水 - 4月 18, 2007

Too bad


I played Bleach: Blade Battlers, the newest playstation 2 Bleach game.... I haven't felt the Sega Bleach games (apart from Treasure's 2) have been all that spectacular, so I had some hope for sony's (...Why?... I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.)

Also, I finally got that Games section updated on the main page.

Posted at 11:22 午後     Read More  

木 - 9月 28, 2006

Batteries


Occasionally, people don't empty their pockets fully and later find them in the washing machine after all the cycles are complete.

...Even more amazing is the fabled "battery gauge." How does it really calculate how long it will be until your device hasn't enough juice to work?

...For example, my digital camera takes rechargeable AAs. My camera was used to take about 356 pictures yesterday*, on 4 batteries. The first pair lasted for 238 of them, the last 199 of which were taken within the same 2-hour span. So, my camera was on almost continuously for that time, during which I took about 50% of them with flash. And throughout that whole while, it warned me of a low battery.

...On the other hand, my cell phone has a 3-bar gauge in a cute battery-shaped icon. 3 means something like 100% to 10% charge.... And 1 Red Bar means THIS PHONE WILL EXPLODE.

...So, how long does my phone actually last?... And like today, I occasionally run out of juice.

Posted at 08:42 午後     Read More  

水 - 6月 28, 2006

Thanks, microsoft


There once was a useful piece of software called iView Media Pro. It used to be cross-platform, Mac and windows. Then, microsoft bought it because A) They wanted to kill the Mac version and B) They can't figure out how to program a new piece of software (or it was cheaper than crushing them, too). Sure, the open letter reads, "The product that was born on the Mac will remain on the Mac as well as on the Windows operating system."... Check out the cross-platform parity of its other products, like office.

...I guess it makes sense, since they were definitely hurting for money. They jacked the price of their software up from $160 to $199 and did a sneaky thing with version pricing a while back.

...Recently, I had the misfortune to run into the program SD-Jukebox, used for putting "SD-Audio" music onto a panasonic product. It's windows-only and has one of the crappiest interfaces ever. There's actually a 1" x 4" box which is dedicated to showing how the transfer is doing. On the left side, we have a picture of the HDD and on the right, the memory card on the music player.... So, you know the total capacity of the HDD and the memory card. It DOES tell you the free space on the memory card, though.

Here's where microsoft helps: When you run out of HDD space, the program just hangs.... The filesystem simply halts with no message from the OS or anything.

...As an extra bonus, when sending music to a device, it has to re-encode it with fun DRM, and that makes transferring music take longer than long. Not that you'd know because there's no overall progress bar, just a PER-FILE progress bar. You put a UI like that on a Mac product and people will never accept it.

...Computers are supposed to make things easier and ought to be designed with that idea in mind.

Posted at 09:07 午前     Read More  

火 - 6月 27, 2006

Study Japanese?


On Saturday, I picked up Brain Age, but in Japanese. I couldn't help myself...it was on sale for ¥2480 new. Sadly, this is because the store I went to (for the first time) was having a going-out-of-business sale.

I just played it and found my brain is 41 years old.

...I also picked up "Bokujou Monogatari: Shiawase no Uta for World" for GC, which I hear is really good.

Posted at 12:15 午前     Read More  

日 - 6月 18, 2006

Study Cube


Got the Enamel Navy DS Lite, which isn't what I wanted, but all they had. =_= White definitely looks much nicer.

Posted at 09:40 午後     Read More  

土 - 3月 25, 2006

GameCube


I just picked up Bleach, Wave Race: Blue Storm, and Naruto 4.

Naruto 4 has amazing graphics, but seems like a technique-less button masher.

...Bleach has okay graphics, but is a little stiff.... Wave Race: Blue Storm is fun, but the control takes a lot of getting used to. If you get an angle wrong, you miss the buoys, and if you do that, it kills your turbo meter. However, it seems like using the turbo is a guaranteed way to mess up your race line.... The game penalises you too much.

