What's this? Two posts in a day? lol.
I fired up World Tour to practice the two hand tapping practice custom song I made, and on a whim decided to play some other stuff. I get to Float On and... what the hell, FC. 591/591, 9/9 SP (lol all World Tour FCs hit all SP phrases), 4.546x multiplier, 186969 points. Comes in 152nd on PS2. Whee.
Normally I'd have just edited this into the previous post, but... different game, several hours later, etc. etc. Plus I tend to edit my posts a lot and the one or two people that read this might not check back for edits.
Next post will be the wallpaper update I promise.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
No Whammy FC #2
The first one was Closer.
This one is Miss Murder. Scorehero's down at the moment or I'd know where I stand. I was too lazy to look up the path, but it's a fairly obvious path anyway, you just activate where all the 3 note chords are in the chorus and let it ride. This was one of the songs on my list of songs that I should have FCed by now, so it feels pretty good to get it out of the way. Oh yeah, stats. 739/739 notes, 9/10 SP (I overwrote, and if I remember the path correctly, you're supposed to overwrite), 4.733X multiplier, and 313754 points. I know I dropped a couple holds in there, but otherwise that's all the ticks.
Why is it that the easy songs are taking me so long to FC?
In other Guitar Hero news, I almost got 220K on The Way It Ends earlier. I don't know how, but somehow I'm getting better at that song. I also cleared Through The Fire and Flames on Hard again. Still a 3 star, and about 20000 points lower than my only other clear of it. But whatever. I guess that's what I get for trying to downstrum most of the song.
I have more wallpapers ready to go up, so next post will probably be another wallpaper update. Spoiler: it's mostly (read: entirely) Lucky Star and Haruhi wallpapers.
Edit: Holy fuck. I got through Before I Forget on Expert (thankfully, I was in Career Mode). I had forgotten that the encore for that set was Cult of Personality. Fucked up in the solo once, restarted, messed up the first SP phrase, restarted, and passed it. Now I'm on the last set where I'll grind to a screeching halt when I've cleared everything but Raining Blood.
Double Edit: Gave Raining Blood several tries and almost made it through Mosh 1 once. Also, Scorehero's back up, so I submitted my Miss Murder score, which places me firmly in 1097th on that song, below several 99% scores. Whatever.
This one is Miss Murder. Scorehero's down at the moment or I'd know where I stand. I was too lazy to look up the path, but it's a fairly obvious path anyway, you just activate where all the 3 note chords are in the chorus and let it ride. This was one of the songs on my list of songs that I should have FCed by now, so it feels pretty good to get it out of the way. Oh yeah, stats. 739/739 notes, 9/10 SP (I overwrote, and if I remember the path correctly, you're supposed to overwrite), 4.733X multiplier, and 313754 points. I know I dropped a couple holds in there, but otherwise that's all the ticks.
Why is it that the easy songs are taking me so long to FC?
In other Guitar Hero news, I almost got 220K on The Way It Ends earlier. I don't know how, but somehow I'm getting better at that song. I also cleared Through The Fire and Flames on Hard again. Still a 3 star, and about 20000 points lower than my only other clear of it. But whatever. I guess that's what I get for trying to downstrum most of the song.
I have more wallpapers ready to go up, so next post will probably be another wallpaper update. Spoiler: it's mostly (read: entirely) Lucky Star and Haruhi wallpapers.
Edit: Holy fuck. I got through Before I Forget on Expert (thankfully, I was in Career Mode). I had forgotten that the encore for that set was Cult of Personality. Fucked up in the solo once, restarted, messed up the first SP phrase, restarted, and passed it. Now I'm on the last set where I'll grind to a screeching halt when I've cleared everything but Raining Blood.
Double Edit: Gave Raining Blood several tries and almost made it through Mosh 1 once. Also, Scorehero's back up, so I submitted my Miss Murder score, which places me firmly in 1097th on that song, below several 99% scores. Whatever.
Monday, January 26, 2009
stuff I should have already done by now
Since this most recent wallpaper update, I've been going through adding the resolution and aspect ratio to each thumbnail's tooltip. If you've just discovered this now and are checking some of them out, you may wonder why I list some wallpapers as being both 8:5 and 16:10. THEY'RE THE SAME ASPECT RATIO. Some people just don't understand that. Hence why 4scrape has both 8:5 and 16:10 search options. Because people actually complained that they couldn't search for 16:10 wallpapers when 8:5 was the only one of the two in the list. Seriously though. Divide 8 by 5, then divide 16 by 10. You'll get 1.6 in both cases.
Anyway, yeah. You can find a wallpaper that'll fit your screen by choosing any of the ones whose aspect ratio matches that of the resolution you're using. Just divide the width by the height and you'll get it.
I really should have hardwired my guitar controller by now. I've had this Torx T-10 screwdriver just sitting here since I posted about it before. However, it's lost some of its purpose as my whammy bar gave out a few days ago. Opened it up hoping I could just put the spring back on and continue on with life, but no. The bit of plastic (yes, plastic) that pushes the other two bits of plastic (sigh) that hold the spring in place broke off entirely. If only RedOctane would actually make a decent fucking controller. GuitarHeroParts.com only has some of the whammy assembly parts, but their limited inventory happens to exclude both the motion sensor (which was defective when I opened the box) and the plastic bit that broke :(
The whammy probably broke because of how I had to use it to actually whammy things. Shame. Since it only picked up motion when I pushed the whammy bar past halfway down, I had to whammy like a motherfucker to get star power.
In spite of that, I got a new personal best score (~208K-ish, I believe) on The Way It Ends and I finally fucking full comboed Closer. I could have gotten more points on Closer (I actually have a higher non-FC score), but somehow I inadvertently squeezed the first note of the second to last SP phrase into my second activation (and thus overwrote the phrase) without realizing it, as I hadn't inspected the note chart or the optimum SP path. I was just activating whenever the 3 note chords began. Apparently I strum too early, my front end squeezes are just that good, or it was some weird thing to do with the timing window because I think I hit the note on time. Had I known it began an SP phrase I would've strummed late or activated in a different spot or something. Oh well.
