Stand Alone Complex

Sometimes, on the way to your dreams...

2010-05-29T14:23:00.002+08:00

"Sometimes, on the way to your dreams, you get lost and find a better one."

I'm currently in the process of getting lost. My dream used to be to become a teacher. While that's still possible, recent events have led me to rethink it all. The difficulty and even near-impossibility of circumstances have added up to it all. Some may argue it's simply giving up, but there are times when that's exactly what's needed.

So right now, even though teaching brought me joy, in all these months that I haven't done it, I've found joy in other things. And now that a new employment in the gaming industry looms over the horizon, as I now only await information on my schedule and when I start, my dreams have really started to shift.

I'm not really sure where I'm going right now. But one thing's for sure, music is coming back to haunt me. So, I'll try my hand at producing and licensing music, on the side as I maintain my full-time employment. I'll be publishing short samples of work I've been doing over the last few weeks.

Juice Can Sketch

2010-02-06T02:22:00.002+08:00

Here's my sketch for the day. It's rushed as much as I could do it, but it's a little more detailed than I wanted it to be originally. The hand close-up is for practice again, of course. I gotta color this somehow, to make it easier to understand. D: Also, his hair seems to be getting longer... I dunno if I like it or not.

Rushed Drawing Before Bed

2010-02-05T01:34:00.004+08:00

My male character (still nameless). Tiny image, I know. But I was able to practice drawing a more manly expression on an unusual facial angle, and a hand. I did this kinda rushed (hence, I did it at a small size) cuz I didn't want to sleep too late, but rushed, small drawings are also good practice. I'm too spoiled with the big images that take me like 12 hours to finish a sketch. This whole thing was done in maybe 10 minutes including thinking of what to draw.

He kinda reminds me of Bruce Lee in this image, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. :D

Thoughts on Society, the Human Mind, etc.

2010-02-04T14:24:00.002+08:00

I consider myself to be rather philosophical. I do a lot of thinking even while I'm doing something else, like watching TV or playing an online game. But anyway, I was thinking earlier and I just spontaneously started typing my thoughts out on my Facebook page:

The most difficult thing in the world (for me, anyway) is learning to be your own person, independent of other people's opinions and flows, yet at the same time, blending in well, finding your place even, so as not to be useless in the world.

This balance is something that may take an entire lifetime to learn, but even that much time may not be enough for most.

Society always asks you to conform. Even people who think they're telling you how to be unique are still caught up in the same fray. Some of them even mask it, subconsciously or not, as if they just want to see you improve. But the truth is, society doesn't really want you to be yourself. They want you to be something they've already pre-envisioned you to be.

Even worse is that even though you do a lot of thinking about things like this, people are too caught up in their own problems, hang-ups, insecurities, and so on, to really think about you in any significant way, though many of them, such as friends and family, sincerely intend to help you, but simply don't know how, and therefore, fail to do so.

I'm also guilty of restricting myself, even though all this time I thought I was being different. I've always hated society, always looking at it from what I might describe as a third-person view. I don't hate the people; what I hate is the mind. Cultures, traditions, popularity, everything, they're nothing but cliques and trends built up so people can "belong" somewhere.

"Are you 'hip-hop'?"
"Are you a 'Filipino'?"

I want to learn to be able to answer those questions and others like them properly, frankly, straightly like this: "I am neither. I am me."

I think the world is stuck. Everybody thinks there's only one way to do things, because certain people at some point in the past had already decided it. As an example, to be a teacher, you must go through X number of processes, take X number of tests, etc. And yet, even with all of this processing and testing, we still have teachers that don't know what they're doing, simply reading from books and making students' lives miserable instead of helping them study and enjoy studying, ultimately making them better students, not just academically, but in a social setting as well. But that's just one example.

In the end, though, you can't put the blame fully on these institutions and their processes. It's because most people are unable to think for themselves and learn things by themselves that people have to set up these countless rules and technicalities, running on a point system for something so abstract such as human thought. In the end, my conclusion is still that the world is stuck.

Preliminary Design Sketch 1

2010-02-03T14:09:00.004+08:00

Here's a sketch "page" I actually started last night but finished just now. I'm practicing drawing full-body and bust/torso shots, because I spend too much time doing faces. This is a preliminary design for my standard male character, which I may use for a manga someday. I expect him to go through evolutions and improvements. I haven't really drawn a male character in a while, and this is a good start. As of yet, he has no name, though if you know me IRL, you'll probably notice that he's loosely based on my own looks. I'll have that hairstyle in a couple of months when my hair grows out. Kekeke.

(To view better in Firefox, you can right click and choose "View Image", or even save it to your HD and view it from there. I'm pretty sure IE has a similar option.)

お久しぶりだね

2010-02-03T11:49:00.005+08:00

I'm sorry, blog, that I haven't posted in a while. I really should've. A lot happened after I last posted, such as my quitting from my job of 1 year because there was no workload, trying to find a new job, Typhoon Ondoy (a.k.a. Ketsana) ravaging our home and the entire city, taking b-boying seriously, Christmas and New Year passing by, taking b-boying even more seriously, and a lot of self-improvement in terms of my discipline and personality. Not to mention, I lost a lot of weight since July, and I'm now only 25 lbs away from my ideal weight.

Sadly, I actually thought of abandoning you altogether. But I realize that this blog is one way for me to look back at my past. What experiences did I go through? What have I learned from them? What games have I played? Why did I like/not like them? I don't have many readers so I obviously don't do it for them.

Anyway, jumping forward, this blog is back, and I'll strive to be able to update it as regularly as possible.

I'm drawing again now, and I've set for myself a target of making one "page" of drawings everyday. This is to train me in discipline. So that means, even if I don't feel like it, I have to draw. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, for example, days when I'm in a hectic schedule over one of my part-time jobs, other job hunts, etc. But still, I feel it'll be good training.

Here's a recent completed sketch:
I may consider coloring that someday. But for now I gotta keep working on my sketching. I take too long to draw stuff.

Back to GE

2009-05-23T23:03:00.002+08:00

Yup. I've longed for an online game to play that isn't as stressful as CoD:4, and I remember two great games that kept me coming back: Space Cowboy Online, which I played in 2007, now known as Ace Online; and Granado Espada. I'd recently tried Ace Online, but it was practically unplayable on my PC because of lag from our network to their server's. So naturally, I picked GE.

I'm glad to say that GE is just as fun as I remember it to be, if not more. However, due to an unfortunate incident with server merging that caused my name to get changed to Canina_4 (and you know how much I hate special characters and numbers in names), I decided it's cheaper and probably more entertaining to start a new account from scratch. Well, not really from scratch. I transferred whatever I could transfer from the old broken account to the new one. And just this week I bought P300 and P580 cards that gave me a lot of GP items and Adelina's Booty Searches.

So what's changed since last year? Well, for one thing, the economy is a lot different. Some things that were expensive before are cheaper now, and some things we'd grown accustomed to as being cheap are now rare items. It's also difficult to be a low level character because most players are at the mid level (50+) and up. This was also my problem in Granado Espada JP almost two years ago, as there was nobody selling any equipment for low levels.

Still, with a lot of patience and effort, I'm closing in on that mid-level, at which I still have a lot of great equipment from my previous account.

Other changes include some new areas, a lot of new recruitable characters, modified quests, a boatload of new equipment and other items, and so on. But with my limited GP, I decided to get a character I've wanted since I was last active: Feng Ling. Feng Ling was a good choice too. She quickly became my favorite frontline fighter, immediately surpassing my old favorites Idge, Adelina, Lisa Lynway, Karjalainen and Catherine of STR. Why? Cuz Feng Ling is fast and her moves are fun to watch, especially in her specialty stance.

I'm just glad to be back. I've decided to make a savings specifically for GE, so I get to buy the P2,000 GP card every three months. All I need to do is set aside P30 every working day and that's easily achievable. :D

Top Ten Things I'll Miss About Hong Kong

2009-04-12T19:26:00.002+08:00

I'd just come home today from Hong Kong. After I got home, I took a nap, cuz I was lacking sleep. Went to sleep after midnight and had to wake up at 4 AM cuz of the flight back to Manila.

It was a great trip of firsts for me. My first time to ride a plane, first time to go to another country, first time to Hong Kong or any part of China, of course, and my first time to be a real tourist, rather than travelling with another purpose, like I'd always done, albeit only in the Philippines.

I made a lot of wonderful memories with my sister (her website). She was such a wonderful host and tour guide. Thanks to her, I have wonderful memories of not only Hong Kong, but my first trip to another country.

Anyway, on to the main topic of this post. I'll make a list of THE TOP 10 THINGS I'LL MISS ABOUT HONG KONG, with #1 being the best.

#10: The MTR
The MTR is very similar to the LRT2 here in Manila, but with significant differences. I'll miss the stations particularly, because the stations are very well organized. There's even glass and a door, to prevent people from accidentally falling or dropping things into the tracks. It also makes the whole thing very classy.

#9: Hong Kong Ocean Park
I enjoyed the HK Ocean Park a lot, but we went at an unfortunate time, where there was probably the most people since it's a holiday (for most of the world), so it was crowded and there were long lines for everything and almost no seats anywhere.

#8: Kowloon Park
Kowloon Park is such a beautiful place. They had interesting birds, ponds and plants, and a lot of places to take pictures, including a castle. Very refreshing, and you can spend an entire afternoon here just walking, jogging, or just sitting around for some fresh air. It's also a short walk away from the Avenue of Stars and the harbor.

#7: Mong Kok
Despite how I hate shopping in such crowded places. As a guy, I do my shopping differently anyway. But I did love the airsoft area. I got to buy a couple of things, including a German WWII hat (M43). :D Also, there was a boatload of stuff you don't see in the Philippines, which makes me wish it were that easy to get those things here...

#6: Walking Around the City
I walk a lot, and I like walking, but the Philippines has made it a barely enjoyable thing due to excessive heat and humidity, and pollution, danger, etc. But Hong Kong was very well suited for walking. People walk all the time around the city, and you can't blame them. It's a very wonderful experience, to be able to walk around a city and not worry about dying of heat stroke...

#5: The Bus and Traffic System
Seeing a wonderful traffic system where it barely ever congests, even at stoplights, where all the drivers and the pedestrians are disciplined: priceless... The busses are predictable and you know where they go, because the bus numbers are actually route numbers. So you can even choose which route you wanna go by. They will never pick up a passenger in the wrong bus stop or in the middle of the road, nor will they let anybody off anywhere but the correct bus stop. And most of the bus stops have bays, so the stopping or slowing busses do not usually disrupt traffic at all... It's so beautiful.

#4: The Octopus Card
The Octopus Card really makes life easier. I put mine in my wallet, and it felt so cool just passing my wallet over the sensors in the bus, MTR, and other places. I'll miss that feeling and the beep.

#3: Central/Hong Kong Station
The place called Central, a.k.a. Hong Kong Station, is one of the most important waypoints. You can get a bus to practically everywhere (I think) from here, and the MTR is also underneath this place. There's also a lot of shops, restaurants, etc., in the area. It's a very familiar-looking place now to me, due to the number of times we got a bus the MTR from there.

#2: The Cantonese Girls
A lot of pretty girls. A city teeming with them. Walking around, in the malls, on the transport systems, in tourist spots, restaurants, etc... Zettai Ryouiki and Meganekko prone, as well. The fashion sense, though clearly trend-based, is interesting yet not overboard, if you ask me. Very nice.

#1: The Weather/Temperature!
Yes, and a very clear NUMBER ONE THING I WILL MISS ABOUT HONG KONG is the weather! It's the spring time at the time of our visit, so it's very fresh, still cold but not bitterly so. And I'm sure it gets hot in the summer. But hot is not that big a problem in a place that isn't friggen humid. I can imagine people are still walking on the streets in the summer, appropriately dressed for the weather. Something completely unthinkable here in the Philippines unless you're already very dark-skinned and therefore protected from the sun (or otherwise protected from the sun). You also don't need air conditioning, unless you need it for heating...

All in all it was such a wonderful trip. I'll definitely try to come back ASAP. :)

More Mountan Bladan News

2009-03-22T21:06:00.002+08:00

Alright, well this is officially my favorite game now. I've even ignored Call of Duty and Left 4 Dead. Cuz it feels like you're following a big political story as you play this game, plus the awesome active combat.

My new character, which should be my best so far, is a concentrated warrior. Kherjit horse archer style actually, including equipment, despite being a Lady of the Nords. Horse archery is just too fun, and jousting when necessary, which is not something the Kherjits really do, but it takes down enemies fast.

