Addition in an Already Crowded Arena

Made me laugh

2009-05-26T00:55:00.001-04:00

This made me laugh. Maybe because I'm a tremendous faggot? You decide:

One Year Later

2009-04-02T19:30:00.002-04:00

So, here we are. One year later.

A) Bought a house. Just picked one off the shelf. It was slightly premature, though. Houses around me are selling at a good 70% of what I paid for mine, and while I did get a tax "bonus", I gotta pay it back over the next 15 years. Had I waited until Jan 1st? All that bonus would be mine to keep forever. Oh well.

I DO like it though. It just demands an awful lot of attention. Maintaining and furnishing appropriately is turning out to be much more expensive than I anticipated... and take far more work. It's one thing to think about how things happen, it's another to actually do them.

B) BUSY work. I'm quite fortunate to have a good job in this economy. Real good. I'm making LOTS of money, too, more than I thought I would before age 30, so it's hard to complain. So, without a legitimate claim to complain, I won't.

C) Life is just sort of slowing down. With all the hectic stuff going on, the ME time is diminishing quite a bit. When a year goes by and I don't have more than just a few weeks memories of Me Time there's something wrong.

Eh, why bother.

Dumbasses

2008-04-02T18:56:00.002-04:00

Some dude/dudette has been spending ALL DAY with his PSP trying to snag a picture that I'm hosting since Google Images picked it up. They give up around 1am and tries on their computer until like 3am. Which picture?

This one of a Liru Tentacle Monster. Awesome pic or awesomest pic? Who knows.

But still... I'm shocked out of everything tried they haven't thought of just, well, you know, asking. Or even following a proper referral link to get it.

¯\(º_O)/¯

Dead Blog is Dead

2008-02-27T19:40:00.002-05:00

Yeah, well, so what?

Anyway, here are a bunch of gaming terms that I hate.

1) SKU. Fuck SKU. Cars don't do SKU, and there's a metric fuckton of those. "Hay, guess what? The new BMW X-series now comes in an optional 5 liter engine!" or "Hay, guess what? The new BMW X-series now has a new SKU with a 5 liter engine!"

2) RTM. Read the manual? No no, release to manufacturing. You only get to say this if you (a) are a game developer, (b) are a game project manager, or (c) work in a disc replication factory. Otherwise? IT MEANS READ THE [FUCKING] MANUAL.

3) Shmup. Shoot 'em up. Shooter. Shmup sounds like the poor slob you just spilled soup on.

4) Squeenix. Square-Enix. If you really need a shorter version, try Square, since it headed the acquisition.

5) Shiggy. He's not your pet dog and you aren't having beers with him on occasion. Shigeru Miyamoto in English. For the love of GOD.

That's all for that.

Anyway, check this shit out. It's called Drawball. Basically it's a big shared oekaki board. I tried it. I suck at art.

Last, I got new jewelry. A circular barbell. It's fucking huge. I'm nervous about wearing it in public. I think it might make an indentation on my pants. That's be kinda lulz.

u r mr. gay PART 2

2008-01-14T23:52:00.000-05:00

So, for the first Wii game purchase since June, I picked up Super Mario Galaxy.

What's that? No games I wanted to play? Not quite. There are plenty of games I wanted to play, I just didn't want to pay $50 a pop for them. I would have liked to FINALLY sit down with Twilight Princess and make it happen, see if it can make up for Ocarina without having so much open expanse of nothingness like Windwaker. Metroid Prime 3 really appealed to me for a conventional game taken to the controls (instead of a Gamecube conversion). Mario Party, Super Paper Mario, Cooking Mama, My Sims, NiGHTS, My Little Pony (ha ha, little joke there). I'm just not going to pony up $50 each for what , frankly, I'd be pressed to spend $40 for. PARTICULARLY the older stuff like Zelda (still $50) and Super Paper Mario (still half a Benjamin).

If you ask me, some DS games are pretty pricey, too. I know I don't have to pinch pennies but maybe I've seen too many games find themselves in the bargain bin at a 90% price cut. I mean, I can't even CONSIDER buying PC games most of the time. There are very very very few exceptions. And, yeah, there's always used but I try not to buy used if I can avoid it. Used games aren't exactly great for the industry and I like my games virgin, not ones with potential flaws and problems. I remember picking up a used copy of Klonoa and the 2nd to last level of the game has music that's got pops and cracks from a scratched disk that was filled in to not look scratched but was still damaged. By the time I got to the end I couldn't return it due to story policy, but even if I sweet talked the guy there I'd only be able to get store credit since they didn't have a billion copies of it around.

But I digress.

Always.

Anyway, SMG. I didn't like how it required me to upgrade the Wii. Once a system is compromised, in the past, there might have been protections in the game to detect the hacked hardware and refuse to run, but with live flashing, now it has the ability to brick itself. Live-flash systems are here to stay so I guess we'd better get used to it. Hence my "don't hack until you can get two if you run into problems" policy. I didn't do anything wrong to my system, but those forced upgrades just make me feel uncomfortable, like I need to pass inspection or something. And it would get carried on the flagship game of the past holiday season.

Of course, maybe the game uses some undocumented features that would crash without a shim in place on the system's OS? Still too cynical? Ok, maybe it uses some documented features in a strange way that could cause glitches if not patched. Ok, a little better.

But this is about the game, now, isn't it? Not the techno-politics behind it.

First, the graphics. Why do I start here? Well, because the graphics... ehhhh, I don't think they're that great. Starlit backgrounds and distant astronomical phenomena looked pretty bad, IMHO. Shading and coloring looks technically poor. In the opening sequence I saw filter aliasing almost as bad as the macro-blocking during Sunshine's opening video making me almost wish for video. The resolution isn't there (only 480p) so the next thing would be anti-aliasing and there just isn't any going on. It's not the first Wii game I saw that made me wish it was more of a graphical powerhouse, but, the high contrast really shows up poorly. Meanwhile, Sunshine didn't have a whole lot of high-contrast spots to show off the graphical limitations of the system.

Now, technical limitations aside, I love the art direction. Colors and effects are vibrant and fluid. I guess if you want to tie it in to the aforementioned problems, the framerate is almost always smooth as butter. I think I had maybe 10 seconds of slowdown within 2.5 hours of game play, not bad. The newer more organic look is tremendous while still doing artificial stuff really well. Halos, pseudo-fur, true reflections instead of just cube mapping, all really show off the attention to the shaders for a balance of look and performance. One of the first levels on a little bump-mapped cratered microplanet with holes in the surface leading to certain doom just impressed me tremendously with the look and the framerate.

Remember when cel shading was novel and new? And the kind of air it imparted to what might have been ordinary looking 3d games? It feels like that new spirit without the overly obvious gimmick of cel shading.

The sound is pretty good. With Galaxy, the potential exists for many different types of worlds and the music selected is perfect. Always. It doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, but, it's also not totally noteworthy. I pay super attention to the old-school fanservice tunes, as they were intended to do, but the rest of the tracks so far don't hold out that far. Which is the problem with audio fanservice to begin with. It doesn't irritate me, but I don't exactly see myself lusting for the OST.

Now, the controls. Muddy. The camera angles and art direction look to disorient the player quite a bit. And I LOVE the feeling. I haven't played a game that gave me the same kind of feelings that I get at the top of a roller coaster looking down anticipating the gravitational forces of which I would soon enjoy. Mario is upside down, he's left, he's right, it's like a camera control needs to be a full 360x360 control style, like the Novint Falcon. But they don't give it to you and, frankly, you don't need it. It's kind of annoying you don't always have camera correction ability, but I never really found myself using the C button to right myself.

It does a great job of portraying the feeling that things aren't right in the universe. It's a legitimate film-making technique, too, so it's no wonder it works. So what am I complaining about if I like the disorienting awkward camera angles and it suits the game perfectly (and they turn it off when inappropriate)? The directional stick. If you need 360x360 for a camera, you need it for motion. There are at least a few jumps and movements I needed to try a few times until I got the direction I wanted. I'm not sure if it's that I'm new at the game and need to learn at it or if it just really is that motion turns out to be based on your guestimate of direction, but, either way, it's not the tight little apple of a control scheme that I learned to appreciate in Sunshine, which I found tighter than 64. When you fuck up a jump in Sunshine, you know it's YOUR FAULT. Here? Uhhh, depends. It really feels like they robbed from Paul (classic control) to pay Peter (motion control).

For the record, I didn't hate Sunshine. I thought it was a fine Mario game and among the top Gamecube games. Easy. Personally, I think it's become "cool" to shit on Sunshine just like it's "cool" to gush over any polished turd named Zelda.

And I can't help but go back to the disorienting camera stuff. You're so close to the action sometimes it's not always obvious you can just walk off the edge and stick on the surface instead of plummeting to certain death. In general, Mario games tend to start with the camera close in so you can get the "ooh ahh" factor and then scale out slowly so that by the end of the game you can just see more of what's going on around you... which helps because there is just so much more that is out to kill you. Actually, now that I think about it, lots of games follow that camera-closeness pattern. So hopefully it'll correct itself as I get farther. For the time being, I've got plenty of lives and losing one or two there doesn't seem to punish too badly at least at this stage in the game.

That's about it. I'm enjoying it and I'll give the rest when I'm done with it.

What else is going on? Not much. Not at all.

*cough*
1) had a date with a stripper (yes another one) but she stood me up
2) phonesex with a 16 year old
3) swearing off of waffles for the rest of time.
*cough*

Like I said. Not much.

FAILGET

2008-01-03T23:48:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I recently checked out J-List again. No, it wasn't the advertising on 4chan. No, I didn't need some overpriced porn at a $1 to 250円 exchange rate.

I used to go there a lot, actually. I used to SPEND a lot there back in the day, actually. Like, 10 years ago actually. As a whole I just plain used to spend a lot on porn. A LOT. I've got like two years straight of every issue of Milky Drop. Huh? Oh, sitting in storage, naturally. Some I've never so much as removed the clear plastic cover on. I guess collecting and being a consumerist fuck was more important than seeing a bunch of porn, huh? Gee, I sure hope there isn't a golden ticket in any of them that I never redeemed for my free permanent harem.

Anyway, I stopped buying from him when I learned about how Peter Payne ruined Anime Expo one year when he picked up loli-hentai off another vendor's table and showed it to a Disney cop affirming that it was ALL the medium is. I don't remember the complete drama filled details other than it was enough to get a lot of showings canceled at the Disney-owned location at the time and pissed off a lot of people, and that he was no longer invited as a vendor from then on.

Anyway, during my last and regrettable trip to California for Anime Expo I was surprised to see him there and figured if the con can forgive him then surely I can. I bought something off him for way too much money and did manage to get it home without it being stolen from me, which is more than I can say for my original copies of Advance Wars DS and Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow (I had 100% in that one MOTHER FUCKING BITCH*).

(* I just got mad about it again just now. LOL. Look, I call myself a gamer, but as put so eloquently by Zero Punctuation's Editorial on Super Mario Galaxy ** , I have a life. So I'm not typically a 100% completion gamer. There are few (and VERY FEW) exceptions. Zelda 1, 2, and 3. Super Metroid. Megaman X series. Castlevania's "metroidvania" games. THAT'S IT. All ~~151~~ ~~251~~ ~~386~~ 493 Pokemon? Nah. 120 ~~stars~~ ~~shines~~ stars? Pshaw. Complete set of armor? If I can't buy it at the bazaar, nah. Unlock every song in DDR? Boi, don't make me bitch slap you. And with Castlevania DS the first 95% of collected souls were fun and easy but the next 4% were a grind and the last 1 was a pain in the motherfuck.)

(** I happen to disagree that there's no place else for Mario to go after space. The clear answer is time. Time travelling Mario, this time for real and not as some excuse to learn shit about history. And, when that happens, Mario either had jumped the shark, is jumping the shark, or will jump the shark, all within a one-game distance, as Sonic CD vs. Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 so clearly demonstrated.)

Anyway, time has come again that I need a 2008 wall calendar and had trouble finding the next Shirow Masamune calendar at the usual suspects. I've had the Masamune calendar every year since 2004. And, admittedly, the 2007 one sucked. The man draws anime women really fucking great: the way he blends CG and drawn art is amazing inspires me to pine over wanting to draw (which I can't). The 2007 one was too clusterfucked with series promotions and not so much illustrations. It was also a smaller format calendar with lower quality print on it so it just wasn't as good as the 2006 one. I blame it due to it getting picked up by Black Horse Comics instead of good ol' Tide-Mark. AND with that, it's probably because Shirow stopped illustrating? Maybe? I haven't heard of anything. The dude's probably making a fortune with his properties getting taken over and expended and kicking back some royalties. Oh well.

So the time has come to find a new calendar. But, who? What subject? I don't want an out-and-out porn calendar. Not clever enough. In searching, though, I found a Shirow Masamune 2008 calendar! Holy crap! At J-List! WOW! So I open the link and, nope, not there.

I remember way back in my [more] naive days I actually wrote them and informed them of the "problem". "I looked on page two of the doujinshi category and there's a VCD on there!" Even got a response back, too. "Uhh, we're looking into it." Little did I know that it was their version of the Amazon recommendation system: show something marginally related in the hopes that they will become educated and perhaps put items like it on their shopping list in addition to what they're browsing for. Searches usually had unrelated items thrown in for just that reason, too.

The trap, she had sprung. It was a page of calendars and, on the side, keywords for related projects. A pitiful SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, trick to get more hits than you otherwise wouldn't have. Counterproductive because if you search for something and it turns out to not really be there you won't buy anything else? Maybe, but I guess SOMEONE SOMETIME ago did that, didn't find what they wanted, but instead decided to buy a Hello Kitty cock-ring or whatever so from then on they continued to use that same tactic, quite similar to that original munged search/category trick.

Anyway, after the Firefox page search for Shirow Masamune and seeing it on the side, I scroll up and see what looks like a personals ad. ADS? ON MY INTERBUTTS?! I KEEL THEM ALL! Well, it turns out to be a true-affiliate ad, where the ad is literally hosted on the server whose page embeds them. Sounds strange, I know, but normal ads consist of pages with blocks sold to brokers who then find the ads to fill it with at that moment of time. This is a more conventional ad in which the site itself set aside the space for A SINGLE specific ad. Ah, the stuff you learn being a ex-full-time web developer.

So the personal ad had three japanese women writing about how they want to meet a new friend and practice English and all. I smirked and scrolled up and saw Peter Payne's face and a blurb about how it's really good or whatever so at that point I'm wondering what's so great about it.

Well, here it is: J-List Friends. Pretty amazing, huh? Thankfully for you, you don't need to think it's amazing or pretty much form any opinions whatsoever because I formed them for you.

Thank me later.

Dangerous Hacking

2007-12-31T01:58:00.000-05:00

Ok, so this Wii hack has hit Kotaku and it's pretty interesting stuff. I'm always hesitant to claim "oh, snap, it's hacked" because, really, until you get binaries in your hands and collaborated results you really can't say it.

Remember that the Wii controller uses standard Bluetooth technology, is capable of being tracked and interfaced on a PC, and video doesn't mean shit. I can very very easily produce such a demonstration on stage or in my own room with a multi-input AV switch, a Wii, a PC, a video doubler, two wiimotes, and the final broadcast device.

And the words are light on details. He goes into all this detail about the hardware and names of stuff, but the technique on how to munge the address lines and access higher memory was rushed through and covered up with some words and a hand gesture that I found rather suspicious. Definitely light on details.

That said, it's also worth mentioning that this is very similar to the technique used for hacking the DS and is probably the best argument against any system having a hardware backwards compatibility layer. That is, the DS was hacked thanks to it being built off of the original GBA hardware and the unavoidable shared hardware space, the GBA was hacked thanks to using pinouts to the classic GB/GBC cartridges* which are unavoidable to keep the hardware compact and robust and power efficient for delivering data to the execution hardwares (ARM7 and Z80). Even the PS2 is soft-hackable thanks to the way it handles PSX backwards compatibility.

* Except at different voltages, but, heh, that's easy to find out.

Three examples in 6 years (and now possibly a 7th) I think might just give the console hardware planners pause before including hardware backwards compatibility, particularly backwards compatibility to known cracked platforms.

Nintendo is actually in the best position to dump hardware compatibility in their 8th generation console. Since the Wii is the lowest powered of all the consoles, the next iteration could take the same hardware performance leap that, say, the Dreamcast took against the Saturn and perform all it's Wii/Gamecube compatibility in a software only hypervisor.

But, I guess we'll wait until the release of the hack comes out. I don't intend to do it to my system until I'm confident I can get another Wii without much fuss, personally. And I wonder when are companies going to just release sensible hobbyist programming kits at low cost to avoid having hackers try to fuck with their systems?

If Nintendo released a home dev kit for, say, $100 there would be no need for this kind of thing to develop. The homebrew people will be happy and Nintendo would be happy keeping people from openly developing an exploit that pretty much will immediately be used for piracy. Oh, that and stop making systems region-locked.

Holes & Fun

2007-12-18T19:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I had some drama last week and it's all FINALLY resolved.

Monday I went to a ~~strip~~ gentleman's club. We wore monocles and top hats playing Gin while drinking brandy. During our game, a young lass said asked towards me: "Why, sir, I hear you have the strangest of artifacts attached to your Richard. Might I fancy a peek?"

So while I was getting a really hard lap dance while she ground herself onto my [covered] studded penis, somehow, one of the balls came loose. I didn't realize the whole assembly popped out and ran away somewhere. I went to the bathroom and started pissing like normal except now I was pissing on my shoe. That's when I looked in horror at the urine trailing down the bottom hole onto myself where the metal plug was GONE.

HORROR

Nevermind I looked like a drunk who'd just pissed his pants. I excused myself as gracefully as I could and sped home.

Don't know if you're familiar with body piercings at all, but, for something only 6 weeks old, if you remove the metal the body will close up the hole and you'll have a hell of a time getting it open again. I was in a PANIC. The only thing going through my mind was "must get something in the hole."

I saw the digital meat thermometer probe. I saw the emergency cd-tray eject pin. I saw the box of paper clips. I saw the eyeglass repair screwdriver. I saw the Nintendo DS stylus.

Now, I don't have a DS Lite, but I DO have a few DS Lite styluses. I bought a pack of three because I dislike the one that came with my Archos 605 video player. THAT would have been a feat, heh. I had my spare conventional DS stylus and never quite found a use for it. It certainly isn't very comfortable to hold for too long a time.

So, yeah, I promptly inserted it into the man-made hole in my penis. It wasn't very comfortable... the texture isn't completely smooth. The plastic is pretty general surface smoothness, PLUS the tiny Nintendo logo and the almost invisible seam line (which, while not immediately visible, is most certainly FEEL-ABLE). OW OW OW.

There's the thing, it's exactly 4mm in diameter. And I don't really know how big my piercing is. The studio is sort of dodgy on that information, I guess so they could sell me more jewelry in the future. But, by gum, it fit. And if I pushed the tip out the end of the urethra it stayed in place, which was important.

And I slept with it there.

Next day I call out sick from work and head over to piercing shops. NOTHING is open in the mornings. It's rather irritating, actually, when you've got a piercing emergency. So the place that's open the earliest that does some piercing is Tattoo's by Lou. I've heard a lot of BAD things about them, but I figure I'd buy it, go home and boil it, and pop it in after it cools.

They didn't stock it.

I wound up having to go all the way to Coral Gables to pick mine up. The only piercing shop in town that would carry that sort of thing. And, heh, not only are these places never open in the mornings, but they're also never open ON TIME.

