Umm...I'm a slacker

November 20, 2008 - 9:03 PM

Wow, so it's November and I haven't posted, unless I updated my S(uper) D(imensional) F(ortress) page and not this one. I doubt it though. I wonder if they've deleted my account after nearly a year of inactivity. I haven't had much to say, though, other than reporting my current game/art/manga/anime intake. There's been a lot of that.

Most of my creative energy is gone due to work draining my soul. And my free time is largely taken up by real life shenanigans (and playing WoW and the occasional bout of Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. with my coworker buddies). I keep thinking of things I'd like to draw, or pondering little game-programming ideas, but nothing comes of it. I'd like to revamp this site in such a way that people would actually have a reason to visit, but I haven't thought of anything good yet.

So! Stay tuned for updates (or not) in the form of a redesign. If that ever happens. I mean, I can't even update the blog. x_X;

Holy crap, it's spring.

March 25, 2008 - 2:18 PM  [top]

I wish I could use the new job and moving as an excuse, but I didn't really start getting ready for that until the very end of February. So to be honest, my neglect is unforgivable. Very sorry. The past month, however, IS excused, I should think. It isn't so much that work is crazy as I'm goofing off full time. It's very tiring. Anyway, I may post pictures of the new apartment and such, but I'd want to password protect them, probably, and I already posted them on FB, so that'd be kind of redundant.

The only non-work-related geekery to report is my excessive gamery. Thanks to the guys at work, I've been playing Rock Band a lot, and while it's pretty awesome, it's exhausting. And, of course, we have Brawl. I'm proud to report that besides occasionally dominating with Pit (not so much now that people have learned how to smack him around successfully), I have won several times with Sonic. Yes. Sonic. I don't knock myself out of the game by flying off the stage anymore. Well, not as much. Finally unlocked Snake and Captain Falcon. The next order of business is Ganondorf, I guess, to appease my coworkers, but that'll take so much work that we'll probably unlock everybody else on the way. I'm a little interested in playing Lucario, but since I have Pit, Luigi and Sonic already, the motivation to unlock him is low. Once I snag a wireless router, I will be prepared to whomp on people online. PREPARE YOURSELF. (Oh, and I also got Endless Ocean, but that's been an utter waste of money. I mean, it's nice, but who'd play that when there's Brawl?) Still haven't beaten either new Zelda game. x_x

Haven't picked up any new anime. In fact, I've been so busy that I'm actually BEHIND on Ghost Hound and Bleach. Madness. I have tons of Rental Magica to watch, but I'm beginning to dislike that series. Maybe I'll start Inukami. I have no desire to watch Outlaw Star anymore, but there is Zim to be consumed.

So that's that. Nothing exciting to say. Maybe once I start learning M/Cache, I'll be able to rant and rave like I did during programming classes at NYU. I miss that. Also, I need to do something about the formatting of this thing. When using a PC, my heading borders don't show up, and for some reason the links to the "top" anchor on the previous posts won't work. I thought my CSS had put a stop to PCs mucking up the fonts and spacing, but I'm using IE7 at work, and it's still managed to retardify my nav boxes. Grah.

Happy New year!

January 5, 2008 - 10:48 PM  [top]

And a happy belated Thanksgiving and merry Christmas, too! I've been really busy over the holidays, which is a real shame, because it meant I couldn't enjoy them as much as usual. Too much stress. But I'm writing to report that I finally have come to the end of the interviews, and after considering two pretty good job offers, I chose to work for a software place across the Big Lake. I'll be a technical services engineer, which is kind of between your typical customer service/tech support job and a software engineer. I don't think I'll be doing a ton of advanced programming, but when a client has an issue with the software, we can work on the code to fix it. So, I'll be looking for a place to live soon, and starting there early spring. I hope everyone will keep in touch with me, because it'll be pretty lonely over there for a long time.