My army is largely cavalry now, despite my original plan of making it pure infantry and archers. That's cuz the Nords declared war on the Kherjits, the most powerful pure cavalry army in the game. I can't win against pure cavalry with only archers... So I had to shift my style. I miss Rhodok Skirmishers and Nobles though. I was working for them in my second character.

Mount & Blade

2009-03-09T17:15:00.002+08:00

It's been a while since I've posted here, cuz Plurk has taken up a lot of my timeline recording online. D: But I still wish to continue blogging cuz this is easier to look back on.

Anyway I've been playing an awesome game by a fairly unknown company recently. It's an offline RPG called Mount & Blade. It's so much fun. I was already excited about it from my friends that started playing it days before me. But when I started playing I got even more interested. The battle system is so unique and intense. You control your swing/attack direction, and also your blocking direction if you choose to fight without a shield (like me). The game also has no magic, so everything is about skill and tactics.

You collect heroes and regular soldiers as an army. Then you choose a faction (if you want to) and ride against your enemies. Or you can spend your time trading and warding off bandits that try to attack you, or rescuing people. Whatever.

I've personally chosen to have an army of cavalry and archers. It seems to work out great so far. I've fought against armies that are twice the size of mine and come out victorious with minimal losses. I fought against 90+ with an army of 46, and only lost 3 crossbowmen and had about a dozen wounded. The other army was completely obliterated (70+ casualties and the rest are wounded) AND I captured the noble in command.

It's so much fun. :D I'm actually excited to go home to play again. Unfortunately I have a night class. Just for tonight. So I can't play tonight. But the good news is I can go home early tomorrow. I can catch up on some much needed sleep AND play after/before that. :D

Lastly, it's also easy to mod, it seems. It runs off what the Python programming language. Eventually I'll try to learn how to use it and make some adjustments myself.

Plurk & Singles Awareness Day (S.A.D.)

2009-02-14T20:15:00.003+08:00

Just joined yet another social thing on the internet. Yay. Another thing to spend time on when online. ~_~ But it's actually fun.

Don't have a lot of friends yet but we'll see.

Anyway skip all that Valentine's Day stuff. It's Singles Awareness Day! :D Yay for sitting around at home. And sleeping. Yay.

Friday Night with Joiz Ducky et al

2009-02-14T20:11:00.002+08:00

I got to spend time with my oldschool buddies (from the days of Y!Chat, circa 2001) last night. It was supposed to be a get-together since Joiz is a bit of a traveller and doesn't get to spend time in the Philippines a lot. I really missed hanging out with these guys. :)

We ate at the foodcourt, then ate again at Rai-Rai Ken. lol

Valentine's Day Almost Here + Freestyle Rapping

2009-02-05T16:57:00.005+08:00

I don't normally care about Valentine's Day, but since I've been actually dating since I started working here at Edulynx, it's become a bit of an excitement for me. I don't have a date yet, but I'm trying to interest a girl in particular.

And since I'm trying to save money, I've decided to just give out handmade cards instead of chocolates or flowers, to my friends and the girl(s?) I like. It's more personal, and it gives me a chance to use/practice one of my talents.

Connected to that poetic talent, I've also had a lot of practice this week with freestyle rapping. I'm nowhere near any good to be entertaining to listen to, but I'm getting faster at thinking of coherent words with a rhythm and rhyme haha.

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it)

2009-01-19T12:02:00.002+08:00

This is a must-watch for both fans and fellow ignorants of the story. (Click)

It's hilarious. :D That's all I need to say. I just had to blog about this cuz it's an epic internet moment. And epic is overused and misused a lot nowadays but this is definitely worthy of the description.

Off The Hook

2009-01-08T08:47:00.004+08:00

There's a war going on in Gaza right now, between the IDF and the militants of Hamas. I won't go into details on this post, but maybe the next post. There's actually a lot to talk about with what CNN calls a crisis.

But more importantly for this post I started to realize just how close we are to what may be what the Bible was talking about in Ezekiel 38 and 39, and how much the world needs Jesus right now. I got into a discussion with my class yesterday and had the opportunity of sharing the essence of the Gospel. It was good, though I dunno if any of them believed what I said or just thought of it as the same mumbo jumbo they might hear at a Catholic mass.

Yesterday I was pretty excited about Jesus and stuff. Cuz I started looking around for more Jesus Muzik and I found a song by The Cross Movement called Off The Hook. As I was listening to this song in the car on the way to work I found myself unable to hold back my tears. By the middle of the second verse I was already sniffling. Cuz the lyrics of the song cut very deep and tell you in a figurative way exactly what the situation is for people.

Easily one of my favorite songs of all time, and definitely the song of the week for me.

Two Thousand and Nine

2008-12-31T19:18:00.004+08:00

Yes in only a few hours from the time of this writing, the new year will be in. This is the time when we look back at the great and wonderful things that happened in the past year so that all the lessons and goodness can be carried over into the new one.

The year 2008 was extremely busy for me, probably more so than any other year in my life so far. It was greatly educational, and I feel like I matured at least a few years with just the things I learned this year. Haha, maybe my maturity level is finally catching up with my age now.

The year began with me going to work immediately on January 2nd, teaching English in D.I.L.C., in U.P. Diliman. Stayed there a couple months until the first week of March. I learned a whole lot there, from dealing with a difficult situation with the bosses due to language barriers and conflict of philosophies when it comes to teaching language, to dealing with a huge infatuation with a girl, one of my students there. I also had to deal with discipline with waking up ridiculously early, and discipline with going straight home after work.

During that time I was also meeting new friends, aside from those in that school. Such as Raja, a fellow WWII fanatic that spends most of his time a year overseas working.

After my contract completed in D.I.L.C., I struggled with the idea of working in a call center, as I sought jobs here and there but found nothing that felt right. After multiple dramatic conversations with my mom, who encouraged the idea, and a lot of prayer, I finally gave in and responded to an ad that ran in a newspaper in May. The ad was for a major call center. My plan was to become a language trainer in there, but first I'd have to be an agent and take calls.

"I don't know if this is God's will or not. But he'll probably stop me if it isn't. And who knows what great blessings I would be missing out on, if I don't try it and it turns out that this was what God wanted me to do." That's what I thought to myself.

I went to their product trainings and learned a lot there as well. I was getting ready to join the call center industry when something hit me during the training. I was to handle a satellite TV account, meaning I would be dealing with everything from billing to activation of channels. From troubleshooting the equipment to answering questions like "what channel is sports?"

Well during this training, around the second week, I started to feel wrong. There was something I would need to be doing that would go against my morals. As part of the job of selling channels and programming, I learned that I would also need to recommend channels. And pornographic programming was no exception. On the contrary, it was, according to our trainer, a large part of what we were expected to do. At least one call a day, sometimes as many as a dozen, would be about that. We spent hours learning about the adult channels, from simple R-18 stuff all the way to the XXX-rated stuff. All the prices and what each channel offers. All the discounts and pay-per-view information...

At first I didn't really mind. The only thing I was thinking of was that this was something I had to go through to get into the call center. After all, I'm not the one watching the pornography. But the LORD kept tapping me, until I came to the realization that God would never want me to sin even on the way to a greater good, nor would He want me to cause other people to sin. With some prayer, after I completed the training, I pleaded with the training and recruitment departments to excuse me from the required one-month call-taking period on my way to becoming a trainer. But they said their policy was ironclad. And I cannot give an excuse to God on judgment day if I tried to justify my decision even if I knew it was wrong.

So after a conversation on the phone with a member of the Human Resources Department, I looked at my computer. Lo and behold, God already honored my sacrifice. A friend of mine, who worked at Edulynx Corporation, the company that trained me in TESOL and sent us to Laguna in July-August 2007 to teach English, had messaged me. Being a Christian, I knew there were no accidents, so I took my opportunity and asked her if there were any job openings. She said yes and asked me to bring my resume the next day.

After a chat with her and the big boss of the company, I was hired and started the next day. And I still work in Edulynx up to now.

As I look back on those fateful events, I now see why God let me get into the call center trainings. He wanted me to know how call centers worked on the inside, something I would find necessary for my job in Edulynx. He also wanted me to know how to deal with various people: my trainer, fellow trainees, H.R. Department, and the training department. And lastly He wanted to strengthen me in my faith, to see if honoring God meant more to me than my dreams of being a well-paid trainer. I work in a lesser-paying job now, but I know every day that I come in for work that I am blessed, and God's blessings will continue to be with me and that company.

"... Who knows what great blessings I would be missing out on, if I don't try it and it turns out that this was what God wanted me to do..." I learned greatly this year that God truly does move in mysterious ways. I think He does it so we never become complacent, and that every step of the way we have to rely on Him, because we really don't know what He's doing.

Aside from that great chapter in my life, God has also blessed me with a lot of learning experiences. I have two educational almost-romantic experiences, that both happened quite recently. I learned a great deal from those.

All in all a good year. I'm exceedingly greatful to God for all that He has done to me, and all He continues to do for me behind the scenes. I know God is setting me up for more great and wonderful things for the next year, and I can already feel some of them brewing up even now.

May the LORD's blessing be upon me and my family, my friends and my workplace, and all who read this, for the New Year. Amen.

:D

Be(very)lated Merry Christmas

2008-12-29T19:56:00.003+08:00

I forgot to post a Christmas message due to various business and run-of-the-mill forgetfulness. But anyway Merry Christmas!

Let's not forget the reason for the season. No, it's not that guy up in that image above. But rather, the big J who's been lookin' out for us ever since before the world began. :D That's right I'm talking about God in the body of a man himself, Jesus!

It's been a great year, and I'll post a New Year's message on New Year's Eve. :)

CCF Christmas Cantata

2008-12-14T15:37:00.002+08:00

CCF held an Evangelistic Christmas Cantata yesterday, Dec 13th. And I was allowed to take part in it, for even a short time. I was a b-boy in the intro song. It was really special. :D I'll try to get videos and/or pictures of it from CCF.

Anyway this is one of those great blessings that started even from the B1G 4 retreat at the end of November. Cuz that's where I met Ms. Kathy, who turned out to be one of the directors at the time of the Cantata. Though she dropped the whole thing into the hands of other people, I got to stay. And as a result I was given the opportunity to serve. And not just that. I got to meet a lot of cool people in the choir, the other actors/dancers, etc. :D

I'm looking forward to more opportunities like that.

Chalk Another Year Up For Me

2008-12-07T00:43:00.002+08:00

Yeah my birthday passed already (Dec. 5th). I am now 25 years old. I know I should've made a post about this back then but I was busy all day Friday and all day today (Saturday).

But anyway, here's to looking back. This has been one of my most educational years. From learning to put up with difficult and overly traditional bosses in D.I.L.C., to dealing with a girl that was showing very confusing signs. From dealing with lazing around while trying to find another job, to dealing with my pride being hurt by applying to a call center, which was then my most hated occupation. From going through training in a call center, to learning about being strong (actually, ironclad) with my principles, and standing up for what's right even if it meant losing a very lucrative job offer. From finding a new job that I love in Edulynx Corporation, to dealing with various types of people, ranging from colleagues to bosses, and trainees to clients. From learning how to handle relationships with friends and women, to learning how to control my own emotions, especially the oh-so-evil pride. From getting over my fear of the Singles Ministry and being counted as one of them, to finally getting into a D-group after what felt like years of stagnation. Yes, this year has been very educational. And there are many many other things I learned as well, but this space is not enough to actually list them all.

Suffice it to say that God has not finished with me. He seems to be targetting my personal quirks that might interfere with present and future relationships, both casual and romantic. It has been a good year for me, but it's time to put aside the age of 24.

It's funny. It felt like so recently when I posted about me actually living to see 24, unlike the character in Coolio's song Gangsta's Paradise. And now, not only did I live to see 24, but I passed right through it and am now 25. I pray for much more growth this year, no matter what it takes. Cuz I have even more confidence in God now. He let me go through a lot of hurts and stuff, but He always somehow made me understand that it was a necessary experience for me. I look forward to what else He has in store.

My Blog is Fixed Now; New Layout Coming Up

2008-12-02T20:55:00.002+08:00

Yes, finally we've recovered the lost images that went down with Ourworld.cs.com. The blog should be back up to its old self.

In addition to that good news, my beloved sister is starting on a new layout for me. :D Look out for that. It'll be turntablism based, to keep true to the hip hop essence.

Ourworld.cs.com is dead

2008-11-19T22:40:00.002+08:00

After years of faithful service, Ourworld.cs.com is down for good. No wonder the images on my blog haven't been loading at all recently. That's pretty sad, though. It's a free service that comes with an AOL/AIM account. And I used to use AIM way more than Yahoo! Messenger.

Oh well. Time to find a new image host.

