It would be fair to say that my all-time favorite band is Pink Floyd. I’ve been listening to them ever since my friend Kourt introduced me to them via the album A Momentary Lapse of Reason while on a trip to Galveston with his family. While I admit I tend to like the newer stuff more than the older stuff (and I don’t have any albums before The Dark Side of the Moon), it’s still all some of my favorite stuff. I even had the movie Pink Floyd – The Wall on VHS, and wish the movie was out on Blu-Ray.

That being said, one of my greatest regrets was not seeing the band live in concert. The one time I knew of that they came into town for a concert when I knew about them and liked them was when they toured for The Division Bell, and not only did I not know they were coming into town until it was too late, I wasn’t much of a concert-goer and I didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone to go with me.

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to do the next best thing twice. Last year, Roger Waters came into town for his The Wall Live concert tour, which was essentially his performing the entirety of The Wall. It was an incredible show, complete with an actual wall being built during the show, projection and laser effects, and the like. Not only was I impressed, so was Jennifer, who wasn’t familiar with Pink Floyd’s work and wasn’t sure she would like the concert.

As much as I liked the show, though, I kind of wished that I could see a performance containing more of Pink Floyd’s catalog. That wish came through on Tuesday, when Brit Floyd came to town.

Brit Floyd is a tribute band for Pink Floyd, with a stage presence that is almost exactly like the original band’s, complete with the round projection screen above them. Jennifer and I had seen their performance at Red Rocks on our local PBS station, so when they announced they were coming to Houston we decided to go ahead and get tickets.

So, how was the show? In a word: AWESOME.

The musicians were all extremely good at what they did, and the singers (Ian Cantell and band leader Damian Darlington) sounded so close to David Gilmour and Roger Waters it was eerie. They literally played at least one song from all of their studio albums, including what I thought were less popular songs like “Sorrow” (from A Momentary Lapse of Reason) and “High Hopes” (from The Division Bell). They covered all of the big hits as well, with the biggest highlight being their performance of “Comfortably Numb” at the very end. For “Comfortably Numb”, they even had a small “hotel room” set, with Cantell acting as the doctor and the percussionist acting like the patient. The widescreen TV in the set was even playing the “Comfortably Numb” scene from the movie. :-)

It was one little detail that made me truly appreciate their dedication to Pink Floyd’s music, however. When performing the song “One of These Days” live, Pink Floyd would add the first few notes from the Doctor Who theme song somewhere during the middle. Brit Floyd did the exact same thing, at the exact same spot. :-)

The most telling reaction, however, came from Jennifer. She had gone into the show with no expectations, not really knowing Pink Floyd’s music. By the end, she had REALLY enjoyed the performance, and wanted to listen to some of their earlier albums. :-)

All in all, it was a wonderful show, and Jennifer and I definitely want to catch them next time they come through town. They may not be the original Pink Floyd, but given how good they are at the music and how much attention and care to detail they give towards the source material, they’re definitely the next best thing. :-)

It’s kind of disappointing when you’re turned off something you’ve wanted to see for a while.

It’s no secret that my tastes in music are extremely eclectic. One only needs to look at the playlist I use at work on my iPod to see how varied my music collection is. As such, it shouldn’t be too surprising that I enjoy opera, even though I rarely get the chance to actually watch it. As a fan of fantasy and mythology, the one opera series I’ve always wanted to see has been Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, better known as the Ring Cycle. The Ring Cycle is made up of four operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. It’s based on Norse mythology and tells the story of the struggles to obtain a magic ring with the power to rule the world (sound familiar?), and how it brings about the downfall of the gods.

The problem with performing the Ring Cycle is its sheer size. Each opera ranges from three and a half hours to five hours in length, and the stage directions and effects necessary make it prohibitively expensive to perform. In fact, the number of opera companies in the United States that have performed the Ring Cycle is in the single digits. As you might imagine, then, I was excited to learn that Houston Grand Opera is performing all four operas over the space of four years.

As it so happens, Das Rheingold is being performed this month. While I would normally go ahead and buy tickets, I had two concerns. The first concern was for Jennifer, because she doesn’t like opera. She would go for me, though, and while I do appreciate that with all of my heart, I don’t want to put her through something she’s not going to like. The other was that I had no idea what the production was going to be like, so I’d like to see a review first. After doing a web search, I ended up finding a review by the Dallas Morning News.