...The chatter is kinda nice, and variable weather helps spice things up. I'm not so fond of the dynamic track changes, like changing tides, but I guess that's just how it goes.

Posted at 10:54 午後     Read More  

日 - 3月 5, 2006

Downward Spiral


I've been increasingly unhappy with my art and my latest project, so...things haven't been going so well.

I need to work on camera angles, but every time I do so, they skew back to normal.

Oops, this is all art-related!

...Little-known fact: I haven't even powered on my GameCube in over 10 days.... I hope to rectify that soonish...Even though at the moment, I have exactly enough money to eat, but my next purchases will be a Nintendo DS Lite, to get that cool (I imagine) Japanese-learning software that's coming out, and Bleach for GameCube.

Posted at 10:13 午後     Read More  

木 - 4月 12, 2001

01/04/12 


Even though I accidentally ended up playing PSO for about 3 hours today, I think it was worth it. The first hour was with all new people and the last hour was with an old friend. That second hour...who should happen in but "Naska"!... O_O And I'm guessing it's not her first character.... Sadly, though, I'm officially 2 weeks behind on CG (because I have one all ready to go...and another is 5% done). ~_~ What a neat contrast to yesterday, where I lost my Justy 'cause the game didn't load the Mine boss. ~_~ All I had was the stuff I had equipped...An Agito?... I also feel really bad about not updating for so long. ~_~ I've been caught up in a vicious cycle of "PSO/e-mail/homework" over and over again for my free time.... I'm feeling guilty about putting up icky work, so I'm needing more and more time to come up with OK ideas and then to work on them and then more time to set 'em aside so I can go back later with a fresh mind and fix errors!... I probably should just drop whatever weeks I've missed but I feel it's a light schedule, so shouldn't I be able to keep up on average? (I still intend to do last year's 4th of July pic...)

...And...FDN's reached 1000! O_O And the Guestbook has reached 2! 

Posted at 09:56 午後     Read More  

月 - 3月 19, 2001

01/03/19 


Saturday, the 17th of March in the year 2001 of the Common Era is a day that will live in infamy.... But I made up for that by playing twice as long today.

...Sadly, however, I finally took the Ponderosa Ranch keychain off my keys for good today. It fell off just way too often, perhaps every few months. So...I'm down to 1.3 actual keychains.... The DC keychain and the main part of the plastic twirlie thingie.

And remember...if the milk smells funny, don't drink it! 

Posted at 09:55 午後     Read More  

火 - 3月 6, 2001

01/03/06 


My Guild Card collection was erased!... O_O Well...it's not too big a deal. But there's all those people I won't be able to find again.

And last night I met a most interesting person who thought s/he was a cat.... ^_^; MYAR, was it? 

Posted at 09:54 午後     Read More  

木 - 3月 1, 2001

01/03/01 


After successfully having a good time for about a month, I finally, finally had a negative PSO experience last night.... His double saber was went missing after he died. Even though, suspiciously, one of our party members vanished immediately after the incident, that guy made it out unscathed.... Not only did he harass me and the other remaining party member, jumping at him, shouting, "THIEF!"... but when the Forest Boss stepped on me, refused to revive me, thus wasting a good bit of time, since I got no EXP from it!... He wouldn't listen to anything I said, even though he listened to the other guy.... He claimed it was his only weapon, and since he was a Lv 40+ Force, I gave him a (useless to me) Rod of Laconum (sp?)

...I'd like to mention that the third person died and his weapon was better (?)

...Perhaps I'm being naive but I don't see the point.

...After that, I went to another game 'cause I wanted to talk with someone and lo and behold, THAT GUY had joined THAT SAME GAME under a different name!... -_- After trying to reason with him for another 20 minutes or so, he stopped listening to me. He also claims that I stole another weapon of his, a Needler or something like that TWO WEEKS ago!