For a complete change of pace, I was playing some Namco Museum on my PS2. Specifically, the unlockable puzzle game called Pac-Attack. It's been forever since I started Puzzle Mode on that and I just now reached level 90 (of 100). I've actually got a piece of paper stuck in the game manual that has various level passwords written on it, since it doesn't save anything.
The two unlockable games in Namco Museum, Pac-Attack and Pac-Mania, aren't all that difficult to unlock, and the manual even tells you how. Score 25000 points on Pac-Man to get Pac-Attack and 20000 points on Ms. Pac-Man to get Pac-Mania. You may wish to get Pac-Mania first, as Ms. Pac-Man is an easier game than Pac-Man is. You can make Pac-Man easier by being cheap and just running around getting all the dots, largely ignoring the ghosts, and getting the fruits. I unlocked both of these for a friend on the Xbox version fairly easily a week or so ago, it's not that hard.
WEDNESDAY EDIT: I GOT 212K (ALMOST 213K) ON THE WAY IT ENDS LAST NIGHT. WHAT THE FUCK.
Anyway, yeah. You can find a wallpaper that'll fit your screen by choosing any of the ones whose aspect ratio matches that of the resolution you're using. Just divide the width by the height and you'll get it.
I really should have hardwired my guitar controller by now. I've had this Torx T-10 screwdriver just sitting here since I posted about it before. However, it's lost some of its purpose as my whammy bar gave out a few days ago. Opened it up hoping I could just put the spring back on and continue on with life, but no. The bit of plastic (yes, plastic) that pushes the other two bits of plastic (sigh) that hold the spring in place broke off entirely. If only RedOctane would actually make a decent fucking controller. GuitarHeroParts.com only has some of the whammy assembly parts, but their limited inventory happens to exclude both the motion sensor (which was defective when I opened the box) and the plastic bit that broke :(
The whammy probably broke because of how I had to use it to actually whammy things. Shame. Since it only picked up motion when I pushed the whammy bar past halfway down, I had to whammy like a motherfucker to get star power.
In spite of that, I got a new personal best score (~208K-ish, I believe) on The Way It Ends and I finally fucking full comboed Closer. I could have gotten more points on Closer (I actually have a higher non-FC score), but somehow I inadvertently squeezed the first note of the second to last SP phrase into my second activation (and thus overwrote the phrase) without realizing it, as I hadn't inspected the note chart or the optimum SP path. I was just activating whenever the 3 note chords began. Apparently I strum too early, my front end squeezes are just that good, or it was some weird thing to do with the timing window because I think I hit the note on time. Had I known it began an SP phrase I would've strummed late or activated in a different spot or something. Oh well.
For a complete change of pace, I was playing some Namco Museum on my PS2. Specifically, the unlockable puzzle game called Pac-Attack. It's been forever since I started Puzzle Mode on that and I just now reached level 90 (of 100). I've actually got a piece of paper stuck in the game manual that has various level passwords written on it, since it doesn't save anything.
The two unlockable games in Namco Museum, Pac-Attack and Pac-Mania, aren't all that difficult to unlock, and the manual even tells you how. Score 25000 points on Pac-Man to get Pac-Attack and 20000 points on Ms. Pac-Man to get Pac-Mania. You may wish to get Pac-Mania first, as Ms. Pac-Man is an easier game than Pac-Man is. You can make Pac-Man easier by being cheap and just running around getting all the dots, largely ignoring the ghosts, and getting the fruits. I unlocked both of these for a friend on the Xbox version fairly easily a week or so ago, it's not that hard.
WEDNESDAY EDIT: I GOT 212K (ALMOST 213K) ON THE WAY IT ENDS LAST NIGHT. WHAT THE FUCK.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Yay, more wallpapers!
It's that time again! This time around we have some Fuuka love and some Lucky Star.
The middle Yotsuba one is a detext. All three Yotsuba wallpapers in this update were obtained from Sankaku Complex. Sankaku Complex can be very NSFW at times, just a word of warning.
Also visible in the first Lucky Star wallpaper is the reason why text ruins wallpapers. See all that useless shit at the bottom? A caption, not one but TWO website credits, a happy birthday shout-out to some random person, the date, and a username? Completely superfluous. If it didn't have the low opacity white background behind it I'd give removing the text a shot. Fucker.
The middle Yotsuba one is a detext. All three Yotsuba wallpapers in this update were obtained from Sankaku Complex. Sankaku Complex can be very NSFW at times, just a word of warning.
Also visible in the first Lucky Star wallpaper is the reason why text ruins wallpapers. See all that useless shit at the bottom? A caption, not one but TWO website credits, a happy birthday shout-out to some random person, the date, and a username? Completely superfluous. If it didn't have the low opacity white background behind it I'd give removing the text a shot. Fucker.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Practice makes perfect
I was trying to go for a while without mentioning Guitar Hero, but fuck it. Too much awesome has just occurred.
You know how the game has a practice mode? Well, oddly enough, it turns out that using it helps a great deal. Strange, I know. I spent about an hour in practice on Hier Kommt Alex, on a stupid part of the Bridge Riff I kept messing up that was less complex than other parts I could hit just fine, and then bringing it into context and working on my chord changes in the chorus since I randomly drop at the end of the Red+Orange/Red+Blue pattern. I arrived at the correct strum rhythm for the stupid part of Bridge Riff 1, and found I could do the Chorus chord changes a lot easier if I use my index and ring fingers on the Red+Orange and index and middle fingers on the Red+Blue.
Then I played it this morning. If 323570 isn't a good enough reward for practicing that song, I dunno what is.
Played Generation Rock, practiced its squeezes. They're not that hard, I can hit all of them, but... the whole practice thing seems to help. Fucked up two notes or it would have been an FC. My usual drop at the end of the intro (the Yellow note just before the Red+Blue chords), and a stupid one-fret-off thing that shouldn't have happened in the outro. My arm's getting better at that song (I downstrum the entire thing since I fuck up slow altstrumming).
Went on to Impulse. FCed the intro only strumming the notes that needed to be strummed. The strums in the intro really do follow the drum track, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.
Fucked up Metal Heavy Lady a few times while trying to get the star power path down. I really should have FCed that song by now.