With set design by Roland Olbeter and video design by Franc Aleu, with sci-fi costumes by Chu Uroz, this is a Rheingold for our attention-deficit age. Nothing is ever still. Water and vague protoplasms splash and spin across giant projection screens spanning the upstage. The descent to Nibelheim takes us through a dense, diabolical factory.

The gods move about, rise and fall on hefty booms manipulated by visible stagehands. Red-lit Loge, demigod of fire and general mischief-maker, whizzes around on a Segway. The giants Fafner and Fasolt are giant tin-man puppets. Highly effective lighting, originally designed by Peter van Praet, is realized here by Gianni Paolo Mirenda.

I guess I can see the point of the gods-on-booms: actually only pawns in the game of life (apologies to Blazing Saddles‘ Mongo), they only think they’re in control. But I’m completely befuddled by the various realizations of the Rhine gold as a giant human fetus and, later, a pile of human bodies, apparently manufactured in Alberich’s sinister factory. And what’s with the portrayal of the gods’ new home Valhalla as either a spidery human bust or a tower of suspended acrobats? Sorry, don’t get it.

That is not promising at all.

If all of that were an opinion of the quality of the performance, then I’d take it with a huge grain of salt. As it stands, though, this is a factual description of what happens during the performance (and a local review, while glowing, confirms the presence of the Segway). I guess you could call me a traditionalist in this sense, but that pretty much destroyed any desire for me to see the production. While I appreciate different, this just seems too offbeat to me.

It’s a shame, because I would like to see the Ring Cycle at some point. However, the Houston Grand Opera version just strikes me as different for the sake of being different, and I can’t get on-board with the changes they’ve made. An opera isn’t just a musical piece. It’s a theatrical piece that requires good set design and good acting. However the music might be in this performance, I just can’t see myself enjoying myself if I keep going “WTF” with the set design.

Maybe in the future I’ll see a live performance of the Ring Cycle. It’s just not going to be right now.

It should be no secret that I love classic arcades. Not only does it bring back a nostalgia factor for me, I genuinely enjoy spending the time to play the games.

Admittedly, my favorite classic arcade isn’t even in Houston. That honor has to go to Pinballz Arcade in Austin. Consisting of two floors of both classic and modern arcade and pinball machines, it’s easy to spend several hours in there just going from game to game, having a blast. In fact, the last time I was there, I ended up spending most of my time playing Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition and Street Fighter X Tekken against Jenn Dolari. Of course, I don’t go there as often as I’d like for the simple already-stated reason: it’s not in Houston. As I go to Austin once every year or so, that’s about all I get to do there.

There are options in Houston, however. The most popular one is a place downtown called Joystix. Most of the time, it’s a distributor of video and pinball arcade machines, from as old as Pong to as new as Terminator Salvation. Twice a month (on the first and last Friday), they open their showroom from 9 PM to 2 AM for a $15 cover fee, and every single game is available to play. In addition, drinks are available at the lounge connected to Joystix through a door.

Unfortunately, though I’ve been to Joystix several times, I don’t really enjoy going there anymore. There are two major problems I have there. The first problem is that even though the place sells the machines that are on the showroom floor, they’re not always of good quality. I’ve come across machines with unresponsive controls, damaged screens, or were plain not operational. The second problem is just how popular the place is. Within a half-hour or so of the showroom’s opening, there are so many people that you’re almost shoulder-to-shoulder at the machines and people are pushing against you to walk down the aisles. It gets even worse in the lounge, where it becomes a solid mass of people. Jennifer ends up not enjoying it because she feels crammed in when sitting in a corner reading her book or checking her phone, and it gets so loud and so crowded I come close to a meltdown.

Several months ago, my friend Josh told me of another arcade that had opened around 59 North and Beltway 8 called the Game Preserve. I ended up going there with Jennifer, and ended up having a good time. It has fewer machines than Joystix does, but they tend to be in a better state of repair. When a machine DOES malfunction, it’s generally repaired quickly. Since my last visit there, they moved to a newer facility where instead of being in a converted small warehouse space, they’re in a pure office space with working air conditioning throughout the facility.

The only two problems I can think of with the Game Preserve are that it’s pretty far from my house and that they don’t tend to have newer machines. The only really new machine they have from the past five to ten years is a single Tron: Legacy pinball machine set to one side, though that’s understandable considering the place is owned by a collective of collectors. That’s not to say they don’t get additional games every so often; they recently added the pinball machines Bram Stoker’s Dracula (one of my favorites) and Twilight Zone to the game floor. As for the distance, it’s around 45 miles from my house, which means I really am only able to go when I’m on that side of town, which is not very often anymore.