Tanaka Kar98k (G-version)

2008-11-19T22:25:00.004+08:00

I'm aiming to buy one of these babies. This is my most favorite rifle of all time, and Tanaka's airsoft representation is simply beautiful. All reviews are positive, and it's easily being given wondrous titles such as "the King of Kar98k's" and so forth. And with good reason.

I found somebody selling one of these for 18k. But I don't have that much yet. But I'm definitely gunning for it, pun not intended.

As an extra-income thing I'm selling jokes and looking to sell some of my other talents as well. It's too early to say how successful I am at that yet, but we'll see.

Whew. What a week!

2008-11-02T01:13:00.004+08:00

If you had asked me Friday morning how my week was going, I would've said something like "terrible" or "regrettable". This week has been very educational, but I never would've thought that until the lessons had all completely lined up and my mind was opened and ready to accept them.

All sorts of stuff happened. Actually the week started off to be just another week. But as it went by, things started to go bad. Especially on Thursday, which marked one of the most miserable days I ever had. This was the day when I got angry at the girl I liked.

In my mind, I was justified to be angry. The details of why are not even important. But now that I look back, I was terribly wrong. First of all, I jumped to conclusions. I didn't even know what was really going on, but I let myself be deceived. Second, I was completely lost to my emotions. I didn't want to be angry, but it kept happening anyway. This probably confused her, which was a bit of a shock to me, but I was too consumed in my own hurt pride that I didn't bother with that.

Friday was the breaking point. I felt like I was losing the battle, for almost the entirety of the day. It started off with me trying to apologize for my behavior, but it somehow got out of hand and ended up with me being even angrier than the day before. Why? I don't even know. The poor girl did nothing wrong. Even to now I don't understand what made me angry that day, but all I can think of is that it was a convention of all things that make me angry, and this just happened to be my avenue through which I release.

But in the end, it turned out well. Something happened, when friends gave me the words I needed to hear the most. All of a sudden my paradigm shifted. All of a sudden my anger subsided. It was replaced by an overwhelming sense of... something. I don't know how to describe it, or if there is a name for it. All I know is that I did something wrong. Maybe "stupidity" will suffice for now, for lack of better vocabulary. But even with that, for the first time all week, I felt like everything was going to be all right. I don't even know why.

I mustered what was left of my nerve that day, pulled her aside and properly apologized. We left each other to the weekend on a happier note. And I continued to spend the day pondering on my anger and how I need to curb that. I dealt with that with a [lonely] meal at an Italian restaurant.

This girl is very special to me, and hurting her is the last thing on my mind. But until yesterday, I found that I still valued myself over her. I believe God let me go through that, to teach me that love's opposite is not hate, but selfishness (and pride, which is very related). I need to let go of myself and stop taking everything so personally if I plan to succeed in building friendships and other relationships with people. Otherwise I'll never stop being alone. I figure that's why my life has always been lonely, and I always felt like everybody was against me: because I thought of myself too much.

All in all, this week was more educational than most. I'm just now learning stuff that some people would've learned in high school or college; neither of which did I give time wisely to. I learned about myself, about friendships and relationships, about women, life and emotions. I learned stuff I never even thought I'd have to learn, and brought stuff out that I didn't even know I was keeping a secret, such as my anger and my solitude. I learned that God really does allow some bad things to happen to us, in order to strengthen us.

At the time when it was happening at its worst, I couldn't understand what I could possibly learn from that situation. That whole time I was ranting and complaining, and adamantly refusing to believe that anything could be learned from such incorrigible circumstances. The truth is, the lessons had already been lined up beyond my understanding. And as soon as I opened my mind they all just made sense all of a sudden. I'm glad I went through it, though I wish there were an easier way for me to learn those lessons. Then again, knowing how stubborn I am, I probably would not have learned anything in any other way.

This is why I write this entry. May I never forget what I have learned this week, and may I apply the lessons as often as needed.

And if anybody is at all reading this (though unlikely), I hope you might learn from this as well.

Company of Heroes

2008-10-12T01:21:00.003+08:00

Yes, the [semi] new RTS has hit me finally. Actually it hit me last week but I haven't had the time to post about it since it's so much fun to play that it became a large percentage of my relax-at-home time. That means it's time for another mini-review.

For obvious reasons, this game appeals to me. Being a WWII buff makes it interesting regardless of whether it's fun or not. But it is fun, and this game did a lot of things good, but a few things bad. Let's discuss some of the good things first.

It's very immersive. The sounds are awesome, especially when set to max settings and turned up, and played on my Altec Lansing speakers makes it a real treat. The graphics and effects are pretty good too. The world is almost completely destroyable as far as I know. You blow up a building and you can watch it collapse. Later on the rubble can turn into cover. The rubble can eventually be blown up even more if hit with a strong enough explosion. You can create craters on the ground with artillery or missiles, and craters within craters, which can be used as cover as well.

The gameplay is interestingly different from regular RTS's. All infantry units come in squads, except for snipers, and have to work together to achieve maximum effectivity. For example, you can't send a lone rifleman out to capture a sector (it works like capture the flag btw). He's almost sure to get killed. You need his whole squad to cover him, and another squad, possibly an MG and/or mortar crew to cover.

That being said, you can't even control individual infantry units. They always move together unless they're from different squads.

Tanks can be controlled individually, though. And it's a bit of a challenge because it's probably a good idea to micromanage your tanks. If you just send them into enemy territory they'll probably get blown up within seconds, because the enemy AI is smart and always maneuvers to outflank the tank and hit its rear armor, the weakest spot.

There's also another interesting gameplay feature. Since obviously there were only two sides to this war (Allies vs. Axis, but in this game it's only America vs. Germany), it would be wrong to make American soldiers fight against each other. People might be clamoring for variety. So instead of allowing that kind of insanity, they made 3 different kinds of play styles per side. This means that even if you're playing 4 vs. 4, each player will have their roles to achieve victory.

Finally, the game is pretty in terms of graphics, especially if you have a good video card and enough memory to take advantage of that. Unfortunately I only have a middle-class PC set up, but it's good enough for me to enjoy if I don't zoom in too much (cuz you'll see really ugly splotching on the mip maps on my machine). But I've seen a demo video of this being played on a better computer, and I know it was designed to be eye candy.

Now for the bad parts. I'm sorry but this game has a plethroa of unrealistic qualities to it, which was probably unavoidable to make a fun game. I guess the developers were trying to decide on whether to make a game that truly stuck to what warfare was really like in WWII, or make a fun game that would appeal to both hardcore gamers that know nothing of WWII and WWII buffs like me that just want another WWII game.

One of the unrealistic companies is the combination of various types of armies into one "company", or even in one battalion, regiment, etc. What I'm talking about is having armored units in an infantry company, and dropping paratroopers in them, and so on. Any WWII buff or anyone that knows anything about the military would know this doesn't happen in real life. They work together but independently of each other. You can't be infantry with tanks. You might have armored escorts but they won't be part of your unit for sure. You can't even have regular soldiers with paratroopers. They're from different branches of the army.

Now some people might think I'm getting it wrong or something. Cuz what if you're actually commanding a lot of different divisions? But that's not the case. How could Able company be a regular infantry company on the beaches in Normandy, while Dog is a paratrooper? If they were from different branches of the army, they wouldn't be calling each other just by their company names. The guys on the beach should be saying "the airborne" or something like that.

Anyway I won't nitpick more than that. That's all I have to say about it. Even with all that, they managed to make a really fun game.

I rate it. 8.9/10

Going Back to Old Games

2008-09-30T09:46:00.003+08:00

I realize I haven't posted in a while. I keep thinking I would, like at the workplace or at home during the weekends, but I keep forgetting when I actually get to my PC. That or I become lazy. But here it is now.

A couple weeks ago I finally got the installer of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 back. It's still as awesome as I remember it. But I got too used to the arcade mechanics of CoD4. So it took me a good hour or so to try to get the hang of it again.

Anyway I finally got all the weapons unlocked and I'm really enjoying just wiping out terrorists in Terrorist Hunt. It's just enjoyable. And some of the Terrorist Hunt maps are really challenging. And you can't exactly design a "perfect plan" for any map, cuz they always have the terrorists in different places each time. :D

Also this week we got Heroes of Might and Magic III: Complete. Another awesome game that we loved for years and years, and still do. One of the best non-real-time strategy game ever made. I'll make and playtest maps and post them here just for fun.

Also I'm thinking of getting Day of Defeat: Source but the CDs are surprisingly expensive here in the Philippines. It's supposed to be at around US$10.00 overseas, but here it's more like US$60 or so. Possibly because of the shipping/import costs. I dunno. I'll try to find a cheaper one. DoD was one of our favorite games ever.

Large Hadron Collider

2008-09-10T10:13:00.002+08:00

D: They activate this thing in only a few hours. The particle collision is expected on October 21st. I first heard of this months ago, when Raki Brown told me about it, several months ago.

I'll say is...

WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE?!

Altec Lansing Desktop Speakers

2008-09-01T21:45:00.003+08:00

Yes, I'm taking a break from posting geopolitical stuff. For a while anyway. But I really have to post about this. I bought a set of Altec Lansing speakers for my PC yesterday. It was a little pricey in comparison to the other brands, as expected, but when I heard it (especially at home) I knew for sure it was worth it.

The sound is so awesome. Listening to my music, even low quality MP3s (like those ripped from FLV files) suddenly sound better. And the stuff that actually does sound good, sounds MUCH better. But I expected that kind of sound quality already. I first heard of Altec Lansing when I went to a Netopia once. All their machines were fitted with Altec Lansing headsets. And I have to say it was an audible treat. We played a LAN game there and even though the game wasn't that much on sound effects (it was just Counter Strike), it still left me with a lingering sensation of pleasure in my ears. And that's saying much from a musician like myself.

My sister bought some Altec Lansing speakers of her own maybe more than a year ago. I had the opportunity to try them sometimes, and the sound difference is just astonishing. So I said even if it took me a while to save up for a set of my own, I'll definitely get Altec Lansing instead.

I was actually thinking of getting one with a subwoofer, or even the very lofty 5.1 surround speaker system. But that's just a bit away from my budget right now. Perhaps in the future. :D

What's up with Russia?

2008-08-29T23:28:00.003+08:00

Russia officially recognized the breakaway and independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The only country to do so, so far. In violation of the ceasefire terms as well, btw, since one of the terms involved respect for Georgia's territorial integrity.

Russia also says that the reason they "fought back" was because Georgia killed people in South Ossetia, and they only retaliated to "save lives" and avoid a great human "calamity".

What I find odd about that is that they bombed civilian areas in Georgia and killed many civilians themselves. How is that avoiding a great human calamity? Oh it's okay to do it to other people?

Meanwhile Iran's nuclear power is increasing, still [no] thanks to Russia. D:

It sounds pretty quiet on TV, cable and local news networks but stuff is still going on there. It would be a grave mistake to not read the signs properly.

Georgia Crisis Quiet; Preparing for Big War

2008-08-26T00:41:00.004+08:00

Not so big on cable anymore, we're not hearing a lot about what's going on in Georgia the last few days. That's a good thing, because we can now focus on good news and other current events, such as the Olympics. But it should in no way let us think that it's over.

Russia is still playing the "we're the good guys here" game. They began pulling out of Georgia yesterday (Monday) and should supposedly be across the South Ossetia borders completely by Friday. Supposedly. But wait, shouldn't this have happened like 2 weeks ago, when they agreed to a ceasefire that said both sides had to pull back immediately?

Anyway Russia still claims that Georgia is guilty of genocide or something (quote: "... using the most terrible solution -- by exterminating an entire people"), with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev calling Georgia's leaders "morons". I'm in no position to say whether this is true or not, but he also said that they "not to let this crime go unpunished."

Meanwhile, some time ago Iran successfully completed long-range missile testing. They had no warheads it seems but they're testing, meaning they're preparing for something.

According to the Bible, Russia and Iran will form an alliance against Israel. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to wipe Israel "off the map". This is particularly interesting knowing Russia and Iran's current nuclear and arms alliance. Iran (and Russia) certainly have the capability to wage the kind of war that Ahmadinejad wants, and it's the big War of Gog and Magog that the Bible has spoken about in Ezekiel 38 (where Magog is what they called Russia, and Gog is their "prince"). It sounds like wishful thinking to some, where Christians and those who study the Bible are just connecting crooked invisible dots trying to make it seem like it's coming true even if it isn't (kinda like what many people are doing about Nostradamus' prophecies).