Moving from the bonus setlist to the main setlist, I GOT A FUCKING -1 ON PAINT IT BLACK. Add that song to the list of the songs I should have FCed by now.
For some reason, practicing the hell out of Solo 2 in Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (I can now FC both Solo 2A and 2B, even in the same run) has made me lose the main riff entirely and I failed partway through the song. WTF.
So I moved on to Knights of Cydonia where- HOLY FUCK I JUST NOTICED I GOT 100% ON BOTH BREAKNECK DESPERADOS. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I FCed Ammending Chorus and Galloping Triplets, only strumming what needed to be strummed. Even added in an Ammending Chorus 2 FC for good measure. But damn, 100% with overstrums on both Breakneck Desperados. I was dropping like crazy and they were all overstrums? Holy Fucking Shit. I'll take that 355006, all the way to the bank.
I wonder if I can get the damn hand shift in Fast Solo B. If I can, that solo will be my bitch. The zigzags are easy (I usually get the SP), but the transition to the descending triplets fucks me up (mainly because I have to do the descending triplets with my index finger on Yellow). It seems kinda ironic to mention this after everything I just said, but my fingers just don't want to move right now, especially my pinky. I shift up to have my index finger on Yellow in some other songs as well. Impulse's Blue/Orange trills come to mind. I just can't trill with my left pinky.
Also, a few days ago I broke 200K on The Way It Ends. Still a 3-star rating.
I think that's it for now.
You know how the game has a practice mode? Well, oddly enough, it turns out that using it helps a great deal. Strange, I know. I spent about an hour in practice on Hier Kommt Alex, on a stupid part of the Bridge Riff I kept messing up that was less complex than other parts I could hit just fine, and then bringing it into context and working on my chord changes in the chorus since I randomly drop at the end of the Red+Orange/Red+Blue pattern. I arrived at the correct strum rhythm for the stupid part of Bridge Riff 1, and found I could do the Chorus chord changes a lot easier if I use my index and ring fingers on the Red+Orange and index and middle fingers on the Red+Blue.
Then I played it this morning. If 323570 isn't a good enough reward for practicing that song, I dunno what is.
Played Generation Rock, practiced its squeezes. They're not that hard, I can hit all of them, but... the whole practice thing seems to help. Fucked up two notes or it would have been an FC. My usual drop at the end of the intro (the Yellow note just before the Red+Blue chords), and a stupid one-fret-off thing that shouldn't have happened in the outro. My arm's getting better at that song (I downstrum the entire thing since I fuck up slow altstrumming).
Went on to Impulse. FCed the intro only strumming the notes that needed to be strummed. The strums in the intro really do follow the drum track, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not.
Fucked up Metal Heavy Lady a few times while trying to get the star power path down. I really should have FCed that song by now.
Moving from the bonus setlist to the main setlist, I GOT A FUCKING -1 ON PAINT IT BLACK. Add that song to the list of the songs I should have FCed by now.
For some reason, practicing the hell out of Solo 2 in Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll (I can now FC both Solo 2A and 2B, even in the same run) has made me lose the main riff entirely and I failed partway through the song. WTF.
So I moved on to Knights of Cydonia where- HOLY FUCK I JUST NOTICED I GOT 100% ON BOTH BREAKNECK DESPERADOS. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I FCed Ammending Chorus and Galloping Triplets, only strumming what needed to be strummed. Even added in an Ammending Chorus 2 FC for good measure. But damn, 100% with overstrums on both Breakneck Desperados. I was dropping like crazy and they were all overstrums? Holy Fucking Shit. I'll take that 355006, all the way to the bank.
I wonder if I can get the damn hand shift in Fast Solo B. If I can, that solo will be my bitch. The zigzags are easy (I usually get the SP), but the transition to the descending triplets fucks me up (mainly because I have to do the descending triplets with my index finger on Yellow). It seems kinda ironic to mention this after everything I just said, but my fingers just don't want to move right now, especially my pinky. I shift up to have my index finger on Yellow in some other songs as well. Impulse's Blue/Orange trills come to mind. I just can't trill with my left pinky.
Also, a few days ago I broke 200K on The Way It Ends. Still a 3-star rating.
I think that's it for now.
Monday, January 19, 2009
DOSBox is wonderful
I've been using DOSBox for a while to run old DOS-based games on Windows. DOSBox emulates the old DOS environment, allowing games written for that environment to be run. In addition, it abstracts your computer's hardware from its emulated environment, basically allowing you to define the drive letters and what paths they refer to on your computer. It will even let you define a drive letter that points to a .iso, so if you're like me and make isos of all your games so you don't have to track down the disc and risk getting the disc damaged, you can still do that.
It creates a window, and lets you run your games windowed, or even fullscreen if you hit Alt + Enter. It will capture the mouse pointer if you click, so if you want to get it back you'll have to remember to press Ctrl + F10. There are other keyboard shortcuts that do different things, you can read about them in the readme.
DOSBox only has a few minor issues I've seen with the games I've run in it. Descent 1 and Duke Nukem 3D both have weird graphical glitches, usually when there's a fullscreen color flash (i.e. you're getting hit). Bits of that color will get "stuck" on the rest of the game's UI (typically the parts that don't get painted very often). The only way to fix this is to force it to repaint. In Descent, this means bringing up the automap. In Duke Nukem 3D, I believe the only way to fix it is to toggle fullscreen. The 7th Guest runs better in windowed mode than fullscreen, though this may be solvable by tweaking some config options.
DOSBox creates within its environment a special Z: drive. This drive contains various system-critical things like the drive mounting program, and the all-important autoexec.bat. If you look in DOSBox's config file (dosbox.conf, open it in your favorite text editor), all the way at the bottom, you can define what goes into autoexec.bat.
You can also create multiple config files and tell DOSBox which one to use when you start it. This makes it fairly easy to have a general config (dosbox.conf) that you work with to get games installed. Once you get a game installed, you can then copy your general config to a separate file, play around with settings, and set up a specific autoexec.bat to set up a proper environment, start the game, and exit when it ends.