In gaming news, I got a very nice new digital camera for Christmas. This one works, unlike my old one. XD Higher resolution, a little smaller and sleeker...nice big LCD screen. I likes it. I also got Escape Velocity Nova, finally. :3 So I can play all the storylines without interruption, and get the plug-ins, and play the plug-in ports for the older two games! I also got some Wii points, so I have expanded my Virtual Console collection to include Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 3 and Donkey Kong Country. And today, I'm sad to say, I finished Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations. An excellent game. I'm not as depressed as I was when being FFVI, but still, it was really entertaining, and now it's done. ;-;

In anime news, I got the complete collection of Outlaws Star for Christmas. I'm pretty excited to watch it again, and finally see the ending. I'm going to have a lot of free time between the 11th (my last day of my current job is the 10th) and when I start my new job, despite the moving and such, so I'm glad to have something to watch. I've also got some Inukami burned and ready. Dennou Coil and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai just ended, and Code Lyoko is coming to a close. I'll always have Bleach, of course. I started watching Rental Magica (subbed by Eclipse), which is so-so. Still watching Hayate no Gotoku, which actually had a NORMAL episode today. It was kinda cute.

I think that's all I've got. I'll be learning some Visual Basic, more Java and C#.NET at the new job, I hope, so someday I'll be more 1337 than I am now. After that, I take over the world!

I'm alive, I promise!

November 20, 2007 - 11:33 PM  [top]

Contrary to my last entry, my work hours jumped back up again for various reasons. On the up side, I've finally gotten a real job interview in my field! I'll be flying to the job site next week. Scary, scary. And I got a phone interview with a different place. Finally, some attention! Wish me luck!

I've been trying to brush up on my Java, so I decided to expand the Nintendo Puzzle. I added a new level--a particularly funny FFVI scene I arranged myself. Good music too. Unfortunately, due to deprecated methods in the original code (the professor's fault, not ours!), I sort of broke the game. I'm sorry! It works more or less on my Macs, but I know some people can't see it. It may depend on your version of Java and your browser. =\ I'll try to fix it, and barring that, I'm trying to get ahold of an old, already compiled copy from my former teammates.

I haven't touched Twilight Princess in over a month now, which is bad. Partially from business, partially from having WAY TOO MANY GAMES, and partially because I got burned out after completing the Gerudo mines/Fire Temple. Perhaps tomorrow. Likewise, I have beaten 2 temples in Phantom Hourglass, which is adorable, but I haven't touched that in a while either. I need someone to start cracking a whip over my head. I think I'm a third to halfway through the Dragon's Den (1 of 2 bonus dungeons) in FFVI Advance. I think I had an easier time with Kefka's Tower. o_O Seriously. I beat the main game maybe a week or two after my last post, and Gau is still ridiuclously overpowered, even after taking my other characters out to level and learn spells they'd missed along the way. Just bought Bleach: The Blade of Fate for DS and am enjoying it in short spurts. Tom actually beat me in both matches we played, even though he'd never played before. That was embarrasssing. XD Also, I downloaded EV: Nova so I could experience it on my beastly new computer. It hasn't disappointed, although I think the writing quality has declined. I mean, there wasn't much writing in the original game, so I guess having to write so much more content strained them a little bit. They should hire me to work on their scripts. Last, and least, I preordered Phoenix Wright 3, but it still hasn't arrived. It was backordered, although I got my super lame Phoenix "plushie" gift a long time ago. Got the surprisingly sweet Phantom Hourglass quill stylus w/cool box a while back. :3

In otaku news, I picked up volume 1 of [Ouran High School Host Club] while snagging volume 12 of Negima! at Barnes and Noble. I've seen the entire Ouran anime, and I fell in love with it. Head over heels, really, during the very first episode. I also finally got around to devouring the 3 volume Cowboy Bebop manga, thanks to Tom. It was delicious. I'm still watching the usual fansubs (Dennou Coil, Hayate no Gotoku, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, Bleach) along with Code Lyoko, and I've been watching Death Note and Blood+ (don't judge me!) on Adult Swim. I've also been watching Get Backers courtesy of Netflix, and am almost done with it. Very entertaining.

