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Achievement redacted! Sayonara Blogger!

(tags blog)

Due to me being all Web 1.0 and Blogger discontinuing Publishing via FTP, I've decided to stop blogging these hobby posts at/via Blogger. I don't have a new blog already set up, but you can be sure I won't be able to stop exposing my strange hobbies. In other words, this will be the last blog post here at this feed. If I ever get another one started, I'll let you know. ;-)

While I'm here, I might as well reminisce. According to the Blogger control panel, this will be (or is) the 963 published post. What a nice clean number, but still less than a thousand. "we get signal" was just my little testbed to see how Blogger worked. A more than four year old testbed. And it did work, but just barely good enough so that I didn't gravitate toward anything else. Along the way, I discovered PSP and DS gaming, bought more than enough moe figures, went to some heady conventions and lost that hunger, stopped buying weekly Famitsu magazines, and other things that made my life grand (or my future job searching efforts a pain).

It's all in there. Or I wish it was, since I keep on forgetting to type it out. I know my memory isn't so great, and re-reading these entries makes me feel satisfying nostalgia. It's just that taking those pictures and post-editing them got so tedious that I stopped blogging. The typing part was fun though. I can do that all day.

Blogging is a joy, best described as... oh I'm just gonna steal that Prince quote: "To create something from nothing is one of the greatest feelings, and I would -- I don't know, I wish it upon everybody. It's heaven." I may not be playing music like he is, but I am still wrestling my fleeting thoughts into thorny, beautiful phrases (yeah right). Then again, this is a self-indulgent diary instead of crowd-pleasing, open comment, Internet 2.0 blog. I am so wrong, so very wrong, wrong in ways I cannot imagine. But it was true. True for me, when I wrote it, it whatever. It was all fiction! Or just ignorance. Bliss. BTW, I don't think I've improved myself at all. :-)

Thank you for reading! See you again!

dat ass!

(tags Windows 7, Nanami Madobe, Quo cards, poster, collectibles)

dat ass!

dat quo card ass!

dat blown up, multiple ass!

dat clear file ass!

dat big ass poster sofmap ass!

Wipe dat ass!

WIPE DAT PREPRINTED ASS!

...

Ahem, Windows 7 Mania, indeed. This "official" mascot, Nanami Madobe (窓辺ななみ), sure is moe. And Windows 7? It's a pretty good Spider Solitare platform. Heh.

Why you should be playing games

(tags game, criticism)

Why you should be playing games. It's to train your brain to recognize good experiences, or perhaps learn how your standard of tolerance is different from others. Not so recently, I played the Pokemon series, but I gave up on it before getting the "complete index" item, because the battle screens are so slow. Still there are millions of people playing this game.

Or more recently, it's to make yourself a noisy nuisance on the bus or train. (Games: DJ Max Portable 2, Rubik's Cube).

Or it's to inhibit (or develop!) your lust for collecting collectibles. 100% completion makes gaming like work, but I don't want to feel like I miss out.

Sometimes gaming is just for relaxation. I recently discovered Spider Solitaire, one of those Windows built-in games. It's been my guilty pleasure for the last week. I play with one deck (beginner level). I really like the bling in the Windows 7 edition of this game, because I find that the Windows XP just serviceable, not unlike the feeling of playing a Windows 3.1 game.

Why shouldn't you be playing games. Surely you need your sleep time? ;)

Caught myself iPadding

(tags ipad, hardware)

Ugh, this is one of those posts that mentions the iPad. I caught myself first thing in the morning looking up its product page and availability at Sofmap. Lucky for me it's not yet available in Japan. Some negative blog posts about the developer restrictions reminded me about my decision to not buy one.

わふー! はろー・わーるど！なのです。(A Kudo PC unboxing affair)

(tags hardware, PC, Windows 7, Kudo)

Today was the 6th Nipponbashi Street Fair, but I was only interested in one thing: The Noumi Kudryavka PC netbook. It's a VisualArt's / Key Official Original Goods「わふーでハイすぺっくなnetbookなのです。」 To make a long story short, I purchased one way overpriced Atom Pineview netbook.

I woke up at 6:00 AM, arrived in Nipponbashi at around 7:40. I thought I was late, and I was, since there was about 500 people already. They lined us up in groups of 60. I was standing in the middle but for some reason, they decided to let our group (5th!) enter first. I finished buying everything at 9:15 AM, and I headed back home, missing the rest of the Festa.