For instance, my autoexec.bat in for The 7th Guest (in my config file t7g.conf) looks like this:
In case you're wondering why I run v ! instead of t7g (which is simply a .bat file that runs v !), it's because the exit command didn't seem to take effect when I ran t7g, and it does with v !. I specify both .iso files on one line because that way, I can tell DOSBox to swap between the discs by hitting Ctrl + F4 (and The 7th Guest does require this, once you go through the door to the attic it prompts for disc 2, and after beating the game it prompts for disc 1).
Then to wrap it all up and make it seamless, I made a shortcut and set the target like such:
"C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72\dosbox.exe" -noconsole -conf="C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72\t7g.conf"
The -noconsole option makes it not pop up a regular command line window (that it normally dumps error information to), and the -conf option tells it to use the config file I specify.
Now, whenever I click this shortcut, it starts The 7th Guest, and when I exit The 7th Guest, the window goes away. Pretty nice.
One thing DOSBox lacks (that's easy enough to fix yourself) is a copy of edit.com, the DOS-based text file editor. Having it around would be really handy for reading readmes and such within DOSBox's environment. Since it's so easy to fix, I might as well tell you my fix for it:
Whoops, got kinda carried away there. Time to end this post.
The verdict: Awesome. Brag about it to your friends.
It creates a window, and lets you run your games windowed, or even fullscreen if you hit Alt + Enter. It will capture the mouse pointer if you click, so if you want to get it back you'll have to remember to press Ctrl + F10. There are other keyboard shortcuts that do different things, you can read about them in the readme.
DOSBox only has a few minor issues I've seen with the games I've run in it. Descent 1 and Duke Nukem 3D both have weird graphical glitches, usually when there's a fullscreen color flash (i.e. you're getting hit). Bits of that color will get "stuck" on the rest of the game's UI (typically the parts that don't get painted very often). The only way to fix this is to force it to repaint. In Descent, this means bringing up the automap. In Duke Nukem 3D, I believe the only way to fix it is to toggle fullscreen. The 7th Guest runs better in windowed mode than fullscreen, though this may be solvable by tweaking some config options.
DOSBox creates within its environment a special Z: drive. This drive contains various system-critical things like the drive mounting program, and the all-important autoexec.bat. If you look in DOSBox's config file (dosbox.conf, open it in your favorite text editor), all the way at the bottom, you can define what goes into autoexec.bat.
You can also create multiple config files and tell DOSBox which one to use when you start it. This makes it fairly easy to have a general config (dosbox.conf) that you work with to get games installed. Once you get a game installed, you can then copy your general config to a separate file, play around with settings, and set up a specific autoexec.bat to set up a proper environment, start the game, and exit when it ends.
For instance, my autoexec.bat in for The 7th Guest (in my config file t7g.conf) looks like this:
@echo off
mount c e:\games
imgmount d "d:\cd images\t7g-disc1.iso" "d:\cd images\t7g-disc2.iso" -t cdrom
c:
cd id\t7g
v !
exit
mount c e:\games
imgmount d "d:\cd images\t7g-disc1.iso" "d:\cd images\t7g-disc2.iso" -t cdrom
c:
cd id\t7g
v !
exit
In case you're wondering why I run v ! instead of t7g (which is simply a .bat file that runs v !), it's because the exit command didn't seem to take effect when I ran t7g, and it does with v !. I specify both .iso files on one line because that way, I can tell DOSBox to swap between the discs by hitting Ctrl + F4 (and The 7th Guest does require this, once you go through the door to the attic it prompts for disc 2, and after beating the game it prompts for disc 1).
Then to wrap it all up and make it seamless, I made a shortcut and set the target like such:
"C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72\dosbox.exe" -noconsole -conf="C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72\t7g.conf"
The -noconsole option makes it not pop up a regular command line window (that it normally dumps error information to), and the -conf option tells it to use the config file I specify.
Now, whenever I click this shortcut, it starts The 7th Guest, and when I exit The 7th Guest, the window goes away. Pretty nice.
One thing DOSBox lacks (that's easy enough to fix yourself) is a copy of edit.com, the DOS-based text file editor. Having it around would be really handy for reading readmes and such within DOSBox's environment. Since it's so easy to fix, I might as well tell you my fix for it:
- Open up a Windows Explorer window.
- Browse to C:\WINDOWS\System32.
- Scroll down until you find edit.com and edit.hlp.
- Select both of them and press Ctrl + C to copy them.
- Navigate back to where you installed DOSBox. (by default, in Program Files)
- Make a subdirectory in DOSBox's directory. I called mine 'edit'.
- Go into that subdirectory and press Ctrl + V to paste the files.
- Go back to DOSBox's directory.
- Open dosbox.conf in your favorite text editor.
- Scroll all the way down to the bottom.
- Add the following lines to the autoexec.bat: (if your install directory is different, substitute that in place of this one)mount y "C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72\edit\"
PATH=Z:\;Y:\ - Save your changes.
Whoops, got kinda carried away there. Time to end this post.
The verdict: Awesome. Brag about it to your friends.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Recent anime endings (no spoilers)
A few anime I was watching (and, I guess, a bunch more that I wasn't) concluded recently. Here are some quick plot summaries and final thoughts, all the while trying to avoid spoilers. I'll also get title screen snapshots in here at some point, so check back.
Chaos;Head I did a fairly in-depth review of a while back (and meant to follow up with other series in the same manner, but it never happened). The ending was pretty good. Some good action and more weird mindbending stuff.
Mai-Otome 0 S.ifr was a three episode prequel OAV to the main Mai-Otome TV series. It looks back at Rena Sayers while she was an otome. You also get to see Miss Maria and a few other characters that show up throughout the TV series. It's got great action and if you've seen Mai-Otome, you should enjoy it.
Shikabane Hime: Aka is the first half of a 26 episode series, the other half being Shikabane Hime: Kuro. If you're wondering, 'aka' means 'red' and 'kuro' means 'black'. The premise here is that, when someone with an attachment to this world dies, they come back as a Shikabane (which means Corpse). Some Shikabane have made a contract with a priest and become Shikabane Hime, who must hunt down and kill 108 Shikabane so they can go to heaven. It's got great action and a good story that keeps you drawn in. The ending of Aka leads pretty much directly into the beginning of Kuro, so much that the last episode of Aka has a preview for Kuro's first episode.