But here's what's funny. And I'm not afraid to say this right now. This war will happen, and it will happen soon. And according to the Bible, Israel will stand alone against the biggest coalition ever assembled including Russia, Iran and other Muslim and Arabic countries around it (except Egypt and Iraq, whom we believe will not take part in this war, if we're understanding the Bible correctly). It's hard to believe now, knowing how protective America is of her allies, especially Israel, and how quickly America jumps into wars that threaten world peace. But America will not help Israel in that war. Who knows why, but the Bible says nobody will help Israel. My guess is America will be trying to avoid all-out nuclear war with Russia and Iran, which would've happened anyway because Iran wants to wipe America (a.k.a., the "Big Satan" while Israel is the "Little Satan") off the map as well. That or the American troops will be in no shape to wage war after just having completed duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't really know. The Bible doesn't detail that.

What I do know is that this war will be big. And Israel will have nobody to turn to, because nobody will help. Then God will show himself and obliterate all of Israel's enemies. And when (not "if") this happens, we will know for sure that the Bible is true, and people will be searching for God. God even details how he'll destroy them, including shaking the earth (not sure if God meant an earthquake per se), and a rain of fire. And no this won't come from Israel's allies. The whole purpose of God's doing this is so that the world will see that the God of Israel is very much real.

Anyway just tossing those things up there. Just so that we know I published these things well before they take place. So when they happen, everybody that was skeptic about the Bible will have something to drop their jaws about. I'm no prophet, nor are any of my sources aside from Ezekiel himself. We're just people who look at the Bible and the world and connect the real dots.

All's Quiet on the Caucassus Front

2008-08-18T10:24:00.003+08:00

Maybe. There has been a lot less news over CNN and other internet sources regarding what's going on in Georgia. Russia still hasn't pulled back though.

Still in clear violation of their original ceasefire agreement signed last week (one that called for both sides to pull their troops back "immediately"), Russian President Dmitry Medvedev still hasn't ordered their army to pull out of Georgia. Or he has but he's scheduled it for Monday (we're ahead of their time by several hours). That means they'll only today start to pull out. Moscow has said nothing of when they will complete their withdrawal operation. We'll see later if they actually keep their word this time.

But terrorists have cut a major railway line from Tbilisi to the port of Poti, and Georgia thinks Russia is behind it. Russia denies it. I'm not going to say Russia did it until we get real evidence, but when you think of it objectively, who else would do it? D:

In other related news, former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev said that "there is no doubt" that Georgia started the conflict by attacking South Ossetia's "sleeping people" with "sophisticated weapons". I'll just relay this information because it seems important, but since I wasn't there to confirm I'll reserve my opinions on this one.

Lots of other stuff happened over the last few days too (that I didn't get to blog about). The U.S. has opened up missile defense sites in Poland, something that Russia "strongly opposes". Now I'm not trying to read too deep into this, but why would they oppose something like that unless they were planning to launch missile-based attacks against the West? D:

But it's rather good that the world is starting to shift away from the Georgia Conflict and now we're getting more focus on the Beijing Olympics. But we mustn't let this fully out of our sights right now. I still feel like there's something big that might happen from there soon.

Other Possible Reasons for Georgia Conflict?

2008-08-14T17:45:00.003+08:00

One of my friends messaged me and mentioned that oil pipelined underneath Georgia may be a reason for it. I agree that it's completely plausible, and actually it may really be it. According to this article here, Russia has had plans of pipelining oil for a while now (just read the details in the article).

Again, I think it's a great motive. But thinking of it from a military and geopolitical standpoint, I don't think it's a very sound move. Russia has its own oil reserves in various territories including Siberia and the Baltics. It's not an oil powerhouse like the Arab countries but they're not exactly poor either. Their recent alliance with Iran also secures their oil as well, which they get in exchange for nuclear technology.

In my opinion, though plausible, I don't really think oil is the main reason for this conflict. But again I may be wrong of course, since I'm no expert. A bit more oil doesn't seem worth the risk of making an enemy of the world (except Iran and its allies obviously). Even if it were a large amount of oil, they're risking a lot, as all the men of the free world would ride against them. They may be planning that or not, but now is not the time. Not until they have fully realized the power of their allies.

Update, I did more research, apparently there's a train line that goes through Azerbaijan linking Russia and Iran. This may disprove my original theory of Russia wanting control of Georgia for transportation of military supplies and nuclear technology. But it still may be that they're trying to eliminate a democracy that's protected by the NATO and U.N., as President Saakashvili believes, in order to gain full control of the area.

In addition, it seems that Russia is trying to reunite all the old members of the U.S.S.R. to reform the old Russian empire, as per Putin's dictatorial wishes.

Things are still not clear to me, but I still don't believe this war is ending soon. Not with what I see so far anyway.

Georgian President Asks for Help

2008-08-14T12:12:00.003+08:00

For obvious reasons the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is seeking help from allies of Democracy, particularly the U.S. According to him, there was never any ceasefire, and it was all just a show, as military violence still rips through his country and war crimes are still committed left and right by Russian soldiers and South Ossetian rebels against even civilians.

The troops that mobilized yesterday into Georgia have turned left into a village north by about 50 kilometers away from Tbilisi and did not cut through Georgia like I thought they would (which is a good thing of course). It is still unclear to reporters, the citizens, or even the Georgian military or government officials what they are planning to do, but it is reported that they are trying to set up an enlarged demilitarized buffer zone around South Ossetia.

What's disturbing, however, is that they set it up so far away from South Ossetia (as normal buffer zones would only be several kilometers across). It's also unsettling how easily such a massive amount of Russian troops was able to move freely around Georgia with no resistance or reprimand. Georgians are concerned about how things might unfold.

I just hope all my thoughts and suspicions about this war are wrong.

Violent Ceasefire

2008-08-14T09:08:00.004+08:00

As of the time of this writing, violence apparently initiated by Russian troops continues in Georgia, despite what optimists thought would be a peaceful end to the "conflict". I of course knew that this ceasefire was just for show for the Russians. It seems to me that they're trying to make themselves look like the good guys in this war.

They began the war because they claimed that Russians were being harassed in South Ossetia. That may have been a plausible cause for war, but I don't think it would've been enough for such a massive troop deployment, which I keep stressing. According to CNN, it seems that there are at least 15,000 troops in Georgia right now.

"The cease-fire never stood in the first place," Saakashvili told CNN's "Situation Room" on Wednesday. "Russia never intended to stop fire."

He added that "Russian tanks continue to ravage Georgia town and villages, killing people, destroying buildings, looting. ... They've been doing worse things to what I've heard in the past and I could never imagine happening in my country."

(Quotes taken from CNN.com)

Right now, however, Russia is justifying themselves apparently by saying that Georgia should pay for its crimes, and are now asking America to choose a side; the Georgians whom they openly support, or the Russians with whom they dread going to war with on account of knowing they hold what may be the most powerful army in the world today, to say nothing of their nuclear capabilities, of which the world is very much aware.

Last night it seems the Russian troops ran through the town of Gori, south of South Ossetia, and soon after claimed that there are no more Russian troops in Gori. But eye witness reports spot them going southeast from Gori toward Tblisi. I can't find where they ended up since then right now, but I'll try to keep you posted (or you can check the news). All I know is that the ceasefire meant nothing, just like I said last night.

Again, to stress my points I brought up last night, I think Georgia is looking for control over the region. Georgia is protected by the U.N. and NATO, and may be a hindrance to Russia's dealings with Iran and the jihad-hungry Muslims in Iran. This is my main concern and what I think may be happening, but of course I'm no authority so you need not share my views on this.

Now the big question is, what are they doing? Is my feared outcome of total control over the region what will really happen? Is something more frightening brewing? What is going on in the heads of the leaders involved here, including Georgia's president, the White House and the Pentagon, and Vladimir Putin?

I'll continue trying to figure out this situation with the rest of the world. It's sad because I thought I'd be blogging mostly about the Olympics this week (and the stuff happening in the Olympics is pretty cool too, so I just might). But all optimism aside and looking at the situation realistically, we may be looking at the beginnings of the end of the world here.

On a side note, I'm also reading the book Epicenter by Joel Rosenberg. And in frightening detail, this book is describing some of the events that are happening today, despite being written about 2 years ago. It's gripping and eerie. I can't really say I'm scared because that's inaccurate. What I am, though, is very much concerned and yet excited.

I'll keep you posted.

"The Georgia Conflict"

2008-08-13T09:18:00.006+08:00

War in the Caucasus, again. It began last week, and after six days of bloody fighting it seems to be over. But I'm going to blog about it because it's bothered me ever since the beginning of the war. Actually it seems nobody really wants to call it a "war", that's why they call it the "Georgia Conflict".

Well anyway, I'm going to write down my thoughts that have been going wild through my head since the first time I heard about the war over CNN a week ago.

First let me begin with a bit of a note. I am no military expert, nor did I serve in any military or law enforcement service. I never worked for the government and I am no intelligence officer of any sort. What I am, though, is an observer and a bit of a history and warfare fan. I wouldn't even call myself a history or war buff because I don't consider my knowledge on either subject to be great. But I do like to analyze things, which is why I am fascinated in both history and war.

It all started when I heard the conflicting ideas on who started the war. Russia claimed Georgia started the war, while Georgia claimed that Russian bombers were the first to initiate contact. I was immediately troubled by that, especially following the disturbing scenes of Russian forces moving into Georgia in droves.

Apparently the war is supposedly about a small disputed province called South Ossetia, in Georgian borders (North Ossetia is Russian territory). Now, this would've been all completely acceptable except for the ridiculous number of forces mobilized by Russia to invade such a small country. Provided that Georgia itself has a formidable army mobilized at the time of over 3000 soldiers, about 100 tanks and many armored vehicles, Russia outnumbered them by a huge amount with more than 10,000 soldiers 150 tanks and hundreds of armored vehicles, and not to mention air superiority (I saw it on CNN but I can't find the article on it to fortify the numbers).

As a student of war like myself, and I think at least some of the professional military analysts out there would probably agree, I find it hard to believe that such a massive, aggressive and sudden troop deployment would be done for such a small province as South Ossetia. There has to be some kind of ulterior motive, one which is yet unclear to me.

People are hesitant to call this a "war" just yet for many reasons. One reason is the fact that the people that are calling this a "conflict" rather than a "war" are the American and other Western politicians. The Americans don't want to call this a war because they openly support Georgia, yet believe that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is America's friend (and Putin feels the same way about America). America does not want to go to war with Russia right now, and though some of the countries that broke away from the hostile grip of the former Soviet Union such as Poland and the Baltic countries want to do something about it, they're thinking smart and not doing anything rash, just the same as how America is responding as of the time of this writing.

As soon as I heard the news of this happening some time last week, I looked at the map because to be honest I didn't really know where Georgia was exactly. I knew it was around the Russian territories but I didn't know its specific geological location. I was very much surprised to see that Georgia lies directly in between Russia and the countries that would link it to Iran (namely Turkey and Armenia). I'm not sure if this means anything honestly, and again, I have to reitterate that I'm not in any way any military expert, but as soon as I saw that, I felt that Russia wanted a firm military hold of the entire region to allow them free access into Iran, their ally in a now growing threat of nuclear arms development.

Now, I'm following everything I can with this war despite my full-time job, via the news and the internet. I began writing this entry this morning at around 9:30 AM (GMT +8), just hours after a "ceasefire" was called as mediated by the French. The terms of the ceasefire favored Moscow heavily in my opinion, but at the very least it should have meant silence on both sides because it required the pulling out of all military forces into their original positions prior to the war. Not intentionally being cynical, but I did not believe that this ceasefire would hold. Russia mobilized such a large number of troops and armor, I don't think it will end with such flimsy ceasefire terms. They're after something. I don't know if it's what I suspect it to be (control over the region for unmonitored access to Iran; remember that Georgia is being watched by the U.N. and NATO), or something completely different. But I think they won't stop until they get it.

Now that alone was enough to disturb me and my analysis of the war. But suddenly, just hours after that ceasefire was agreed upon, at the time of this writing, Russian forces are being spotted "in violation" of these ceasefire terms. The first time I heard the news was over the radio, at around 6:30 PM, where hundreds or even thousands of Russian troops in military trucks and armored personnel carriers were spotted miles south of South Ossetia, where they were supposed to stay, into the town of Gori, and travelling southeastward in a column towards Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, in what I estimate to be about 40-50 miles away (it may be more or less, I'm just guessing). Now this is a clear violation of the ceasefire terms because the terms involved having Russia pull its troops back across the border and back into Russia.

As of the time of this writing, which is now 8:50 PM (I started about 20 minutes ago as well), it is still unclear to me what will happen. But if the events unfold as I see it, from a strategic and political standpoint, this won't be good. We could be looking at a big war here.