One unremarkable cardboard box gives way to a kawaii assault. The box set is basically the netbook and the themes backup CD-ROM.

Everything seems to be in order. Glossy finish with no imperfections. Hard disk looks alright at 320GB. No discernible way to upgrade the 2GB RAM. Only two USB 2.0 ports and both of them on the left side.

There are important things to do before booting into Windows 7 Home Premium Japanese. I first checked the boot up sequence, then did a quick MemoryTest+. After that I backed up the hard drive using Clonezilla Live USB. Finally I ran Windows, played around with the themes and backgrounds, and checked out my Miku score.

This is pretty much my first time to listen to Naomi Kudryavka in depth. It's the original voice actress Miyako Suzuta (鈴田美夜子). The PC comes with 6 voice themes: maid, wife, sister, love, wahoo and russian. The wife one is good for a laugh but the sounds are longer than 3 seconds so I know I will tire of them quickly. First I need to make some noise by making errors.

Now to actually play this Little Busters!. It's been 2 years already and I still haven't finished any scenarios. I just like the way she's illustrated. Now that there's enough space I will install that game, Kudo-Wafter (クドわすたー) when it comes out, and Starcraft 1 right now!

wins the ketchup painting mini-game

(tags game, Xbox 360, gal game)

w1nnar!

w1nnar?

IRC is the mind killer

(tags IRC, blog)

Just now I got stuck reading my own blog. Man, this guy is totally interesting, and I wish he wrote more. ;-) Heh.

Ever since re-joining the IRC life after meeting some IRC friends IRL (ooh scary). I have not been writing many posts. I suppose I must prioritize my limited free time but its just so easy to derive satisfaction from sitting in an IRC channel and bouncing non-sequiturs and off-the-cuff rude remarks. "Yer mom". Then again sometimes I learn about new things like new games and new Internet usage techniques. Communication is important! Says the hermit who refuses to turn on comments on his blog.

Now that I figured out how to log in my IRC client and how to keep a client session up longer (run it on my always on PC, duh), I can still participate, but perhaps I shouldn't pop in every day. Let's give that a try. Greetz and howdy for a new habit.

Nanoha cross-media uppercut

(tags game, movie, なのは)

I thought my Nanoha fandom died out after ignoring the third TV series, but I got swept into this weekend's one two otaku-targeted cross-media punch: Nanoha the theatrical movie and Nanoha the PSP game. Below is the instant when my fandom re-ignited, mostly raw and unedited. I want to expand on certain facets of it in separate posts, but give me a night to polish (and collect pictures eh heh).

Written around 2010-01-22 Friday evening:

Nanoha the Movie 1 starts tomorrow. Wanna watch it. Then again its 1500 yen and no special goodie with ticket because I was too slow to pre-order. The movie is showing at Cine Libre Kobe (シネ・リーブル神戸) which is this artsy almost-independent place that sometimes shows anime. Also starting tomorrow is the Fate/Stay Night movie but I'm not into that. Well, that's two "Fate"s in one day (the other is Fate Tessterosa from Nanoha, ha ha).

Yesterday, there were many limited edition copies of the Nanoha PSP game to be had, but the regular edition was either sold out or just not in yet (or stores are forcing the sale of the expensive version first).

A Xbox 360 Holiday full of deals

(tags game, Xbox 360)

I spent the Xmas and New Years holidays playing the daily deals trickling off Xbox Live. It was called the Xbox Live Holiday Deal. I watched the daily unveiling through the Cheap Ass Gamer post. The Japan region had different deals from the US region, so I watched it through ホリデーカウントダウン.

I picked up all the free stuff. I also picked up Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Castle Crashers, Battlefield 1943. Only Castle Crashers held my attention longer than a day. Actually the first day I played it, I logged into a game and some high level total strangers helped boost me. I then played the game with some closer aquaintances and got a complete Achievement from it. That was fun.

Acutally the Deal of the Week was Shadow Complex, which I played to completion on Hardcore the first time. That was pretty fun but I don't feel like playing that game a third time through.

Finally I picked up A Kingdom for Keflings, which was the following Deal of the Week. I like this game a lot because of the building and resource collecting. I even purchased one of the DLC packs which is just two extra maps. I'm feeling the tinge of boredom with it now, but the first time I played it was a 5 hour straight session.

Xbox 360 don't fail me now.

My Avatar movie experience

(tags movie)

"Do I really have to do this now?" "Yes while it's still fresh."