Telepathy Shoujo Ran was a series I started watching solely because it had the word 'telepathy' in the name. The first arc, which is the first three episodes, sets us up quite nicely. We get a crash introduction to the telepathic and telekinetic powers possessed by a few of the cast, some anomalies (Rui, whose mind can't be read) are brought up, and then we go on to the second arc expecting a great supernatural action series and we get... Scooby Doo. Ok, maybe it's just an off-arc, shows tend to take little breaks between plot arcs periodically. Next arc comes, and... more Scooby Doo. All right, the arcs are short, maybe the next rising action needs to be spaced out some more. The third arc comes and, surprise, more Scooby Doo. This repeats throughout the rest of the series until the final arc. It starts out with weird supernatural phenomena that only some can feel, looks pretty good, and then... what the fuck. Animals. Seriously. What the fuck. It never explains any of the powers or anything brought up in the first arc. It just turns into a series where the main group solves mysteries that only they can solve because of telepathy, hence me calling it Scooby Doo. I want my time back.
There's the four series I was watching that wrapped up recently. Just stay away from Telepathy Shoujo Ran and you should be good.
As for stuff I'm watching now, I'm waiting as always for Menclave's Gundam 00 Season 2 subs, and I'm also watching Shikabane Hime: Kuro. I'm also watching Minami-ke Okaeri, but I'm not sure what to expect since it's being produced by the same studio that did the fail of a series known as Minami-ke Okawari, instead of the studio that did the first season. A series whose description made me lol that I'm checking out is Akikan. It looks like a wacky harem series. The main character buys a soda from a vending machine, which turns into a girl who needs carbon dioxide to live. How does she get this all-important CO2? By kissing, of course. The description implies that more of these girls show up as the series progresses. I'm about to watch the first two episodes of it after I get my new case fans installed.
Chaos;Head I did a fairly in-depth review of a while back (and meant to follow up with other series in the same manner, but it never happened). The ending was pretty good. Some good action and more weird mindbending stuff.
Mai-Otome 0 S.ifr was a three episode prequel OAV to the main Mai-Otome TV series. It looks back at Rena Sayers while she was an otome. You also get to see Miss Maria and a few other characters that show up throughout the TV series. It's got great action and if you've seen Mai-Otome, you should enjoy it.
Shikabane Hime: Aka is the first half of a 26 episode series, the other half being Shikabane Hime: Kuro. If you're wondering, 'aka' means 'red' and 'kuro' means 'black'. The premise here is that, when someone with an attachment to this world dies, they come back as a Shikabane (which means Corpse). Some Shikabane have made a contract with a priest and become Shikabane Hime, who must hunt down and kill 108 Shikabane so they can go to heaven. It's got great action and a good story that keeps you drawn in. The ending of Aka leads pretty much directly into the beginning of Kuro, so much that the last episode of Aka has a preview for Kuro's first episode.
Telepathy Shoujo Ran was a series I started watching solely because it had the word 'telepathy' in the name. The first arc, which is the first three episodes, sets us up quite nicely. We get a crash introduction to the telepathic and telekinetic powers possessed by a few of the cast, some anomalies (Rui, whose mind can't be read) are brought up, and then we go on to the second arc expecting a great supernatural action series and we get... Scooby Doo. Ok, maybe it's just an off-arc, shows tend to take little breaks between plot arcs periodically. Next arc comes, and... more Scooby Doo. All right, the arcs are short, maybe the next rising action needs to be spaced out some more. The third arc comes and, surprise, more Scooby Doo. This repeats throughout the rest of the series until the final arc. It starts out with weird supernatural phenomena that only some can feel, looks pretty good, and then... what the fuck. Animals. Seriously. What the fuck. It never explains any of the powers or anything brought up in the first arc. It just turns into a series where the main group solves mysteries that only they can solve because of telepathy, hence me calling it Scooby Doo. I want my time back.
There's the four series I was watching that wrapped up recently. Just stay away from Telepathy Shoujo Ran and you should be good.
As for stuff I'm watching now, I'm waiting as always for Menclave's Gundam 00 Season 2 subs, and I'm also watching Shikabane Hime: Kuro. I'm also watching Minami-ke Okaeri, but I'm not sure what to expect since it's being produced by the same studio that did the fail of a series known as Minami-ke Okawari, instead of the studio that did the first season. A series whose description made me lol that I'm checking out is Akikan. It looks like a wacky harem series. The main character buys a soda from a vending machine, which turns into a girl who needs carbon dioxide to live. How does she get this all-important CO2? By kissing, of course. The description implies that more of these girls show up as the series progresses. I'm about to watch the first two episodes of it after I get my new case fans installed.
Monday, January 12, 2009
digital tv
I don't get why so many people are up in arms about the switch to digital television. They say "but we're not ready yet!" or some other bullshit excuse like that.
Well, think about this. If you're not ready, whose fault is it? Yours. The plan has been announced for years, the cutoff date was announced well ahead of time, and there's a government program through which you can get a coupon for $40 off of a digital receiver which will allow your old ass-analog TVs to still work.
Furthermore, this only affects over the air broadcasts. If you have cable or satellite, you don't have to worry. Digital cable is even better than analog cable (picture quality, HD programming, DVRs) and satellite is balls because when the weather's bad there goes your signal.
It seems like every day I see an article in the newspaper or on a website somewhere where people are bitching about this switch. Hell, even Obama wants them to put it off. I have a good plan: Switch the analog broadcasts off without paying attention to all the lazyasses' complaints. Anyone who isn't ready because they've been putting off getting ready will suddenly feel a sense of urgency about the matter and fucking get their asses in gear.
From a different perspective, the TV station's, it actually costs them more money to be running both types of transmitters. Since the digital signal delivers a clearer and more crisp image, it has the clear advantage. With regards to analog vs. digital picture quality, you need to experience the difference. Same with SD vs. HD. Or xvid vs. h264. Everything is so much better in the latter of all three choices, but you have to see the difference to understand why.