I will continue to blog on this matter as much as I can, with as much information as I can gather. Just take note that I am not a professional journalist or military analyst. Just some guy who is disturbed by what's happening that felt like writing down his thoughts on the matter before it's too late.

- edit: I may have to note that I began writing this at work at 9:30 AM Philippine time, but had business to attend to and so saved it as a draft. I resumed writing this when I got home, as seen in the second half of this post.

Getting Back in Shape

2008-08-09T22:38:00.003+08:00

Due to lack of exercise and having too much junkfood these days, I'm starting to feel the effects of being overweight. My ab flabs are getting in the way of stuff, I get tired so easily, and I don't feel good about my appearance anymore.

So, as an obvious resort, I've decided to get in shape by cutting down on unnecessary foods and going back to my exercise routines from back when I was actively b-boying. I wanna be healthy and strong again. It sounds stupid but I miss being able to do clapping push-ups, handstand push-ups, dozens of sit-ups, etc. I miss being able to do two full b-boy routines back to back without getting tired. I tried doing a full routine yesterday and I got tired doing a simple toprock -> uprock -> 6 step -> baby freeze. I was freaking wheezing.

So starting today, I'm gonna go back to my cardio exercises, strength training and flexibility training as well. :D

Language Studies

2008-07-29T22:44:00.002+08:00

I've decided to try learning sign language as well, in conjunction with my Deutsch studies. The problem is, contrary to my initial ideas of it, sign language is different across the globe. That's sad. I thought before that I'd be able to travel the world and communicate with any deaf person once I learn "sign language". I was probably naive to think that, though, since obviously each country would've developed its own sign language throughout its own ages.

So I'm not sure if I should continue sign language studies. The American sign language is what I see being used most often, but sadly it's not even the same as the British sign language, according to Wikipedia.

Oh well. I'll stick to my Deutsch studies for now.

Why didn't I think of this before?!

2008-07-17T20:52:00.003+08:00

Yeah this is my second entry for today. It's unrelated to the first post I put up so I'll make a new post instead.

Anyway what I'm talking about "why didn't I think of this before" is finding scratch and beat juggling videos on YouTube. I mean I've searched for BBoy, pop & lock, beatbox, rap and graffiti stuff on YouTube before, but DJing, which I've been interested in since I was a kid, I've never thought of searching for, which is weird. Anyway I started searching yesterday and I'm completely wide-eyed and drop-jawed. It's just so fun to watch and awesome to listen to. I'm trying to listen to samples from all the popular DJs before I judge who my favorite would be, but so far I'm really liking DJ Troubl's style.

I really want my own turntables now even more than before.

Recovering From a Possible Food Poisoning

2008-07-17T20:48:00.002+08:00

Just to mark this, cuz this is unique for me. I think I got food poisoning last Monday night. I went through the stomach pain and the water (not watery; water) stool. I'm getting better, and I think I'm pretty much cured of it now though. I got the stomach pains and all but it's not as bad as a couple of days ago and I'm not having to go to the bathroom every 10-30 minutes or so, which was the case on Tuesday. Monday night I couldn't even sleep cuz of the pain, and I had to go to the bathroom every hour or so. I became dehydrated but I'm taking stuff to combat it and all that. I missed 2 days of work but like I said I'm fine now. I was uncomfortable the whole day but I got through it without having to go to the hospital heheh. It was a mild case that thankfully I got through. Not trying to gross anyone out or anything but I just felt like marking it cuz it was one of the most unique yet uncomfortable experiences in my life.

New(er) Job and More Pen Spinning!

2008-07-11T09:06:00.002+08:00

I had to resign from the job I mentioned in my previous post, but now I'm working for Edulynx (the same company that sent me to Laguna for the How Fun! English Camp almost exactly one year ago). Even so I've still continued my pen spinning. I'm getting pretty good, but I haven't properly customized my pencil yet. I got an orange unsharpened wooden pencil but it needs more weight (those rubber grip things for pens would do nicely, but I haven't found any yet; always out of stock in the stores here).

Anyway I suddenly realized that I haven't made a lot of posts this year yet. We're already past the halfway mark of the year but this would only be my 5th post! Wow. D: Well I've obviously been busy with work and stuff. In fact I'm posting from work right now. I'm having a lot of fun. But I can't neglect my blog, even if I don't actually have a lot of readers. This isn't just for publicity, but also for myself so I can look back on my experiences and see what I was doing at particular points of time.

I'll try to post more regularly. :D

New Job Makes Me a Novice Pen Spinner

2008-06-18T19:52:00.002+08:00

From teaching English, I got a new desk job that I'm currently in training for. It's a call center job, as a customer/technical support agent. The job requires long hours sitting in front of a computer, with frequent idle times in between calls.

What does one do for fun in such a situation? Take up a hobby!

Behold, I've chosen Pen Spinning. Pen Spinning is a form of juggling, specifically designed for spinning a pen in and around your fingers and your hands. Not sure on the history (yet) but I it was likely to be some really bored dude (or his collective) at his desk sometime that invented it.

It's really fun, and shares many similarities to b-boying, which I'm obviously into. It can also be compared to BMX, skate boarding, and other such sports where you can freestyle, but in a pen-related way. There's a variety of tricks to learn, with either pre-created combos or combos you can create yourself (just like b-boying or any of the above listed sports). And it's a lot of fun. I literally spent all afternoon (from around 10 AM up to about 3 hours ago) spinning my pen. I'll get back into it a little later, after I finish this and some other things I need to do.

Lots of videos on YouTube and Pentrix.com that have been really helpful to me. I've got a few of the foundational moves down. I'm hoping to master them soon, and I'm starting learning some of the next-step type tricks.

When I'm ready to make a newbie video, I'll post it. :D

Warriors Orochi PC

2008-06-04T12:46:00.003+08:00

Aside from still playing Granado Espada, I recently acquired Koei's PC version of the game Warriors Orochi. Koei is responsible for the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games. And guess what Warriors Orochi is! That's right, it's a crossover of the two games. So we're tossing logic and history out the window for this one, and just enjoying another thousands-of-enemies-against-you game.

It has many of the elements that made Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors successful, and a little more. The most prominent one is the tag team style system, where you can switch three characters around during the battle. It doesn't make any sense (I wish they jumped in instead of transforming into the other character), but hey, it's still fun. Makes interesting combos too. If you'd ever seen Tekken Tag or Capcom's VS games, it's similar in concept (except in Warriors Orochi the characters don't jump in, like I stated earlier).

There's also an elaborate weapon fusion system where you can empower your character's weapons with various extra abilities to make them more powerful. You can even give powerful weapons to characters you've never levelled up before, so that when you do finally decide to level them up, it'll be easier.

One thing this game lacks that I kinda miss from DW4, which I loved, is the officer creation system. :( Why can't we make our own officers anymore? That was really cool. Also you only get two costumes per character here (as opposed to DW4 six costumes). But oh well.

All in all, the game is still epic fun, and takes up a lot of my free time these days. I've finished all the stories and unlocked all the stages. I'm about to unlock the last 3 characters later today. We'll see how that turns out. :D

Granado Espada... Again

2008-05-11T20:20:00.004+08:00

Well, I've delayed this post for over a week because I wasn't too sure whether I would stick with it or not. But after like 10 days of playing I'm pretty sure I will.

That's right. I'm back to playing Granado Espada (the one hosted in Singapore for SEA). It's still fun. It was never not fun for me.

All I have to say about it right now is that, even if some people don't think it's anything special cuz it's nothing but just another grind game with that MCC (multi-character control) system, I think the MCC makes all the difference.

Here's why I like it: I DO NOT THINK OF IT AS AN MMORPG. That's right. It's more like a massively multiplayer strategy game. When I play this game I feel like I'm going through the mission mode of some real-time strategy game. Positioning is key when you go into harder dungeons. It kinda reminds me of DotA in a way, because of having to equip yourself with the right items and the right skills, time it properly, and position yourself properly. That sort of thing is just way too enjoyable for me.

Also, while I was willing to return even if it were P2P, which I thought it was, it was a very pleasant surprise for me to learn that they dropped the P2P system and instead made it rely heavily on overprice item mall stuff. Well, that's fine too, though I certainly intended to buy a lot of item mall stuff, and that'll impact my wallet a bit.

I don't have to explain further than that. So enjoy some pretty screenshots. :)

Took this screenshot because I thought the female fighter's costume in the foreground was pretty. Oddly enough, like an hour after I took this screenshot, I randomly got the same costume from the costume box.

Female wizard costume + hair. Really pretty. :)

Grace Bernelli: one of the pretty girls that made me come back to this game. :D
The other pretty girl that made me come back to this game: glasses-wearing French blacksmith Idge.
Feng Ling, a new recruitable NPC. I'd like to see what they come up with next. :D

Synchronized Swimming Goldfish

2008-05-05T10:23:00.001+08:00

Simply amazing... And cute too. I love goldfish! :D

So the dudes are speaking Japanese in the video, but randomly, the Chinese voice over at the end really frightened me cuz I'd turned my volume up. o_o

So Today Was Labor Day...

2008-05-01T21:15:00.003+08:00

Worldwide celebration of Labor Day was today. In the Weste they're still celebrating it, but here in the Philippines it's almost over.

I don't usually post about stuff like this but I felt the need to post about it now. Cuz it's just sad.

I was watching the news where they featured several countries and how they celebrated Labor Day. They showed Singapore and it was pretty nice. They showed Korea and it was orderly. They showed Russia or Poland I think (sorry, wasn't paying attention) and it was going well. Then they showed the Philippines, and it made me sad.

It seems customary for the world to hold rallies during Labor Day. These rallies don't necessarily have to be protests. And the world seems to have gotten it down. But the Philippines, what with our excess of "democracy", took it as an opportunity to throw another set of baseless and/or meaningless complaints against the government and demanding unreasonable and even sometimes downright stupid solutions of our president.

Though our Labor Day rally wasn't violent, it did feature some people yelling against the government as if it's torture to their souls, including an old lady who didn't even have her front teeth. Yeah, right. Like she's one of the working force who should be participating in Labor Day. Or maybe she is. But that's still sad. All they're doing is complaining, and I wouldn't be surprised if some or many of them don't really know anything about what they're complaining about.

Now, I'm not one to complain about anything. I rarely ever find myself complaining because whenever something isn't going my way, my first reaction would be to shut up and think of a solution to get out of it. Often times I would end up praying, though it should be always. I don't always agree with our government either, but I never once thought that our current president was doing a bad job.

The economy is doing well. It was almost constantly getting better and better during the entirety of her stay in office. I saw a lot of important programs being carried out, in terms of housing, industry, economy, environment, etc. Even her cabinet members have proven to be effective at least to some extent. Even the PNP has stepped up recently. The Philippines isn't broken anymore, despite what some of those parties opposed to the country want us to think. And most importantly, if God wanted Gloria to stay in office, no force in heaven or earth could possibly remove her from there. Alternately, if God wanted Gloria out, no force in heaven or earth could possibly keep her in place.

With that, I make the following bold statement: I believe that God is using our president to help fix our country.

What are these people complaining about? Listen to how ridiculous it is:

- They're blaming Gloria for the increase in prices in the world market, such as oil, etc. I can't even imagine how that could possibly be her fault.

- They're blaming her for the rice shortage. There's a possibility that this is true, based on what researchers say, but the important thing is that she's doing what she can to help fix the problem. And you can see she's working on it. Still, it's ridiculous to blame a worldwide natural phenomenon on a human president.

- They're asking for higher wages. Economic analysts have already said that these wage increases might be detrimental to the economy. I understand that the poor people are suffering, but in reality if our economy goes bad, they'll suffer even more, and they'll take those in the lower-middle class or more with them. Also, how can they have the guts to complain so much about wages being so high when they spend so much money on cigarettes, beer and other alcoholic beverages, and even drugs in some cases, etc.?

To change this country, we do not need to start from the top. We need to start from the bottom. What good is it if our president is the most brilliant example of all time when the regular citizens are corrupted themselves?

That's all. I didn't want this to be too long but I was getting annoyed at all these people. Had to get this stuff off my chest.

Bootfighter XP SP-2 (機動戦士ウィンダムXP SP-2)

2008-04-22T16:09:00.003+08:00

A free Gundam clone game has come out, and it's pretty cool, especially for a free game. They call it 機動戦士ウィンダムXP SP-2, or Bootfighter XP SP-2 (English translation name; not literal translation of course) Have some screenshots for fun.You can make your own custom pilots, complete with voices (if you want), which I did, as you can see. It's quite entertaining, though a little complicated to begin. But once you get the hang of it it's really straightforward and you might be compelled to make even more pilots.

