar made for a bag that was easy to eat and didn’t outstay its welcome. A textbook definition of what this blog series is all about, and an easy SR.

Lays had the highest rated chips in the first review post, only those were kettle chips and here we have their normal type. As befits the world leaders of chippery, these are an extremely high quality product no doubt engineered by teams of scientists to be superior in almost every way. I’d rate them well up there on the SR scale. Surely they’re at the pinnacle of a non-kettle chip?

Zapp’s is a brand that originated in the south, but now is part of the Utz company. I picked up this bag of ‘New Orleans Kettle Style’ chips when we were in NYC and we ate them over lunch one day. Holy smokes they were good! The chips were thicker than the average kettle chip and cooked perfectly, and the vinegar taste was strong but not overwhelmingly so. It was also sweet and very moorish. These are some of the very best we’ve tasted so far, and makes me wonder why the other Utz ones are so average. An easy SSR!

I picked up the bag of Uncle Ray’s chips at our local train station and I reckon the Bible verse on the back is no accident since these chips were close to heavenly! Notably not kettle chips, their perfectly light and delicious, with super-sweet vinegar that can be eaten to excess without fear of ‘chip sweats’! I devoured this bag like a beast, and I reckon it’s unlikely I’ll ever taste a better non-kettle example. Undoubtedly an SSR.

Another nine types tasted and reviewed! There may have even been one or two others, only Covid has laid us both low this past week. No worries, we’ve still got a mighty stash to get through, so this is hardly the last in this series. Will anything surpass Lays kettle from last time? I wonder…

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Birthday Trip

October 10th, 2023

We went to NYC for a few days to celebrate Kristins birthday. Once again we splurged for a room high above Bryant Park with a balcony.

It was cooler than we expected in the city and I probably wasn’t dressed for it, but we filled the first day with shopping at all our favourite spots.

We had fun, bought some interesting things and ate richly, as usual. Also as usual, we mostly ate at different times since we both prefer different things (and I eat freakishly early these days).

Here’s the view from the balcony at night:

On the second day we went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which we’d never visited before. It was very popular and bustling with people at the entrance, but it’s a large museum and didn’t seem packed inside.

That was the highlight. It’s (of course) Starry Night by Van Gogh, and neither of us knew it was there. In fact we were both so surprised to see it just hanging on a wall in the open we assumed it was a copy or something, but it is the actual painting which has been in the MoMA collection for over 80 years. It was genuinely moving to see, given the story behind it and how famous it is. Some believe it’s the most valuable painting in the world!

Of course MoMA has many other works, and we did our best to view all of them. I’ve been to modern art exhibits before and all I’ll say about much of what we saw is that the question of whether it was ‘art’ or not is perhaps more interesting (to me) than the pieces themselves.

Afterwards we did more shopping and eating and just soaking in the sights and character of the city. There was a parade as well, to celebrate Italian-Americans, and we watched the floats a bit as they went down 5th Avenue.

Although summer has passed and winter’s chill is starting to arrive, the city was still full of tourists. Times Square was busy as it always is and yesterday in particular shops and eateries were very full probably because it was a holiday (Columbus Day)?

Inside an empty shop we saw taller-than-man-sized reproductions of Star Wars PEZ dispensers being carved from styrofoam. Why and for what reason? We’ll probably never know…

Oh and it’s beginning to feel a bit like Christmas…

It was a very relaxing and fun few days, and while we exhausted ourselves filling each day with activities.

To cap things off we sprung for a large sized roomette on the train on the way home. It seated four and had its own shower (in a separate room to the left in the photo). It was more than twice the size (and cost!) of the roomette we usually use and was very comfy:

I asked Kristin if she had fun on her birthday trip and she said: “Yes, I ate bought and saw many wonderful things!” 🙂

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Top 40 Nostalgia

October 7th, 2023

Some years back I referred to my collection of ‘Too 40’ charts I used to get at the record shops. I had dozens of them lasting many years through the 1980s, and wish I still had them.

Recently I found some scanned in a historical website of Australian music. The scans were a little low-resolution, but the charts are still readable. Here’s one from March 1984:

Some iconic songs in that top 10! Also note that Thriller is at week 67 in the top 40 but a Midnight Oil album is at week 69! Incidentally I love how this scan is obviously of a copy once owned by a kid who wrote on it.

Here’s the back of the same chart:

These were about A4 size, always printed in two different colours, and usually sat in piles on a counter free for the taking. The fronts always showed the singles/album chart and the back was usually an ad that often contained lyrics. It was a particularly great week when a band I liked was featured on the back 🙂

Here’s the front and back of another from 1984:

99 Luftballoons spent at least two weeks at number 1 in Australia? I wouldn’t have remembered that, even though I did buy the single (and I believe own it to this day). Since I was a big fan of Nik Kershaw in those days, I’m sure I was thrilled to see him featured on the back.

Here’s one from 1985, in which we see the Countdown (a very famous Oz music TV show) promotion had ended:

And lastly the fronts only of two more:

That’s all I was able to find online, and since it was years ago I no longer remember where. If anything this dip into nostalgia makes me want to get my hands on one even more. Years back I saw one (in so-so condition) for sale in an antique store for some silly price and passed. Next time I may reach for my wallet, especially if it’s got a good band on the back 🙂

Posted in Australia, History, Music, Retro, Time | 2 Comments »

World Postcard Day

October 1st, 2023

It’s been a year since my last Postcrossing post, which was when I passed 750 cards received. I was going to wait for 1000, but since today is World Postcard Day (did you send someone a card?) it felt like a good day to catch up.