Anyway, he asks what size and I don't have much of an answer. I said 8 because someone I showed it to reckoned it was (she didn't measure it, just eyeballed it). So I got an 8 and put it on after sterilization and it worked ok. No discomfort, nothing. It wasn't quite as long as the other one which made erections slightly uncomfortable, but it's only temporary until I the one I ordered from the original studio got here. Also the balls were smaller and the whole thing was shiny stainless steel instead of the super-cool colored titanium one I had before. But, again, temporary.

Fast forward to this week. I FINALLY get the metal from the original piercer, in the original size I had. I excitedly try to swap and came to a horrifying conclusion.

Too big.

Or, rather, the 8 gauge was SMALL. Get that? 8 = small. Turns out I've got a SIX GAUGE PIERCING DOWN THERE. That's, like, whoa, dude. No wonder when I showed it to Jane (who has a totally awesome vertical nipple piercing of her own, and, clearly, would know a thing or two about piercings) went WHOA. So, yeah, evidently I'm a bad ass (and all this time I thought she thought my dick was super cool. Oh well.) and now in trouble because the hole has conformed to the smaller size over the past week.

When I removed the steel one, I confirmed my fears. Yep, the stylus was wider than it was. Now, in order to get the new jewelry in, which was my old jewelry, I had to somehow stretch the hole. I look again, and, well...

DS stylus saved me again. Inserting this time was even MORE OW than before. Really. Not only was it not smooth and with a logo and a seam, but it was stretching the hole back to what it was. O. M. G.

But, it sure saved my ass, in a manner of speaking. With a little lube and a little oomph and additional stretching the piece went in and I'm happy. Turns out, there's a little thing about reassembling the jewelry that nobody seemed to explicitly tell me: when screwing the ball onto the post, it will get tight. At that point, CONTINUE TO TIGHTEN. It will get loose again and at that point when it gets tight it's tight for keeps. It's like a lock. Really a clever design, I wish I knew how it worked since I just love knowing how shit works.

Anyway, that was the whole point of it coming undone to begin with. I didn't tighten further than the safety spot. But, dang, that DS was a damn good purchase. Especially ol' fattie.

T-T

2007-12-07T21:23:00.001-05:00

Got Metal?

2007-11-28T21:32:00.000-05:00

Ok, so, it's time to reveal my secret.

I got a piercing!

"But, I don't see it! Your ears are intact, so is your tongue and lips, and your eyeball is lacking in all that might be shiny."

'Coz it ain't on my head, silly.

Yeah, well, I guess it is pretty easy to guess by this point. I mean, if it wasn't my dick it'd be my nipples then, right?

It kicks ass, too. It's a curved barbell on a Prince Albert piercing. It's a cold blue titanium ornament. Did I mention it kicks ass?

It healed pretty good and I've got a handle over the etiquette of showing it. If you're my friend, it's ok to show you. If you're a stranger, it's ok to show you if it comes up in conversation, or in response to exposing a piercing of your own (that takes effort to expose, so, ears wouldn't automatically count). If a friend tells another person "you gotta see..." then, yes, they gotta see. If someone doesn't want to see, it's ok, too. I'd show it to boys or girls without prejudice. No one can make a habit of seeing it, and I'll just to play it by ear in that case if I think someone is exploiting my eagerness to show off how much it kicks ass.

Yep. Just thought y'all should know. Because I'm very very happy with it and, yes, it kicks ass.

I guess this makes me a LUCKY shithead

2007-11-21T00:02:00.000-05:00

So, ok, I'm not a big fan of the police. They don't really enforce the law unless they really have to. When I saw Tank Police for the first time (old reference, sure, but those Puma twins were HOT) I thought the bit about the Sarge stopping crime UP TO the job-securing minimum of X crimes a time period was funny but it's really the truth. Pigs spend too much time on crimes that don't harm anyone and not enough in the ghettos and underworlds to really stomp out the bad guys.

Cop gets shot not too far from work: they lock down the area and put checkpoints in everywhere and basically make life miserable for everyone for hours upon hours. Home invasion robberies and ordinary citizens getting shot? They'll send a unit but they won't promise much. Employees steal money from work and it's obvious it was them? Nah, not enough evidence, where's my donut?

Now, I did something shameful Sunday night. Yes, shameful. Please don't replicate it. I didn't intend to do it, it sort of just happened.

I drove drunk. Yes, I sure did.

Now, ok, I could have called a taxi. Not much sweat off my back for that. I just didn't want to leave my car there. Call me paranoid, but I don't like to intentionally put myself in positions of vulnerability. And leaving my car in a strange place overnight without me around is a vulnerable situation. (It'd probably all work better in a real city where you could WALK places, or with real public transportation.)

Anyway, I'm feeling rather inebriated but everyone assured me I still seemed as sharp as a tack. I piss, I get some gum, I drink some water, and I pull out. I can tell my reaction times are sluggish. I get on US1 and start going home.

While driving I notice these two cars in the gap in the median with lights off. I just glance and don't really pay attention until I see one car start moving and do a u-turn and get behind me at a light. I think it's a cop at this point. My heart starts pounding but his lights aren't on so it puts me a little at ease. I get a light, I go and turn and, 3, 2, 1, flashing lights.

OH SHIT. Game's over. That's it. End of the line for me. Here begins the end of my life as I know it. Some assholes get DUI after DUI after DUI and they're still on the road. Knowing my luck, I'll be the one they make an example of.

I start hyperventilating. I'm slightly psychotic about things happening to me that I could have prevented so I feel like bursting into flames. I could have taken another road home. I could have stayed there another hour. I could have gotten really really drunk and made someone call 911 for alcohol poisoning. ANYTHING.

Meanwhile the hyperventilation grounds me. I remember that it may lower the breathalizer. I remember what my father said about dealing with pigs: yes sir, no sir, thank you sir. THEN I think that the less I speak the less the chance he'd smell the Kamikazes on my breath.

I lower the window, he approaches and asks for license and registration. I was too gone to wonder why he didn't ask for insurance, but, you know, this or that. I hand him my license and fumble slightly with the wallet. I get my car book from the glove and zip it open deliberately but I knew my motor control simply wasn't there for me to be at my usual dexterity.

I hand him everything and he says he clocked me at 61 in a 45 zone. I open my shit mouth and say I didn't realize, and he goes back to his car with them.

OH SHIT again. He saw me open that book. He saw me fumble with my wallet. He could have smelled me speak. THE JIG IS UP. My life is over. I thought about how I'd be fired at work, how I'd be unable to get work ever again, how I'd be kicked out of the house, how I'd have to live in my car except I can't because my license would be revoked and the only place I could live is in my car while it's in impound. I'd have to sell all my worldly possessions to pay for the lawyer and I'll wind up losing the case anyway and I might as well kill myself or emigrate to another country.

I'm such a damn psycho but it's true. My adrenaline was pumping about as hard as it was when I _______ my ____ (I'll tell ya soon, don' worry).

He comes back with my stuff, hands me my ticket, and asks me to sign it. It's speeding. I'm to sign on the blue but I screwed up and started signing in the wrong place. He corrected my hand. I finished signing and leaves without any more word. I start putting stuff away and the lights turn off. He does a u-turn, presumably, to return to his hiding spot.

OH, uhhh, not shit? He let me go? He couldn't tell? Maybe he couldn't. Maybe I shouldn't think he couldn't. Maybe he knew and decided not to completely ruin my life. Maybe God, you know, the one I'm always harping about, took pity on me. But I was on my way.

And all I got was a $250 speeding ticket. I've never been so happy to get a ticket. Not happy enough to let it go without calling a ticket attorney, but, yeah.

Now, thing is: I'm not opposed to the designated driver program. Not at all. I've got lots of friends who don't drink at all and I love them and they would most certainly keep me company if I asked and they were available. BUT it feels lame to drink on my own. It's lonely.

It may sound strange, but I feel more lonely drinking with someone who isn't drinking than if I was just drinking alone. Like, I want to BOND with my friends and if they aren't participating in bonding it feels empty. So, I prefer NOT to have a designated driver. At least when it's them and no one else I know is drinking with me.

But that's all. The trick now is to just get drunk with my friends, you know, in the place I intend to spend the night. <3

Tenisu no Boifurendo

2007-11-13T22:25:00.000-05:00

I'm upset there are no new opponents above 2000.

I wonder if there will be a competition at a con anytime soon? :D

Ethos

2007-11-11T23:45:00.000-05:00

Since I got my toy (ahhh, NDA be damned), I've been looking for stuff to put on it. So far? Vast majority is anime, and of that most are fansubs. So, now's a good time to talk about how I feel about fansubs.

They are illegal. Not for profit? Check. Not available in English? Check. Doesn't matter. It's still illegal. You can justify it any way you want, as long as you're sending around video, it's illegal.

That said, it happens and trading happens and woe happens to companies that try to stop it. I mean, when was the last time a Media Factory Inc. property was licensed? I mean, it's usually in their [financial] interest to get licensed in other regions, but, if they really can't be bothered with it it's their prerogative.

My beliefs in a nutshell:
1) The original material is above all else.
2) Soft-subs are possible today and, therefore, the most desirable.
3) Stop distributing after release date is ANNOUNCED. This is different from just announcing that it's licensed. Fall '09 doesn't count either. Tell me what Tuesday the first volume comes out. This is to keep companies from licensing a series and holding onto it for ages as a legal grounding to get people to stop distributing.
4) If the release date slips more than 3 times, keep distributing until the actual release date arrives. Nobody likes liars.
5) If the release is censored, continue to release fansubs. See #1. Licensing company loses money? Too f'in' bad. They go out of business? No big loss. In the economic scheme of things, companies that do undesirable things should go out of business.
6) If the official translation is wrong or lousy, release the fanscripts but not the videos. Compromise, sir. Note if there has been censoring and editing the timings won't match up. Then, see #1 and #5.
7) If you got it and liked it, buy the series. If you didn't like it, don't worry about it. Reward those who do what you like and there's no need to be obligated to those you don't like.

That is all. This is me, stepping OFF of my high horse.

Fake Boobs

2007-11-06T19:39:00.000-05:00

Nah, no fake boobs. Got my silicone skins for the Wii today. Dang, these things are fugly. They also seem to lower the sensitivity when aiming on the screen... some of the front lens is covered with silicone. Of course, it could be that I'm not using it head on anyway.

I've got a secret. I'm not telling. At least until the 30 days are up. Sorry, but thems the rules. NDAs are funny that way.

Orange Box

2007-11-01T21:37:00.001-04:00

Given that Half Life 2 Episode 2 was the draw, I'm having a hell of a fun time with the two "bonuses" Portal and Team Fortress 2.

Since I finished Portal and there's not much left that I can do (speed runs aren't really my style, although minimal portals is fairly doable), I've been focused on TF2.

Ahem.

TF2 ROCKS, yo. I hate team FPS games, especially online only team FPS games, but Team Fortress 2 really is an awesome good time. One day I feel a particular way and I'm the ultimate Demoman, other days I'm the best buddy you'll ever want as a Doctor, sometimes I just kick ass as a Heavy.

BUY IT AND PLAY WITH/AGAINST ME, FOOLS.

Uh-huh

2007-10-17T20:37:00.000-04:00

Dear ZONIC505,
I did, in fact, follow your attention-attaching name-drop. I punched Kodomo no Jikan into my local torrent search.

That series is ALL sorts of wrong. And by wrong I mean WRONG. You are one sick puppy.

Sincerely,
Applekid.

>>

<<

(fukkin' saved)

Humor

2007-10-16T22:49:00.000-04:00

It's occurred to me that some people might need cheering up. So, here are my three favorite misogynistic jokes.

Oh, and, if you know me, you know that, seriously, I don't hate women at all. I love them. Very very much. But, you know, comedy is comedy. It's not that there's nothing I wouldn't do for a laugh, it's just that a laugh can do so much to make people feel better.

Joke 1:
A man comes home from an exhausting day at work, plops down on the couch in front of the television, and tells his wife, "Get me a beer before it starts!"
The wife sighs and gets him a beer.
Ten minutes later, he says, "Get me another beer before it starts!"
She looks cross, but fetches another beer and slams it down next to him. He finishes that beer and a few minutes later says, "Quick, get me another beer, it's going to start any minute!"
The wife is furious. She yells at him "Is that all you're going to do tonight! Drink beer and sit in front of that TV! You're nothing but a lazy, drunken, fat slob, and furthermore..."
The man sighs and says, "It's started..."

Joke 2:
A man took his wife to the rodeo and one of their first stops was the breeding bull exhibit. They went up to the first pen and there was a sign attached that said, "This bull mated 50 times last year." The wife playfully nudged her husband in the ribs and said, "See, he mated 50 times last year, once-a-week."
They walked to the second pen which had a sign attached that said, "This bull mated 120 times last year." The wife gave her husband a healthy jab and said, "That's more than twice a week! You could learn a lot from him."
They walked to the third pen and it had a sign attached that said, in capital letters, "This bull mated 365 times last year." The wife, so excited that her elbow nearly broke her husband's ribs, said, "That's once-a-DAY. You could REALLY learn something from this one."
The husband looked at her and said, "Go over and ask him if it was with the same cow."

NOTE: The husband's condition has been upgraded from critical to stable and the doctors say after two months of rehab and a couple more surgeries he will most likely be okay.

Joke 3:
Q. How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. THAT'S NOT FUNNY!

Pause

2007-10-13T15:39:00.000-04:00

The following games I have are on pause. They have yet to be completed, at least this time around.

SNES: Yoshi's Island (replay)
GameBoy: Pokemon Blue (replay), Warioland (replay)
GameBoy Color: Pokemon Silver
GameBoy Advance: Advance Wars 2, Sword of Mana, Final Fantasy IV (beaten, but not the extra stuff)
DS: Final Fantasy III, Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow (beaten, but cart containing my original 100% save was stolen)
Gamecube: Metroid Prime (replay), Ocarina of Time Master Quest
PS2: Final Fantasy XII, We <3 Katamari, Dragon Quest VIII, Final Fantasy X-2
PC: Thief 3
XBox: XMen Legends, Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball, GTA 3 (first play on this platform)
Wii: Blazin' Lazers (TG16 VC)

Here is my game queue. That is, games not started but slated to be started "eventually" and "in any order" and "with quotes". Replays are left out, but a new game ALWAYS have to contend with a replay.

N64: Super Smash Bros.
Gameboy Color: Pokemon Yellow, Pokemon Gold, Zelda Oracle of Ages
Gameboy Advance: Pokemon Saphire, Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI
DS: Castlevania Portrait of Ruin, Children of Mana
Gamecube: Metroid Prime 2, XIII, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Majora's Mask
PS2: Legaia 2, Unlimited Saga, Rumble Roses
PC: Portal, Half Life Episode 2
XBox: Munch's Odyssey, Prince of Persia The Two Thrones, Sudeki, Castlevania Curse of Darkness
Wii: Paper Mario (N64 VC)

Heh, my missions are cut out for me.

Huh? Oh, yeah, there's a new member to the family. I picked up both an N64 and an XBox over the past few weeks. My game infrastructure just keeps growing! Not to mention games I would like to play and don't have.

It ain't easy, but, if it was, my list would be much much sorter.

u r mr. gay

2007-10-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

It's only got three posts but I think it's hilarious. Obviously it's satire. My favorite part? "AAA+++"... like a game is an ebay seller or something. LOL.

Also, I bought a toy. Yep, totally. It's a secret, though, until it actually gets here. It's backordered.

A) No, it isn't a sex toy.
B) No, it isn't a flash card.
C) No, it isn't a mod chip.
D) No, it isn't a unicorn (see also A).

Super happy bonus points for guessing what it is before I announce it.

In other too-late news, my high school reunion was last week. Heh, no, I wouldn't be caught dead going to it. Fuck the fucking fuckers. There's no one I want to see and anyone who wants to see me is misguided and clinging on to a fiction. Besides, I know who my friends are... even if I don't get a chance to hang out and chill or talk every day. :)

(btw, if I haven't so much as spoken with you over the phone in the last two months, be more aggressive in seeking me out. Show me you care.)

In more other news, I'm an executive producer! A PORN executive producer. No, really. I bought into a porn flick and am funding it. You know, like an investment. I'm supposed to get a handsome cut of sales for as long as it sells. Honestly, I'm just hoping to break even. Porn is a crowded market but, hey, at least I help fuel the fire.

And, that's it. With each passing day I get a little less boring.

Also, this episode synopsis made me laugh. And the anime ain't too shabby, either.

Wh-- where's my stuff?

2007-10-01T21:41:00.000-04:00

I'm mourning a little today. I lost a whole bunch of ROMs.

I'm not sure how it happened, actually. In fact, I might have lost them before on my last hard drive snafu and just didn't realize that it took my ROMs down with it, so, I'm mourning AGAIN for my data loss.

I had every single GB and GBC game dumped. No, you don't understand. Every. Single. Cartridge. Ever. Produced. Like, did you know Super Mario Land 2 had three different versions? Pokemon Yellow had three different versions? Other games had multiple versions, too. They're essentially the same game but with slightly more optimized code, slightly more fixed, another release for a different save memory spec, another release for Player's Choice, etc etc etc. I had it sorted by platform (GB,SGB,Dual GB/GBC, GBC), sorted by territory, everything. All verified I had a raw dump and a trimmed dump for each rom.

And now it's gone, or, rather, I just realized it's gone. I mean, yeah, I could download them again but it'll never be as nice.

What caused me to reach this realization? I pulled my flash carts out of storage. I had driver issues and spent the last few days working it out. Literally a few days.

The trick with flash carts is that the companies releasing them try to hide away from public scrutiny. Thank goodness there are underground communities that hold reputation above all else so we can keep track of what sucks and what doesn't. (I remember a bunch of Flash2Advance clones out there that were really shitty, and PocketHeaven was the first place to really detail how to spot them in the wild.)

Turns out the drivers don't work under XP like they used to and I couldn't uninstall them because of the way XP shadows system files and to make a long story short my broken laptop turned out to be the key to get the program to write GB and GBC games on it so I can play them with the native GBC bridge. Now, the laptop is broken and the screen gives me a headache, but it works at least. Writing GBA games on the flash card with alternate programs works wonderfully so I'm not too upset.

So I go to set up my GBC games and I realize I can't find them. I do a global search on my machine and, BZZZ, gone.

Please please, a moment of silence. Too bad I don't have the time to redownload everything soon. Maybe in a few weeks.

Awesomeness

2007-09-30T00:18:00.001-04:00

In other news, why don't I have anything interesting to talk about lately? YOU TELL ME!!!

Told Ya.

2007-09-20T12:32:00.000-04:00

Don't say I didn't predict this one.

iPoddery

2007-09-07T18:13:00.001-04:00

Well, the new iPods for this year are announced so here is my opinionated and self-serving, er, opinions.

The new iPod Nano makes me wanna shift in my pants. Yes, the f is in shift and it's appropriate. It's kinda cool having video on it, but, video two inch screen? For comparison, the Game Boy Micro has a 2 inch screen so it's probably doable. Still, though, it's probably the lower end of the watchability spectrum.

And, ahhh... who'd want video with only 8 gigs of space? I mean, I've filled up the 4 gigs with the original Nano annoyingly. With 8 gigs I'd be all set, I think... but no extra room for movies. It's a real pity they're not releasing a 16 gig Nano with video. Yet anyway. Clearly they reserved the 16 gig version for the iPod touch, the new touchscreen iPod (think iPhone minus the phone). Which is MORE of a pity because I don't like having to look at a device in order to control it. I can use my Nano without looking at it too much, with one hand and the thumb of that hand.

Plus the video out doesn't work with the classic video out cabling for some shitty reason. Apple's going the ol' lockout-chip path. Shame on them!

Since there's no love in Apple for me, then, I'm waiting for a flash 16 gig Archos with a car adapter. Then again, there's always a Zen. Those are fairly popular, aren't they? (Popular, while not important to me, is important for prevalence of accessories.)

