So I've been spending money like I shouldn't be, but I do enjoy life a bit more when I do. I purchased some new speakers for my car and hooked up my old subwoofer, so now you can hear a bit more sound than the monaural crap I had before. I wish I could have done that before the trip to Fanime, but oh well. I also broke down and bought an iPhone, which is probably the best purchase I've made. Sure, it's a fun toy that does all kinds of stuff, especially when jailbroken, but it's also incredibly versatile. It makes a great study tool with Anki, the flash card program I use. Plus I have an entire dictionary in my pocket so I don't hafta carry one in my backpack like I usually do. I also have all my school syllabi for each class as well as my schedule. I also have a program for assigments, and even a GPA calculator, so I don't need an organizer anymore. Just really cool stuff. I also have every Family Guy episode on there and several fun games, so I'm never bored wherever I go. Just incredibly convenient. Right now I'm organizing my music files so I can sync them instead of manually adding them. That's taking a lot of time.
I've been going out a lot lately, too. Probably not the best thing since school has begun, but my classes this semester seem fairly chill with the exception of German. But language classes are always hardcore. My German class seems fun, though. I look forward to the rest of the semester. =)
I've caught up with Warehouse 13 at six episodes. This is why I hate watching a series -- you are forced to wait for a week (or more) for the next one to air. I'd much rather watch an entire season at my discretion. I watched Merlin rather quickly, and it was nice... at my own pace. Now I'll be forced to watch it weekly again, probably with a pause in the winter. Not cool at all.
I was attempting to fix Vonage while my mom was watching a show on Hulu called Defying Gravity. It looked campy and not too scifi-ish, but because I had nothing else to watch, I thought I'd check it out on Hulu. Watching a show from the beginning makes a big difference. Defying Gravity is fascinating, because it's not what you would expect from Ron Livingston, the carefree office worker in Office Space. He's funny at times (his brand of funny -- which is good), but it's a deeply philosophical show in the backdrop of space. I love how sci-fi shows lately have been getting some great writing in like they should, such as Battlestar Galactica. It reminds me of the Star Trek: TNG days.
Right now I'm waiting for some files to copy onto my laptop. I was having some overheating problems with my laptop and Dell has since replaced the cooling fan, which seems to be helping out so far. It definitely runs a lot cooler and although I can hear the fan spinning loudly at times, I feel comforted knowing that it's doing its job. I have Windows 7 beta running on it and everything is going rather well right now. I'll be testing the video soon. The CPU runs the same, but the fan is dissipating the heat like it should. So far. =) Not sure about the video card. I'll check that, too.
Still, both computers are running nicely now. I have (after a mishap in losing my phone contacts) updated Outlook on both computers and my phone, and my school schedule and contacts have been synced across all devices. Looking great so far. I'll hafta reinstall Windows 7 after I actually buy it (for the lappy), but after this whole overheating business, I have backing up and re-installation down to a T.
Everything's been pissing me off today. It's just not a good day for me. I've been fighting Bank of America to reverse charges made on my account for something that I corrected and they've been sending me all over the place. It's frustrating as hell. Every time I get in these moods, I just don't want to deal with anything anymore. I'm sick of bullshit. I'm sick of the damn sucky economy. I'm starting to hate random things like a grumpy old man. Watching my dad curse at the TV... it's like peering into the future of which I don't want.
I can't play games at the moment because when I'm already pissed off I'll just end up throwing shit left and right. Okay, not literally. But I get far more angry than I would normally be and it's not that it's ugly, it's simply ridiculous. There is no point in venting. It gets nothing done. But us humans with our emotions feel it is necessary. I just don't see why we get angry at certain things, and why we have the reactions we do. It gets nothing done. In my case it just breaks controllers and causes yelling at nobody in particular (theoretically the game, but it doesn't exactly yell back).
That said, I've been playing Mirror's Edge lately. The game is inherently frustrating, and there's no way I can play it right now, but the idea is great and the aesthetics are nice. At its core it is essentially a puzzle game with a timer. In certain ways you can equate it with Tetris. Odd comparison, I know, but I think it works. Finding the exact route to take, even with the hints it gives you, can be frustrating. And I'm not sure a game is good when it expects you to die. I think that's what made Braid so brilliant. It expects you to die, but that fact is made necessary through the story itself. The reversal used in Braid would be very nice in Mirror's Edge, almost fitting, really. I'm not surprised that Mirror's Edge didn't do well commercially. Darwinism weeded it out.