I’ve personally found the staff at the Game Preserve to be very friendly and helpful as well. My friend Louie wanted to go to an arcade for his bachelor party earlier this month, and had originally thought of Joystix. Instead of spending $600-700 or so for a couple of hours to have Joystix by ourselves (Louie doesn’t like it crowded either), we went to the Game Preserve where it was nowhere near as crowded and spent far less. In fact, we were prepared to spend $60 total to get in ($15 per person), but the staff informed us that if I paid $30 for a bronze membership for the month, the rest of us could get in free. Not only did we do that, I went back this past Sunday with Jennifer and spent a few more hours playing. :-)

If there was a classic arcade like the Game Preserve closer to my home, I would be a very happy camper. Still, I enjoy the chances I do get to visit the Game Preserve and Pinballz Arcade, and I’m glad that there actually are decent arcades out there, allowing me to live a little bit of nostalgia and play the classic games the way they were meant to be played. ;-)

It’s been five and a half years since the parent company for Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, leading to the closing of every single one of both chains’ restaurants. I thought the brand was well and truly done. A year or two ago, however, that thought was turned on its head when driving to my friend Louie’s house. I noticed (to my shock) that a Bennigan’s had opened on the corner a few blocks from his house. The logo was different, but the theme looked to be the same. Once I got home, I checked online and found it was a resurrection of the original brand. I was curious, and resolved to try it someday.

The problem for me, though, was that the Bennigan’s was the only one in the city, and Louie’s house is very much out of my way most of the time. Therefore, my opportunities to go were extremely limited. I only ended up going once, and that was when I spent a day car shopping back in August. In the end, I was seriously underwhelmed. The food tasted pretty much like I remembered, but Bennigan’s never was good enough to be a “go out of your way” place. In addition, the customer service wasn’t very good. The wait staff didn’t really seem to care, and I didn’t feel like we were welcome there. I chalked it up as indulging in some nostalgia, and didn’t feel an urge to go back.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. This past Saturday, I went over to Louie’s house, and found that the Bennigan’s had closed and was now a 59 Diner.

It turned out the problems I had noticed with customer service were not due to an isolated incident. Not only did people get terrible service at the location I had been to, a new location had opened in the Woodlands and their customer service issues were just as bad.

The sad thing is that Bennigan’s is falling into the same trap it fell into before it originally went bankrupt. Even back then the customer service was becoming horrible, to the point where people like me were swearing off the chain. Unless the food is absolutely fantastic, no one is going to come back to a restaurant where the service is awful. Bennigan’s was never terrific food; it was at best okay but cheap. This revival of the chain will probably not survive unless they get their act in gear.

It’s sort of a shame, as Bennigan’s was a fixture in my adolescence. Still, the way the company looks now, perhaps it’s better that it stay buried in the past.

I suppose it should come to no surprise to some that I enjoy reading, and am a pretty fast reader to boot. Unfortunately, I tend to buy books to put into my library, and they end up sitting there because I find myself spending evenings watching TV or playing video games instead. This started becoming unacceptable to me, so I decided to do something about it.

A few weeks ago, I declared Sundays to be reading days. This happened after I found myself stuck in bed with severe back pain (due to aggravating a back injury), and wanted to be productive at least. I ignored my tablet and laptop all day (as my desktop PC was still inoperative), and spent the day reading instead. The first book I read was The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan (the third book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series), and Heat Wave by Richard Castle. After doing that, I decided that I would go ahead and make it a point to stay off the internet every Sunday until I’ve read at least one book. :-)

Last week’s book was Blowback by Valerie Plame and Sarah Lovett. Blowback was very much an impulse purchase; Jennifer and I were at Murder By The Book, a local independent bookstore specializing in mystery novels, when I happened to notice the book on a table. I didn’t know she wrote mystery novels, and in fact this was her first one. I knew of her as the former CIA operative whose cover was blown in retaliation for her husband revealing that one of George W. Bush’s claims regarding Iraq’s WMD developments were false. The book itself was a pretty decent mystery thriller, involving a CIA operative seeking out the man who was murdering her contacts, hoping he’ll lead her to a mysterious terrorist/criminal mastermind she had been pursuing. It’s obvious Plame used her background as an operative in the novel. I’ll likely pick up the second book, if/when it should come out.