Delicious Copypasta

2007-09-03T09:57:00.000-04:00

Why do we hate furfags? I'll tell you why. They have taken a fetish and turned it into a lifestyle. See the faggotry here? Some people have foot fetishes but you dont see them walking around dressed as feet now do you?

Also you're blatant ass-fuckery is annoying. And I dont mean because you are fags. I mean your tendency to come into a place where you KNOW you are hated and say Hey! Im a furry! Dont 'fersecute' me! THATS RETARDED. Its like a gay man walking into a country redneck bar and saying HEY! IM gay, please dont kill me! Or a man walking into an all women on the rag all the time bar and saying Hey! I have a penis! Its all just retarded BULLSHIT! So you have a goddamn fetish, SO DO I. I dont walk around in handcuffs all day dripping hot wax on myself and say its a lifestyle.

You wanna wear your stupid suits and have bisexual orgies and pretend you are fucking animals because APPARENTLY you want to fuck animals, go right ahead, just do it in private, Damn.

Some posts never leave you. For those that don't and not because they are offensive to the point of emotional scarring, there's ones like these.

A little thingie before work

2007-08-15T08:16:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I see something that makes me snicker for more than a couple on minutes. This is one of them.

(I actually had a microwave with similar layout (minus the temperature dials) for a while as a child, so, I can attest that the button in question is not actually do what the music implies it does. Then again, it wasn't an oven.)

Yasumi so sue me

2007-08-12T22:00:00.000-04:00

So I spent a few hours yesterday at Yasumicon and here are my opinionated, uh, opinions.

Location: A downgrade for the con it's now held back at FIU. They did a much smarter job in organizing this year as opposed to the first year keeping everything within two adjacent buildings, and got lucky with the weather and hurricanes. So, it saved them some money and it worked out ok so that's good.

So, with the extra funds available, what was done with them?

Organization: Not one of the things that got increased funding. It's really annoying to go to a con for some fun only to have fuckheads everywhere in zombie-mob mentality. Event at GL-100. Cool, nice big room. Easy to get to. But... there's a "lobby" area inside the building that nobody bothers to keep clear. People just amalgamate these like a clogged artery. This mass of humanity just makes confusion. Is it a line? Is it a mob? Is the door closed? "What's going on here?" is a frustrated question when nobody else knows either.

There was very little signage pointing where things are relative to you. And while everything's physically close together the path to get there isn't so obvious. And with clogs everywhere it's not always obvious where everyone is going, either. They failed to control the area, if you'll excuse the military expression. Lining up for an event? Put a volunteer there to keep the line out of the way. Put some signs up. I might say they didn't know the volume of people that would come but, yeah, they know since it's not their first year.

Events: They had standard events less one: costume cafe. THAT is a fantastic idea and I hope it really picks up in other cons. It's pretty obvious now that I think about it, but no con's ever done it before (that I know of) so it's one of those really clever ideas. But, it gets smashed by organization. The signs scattered about don't really say much about how it works.

The viewing room was weird and the showing of Haruri, a licensed anime, was in rather poor taste, in my opinion, since it goes against the spirit of fansubs. There were other anime on it that I'd never heard of which is a good change from last year. BUT, there was only one viewing room. It ought to be a mix of known and unknown anime in each, by genre, to give people something familiar and introduce something new. It's more a style thing, actually. But, where's the schedule? You had to go to the room to find out. I guess it's the way it goes since they didn't print programs but, really, they should have.

Similar with the game room. All competition for one day was fighting games except for ONE military/team one. Everything else fell into the next day. No variety. Too cookie cutter.

Aside from those, the other events weren't too appealing to me. A lot of them felt like filler and junk (Parent's Guide to Anime?! How to start an anime club?! LAME-O). Like most conventions, the fan participation is very cosplay/costume biased. But that's just the way it is. Dealer room and artist showcase together in one room was a BAD idea. Both are big draws and the room was a mess. There is no crowd management in [what should be both] rooms, so, it's best to leave good spaces and let people figure it out. Except, the booths were really close to the walls so it was nearly impossible to navigate without shoving and pushing. And the problem with the campus is that you can't leave a lot of doors open and shitty people being shitty will usually flood a doorway with one direction and nobody will open any additional doors... and when they do people swarm to keep shoving. I knocked at least a three people to the ground unapologetically for being assholes. But that's more likely a Miami thing than anything else.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. They gotta start charging.

Now this is an unpopular opinion, I know, but it solves a lot of issues.

A) Keeps the fuckheads away. Some people are there to gawk and take up space and oxygen because they've got nothing else to do. If you gotta pay you already want to be there.
B) Gain funds for interesting events. Pay some guests like the other cons do. Then maybe you'll get bigger names than Sonny Strait, and ones perhaps that aren't trying to promote other things other than just being a cool guest.
C) Use payment due as "lure" for additional volunteers. Other cons do it. Volunteer to work and you get in for free. Then they'll have plenty of workers to keep things in line.
D) Go bigger and better with each successive year. Backtracking to FIU? Poor form. The indians weren't that great to you last year so you find another hotel. It shows confidence in the art and the con.

I'm just saying. Huh? I think I can do it better? Not by myself, obviously, I'd need a horde of minions following my every command and fund raising efforts. But I'd build my own con.

With hookers. And blackjack. In fact, forget the convention.

Time to Lose Credability

2007-08-10T18:36:00.000-04:00

I like the Megaman Legends series.

The Many Flavors of Fanservice

2007-08-04T17:17:00.000-04:00

I hereby will rock the anime community by debunking fanservice.

Origin: I've noticed a correlation in my anime viewing habits. I don't wind up really gravitating to series with a whole lot of gender-bending and homosexual stuff. I'm not casting judgment on it, mind you, I just don't dig it. BUT, it's not because I actively seek out non-gay material.

Likability: For me to like an anime, I have to give it the two episode test. The 2ET, as I'm going to call it from here on out to be more scientific sounding by confusing you with acronyms, stems from anime usually only coming in two episodes per tape. Now with DVDs, the first volume usually contains three or four so sometimes I revert to that yet still call it the 2ET. That means I give an anime a very limited window of opportunity to hook me. Some people may poo-poo this idea since 2 episodes out of, say, Maison Ikkoku represents only 2% of the series. I respond by flinging back that poo and stating that good storytelling is good storytelling regardless of the length it is. Bad storytelling most certainly becomes evident within two episodes. Example: Ping Pong Club.

Thing is, some people are REALLY into gay material. Like the story doesn't matter insofar as there is girls into girls, boys into boys, and boys that look like girls and vice versa. To be fair, I like things ecchi. So I'm willing to be more forgiving on a bad anime that's dripping with ecchi stuff, much like someone into gay would be more forgiving.

Traditionally, fanservice has implied "ecchi" materials. You know, nudity, panty-flashes, raunch, the works. But I've seen through the smokescreen. Calling it "fanservice" is a way to marginalize it and avoiding finding a rational reason to dislike it. Thing is, if you don't like ecchi in your anime, that IS a rational reason. The colloquialism fanservice was used so that it wouldn't seem petty.

When I told you I don't like gay-heavy anime, you thought it was pretty petty, didn't you? You probably equated some of that with being a homophobe (which anyone who knows me can easily tell you I am NOT). "Give it a chance," you might have said, somehow thinking that the inclusion of gay and androgyny somehow instills a halo of good taste upon a series.

It's the Gay Cowboys Eating Pudding effect. Independent, artsy films use gay and lesbian themes to garner an audience of people who might not really be interested and exploit that community to lend authority and "art status" upon them. If *I* were gay, I'd be offended by exploiting my lifestyle for a marketing tool.

Results: So, that's how it started. Rejection of the word "fanservice" for ecchi, when, in reality, there's lots of fanservice that occurs in an anime at conception based on what audience they wish to get. Ecchi draws in the 12-25 male crowd, Gay draws in the 12-25 female crowd, Violence draws in the 8-22 males, cute draws in the 8-22 females. Each aspect explicitly chosen to get each audience group to impart that Subject Matter Halo (SMH) within the 2ET, regardless of number of episodes for the test.

And, no, I'm not "above" it. I get snookered in like everyone else. But you don't have to be above it to recognize it's existance. Armed with that detail, you no longer have to rely on "fanservice" as a catch-all to voice disapproval with ecchi. Now you can say, comfortably and with my blessing, "I don't like the ecchi stuff." It's ok. That way those that DO can maintain the dignity of partaking in entertainment suited for them.

All in all, it's one of the cardinal rules of my congregation: don't be a fucking snob.

To balance things, here are some reference materials for adjusting the scales. Disagree with the scores? Don't know: it's a vacuum out there.

	Costume	Gay	Ecchi	Violence	Cute	Emo	Deep	Romance
Neon Genesis Evangelion	6	3	4	7	2	9	7	4
DNA^2	6	1	7	2	5	5	4	6
Sakura Diaries	3	1	8	1	3	6	2	8
Those Who Hunt Elves	7	1	6	4	6	3	1	3
Dragon Ball Z	6	1	2	8	1	4	1	2
Card Captor Sakura	10	6	4	4	9	2	3	5
FLCL	4	1	8	6	4	6	4	7

More SPACE

2007-07-31T19:15:00.001-04:00

I stretched out my template for more space. HOORAY ME!

Never let it be said I'm deaf to requests

2007-07-30T22:49:00.000-04:00

It's really amazing. 100% of my readers hunted me down today and requested a final review of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. Amazing! Clearly by influencing 100% of my audience I could get cats and dogs to live together, furfags to shake hands with Xbox 360 gamers, and bring peace to the middle east. You know, major shit.

Unfortunately 100% of my readership is male. What a sausagefest.

Anyway, here we go.

DDMS as a game is about average. The big how-do-ya-do about touching little girls aka. witches isn't too scandalous and all a relatively small percentage of actual gameplay. I can't read Japanese, but I'm used to dating sims enough that I can pretty much tell what's going on. That said, I didn't read much of the text at all. From a scale of 1 to 12, I'm easily pre-embryonic with my Japanese.

You'll notice I'm not much of a weeaboo. That's because I don't like mixing my languages and I don't like romanji since that's simply not how they read or write over there. Like those English lessons for Spanish speakers that spell words phonetically, if it helps YOU learn that's great. But it wouldn't help me learn which is fine since those spellings are just wrong anyways.

So the plot, as I gather, is that you run into an apprentice angel and have to track down these witches at your school. Why? I dunno. If you put a gun to my head I'd say it's because the queen angel asked them to be gathered up. Why? Just think about any anime and you'll be three steps away from figuring out how nefarious the plot can be.

Anyway, a lot of the early game involves catching your target in certain locations on the map. Locations lock and unlock themselves throughout the course of the game, difference of which is either gray or in color respectively. Each of those locations has "rooms" which also may lock or unlock, except that unlocked rooms have circles on them and locked ones simply don't show up. Unlocked circles can either have a character face on it for an event or just a ! to look around and collect pandas.

Pandas? Yeah, I don't know either. There's a whole bunch of them hidden in the game. I assume something good happens when you find them all but I'm only about 65% collected. After you finish the game you can restart it with your same panda counts and find the other ones. I could have sworn that ones are around that I would have gotten before so many it's intentionally to get to you replay it. If it is intentional, BAD DEVELOPERS, BAD BAD DEVELOPERS!

Now, there's pretty much the bulk of the game. Follow clues and wander the school and township to find events and catch damning evidence against the witches. To my disappointment not one piece of evidence is a flying broomstick. If you have a fetish about witches and broomsticks and witchcraft and that sort of thing: black nail polish, sultry bodies of evil, sitting on a broomstick in oh-so-unladylike-a-manner, you'll be sorely disappointed. Closest I saw was a demon circle etched into a desk. How, uh, subtle.

Anyway, like games of this type, the core mechanic is finding those event spots. But there really isn't a lot of attention paid to when things open. There ought to be some kind of eyecatch to let you know, for example, the shopping center opens up. Sometimes, also, two events are available but once you do one the other no longer is. Typical fare for the type of game, yes, but I'm also used to having a metric fuckton of save game slots to do a tree-comb* of the game. DDMS only includes three. Then some non-event spots can turn into an event. I assume the text provides hints as to what happens where, but you've got that panda quest to worry about too. Sometimes if you get into a non-event spot to investigate the event markers will disappear.

* Tree-comb is what I call the technique of finding everything in a game of this kind. Imagine a tree (mathematical tree) where the root is where your first decision lays. You save (set a bookmark) there and take the top choice. Then you keep playing the game selecting top choices for all decisions, saving before each. When the game finishes, load up your saved games in reverse order and hit the next save. So, if the game had three decisions of two options each, your game would go: Save A, #1, Save B, #1, Save C, #1, End, Load C, #2, End, Load B, #2, Save D, #1, End, Load D, #2, End, Load A, #2, Save E, #1, Save F, #1, End, Load F, #2, End, Load E, #2, Save G, #1, End, Load G, #2, End. Complicated? Not really, it's perfectly logical. I'll leave the math to you... but it does get more complicated since a lot of times each path has a different number of decisions and you'll need a LOT more than just three decisions to make a good game. And with a game mechanic like this, it's usually a good idea to mix it up a little bit with some stuff that breaks the rules, like minigames. Although minigames shouldn't accomplish anything that the natural branching can't since you can't use a sub-mechanic to overthrow the main mechanic as that indicates broken gameplay. But all that's left for a bigger discussion on games.

Another annoyance with the room-to-room stuff is that as you gain allies each person has the potential of investigating a room. In practical terms, though, most of the time they're grayed out so it's not very frequently. And when you do have all people available a lot of times there's a room puzzle that for some reason only one person can solve. It makes room exploring pretty tedious at times and, like tree-combing, makes you wish you can just back up a little and try it again with someone else in case you stumble upon the solution early.

Back to the game. Between the general game and the touching there's a fight with a witch. In Megaman style you get to use prior level's witches to join your fight and use their abilities to help you. And, much like Megaman, when you've got their abilities you don't get access to the overwhemingly powerful ones. The fight is pretty action packed (and could be pointed to as a minigame that breaks up the main mechanic with molesting the "reward" for that level of the difficulty curve). For most moves, the stylus is dragged a small length to swing a sword or claw and that usually reflects enemy attacks. Other enemy attacks need a few hits. It's nice that the slash actually follows the motion so if you have, say, two energy beams flying at you, you could slash a line marginally longer than the minimum line between the beams and reflect both. You can also tap and hold to charge up for your secondary attack.

Most of the moves are pretty basic: slash, projectiles, and that's about it. Each one has different traits to make one more useful than others. There's a fire-shooting mode that hits the enemy over and over in quick succession and keeps them stunned as long as you have magical energy left. There's a projectile attack that curves severely like hitting a golf ball off center to get around barriers. There's a weaker but faster slash attack and even a supreme meteor raining terror down on your foe. TAKE THAT! SUBMIT! SUBMIT! SO I CAN TOUCH YOUR JUBBLIES!

So after you've beat them down now you gotta make them join your harem. Touching mode is pretty disappointing, but as expected for a CERO C game. Where a Z game would clearly have you touching all her goodies to get her to expose her witch mark and, hence, take her as an ally. It's got it naughty moments like bouncing the witches boobs or touching her in quasi-sexual places like just below the bottom edge of a tiny skirt, backs of her hands, shoulders, cheeks, ears. The combination of spots are occasionally a little weird: I had a friend looking over my shoulder while I was touching Maho, the first suspected witch, and I wound up touching in succession her ears, arms, shoulders, and legs.

Can't touch the same place in a row and have it count so you gotta move around a lot to do things. There's a lot of dead spots of non-interactivity that don't help your score but don't hurt it. There's also negative spots that squelch your progress: if you manhandle some boobies most of the witches immediately raise their guard and you lose a lot of progress... meaning that catchy boob bounce you can do by flipping the stylus over a bust usually costs in points for the round. It's easy to know when you're doing well, though, as a little heart will float up from where you touched her. Even if you don't know what you're doing you'll stumble through all the witches except for one or two that are kinda hard figuring out what their focus points are.

There are multiple tools but it's a joke. That's the biggest disappointment. You can touch, "stare" at a spot, or blow on a spot. They all function the same way in the game except the blowing is done by blowing on the microphone. Aside from the input, all the control points are the same! I thought things like "oh, the lips, I could try pointing at her lips and using it" only to find that it doesn't help and acts exactly the same as the other tools. So much potential squandered. The only mixups are as the witches get certain levels of excitement they change positions. This does change the control points in a physical sense but not a logical sense: you still have to tap an earlobe but now it's over there on the screen. It's all lead by the witch's excitement level: you can't just decide to flip her around and try the back, for example. I'm curious how much is the development team's fault and how much is self-censorship to make sure they didn't get a Z rating.

There's also a "flirt" command which raises her excitement a lot for relatively little work (just tap the button). Much like all-or-nothing magics in Final Fantasy, it usually works in the beginning but becomes a useless gesture all the time in late game. You can also present your physical evidence in this mode and it seems to make your poking and prodding more effective... I guess because they get demoralized trying to deny their witch marks.

Aside from the briefly mentioned booby bounce, there's not much dirtiness to it: I'd feel ok handing it over to a 12 year old to mess around with. It's a little dirty but really not much different from a Gainax bounce... although clearly not as powerful as the famous G-Bounce. There were some cheeky moments, like picking a crystal shard out from between the nurse's ample busom. And some moments I wish I could forget like wiping the sweat off of the little sick boy (bleh).

Artwork though is top-tier, as expected for a well funded game. There's not much in the way of animation, though, so it would have to be good or else it would lose all credibility. Audio is unremarkable. When they announced a soundtrack was to be released a month after launch, I figured, wow, the music must be pretty good. There are two great songs and the rest is just filler. Audio acting is very nice, but it gets repetitive which is why I always say you can't catch-phrase audio clips in games because they're always irritating. (Navi: "HEY")

All in all: average. Going in I knew it wasn't going to be all filth so I'm not disappointed. 3800 Yen is fine, but after currency conversion and shipping it wasn't a great value. Then again, that price didn't break me or make me alter my life in any way so I don't think of it.

There. That's my LAST Majo post. This time I promise. Unless I start getting some chicks in my readership. Then whatever they want me to do I will do. <3

In other news, I didn't know I was someone people should be afraid of:
Anonymous on FOX11

(noteworthy video replies: This one (despite shitty watermarking) and Trap getting scolded by security LOL.)

More Audition

2007-07-26T23:27:00.000-04:00

The other day I did my personal best in Audition and I wanted to share it with you.

It's not so much a "personal best" since I tend to think in terms of percentage of perfects but it's the highest score I've gotten when there's pros at levels 20+ playing against me. Since I got lucky with some chains, yah yah.

Audition scoring is very generous to those who chain well and occasionally I do. Then again, the more perfects you get, statistically speaking, the better your odds of chaining. Why?

If I'm getting 50% perfects in a song, then that means the odds of getting a chain of 6 is .5^6, or 0.015625, or 1.5%. Suppose I get 80% perfects. Then the odds of getting a chain of 6 shoots upwards to 0.262144, or 25% chance I can get a chain of 6. And even with the way scoring gives bonuses for chains, x5 is still pretty good even if I don't make it to x6. The best I've ever gotten was x9. I nearly cried real tears when that happened.

If I didn't already seal up my tear ducts with spackle.

It's not only statistics, mind you. You still gotta get the arrow sequence. But I still see improvement in my game and it's exciting.

Kind of like how I blazed through from Light to Heavy in DDR. Those were the days... constant improvement so I know my practice is going somewhere. Nowadays I'm limited more by physical ability than reading and moving ability. The learning curve hit a pretty high slope for me. But Audition? Still shallow enough to keep me truckin' along.

