Stuff

Thought of the day.

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:20:27 GMT

My mouse is so old I can see the growth of my had on it from the wear. I can see where I gripped it farther up the front because my hand was smaller.

Thought of the day.

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 19:21:28 GMT

I think that the Ultramatic Bed company has been running their free bed draw as a "limited time offer" my entire life.

Thought of the day

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 04:18:47 GMT

Rock Band is awesome.

EDIT: Oh and happy new year and such.

Though of the day

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 09:04:29 GMT

If a picture is worth 1000 words, a 2 hour movie is worth 172 800 000 words.

Thought of the day

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 05:52:20 GMT

Blastoise evolve from Squirtle. When two Blastoise mate, they make a baby Squirtle.
Humans evolved from apes. When two humans mate, they make a baby human.

If humans evolved from apes, babies should be apes that eventually turn into humans. Evolution is false.

Thought of the day

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:37:11 GMT

As a result of my naivete in youth I will probably always pronounce Ryu (Street Fighter, not Hayabusa or any other Ryu) as Rai-oo and Regen as Reagan (like the President) even though I now know better.

It was Mole Day today?

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:18:46 GMT

I thought it was June 2nd at 10:23.

Thought of the day

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:26:11 GMT

I'm seeing things in every game I play now in terms of how to exploit portal use.

Anyone want a free copy of Half-Life 2?

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:47:23 GMT

I picked up The Orange Box, and so now I have two copies of it. Apparently Steam lets me gift a copy to someone, so if anyone out there in Journal land would like it, post.

Thought of the day

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:25:10 GMT

There are 959606 other people playing Halo 3 with me right now. Wow.

Thought of the day

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:40:21 GMT

What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"

Thought of the day

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:30:40 GMT

It has occured to me that if I ever do actually win a free TV, or laptop, or something and am alerted by e-mail I might just assume it's spam and delete it.

Job?

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 03:07:36 GMT

Well, it seems I've got an interview with Logitech for a customer support position. Help people figure out their Harmony remotes and such I think. Pays beans and it's only a four month contract. Have to drive to Mississauga by 11 am on Tuesday. I'm currently pretty unsure about it, as it's four months work, but it's four months work that pays poorly and will do not provide any meangingful experience at all.

Thought of the day
Does anyone remember The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz? I remember that I did read it, but can't remember anything about it. Same with both of my parents.

Thought of the day

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 05:05:36 GMT

We need to decide on something that trumps sliced bread. I'm sick of things being the best thing since sliced bread. We need something like, "The best thing since the aeroplane" or "The best thing since sliced bagels". I liked sliced bagels, since I'm terrible at slicing bagels. One side always ends up much larger than the other and it makes them harder to toast.

That might've turned into two thoughts.

Well, there's a few typos like the second one.

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:06:46 GMT

But the translation is still funny.

Thought of the day

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:51:25 GMT

I miss the old Phoenix Wright. Seems in each game he gets smarter, the first game he was as clueless as me but by the third he seems to always have everything all figured out and I'm left feeling as clever as Maya.

Thought of the day

Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:16:22 GMT

Just because something is overrated doesn't mean it isn't good and I don't consider this a reason to not like something.

Thought of the day

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 04:25:31 GMT

Screw you Code Geass writesr/producers. I wait months just to watch another hour and be left at a larger cliffhanger than we previously had!?

Frantic Fun!

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:25:27 GMT

Spoilers as always, beware.

Kingdom Hearts II
My party AI is terrible, moderation means waste all their MP. There's effectively nothing in between waste it all super-quick and never use it unless we're about to die. I'm slowly gaining more abilities, which means I'm slowly able to do more than just charge recklessly and mash attack to defeat foes. My magic power is terrible though, I think that might be because of some choice I made at the beginning. Currently in Mickey's Castle, I'm a little concerned that my form level is still one. I just never seem to need it.

Metal Gear Solid Twin Snakes
I don't feel like doing the card key trick right now, so I'm stalled in my second playthrough. Easily the most boring part of the otherwise awesome game.

Resident Evil 4
Just a rental, but I might just buy it. I really like this game. The action is intense, and I like the weapon mechanics of buying and upgrading. The Wii controls are well done, and in my nervous and edgey state I really go nuts when I have to wave the remote to cut something or dodge. The game does a really good job of making me believe that I'm about to die any second for pretty much the entire time I'm playing.