I FINALLY got to see more of the KARAS OVA, thanks to [Anime Kraze]. I've heard complaints about the plot and writing (and about the English voice acting), but I've found the whole thing very interesting. It can be confusing, but it gets clearer. There's still a lot to be explained, however, and only OVA 6 hour left for them to do it in. The show is pretty gorgeous, so I recommend you check it out. I've also picked up Ghost Hound, which is being subbed by a few groups in pretty high quality. It's moving pretty slowly so far, but it's a mystery (maybe slash suspense/thriller and perhaps eventually horror?) so that's to be expected. The opening theme is EXCELLENT. It's jazz, and it's plain awesome. I've been watching both Ureshii and Genjo's subs, and they're both good. Link to Ureshii's first Ghost Hound release below!

I think that's about all the geek I've got in me today. I hope you've noticed the improvements in the layout and positioning of the site. I finally got rid of that stupid space at the bottom AND the stupid horizontal scrolling problem in Firefox. Yay me! I liked the bit of extra space around the main blog text I had before, but this layout will work better on smaller monitors/lower resolutions. I hope, anyway. For those of you who know how to contact me, let me know what you think! The rest of you, keep an eye out for updates in the future. The Freeshell version of my blog, found [here], supports scripts of various types, and once I figure out how to write them without Perl, I might be able to add a comment feature of some sort. DEFINITELY, I will add an archive for old posts. Sorry about the length of this latest entry...I had a lot of time to cover! (Also, be sure to catch up on my art updates on devART!)

[Ghost Hound] (1280x720 H.264 MKV). Higher res can be found at [Ureshii Fansubs].

An overdue update

September 28, 2007 - 2:38 AM  [top]

...But probably very short and disorganized, so bear with me: Bought Trace Memory for DS ($9!) and Twilight Princess for the Wii (yay for discount cards), and promptly beat Trace Memory. Worth $9 maybe, but not much more. I've beaten the first two temples in Zelda and am thoroughly enamored, although I always get burned out after a temple so I haven't played it in a while. All I have left in FFVI is Kefka's Tower. Gau is level 50 or more and puts every other character to shame. But I insist on leveling him (and others!) more. Will beat it soon. Beat Darwinia a second time. Got a ROM for Sonic 1 so I can actually save, and hope to beat it sometime this decade. Snagged Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door for $8. Cute music. Cute everything. Not sure if I like it or not, but it was worth the money. Pre-ordered Phantom Hourglass and Phoenix Wright 3. I get a free DS skin and a Phoenix plushie. wheeee!

Still working, albeit fewer hours. In my slightly increased free time, I've finally begun the job search and have actually gotten around to applying to a few places and intend to apply to two more tomorrow--and these are places I'm actually INTERESTED in working for. All Chicago, so far. =\ Ann Arbor's been a let down. Also, have all but given up on Google because while PHP isn't so bad, mySQL is mind boggling and will take me years to learn my way around. Boo. But I have joined SDF, a unix shell, and have been stumbling around it a bit. It'll host my sites and supports some scripts, so yay. I even tried out PINE. Egads.

ki ga kurui sou de nakidashita

August 12, 2007 - 10:35 PM  [top]

I got hired since my last post, and I'm happy to say that I don't hate working at the store. It's busy almost all the time (at least during the summer, they say), which keeps me from being bored--which in turn keeps me from being miserable. Most of the time. Now if my boss would just PAY me, I'd be satisfied.

I finally beat New Super Mario Bros.! =D And I unlocked just about all of the alternate areas. I think I may have missed a couple cannons and I know there's a 1-up house in World 7 I didn't get to, but I still got most or all of the extra stages and finally got World 7 unlocked. I'm a little sad that there won't be much Mario in my immediate future, but it's nowhere near as crushing as beating Zelda. XD I've finally made a little more headway in Kid Icarus, but still no boss battles for me. Got to stage 12 of Lode Runner and I still have lives left . Addictive. I've been playing Strikers for nostalgic reasons since I got my GC controller working. Methinks I'll have the super team unlocked shortly. I wonder if there's anything else to unlock. ...And now to defeat FFVI! It's about time!