This was going to be longer, but it's really cold and my fingers barely want to move. Remind me again why the fuck I got up so early? Was it laundry, computer maintenance... or what? (both of those need to happen, the sooner the better)
Speaking of computers, I found a pretty nice case fan on newegg that I'm ordering two of later today once I shove some money in my account. Actually I could probably go deal with my account now, but fuck it. It's too cold. But my computer will finally have both the dead fan and the ailing one replaced, and hopefully I'll be able to play games without the temperature going critical again.
Or maybe I'm so cold because I'm drinking soda. Who knows.
Well, think about this. If you're not ready, whose fault is it? Yours. The plan has been announced for years, the cutoff date was announced well ahead of time, and there's a government program through which you can get a coupon for $40 off of a digital receiver which will allow your old ass-analog TVs to still work.
Furthermore, this only affects over the air broadcasts. If you have cable or satellite, you don't have to worry. Digital cable is even better than analog cable (picture quality, HD programming, DVRs) and satellite is balls because when the weather's bad there goes your signal.
It seems like every day I see an article in the newspaper or on a website somewhere where people are bitching about this switch. Hell, even Obama wants them to put it off. I have a good plan: Switch the analog broadcasts off without paying attention to all the lazyasses' complaints. Anyone who isn't ready because they've been putting off getting ready will suddenly feel a sense of urgency about the matter and fucking get their asses in gear.
From a different perspective, the TV station's, it actually costs them more money to be running both types of transmitters. Since the digital signal delivers a clearer and more crisp image, it has the clear advantage. With regards to analog vs. digital picture quality, you need to experience the difference. Same with SD vs. HD. Or xvid vs. h264. Everything is so much better in the latter of all three choices, but you have to see the difference to understand why.
This was going to be longer, but it's really cold and my fingers barely want to move. Remind me again why the fuck I got up so early? Was it laundry, computer maintenance... or what? (both of those need to happen, the sooner the better)
Speaking of computers, I found a pretty nice case fan on newegg that I'm ordering two of later today once I shove some money in my account. Actually I could probably go deal with my account now, but fuck it. It's too cold. But my computer will finally have both the dead fan and the ailing one replaced, and hopefully I'll be able to play games without the temperature going critical again.
Or maybe I'm so cold because I'm drinking soda. Who knows.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
computers are good
We got the upstairs computer fixed. And by fixed I mean almost completely replaced. My dad couldn't find a motherboard that would take the processor, RAM, or graphics card we had, so he had to order all-new stuff. Now, sadly, it's better than this thing. It's got a Core 2 Duo with 2 gigs of RAM (unsure of the speed of either of those), and a somewhat recent nVidia PCI-express card whose number I'm unsure of.
At least now we won't have to keep shuffling around which computer is connected to the cable modem to use the internet.
And if we had a router, we could very easily not have had the problem be as severe as it was. But for some reason my dad actually likes ICS.
Anyway, I've been playing around with those Explorer replacements. On my VirtualBox install of Windows, I have an account set up running Litestep, and another account set up running BlackBox. They're both fairly similar, though technically Litestep is a takeoff of BlackBox. I'm used to Fluxbox on Linux, which operates almost identically to BlackBox. Overall, they're a lot more configurable. Themes can be changed by editing text files. It eliminates the Start menu bullshit and replaces it with a fully configurable right click menu on the desktop that enables you to get to all your settings and shit. I'm going to play around with how that menu is organized a bit, but the end result is that I'll be switching to BlackBox on this computer.
Isn't open source software awesome?
At least now we won't have to keep shuffling around which computer is connected to the cable modem to use the internet.
And if we had a router, we could very easily not have had the problem be as severe as it was. But for some reason my dad actually likes ICS.
Anyway, I've been playing around with those Explorer replacements. On my VirtualBox install of Windows, I have an account set up running Litestep, and another account set up running BlackBox. They're both fairly similar, though technically Litestep is a takeoff of BlackBox. I'm used to Fluxbox on Linux, which operates almost identically to BlackBox. Overall, they're a lot more configurable. Themes can be changed by editing text files. It eliminates the Start menu bullshit and replaces it with a fully configurable right click menu on the desktop that enables you to get to all your settings and shit. I'm going to play around with how that menu is organized a bit, but the end result is that I'll be switching to BlackBox on this computer.
Isn't open source software awesome?
Monday, January 5, 2009
MAGFest Report
Wednesday
Around 10-11 this morning the northbridge chip on my parents' motherboard blew up. Since our network topology is totally stupid and thus uses Internet Connection Sharing on their computer, which is connected to a switch that connects to the rest of the network, this took out my connection to the internet, just before I was about to print me some Google Maps directions.
We got my dad's laptop hooked up directly to the cable modem and I looked up the directions. We couldn't get the printer working on my dad's laptop, so get this: I wrote them down on a sheet of paper with a pencil. Wow.
Anyway, I left around 1 PM, and it took about 2.5 hours to get up to the Hilton Mark Center.
All MAGFest had this night was LAN and Jamspace. LAN was busy doing its signature thing where it wasn't actually hooked up or running, as the primary focus was on setting up Jamspace for the New Years' Eve party/balls dropping event/concert.
At some point during the night we managed to go from the top floor of the hotel (floor 30) to the bottom floor (the Lower Lobby) without the elevator stopping. Ears popping as we went down. It was fun.
Thursday
The reason we couldn't get the entire hotel on Wednesday night is that we were double booked with some wacko James Bond convention that had gambling, alcohol, and lots of formal attire. They exited around 2-5 AM (I didn't check to see, but we explored the back hallways of the hotel for a while afterwards, technically looking for a good route to run some fiber optic network cable to the registration desk but just generally exploring the inner hallways of a 5 star Hilton and turning away employees when they asked us if we needed help.)
People started actually arriving, and eventually we bugged the hotel to get the power boxes we needed and actually got the LAN room going, sans internet. Later the internet got going as well, though slow as balls. We're using a totally ghetto network to circumvent having to get gouged out the ass by the hotel for internet connection fees for a shitty connection. It involves using 3G-enabled cell phones, and supports adding and removing them on the fly, so people can just donate their phones towards the greater cause if they'd like.