I had to return it, unfortunately. However, I checked out Call of Duty: World at War. A lot of people say it's not as good as the first and now I see why. Not only is accuracy a bitch in the game, which is somewhat acceptable in a World War II game, but when I'm shooting people dead on it takes forever to take people down. Not cool at all. It's like the Halo of the Call of Duty universe -- spray n' pray is what people do best and it works in their favor. Sniping works okay, though. So I guess there is no in between, like the variety of guns in Modern Warfare. Yes, there's a time difference, and like I said a rough accuracy is acceptable, but point blank shooting with no results is not.
There's one thing that I may be able to blame for it (besides the fact I suck, which is always a factor) and that is the ping rate. Many times on WaW my ping is not all that great (at the worst it's three of five bars), but when it is, so is everyone elses. Which means everybody is theoretically playing with the same handicap as me. I rarely get a bad ping rate in MW, which begs the question: Do people playing MW simply have better internet connections than people playing WaW? Awkward, but logic isn't presenting anything better. Since individuals host games rather than a central server there is a large variance in connection health. Sigh.
Oh, and still watching Merlin. I'm on episode 7. Cheesy, low budget, but very entertaining show.
Anywho, Merlin comes into a kingdom that forbids magic in any form. The person who has taken Merlin under his care is Gaius, who is King Uther Pendragon's servant... not a wizard, but one who uses science to heal or figure things out. Gaius is the only one who knows Merlin's ability to use magic and to what extent he can. According to Gaius, all sorcerers and witches must utter incantations to cast their spells, but Merlin can do certain things without utterances.
Anyway, it's a different spin on the whole King Arthur thing and the show has a ton of potential. I don't think all the episodes have played yet in the U.S., but in the U.K. the first season is over and done with, which means I can get all of them before they air here. I'm on episode four right now. It's a fun show, and I think I like it more than Warehouse 13. We'll see which one I tire of first. =P
I came across this video at The Onion, a spoof news site. I thought it was pretty funny. =)
There's a bunch of other videos on The Onion that are pretty funny. Check them out...
So another Anime Expo has come and gone. These days I liken them to annual family gatherings that I'm expected to attend. This is in contrast to the days when I would watch anime religiously and draw out efficient schedules to make sure I would get the most out of the con each year. Having no friends that were into anime meant that I would hit each AX solo for the most part. It was nice. I didn't have to follow my own schedule. I would drift into video rooms until 2 in the morning without a care as to what would happen the next day. I never had a hotel room so I didn't need to worry about sleep or any sort of drama amongst people. I was free. I love that.
It's very different now. The past year I've hit multiple conventions, which is odd considering I don't watch anime anymore. I actually hang out with people who do, which means much less freedom and more focus on the consent of the majority to do whatever it is everyone wants to do at any given moment. There's hotel rooms to deal with and any sort of drama between various people. Cosplay plays a role with many people whereas before I would simply be on the sidelines taking pictures of others. Perhaps I make it sound bad, but it's not. Just different. In fact, if I hung out with everyone when I was still the same person back in 2000, I would be having the time of my life. I've experienced this once the year #rpgamer2 visited my apartment (which was a total blast). But it's all behind me now. I hate being my age. Actually, I like being my age. I hate people's perceptions and expectations they have of me because of my age.
So I've been doing random things lately. Summer is kinda dragging along but going too fast, a common theme I've been having lately. I've been checking things off my list. I've watched a good amount of movies. I've been playing Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, the game I recently blogged about. I like it so far, but the game focuses too much on battles. It's basically all about the battles, which is part of the reason I don't like tactical RPGs. Even traditional RPGs are changing with the focus on battles. I love exploration. I love talking to people in towns. I love exploring caves and finding hidden things. It's like the adventure genre with Tomb Raider. I'm not big on the battles. I like more of the exploration and puzzle-solving elements. Maybe this is why older people say "they don't make 'em like they used to": because they grew up liking something and those things that they liked changed on them.
I just finished watching the pilot episodes of a show called Warehouse 13. It's on the Syfy (Sci-Fi) Channel, and it's basically a campier version of the X-Files. I'm starting to dislike the campy humor of science fiction television. I know they're capable of better, as evidenced in Battlestar Galactica. We need to go that route. Stargate was awesome, but we need to move on. Kinda odd coming from the old guy who was just complaining about change in the last paragraph. I guess I'm not that old just yet.