I've started learning PHP as mentioned several times before, so that my geek status may be geeky enough to impress the uber geeks at Google. I do not want to be laughed out of an interview by uber geeks. If they're even crazy enough to call me for an interview. Why am I even bothering with this again? I have no prayer of getting hired. I'll be lucky if I even get hired by a small magazine to do grunt work. They probably have plenty of undergrad intern candidates down there from Northwestern and stuff. Bleh. I'm going to end up having to work for a crummy local newspaper writing about crummy local politics. /whine

Other than that, I've got nothing remotely geekish to talk about, and I was trying to keep this blog geeky. So, I'll shut up.

Incoming Income?

July 28, 2007 - 9:44 PM  [top]

My ambition to post once a week or so hasn't really been realized. I don't think I've really been busy, except for the past few days. Dave came up from Chicago, my dad's birthday was this week (cake!), and Cruzin' was last night. I've been feeling pretty low lately, but as soon as I started working up some motivation, things got hectic. XD Excuses.

I'll hopefully be busy on a more regular basis starting in a week or two. I applied for a local job that seems like a pretty sure thing, provided they decide they don't mind that it'll be temporary. I haven't ever quit a job before, so I felt compelled to tell them I'd be looking for a real job within the next month or so. I'm aware it'll take a while to find one once I start, and hopefully I'd have a week or two at least once hired...I mean, I'd have to move and all, so of course it'd take time, but I'd want to give two week's notice here as well. (I also told them that I'd quit without complaint if they found a more permanent employee to fill my position.) At any rate, I'm hopeful that I'll have an income soon. It'll make my bank statements more cheerful.

Dave burned last Last Exile for me! I started watching it ages ago and never finished. He burned the good Ani-Kraze fansubs in proper DVD format so I can watch them on TV! I'm still waiting for the last few episodes, but I've seen nearly the whole series now, and I think it's fascinating. And pretty. So thank you, Dave! Ureshii has been horrifically slow about producing Dennou Coil subs. I know that raws are available elsewhere for up to at least episode 9 (and that was two weeks ago), but Ureshii's only released episode 7...three weeks ago, I think. I'm going through withdrawal. In the meantime, I've caught up on Code Lyoko, which is on TV again. :3 w00t! I've also watched 20 episodes of Fushigi Yuugi. I know it's not particularly good. The story seems rushed and the characters tend to develop strong feelings very suddenly. I suppose develop is the wrong word. Feelings just sort of happen conveniently. Even so, I keep on watching. It has its funny moments, but I do enjoy the absurdly dramatic parts. They're so corny and bad. But mostly I just like Tasuke.

I may be looking for some new web space soon. In order to apply to Google, I must first brush up on my programming sk33lz, and learn more about server side technology. Otherwise they'll think I'm a joke if I apply for a software engineering position. And since NYUHome sucks and won't support CGI or PHP or anything remotely useful, I'll have to put it elsewhere. Updates to come!

Not much gamage lately. I'd been wandering around leveling up in FFVI, hoping I don't get my butt kicked on the floating continent, but I got tired of that, so I'm now trudging around the floating continent. I'm not sure what my objective is. I think I'm trying to get attacked by some boss or another? And I'm slowly working on unlocking all cups in Mario Kart DS on all difficulties. 50cc gets boring after a while.

Catching Up

July 11, 2007 - 6:17 PM  [top]

Been a while since my last post! I'll try to make this short (and very condensed). I finally found a Wii! I've got everything playable on Wii Play and thanks to my friends, Rayman Raving Rabbids score mode is unlocked (finished story mode). The utter silliness brings tears of happiness to my eyes. I bought Kid Icarus from the Virtual Console so that I may get to know Pitt in time for Super Smash Bros. Brawl this winter, and I just bought the original Lode Runner for NES. Good, clean, addictive fun. Well, clean until the bad dudes eat you, or whatever they do, but tiny bloodless pixel violence probably won't scare the children. I'm still working on my Genesis so that I may play Sonic & Knuckles (and hopefully find Sonic 3). I just got my Genesis and Sonic&Knux working last night. You can accomplish a lot with a simple Q-tip and rubbing alcohol.