Then again, it helps that there are other human players, many of which are worse than me, since it helps me keep top ranks and encourages me to stick around and play more. Nobody likes to constantly lose, after all.

So, yeah, here it is.

Your money is now our money

2007-07-24T23:05:00.000-04:00

I hit 20 pounds lost today. Actually, this is the third time I've hit my "20 pounds lost" marker. Ha ha. Did I mention I like yo-yos? I feel good, yes I do, even though I've essentially been eating out of cans and bags for the last 6 weeks*.

* Not entirely true. I've also been adding fresh fruits and veggies and skim milk and bread and peanut butter. Hooray peanut butter!

Been playing Final Fantasy XII lately. The game engine? Playable, I guess. It's very MMORPG-ish, which is too bad since they didn't take it that far.

Well, no, I DON'T want an MMORPG Final Fantasy. There are things called "ego" and "uniqueness" and "universal influences" that make console RPGs so cool. The world hangs in the balance, for example. The continent of blah blah is destroyed and it's not part of a GM event or a patch but as a result of something YOU did.

MMORPG land: Frogloks have taken over Grobb. It just happened one day overnight with a patch. Maybe it was (all of a sudden) overwhelming force. Maybe it was some powerful ally or mysterious item that "somehow" got into their hands. Contrived. The move was made by design of the developers and players did not influence it one iota.

Console RPG land: Frogloks have taken over Grobb. You finished a quest for the Froglok factions giving them a powerful item. It was in exchange for the war with the Trolls to end but they double-crossed you and your people and have used the power of the item to turn the tide of power. Betrayal! The move was made by design of the developers and triggered exactly when you did it.

What I would LOVE to see is a true MMORPG/Console RPG hybrid. It can work, too. Ask me how. *WINK*

Lets just say that if I had the time or the money to support myself on this endeavor for the years it would take, I could completely design an RPG engine with all the dynamics and fun of a MMORPG raid along with the "instanced yet still dynamic" world of a console RPG. I hesitate to give it away because it really will be next-generation MMORPG technology. 9 million WoW players? Ha.

Enough dick-waving. No, wait, I'm not done. *wave wave wave* There, that should do it.

Sorry about that, lady, must have had some semen still dripping out of it. Damn my mutant ability of shooting seed across a room. My best has been an impressive 12 feet, btw. Fuck TMI.

Anyway, this is funny. It's begging for In The Groove steps. I'm totally cereal.
(And before you get cute, I've got lossless audio of it, so, don't make them without consulting me first to get an .ogg authored.)

The Old Switcheroo

2007-07-19T08:16:00.000-04:00

My favorite part about some asshole that runs Subeta stealing my bandwidth by directly linking to files on my server through his?

Replacing the file with Goatse's hello.jpg. Enjoy, furfags!

Manx: 1
Furfag: 0

this means WAR

2007-07-11T18:27:00.001-04:00

This is pretty funny. People are awesome sometimes. ^^-b

Poem

2007-07-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

Just a quick poem for you because I'm bored out of my mind.

Don't blame me
If now it hurts when you pee.

Thank you, thank you, you're a terrific audience.

Last DokiMajo post, honest!

2007-07-05T07:22:00.000-04:00

I considered putting together a video of some gameplay, but, nah, I knew someone else would do it.

It's kind of like open source software. Sure you could open it up and fix bugs and implement new things... but, if you wait long enough, someone else will do it.

I'm not lazy: I just value my time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=137JpVe9lSY

Of course, the game isn't all molestation. It's got dating game elements pretty much all over it. There are a bunch of predefined locations on campus (and town) that get unlocked due to various events and you can find people at certain times in certain locations. One of the tricks is to find evidence of witchcraft: a book of spells, shards of a crystal ball, animals that recognize their friend regardless of what shape they take. Well, the stereotypical witch paraphernalia is what I recognize anyway. It's definitely hard to play in Japanese if you don't know it. Thankfully this exists in a pinch, especially when all I have to go on is a stroke count because I'm such a n00b.

I'm about 2:40 hours into the game, not reading any text, so I'm guessing I'd be 4:10 into it if I could read it. I'm stuck now, after a series of answer trees so I wonder if I got myself stuck and if there's anything I can do to get out of where I am. So far, it's an amusement.

There, that's it. I promise no more talk about this stuff. Ultimately it really isn't THAT interesting or relevant. I just like this for a blog theme of late.

IT'S HERE

2007-07-02T22:09:00.000-04:00

Well, sort of. I gotta run out to the post office and pick it up. If my lazy vacationing goober-of-parents would have opened the door for the mailman I would have had it a full 3 days in advance of street date. (I simply must remember to import from Play-Asia again in the future... maybe I should join their affiliate program and ~~trick~~ convince my friends to buy from there.) Meanwhile I've got to lie, cheat, and steal my way out of work to do the deed.

What am I talking about?

DUH

In other news, there is no other news.

Corrections and Apologies

In this post back in late May I suggested that MCSD is killing my soul. Well, it's killing something alright: my will to finish it. My correction is that, as a minister, I should know that a soul is eternal. Sorry folks... 40 whacks with a wet noodle for me.

In this post also from May, I used an awkward sentence structure at the end of the post: "So, if you've been consciously trying to convince yourself that you don't, don't feel guilty that you had dreams about me, ladies. XD" As it turns out, that was me trying to overly manipulate a sentence to achieve maximum Funny. Generally, for comedy writing, your punchline should be as close to the end of a sentence in a block of speech or text as possible. I won't go into WHY (maybe some other time), but I did it badly. The sentence was then confusing and didn't flow well at all. Henceforth: I hereby apologize to women everywhere for being so damn sexy.

Way back in December of '05 I made a speech claiming that the Holocaust is a myth. In no way did I mean to belittle the death of six-million Jews world-wide at the hands of the Nazi regime. It was all just a big misunderstanding. I was to give a speech about kittens but some joker replaced it. The crowd's reaction, though, was so awesome I just ran with it. I hope you all understand.

Racist Weekly

2007-06-29T23:28:00.001-04:00

I haven't linked to anything racist lately. I'll fix that in a jiffy.

ALL DokiMajo ALL the TIME

2007-06-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

7 days until a great evil is unleashed upon the world. WITCH TOUCHING GOODNESS.

Ha! Check out this video being played in stores in Japan. (Yeah, there's another more popular video but in this one you can actually hear the audio.) Unfortunately Namco announced they won't make it downloadable. I hope the translating software wound up missing a "yet" from their blog.

Other news, I'm dieting. That's about how exciting that is. I have the ability to customize my food order between shipments and I'm looking for substitute meals I could get so I could actually be more sociable. So far: dinner's a tough nut to crack. I guess there's something psychological about a nice hot dinner.

That seems to be the overriding theme. You eat high-nutrition now-calorie foods and the portions are sized so that you EAT IT ALL. Like, today I bust open a little can of pasta and beef. If I had to scoop out only 7 ounces from a big basin I'd feel kinda ripped off. But it's an individual pack and I'm encouraged to finish what's in there. When I get to the bottom I can sit back and look at an EMPTY container and go, "ahhhhh".

So far it's working, but I don't weigh myself daily because I'm not a FREAK or anything. I guess I'll know when I have a stroke tomorrow. Or not. Heh.

Anyway, this made me very happy. Click it OR DIE.

Quick Gift

2007-06-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

This game is pretty cool. There are definitely some interface problems with it due to it being in Flash.

The joy of actual executing code is that it's just. plain. faster. I would love to see a native port of this game. If it used hardware acceleration it would be a phenom. The cursor is hard to see in all the action and analog controls with the ability to move in a direction at a constant speed would have made it perfect.

So open it up, close all other windows, put it on lowest graphical settings, have fun, and pretend it doesn't sadly end at level 50.

Different names

2007-06-13T20:06:00.001-04:00

Star Wars turned 30 a few days ago. Without really thrilling things going on right now, I'll admit something.

I can't think of Obi Wan Kenobi (spelling errors are for you entertainment) without thinking of something else.

Back in 1977 my father purchased an issue of Mag Magazine. The Star Wars issue. In that issue they had a parody of the movie in comic book form.

What do I think of? This parallel world... where he's named Oldie Wan Moldy. His sudden sensation of a million voices crying out in horror? The mexican food he ate.

Ahhh... my influences are many splendored.

Quickness

2007-06-05T07:46:00.000-04:00

Boy I like pizza!

(damn, flashes keep getting funnier and funnier)

The danger of preorders

2007-06-01T07:39:00.000-04:00

Not all is well in Doki Doki Majo Saiban land:

BRACE FOR IMPACT

What's wrong? Hmmm... I guess I have to be a little more clear.

D:
DO NOT WANT! Here's hoping it's optional. Trading Creepy Gay for Creepy Pedophile is one thing, but now it's a trade for Creepy Gay Pedophile. Boooooo....

They did well to keep it under wraps until, oh, 4 days before release.

(ah, well, it's no big deal. There's a lot of witch-hunting action to be had.)

...

Wait a minute... men cannot be witches. SHENANIGANS!

Hating

2007-05-28T00:24:00.001-04:00

You know the expression "if it's too good to be true it probably is?"

That free MCSD cert is shit, yo. I've complained to every ear I could get a hold of multiple multiple times already so I won't bore you any more with it.

I just hate it and it's KILLING MY SOUL.

ARG.

Also, feel free to respond anonymous if you wish, do I not play well with others? ><

There's also the stress about Mel's wedding next weekend. As it approaches the more and more I wish I didn't have to go. I RSVP'd so I have to. And it's not that I don't want to go because I don't care about her, I don't want to go because it's a bother and it's not even for that long a visit and I'm going to meet a bunch of her friends and they're probably not going to like me.

I don't know what it is, but I'm pretty uncomfortable meeting people in places that I'm not used to. It happened in California, it happens up north, it happens lots of places. I'm sure there's a psychological reason for it and it's referenced in Art of War or what have you but why bother getting into WHY? It is what it is.

Ah, who am I kidding, even if it was going on down here I wouldn't want to meet 100 new people at one shot. Geez, it'd take forever to impregnate them all!

Remember, bukkake is how the Japanese say hello over there.

Anyway, it's also a long drive. I considered flying but I ruled it out because of the possibility of not having a good time and wanting to come back early.

...

Plus there are Hardee's on the way. Heh heh heh.

Anyway, if this sounds convoluted it's because within the last 15 minutes I became unbelievably drowsy and I don't know why. Hmm.

I used to have a friend that whenever I would ask "why" anything, she would respond with "that's probably due to all that sex you've been having." So, I hereby adopt that explanation for everything.

XD

P.S. Check out my pictures in Myspace. Got a quicky with Hilary Clinton. :O

Loss of a Titan

2007-05-24T20:49:00.000-04:00

There are a few things I take seriously in life. A few. One of them, for a while, was Boston Market.

THAT was a hell of a place to eat. Home-cookin'. Ham, Turkey, chicken, but, hell, everyone does chicken. Fixin's! Mashed Topatoes (I know it's "potatoes." Fuck you, I'm an author, I type what I want), stuffing, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes ("topatoes" doesn't work here), lots of veggies, lovely cornbread. And the carver sandwiches. Those things were SO good.

The King Club sandwich. I remember it like I remember my first Big Mac, like I remember my first drive, like I remember my first kiss. All things I liked, except I regret my first kiss. :P

It was ham, turkey, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a delicious sauce on white or wheat bread. Mother fuckin' good, yo. This was, ahhh... over 10 years ago. 1995.

Fast forward to today. I got a sandwich that was sad. It was "toasted", and by that, they mean they just burned the bread. They don't have ham anymore. They. Just. Don't. Make. It. No choice of bread. No tomato. Comes with a side.

I like sides. Got the stuffing. I love stuffing. What I got? It wasn't stuffing. It was putrid and cold and just like a huddled mass, afraid of the real world outside the steam-heated pan.

In the end, I was out nearly $7 for a sad, pathetic descendant of the once great King Club.

The sandwich was sad. And, through that sandwich, I became sad.

The Most Important Flash Ever

2007-05-15T22:29:00.000-04:00

This is perhaps the most brilliant thing I've seem in a while. Really. Please watch it.

I know SOME of you out there will see maybe 15 seconds of it and close the window in disgust. Remember that which does not kill you only makes you stronger.

You don't have to enjoy it. You simply have to endure it. Your mind will then become free.

Lack of Retraction

2007-05-13T11:46:00.000-04:00

I'd like to reiterate that a dream doesn't mean anything. As sensory input and waking mental activity diminish, the brain has to find something to do. Think of it as an idle loop.

Dreams are an amalgam of memories and imagination. They do not represent predictions of the future. They do not, by themselves, represent your innermost desires. Unless, of course, you desire it anyway.

So, if you've been consciously trying to convince yourself that you don't, don't feel guilty that you had dreams about me, ladies. XD

Nekkid Time

2007-05-11T21:57:00.000-04:00

So the other day I got into a discussion where cat assholes were a brief topic of conversation. Don't ask, it's far less interesting than you think.

And I got to thinking... what IS is about nudity that's so forbidden? Seriously.

I mean, everyone's got naughty bits. And I guess by referring them as "naughty" bits I'm buying into it, huh? Not at all. I'd rather not just rattle off a list of the forbidden. But they're there. There are men and there are women. Men have abc and women have xyz. It is what it is.

Why sit around and pretend we don't have those things?

The old testament tells the story of Adam and Eve (yeah, you can cut out rolling your eyes... just keep reading, fucko). God made them and things were koo until those two crazy kids ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. Then they felt shame and tried to cover their naked bodies. God paid them a peekaboo visit and was pissed, boy howdy. God made us in His image and it was lacking shame of our bodies.

Now, believe in it what you will. Science for clothing? Warmth and protection. That's it. Sometimes both are not required. A comfortable temperature in a safe environment happens a lot. The weather is nice. No bugs around. Nobody's frying up bacon. No sandstorms. Nothing drippy drippy or bleedy bleedy. Hell, now there's no purpose.

Oh, right. Sex. Uh huh. Because nobody could EVER see a naked person of the appropriate sex for their interest and NOT immediately tackle them for fucking. I sure know that every time I take a trip to the strip club I just whip out my cock and spooge all over everyone with so much as a single exposed nipple. Hell, when I strip down in front of the Doctor I immediately get hard and start humping the examination table.

Lets. Get. Real. And you know what? Stuff happens. Erections happen. Moisture happens. It's not really all that important. You know all those rape fantasy stories where they go "you say no, but your body says yes"? It's a STORY. It's FAKE. What kind of bullshit would that be? The body is hard wired in that area. Thankfully the brain is soft wired and WE have control.

I don't know. Society seems really scared of this sort of thing and sometimes I feel embarrassed being a human along with all the rest of ya.

Doki Doki Majo Saiban

2007-05-07T07:16:00.000-04:00

Oh yes... you'd better believe it. It's not going to be as raunchy as some with photoshop skills implied, but it's still going to be a very "hee hee hee" kind of thing.

See y'all in one month. XD

Disclaimers: Pedophile? NOT IT.

Right now the creepiest game in my DS collection is Cooking Mama. Creepy as in gay creepy. I'll take pedo creepy over gay creepy anyday.

Creepiest Game List (well, from the games I own):
NES: Taboo... the Tarot card game! :P
Game Boy: That second copy of Tetris.
Genesis: Super Baseball 2020. A sports game?! THAT I LIKE?!?! (female baseball player's got big bewbs, huh huh huh)
SNES: Actraiser 2... take everything you like about Actraiser and remove it from the game! Uh, yeah. Also, replace the hero with something more at home in Cho Aniki.
PSX: Tobal No. 1. It's my PS2 HDD boot disc. (It also came with a k-rad FFVII preview)
PS2: Rumble Roses. Yeah.
GBA: Lunar. I got it on PSX. D:
Gamecube: The second Zelda port disc. One's got Ocarina & Master Quest, the other's got Ocarina, Mask, and the original NES game. :F
PC: Too many fucked up games to state them all!

I was only kidding.

2007-04-30T22:08:00.000-04:00

The classy thing to do would be to avoid trying to figure out WHOM I’m talking about and just accept I’m talking about someone. Are you classy?

So I had started thinking. It was prompted by an impromptu declaration of love. It was to a friend, so interpret this as a friend love.

The more disappointing parts about language are that love is a noun/verb when it should be maybe 12 – 15 different noun/verbs. It relies on a qualifier to make sense. Romantic love, family love, friend love, peace love, empathy love, puppy love, etc etc etc. It’s not my fault language sucks.

How was she to know it was friendly love? You mean, other than that we are friends? I suppose you could argue they wouldn’t know unless qualified. But there are lots of things that don’t need qualification. When you say you miss someone, you don’t have to qualify that with “as a friend.” How do you miss me? That’s answered by the type of relationship. Dramatic missing of lovers for those who are coupled versus casual friend if they are friends. It’s really quite simple.

No biggie. Really. Except this person is someone I used to like in that other way. Operative words: used to.

This is how it then occurred to me. She’s keeping that in the back of her mind ALL THE TIME. I can’t do or say anything without her immediately thinking about the boy that wants her. The boy DOESN’T want her. I shouldn’t have to repeat it, you know? Yeah, I play around. I flirt a lot with people I’m comfortable with because, hey, I’m comfortable, and it’s entertaining. If I pretend I’m going to lick your leg it’s a JOKE. That’s obviously something not exactly in the realm of “just friends.” It’s kind of like me saying I’m going to fill a burlap sack full of kittens and toss it into a canal. It’s monstrous and cruel and OBVIOUSLY not something I’m going to do. It’s so obvious I wouldn’t do it that it doesn’t need explaining.

If I say something like “let’s go skinny dipping,” you could say yes and keep the humor going without breaking the fourth wall with an “I’m kidding.” I know you’d be kidding. Unless you’re worried about me holding you to it later at some unnamed time and saying “but you said you would!” Enter back to “used to like.” If, on your mind, you cannot forget that I USED to like you then you might not even joke around like that. And if you can't joke around your friends, who CAN you joke around with? You might think you don’t want to lead the poor schmuck along. Got to nip it in the bud before you send the wrong signals. Here’s the trick, though: THERE ARE NO SIGNALS BEING SOUGHT OUT OR INTERPRETED. Plain and simple. Reception is a non-issue.

I used to have a friend. I don’t remember her name, and she wasn’t really close, but she was still a casual friend. Her bit was that she always took the public bus home after school. She had change in her purse and pockets and bookbag and scattered all over the place. She would gather those coins but would need a place to stash them to add them up. Instead of doing this over a table she would do this at the bus stop. She’d get one of her friends to hold her change while she searched and counted. Thing is, she wouldn’t ask for them to hold it. She would just put her fist out and motion to you to put your open hand under it and then dump a whole bunch of coins into it. If you asked what that was for, she would invariably answer “that’s for last night, baby.”

Now, did she really pay for sexual favors that were given when the friends were unconscious? NO. Was she interested? No. It was just a gag. It was cute and showed her personality and stuff. Any worries about leading people on? No, it’s patently obvious it’s just a joke.

I guess the reason why I’m not naming names is that everyone is their own person. Suggestive comedy isn’t in everyone’s basket o’ fun. And I’m not applying a value judgment on it, either. If you want to let some thing from years and years ago permeate your existence TODAY and throttle your fun TODAY and impact your guard so that you can’t be casual TODAY then you’re welcome to it. But, again, how much of a friend can you be if you're always harboring a fear like that?

I just think that a friend should believe the other and give him the benefit of the doubt. No, there IS no benefit of the doubt: I’m telling it like it is. I can’t expect other people to get into my brain and know what I’m really thinking. Only I am privileged enough to know that. So when I tell you I’m not interested anymore, just believe me and be done with it. If I say I love you any question in your mind about what I mean is instantly answered with “I’m not interested anymore.” If I want to wash your back, remembering that I’m not interested will help you determine if I’m serious or not. If I make a kissy face it’s because I love my friends and not because I wanna jump your bones. Yes you can be attractive but, really, I don't want to fuck you. I think oranges are pretty but I don't want to fuck them, for instance. Don't get a swelled head or assume a suggestively flirting joke is anything more than what it is.