Avatar hasn't moved me to write a screed. But it reminds me of earlier last month.

I was digging through my stash when I found this old DVD of Terminator 2, with burned in letterboxing. Unlike other DVDs I owned, I felt the need to watch it right then and there. Two hours flew by, and I had new found (refound) respect for this James Cameron work. Remember when the T-1000 rammed the truck through the bridge barricade? This was the point of the movie for me where I know the bad guy (and the production crew) wasn't just messing around. That was movie magic.

So with that Terminator 2 fresh in my mind, and the buzz and hype from blogs I read (I mean skipped over) and other Internet friends, I decided to watch it on a theatre discount day. The weekend before was also a discount day and I watched the sequel to Tinkerbell there as well, which I hoped was a good as the first but unfortunately was forgettable Disney moralizing and deus ex machina.

I announced my intention to watch the movie to my IRC chat buddies at #insertcredit and most of them recommended the 3d version. I was set on watching the 2d version with subtitles but after some rumination (you can't duplicated the experience at home) and seeing the price difference (only 300 yen more, so it was still a good discount), I decided to give the 3D "IMAX" version a try. BTW, I always thought the "IMAX" thing was the distorted 180 degree bubble screen. I think that was the last time I ever saw anything called IMAX.

I arrived at the theater one hour before, intending to watch the 13:10 but it was sold out. Was this the result of the discount pricing? The second showing was at 20:10 but I didn't hesitate. Coming back again, I decided to get popcorn and drink with this movie, hoping the movie food would suspend my disbelief. Buying overpriced snacks at the theater is a rarity for me. I felt dismayed when the admission lady handed me the required 3d glasses though.

Still I sat throught the whole 2 hours and 40 minutes not wondering when it would end. I also spent the whole period wondering what is CG and was wasn't. Technically speaking, the 3d effect is not very impressive and has turned me off to the 3d display push now happening in the consumer electronics arena. All it does is make the background blurry. Maybe I need to have my eyes checked, but maybe only young people can enjoy this 3d effect. Not me.

After the movie ended, I had to walk home uphill 30 minutes during a winter midnight. At least the weather wasn't too bad. My brain was stuck on processing the movie, but nothing of eloquence or insight came out. It was just as if I've seen Terminator 2 full of awesome visuals, but with none of the satisfaction of thinly-veiled moralizing. The story played with my emotions bouncing them in obvious ways. Too much happy end and deus ex machina. Because of that, I unfortunately don't think this one will stick in my brain. It will be a year or 10 before I feel the urge to watch it again.

I'm not saying that this movie is bland, but perhaps that watching all this anime, reading science fiction and playing fantastic backdrop games, etc etc, its standard fare for my imagination.

Okay now onto the web to read all the other reviews I skipped.

Happy New Year 2010

(tags greetz)

Greetz and Howdy for the 2010 year.

With that out of the way maybe I can write some random blatherings.

Kansai themed Melon-chan (Melonbooks key-holder)

(tags Melonbooks, collectable, goods, kawaii, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto)

Last month I went to Kyoto to see the Autumn Leaves in fancy Japanese temples and shrines. Big woop but my camera failed to capture the leaf beauty.

While I was in the area I picked up the Melonbooks key-holder goods (メロンブックスオリジナルの特製グッズ交換 「ご当地めろんキーホルダー」). Basically, each Melonbooks store has their own themed key-chain goods, based on their lead moe-ish character "Melon-chan".

It was no sweat to pick up the Kobe's Sailor Melon (神戸／水兵メロン). Kyoto's Maiko Melon is the classic (twin-tail) beauty (京都／舞妓めろん). And Osaka's Takoyaki Melon makes me laugh nandeyanen?! (大阪／たこ焼きめろん).

Artist Shun Kazakami (風上旬) is responsible for this killer design. I totally forgot about it, but this artist was featured every month in the now defunct moe-friendly Majikyu magazine (マジキュー連載「５階美少女家電売り場でございます」). I have all 40 issues, heh heh.

There are 20 themes in all, and all of them are pretty kawaii. Gotta catch 'em all, except I hate travelling. I've been trying to do the Auctions but not all of them are up. I did collect some already but at this rate I think I'll be done in 2011.

Oh, and the official web banner. Hawt. I forgot how much 300 Melonbooks points is in yen, but it's not that expensive. I have like 4000 Melonbook points. Now all I need is a bicycle to ride around.