Holy fuck, Batman!

Uhhhh... wtf just happened.

Seriously.

It all started with an FC of Darkness Riff in One (on Expert, all of this is on Expert).

Then I bumbled around playing some other stuff for a bit.

I decided on a whim to play a song I usually have a hard time with (due to a strum rhythm that changes ever so slightly every time it comes up): Monsters. Passed it easily.

I thought "hm, do I have something good going here?" So I played 3's and 7's, which has another fun strum rhythm and some damned annoying chord changes. Passed easily. 4 stars.

I decided I needed to end this, so to commit suicide I load up Cult of Personality. I beat it. I GOT THROUGH THE DAMN SECOND SOLO. 4 FUCKING STARS.

Still trying to commit suicide, I loaded up Cliffs of Dover, figuring Intro Solo B would get me. Well, I died a few times trying to get to Intro Solo B, but when I did get to it, not only did I have star power, but I got through it. Went on to beat the fucking song. Only 3 stars here.

Do I dare... Raining Blood? Surely Mosh 1 will get me, and it would be a sightread since I've never played the song on Expert. If not Mosh 1, then definitely Flood! will get me.

Edit: Well, didn't get Raining Blood on Expert, but did finally get it on Hard. Lou battle!

Edit 2: Can someone come to my house and pass Before I Forget on Expert for me? The section of bullshit chords gets me every time. If you listen to the audio there aren't even any power chords there, so WTF, Neversoft. Overchart much?

web browsers

Everyone probably knows about Google Chrome, Google's lightweight web browserfancy information collector. What most people probably don't know is that there's another compile of the same code out there (yay open source) that omits all of the data mining stuff, turning Chrome into just another web browser.

It's called SRWare Iron.

Let's compare.

Chrome: Collects information about your web browsing habits and sends it back to Google.

Iron: None of that bullshit.

Chrome: No ad blocker.

Iron: Has one integrated, that runs off of a file "adblock.ini" in its directory. They have a file you can toss in there to block most everything on the internet. It works pretty well, I haven't seen an ad since I set it up.

Chrome: No flash blocker.

Iron: Sadly, the same.

Chrome: Uses Windows' Internet Options control panel to connect to the internet.

Iron: Sadly, still uses it. I'd like to cockblock IE and allow everything decent plz.

Chrome: Refuses to install on Windows XP SP1 or earlier.

Iron: No such artificial OS limitation.

I'm using it to write this post right now on WinXP SP1. Just like Chrome, it crashes a fair amount, but the codebase is still technically beta, so that's to be expected. Unfortunately, it lacks the one feature other browsers have where you can press F11 to browse in fullscreen, with the location/tab bars hidden except when you need them. It's still got a long way to go, but it's a decent browser.

Iron also has a portable version that you can run from a USB flash drive and makes no system configuration changes.

The verdict: Use when you need a light and fast web browser. Funny, that's what Firefox was supposed to be, but it's a behemoth now.

SO FUCKING CLOSE

I just did a 100% run on My Name Is Jonas. Not an FC because I overstrummed on the first activation (lol select button and getting used to strumming when I hit it), but still. It's even more proof I'll FC this song someday.

Score is low because of the dropped combo (my streak is 735, there's 843 notes), but I hit all the squeezes, even the ticks. 349458 points, 8/10 SP, 5.241x avg. multiplier. Yeah, it's fewer points (and a lower multiplier, wtf) than my previous -3 run. Oh well.

At least now I'll have the gold stars in the setlist.

Last night I FCed it in practice mode, lol.

I was hitting select instead of pre-tilting on the first activation because if I tilt then yellow tends to go out. Just wiggling the neck back and forth makes yellow flicker.

THIS FC WILL HAPPEN SOMEDAY, I SWEAR

Hot damn, sauce plz

My parents came back from their trip to North Carolina's Outer Banks last Sunday, and they brought back with them a bottle of Tortugas' Lie Habañero Peppa Sauce. After helping them get their stuff inside and handling other minor things, I broke out the chips, gave it a shake (good advice for any hot sauce, they tend to separate) and opened it.

Holy fuck it's awesome.

It's probably the first habañero-based hot sauce I've had that actually has a decent flavor to go with it. Quite simply, I can't put the bottle down, even though I'm in pain. I call it "happy pain".

The bottle's almost empty already, so I hopped on tortugaslie.com to see if I could order any more or something. Unfortunately, they don't have an online store, but there are a few physical stores that they say have their hot sauce, one of which we actually have in Charlottesville (Harris Teeter). Harris Teeter is more expensive than all the other grocery stores, but whatever.

I'll have to see if I can't pick up some more of this stuff.

Friday edit: Finished the last of it early this morning.

FUCK YEAH FULL COMBO

Guitar Hero 3, Expert difficulty, Generation Rock.