Remember: IT IS WHAT IT IS. No matter what you point at, it always is what it is first before anything else. And what's my anything else? Nothing. There is NOTHING there in present day 2007.

Then again, first impressions are hard to shake. In the future, any time I’m interested in someone and I get shot down I’m just going to avoid them forever. It really isn’t fair to hold shit like that over my head when I’m just trying to be sweet. I can't be a friend if they're not going to let me do my job as a friend.

Kids

2007-04-26T17:44:00.000-04:00

Today was take your little kneebiter to work day. I don't hate kids... that is, when they're far and unseen and unheard. But, yeah, at least three employees told their kids to go find something to do and were running around the floor playing hide and seek.

Nice way to thrust your responsibilities on the community, Bitchy McBitch.

I guess I brought my kids to work, too. Well, half kids. I got a couple million of them in my balls. Maybe. There was some rumblings growing up and I might be sterile, but I always treated it as: if they don't get a sample, how can they know?

Thankfully, though, I brought my Braterang on my utility belt and killed them all.

Anyway, I GOT PAID! YAY! And... wow, they took a metric fuckton of money out. How big is a metric fuckton? How about $600? Is that metric fuckton enough? At this rate it'll be about $14,400 in withholdings for the year. FOURTEEN GRAND, yo! Ah well. What'cha gonna do? Become an anarchist and blow up shit? But my favorite TV show is on... :P

Anyway, that's it. Peace, niggas and niggettes. I'm allowed to say it. I just don't care anyway.

P.S.

2007-04-19T22:54:00.001-04:00

P.S. I know I'm feeling better because my sex drive is coming back. Rawr.

Nothing to see here

2007-04-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

So, sure, I'm not going to die. Yet. My work here on this Earth is not yet finished.

Replace "work" with "shit"
Replace "here" with "hasn't"
Replace "on" with "yet"
Replace "this" with "covered the"
Replace "is not yet finished" with ", but give it two weeks"

Anyway, Melissa is still getting married and I got my little invite. Yeah, I know. But it's ok. Proof positive that breaking up isn't the end of the world. It just was that we weren't couple compatible. It happens. I'm not upset about that in the least. We tried and, sometimes, that's all you can ask for.

It's in June so I gotta get ready for that. It'll be too soon to take a day off so looks like I gotta get another unpaid day. Ulg.

Speaking of pay, I'M NOT GETTING ANY. These guys are totally dragging their feet on it. At this rate I'll get paid the beginning of May. Oh, I'll be alright. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine... IF I don't make any major purchases. If I spy a Wii in a store I'd have to think long and hard about it. I just don't like having a "balance". I want my back pay NAO.

Other than that, meh. My coughing is no longer "productive" and I'm coughing considerably less. It's still there, just not major. My voice is still a little iffy, too, but almost 100%. Hoo. Ray.

*hack*

Admissions

2007-04-13T21:09:00.000-04:00

I'll admit, I don't write as often as I used to.

I'm in a foul mood right now, so now's as good a time as any. My voice is finally non-scratchy and I can go a little bit without coughing. Time to celebrate. I sound different so I decided to leave an obscene message for Su. Why? I dunno, that's the thing with jokes. It's not some grandiose effort and planning event, it's, you know, just a joke.

So I leave this message this morning and when I was done I felt bad. Not for what I had done, but for how it was done. Bad form, not nearly explicit enough, not even an "Ung" sound that I figured it HAD to have while I was dialing. Off the top of my head, you know? I even ended it with a sunny "BYE!" so I'm like, aw, man, I totally blew it. And it's with reason. I mean, it's SU, I can't really summon raw lust on command when it comes to her. I can barely keep a straight face about it thinking of it, if at all.

By noon I get a message that she got a weird message. I text her back that I did it and then she told me not to ever do it again because she was ready to call the cops. Uh... wut?

So I screwed up because, evidently, she thought she was being stalked for a while. Well, ok, shit happens. But my apology isn't enough now, and I needed to be more understanding. Like, how? What's the benchmark?

There is no reasoning with a mad woman, gents. NONE. And to think I was snickering to myself all morning.

Loffles

2007-04-04T22:26:00.001-04:00

I'll admit. This made me laugh.

Ah, well, you see...

2007-04-01T19:57:00.000-04:00

I know the timing of my announcement of my engagement is a little strange. But it turns out I'm gonna be a father, so, the unexpected news sort of forced my hand. No biggie! XD

(Naturally it's a joke. Come on, now.)

Immunity from Bitch

2007-03-19T22:40:00.000-04:00

Gah, I'm sick again. I got a lump in my throat. This time I think it'd gonna be a doozy: maybe even lose my voice. Which is bad for a few days but when it starts coming back it's totally smexy and everything. Ripe for phone sex. :O

Of course, the few days with no voice is a pain in the butt since I'm coming up to a presentation of some big project. I didn't do much on it, though. I wrote up some code that takes about 12 hours to complete, so testing it takes a day and a half. Total shit. If it was faster then this thing would have been done ages ago.

Saw Diana in Cafe Tokyo today. She didn't acknowledge me. I didn't acknowledge her. She was there with her new guy-she's-got-claws-in. I wasn't really upset until a few weeks ago when I found out I still had my old Trillian logs. I log all my chats because I'm a digital packrat. When she stayed with me for two/three weeks, I let her use Trillian to log into her AIM-fag chat... (adults use MSN, btw). Turns out it was being logged. And she said some really not nice things about me. Downright mean things, actually. I won't repeat them because I don't give credence to that sort of thing. But, shit, I took her off the street for WEEKS and that's how she thought of me?

It's easy how it works. Befriend someone, be flirty and mess around with them a bit to hook them in. Now hooked, take complete advantage of them while laughing at them behind their back. When kicked out, repeat process with someone else: specifically don't flirt or mess around to see how much they squirm so that you can raise your ego. I didn't squirm a whole lot: that whole herpes thing puts a damper on all of it. But this talk was even before that. I just feel betrayed. No big loss, though. She never had much to offer and one day she'll stop being cute and instead be a hag with a huge gaping vagina the size of a hallwax and then her tricks will no longer work. At that point I'd expect her to go back and make nice-nice with people she chewed through. And... if they got any brains they'd slam the door in her face.

Is it that I demand more loyalty from my friends than others? Hmmm...

Trust me, Tiger, between her and Jenny and Lisa I'm a fucking PRO at traitorous bitches.

Reclaiming

2007-03-08T22:57:00.000-05:00

So I FINALLY met up with Melissa today. She's good, and I met the fiancee. Yeah, he'll do. Glad he's not a prick like her ex-husband.

I'll avoid saying it. Nah, nevermind. I won't avoid saying it. Don't get married young. D:

Anyway, this month I'm pleased because I kept my spending to under 20% of what I earned. This is VERY VERY GOOD. Soon I'll have my savings account back. PLUS my car will be paid off in September. Yeah, 6 months away. BUT that's only SIX MORE PAYMENTS! Then I can lower some of my insurance coverage and pay a reasonable rate. When that happens I'll be able to squirrel even MORE cash away.

You know. To buy my secret lair. In a volcano or some shit like that.

Now, time for TOY REVIEW. I got a Palm. Well, I got two palms and one Palm. It's an older model, a Tungsten E. Still kinda cool. Don't know what I'm going to do with it. I hope to get some games for it... but so far it's not been too promising. I got a Shadowgate demo and it does funky things when I exit. Plus it's not very good with the stylus. Or maybe I was just rushing through it.

Either way I ordered a microSD card w/ SD adapter. Even if I end up not fucking around with the Palm too much I can later turn around and use it with a future cell phone.

Other than that, nothing to report. I got jury duty next month. I want to weasel out of it. Or at least delay it so I can get a paid day off instead of a jury day off where I'd get $5 at the end of it. Hmmm... $200 versus $5. The choice, good sir, is clear.

Or maybe I'll just flake it off. All I know is that if I were to stand trial I'd want more jurors than old fogeys deciding my fate.

Executive Summary

2007-02-27T20:12:00.000-05:00

A. Had some computer problems over the weekend. They're fixed now. It's totally not my fault, totally Windows XP. The most poorly documented problems I've ever encountered. But, yes, I'm TEH MAN so I crushed it.

B. Nothing to do at work anymore. Well, it was fun while it lasted. I'm bored to tears there. I just want something to do. Or a Gameboy. You know, whichever won't get me fired.

C. One reason why I wasn't hired at that job last year mid December like I would have liked? $500 bonuses were given out to all employees. Also, "causal Friday" is no longer. Nothing like things starting to go downhill starting with when you're hired.

D. When it comes out, I think I'll get an Xbox 360. I'm waiting for the ball to drop on the new secret model that's all hush hush: supposedly there's gonna be one with a 120 GB hard drive, HDMI output, and *possibly* HD-DVD built in. It will STILL be cheaper than a PS3.

E. I was ripped off on ebay. Never happened before. I've been a member for, whooo, 9 years or so. I guess it was just bound to happen. I intend to put in a complaint to the post office mail fraud division (since I mailed payment) and the FTC (general fraud). Will I get my $38 back? Nah, probably not. I could get all mad and huffy and puffy but, hell, getting robbed from someone I don't know is a hell of a lot better than getting robbed from someone I did know.

F. I got a sunburn from the Renaissance fair. On my face and on my SCALP. WHAT THE FUCK, YO! Last I checked I'm not losing my hair. I guess since it was tepid weather my guard was lowered. Funny thing: last time I went I got a sunburn, too, but primarily on my neck. I guess long hair traded head protection for neck protection?

G. Melissa is coming next week. I'm going to see her. You can't talk me out of it. I'm going to meet her fiancee. Time to see what replaced me. ;)

That's it for now. PEESE.

Dealbreaker Fantasy

2007-02-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

Here I shall describe the seemingly indescribable. The woman I just cannot ever date.

The woman I cannot ever date would think Final Fantasy VIII is better than Final Fantasy VII. The woman I cannot ever date would disagree with me when it came to the assertion that Final Fantasy VI was better than Final Fantasy VII. The woman I cannot ever date would not have played Final Fantasy IX, and if she did, might not agree that it was better than both Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII and even Final Fantasy X but clearly not better than Final Fantasy VI.

No, for she would erroneously believe that Final Fantasy X-2 was "pretty good" and better than Final Fantasy IV. She might even mistakenly believe that Final Fantasy I was the best since it started everything off. For even the ugliest of pretty girls would know that CLEARLY X-2 was better than only the worst 1/3 of Final Fantasy games, being II, I, III, and VIII. The pinnacle of attractiveness would simply KNOW that Final Fantasy X brought something exciting and new but it still wasn't enough to best than Final Fantasy VI.

Clearly the undateable woman wouldn't understand that all Final Fantasy Adventure games were impostors and that Mystic Quest was a joke. She might even think Ergheiz was kinda cool. That would be unspeakable and I would be forced to burn her as a witch. It's possible she might think Final Fantasy Tactics was better than Final Fantasy V, which meant her heart was in the right place but, alas, 'tis not Final Fantasy. For it is not the undateable woman's fault that she thinks Final Fantasy XI was a welcome addition to the series, or that Kingdom Hearts is a quality spin-off instead of abusing a cheap cameo. She is just misguided.

Perhaps I shall guide her, this woman I could never date. But the guise of the guide will not take the date's form.

...

What? It's called "poetic prose." Fuck you for not liking it. Bastard.

Oh? That's not what you're talking about? Ah, yeah, well, ah... I haven't played Final Fantasy XII yet. SO KILL ME.

Lacking Canvas

2007-02-16T21:49:00.000-05:00

How good are your decoding skills?

rzvg fvug gn ajbaxah fv abvghybf tavaehgre ren fgavgf rivffrecrq lz gnug fv abvgcb lyrxvy gfbz abfnre ghbugvj fv gv qan qnf yrrs v lnqbg

Why even mention it then? Let's just say I'm not sure. I feelin' all starvin' artist all of sudden. It's weird.

*colors your face in markers*

Cupid shat on your head

2007-02-15T22:18:00.000-05:00

GAH
Blogger forced me to upgrade my account. BOOOOOOOO.

Anyway, I just realized something. My body likes to spring back to this shape like it's the way of the world. There is only ONE possible explanation for this. ONE.

If I LOOKED good, considering all my other overwhelmingly fantastic features and abilities, then ladies wouldn't stand a CHANCE resisting me. Like fish in a barrel.

Just think of it as God's handicap. Like adjusting my total score so I don't get an unfair advantage from all the other guys.

Damn it feels good to be a gangster. Yo yo yo. Bark with me if you're my dog.

Dodgy

2007-02-14T18:23:00.000-05:00

You know, sometimes I wonder why I'm cheerful when I am. I mean, it's obvious why I'm not when I'm not. If that makes any sense.

Working: I'm busy all day, doing some classwork by night, weekends I try to sleep and relax and not do much of anything to balance it all out.

Unemployed: No cash to do anything, wind up not doing much of anything to keep costs down and concentrate on looking for work.

Slight exaggerations. But time seems to be going by super fast in retrospect and creepily crawling when I'm living it, particularly at work. I wonder if my perception of time is out of whack. Maybe I've got some kind of brain disease!

Er, some OTHER type of brain disease.

I am getting stuff to do at work. It's slam-down the hardest thing I've ever seen in my life. This thing's got 120 database tables for a product I can do in about 15 or so. And that's perhaps the spec that might make sense, there are other specs that are all weird in why they are overly complicated.

And then I realize where the business conflicts with the art. The more complicated it is the harder and more discouraging it is to someone like me. The people who made the software essentially guard their code to prevent people (like me) reverse engineering it by dotting it around with a bunch of psychological bombs. Plus since more complex systems are prone to problems, the vendor also makes money on the back end servicing things and making sure whatever upgrades they want get produced by the original company.

Clever clever.

Well, I can do it... didn't say I couldn't. It's just a monumental pain in the ass, particularly when everyone above you doesn't know dick about technology so they expect things to just happen. Magically. With sparkles.

Oh well. At least I've got something to do while at work.

Anyway, tonight I'm getting stinking drunk. Dirty stinking drunk. I'd invite you all, but, pfft, nah.

Yup yup

2007-02-07T07:08:00.000-05:00

(lulz)

Moving Right Along...

2007-02-05T22:04:00.000-05:00

Now that THAT ugliness is behind us, here are some thoughts on Thief III.

Thief III Deadly Shadows is pretty good. It's definitely not the best in the series, but I'm having trouble figuring out whether Thief I or Thief II was my favorite. It's realistic running around the same city day after day to fence your goods and buy equipment, but it's a micromanagement that I rather not deal with, personally. It's not fun to sneak all the way to the opposite side of The City to sell off art goods and then sneak another way back to sell gems, for example. You don't have to be insanely diligent: cityfolk don't know or care that you're around but City Watch and any opposing factions don't take kindly to you.

Plus, I'm not sure how I feel about that faction stuff. I mean, after the first game you're supposedly in good with the Hammers but then Karras takes helm and you're the enemy again but then you stop him and the Hammers like you again and then you have to steal from the Hammers again. Love hate love hate. You can also ally with the Pagans but that makes no sense: you totally iced the Woodsy Lord. Sure, it's neat to ally yourself with a faction and run up to them in good light and practically pat them on the ass without so much as a peep but... so?

Now, Thief takes patience to play. At least for me. I like to sneak around everywhere, plucking all I can off shelves and whatnot. I don't wanna kill anyone, but I have no qualms against knocking everyone out and piling them up in a corner. (I secretly imagine people coming to and wondering why someone's fishing for trout between their legs.) Anyway, doing a level takes a few hours or so. You know, to figure out good paths, check out patrol routes, etc etc. And after 30 minutes or so I just get tired of being on edge. So save, come back later, and it's all good. Which is another issue with the whole City intermission levels... just put me where I need to be... I don't want to spend another hour or so doing the whole City level again, since I don't know if the next mission is going to advance the day. When the day advances, a lot of goods come back to get stolen again.

Well, I was tired of playing and I found a mission and I figured, while it's up, let's case the joint. So I'm running around like a jerk and getting spotted and chased and fought with and I'm TAKING PEOPLE OUT. Fancy dagger play, sniped with arrows, gassed out of existence, exploding mines, a fucking FLAMING FIRE ARROW OF DEATH TO THE FACE. I wasn't killed. I was hurt, but it wasn't too bad with all the health potions around. The game shouldn't have let me do that. They should have ganged up on me and beat me into submission. It's supposed to be that way... the ONLY way to play the levels should be stealthy sneaky thief. Now, things could go horribly wrong and you can defend yourself and mitigate the situation. But, come on, I did the WHOLE level Metal Gear Solid style. Boooooooooooooooo

I'm not sure how far I am in the storyline since I can't use an FAQ for that game without it being ruined totally. But it sure LOOKS pretty. I miss the rope arrow and instead got these "Human Fly" gloves that let me climb walls. When I bought the upgrade I was trippin' with how awesome it would be, except I've found ZERO instances in which it's useful. All walls have an overhang or a balcony above it that prevents you doing kickass stuff like squirreling around on rooftops like you did in Thief II (which were really fun missions).

If you have a computer strong enough to play it, I suggest checking it out.

I also saw some Chobits this weekend. But it's already kinda late. I have a feeling that series is going to make me cry a little.

SPOIL IT FOR ME AND DIE IN A FIRE.

Go Away

2007-02-03T18:08:00.000-05:00

So, ok, I know you're reading this. I don't know nor need to know WHY you are. I haven't so much as breathed a word to you in forever (even though it's not long enough) and if I never hear from you again it'll be too soon.

This is a drug free zone, a no bitches zone, and, basically, a NO U zone. So GIT. It's funny how notably and quickly my life improves when you're not in it. You really have held me back all that time.

So go away. I don't want you to think you're clever or anything about how you're spying on me like "tee-hee, he's got no clue." I do have a clue. I've always been smarter than you, you know. So much for leaving Gifted because you were tired of people being snobs... seems to me like you got axed 'cause you weren't makin' the cut.

If you're having trouble figuring out where you should go in this blog's stead, try http://www.portalofevil.com/ . You should be happy there. ^^

For the rest of you, check this out. I was wondering why Tomoyo's Room stopped updating, and here's why. Gotta love it!

Vista is HERE

2007-01-30T19:24:00.000-05:00

Except, um, not. Is this the next big thing since sliced slices? OR is this just another Windows Me in waiting? WHO KNOWS?

One thing is certain. The torrent circuit has at least one torrent at 700 seeders and over 10,000 leechers. 10 THOUSAND. Not too shabby.

Did anyone tell them Microsoft can disable it remotely? Ah, I guess they'll just try their luck.

Me? Nah. It's almost always better to play wait and see.

Oh. Other things. Nah. Nothing big happening. Life just ain't so exciting anymore.

So,
¯\(º_O)/¯

My my my...

2007-01-25T22:16:00.000-05:00

... how time flies.

Don't look at me. I ain't got any news. Or work. But, hey, they're evidently paying me to sit down, shut up, and look pretty.

Two out of three ain't bad.

Recovery

2007-01-16T18:34:00.000-05:00

First off, I really wish Blogger would stop begging me to sign up to their new system. I did some undercover work checking it out and it's just more AJAXy.