I initially was looking forward to the new Canon HF S100, the follow up to last years Canon HF11, the camcorder that ruled all camcorders. It still does, actually, when it comes to price. But I want a good all around camcorder with the newest technology, and this year's competition was surprisingly fierce. Not only did Sony and Panasonic give Canon a run for its money, but Sanyo's mid-range camcorder kicked everybody's ass in terms of low-light filming. It sucked in most others, but only when compared to the high end models, which is what I was looking at. Another thing the Sanyo VPC-HD2000 had going for it was the 60p recording, which is unheard of in consumer camcorders, so it had possibly the smoothest recording out of all of them. Pretty impressive for a mid-range camcorder. If anybody is looking for something around $600 - $700, check this one out.
But the Panasonic. The HDC-HS300 is the 120 GB hard drive version of the HDC-TM300, which has a 32 GB flash memory built in. Both camcorder have an additional SDHC slot that can hold up to an additional 32GB flash card. Flash is the future, because you can shake the camera all around and not worry about moving parts breaking, like the hard drive. I didn't want a hard drive model because of this, but with the inclusion of the flash memory, I can use it for potentially shaky times while falling back on the hard drive for main recording, because really, 120 GB can hold up to 15 hours of video at the highest quality settings. And that's fantastic. Each flash card, by comparison, can hold about 4 hours, which is not bad at all. Honestly, I may just buy the TM300.
Now that I've picked one, all that's left is to find a vendor that has an affordable but good warranty. Anybody have suggestions? I love Dell's warranties, but they don't carry this model. =/
So when I casually came across some information on a DS game in the series, I became a bit interested. The Megami Tensei games have been on the PS2, which I no longer have, so I never really even had a chance to try. But now that it's out on the DS, and I have a lot more time available to me, I thought I would check it out. I've been jonesing for a game to play. I tried out The World Ends With You, and the concept it awesome and I hear the story is very good (which is the biggest draw for me), but damn the battle system had such a steep learning curve for me, I just kinda gave up.
So I tried SMT:DS and interestingly it's a mix of strategy and traditional RPG gameplay. The battles are layed out in strategic fashion, but when it comes to actually engaging an enemy, it turns into traditional battles, which I enjoy.Honestly, I think it's a perfect game for me to get my feet wet in tactical battles without scaring me off.
I just started, but the story is interesting. I know there are going to be some hard choices that force me to change the course of the story, which I hate. I prefer linear storylines. I'm not a multiple-endings kind of person. I prefer to be able to get 100% completion through one sitting of the game. I think replayability is overrated, and should be left to shooters and platformers. Yes, my love for Chrono Trigger goes against everything I say, but I actually don't like the multiple-ending aspect of Chrono Trigger. I simply love it for it's main storyline.
Anyway, so far SMT:DS is great. It may be the game I complete for my list of things to do this summer. I hope the story stays as interesting as it is so far.
What I liked about Wall-E was that it had heart. It was the characters that sold it for me. Not only was it visually stunning, but the music was spot on. In the beginning when the "camera" pans out through the arid heaps of trash, the score is ominous, foreboding, but flecked with subtle hints of hope. It's among my favorite movie scores (my favorite is the "Scherzo for Motorcycle and Orchestra," aka the motorcycle chase scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
Up, too, had a lot of heart. In fact, the opening montage that essentially introduced Carl was one of the most poignant and touching five minutes I've seen in any movie. Needless to say, I can't wait to get this movie on Blu-Ray. I want to see it again in theaters one last time, though. Without the 3D glasses.
My Groups
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Japan lovers ... Updated: Yesterday
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Jdrama Fans! Updated: Oct 23, 2009
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Languages Updated: Oct 12, 2009
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Recent Comments
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Mikeymcmuffins said:
You're learning German? Dude, that's fricken awesome! How many languages do you plan on trying to learn bro? read more
on Money is the root of all evil... and some fun. -
Mikeymcmuffins said:
Dude, glad to see that things are looking up for you now bro. I totally get what you mean about... read more
on Drama in space... and in my computer. -
Mikeymcmuffins said:
Sucks bro. Hopefully things start changing for the better at full swing soon. read more
on Talking to a wall -
i have a harder time buying stuff, it seems im happier with the money in my pocket or bank account,... read more
on Money is the root of all evil... and some fun.