Order of the Phoenix
As a movie, I liked it. The movies have an obvious focus on Harry over everything else so there wasn't a lot of development for everyone else. Featured Ron more, now that he wasn't busy with Quidditch while Harry was banned. I noticed Ron and Hermione seem to fight less than I expect, which is alright. The duels were pretty well done I think, though stunning spells not knocking people out is sorta odd. As a final note, Luna was my favourite character in the book and she was great in this movie.

Transformers
Fun, if shallow. Lots of action, I liked the interactoin between Sam and the bots. They had no development, Jazz's death was meaningless but I really was able to ignore all that and enjoy some amusing jokes and nice looking action scenes. Rare a movie can do that.

Deathly Hallows
Best in the series, I'd say. Book 6 kept everyone seperate from what was going on, but this book really did a good job of painting a picture of panic, hopelessness and general chaos that Voldemort was causing the country. It was a stressful situation on the trio, as most of the time they seemed to constantly be failing. Even if it wasn't direct, I consider the Hallows existing despite Hermione's complete insistence that they don't a point for Luna over her. It's a magical world, things shouldn't be so black and white about existing. The deaths just seem to come, with no real buildup. I thought that's how it should be, war means that people die, and not necessarily in dramatic fashion. That Dobby received the most attention is pretty funny. I enjoyed the idea that the students mounted such a strong rebellion at the school, and the entire last battle was enjoyable to read. Frantic, somewhat hopeless even if you knew it would work out. I enjoyed Neville killing Nagini, and the fact that the best Death Eaters were managing to really be better than children one on one was welcome. Epilogue was cheesy, but I don't really care about romance in this much so I didn't care.

Bleach is in filler, Naruto pacing is intolerable, Darker than Black is so slow since being licensed that I really haven't much to say on it. I'm checking out some of the new season, see if anything exciting shows up.

Thought of the Day
I prefer to think of threads as lines, as threads makes it sound like they're going to become hopelessly tangled. Maybe my lack of sewing skill?

Thought of the day

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:22:53 GMT

Eliza Dushku did a much better job as Buffy than Sarah Michelle Gellar did as Faith.

Thought of the day

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:38:10 GMT

Boo Mario.

Awesome.

Hacking the Wii

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:33:14 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTx2MAOspS4

So, they used an insecure encryption method, and then basically gave the key to everyone by putting it on the Gamecube.

Then, they left their own backdoors on the system. I'm guessing that kinda stuff was meant for developers to use to run their code during development, but I don't know why it was placed it into every production model. The first backdoor, with the password, was pretty funny. Especially that the password on the Wii was just changed to the same thing, but lower case.

It's a shame that there can't be any Wii homebrew yet, I know. But on the other hand, I think doing anything complex with the Wiimote would be pretty difficult to just kinda guess at. I know there's some PC Wiimote drivers, but Nintendo's development kit is pretty awesome. I saw a demo of it, and it allowd you to basically just record your own action and then the kit would program that action for you, along with enough variance to make it useable.

It took hackers years to break the encryption on the DS cards and make the slot-1 flash card solutions. And I'm guessing this is going to be more difficult.

So...

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:54:52 GMT

Pokemon Pearl
Working through the Battle Tower to get me some of those EV boosting items, and trying to catch those three things to get me that Macho Brace. First on the list to train is my favourite new Pokemon, Mismagius. She's affectionately named Yuki (of Haruhi fame) and will Perish Trap. And it's hard to breed a nice Swampert, it's male so often.
Naruto the Ninetails: Protect, Will-O-Wisp, Confuse Ray, Flamethrower
Shampoo the Swampert: Protect, Ice Beam, Earthquake, Waterfall
Dave the Pikachu: Thunder Wave, Quick Attack, Thunderbolt, Light Screen
OMG the Gyarados: Waterfall, Strength, Rock Smash, Dragon Dance
Velo the Staraptor: Fly, Close Combat, Aerial Ace, Brave Bird
BM the Mismagius: Perish Song, Shadow Ball, Mean Look, Pain Split

Pokemon Battle Revolution
Need some EV trained Pokes to effectively battle the teams of legendaries that I keep coming across. I think the game cheats on the randomizer, though not as bad as the old Stadium games used to. I just seem to get confused or frozen a little too often than I should. But I might be imagining it. Since Light Ball doubles both Sp. Atk and Atk, a surfing Pikachu is something I don't want as much as a nice Volt Tackle/Grass Knot Pikachu, which is much easier to get. Huzzah for more TMs and evolution stones however.

Kingdom Hearts II
I never finished the first one, so I'm a bit sketchy as to why there are Nobodies of Kairi and Sora. Flashbacks seem to imply that they both lost their hearts at some point. I'm still waiting for more skills, as combat is pretty tedious at this point. I don't seem to have lot of options. Just caused an avalance in the Mulan world at this point.

Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes
Controls are as awkward as I remember them being, needing two buttons to access the code, or holding Z to aim in first person, I don't like the Z button. I beat Ocelot in about 10 seconds by just going into first person mode with my M9 and shooting him. I seem to remember a detour on the way to President Baker where there were some items and machine gun cameras but I couldn't find it. Snake is ridiculously agile in this, which makes the difference between him and Raiden I felt was demonstrated in the second game much smaller.

Final Fantasy VIII
I'm between levels 10 and 13 with all my characters, and I'm currently on disc 2 in the prison. The attempted assassination of Edea is one of my favourite moments int he game, as it really lets the idea of the the SeeD as a mercenary team come across. Much better than the disorganized Forest Owls. I'm currently tring to win a Rosetta stone from the prisoner in a card game, so I can start levelling up properly when I get Leviathan.

Bokurano
Awesome. The idea of everyone dying was made even better by the current suggestion that one of them is going to live. They are no longer resigned to their fate, so the picking of the next pilot becomes even worse for them. Also, these kids are getting pretty screwed up with the attempted rape and student/teacher affairs. I'm quite looking forward to what happens in this series. I just hope it doesn't turn out to be the game, and so they're all alive.

Hayate the Combat Butler
Funny. There's no real plot, so there's not much to say about this.

History's Stongest Disciple Kenichi
Wow, that fansubber battle was awesome. But, they're caught up on RAWs now so it's back to a weekly schedule. I'm not really interested in Hermit, but hopefully he'll be gettingless screen time now that the first fist has been introduced and known to have some past relationship with Kenichi. I like his new punch though, even if it seems pretty impractical against anyone who doesn't just wait around and try to counter.

Bleach
Nah, don't need to train for the invasion of Arrancar far more powerful than me, it's better to waste time playing soccer with school kids.

Code Geass
July 28th, finally the end of the first season!

Tales of Symphonia
Quite cool. They changed some things, but I don't really care. I liked seeing Lloyd use Tiger something or other, that triple slash jump move. Lloyd's dad was pretty awesome with that hammer. I don't know how much they're going to cover, this is only supposed to be four episodes. Hopefully we get more cool fights, I've noticed the violence is ramped up compared to the game. Less knocking out, more stabbing.

Thought of the Day
Looking at my shelf, which has all my DVDs, and all my games it really hits me how much of an investment I've put into digital entertainment.

Also, my grad gift of a new TV:
Here
It's awesome. My computer looks amazing on it, games look nice on it, its 1080 resolution gives me huge amounts of desktop space that I can use when sitting a decent distance away while still reading small text. I'm very pleased.

Ciao!

Thought of the day.

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:45:58 GMT

There's going to come a time when the term "hang up the phone" will stop making sense.

Anime North

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 20:47:44 GMT

Well, it's a week later. Things have had a chance to set it, and I've had a chance to forget things I probably shouldn't have already. But nothing to be done about my laziness regarding updating this thing, I shall move on!

Friday
Friday started at 6am. I had about 3 hours of sleep, give or take, and then started to quickly throw all my stuff in a duffel bag that I didn't bother to pack the night before. I ate a few pieces of toast, got myself cleaned up and was at the train station with time to spare. The train was surprisingly on time, both in leaving and in arriving in Toronto. And after getting a little lost in Union for a while, I managed to find the subway entrances. I've never really been to a big cirty, and regardless of how much like a bumpkin the place felt huge. Anyway, I managed to basically walk onto my train and bus and finally arrive outside the TCC at the conclusion of my 5 hours of travel.

Of course, registration isn't open until 1 and the actual con doesn't start until 5. So, after eating some lunch at Subway I find the best thing to do would be to lie in the grass for a few hours and continue listening to Lord of Chaos on my MP3 player, the same thing I did the entire travel time. I checked back around 1 to discover the line was crazy long, so I went and laied on the grass again for an hour, at which point the line disappeared. I may have waited the same time, but at least I got to wait laying in the shade starting at clouds.

After registering in the much shorter than the pre-register line, I left just in time to have Kait call me and inform me that she and Rock had arrived. So, back inside I go while I wait for Rock to register and wait much longer for Kait to do the same. Realizing we have a couple hours until we're able to do anything, we sit outside on the grass and read. Seems Kait still has my History book, but she barely started it in over a month so who knows if I'll ever get it back. Kait started complaining about the wind and her skirt, and I made fun of her for it. The wind was really annoying with the huge L wig I had on, but I lived. Then continued to make fun of her for it ALL WEEKEND LONG. Kait obviously complained to Rock about it, but he took our side. Evidently, our side is better than hers in his eyes. He's a good guy.