I bought both of the Angry Video Game Nerd DVDs. ScrewAttack had a special deal where normally the prices for each were higher, but if you bought them together you only had to pay $40. Pretty nice. Caught wind of the official word that The Nerd was floating around the convention, and went looking for him but didn't find him. Oh well.
Friday
My staffing shifts began at 6 this morning and concluded at 10 AM. Got some food from the staff food room and crashed in a friend's hotel room. Went to Planet Skill's concert, which was the first set, and it was just A_Rival doing some awesome raps, including one dedicated to the ladies where the main line was "push it in, push it down, turn it on". Think about possible innuendo for a while and then /facepalm and realize that the main line is telling you how to start up a NES game. I remembered to bring earplugs this year. That's probably why I forgot my watch.
If you look closely during the two videos I linked, you can see me briefly. I'm wearing my Nyoro~n Churuya-san shirt (that I bought at Nekocon) and my face kinda looks like it's emerging from my hair. Maybe when it gets warmer I'll get a haircut.
Also, Leninade is awesome.
Saturday
Starting at 2 AM, I had three shifts lasting two hours each, so my Saturday staffing duties ended at 8 AM. I was falling asleep by the end of that. Wandered into Jamspace and played drums for a while, that revived me. After I was sufficiently revived, I grabbed some breakfast from the staff food room and went to Benjamin Heckendorn's panel, and then hurried over to Events 1 to catch the end of the AVGN panel (scheduled at the same time FTL). Missed the fan-made Megaman movie 20 minute screening and Q&A because I was too damn tired and crashed in a friend's room.
Woke up, showered, and got to the staff food room for some food, then on down to the game room where I played some mo'fuggin Guitar Hero World Tour. With a Rock Band guitar. The RB guitar sucks donkey dicks. The frets click, the strum bar doesn't, and the whammy bar is too hard to use.
All through this weekend, I've been playing drums on Rock Band. It's pretty damn fun.
For some reason, Guitar Hero was massively discriminated against. At one point there were three full Rock Band setups in the game room, while World Tour had a TV and RB guitars in the middle of the game room. I wanted to play WT drums :(
Sunday
One final two hour staff shift beginning at 2 AM to close out my staffing duties for the weekend. It concluded without event. Then a friend of mine loaded me up with some spiced rum to drink (who needs a chaser, seriously), so I was pleasantly drunk for a while.
Three of us on MAGFest's forums inadvertently created a really awesome thread, so one of us printed the fucker out and assuming we can find the third one of us, we're all going to autograph it and sell it at the auction. Rod and I never found FreakTard, so... that didn't happen.
The theme of the weekend in the LAN room was most definitely the Jizz In My Pants video. I torrented it on our private Bittorrent tracker and it was the third most downloaded torrent.
Monday
Well, I got home last night, but due to the aforementioned problem with my parents' computer, no internet access until now. What's the difference? I paired the cable modem with my computer. It looks for the first MAC address it finds and only communicates with that, and if you want to have multiple computers you need NAT, which is normally provided by a router, but that would mean we would have a sane network topology. So here, NAT was provided by Internet Connection Sharing on, you guessed it, my parents' computer. That means our network goes somewhat like this: Internet <--> Cable Modem <--> My Parents' Computer <--> Switch <--> My computers, my dad's laptop
Staff food room rant
The food in the staff room was awesome, but overall the experience was worse than last year. Let's compare, shall we?
Last year, the staff room had unlimited amounts of spaghetti, ramen, and rice for us with all the appropriate toppings so that we could fashion ourselves simple, yet tasty meals. The room was open round the clock (well, people slept in it periodically, but we could still get in and get some coffee in the morning hours). It was on the 12th floor of the hotel, which took some time to get to but generally wasn't that much of an issue. There was actually space to sleep and the people staffing it didn't have an entire room reserved to themselves. The people staffing it were also less full of themselves because they weren't actually cooks that considered themselves to be awesome.
This year, it had scheduled mealtimes (that doesn't mesh well with MAGFest in general), was closed between them, and there was a note on the door saying knocking after 1 AM would have dire penalties. Portions were small and you could only have one unless you managed to sneak another. I had to stay in there for 10 minutes or so eating the random snack food to actually feel like I'd had a decent amount of food before leaving. It was on the third floor of the retreat wing of the hotel, which took a decent amount of walking to reach the choice point between stairs and a really slow elevator.
Give M6's staff food/crash room back to us, dammit. I'd go to the 12th floor of the hotel again if I knew I'd be able to get a full stomach or some decent sleep just by walking in.
Summary of items purchased
AVGN DVD volumes 1 and 2 (5 DVDs total!)
Several bottles of Leninade
An accidental package of Halls mints from a vending machine, was trying to buy the item just above them and inputted the wrong code.
Other items obtained
Two MAGFest 7 shirts (we had two styles this year). This is because I was owed a shirt from M6 because of staffing that wasn't available because they ran out of XLs.
A blue SanDisk MP3 player that someone left in the LAN room. If it's yours, claim it, if you don't, I'll use it myself.
Edit: Blogger has issues with posts started as drafts... It didn't update the post time when I actually posted it. The formatting was also kinda weird. I've fixed both of those issues now.
Around 10-11 this morning the northbridge chip on my parents' motherboard blew up. Since our network topology is totally stupid and thus uses Internet Connection Sharing on their computer, which is connected to a switch that connects to the rest of the network, this took out my connection to the internet, just before I was about to print me some Google Maps directions.
We got my dad's laptop hooked up directly to the cable modem and I looked up the directions. We couldn't get the printer working on my dad's laptop, so get this: I wrote them down on a sheet of paper with a pencil. Wow.
Anyway, I left around 1 PM, and it took about 2.5 hours to get up to the Hilton Mark Center.
All MAGFest had this night was LAN and Jamspace. LAN was busy doing its signature thing where it wasn't actually hooked up or running, as the primary focus was on setting up Jamspace for the New Years' Eve party/balls dropping event/concert.