...I checked my Card List 'cause I get cards from all the nice people I meet and gee, I never got a card from him.... Yet, yesterday, one of the first things he did upon joining was hand out his card.... At this second meeting, I pointed this fact out and the dummy says that he never got mine and LOOKS in his Card List!... The card files are tied to the character save files!... Of course he didn't have my card with this other character!

...In order to try to prove my innocence, I even offered to give him my strongest weapon (A Wisk something) and he just scoffed at it. I continued to try to reason with him but he was too hard-headed. Another guy joined on, a Lv40+ Force. This same rude person asked why he was playing in "HARD" if he could play "VERY HARD" (requirement of Lv40+) and was told that being a Force, he had only like 276HP. Rude guy said that Force are for backup.... Force said he sometimes played with people who didn't know their "roll." Rude jumped on this and said, "role," said Force couldn't spell. Then he laughed at 276HP and said Force are for wimpy little girls.... Not only is Force the Hardest Class to use but HE has a Force!

...I don't remember who played the Race card first but it descended into White-bashing and Mexican-bashing, complete with all kinds of racial slurs and negative stereotypes.... and stuff like that and Force even gave his phone number!

At this point, I knew I was dealing with an Entirely Unreasonable Person and left.... Now I see why the Japanese people always ignore anyone marked 'E' for English.... And I gave him all that stuff, too.... With Europe on-line, too...will it get any better?

I, too, had a weapon stolen from me.... Even if my next best weapon was like half as strong...I didn't accuse everyone of taking it. Somehow, I was able to understand that 1) It's a game and 2) People are selfish and will do things like that.

One blemish on the experience like this can wipe out the numerous kind acts of others, where they would give me hand-me-downs or money or (in one case!)

...But I will still play on. Yes...But I somehow don't think I've heard the last of this Rude guy... 

Posted at 09:54 午後     Read More  

月 - 2月 26, 2001

01/02/26 


Two days ago, I picked up a Special Weapon on PSO and went to ID it. The best guess was a VARISTA +4 but I hoped for more and tried a few more times. This all ended when I accidentally refused to pay the Tekker and was left with a VARISTA.... I'm still trying vainly to fit PSO into my everyday life, so most of my webpage updates are off... 

Posted at 09:53 午後     Read More  

月 - 2月 19, 2001

01/02/19 


Having obtained Phantasy Star Online, I find that's the only game I ever play now. I played a little Twinkle Star Sprites but other than that and a few demos on the last <sniff> ODCM demo disc, only PSO.

...Today, I picked up a special weapon...AND I can use it! It's not a terribly rare gun but it's nifty to have, just the same...but I wonder if Seekers can get SPECIALs wrong? O_O And you can't re-ID once accepted...What happens? You just GET the item they IDed it as?

...If you don't have a DC and/or PSO, it's not too late yet..! 

Posted at 09:52 午後     Read More  

火 - 2月 6, 2001

01/02/06 


How can you afford to stop playing? If you do, all your friends will be 10 levels higher than you the next time you meet them!

...Well, I still have been playing the Time Stalkers mini-game "Dungeon IV!" Today, my schedule is in order for the first time in a long, long time... 

Posted at 09:36 午後     Read More  

月 - 1月 15, 2001

01/01/15 


So far, I haven't put down the wrong year yet!

...I don't see the differences as being very major but the guy at RPG Critic (Robert Schmitz) obviously found enough differences to give it a score 4.5 points lower!

...He doesn't state it as explicitly as he does in his Azure Dreams (GB) review: He's tired of the random dungeons and the monster system. He wants the game to be something else, rather than looking at what he's provided and seeing how well whatever's there is presented. Taken for what it is (Very like Azure Dreams), it's a fine game. Why people insist on rating games against games they are NOT trying to be like rather than games they ARE, I don't know.... However, I played 3 most recently and since they start off in generally the same place...I'm getting confused as to where I'm supposed to go next in each game. 

Posted at 09:35 午後     Read More  









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