I don't know what to make of AJAX. It's a pain in the butt most of the time. I switched my Yahoo mail to use the new snazzy AJAX mode and I hated it. It was slow, cumbersome, and, you know what, there's nothing really wrong about the old interface. There's this whole push lately for replicating the desktop look and feel on the web and I think it's not appropriate. I mean, cars could be built fly-by-wire, right? I mean, we've got the technology. Well, I for one don't want a car that I can't feel. If you've ever skidded in the rain you know how to pulse on the pedal and what to do with your hands and you feel the wheel resist and bend and resist. With racing lessons from long ago I forgot most of the explanations and scientific reasonings behind it all: I could probably derive it again but my physics section of my brain has been stunted for a few years. Anyway, it's become ingrained in my muscle memory. If I was just playing with a racing wheel and going through the motions I'd never get it done. (Safely.)

Besides, there's ALREADY the problem of malicious web sites impersonating genuine Windows dialog boxes to coax you into installing malware. Do we really need to make a habit of making the web look like your desktop? I say, no. People talk about how efficient AJAX is, since you only load what you need.

Think back to 10 years ago. They were talking that shit about Frames, too. Does anyone use Frames anymore? I thought so. We'll see how far AJAX stuff goes before people snap out of it and go, "whoa, I must have been SOOOOO wasted."

In other news, I finally got my Game Boy Advance stuff out of storage. Right now I've got 8 Game Boy Advance compatible game "systems" within arms reach. 2 of them are SPs still in box for future scalping, one is the Game Boy Player, one is the DS, and one is the Micro. How does it feel? Ahhh... sexy?

My first GBASP, the US Cobalt Blue, did get some damage, though. It acted wonky starting up... considering it's the first time in a YEAR it's been powered up I'll give it a pass. More interesting is that it wasn't even charging when I plugged it in. It's possible that the battery was almost completely empty. You can't let Li-Ion batteries drain completely: they need some residual charge to "jump-start" the recharging process. It's also possible that the socket has been abused. I used to charge my SPs using a 3rd-party docking cradle. The Japanese Light Blue one worked nicely. I'm still miffed that the light blue color was eventually released in the US with the newer screens. It's too bad. Although it does mean that it was exceptionally stylish, and by association I am, therefore, exceptionally stylish.

One sad part about the dark blue one is that it developed a dust dot on the screen. Maybe half an inch down right smack down in the middle. Oh the humanity. I had heard of an electrostatically charged comb can "pull" it to a side where it'll be behind the dark frame. But I don't own a comb. We'll see. I am most certainly NOT going to open it up. I don't think I have a room clean enough to do anything in. What really bugs me is, how did that dust dot get there if it wasn't there before? I had a TI-82 nerd calculator. And the LCD screen got really dirty on the inside... like the screen doesn't have any kind of fittings to keep out dirt. I imagine the GBASP has something like that on the inside since it's Nintendo. (even the GBA Micro has a rudimentary foam seal.)

Oh well. Whatever. I've wasted enough time. I was off Monday but I buried myself in storage digging those things out. Damn, I got games I totally forgot about. Too bad I don't have the time to play them.

THEFT

2007-01-13T23:09:00.000-05:00

Plagiarism is my personal peeve. The idea of someone working hard doing what they love only to have it taken from them and passed off as someone else's makes me burn up with anger. And when that stealing results in COMMERCIAL GAIN that's even worse and I just want to start a massacre.

Please check this out and spread it around!!!

TOYS

2007-01-09T17:58:00.000-05:00

Huh? What? What'cha lookin' at me for?

Oh, heh, no, that's ok. Sure, I guess I will.

iPhone is pretty cool. I don't want to call it a hybrid device, but it's basically a handheld computer merged with a cell phone. Apple muscling in on Windows CE and Windows Mobile? Yeah, well, way it goes. One-two punch for Motorola? Yeah, with their failed iTunes integrated phones, totally.

But, really, it's too soon to say. It's definitely sexy. First off: touchscreen. I like touchscreens... when attached to a stylus. Finger touchscreens are irritating. You will never be able to keep the screen clean enough. Also of concern is that this is a cell phone... it'll be in pockets and things and true capacitive touchscreens are pretty sensitive to scratched screens. Ask any Palm owner, and check sales of those protective films.

Of course, it could be a RESISTIVE touchscreen. Those are tougher. The DS uses one. Let me tell you, those are irritating without a stylus. I used to service an internet kiosk with a completely touchscreen display. You might still find one of the exact models I serviced still set up in Flippers North. And? Well, the resistive film gets loose over time. It cannot be glued to the surface since the actual contact of the film to the (mostly) transparent mesh is what makes it physically work. So imagine a sheet of plastic wrap extended above a bowl. Freshly done it's great. Now, stress the plastic a few times with light pressure and that springy elasticity wears out. Same thing.

In the end you would see iridescent artifacts on the screen where film wear bunches and flexes in front of the LCD. Since LCDs are precise display devices (unlike CRTs which have, essentially, analog color screens) this will amplify this effect. I'm curious if Apple REALLY solved that. Capacitive touchscreens have always been much preferred for being unable to wear out since they don't have a top loose film.

As far as using a stylus instead of your finger, I doubt it. Looking at the demo on apple.com shows instances where it's really useful to do inputs with two fingers (say, zooming). Now, of course, they could have designed a matte-finish plastic film that will go easy on the fingerprints. BUT as anyone who's had people poke and prod at their laptop screens before will tell you, it ain't perfect.

Now, WiFi is cool. Skype functionality would have been even cooler. Like, use your cell phone features only when you're out of range of a WiFi hotspot. Since it's a full fledged computer with OSX running on it I'd expect apps to be written for this purpose. But it's not official which means you'll never get official support. It's always been the caveat with those kinds of hacks. Unfortunately, the included browser (Safari) is gay. Horrible horrible. Show me some mac guy browsing web sites with Safari and I'll show you either someone who has to do it so they can check their sites for compatibility, or someone who hasn't heard of Mozilla. Again, there probably will be a port but out of the box it might be a little disappointing.

Now, size. 4 Meg or 8 Meg. Obviously it's a pure flash device, but that's really stingy. I mean, this thing can show video, play a bunch of music, AND run apps. I'd go so far as to say the 4 Meg probably won't be very functionally useful. I'll accept that some of the installed stuff is on a separate rom space from the flash, but even then how much space is 4 Meg, really? I've got about 800 songs on my 4 Gig Nano 1st Gen. And it doesn't do video. And it doesn't store all my telephone contacts. And it doesn't have any pictures, particularly any taken with a 2 megapixel camera.

Next, who's it from? Cingular?! No unlocked versions "for years". That's just a slap in the face in my book. Then again, it's Apple. They've never had any problems locking their software to their hardware only. It's a philosophical design, I guess, so it extends to cell carrier. With prices starting at $499 it also seems pretty pricey.

But, hell, the original 5 Gig iPod was that same price. A leap forward? Nah, I won't say that. But give it 5 years and we'll have some really amazing cell phones, I'd wager.

...

Wait, what, that wasn't what you were waiting for?

Ok then. I like pumpkin pie. There.

One Year Ago

2007-01-07T19:41:00.000-05:00

Let's see... a year ago Flipper's closed. And, almost as if guided by the Invisible Hand, Destructoid has a short essay on the decline of American Arcades. It's a pretty interesting read, and so are many of the comments.

(and, um, while I'm at it referencing Destructoid, check this out: Vagina? Yeah, that might get your attention.

Yes yes yes, it's technically labia but I hate trying to be highbrow about things.)

Plus, while I'm shooting out news from AROUND THE WORLD!!!111, here's one from the totally obvious pile: dance games burn more calories than treadmills.

I can't believe weekends are so short. Ah well.

Lies and the Lieing Liars who Tell Them

2007-01-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

The following lies are what I'm dealing with right now:

1. The recruiters lied. I'm not in a permanent position. I asked my boss when I pick out my insurance and benefits and stuff and he tells me that I need to check with my recruiters since it's all through them. I thought it was suspicious, but, hey, I'm open to alternate ways of doing things. Well, I checked with them and it's a CONTRACT position. I am LIVID. I'd up and quit but right now it's just my pride that's bigger than my wallet. It's still a big name on the old resume, and tech people do contract stuff ALL the time. So in 3 months time when the contract is up I can look for work again and put them on my resume and just say "ah, it was a contract job."

This also means I don't get benefits, either. Looks like I'm putting away more money than I might otherwise do... which is too bad since I'm trying to REFILL my empty savings account. Also included: no paid sick days, no vacation, no health, NOTHING.

Sure, it's possible they hire a contract as a permanent employee. Supposedly it happens all the time. But it's not a guarantee. To me that carries the same weight as "well, I guess something could happen overnight like nuclear war and the sun won't come up tomorrow." Sure it's possible but how likely is it to happen? Today?

2. Free Training
Turns out 20 hours a week minimum is the way it is 4EVA. The changing of my schedule was only if I got a job during the waiting period after I sign the paperwork but before I take possession of the laptop. Gah. How am I going to pull 20 hours a week when I'm working full time and, you know, sleeping every night? If I quit, I pay back all the money the government paid ($6,665 to be exact), lose my portion of the fee for me to start classes ($330), lose the laptop, lose the books, and will never be eligible for any government grants ever again.

And to think I used to think my case manager was a little hottie. WOMEN = EVIL. Don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.

Um, well, I guess that's it for now. I'm sure there are more but I'm too busy to think right now. I should have been asleep an hour ago. ><

Happy New Whatever

2007-01-02T01:38:00.000-05:00

2007. Um, yay, and stuff.

When you think about it, it's all just nonsense. Some old dude sat up and said "This is the first of the year" and it became so. It's just a set of number values. It's cyclical in nature and adjusts for the seasons and things but "date zero" was arbitrarily selected. So, essentially, if they had arbitrarily picked another date, we could be celebrating New Year in summer, for example. (Would it still be called January, though?)

I could write about my brother's party that got carried away. I could write about the big hole in my bathroom shower wall as a direct result. I could write about my resolutions and how I'm going to make 2007 fap-tastic. But I'm not. That would take a long time to type out, and it's not that interesting anyway.

8pm on January 1st I went to sleep. I wanted to be fully refreshed and ready for my work starting in a few hours from now. I was woken up by clicking. It's one of my hard drives! WAH! Screw everything else.

Riddle: When is it time to give up anime?
Answer: When the hard drive crashes dirty.

Worse yet, the loud clicking (usually an indication that the heads are out of alignment and can't seem to get back into it) woke me up and I felt completely refreshed and wonderful. Which would be fantastic if it were 6am in the morning. It's 1:30am. Now I gotta wind down and get to sleep.

Wah-mbulance? Maybe.

Things Left Unseen

2006-12-29T00:49:00.000-05:00

Well, I have silence around me right now and thank GOD. It's not that they were bad kids, they were just obnoxious. Very well behaved but didn't know how to just leave me alone. I resent babysitting, especially when it's thrust upon me without prior knowledge or consent. You'd think nobody has to work tomorrow. With my bad luck, nobody DOES and I'll have another day of hell tomorrow.

And I discovered my brother isn't paying for his auto insurance. He has an old truck he drives and a motorcycle. No insurance on the bike, but insurance on the truck is covered by our loving parents. Meanwhile, when I was still in school and working part time I still had to cover my insurance every month. That's about $3000 I'll never ever see again: nice to know he doesn't have to pay it. Fucker.

New Year is coming up. Not sure what I'm gonna do. I'd like to go into 2007 with a bang, if you know what I mean. Luckily for you, I do kiss and tell. But I don't know, I'm up for anything, really.

I got Final Fantasy III for Christmas. My ears pretty much hurt from using my headphones on it most of the day. It's ok... just ok. If it were an RPG by any other name I don't think it would get as noticed. Final Fantasy, and, well, games in general in those days (1989, I believe) didn't have much in way of in-game tutorials. Since it was remade I figured they would work that stuff in but, nah.

Square, um, shouldn't let third parties develop for them. It feels like a rush job with an inexperienced team. Matrix Software... what else have they done? The graphics are pretty (and I love the noseless Final Fantasy Tactics look), but slow. The game slows down on the world map quite a bit, and the models are pretty low on the polycount. Towns have items like barrels and crates but they're all sprites and they scale pretty poorly.

Also, a lot of the time the top screen is wasted. In the world you get a world map, but as your universe of discourse gets bigger the zoom is so far out that it barely helps when it doesn't show that mountain range between towns. When in town you look at the same world map. Lot of use that does. If you're in a battle or a dungeon you get NOTHING. Bupkis. Sometimes there's a nice effect when there's a voice over and you read what they're saying up there, but that's minimal at best. I put 5 hours into it and it's use as voice-over was maybe 20 seconds worth... and it's nothing that other games have never done. Videos usually split up between the top and bottom screen but there's not a whole lot of dual-screen video action. (Hint: I don't want video cutscenes in my games that look so DRAMATICALLY better than the real-time gameplay that it makes me feel cheated when the video is over and I'm back to the game engine.)

The play engine itself is kind of odd. The stylus control is optional and when used it's considerably slower than using memory cursor menus so it's better off just not using it. Being able to pinpoint the exact enemy to hit with the stylus is neat in design, but in practice it's never done simply because it's inefficient. Just imagine using 100% mouse cursor in an MMORPG or anything like that. The zoom feature is nice except it's slow. The idea is that you can zoom in and see sparkles over things that you should inspect for some treasure. It's nice except you don't see the sparkles until you're zoomed in to the maximum and it takes a few seconds to get to that point. I guess it simulates realism by taking time to inspect your surroundings. Which is FINE, except you can still find the items by just pressing A at every object in the room. Considering that zooming in too close making exploring impossible since you can't see very much around you there's a feeling that washes over you while exploring a dungeon that makes you think you're missing a whole bunch of secrets. In the end you zoom in for a while and make multiple passes to cover an entire area and until you figure out it's all just a trick to wear you out faster than normal you'll keep doing it.

Battle sequences are kind of plain. You have a lot of options in a menu and the menu's got a scroll. Which is fine, except there's one option for "Item" and one for "Equip". There's an option on the menu to change which row you are in, which is nice except classically you do it by pressing left or right while in the menu. Thanks to stylus control you have to put it in the menu. It makes some menu selection clumsy. Enemies (so far) are always in one row and I haven't seen more than three at a time and only once where there were three different races. Enemies have been reused way too soon. I've seen Goblin reused a bunch of times already... and while it may be par for a game nearly 17 years ago today why not have separate models instead of just a palette swap? It's not even a texture swap. During battle there's pauses while the game loads an animation which is nice for a cartridge game but just because DS games come on a cartridge doesn't mean you can program them like that. They're sort of distracting. I mean, CD games don't freeze up for that long. I'm disappointed in that.

WiFi is a joke. Send letters to your friends in game! Um, wow. The only point of this is to unlock extra quests and bosses. Meaning if you don't do it, you just get the straight game without any new levels. Blah.

Maps are pretty close to the original, if not modified to look more organic. I was surprised how faithfully the original maps are followed AND they still looked "modern". It's probably a testament to the excellent dungeon designs of the original Square team.

Magic is using the classic leveled magic of FFI and int casters of D&D. It's a little different, though. You can "equip" magic on a character and remove it later or even move it to another character. So, it's a loose and swingin' version of the original magic design. You can't learn spells at levels other than their intended level, which is just like the original Final Fantasy but I would have liked to see that enhancement. (Actually, I'd like to see that system in ANY console RPG.) Personally I prefer the flat MP system since I feel tiered magic hits you twice for powerful magic. Higher levels are not accessable to lower characters AND you have limits on castings of magic at a particular level. Flat MP systems base accessibility and limits on one unified system where the more points required the bigger a draw it is. Not to say Flat MP systems are that great, either. They end up trivializing magic since you can wind up casting low magic a nearly infinite amount of times. Except as I level up in FFIII my caster is able to cast level 1 spells 14 times without rest so, it looks like it'll go up to a huge number if I level them high enough.

The downside to this system is that leaning a new level tier of spells usually require a lot more leveling than otherwise might be required. FFIII feels limited in the number of spells per tier also. Fire and Blizzard, for example, are level 1 spells while Thunder is level 2. That seems to be only because there's 3 spells per level a particular character can equip. There was a part where NPCs were handing me multiple copies of a spell because it's required by the story that I cast it but I didn't have any characters high level enough to use it. That seemed to be a symptom of a slightly flawed system. D&D gets around this by letting you buy items that can cast spells from skilled artisans or by improvising something. Console RPGs can't be THAT flexible right now. And being able to cast the most basic of spells only a few times before you're exhausted is lame... especially when you can't use up a higher level to cast a lower level spell. This also means that Ethers and other later innovations in Final Fantasy are out, too.

Magic is also really powerful. Too powerful, sometimes. I would have my fighter characters deal maybe 100 damage on an enemy and then have spells deal nearly 250 damage per cast. Which is nice considering the limiting feel of the magic system... except you tend now to save them for bosses only and feel less likely to experiment with them during normal fights. Once you get some staffs that you can equip and use in battle that casts those 1st level black magic spells the game all of a sudden becomes overwhelmingly easy since now all those MP limitations brought on by character development go out the window as you can use the items an unlimited number of times... and you find all three elemental staffs in about 4 hours of game play... no purchase required.

It ain't all piss and vinegar. Story changes versus the original? Well, they gave the orphans some limited background and you mean them one at a time instead of all at once. I like that change a lot. It's a delightful return to the past. Modern Final Fantasy games keep the player mostly chock full of those things. Whatcha gonna do NOW, BITCH?! MWA HA HA HA HA! The old school feel is nice, and the script seems to poke fun at itself with the cliches. I mean, sheet, they give you an airship practically right off the bat! I found that hilarious. And not being able to buy Phoenix Downs? Wow, I wish I had advance warning of that one. I would have conserved them.

Actually, I don't know. :P I lost a party member and accidentally saved so now I have to figure out how to bring them back to life. Inn's alone won't do it. And nobody knows life spells. I mean, honestly, when was the last time that the death of a party member REALLY impacted you?

All in all it's still fun. Even if it wasn't a Final Fantasy game I'd still play it. My brother said it was only $10 cheaper than Final Fantasy XII, which to me must mean this DS game was $40 or so. Very pricey for a DS game if you ask me. If it sounds like I'm being harsh then that's right. I think the Final Fantasy series should be held to extreme standards as it is THE defining console RPG. Just like I feel about Zelda and that kind of adventure game. I think it's one of the more overrated Final Fantasy games. IGN gives it an 8 something, Gamespot a high 7. I'd give it a high 6 or low 7 (I haven't finished it yet, after all). I seem to think that if it was developed in-house a lot of those things would be non-issues as they might have been less afraid to tweak things like they did for the Final Fantasy I and II remakes on the PSX.

I'm pretty exhausted. It's been a long day of schmoozing and doing shit. Hopefully tomorrow I can actually get around to doing something fun. If the MCSD doesn't get in the way. Turns out I don't have my work schedule for next week and I'm getting anxious because it seems that anyone that COULD help me seems to be in a holiday mood and not very helpful at all.

Also, I specified a GUI format. I'm working on actually parsing it. It's in XML which seems like a good idea for future upgrades and things... but I've never used XML in C++... only Visual Basic. I didn't realize it's such a pain in the ass. And because of the nature of the format I have to define a whole bunch of weird structures and abstractions before I can test any of it in the slightest. So far I've built a file to recreate the Donkey Kong NES menu just to keep it simple. Now I have to emulate it. *groan*

Gah, since when don't I have time for myself? And to think I'm not even working yet. ><

Childrens

2006-12-28T10:35:00.000-05:00

Did I ever tell you how much I dislike children? Having to babysit two of them in this house is just plain silly when they have a closer relative to watch over them on the other side of town.

Gah.

Stuff

2006-12-27T13:40:00.000-05:00

Uhh, yeah, because my videos were SO OFFENSIVE but look what else is on YouTube.
Yuna getting friggin' raped.