This here's a screenshot I took at the beginning of team battle. I didn't take any screenshots during the fight, though I might take an action shot soon enough. It's rather chaotic, and one of the main things you should be thinking of is survival and taking the enemy out. If you get teamed up on by 2 or more Windoms, you're toast.

By the way, I have no idea why the translation has it as Windom rather than Windam (Windam being probably a better juncture of Windows and Gundam). The game itself was produced by a Japanese guy apparently known as YSK, and was translated by Mirror Moon.

The game is clearly addictive, reminiscent of Virtua On and other such similar games. Online multiplayer is supposedly fun, though we haven't yet figured out how to set up the server when behind routers. Yes yes, we know it has to do with port forwarding. I've done it with other games already before, but for some reason it doesn't work with this game.

It's still in its early stages and is still undergoing development and improvement. There's a few bugs and a few annoying things that weren't supposed to be that way, such as autotargetting that you can't turn off, forcing your suit to always face your enemy, making it somewhat difficult to navigate, and causes the game to go nuts when your opponent is directly below or above you. It needs more stages and probably more suits (some people are suggesting a custom Windom creation tool, though I'm not sure that'll ever happen).

My personal suggestion would be to fix the targetting system first. I want to stay locked on to a particular opponent but that doesn't necessarily mean I have to always face them and mess up my maneuvering. I'd like to be able to move around the field normally whether I'm locked on or not, so that the forward movement doesn't necessarily mean "go towards enemy", and the sideways strafe movement doesn't necessarily mean "circle around enemy".

Another thing that I think would make it cool would be first-person view change option. Quite honestly I prefer playing games like this in first-person. And it'd be cool to see you extend your gun before firing, and feeling the vibrations of every projectile you send forth. This may be a long shot for the project, but it's something I'd definitely like to see.

Also, an improvement on the radar system might be good too. It's not bad now but it could be so much better. I want it to look like the radars you would see on any Gundam show. If possible, using actual blips rather than static dots.

Finally (for now), I'd like to see an improvement with the names and pilot portraits with draw distance. Name and pilot portrait are being shown even if you're ridiculously far (as you can see in my second screenshot above). This also increases lag a bit especially when it comes to large scale battles such as Blitz Tactics and Team. We don't need to know who's piloting that Windom more than 2 km away, thank you. They can't shoot us either anyway. We can't even target each other.

All in all it's a great game. I can't wait to see it get developed further.

- edit: My friend Mikko informed me on a few things:
Windam wasn't used apparently because of copyright reasons, because there already was a Windam in the original Gundam.

Auto-target can be turned off by holding the switch target button.

New NicoNico Medley - Meteor Swarm「ニコニコ動画流星群」

2008-04-15T02:16:00.004+08:00

はいそうなんですよ！こんかいの新しい組曲ニコニコ動画は古いの組曲より長い。とても面白いぞ。NEETのほうがいいよね・・・

The NEETs of NicoNicoDouga have come up with a new medley. They call it "Meteor Swarm" (流星群) This one even more NEETeriffic than the first medley I chanced on, which is still one of my favorite things in the world. This new medley is over 14 minutes long including the "credits", and features some of the stuff that was in the first medley, and tons more including stuff that's purely VIP. I mean, you wouldn't even know what some of this stuff is if you weren't up-to-date with the Japanese internet community. And that means not just anime and games. Some people think they know a lot about Japan just because they watched a lot of anime, etc. That doesn't count.

Anyway some of the classic parts here include the BGM they use in るろうに剣心 (I forget the title; it's in the medley but I'm lazy to check), Ievan Polkka, Yatta!, IM@S stuff, lots of 初音ミク songs, etc.

This new medley is at least as epic as the first one, in my opinion. They've successfully captured the whole flow of making the medley of songs sound like it's just one longass song that changes its style here and there. The songs seriously just flow into each other. Their other 20 minute medley didn't quite do that, as the songs had distinguishable pauses between them so you don't really feel like you're singing just one song. And that may be the reason it didn't turn out as well as the first one.

Alright well here's a link to the vanilla version, which is the first version I heard. As of the time of this writing it's still being actively spammed by the Japanese NEETs. It's fun to watch because they really flood the thing with walls of VIP語 and such.

Alternately, I found the karaoke version, for those of us who can read Japanese and want to sing along (some of the lyrics are changed from their original songs, or some songs don't really have lyrics and they just put some in). There's lots of other versions, which you can find in the related links in NicoVideo's website.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

2008-03-28T00:08:00.003+08:00

A new strategy role-playing puzzle game has stormed into our lives. Puzzle Quest (for PC)!

What is it? It's an RPG that uses a very basic puzzle game to determine many of the activities that you do, including combat, capturing monsters, and item crafting, among other things. The puzzle game itself is similar to the old game Bejewelled, which is already addictive to say the least. Add in RPG elements such as learning skills, equipping yourself with items that you craft by yourself, and fighting tough monsters that can beat the crap out of you, and you got yourself a winner.

Been playing this game for days now and I can't see myself getting tired of it soon. Though some of the challenges, such as crafting high level stuff, is extremely mind-numbing, I can't pull myself out of it like I just gotta finish it.

The developers of this game did it right. I love this game. Spreading it out to my buddies so we can play multiplayer, which is awesome.

Rainbow Six: Vegas again

2008-03-18T11:07:00.002+08:00

Oh man is this game fun. After lots of training with solo terrorist hunt mode in realistic difficulty and heavy enemy density, suddenly the story mode became lots easier (because I'd gotten the hang of the controls and the weapons by then). The new challenge became trying to find the best tactical way into or out of situations, including preserving my team.

I played it so much yesterday that I dreamt about one of the scenes. And it's cool when you get realistic dreams like that.

Anyway, the first part, which was some border town in Mexico, was rather slow and boring in comparison to the Las Vegas part. We got to raid casinos being held siege by hordes of terrorists. And it's really awesome to have your comrades in weapons free. Set them up behind sufficient cover and they really clear the area. This is the main difference that I've noticed from the old Rainbow Six games I played (particularly Rogue Spear). The teammate AI is really good. They take cover, and they actually fire smart shots including suppressive fire when necessary. In fact, you can probably finish the game without having to fire your own weapon, if you can direct them properly.

Also, stealth isn't as important in this game as it was in Rogue Spear. It's a different kind of fun, like I said. In this game, you can actually survive even if you don't ever use your silencers, even when clearing out rooms with hostages. But in Rogue Spear, even visual cover was very important. I remember that one crazy mission where I had to go into an enemy house, plant a bug in the room, and get out. Leave no trace, kill no one and let nobody see me.

I'll play some more later. I think I'm still a long way from the end of the game. But I hope the future chapters are just as fun, or even more fun, than the casinos part. :D

Operation: Pathfinder

2008-03-15T22:07:00.003+08:00

http://www.milsimxgames.com/pathfinder.shtml

I'm going to this game on March 29. I'm really hyped about it. It's not just an airsoft game. It's a game of survival and large-scale missions. The kind that has medics, etc.

I was at a game today with my team in Sitting Ducks gamesite, Libis. It was fun. My second game in a forest setting. I'm starting to learn a few more things about airsofting, and the difference between airsoft guns and real guns, such as how much twigs can protect you from fire.

Pictures, taken by a teammate, will be uploaded soon.

Guild Wars!

2008-03-13T00:25:00.003+08:00

I'm getting a taste of Guild Wars again, thanks to a friend who lent me an account, after over three years since the Open Beta Weekend given to us in 2004. It was lots of fun back then, and I particularly loved the skill and class system, and the fact that the fields were private. That meant no threat of kill-stealers or looters, or otherwise annoying people during your hunting sessions.

Guild Wars has changed a lot since then. I can't even enumerate them, or even consider them the same game. I mean, the classes are still the same except for expansion classes, but there's a lot of new skills, new changes to skills, etc.

During Open Beta Weekend the only thing we had was a lot of hunting in the fields, and a little bit of the interesting item system. Those things are still existent now, but Guild Wars suddenly became a game focused on exactly what its title calls for: guild wars. It's supposedly a great PVP game (I haven't tried yet, but from all reports, this game was built for team-based PVP). The game places great focus and importance on support classes. In fact, there are more support builds than standard killer builds. From reading up on skills, builds, and strategies, it's all about teamwork and supporting each other.

Which makes Guild Wars awesome. I'm considering buying my own account, but that'll cost me quite a large sum. Maybe in the future. :) For now, I'll try to satisfy myself with borrowing the account.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas

2008-03-03T14:36:00.004+08:00

I understand this is another review of an old-ish game, but I might as well write one on it since it's actually my first time to play this game.

So anyway the last time I ever played an R6 game was Rogue Spear, which was obviously years and years ago. So upon getting a taste of the new(ish) Vegas look and feel, not to mention all of the new features and functions, I suddenly felt like all other FPS games are lacking. And that includes Battlefield 2, which is one of the best and most realistic of all FPS games today, in my opinion.

Anyway, what makes Vegas cool isn't necessarily the realism or even the immersiveness. It's not necessarily immersive because there are times when you can see your character in third-person view (particularly when taking cover). It's kinda like a cross between Battlefield and Gears of War, I'd say. It mixes arcade-ish tactics with realism in a strange way that seems to work.

I know a lot of people dislike Vegas, but I have to say, if I stop thinking of it as a faithful R6 game, it's a really fun game that can have you absorbed in it for hours. I literally have to pry myself away from the computer when I play for too long. Even just Terrorist Hunt mode is very exciting.

My main complaint is showing the third-person view of the character when in take cover mode, and the fact that they don't have as many guns as they did back in Rogue Spear. They don't even have basic spec ops/SWAT/military guns like M4's, M16's, and MP5K PDW. That made me a little sad, but I'm told there may be a few mods here and there for that. I haven't done any searching yet, but I'm hoping it's true.

Haven't played enough yet to give any ratings. But so far so good. It's a really exciting and enjoyable game.

DBoys (Boyi) Kar98k Wood Version

2008-02-11T19:12:00.000+08:00

The Chinese company DBoys (or BOYI, whatever the heck they call themselves) recently released a Kar98k, supposedly the first of many in a long line of planned WWII replica guns. It seemed they were serious about it, as just a few weeks ago they re-released their Kar98k in REAL WOOD. Yes that's right. No more plastic stock. This one will look and feel like the real thing, especially since it ejects shells, just like the real thing, and you load it up one by one or via stripper clip, just like the real thing.

This is certainly no skirmisher's gun, however. A 5-round bullet limit and shell ejection make it terrible for running around, especially since it comes at only around 350 FPS in its stock form, which makes it a poor sniper rifle without upgrades. What it is good for, however, is collectors and reenactors, myself included! If you'd ever wanted an airsoft gun that you can easily use in plinking without getting in trouble with the law that looks and feels like the real thing, this is it. And what's better is that it's really cheap, since it's from an ACM company. And reenactors will appreciate its realism and the feel. This will force regular infantry to be careful with their shots, lest they miss and waste one of their precious 5 rounds, just like they did in real life. This is particularly awesomein low-cap games, where everybody is using realistic ammo amounts (Garands, even those converted from M14s, with only 8 rounds, Thompsons with only 30 rounds, MP40s with only 32 rounds), etc. So everybody is careful with their shots.

I'm definitely getting one. :D

Pros: AWESOME. Collector's/reenactor's item for sure. Low stock FPS means it's easy to let this gun into many game sites, even CQB games in case that's the kind of WWII scenario you're doing.

Cons: Awful for skirmishing. Need to buy more shells for about US$15 for 5 extra shells. I don't even know where to get stripper clips. :( May need to use real stripper clips, or have them made by machinists.

AGM MP001

2008-02-03T21:01:00.000+08:00

Last night I got me a brand new AGM MP001 a.k.a. "Sharpshooter", which is a low end clone of the Tokyo Marui VSR-10. I originally only bought it because I was on a tight budget. I needed the internals for a near-future Mauser Karabiner 98 (my favorite rifle of all time) conversion project. But I was expecting to be surprised, if that makes any sense at all. I've read a lot of good reviews for this bolt-action rifle, especially considering its price. So I was expecting a little spark of something.

And indeed I was not disappointed. In fact I was surprised beyond my expectations in some aspects. This blog entry is a sort of mini-review but not really. More like an account of what I like and don't like about it.

First, it was awesomely cheap. Costs only P1,900 at a certain shop in a hidden part of Metro Manila, a part I'm not particularly familiar with considering I usually only hang out in the north and east of the Metropolis. To put it in perspective, a medium-quality AEG costs about twice that price.