I haven't been doing much else on the game front because Allison and Alex (from New York) visited me. Good times for all, but I got far too much exercise to be healthy and not enough sleep. And I got beat up by logs in a river. It was painful. I'm just now regaining full use of all of my limbs. But hanging out with them for that long was totally worth it. Now that they've abandoned me for the East again, I'm back to FFVI and my anime. [Dennou Coil 6] was awesome as expected, so I recommend you start watching it if you haven't already. Each episode continues to improve over the last. I think. ...They're all pretty sweet. Still following Hayate no Gotoku and Bleach, and I've just picked up a new manga - "Orphen." Good so far. Not a masterpiece, but definitely entertaining.

I finally posted on devArt, after a month and a half. [Gold Finches!]. Probably not what you'd expect from me. I'll post a Picc pic or two later, and maybe a Kakashi fan art. We'll see. In the mean time, it's probably PAST time that I post links to my dA page. That's what navigation bars are FOR.

Busy, Busy

June 26, 2007 - 9:01 PM  [top]

No, I haven't lost interest in building this. I've just been very busy. Between helping Nick out with his new apartment, going to the beach, and getting ready for Alex and Alli's visit next week, I've been sweaty and covered in dirt more often than not and not in the mood for wrastling HTML and CSS demons. Going to add nav bars and the first game, I promise. Wish granted.

That and I've been playing WoW. I believe I started it right after I made that last post. My 10 free days are gone now (or rather, tonight, I suppose), but I feel that I've exhausted the possibilities of that game. I have awesome threads, a boomstick and goggles. And I was a gnome rogue. What more do you need? I will post screen caps below for those who would like to see the deadly cuteness that is Picc, the Level 17 Gnome Rogue with Goggles.

I've been slowly whittling away FFVI. I think I'm still somewhere in the middle, but I can now use espers, so that's pretty sweet. And I can fly [Setzer's airship]. (Which probably looks something like [this].) Screw you, chocobos!

Stillll haven't found a Wii. *sob* I've seen that they're making a Code Lyoko game for Wii later this year or next year, and I'm excited. I mean, half the show was CGI and based on an RPG battle system.

Any suggestions as to what brands and models to go for/stay away from when it comes to extra RAM and adding a combo drive to a tower? I've been looking at LiteON or whatever they call themselves for a DVD burner, but I've never heard of them before (...Mac) and frankly, I'm not sure what all of the different options mean.

Only two more episodes of Hayate left for me to watch?! Someone please tell me they're making more than 12. And someone tell Ureshii to hurry up with the Dennou Coil subs.

Picc the Gnome Rogue - because when doing it from behind, it is important to hide your face.

BOOMSTICK - and funny cloak with +2 Agility

Goggles AND a Boomstick! - I made both of those with my 1337 engineering sk33lz.

Goggles and Blade of Cunning - my sweet green curvy knife if DEATH.

Conundrums

June 16, 2007 - 8:36 PM  [top]

I tend to lose steam on updating stuff once a site is built. I'm not in that boat yet. I am, however, stumped on how to get this to do what I want it to. First of all, I'd like to make my blog commentable, like on LJ and practically every other blog service. That would require scripts though, and I'm not entirely sure NYUHome allows even cgi. Scripts, scripts. It always comes back to that. I could have my comment links on this page link directly to a comment box and such on LJ. But that seems wasteful! Why bother having this site at all? Other than for links, that is. Boo.

The other problem is how to arrange this page so that the portal box doesn't mess up my pretty blog area. I decided I don't like how Ureshii has all of their links squashed next to the blog. I think I'd rather have mine in a floating box to the left of this, but positioning it so that people with any resolution screen/any size browser window can view the page perfectly without overlaps or scrolling will be irritating. I'll figure it out though. THAT won't require scripts.