I mean, sheesh, the poster's name is UtubeIsFullOfFags for crying out loud! D:

Also, turns out Microsoft has been giving out free laptops to some bloggers. I'm not a pro blogger, but I guess if I was getting freebies like that I'd happily become one. I guess the question is whether they keep it, whether they write good stuff or bad stuff about Microsoft, and whether they declare the gift on their taxes next year.

I've mentioned them before. Too bad Microsoft never gave me any presents. Oh well, I guess I'll just take it out of them my way with a few extra pirate copies of Office or something.

Some of my unwelcome extended family is here. Can't I just be alone?!

Merry...

2006-12-26T00:48:00.000-05:00

... umm... oh, too late.

I hate getting pulled out of town for things I have to be at. I was exhausted and went to sleep for the night only to wake up now and I can't sleep. I'll make myself sleep, though.

Hopefully I can get around to saying Merry whatever tomorrow when I'm not being watched. Heh, and hopefully MSCD will give me some time to spare. Did you know they don't recognize holidays as an excuse for not doing my classwork? Sheesh.

The only reason for the restrictions is that I'm getting government money for it. Too bad. D:

Supervillainy

2006-12-24T15:42:00.000-05:00

The RIAA is suing the website AllofMP3.com on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October of 2006. That comes to a lawsuit totaling $1.65 trillion!

If AllofMP3 sells tracks for like a dollar or so, RIAA can't possibly get that kind of return, even if they manage to bribe all the judges, even if a US judgment held water overseas, do they really expect to get a big fat check for $1.65 T? Are all the employees so wealthy that they even have assets in that amount? Obviously the company would fall and the employees won't be jailed since it's a civil case not a criminal one. Can any of the employees ever work any job that will make up that kind of money?

My theory? That way the RIAA can later say "WE LOST $1,649,999,999 ON PIRACY LAST YEAR!!!"

Haw.

Animalia

2006-12-22T09:57:00.000-05:00

So one thing that's passed me by is that the video quality of PS3 backwards compatibility is dog shit. Of course, that shouldn't be much of a surprise to anyone.

Yet Woot had the crappy 20 Gig PS3's in stock yesterday and it sold out in 10 minutes.

I'm stunned at how much negative press this thing gets and people are STILL snapping them up. The loyalty of Sony fanboys is stunning. If you followed that YouTube link you could read some of the comments. Some of the comments even accuse the producer of doctoring the video! Yes YouTube has been invaded by idiots in the past year (and many of them are in the admin side of it, but that's another beef), but still, the lack of people thinking before they type is going to make my brain melt.

Now I DO have a beef with the suggestion that all it takes is a "simple firmware upgrade." Unless you're a member of the design engineering team at Sony of Japan, you don't know. Unless your contact person on the inside is a member of the design engineering team at Sony of Japan, you don't know. WE (the public) may never know what it really takes to fix it. Even comparing it to turning on filtering with DirectX is a fallacy since it doesn't run DirectX. I'm just completely shocked that it doesn't at least filter it. Thing is, filtering won't solve the issue, just make it less noticeable. The real answer is to rescale polygons and points to newer and higher resolution displays. Impossible? Maybe. Even then it won't look that great. I'm no expert, but I'm not sure HDMI can even describe low resolution modes.

But, you know, everyone likes backwards compatibility. But once you give them exactly that, they start complaining for more. Not to say that ugly filtering on PS3 and not letting the resolution change is an excuse, but you can't have both "looks exactly the same" and "looks better" in the same window. I can't believe units would ship with such a major problem.

Oh, wait, it's Sony.

My advice? Don't be a fanboy. Even if I could afford it and find it, I wouldn't get a PS3 right now. What's the blockbuster game? By the time a blockbuster game comes out, should we have faith that everything will be fixed? Well...

Sometime ago, the Gamecube lost it's digital video output. Since I don't have HDTV I simply never followed the happenings of anything HD. But I have to say I'm disappointed. They don't even make the cable anymore. Sheet, I can get a replacement screen for an old Game Boy Advance but I can't get a digital cable for the GC? Boooooo---

Ah well. Busy busy busy. MCSD coursework is taking over my life. That's unfortunate too.

User Warning

2006-12-20T22:12:00.000-05:00

My body is changing shape. I'm losing weight and it feels good.

One of the consequences of losing weight is that basic activities change in how they are done. I can't open doors by just throwing my weight around, for example. Another consequence is evidently I don't know how to hug anymore.

Well, I do, it's just that apparently my aim is off more than usual. So if you hug me and I grab something I'm not supposed to grab, here is what you should do:

1. While hugging, pretend I'm not touching what I am. Seriously. I don't know what I'm touching anymore.
2. Casually mention afterwords what it was that I did wrong. Please don't embarrass me by making a big deal out of it.
3. Watch me get embarrassed anyway even if you did number 2 perfectly.

See, if I'm going to touch something inappropriate, I want it to be remembered. Casual cheap feels are not required.

Please bear with me while I get the hang over this changing body.

Just because...

2006-12-17T02:18:00.000-05:00

... there is hope on the horizon doesn't mean it stopped raining. I'm still getting hassled and being punished for being alive. The first time my phone rang today my case was reopened about just about everything. Example: did you know that if I want to use kitchen equipment (like a stovetop, frying pan, saucier) I must clean it afterwords? No big deal, right? Well, that rule's only for me. Anyone else may use any items and not clean them at all. Meaning if I want to use them, I have to clean them before I use them and clean them after. So don't feel bad if I turn my ringer off and am completely unable to talk on weekends. It's because people are home who hate me. Easy enough to understand, yes?

My first paycheck would end up being middle of January. A taste of the good life again, except more good. I hope. I don't like changing a lot so I hope this is a job I can enjoy and get used to for many years. I did put 5+ years in Baptist Hosptial putting myself through school. I'm what they call "a lifer," I guess.

Anyway, I'm feeling really creative today. I've got things in my head for some Stepmania stuff and I've already trimmed a song to under 2 minutes so I could play it on In the Groove 2. Gotta make some steps. I've got a new YTMND in mind and I've already got my initial sound and .gif. The picture's gonna need some work to look cool but it's doable. I've got a neat picture I'm working on involving a laptop, I'm just trying to figure out the best ways to attack it. I've got an idea but I just need to DO it. I'm done with my second inventory load from storage and I need to make another run to exchange. PLUS I want to put in my hours for school: the sooner it's done the sooner I get certified and can command a larger salary.

One thing I'm putting off for a few is my game. I keep coming up with more and varied ideas for game play and I think I've changed the genre of game like 4 times already. :P
My custom engine's terrain system "works", except it doesn't currently support a whole lot of anything. I just need to take the existing code and wrap it in different ways so I could make it modular. Once modular I can add features easily. As it is now, it doesn't even support models or skins, but I'm chalking that up to being unwilling (right now) to sit down and learn Lightwave since I've convinced myself that Maya sucks. I'm sure it doesn't suck, it's just that I think more mathematically and Maya is more engineered to artists and organic modeling and things like that. Is Lightwave the answer? I dunno, um, maybe?

Now, about the current game image. I'm thinking of a cross between Zelda (Link to the Past, of course) and Final Fantasy Tactics. I've got sketches of characters and moves and weapons. Nevermind that I'm not an artist and my sketches could be misinterpreted for a six-pack of beer and a contact lens milling machine trying to fuck a paper shredder. But as long as it makes sense to me that's ok. I've got a vision of the game play and bosses and items. Story? Uh, lol, I dunno. I'm sure I could whip something up if I wanted to. I want to avoid marrying a story to a design since the design ends up changing so often. I think it's my desire to make an end-all be-all game. I know in my head that an independent game won't break that kind of goal, I just go with my heart. Or stomach, I forget which.

So I'm just casually looking around online and I notice this old news article regarding the idea in the head for Dead or Alive 5. Tomonobu Itagaki says he has a vision of the game's opening sequence... which is fine except, um, that's a movie, not a game. What's the game like? How is it going to be better?

The problem with new Japanese game superstars like Itagaki and Hideo Kojima is that they have grandiose visions of cinema and story and graphics that it almost seems like the gameplay itself comes second.

I mean, here in America we raked John Romero over the coals because of Daikitana. I wonder if game players here and abroad will finally wake up to that sort of shit. The game should come first. That's why I've always liked the idea behind the Final Fantasy series. Story? Bah. None of the games are related to each other other than the reuse of a few names. But they keep reinventing the RPG wheel. They sic one section of the team on graphics and animation and just trust that the guys redoing the battle engine will make the best use of what they produce. There's no Final Fantasy "superstar." It's a product of a team and while there ARE team leaders, there's nobody there with an ego that's willing to put it ahead of the game itself.

Humble is good.

The Man Disapproved

2006-12-16T12:52:00.000-05:00

I got a YouTube video got pulled. T-T

At least you guys got to see it, right? Nothing inappropriate in there, right? Ne? Ne? Ne?

I'm going to go pack my bags and defect to another video site. Thing is, who's out there? Yeah, Myspace has video upload capabilities but I don't need to give these gifts to News.com.

Of course, since I'm such a spiteful person, I HAVE to make a super filthy version of Virtual Hentai.

You're welcome in advance.

4chan lives within me

2006-12-15T01:31:00.000-05:00

hard test is haaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrd

Short Bus

2006-12-10T22:10:00.000-05:00

A. I got the job(s). I'm going to take the one 15 minutes away from me because it's a fantastic job. Permanent, benefits, a WHOLE lot of money. Of course, I don't know when I start, my hours, or anything like that. And I don't have the cash JUST YET. I'll probably need to work two weeks first.

B. At one time, I needed a Playstation memory card. I can't use the Dexdrive thing in Windows XP (or even Windows 2000 for that matter), so that's it for that thing. Gamestop and EBGames don't sell them anymore, which I find hilarious. Playstation 3 is supposed to have backwards compatibility with PSX and PS2, yet Sony doesn't sell those memory cards anymore. Sheesh. Thankfully there's always ebay. I picked up like 6 third-party memory cards for $5. Hell yeah they were ugly. Clear blue. Ick. So I spent some time this week coating them in primer, sanding it down 'til smooth, and repainting. Except, I really don't have much airbrush practice. The rig to hold it spun around under the 20 psi of air pressure into the brush. So I ended up coating way too much paint on it so it took a bath in brake fluid. It's my traditional paint stripping fluid. Yeah, Castrol Super Clean is supposedly better but I've never found it in any store so, DOT 5 it is. I checked it out today. Half of the paint didn't come off, and all the clear blue plastic swelled and turned into a bloated blue-grey plastic. It's like the memory card had elephantiasis of the nuts. (Anyone want a playstation memory card circuitboard? 1 megabit of NAND flash goodness?

C. Bookworm Adventures is pretty cool. Best word I've gotten so far is "Devolution". Yeah, I'm a fucking MADMAN.

Fish!

2006-12-05T12:25:00.000-05:00

Why, yes, I *am* addicted to fish.

My interviews have shuffled around. The one for today is at 4pm, rescheduled from 11. Now, with how far I have to travel for this, I woke up semi-early-ish. Fuckers. This particular job (which I'll call job B) sounds like it's a piece of shit, even if the money is good. I mean, you don't reschedule the day of the event. That's pretty unprofessional. Job A's interview is TOMORROW instead of Thursday due to my evidently not knowing how to use a calendar. I have to fill out a HUGE application, too, since it's the final interview, as far as I know. It's literally 15 minutes away from me, and they seem to run a tighter ship. Job B has a much less well known name than Job A.

Needless to say, I'll only take Job B if Job A doesn't get offered to me since they pay about the same. But I can't just throw away Job B. Although it might have been fun to show up in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and sandals and use the word "cunts" a lot with a fake British accent.

Also, Job B is a 3 month contract, while Job A is permanent. No brainer there.

Ah well, we'll see. I'm desperate to move but even if job B offered 10K more a year (which would only come out to $4/hr over Job A, which sounds great except I wouldn't get benefits and after $15,000 the gravy train is over and I need to look for work again), I'd be hard pressed to take it. I mean, if it takes me another 3 months to find work, then I'm really looking at making around $15000 a year within that whole 6 month period. Rent & Uts would be at least $800 in this crazy-ass town (or crazy ass-town). $4800 in living, so I'd have to make due with $10000 for six months of just being. Not counting food, gas, maintenance, internet, etc etc etc. Which I GUESS I could do. But, the alternative is like a $50K job and it's permanent.

Wuh? Oh. Stay in school, kids. Wish me luck!!!

Weekend Warrior

2006-12-04T00:31:00.000-05:00

Finally I get some peace and quiet around here.

My parents are kind of like babies. If I'm out of sight things are ok but if I'm spotted or noticed in some way/shape/form all of a sudden they get reminded of how much they hate me.

So if I'm out just fixing a fence (again), it's in my interest to do it as silently and inconspicuously as possible. If I make a ruckus, someone perhaps also outside or in the kitchen may hear. That someone may be a slave driver, and they may think of me and then become reminded of some other things I should do to make my keep.

So, also, when I manage to disappear into my room, it again is best I do so very quietly and without drawing attention. If I go and start playing, say, Unreal Tournament with sound and all I'll inevitably get someone to barge into my room saying that if I have time for games I have time to clean my room.

Now, I know I should clean it. But I've just been turning it off for like a year. I was supposed to be in my place. And if the room is my responsibility to clean, don't I then have a right to ornamentalize it as I see fit?

Alas, there is no justice when someone else holds all your cards. Nothing to get upset about, really, because right now I can't change it. Operative words: "right now."

But it's late. Can't wake up at the crack of noon, you know. I'm no bum.

Happy December

2006-12-01T13:37:00.000-05:00

I've been in a strangely good mood lately. I think it's because pretty soon I'm probably going to nail a job. It's just a feeling.

There was a jar of sauce I used to top some meats with. It is a savory sweet sauce that didn't have any carbs. It didn't stop anyone from throwing it away. Gah.

Anywho, I've been reading up on some stuff. I'm curious where the congressional hearings are regarding Dead or Alive Xtreme 2. I mean there's a LOT more suggestive stuff in that, right? RIGHT. There's fucking POLE DANCING. Not that I'm complaining, I just find it interesting that GTA San Andreas got the beat down regarding a sequence that was removed from the game that could be hacked back into existance (which, without the nude textures that aren't in the game essentially comes down to enabling dry-humping), while a game with bikini-girls (which some said bikinis are no bigger than string and seashells) pole dancing as part of the game barely gets a blip.

Again, I'm not complaining. Just a curiosity. I wonder if the US could handle a true widespread release of a porn game. Events have certainly been leading up to it. The Guy Game, BMX XXX, Leisure Suit Larry Magna Cum Laude, Playboy Mansion, DOAX2... all dancing around the same thing but nobody wants to take the initiative and slam it forward.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, it seems Japan has no problem with it. Valis had the 10 year anniversary earlier this year and the company that holds the rights to it celebrated by making a downloadable hentai game around it. It's not even the first time... alongside general released games under the Valis franchise, Japan got erotically charged side versions of the games. Hell, Gainax officially licensed the characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion for a strip poker game.

I really wonder what would happen if a mainstream company released for a home console a game like, say, Interact Play VR. That game goes that you are a rapist looking for targets and the rape itself is interactive: Press the mouse button while hovering over a nipple and you could fondle it, for instance.

I raise this question because: what if they were all up in arms because it was that there was AO content in an M game? Was it an excuse to wail on Rockstar due to all the GTA games which always seemed to get press over how "evil" they are?

I'm not even saying I would buy an explicitly naughty game for a home console system. There's something kind of weird about putting "Long Dong Donkey Kong" next to "Super Monkey Ball" on your shelf, for instance. BUT, I have found maybe hundreds of video captures from DOAX2 showing off the skimpiest of the skimpy, the sluttiest of the slutty, and blah blah blah so I'd say without any hesitation that they would most certainly sell.

Also,--

Snaggletooth

2006-11-27T00:14:00.000-05:00

Look, just because I'm not going to erupt into a murderous rampage anymore doesn't mean it's ok to THROW AWAY my toothbrush.

Shit, it's not like it's an accident. I have an electric toothbrush, right, and the heads are replaceable. Toothbrush replaced every 6 months? Nah, just the head. Costs about the same as getting a whole new brush, sure, but I'm convinced they clean a little better. I can use it like a manual brush and there's an extra rotational factor in play to help get at those nooks and crannies. Which is important because flossing is a thorn in my side, so if my teeth feel cleaner I don't quite feel so bad for not doing it as often as I probably should.

Now, the trick with these things is that you just can't get ONE of those heads. They come in two and three. My model comes in threes. I bought it back in the day and used one head. The opened display case was left in the bathroom. I've decided I need to change it. Well, I actually LOOK today and, hells bells, it's GONE. Tossed. Now, these things ain't cheap. $20 for three.

Score so far:
$50 Brake Pads
$5 PVC construction bucket
$5 PVC pipe excess
$3 Ranch Dressing

These are items that were found in the house in respective locations that have been THROWN AWAY without any questions as to why I have them, what they're for, anything. My most hurtful was the salad dressing. I spent my time making a wonderful salad full of cooked toppings and it took me maybe 30 minutes to prepare. I set it on the table then open the fridge to get my dressing when... missing. PURELY MISSING. Now, I had JUST gone grocery shopping THAT MORNING. Expired? Well, why not put it on the list for me?

There is just blatant disrespect for anything I use. Anything. Nobody's ever asked me why I keep my hairbrush and deodorant in my room. Easy: because other people will use them and lose them or toss them because they just don't give a shit. I don't lend my pens or markers or anything because I know I will NEVER see them again.

Now, you wouldn't borrow something from a friend and smash it, right? Hell, you wouldn't borrow a clipboard from the petition taker and break it over your knee. You wouldn't borrow a pen from the hotel lobby just to toss it in a trash can. Why should your SON'S insert object here be any different?

So today I didn't brush my teeth. I feel gross. I didn't even want to leave this morning to pick up a new set because I knew it'd be a lot. At least I stole the $20 to get them.

Sheesh, why not? They're gonna cost me money? Hell NO.

In other news, it took a lot of sweat to get this far. But, it looks like things are going to go a bit faster now. I've wanted a long time to show these. :P

I've got a format that may work after all. I keep coming up with new game ideas, but I finally really understand 3D technologies... even if it IS rudimentary. But that's ok. Aim for the skies.

Interview tomorrow. YIKES!

Zen

2006-11-24T12:56:00.000-05:00

You know the saying that nobody can hurt you more than the ones you love?

Simple solution that has evaded me: just stop loving. Now they're strangers doing hurtful things. And there isn't anything a stranger could do to alter my mood.

Ahhhh... so much better, yes?

Up on the chopping block: Interviews. Lots of them. Monday and Wednesday of next week. It's GO time, I think.

Today's "FUCKING LIARS" section: when I showed my face at the unemployment office they made a big whirlygig about free education you qualify for since you're on unemployment. I asked if I could get my MCSD (which is like THE Microsoft programmer certification) and they said "sure". I did all the paperwork last week, signing my name so many times I was like a rock star signing autographs. And, wouldn't you know it, it turns out I qualify, but not 100% like they insinuated.

I need to pay like $300 to enroll. Ordinarily, $300 for that kind of certification is a DEAL. BUT when you're not working, $300 is a lot. That's a car payment. My TV is like a kaleidoscope of colors lately: displaying in red sometime, sometime normal, sometime green, sometime blue. I need a new one but even buying a shitty TV will break me financially. I also need a new monitor: mine can't display refresh rates above 60Hz anymore. Well, it can, but it screams a high pitched scream loud enough to nearly deafen me and any neighborhood dogs (nobody else can hear it I've learned). It sucks because my eyes are sensitive to low refresh rates when paired with high speed phosphors (exactly like a monitor) so I am popping advil at least 3 times a week due to headaches. But I can't even buy a Shitty McShit brand monitor because it WILL break me. My speakers don't output on the right channel. SPEAKERS WILL BREAK ME. Any expense of money not directly related to living and breathing and eating will break me at this point. $300 is a great deal and a fantastic investment in my future, but, well, there you go.