At some point during the night we managed to go from the top floor of the hotel (floor 30) to the bottom floor (the Lower Lobby) without the elevator stopping. Ears popping as we went down. It was fun.
Thursday
The reason we couldn't get the entire hotel on Wednesday night is that we were double booked with some wacko James Bond convention that had gambling, alcohol, and lots of formal attire. They exited around 2-5 AM (I didn't check to see, but we explored the back hallways of the hotel for a while afterwards, technically looking for a good route to run some fiber optic network cable to the registration desk but just generally exploring the inner hallways of a 5 star Hilton and turning away employees when they asked us if we needed help.)
People started actually arriving, and eventually we bugged the hotel to get the power boxes we needed and actually got the LAN room going, sans internet. Later the internet got going as well, though slow as balls. We're using a totally ghetto network to circumvent having to get gouged out the ass by the hotel for internet connection fees for a shitty connection. It involves using 3G-enabled cell phones, and supports adding and removing them on the fly, so people can just donate their phones towards the greater cause if they'd like.
I bought both of the Angry Video Game Nerd DVDs. ScrewAttack had a special deal where normally the prices for each were higher, but if you bought them together you only had to pay $40. Pretty nice. Caught wind of the official word that The Nerd was floating around the convention, and went looking for him but didn't find him. Oh well.
Friday
My staffing shifts began at 6 this morning and concluded at 10 AM. Got some food from the staff food room and crashed in a friend's hotel room. Went to Planet Skill's concert, which was the first set, and it was just A_Rival doing some awesome raps, including one dedicated to the ladies where the main line was "push it in, push it down, turn it on". Think about possible innuendo for a while and then /facepalm and realize that the main line is telling you how to start up a NES game. I remembered to bring earplugs this year. That's probably why I forgot my watch.
If you look closely during the two videos I linked, you can see me briefly. I'm wearing my Nyoro~n Churuya-san shirt (that I bought at Nekocon) and my face kinda looks like it's emerging from my hair. Maybe when it gets warmer I'll get a haircut.
Also, Leninade is awesome.
Saturday
Starting at 2 AM, I had three shifts lasting two hours each, so my Saturday staffing duties ended at 8 AM. I was falling asleep by the end of that. Wandered into Jamspace and played drums for a while, that revived me. After I was sufficiently revived, I grabbed some breakfast from the staff food room and went to Benjamin Heckendorn's panel, and then hurried over to Events 1 to catch the end of the AVGN panel (scheduled at the same time FTL). Missed the fan-made Megaman movie 20 minute screening and Q&A because I was too damn tired and crashed in a friend's room.
Woke up, showered, and got to the staff food room for some food, then on down to the game room where I played some mo'fuggin Guitar Hero World Tour. With a Rock Band guitar. The RB guitar sucks donkey dicks. The frets click, the strum bar doesn't, and the whammy bar is too hard to use.
All through this weekend, I've been playing drums on Rock Band. It's pretty damn fun.
For some reason, Guitar Hero was massively discriminated against. At one point there were three full Rock Band setups in the game room, while World Tour had a TV and RB guitars in the middle of the game room. I wanted to play WT drums :(
Sunday
One final two hour staff shift beginning at 2 AM to close out my staffing duties for the weekend. It concluded without event. Then a friend of mine loaded me up with some spiced rum to drink (who needs a chaser, seriously), so I was pleasantly drunk for a while.
Three of us on MAGFest's forums inadvertently created a really awesome thread, so one of us printed the fucker out and assuming we can find the third one of us, we're all going to autograph it and sell it at the auction. Rod and I never found FreakTard, so... that didn't happen.
The theme of the weekend in the LAN room was most definitely the Jizz In My Pants video. I torrented it on our private Bittorrent tracker and it was the third most downloaded torrent.
Monday
Well, I got home last night, but due to the aforementioned problem with my parents' computer, no internet access until now. What's the difference? I paired the cable modem with my computer. It looks for the first MAC address it finds and only communicates with that, and if you want to have multiple computers you need NAT, which is normally provided by a router, but that would mean we would have a sane network topology. So here, NAT was provided by Internet Connection Sharing on, you guessed it, my parents' computer. That means our network goes somewhat like this: Internet <--> Cable Modem <--> My Parents' Computer <--> Switch <--> My computers, my dad's laptop
Staff food room rant
The food in the staff room was awesome, but overall the experience was worse than last year. Let's compare, shall we?
Last year, the staff room had unlimited amounts of spaghetti, ramen, and rice for us with all the appropriate toppings so that we could fashion ourselves simple, yet tasty meals. The room was open round the clock (well, people slept in it periodically, but we could still get in and get some coffee in the morning hours). It was on the 12th floor of the hotel, which took some time to get to but generally wasn't that much of an issue. There was actually space to sleep and the people staffing it didn't have an entire room reserved to themselves. The people staffing it were also less full of themselves because they weren't actually cooks that considered themselves to be awesome.
This year, it had scheduled mealtimes (that doesn't mesh well with MAGFest in general), was closed between them, and there was a note on the door saying knocking after 1 AM would have dire penalties. Portions were small and you could only have one unless you managed to sneak another. I had to stay in there for 10 minutes or so eating the random snack food to actually feel like I'd had a decent amount of food before leaving. It was on the third floor of the retreat wing of the hotel, which took a decent amount of walking to reach the choice point between stairs and a really slow elevator.
Give M6's staff food/crash room back to us, dammit. I'd go to the 12th floor of the hotel again if I knew I'd be able to get a full stomach or some decent sleep just by walking in.
Summary of items purchased
AVGN DVD volumes 1 and 2 (5 DVDs total!)
Several bottles of Leninade
An accidental package of Halls mints from a vending machine, was trying to buy the item just above them and inputted the wrong code.
Other items obtained
Two MAGFest 7 shirts (we had two styles this year). This is because I was owed a shirt from M6 because of staffing that wasn't available because they ran out of XLs.
A blue SanDisk MP3 player that someone left in the LAN room. If it's yours, claim it, if you don't, I'll use it myself.
Edit: Blogger has issues with posts started as drafts... It didn't update the post time when I actually posted it. The formatting was also kinda weird. I've fixed both of those issues now.
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