262662 points (lol)

I didn't really have an intelligent star power path outside of the first and last activations, but whatever. 9/11 SP, 4.722 average multiplier, and of course 734 of 734 notes.

Downstrummed the entire thing. It could be altstrummed, and my arm was getting pretty tired past about halfway (well, during Build-up), but there aren't any complicated rhythms at all. It's just beat and half-beat for the entire song with some rests thrown in every now and then. There aren't even any hammer-ons or pull-offs.

Let's see where that score comes in on ScoreHero... 1637th on PS2. To be expected, I didn't squeeze or have good middle activations at all. Hell, there are better 99% scores :(

Still no FC of Closer (stupid chokes while trying to squeeze) or My Name Is Jonas (haven't played it in a while, kinda want to hardwire my guitar and celebrate with an FC)

I've noticed two things that Generation Rock and My Name Is Jonas have in common: Both songs' first SP activation is properly timed by pre-tilting in the 2nd SP phrase, and both have no holds in SP phrases.

I went through and tagged any post where I mention Guitar Hero with, well, Guitar Hero. Posts that mention it exclusively (meaning, no other games) don't have the games tag.

Happy birthday to me

So, yeah. Another year gone. Also, that last quarter century went by pretty fast.

Tsuruya is looking really good on top of my monitor. The figure was a cheap one (it had to be assembled), but I don't really care. Maybe once I have money I'll order the good one from HobbyLink Japan or something. Also, it came with a little round stand (to be expected) and a support thing which I can't figure out why it needs it. She stands up just fine on her own. I used some scotch tape to secure the base to the top of my monitor, but that was just to make sure she wouldn't fall off.

The missing volume 18 of Negima contains chapters 160 through 168 of the manga. Maybe I can get a fellow Negima fan who's been reading the scanslations to copy them onto my flash drive or something so I can read them while hunting down the rogue volume. I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday, they had 1-17 and 19. Thinking of going again today and if they don't have it, putting it on order.

When I left yesterday to hit up Barnes and Noble (Negima 18, where are you?) and Giant (for some yogurt I neglected to get last Thursday on my mom's bill) I forgot to check the mail before I left. So I did it when I got back and discovered that my grandmother had sent me a birthday card with $25 in it. $25 I could have spent somehow. Oh well, I guess the better thing to do with it will be to put it in my account and refill my gas tank with it, since it's still practically empty from driving to/from Nekocon.

I was going through some stuff I haven't touched in years in my My Documents folder and happened upon an old website of mine that I made for a class. Out of this, I got an awesome picture of Boogiepop (from Boogiepop Phantom) which I cropped and resized and am now phasing in as my avatar. I also discovered a stupid MSPaint webcomic I made in 2004 (before discovering 4chan). I made it at work while bored, which accounts for the level of humor in it. Some of the humor kinda reminds me of xkcd, to be honest. I might post the comics here, I might not.

Maybe I should make a regular thing of it. A few times a week, I would MSPaint something kinda funny up and put it up here. The trouble with that is, if I commit to any form of a schedule, my creative inspiration is going to go out the window entirely. I made the aforementioned comics basically as the joke came to mind, not on any form of a release schedule. I might give random comic-making a try. We'll see. I'm not much of an artist, so it'll be stick figures. Themes to be expected: anime, computers, games, internet phenomena/memes, etc.

Also, an update to this post I made a while back. I got the navbar up at the top showing me as logged in, with the New Post and Customize (and Sign Out) options. It was a cookie issue, which is weird since I'm allowing cookies. I had to go into Firefox's cookie exceptions dialog and add Allow exceptions for blogspot.com and blogger.com (not sure which did it, too lazy to figure it out). Once I did that, hit Sign In, and then in the dashboard hit View Blog, it worked. The post box still randomly inserts line breaks on its own though.

Through the fire and the flames we carry on

Cleared it on Hard finally. It's my patented technique of not playing it for a while and coming back to it that did the trick. Kinda like finishing that detext for the last wallpaper update. Anyway.

I can get to Herman's Solo no problem. Somehow I had star power at that point, so I activated when I needed it and it carried on into the beginning of Sam's Solo. BSed my way through that and Herman's Solo 2 somehow, then I couldn't believe I hadn't failed. I'm like "This is 'What the...'! I got through the damn solos!" and I went on to clear the song. I also FCed Almost There... before getting 58% on You Rock!

So I immediately hopped over to Expert and almost managed to BS my way through the intro, but then right on cue Yellow started being a bitch.

So now I'm gonna go cook the taco meat I bought last night (mmm, ground bison) and have me some tacos. I have Sargento's shredded cheese blend that has bacon in it. It's gonna be delicious.

Edit: IT WAS VERY DELICIOUS.