Anyway next was when the box was opened in the shop, I was surprised to see the black stock of the gun I was about to buy. I'd heard very good things about the fake wood on their wooden stock version, like how it was one of the most realistic-looking wooden stocks made of plastic ever made, etc. It looked even better than some actual wooden stocks haha. Anyway the black stock didn't disappoint. I'm not a particular fan of black stocks but I didn't think it would matter since I would eventually ignore the stock since I'll take the internals out and put it into a Kar98 conversion kit soon. So I picked just any random color they had out.

But like I said, I was really surprised when the box was opened. Standing there in front of it, I couldn't really tell from the looks of it that it was made of plastic. It looked more like matte paint on wood. Even to the touch, it doesn't really feel like plastic, except for the weight. The seams on the stock aren't very prominent, contrary to what I was expecting considering it's a cheap gun. So far, I'm very impressed visually.

It was chronoed at the shop to give off about 380 fps with .2 BBs. That seemed a little low for a bolt-action gun designed for sniping (it has no ironsights; needs a scope for aiming), which made me a little sad. It was advertised as a 400 fps gun in stock form. I hear there are a few simple mods out there that can easily boost its fps without buying upgrade parts yet, so I'll try those soon. I don't want a monster sniping weapon, since the Kar98 I'm building isn't going to be a sniper rifle anyway. I just want something that shoots heavier BBs like .23 and .25 (to simulate the Kar98's big 7.92x57mm ammo) with good range, accuracy and stability, as a testament to the original gun's good performance, while still not being too strong a gun to shoot at people within 50 feet.

Anyway. I tried firing it at the shop, and was also surprised with the bolt-action. I was told that the bolt-action of the MP001 is really good for simulating the Kar98, because it was stiff (just like the real gun) without being hard to do rapidly (just like the real gun).

So on the way home I was really happy. I had a brand new gun that would eventually turn into my favorite rifle of all time. However, when I got home, I got really annoyed. Why? I found out that the scope rings that came with my Tasco 3-9x40-E illuminated crosshair scope do not fit the 20mm railing included with the AGM MP001. Go figure.

So I set out to find 20mm scope rings and found them rather easily (though I was hoping they had them at Megamall today so I could go plinking with my scope, but it was not to be). I'll get those this Friday, along with a bunch of new BBs.

All in all I'm really happy with the gun. It's a little lightweight to feel like a real gun, and most of the weight is in the front and middle (with the butt stock being really light in fact). It feels great to shoot and makes a nice clapping sound when fired, making it a rather loud rifle, which is fine since it's going to become a Kar98, like I've repeatedly said.

I'm excited. ;D Can't wait for the conversion kit to arrive.

Recovering From The Flu: Mad Dreams

2008-01-24T14:57:00.000+08:00

The past few days I've been sick with the flu. I had to leave work early on Tuesday because I felt I was physically (and mentally?) incapable of continuing teaching that day. I worried about my students, but I felt that if I forced myself to work, my condition would only get worse. I stayed home yesterday and today. I'm feeling better today, though, and I should be able to go to work tomorrow.

Anyway I made this post to note that I've been having strange, frightening and realistic dreams in the time that I was sick. I remember this was usually the case with me whenever I was sick ever since childhood. I only remember a handful of any of my dreams from before, so I decided now to document some of the things I've been dreaming about in the last few days. These dreams may be quite long due to the realistic detail presented to me. But they do make for interesting stories.

Tuesday Night:
The simplest of my dreams, but extremely realistic anyway. The only part I remember clearly was that I was browsing on my computer (I even remember what my table looked like) and I voted on SaiGAR, which I do daily btw. While on my computer in my dream, I visited an online game's website and downloaded it. I even remember looking at the various versions available for download, and how some are smaller in filesize than others. I remember the layout of the website as well, and it was a nice website. After setting up the download, I left my PC and did something else, which I don't remember. I woke up some time after that and looked in my downloads folder for the game and was surprised that the game wasn't there. And upon actually visiting the website (while awake), I found that the layout was different. That's when I realized it was just a dream.

Wednesday Afternoon:
Zombies. I'm not sure how it happened or what transpired in my dreams before the moments I remember, but I was standing inside a dark place, which may have been an airsoft shop though the walls and the rest of the room was too dark to actually notice. I remember calling one of the people there Kronus, who is the leader of our airsoft team, Task Force Rangers Philippines, and also a knowledgeable gunsmith. We were upgrading airsoft weapons to beastly proportions to fight zombies. Prior to that, there was a zombie that we had shot twice in the head in the back of the room.

I don't know why I had a dream like that. I haven't watched any zombie movies in a long, long time. But maybe since "zombie" is an airsoft term (describing people who don't admit to getting hit), I guess my mind kinda put the ideas together.

A lot more happened in this dream, but I can only remember vague parts of it, such as standing under a bridge thing (reminds me of the corner of Quezon Ave., and EDSA) looking up at the bright sun while there are shining feathers floating overhead. I believe I was here on my way to the airsoft shop, though I can't say for sure since I don't really remember. I should've documented it as soon as I woke up. There was also another scene where I was on the roof of some building, overlooking the bridge thing (though it wasn't the MRT like it would've been, were it the actual corner of Quezon Ave. and EDSA, and the surrounding buildings were different so I knew it wasn't it). The feathers were still there but I remember that the sun's glare was very painful.

It's also important to note that we had tried to sneak one of our friends out of the zombie area by putting her in the back of our SUV. This will be referenced later in the next dream.

Wednesday Night:
The most frightening of all my dreams. I don't remember the order, but there are many connected events. It also contained multiple references to previous dreams.

In one scene, I know I already had this dream before, or rather, I had a dream like it, and this was a continuation of it. I was inside a building with a very nice elevator. One of those old classic elevators that had those mechanical pointers like clock hands to indicate what floor you're on now rather than digital displays. I remember the interior was golden, and it was reflective like a mirror. Upon reaching some floor, just like my my old dream, I came upon an office where I had no business. I wasn't sent out but I felt out of place. So I decided to get back on the elevator and find another floor. Just like in my previous dream, when the elevator door opened, a group of girls (this time it was 3 girls; not sure how many it was in my old dream), came out. They were chattering about something, which I didn't pay attention to, but from the conversation I picked up that the mother of one of them was working in that office.

I hopped on the elevator and went to another floor. This also happened in another previous dream. I came to a place that looks like the old CCF sanctuary, which is the 4th floor of St. Francis Square. There was a private party going on, with lots of food in particular, and though I wasn't invited, I wasn't told to leave. In one corner there was a bunch of arcade games. Common stuff you see in almost all arcades like House of the Dead and Daytona USA. At the table with food, there were some old people talking and laughing. I don't remember clearly but I think one of them was telling me to eat, or it could've been that he was telling me not to eat. I just remember that I didn't eat.

Another scene. I was in some kind of spelling contest. It was actually more than a spelling contest. Was more like a vocabulary contest. It was probably influenced by my being a teacher and one of my teaching techniques. Anyway in my dream we were told to write a bunch of words that relate to certain topics (this is very similar to my teaching technique). Anyone caught being unsure of what they're writing would automatically lose. We were allowed to take breaks though, but weren't allowed to talk about our words. I remember taking a break and going to a room that looked like our kitchen in this house. I was preparing something with salt. One of the girls also in the contest started talking to me about her words. I tried not to pay too much attention because I knew it was against the rules. I didn't tell her anything about my words. We got back to the contest and nobody called her out for breaking the rules.

After that, to shift to another scene, I started driving out from the contest area on to the streets of what I'm sure was Arty Subdivision, in Valenzuela. I remember the place very well. It was nighttime and it was raining a little when we started driving. I was driving, and Abby, my sister, was with me. We stopped at the corner just outside the subdivision. There were no other vehicles on the road, but there was a roadside stand for something. Whatever was being sold was ambiguous. A policeman came up to me and asked me if I knew what was in the back of our vehicle. I suddenly remembered that we'd stowed one of our friends away there. She was asleep when we opened it up, and I woke her up. For some reason, though, she was bound and gagged. We tried to explain to the policeman that it wasn't a kidnapping. To prove our innocence, we all decided to go with him to the police precinct. We followed him on his motorcycle but he drove too fast. In a short while, we were lost and didn't know where we were going. I drove around slowly looking around in case I spot the precinct. I decided to stop in front of some building, and we all got off there.

Inside, it turned out to be the same building that had the fancy elevator. But the lobby was terribly dirty. There wasn't much emphasis on it, but I remember thinking it was dirty. The policeman was standing inside. He asked us what took us so long, and we said we didn't know where we were going. He told us the chief was waiting upstairs. I don't remember clearly what happened next, but we took the elevator up to some floor.

There was also a part with demons. It's scary, and I don't know why I had a dream about them. In my dream, there were demons of various shapes and forms walking about. I remember one of the demons being huge and muscular, akin to Balrogs in fiction. And one of the demons was shaped like a giant disembodied foot. It had wings of its own and the part where the leg bone should've been had demon horns protruding. It may not sound so threatening now, but if you saw it the way I did it was really freaky. I remember one of my friends saying that they're not hurting us because they can't (or maybe he said that the demons were waiting for something; not sure).

I also remember pointing out to somebody where I saw the shining feathers in my previous dream. I stood at the same place, only this time there were no feathers, and the sun wasn't as glaring.

That's the end. I'm feeling better today so I might not get any more freaky dreams for a while. Though I still wonder what the dreams mean, especially the last part with the demons. It was scary, since they were all inside our old house, the second house I ever lived in (the one in Caridad St., Don Pedro Village, Valenzuela).

It's important to note that whenever I see a "friend" in my dream, it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody I know. I usually don't recognize faces in my dreams. Even faces of my family and close friends, I don't usually actually recognize. I just know my mind labeling some faceless people as being "Abby" or "Mom" or "Mikko" or whatnot. So I don't really know anybody I was talking to in my dreams, except for Abby, who was the only named person in any of my dreams aside from Kronus, whom I've never met IRL yet.

My First Airsoft Games

2008-01-12T23:46:00.000+08:00

This week I went on two of my first experiences with actual airsoft games.

Last Sunday I was supposed to go with my team, Task Force Rangers, to PL2. The problem is that it's really far from our house, and I didn't have a ride. So instead of going with them, I went with my new friend Raja to D'Backyard near Shaw Blvd.

I met Raja on the FAS website, because he had a thread on WWII airsoft, which is, as I've mentioned repeatedly, the main reason I got interested in airsoft at all. He wanted to show me his Japanese Imperial Army uniform and weapon.

His stuff was pretty awesome. He was one of the highlights of the game day there for almost everybody, because it's very rare to see somebody with an "era" uniform like that, especially not a Japanese one. Especially not one with a custom-built Type 96, the Japanese machine gun of WWII.

For my first game in a field scenario, it was a lot of fun. I got one confirmed kill and only got killed once, though I admit my play style was probably a little too conservative.

Later that day, we dropped by Raja's house so that he could pass on to me [b]an authentic WWII German uniform[/b], complete with accessories. I'll discuss this thing more in detail at a later date, with pictures of me wearing it, because it's still quite dirty and smells of closet fungus or whatever (he told me it's been in his closet for a very, very long time). It requires dry-cleaning, which we haven't gotten around to yet. I was insanely happy, and I still am. I need to lose some weight to be able to wear the uniform properly (the pants are a little tight).

So our team began planning for the next game, which was supposed to be on a Saturday at PL3, in Katipunan. Everybody was excited about it this week. Unfortunately, it began raining in the early morning and it hasn't stopped raining yet at the time of this writing. The game was cancelled.

But because I'm new, and excited to get to play some more airsoft, I contacted the nearby warehouse CQB site Octozone and went over to try my hand at CQB. I already knew I would be ineffective in CQB due to my long M14, but I wasn't prepared for the utter darkness of the game site. Not only did I not have an illuminated scope, but my ironsights were also pitch black, and to make matters worse, my goggles were polycarbonate shades that fogged so often; making things even harder to see.

This CQB game gave me my first airsoft-related battlescars, and I also hurt my shoulder possibly because I didn't have enough warm up. I tried lifting my gun overhead to signify being hit, when I felt my right shoulder turn again, like how it did when I sprained it. It's important to know that I've already hurt both my shoulders in this manner. I've hurt my left shoulder about 5 or 6 times now, due to the muscles being weaker than normal after the first shoulder injury. I've hurt my right shoulder about 4 times.

Since I need to lose weight anyway, I should also do some weight lifting, especially those that work on the shoulders, so they're a little tougher. They're obviously so weak that they get injured by quickly lifting about 3.1 KG (the weight of my gun). And 3.1 KG isn't a lot.

Welcome, 2008!

2008-01-01T01:55:00.001+08:00

THE DISTANT FUTURE...
THE DISTANT FUTURE...
THE YEAR 2000...
THE DISTANT FUTURE...