When you're broke, any amount is expensive. What gets me upset is that they made a big song and dance like an infomercial: "YES YOU can enroll for CERTIFICATIONS and HIGHER LEARNING to GET YOU that HIGH POWERED HIGH PAYING JOB!!!" And this is supposed to be GOVERNMENT FUNDED training.

...

Wait, what? Government lies to you?

To Wake Once More

2006-11-17T00:17:00.000-05:00

At least Activision has a sense of decency.

We have received your application for the position of Associate Programmer-VV-PRO000034. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that you have not been selected for this position.

Considering how many applications I've filled out, and this is the first actual "we took the time to click a button and send you a negative response instead of just ignoring you outright". I guess that's the way of the world today. People are commodities. I thought it was just MySpace that was edging this along by keeping count of virtual friends, but I think it's just a general trend of humanity lately.

I've run out of just about all gaming positions I could do. I've been doing some applications for conventional jobs too, but it's the end of that.

As far as my game? Well, one man doing everything alone is really rough. I can definitely appreciate a multi-teamed development method. Right now I'm deriving a way dynamic(ish) objects can interact with a static(ish) map. The "ish" is there on both since You could have dynamic objects that appear static, and code can certainly manipulate a map during gameplay.

There's gonna be big payoff with this, I think. I have to code a whole bunch of different interactions between dyn and sta to make it flexible enough for what I need. Pool table bankshots? I need to know how to record angles and manipulate trajectories. Non-square floor tiles? Hey, we all want to run on rooftops. It's absolutely MASSIVE the amount of details and data one has to take. These things are usually covered by splitting up the work within a team, but it's just me.

An advantage of multiple teams is that things stay fresh. I had some code to handle dyn objects and I've been working on the sta maps for so long that I don't quite remember the dyn stuff intuitively anymore. I mean, it's NOT impossible, just daunting.

Now, this is because I like the idea of coding once and pumping them out. I *could* just do a hack job for something. But that's no fun. I want quality. On the other hand, artists get good by drawing a lot of shit so... maybe I should change gears?

And real life comes crashing down on me, still. I have no income and I'm out of money. I am sweating. I've got unemployment but it's just barely and it's not going to cover my auto insurance due next month. I'm worried about being no good and unhireable. I mean, did I just waste all my time at the university? Plus, I applied for bunch of gamer jobs because that's my dream. Has that been finally squashed?

So in the midst of all that, I simply cannot be blamed for wanting to roll up into a ball and sleep for 23.5 hours a day. I just wanna wake up and have my life change and THEN I'll stay up.

I'm also just fighting my depression really hard, trying to not let it sound when I call my case manager or recruiter. It's hard to stay motivated when you're so upset you don't want to DO anything. It's really hard work, let me tell you. Even my DIET has taken on my mood. I've been losing and gaining weight with fast frequency. Last week I lost 8 pounds. This week I gained 6. It's just totally queer.

I logically KNOW that it won't be like this forever. And I WANT it to hurry up and be over already. But I am also fully aware that there's no short cuts and I have to endure.

After all, I might qualify for federal financial aid to get my MCSD certification. Might as well put this time to use, especially since my dreams are crushed. But, hey, what else is new, right?

Things you might not know about stuff

2006-11-10T17:33:00.000-05:00

Banks: Did you know that checks cashed on the same day are processed in order of greatest value to smallest value? It happens at 8am and 4pm. Banks may have policies like "anything after 2pm is tomorrow", but, essentially, they're slotting those transactions to that next 8am event. Who cares? Well, when you do this, you increase the chance of bouncing checks. If you have, say, $300 and there's outstanding checks for $50, $100, $300, if you cash them in that order, only one will bounce: the $300. If you do it the other way, TWO will bounce: the $50 and the $100. Net result for the bank? Another $25 charge. Net result for you? Two angry calls and two red marks on your credit report instead of one.

Cell phones: So, I had that cancellation charge. They waved it, since I was still going to be paying them SOMETHING with my reduced plan, and I guess they wanted to get on my good side so that when I find better times I can upgrade my plan and still stay with them. Well, I look on the fine print on my first bill and notice something weird. My weekends aren't free. I call and, yup, it's true. Gah. Well, shit, if that's the case why not just cancel my service altogether? Because while I didn't have a contract before, I've got one now. T-T. Blast.

Sonic 2: Just recently, a new beta has surfaced. It's currently believed to be the version played on Nick Arcade. It's kind of exciting. Check it out if you're so inclined: http://www.hidden-palace.org/?releases

Also, let people know: I'll build computers for cheap. All I ask is $100 over the price of parts. And you get the benefit of a custom design (not those store-templates) with room to grow and the benefit of YEARS of computing knowhow. Hey, just offering.

:(

2006-11-08T01:01:00.000-05:00

I promise I'll stop behaving like an injured cat. Just give me time.

What you say?

2006-10-31T00:28:00.000-05:00

What you say? I posted more when I WAS working? Well, I guess I had a routine going at that time. Now I rarely have scheduled events. Hell, I have lunch at a different time each day, sometimes have breakfast, sometimes not.

What you say? Interview went well. Why, if the job was anything like what the application said it would be, I'd be a great fit. But it isn't. I don't want to say I'm too advanced for it, but it's just a different field. Development is different from deployment, even though they share some of the skillset.

What you say? Nah. I'm tired. Word is that I may not have to pay that cancellation fee. We'll have to see. It's gotta go through their "people". I had to get nasty with them (on a land line phone, naturally). I hate getting nasty just to get things done. If I'm going to be nasty, I'd rather be nasty for fun.

What you say? Well, I DID make $100 building a computer for someone. That was pleasing. I'd like to build more for some other people to make some money, but it's a lot of time getting things done. While it wasn't my best work, it was the fastest. I reused their old case which didn't have a lot of opportunities for clever cable routing. Things were all kind of cluttered and even then some of the cables were too short to route anyway even if I did have the space.

What you say? Nope. No costume. I'm lame.

*shrug* I guess that's it. I feel depressed.

Wireless Noose

2006-10-27T11:50:00.000-04:00

Remember how the big deal with an unlocked phone and shopping for rebate-less service meant I don't have to have a contract? Well someone fucked up.

When I lost my job one of the first things I did was change my plan. I went from 300 minutes to 100 and cut out all the internet goodies. Total no frills. No problem, right? Well, I get this bill in the mail for a $200 cancellation fee. WHAT CONTRACT, BITCHES?! Now I have to get this all straightened out. Not only do I now have a crippled plan that ALREADY has overages (since I use my cell number as my work contact because I can't rely on anyone giving me my messages), but I gotta deal with the hassle of getting that charge off my bill.

Gah.

At least one thing is looking up for me. I've got an interview come Monday. Office Depot Corporate. Network Developer. Yeah, that's what I'm a-talkin' about. And if they called me, they like me. Gotta make sure I don't disqualify myself. If it works out for me, might be headin' on over to Boynton Beach.

I havn't posted lately because it'd all be negative. I'm not a negative person: it's just slightly consuming. When I have back the security of a full featured phone plan, knowing I'll be able to make my car payments, not having my wrist hurt, and other things then All Will Be Well.

Wasted Effort

2006-10-13T21:21:00.000-04:00

Gather 'round, childrens. All you boyzes and girlsies. Let me tell you a tale.

Back in the day, you know, the days when the mighty Griffon flew freely, we accessed hardware directly in code. That's the way it was done to get any kind of speed out of it. And it was FINE, nevermind what all the naysayers said, which, coincidentally, was "NAY." The reason we were supposed to use BIOS for graphics and things was so that we could keep compatibility with a wide variety of platforms.

Ultimately, things became unified and we didn't really need it. Anyone with a VGA video adaptor plugged into their system means that THAT card will use selected ports and memory addresses: END OF STORY. If it didn't obey, it wasn't VGA. $A0000 was the start of video memory when you set it to 320x200x256. Select a color to define by sending one of those 256 colors to some port (I think it was 0x3c8?), then start feeding three byte sequences coinciding with Red Green Blue into some other port (0x3c9) and keep going for as many colors starting from that first value that you want. Drawing offscreen meant allocating memory from the heap and putting some data there and literally memcpy() from that memory space into $A000:0000, depeding on where you wanted it.

It was great. Then VESA came along to make a specification so that people can just program that and video cards were free to implement things any which way they want. It didn't insulate the coder from the implementation details: they just made hard code values and intuitive things to teach into variables. A resolution of 640x480x256 was around 300k... the maximum size a segment could address is 64k. So you had to call a writing function. Kind of like how those mapping chips (MMC for the rest of us) inside NES cartridges allowed games have more than 16K of addressable ROM memory. Some video cards chunked it at 64k, some at 16k. You see how things get complicated.

From humble beginnings. DirectX today tries to unify very complicated and different hardwares under one control. The thing is, there has been 8 different interface designs for it. Yeah, it's backwards compatible, but, it's HARD to find details on ONE specific implementation. All the information of DirectX I could get ranged from DirectX 6 to DirectX 9. And some DirectX 9 stuff doesn't work with DirectX 9.0c (unless I specificly ASK for the vintage interfaces... *rolleyes*). And they rarely say what version they're using.

Anyway, I coded for the last week to make a pretty comprehensive sprite library for DirectX. It wasn't clever, but it was supposed to get everything. Rotation. Per pixel representations. Everything so far was perfect.

...

And then I tried some animation. BZZ. WRONG. I wanted perspective, but at the edges of the screen the pixels weren't matching up. I changed resolutions and the display wasn't even the same. GAH.

While stumbling through the documentation, I found that the sprite library I was developing WAS ALREADY MADE. GAH x 2! And it supported translucency (I only supported 1bit alpha channels) AND tinting (something I didn't even know I wanted, but, now that I think of the practicality, HELL YEAH!). That made me feel teh-stupid.

I don't mind working hard, but I hate WASTING my time on bullshit. Now I can't adapt my library to do those tricks because I'm not sure I would know how to do it. So I turn everything around and use the Direct X sprite thing. NOW I discover it doesn't support rotating along X and Y. I gotta use negative scaling to flip. Pain in the buttocks, mang.

I'm just bitchy lately. My favorite chores lately? Driving out of my way to COSTCO to pick up something off the shelf that NOBODY ELSE CAN LIFT. Um, I'm not really that strong, you know. You don't want to hurt your back? My back isn't expendible... you should have thought about YOUR back BEFORE you got breast implants. Yes, but money's too short to have me stop paying my Manx Tax.

I need work NOW.

...

At least I found this absolutely hilarious:

Juggler

2006-10-04T02:17:00.000-04:00

Dang, it's like 2am. I'm back to where I was while I was working: biting off more than I can chew. Always.

It's because I have a lust in my soul to be a living node of knowledge and experience and skill. Or just have an itch I can't scratch.

I am currently playing the following games, trying to juggle them in attention:

1. Final Fantasy IV for GBA. I'm in the exclusive new content. So far it's not too hard. I actually had to reach in my items for a boss, though, since everyone ran out of MP and I was nearly done for. If you've ever seen me play RPGs, I *HATE* using items unless I really have to. So, naturally, games where I can't hold 99 of everything at a time are a form of suffering for me.

2. Legend of Legaia. I was playing it emulated even though I own the game because it just looks so damn NICE in high res. UNfortunately, epsxe 1.6.0 has a problem in some sections of the world map where the fights freeze the virtual machine before they start. I think it has to do with loading up an enemy model that it doesn't like loading since it's only in certain areas of the maps. I have to walk over from that city in area 2 with the big tower ALL THE WAY to that stone flower thing. 75% of the area is prone to those errors so I have to do "tool assisted" techinques just to get across. I stopped it, but I want to continue.

3. Thief 3. I LOVED (loved, seriously) Thief and Thief 2. This is a fine game as well. I remember reading up on this game while I had a shitty computer and could never play Thief 3 and reading up on things like "you can see their faces... some people are genuinely scared of you!" and now that I'm playing it, it's like, "um, nice feature, except if I get close enough to see it then I'm already discovered." Some stealth. I got arrested in the game and am trying to break out of jail. XD

4. Ragnarok Online. Again. H-RO shut down, taking with it my level 70 something assassin. I'm back but this time on Ceres. I'm in Payon getting Soldier Skeleton cards. Again. So far I havn't had ONE card dropped. And I'm playing on the server where the drop rates are 3x what they should be. Playing an official RO server sounds like torture. But this one seems to be very nicely paced. Well, I guess all MMORPGs get torturous when the levels start getting high. I often wonder if a game with linear level gain would REALLY break it. I'm guessing it will since there just isn't a game with linear gain. Who knows. Who cares?

5. Company of Heroes. I helped multiplayer beta test it thanks to Jed. When it went gold I sort of missed getting iced in multiplayer so I picked up a copy *cough*. I can't go multiplayer with it but the single player campaign is pretty fun as far as RTS games go. Of course, the way things go, the game will get insanely hard. I already hit a part where I wish I could be in multiple places at once to babysit my troops and the action is frantic and slightly hard to follow. Which is the whole problem with RTS games to begin with. Units are inherantly stupid and have no sense of survival skills. I like having control, but, sheesh, if I can't see you AND I can't zoom out or quickly select you from the minimap, please, grow a brain and a pair of balls, please?

6. X-Change 2. After finishing X-Change 3 and the original, I went after this one. It's pretty good. It's got a lot more decisions than XC3 and is MUCH more limited in the number of save games so it's quite a challenge doing my spider technique to get everything. The art is beautiful. And, um, hot.

7. Lensmoor. Diana has been pushing me to go play. I havn't played in just about a year. I log in every now and again to make sure I don't get the axe during a player wipe. I logged in just now and some random player instantly sent me a message asking how I've been. Damn friendly folks, I'll tell you what. And it isn't the first time, either. I guess I made some impact. Yep... I know I'm awesome. People all want to be on my good side.

8. Hexen. After finishing Doom in Ultra-Violence difficulty thanks to the power of mouselook and strafe, I figured I'd apply it to Doom 2. Well, fuck me, I can't finish Doom 2. I tried Heretic and it just bored me. Hexen is pretty exciting but the game dynamic is so different from Doom. I don't think I'll be able to finish it, but with like 40 levels, I'd like to at least try. One thing about the source port I'm using is that I wish it still had that spinal column loading screen. That was cool. After this I'll probably look into playing Hexen 2. I remember finding a copy of it years ago but at the time it wouldn't play on my machine.

And... non game projects:

9. Write my 3D game engine. Game companies either license an engine or build their own and then stick with it (save for minor improvements) for a platform. I tried OpenGL. I don't like it. I don't have a lot of header files and it's a hassle to expose new functionality. DirectX is a pain in the butt because it does the fundamentals a bit differently. Unfortunately I never really understood what goes on under the hood so it's more of an uphill battle than back when I was in school. I had to walk 20 miles to school. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways. Well, maybe not, but it's still hard. I spun my wheels for a few hours today on this only to delete the trash I was holding onto for dear life and trying anew. Bah, happens all the time. At least *I* am one person. 3DRealms is a bunch of people... and Duke Nukem Forever has been in production, well, forever.

10. Figure out how to use at least ONE modeller. Maya is hard and nonsensical and likes to use a set of origin axes that are wholely incompatible with the axes in my head. Months playing around with POV Ray really screwed me up, I think. Milkshape doesn't like me, and I want to avoid ever thinking "gee, I should make my own modeller" because THAT will be a world of hurt for me.

11. Relearn piano. I used to play. I don't know. I want to regain skill and get back to where I was. It's pretty fun... except it's a timesink in which I can't do ANYTHING except that. Monotasking For The Lose.

and...

12. Look for work (damnit). I need MONEY. Wii is coming out after all.

All this while avoiding getting hassled by my folks. How do I keep it together? Well...

...

Who says I'm keeping anything together? >>

Degrade

2006-09-28T00:15:00.000-04:00

So, ok. My car is finally fixed. My brother's a real champ, doing farther than he has to. Which makes me somewhat owing.

My dad's always instilled something in me. Be a not a lender nor borrower. Not because he said it or believes it, but because he's the opposite. Always doing a favor for a favor. Bartering abilities.

He's in sales, so I guess it works out. People helping him out later in return for buying a bunch of cases of ass-wine, which helps out the numbers.

I shudder to think what I'm going to have to owe my brother.

In other news, not much to say. I've been napping at certain parts of the day. I know I shouldn't, but I am. Oh well. They say when the mind is resting is when it has inspiration. I'm trying to learn a 3D modeller so I can get some stuff done in my 3D engine. Or, more appropriately, figure out what things my engine will need to do.

Pro companies will build and design a 3D engine (or license one) and that will be what they use for EVERYTHING. I need one. Sure, the Quake engines are all available with GPL, but, sheesh, I don't want to be forever bound by GPL. They can get away with it because by the time they GPL the source they've already MADE their money. I want a chance, too.

Besides, high polycounts and beautiful effects aren't exactly paramount to me. I want beautiful pixels. Simple shades, some focus effects, color and alpha tricks... just razor sharp fps as opposed to super detail.

Nevermind, though. I guess I'll have to keep hacking away at it and see what happens.

Still no real paying work though. I have to admit now I'm getting a bit depressed. Blarg.

T-T-T-T-T-T-T-Tentacle Breaker!

2006-09-22T19:11:00.000-04:00

My it's been a while. If you still read this, give me a howdy ho.

...

HEY, are you calling me a HO?!

...

Why yes. The unemployment job de jur is whore. I havn't been advertising. If I had been I'd probably be rolling in it now. After all, having a series of 25 extra muscles along something that shouldn't have muscles around it makes things rather intersting.

I'm kidding of course. But for some reason I've been contemplating the physics of hentai tentacles. To have the kind of dexterity required there would have to be a HELL of a lot of tendons and muscles and interlocking chains of cartilage and it would be hard to keep them all straight because the physics involved would tend a tentacle to get smaller the farther away from the point of origin is and...

... oh, wait, just like a natural tentacle. N-eeeeeeee-vermind.

Anywho, the additional bad news of the day is that my car's belt broke. I knew I needed one, I just wanted it to stretch until I got a new job. No such luck! Bro tells me it shouldn't be that expensive. That's good at least. But I still need to figure out a way to get it done all the while survivng the moral stone-throwing that is my parent's being home for the weekend. Looks like I'm trapped here. It doesn't get me off the hook for anything until Monday since I can always use their car. It also means I won't get gas money for it. And Monday I'm sure I'll be assigned lots of shit to do. My official job on Monday is the "watch the garage door repairman and make sure he doesn't steal anything" job. And I thought I wanted to go to a Job Fair. Feh.

I definitely can't survive thrown out on the streets so I guess I gotta do what I gotta do.

Coinage

2006-09-14T00:38:00.000-04:00

iPod Nano + iPod Mini =

The new Nanos!

I call them: Nani. XD

No, I'm not impressed. I didn't like how the Mini looked, so the Nani's aren't really that attractive to me. Anodized aluminum is cool, but the colors are too bright to show off any industrialness to it.

Even though mine is entombed in a case, I still think it looks better.

Oh well. I'm not in the market to buy one anyway.

Latest Hassle at Home due to Unemployment: My weight. Sheesh. If it's not one thing it's another. I spend time combing through employment sites and reading up on companies and stuff AND spending time learning things I want to learn that might be useful later in my career. I don't really have the drive to spend two hours of my day sweating under the insane Florida sun.

Bah.