By the way, the [Awesome Nintendo Puzzle Adventure of Doom VII] is missing its hints, which makes the 2nd level excruciating. Sorry about that. I don't have the complete image to make the 2nd hint. I'll put them up as soon as I find them or as soon as Allison sends them to me. I'll work on getting our point-and-click adventure game and site uploaded soon, but I'd like to get the navigation bar done too, so I'm not sure which one will get done first.

In other geeky news, I'm in the process of downloading WoW. It's just a 10 day free trial and I have a feeling it'll only take me a couple hours to get bored with it. Blame Alex for encouraging me and Nick for letting me dink around with a gnome rogue on his account. But because of HIM, I won't be getting addicted to the game on principle. My ego just couldn't handle it.

I currently have two episodes of Hayate The Combat Butler to watch. I don't get some of the jokes, what with all the beeping out of names. If anybody feels like giving me a rundown on the jokes in the first few episodes, please do. u.u;; Lastly, in non-WoW gaming news, I'm not even to the middle of FFVI Advance, for all I love it. That frustrates me! I should be glad it'll last me a while, but I have a short attention span. Since I started that, I've barely touched New Super Mario Bros., which I was blasting through when I started. Now that I'm trying to get through World 4, I'm completely bogged down. And even when I work on World 8 (which is hard!!) I almost never make it to a save point with enough coins in hand by the time I give up. Mario Kart is so much less stressful! And Naruto 4 (import - DS), which I chucked over $35 for last month, hasn't been touched in I don't know how long. Why can't I read Japanese?!

Somebody please find me a Wii.

More Updates!

June 15, 2007 - 2:55 AM  [top]

Banner'd! I kept it simple/ripped off Ureshii's design. Made the background image myself, by the way, so please ask before you steal it! Not that I'm claiming Ed or the bird and stuff...but as a whole, that's my hard work! No navbar up yet, so here you go:

Awesome Nintendo Puzzle Adventure of Doom VII

Click on the Game link in the nav bar to the left to load the game window. It has music and pretty pictures! I haven't got the entire site up and running, as some of the images were stored on Allison's i5 account, and as that's no longer operational, I'll have to get them from her computer at some point. But you can see the majority of the images, and more importantly, the full game is operational. Maybe someday I'll expand it. Enjoy!

Testing!

June 15, 2007 - sometime after midnight  [top]

It appears that NYU has revoked my i5 privileges now that I'm an alum and not paying $40k a year to grace the halls of Courant. Well, fine! I don't need you anyway! Thankfully, I've got nearly everything that was up on i5 saved on Statler, my trusty external hard-drive. In the near future, my game sites at least will be returned to the intarweb in all their glory. It really irks me that our Java Applet assignment got ripped from the web only weeks after we finished it.

Anyway, the only webspace I possess at the moment (besides some ancient GeoCities and Angelfire accounts...and I just don't want to touch those) is here at NYUHome. Let's hope they don't take this away too. The File Manager is teh suck, and as of now I can't see a way to use a separate FTP client like Fugu, so I'm stuck uplading/moving/deleting files and directories one at a time for now. Blech.

This page is going to be a portal to my various other sites, pages and projects as well as a blog. And I intend to use the blog to geek out in ways I do not dare to geek on LJ. XD w00t! Don't be too surprised if you find a post entirely in 1337. Just because I can.

If anybody knows a way for me to post to this blog without going in and editing the HTML file every single time, please tell me. I have no idea what NYU Home allows as far as php or cgi or anything go, and I don't really know how to use php...but this will get ridiculous after a while if I actually update.

Since I haven't got any other content linked (I have to build the navigation bar still), I'll link you to the anime series I'm currently watching. The ones airing in Japan, that is. Fansubs are trickier to find than the dubs they're showing on TV. I'll only post torrent links when I'm talking about new eps after this.

Dennou Coil 01 - Ureshii Anime Fansub

Hayate no Gotoku! 01 - Eclipse Productions

Bleach - Dattebayo