We hit the dealer's room to kill time and wait around for Dim, Kevon and Dim's friends to arrive. Missed my chance to buy some Death Note figures while I was there, they were gone the second time I went there. Then we went to go meet the rest of our party, and discovered that Kim wasn't there yet. Apparently, the cat had eaten something that wasn't cat food, and was sick. So, one party member short most of them were off to the hotel to drop some stuff off. I pondered some of the Go problems for a while, and then we all met up to watch the VG Cats panel. There was some technical difficulties near the beginning with a microphone only being present in the middle of the room. But some volunteers came and untaped some wires and saved the panel. Not for the last time that weekend, Kait expected my CS knowledge to fix any technical problem that could ever come up.

The panel was amusing, as Scott just answered whatever he wanted to. People kept asking about porn on his laptop, which he began answering with joke answers and eventually just ignored because it kept being brought up too much. He showed a picture of his new cat a lot, which drew the expected awws from the crowd. Said his favourite DS game was Phoenix Wright, and was pleased to find a Phoenix and Edgeworth cosplayers. He showed off the prototype of his first book, and mentioned that he'll be redrawing the early comics because of how terrible they look. And he showed his prototype Leo plushie, which I definitely would've bought from him if they had been ready on time. He talked about how he found yaoi hilarious, and showing off a picture of Phoenix and Edgeworth embracing caused the two cosplayers from before to simultaneously yell out Objection!. I was amused.

Outside the panel I found...Stuart! We thought he died or something, but apparently it was just his usual bad luck. His computer had truly broken, as it snapped in half falling off of his desk. And, within a week of this event he had lost his phone at his friends house. And his friend had proceeded to move. Months later, the new occupants called Stuart's friend to ask if he had left a cell phone behind. They were clued in that it was Stuart's, and so a week before the convention Stuart had recovered his phone. But he does have a new phone and a new computer so hopefully we'll get to talk to him again some more. Could only happen to Stuart.

We went to the Dealer's room again, party collected, while we waited from the much advertised independent zombie movie showing to air. I picked up a Suzumiya Haruhi figure, which caused more than one person to ask me where I got it over the weekend. The show really is crazy popular and witha good reason in my opinion. There were of course good deals on anime and manga, except I decided to go for things that weren't easily found elsewhere this year. It means that I'm still stuck with the first two volumes of Mai HiME and Scrapped Princess, but I'll complete them eventually.

The zombie showing was both a trick and a disaster. They had some Pen and Paper RPG writers, along with the student creators of the film at a panel during this showing, and they were going to talk for half and hour before the showing even began. I sat there very bored, and they spoke at length about the creative process of writing for games (which made it seem like there's no real cohesion and they all just write whatever they want). They mentioned that flavour text is what draws people to classes or races, while I mentioned to Stuart that numbers were far more of a draw for me. I had a lengthy discussion with Kait about this one night, and how I'm completely willing to make my thief take a level or two of the life dedicated, holy position of a Paladin to make his stats better even if it makes no sense at all.

I left after this, and wandered around for a while. And then I played Pokmeon, the game with incredibly broken flavour text if you actually read some of the Pokedex entries. I came back in thirty minutes to find some technical difficulties going on, which lasted way too long. Then we were moved to a different room, where they persisted even further and the film makers talked more about their craft and I left again to take a nap in the hallway. It had already been an hour at this point. They eventually showed the film, I'm told, and it was somewhat good. I just considered the whole thing a waste of time.

Friday ended with the Comedy Cabaret, which showed the Yu-Gi-Oh and Naruto abridged series. The YGO abridged is much funnier, but I was really tired and left soon after it started. Having lost the directions, address and number for Dan's place earlier in the day. So, I ended up cabbing to the location I thought sounded correct after looking at a map I got from the Doubletree brochure rack.

Dan's place is pretty nice. Spacious, with a really shiny floor. Of course, it's also mainly empty but I'm sure that will eventually be taken care of. We talked for while, I set up my Haruhi dolled and remaked that it was impossible to see up her skirt while she was still in the box due to its design. We decided that was a selling feature. And I swapped her pointy finger hand for the voice cone thing. Planned our route, what time were were arriving and then went to sleep. I was dead tired at this point.

I'll post in the rest of this later, this entry is already tl;dr worthy. Leave a comment if you wish and I'll mail you the link to my pictures/movies.