As of today, I’ve received (and sent) 943 cards. I’m getting about 25 a month, so I’ll pass 1000 this year. There’s been no change in the top 10 countries from which I’ve received cards, but the order has shuffled a little bit:

Interestingly while I’ve received about 30 cards from Russia in the past year, I’ve sent none. I didn’t realize until writing this post that the service seems to not be assigning Russian addresses, no doubt due to the ongoing war.

The above is a map showing the locations from which I have been sent cards since I joined back in 2018. As you can see every continent is represented, with a strong concentration in Europe. If you look closely you may see one unusual one off the northwest of Africa:

That’s the island of Madeira, which is a region of Portugal. I believe that’s the most remote place from which I have received a postcard so far.

The above shows where I have sent cards, which is similar to where they have arrived from with an even larger concentration in Europe. Once again, one marker is notably more remote than others:

That’s Guam, out there in the Pacific. Although it’s counted as a country by Postcrossing, it’s a US territory and therefore I was able to send a card there using domestic postage! It also arrived very quickly, which suggests the USA doesn’t mess around getting mail to its territories 🙂

As far as cards received, the top two are notable. Both came from Australia, and both were examples of pre-stamped postcards sold at post offices. They date to 1997 and 2001, and the postage on each is much lower than what it costs today to send a card internationally. But since these are forever valid for international use, both made it here without problem. For comparison, it costs about A$3.60 to send a postcard from Australia to the USA today, but the doll one has only A$0.45 postage on it!

I was inspired by the above to test this myself when I found (in an Australian antique store back in May) a similar postcard from the early 1980s with even less postage on it. I mailed it and it arrived here without issue! If I ever see any others for sale, I’ll buy and send them for sure.

As usual I love looking at the cornucopia of stamps on the postcrossing cards, and during this past 10 months there’s been a lot of exceptional examples. I’ve only showed a couple of examples above, but the Diana stamps were unusually included on a postcard sent from Germany. I was under the impression that in most countries it wasn’t allowed to put foreign stamps on postal items so maybe this was simply overlooked by a postal worker or perhaps it’s not a problem at all. I’m tempted to try it myself…

The above show five unusually shaped stamps received in the last year. The standout is the absolutely wild owl stamp from Finland which was a Valentine’s Day issue back in 2011! It was one of five similarly unusual (but differently shaped) bird stamps, and I’m happy the sender hung on to it for so long and sent me one.

The other Postcrossing news from the last year was that for a time I was seriously facing the need to stop due to lack of postcards. It’s become impossible to buy new ones in Albany, so I used to depend on the freeway rest stop shops and used to stock up every time we took a long drive. However they have closed as well, which left only Rochester which itself has run nearly dry. Things looked grim indeed until by a happy twist of fate I learned of the existence of a dedicated postcard shop not half an hour from our house! Two visits later and I’d bought 200+ cards for about $0.25 each, most of which will be used for Postcrossing. It seems my membership can continue for the foreseeable future 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Postcards | Comments Closed

A Couple Of Riders

September 29th, 2023

Being so close to having watched all Ultraman, naturally my eye is turning to similar franchises. The obvious pick is Kamen Rider, which has been going for almost as long telling stories of motorcycle-riding suited heroes defending the helpless from powerful enemies.

In Japan last June I eagerly looked forward to the midnightly screenings of the 1970s serial and I loved the recent Shin Kamen Rider film. This series is definitely my sort of thing!

Alas the majority of Kamen Rider has never been released in the west or even translated into English, so it’s currently beyond my ability to fully enjoy. Hopefully one day that will change.

Until then though, I can of course admire it in other ways… such as via plastic model kits! Here’s two I recently built.

This guy – Kamen Rider Double Fangjoker – is apparently from the 20th Kamen Rider series which screened back in 2009-10. The bicolour form is due to two Kamen Riders combining into one, and this specific ‘Fangjoker’ seems to be an ultimate version. Here’s a shot of the character from the show itself:

I bought this kit since it’s striking, and I knew (from experience) that having different colour arms and legs would make the assembly a bit more interesting. That said, being essentially monotone meant the runners weren’t too interesting when I took them from the box:

Assembly was easy; Bandai has perfected the design of their humanoid kits and everything fits together seamlessly. I particularly like the unusual faceted effect on the eyes achieved Dr by combining a textured back, a silver sticker and a transparent layer:

As usual I don’t paint these kits, but this one gave me the rare chance to use one of my fine ‘Gundam markers’ to add a thin black line down the very center. It looks better than I expected:

A couple of weeks later I made the second kit I’d bought:

This is from a 2015 series featuring a main character who is a dead ‘ghost hunter’ trying to collect 15 souls so he can be resurrected and take revenge on the villians that killed him. The story sounds wild and the action scenes look great:

I have a thing for black and gold and once again I bought this kit based solely on the powerful design. It’s much more complex than I knew when I bought it, with the ability to make multiple forms of the rider himself. I went with the default, and not the wacky ‘ghost’ form.

The first thing I noticed when I removed the box contents were not one but two sticker sheets. And even worse, there were loads of stickers. I don’t hate stickers on kits as much as some do, but I prefer them in moderation. But with instructions like this I was concerned:

Happily it wasn’t nearly as difficult as it looked, and the stickers aligned well and – even better – looked great when applied:

This is one stylish character, with orange parts that just pop from the black, and nifty use of transparencies. The black also helps hide what few visible seams/joints it has. It’s a very pretty kit once completed.

These weren’t too expensive for plastic model kits (about $40 each), and I loved making both. As I mentioned Bandai has got their humanoid (which includes many Ultramen as well as Riders) kits down to a fine art, and I’m happy to see them continuing to churn out new characters.

Assembling these kits and reading about the characters makes me want to watch the shows even more. Will they ever be translated? I hope so…

Posted in Miscellaneous, Models, Otaku | Comments Closed