I went ahead with a “related” book yesterday: Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. While the thriller film Green Zone was based on the book, the book itself is non-fiction and does not delve into the search for WMDs in Iraq. Instead, the book (based on interviews and the author’s own experience on the ground) delves into the American occupation of Iraq after the invasion, leading up to the handoff of sovereignty to the Iraqis. It’s a pretty damning account of how badly the attempts at reconstruction and formation of the new government were handled. The common theme throughout the process is that qualified and experienced individuals were pushed aside and ignored in favor of those who followed the Bush administration’s political orthodoxy and told them what they wanted to hear. As a result, the country was left in far more of a mess than it was when they found it. I’m seriously considering picking up my own copy of the book; the copy I read was borrowed from my father-in-law, who received it from me as a Christmas gift a year or two ago.

The next few books in my list will likely be The Cuckoo’s Calling by “Robert Galbraith”, Necropolis by Michael Dempsey, and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter J. Miller, Jr. All three are books I picked up at Half-Price Books and intended to read, but never got around to doing so. My hope is that by scheduling one day a week as a pure reading day (excluding any needed errands or chores, of course) I’ll be able to knock out most of my literary pile of shame. :-)

Of course, that will mean I’ll need to buy more books, but that’s a never a bad thing…

If you have a Goodreads account, I’m on there too. You can find me at http://www.goodreads.com/drkbish; I’m always open to suggestions regarding good books. :-)

The following post was originally posted at Mortal Kombat Online. If you wish to take part in the discussion on that site, the forum post is located here.

Last year, Valve Software announced that they were introducing their own entries into the world of gaming consoles. Their approach differs from that of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo; they have gone the way of Android, where they have created their own Linux distribution called SteamOS, and are encouraging PC manufacturers to create their own hardware boxes called Steam Machines. While SteamOS can run any Steam game that has been ported over to Linux, its other big selling point is In-Home Streaming, which will allow players to control and play a game from one system while the game itself runs from a second system. Thus, a person with a Steam Machine could play a Windows game from a Windows-based PC on the same network.

Also last year, NetherRealm Studios surprised many fans by releasing a port of Mortal Kombat: Komplete Edition to PC, thus ending a fifteen year drought of PC ports of Mortal Kombat games. Later in the year, they also released Injustice: Gods Among Us to PC as well. As a result, it would be fair to say that the next Mortal Kombat will likely eventually find its way to PC.

While both games are available for PC, they are only available for Windows. NetherRealm Studios have been mum as to whether they would support SteamOS. Assuming that they would not, I was curious: would a Mortal Kombat game be playable on a Steam Machine via streaming?

Recently, Valve brought their In-Home Streaming service into beta, and gave access to anyone who joined the group called Steam In-Home Streaming. One does not have to run SteamOS in order to stream; as long as you have Steam (with the appropriate betas enabled) installed on more than one PC on your network, you can stream between the two. I decided to give it a test.

For reference, I used my desktop PC and my personal laptop to conduct this test. My desktop PC is a custom-built machine with an Athlon II X2 245 (2.9 GHz) CPU, 6 GB of RAM, and an nVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti video card. The laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420 with an Intel Core i3 2350M (2.3 GHz) CPU, 4 GB of RAM, and integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000. Mortal Kombat runs close to console speeds on my desktop PC at 1080p, with the exception of arenas with a lot of activity in the background.

I ended up testing it three times, with different variations. In the end, the answer I came back with was, “At this stage, it’s not ready for prime time.”

Given my setup, the game ran extremely slow. The CPU is the biggest bottleneck; not only did it have to run the game, it had to push the game audio over to the client and re-render the video in the laptop’s resolution. The network speed matters as well; as slow as my game was, it was almost unbearable when I tested via wifi (802.11N). I ended up plugging my laptop directly into the router in order to get some semblance of a good test. Checking the Steam discussion communities shows that this is hardly an isolated problem.

Other problems can be explained away via glitches in the beta client, that may be fixed upon release. For example, my 360 gamepad was not immediately recognized, and did not work until I actually responded to a couple of prompts using the keyboard. In addition, the game does not cleanly exit; more than once I had to kill the streaming client process on the laptop to get it to exit properly.

To give everyone an idea of what the final results looked like, I used my iPhone to record the game playing a demo match streamed to my laptop.

In the end, I simply cannot recommend playing Mortal Kombat via In-Home Streaming. It runs too slow to be enjoyable; even people with hardware more powerful than what I am using have noticed the severe gameplay lag. Unfortunately, unless NetherRealm decides to port their next game to SteamOS, it looks like it won’t be feasible to play it on your Steam Machine.