I've witnessed the entrance of yet another year on this world. Can you believe it's 2008 already? It feels like it was just yesterday when everybody was abuzz with the Y2K bug. Suddenly, it's 8 years in front of that, and only two years away from a new decade. We call this 00's part "the new millenium". What'll we call the new decade, though? The 10's? Y2K.01? I honestly don't know. We might actually stop calling eras by decades by then, and just start naming the years specifically. It won't be "the early 2010's". It'll be specifically 2012.

Anyway, this year we saw less fireworks in the sky, compared to last year. Even our rich neighbors who put up a lot of pyrotechnics last year were pretty conservative this year. The best display from our nearby neighbors was one set of those colorful cannon things that shoot out low rockets that blow up into various colors. I dunno what it's called. It's slightly sadder than usual, as a result, at least to me. But the bright side is, there's probably less accidents this year too, I hope.

Thinking back on my blog entries this year, I've noticed that there are two major themes that I can draw from. The first one is thinking back, nostalgia. The second one is change.

At the start of the year I was getting nostalgic with all the old anime songs that I used to love. Put them in my playlists and many of them are in my "Super Select" playlist, which involves all the songs that I'm convinced I'll never get tired of hearing, so I can listen to them absolutely any time.

In the middle of the year, one of the biggest changes in my life was taking place, when I took up training for TESOL and EPAT, in my steps towards becoming a teacher. Later that summer solstice, I actually went on an English camp, which was my first formal teaching experience.

Towards the end of the year, a mix of both. I got hired for my first full-time job as an English teacher in U.P. Diliman for Korean students, and the nostalgia comes from the NicoNico medley, and especially 思い出は億千万 (Omoide wa Okkusenman; 110,000,000 memories).

So I'm about to start on my new job, which kinda rocks my world, taking me out of the comfort of my home for most of the week (I'll be out of the house for about 13 hours a day, Monday to Friday). I'm excited, anxious and nervous all at once. Mostly because it's a huge change. I have a three-month contract right off the bat.

My new year's resolution? I'll strive to better my patience. I need it greatly.

I pray that this year will be full of awesomeness, even more than any previous year.

Merry Christmas! 2007

2007-12-25T01:57:00.000+08:00

It's 2 AM here, December 25th, 2007, at the time of this writing. Just wanna wish everybody (that reads my blog) a Merry Christmas! :D

My First Airsoft Gun: CA M14

2007-12-16T01:38:00.000+08:00

A few days before my birthday, I don't even remember how exactly, but I randomly looked at some websites for airsofting. Within a few minutes of that, seeing how there were many model guns (as in replicas of real guns), I decided to look for WWII-style guns, particularly the Karbinier K98 and the M1 Garand. However, since they're collector's items, I was dismayed by the extreme price tags on them. So I searched for the next best thing, and found that it wasn't all too expensive!

For the next few weeks, I went on various online and on-site shopping trips, and finally found what I was looking for.

I got pics! :D

Classic Army M14 Match, still in the box + a pack of BBs I bought with it.

Looking down the ironsights is awesome. It feels awesome to hold too. Nice weight distribution. Heavy but not too cumbersome that you can't run with it.

My sister's idea to take this angle. She's into photography, though we only used a digital camera so the image quality isn't so nice. I still like it though.

A very "classy" gun, as I always describe it. The M14 is a historic rifle in military history based off another historic rifle, which is one of my favorite rifles of all time (particularly in looks), the M1 Garand. The M14 saw action in Vietnam, and is still in active service today, particularly as a designated "marksman" rifle.

I've already made a few friends in the process of my procuring this classic weapon, and I'm looking forward to the first game I get to play with it. For now, I haven't even adjusted its sights and hop-up yet, because it's friggen 2 AM. I won't go outside for a long-enough range to test its accuracy at this hour. I'll do some adjusting tomorrow, though.

What I plan to buy for the weapon soon? I'm not sure if I want to turn it into a sniper rifle. I do want to use it in semi-auto most of the time, though, because I'm more of an accuracy guy, rather than a burst/spray until something is hit. I'm considering getting a scope and a bipod, though. Oh and I'll need a sling and a gun bag.

:D :D :D

組曲「ニコニコ動画」(NicoNico Animation Medley)

2007-12-14T15:05:00.000+08:00

I have to say, this is one of the greatest contributions of the Japanese NEETs in the entire history of the great interweb. I've been listening to this song almost solely for the past four or five days. I'm in the habit of looping songs I like, and this is certainly no exception. However, this is even more special, because it's a medley of different songs that became popular in NEET circles. So it seriously doesn't get tiring. In fact, by the end part, I can't wait for the song to start over. It's awesome fun to sing along to (even if I only know about less than half of the references in this song).

Of particular note is one of my favorite parts of the song, which is the 思い出は億千万 song, somewhere around the middle. Omoide wa Okusenman, which means "110,000,000 memories", is a truly awesome song, which goes well with the theme of the entire medley. It seems to take you to some of the greatest, and maybe some of the most nostalgic, things the internet has ever spoken about, from both anime and gaming. This is including stuff ranging from Super Mario to Haruhi, from Final Fantasy to Prince of Tennis. From Megaman to AIR. lol

Additionally, the singers, a bunch of NEETs (I assume), or just plain fun-loving fans of such things and avid nicovideo.jp people, sound like they're having such a great time singing the medley. The song makes me happy listening to it, and really gets me going. Even the way it was arranged was awesome. It's so awesome that lots of people are making their own versions (just re-singing the same song with their own personal touches). There's a Haruhi version, featuring Nayuta who was also in the original medley. Nayuta is a voice-alike of Aya Hirano, the seiyuu behind Haruhi of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya & Konata of Lucky Star. Actually their voices are so similar that it's kinda scary. D:

So anyway, I don't like the idea that I'm a NEET right now (but that'll change soon since I'm getting a job; I'm already practically hired but work doesn't start until January). I don't really like being considered an otaku. But somehow I forget all of that and just enjoy myself when I listen to this song. And somehow I can even say it's fun to be a NEET/otaku.

Anyway yeah. Just thought I'd share. There's various uploaded versions of it in NicoVideo (of course), YouTube, TokyoTosho and maybe other similar torrent sites. Take your pick on which flavor you like most. :D The version I'm listening to over and over is this one (may need to register/sign-in to NicoVideo to view it; if it's too hard I'll upload the flv file somewhere, though you can probably find it on YouTube by copy-pasting the term ニコニコ動画.

SCO Going Down!

2007-12-13T11:36:00.000+08:00

This is already old news for those in the know. I actually heard of it several weeks ago. But I kept procrastinating on making a blog entry on it, and I think it's about time to post.

Space Cowboy Online (NA/English service), one of the best MMOs of today IMO, is going down. As explained in the website, Gala-Net, the company that distributes/publishes SCO in NA was ordered to shut down their service, as another publisher was given the rights to publish it in North America. I applaud GM Xarfox and the Gala-Net fight for the rights of players, though. It's too bad that nothing could be done in the end.

Although I haven't played SCO in a few months, I have to say I'm going to miss it now that I know it's going down permanently. Somehow I feel that Ace Online NA will not be the same kind of place as SCO was.

I Did Live to See 24

2007-12-05T23:55:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, during the last minutes of my being 23, I quoted lines from Coolio's old song, Gangsta's Paradise. It goes:

I'm 23 now but will I live to see 24?
The way things is goin', I don't know...

This was a legitimate question for me about 10 years ago, with the years edited of course. That time was the height of my rebellion, against school, against "the system", and against everybody. Those were dark times for me. At the time, I really didn't know what I was doing to myself, but it sure seemed like a good idea back then. Now that I'm older, and maybe a little wiser, I see now how wrong I was. I know I can't turn back time and take back any of the things I did back then, to my friends, to my schools, to my family, and to society. But I know I can make things better in the world by trying to help kids that may be facing similar problems as I did back then. And that's why I want to be a teacher.

I praise God that He's really helped me to grow. I should be really grateful that I've been plucked out from such a terrible lifestyle. I often take it for granted, but whenever I look back, I get mixed emotions and just realize how much better I'm doing now.

By God's grace, I really did live to see 24. When I started typing this entry, I was in the last minutes of my 24th birthday, and now I'm 24 + 1 day. My math may be slightly off, but that's about 8766.76 days. It's interesting to say that 24 years old is roughly 8765 days lol.

Anyway, it was a wonderful birthday. Just wonderful. We didn't do much, because I don't really like parties, but I can genuinely say that I'm truly happy. I've really been blessed, and I can feel it. I sometimes shed a tear or two whenever I think about just how much God has done for me. And I'm even happier to know that God is good to me, and always has been, and always will be, regardless of what I've done, what I do, and whatever mistakes I might make in the future. Truly, I'm unworthy of such awesome Love, but I'll gladly take it from Him!

I offer up this birthday, and the rest of this year to You, God. Thanks for allowing me to go through everything I did. May all my experiences and skills be used for the greater glory of your kingdom, even at the cost of my life. Because I owe You much more than that. I can never repay You, and I know I'll make a lot of mistakes, but I want to give my best for Your highest!

12Sky Online

2007-11-28T14:59:00.001+08:00

Yesterday, I finally got myself the installer of 12Sky Online, a game I was looking forward to some months ago. Unfortunately, it didn't quite live up to my expectations. Here's a short review on the game.

First off, the concept seemed very similar to Netgame's Hero Online. I liked Hero, except that it was fairly lonely and didn't have so many features yet, being a new game at the time I played it. So I thought maybe I'd like 12Sky too. First thing that hit me was this glaring fact: 12Sky's graphics are outdated.

Supporting screenshots:
This is me running the game at its highest possible graphics settings. Highest possible. Including their idea of shaders and lighting effects, and filter. What's with the filter anyway? It looks like a 2D game given a filter to look like a 3D game. o_O I mean, considering the technology we have these days, why does the game look like it was made for Windows 98? Why didn't they use the normal 3D engines we have in most other games? This was probably much cheaper, but it's certainly uglier.

My character, up-close. The poor graphical quality does her no justice. Notice the strange blocky blur they have, which may have been their idea of cool. o_o

The highlight of the graphical advancement is how their shaders/lighting effects work. I mean, look at how majestic that glow on the brazier is! I've never seen light so splendid and realistic in a game! You see the rings of light (for some reason). And no, it's not just because it's close up. See, the brazier in the distance has it too. Oh and the scrawny guys on the left side just standing around (literally) are the low level enemies.

On the topic of just standing around, non-aggressive enemies have some of the worst AI I've ever seen in any game. It's not that they make stupid decisions or anything. It's that they make no decisions. They literally just stand around the entire time. They spawn (by sprouting out from the ground, seriously), stand around for hours until somebody kills them, then die where they stand. They never move around. They're just... there. Even the aggressive monsters have nothing better to do than stand around until something comes close enough for them to attack. It's not all that bad, but it gives the game a feeling of being dead, if your enemies are just standing around like twigs planted into the ground, only to spring right back up in a few seconds.

Next point:
Notice "katana". Since when was a kris ever a katana? Even the way they're used is different. Even the place they're from is different. It doesn't even look anything remotely like a katana. I mean, if it were a straight or even curved sword like a thin scimitar or something, I'd have been more forgiving. Or rather, I'd be even more forgiving if not for this:

Okay... If they were planning on putting in a katana weapon, why didn't they name this one the katana instead? Could it be a translation error? I doubt it. I mean, a katana is a world-famous weapon. I'm sure even in Korea or China or wherever the heck this game was made in, they know what a katana is. Even if they didn't know what to call the kris, they should've put the name katana on the actual katana, and just named the kris "wave blade" or something obvious like that.

Also, their newbie help is the most annoying thing ever: It's nice that they have such detailed information, in case the player is completely new to this sort of thing. But that big message box on the left hand side of the screen can not be closed, can not be toggled off, and blocks off your already small view due to the non-adjustable resolution. Yeah, it can't be closed. You have to wait for it to go down in like 2 or 5 minutes or whatever.

Lastly among the bad parts, the sound effects and music; an aspect I always stress about. Counter-immersive and downright annoying at some points. Everytime some system message pops up, you hear the sound of those big war drums or something banging, and considering the frequency of such system messages... The music inexplicably stops looping sometimes, which is clearly a bug, but actually quite welcome, since the music isn't much to talk about anyway. May be best to just turn the thing off the entire game so you aren't sometimes annoyed when it decides to randomly play.

Now, to be fair, the good parts, though few as they are. I liked the game's level system. It gives huge rewards for levelling up, pretty much allowing you freedom for what kind of build you can make. You get 5 free points to distribute freely among any of the four stats, and each point increases the stat a great deal depending on your clan/class. I also liked how they promoted party play, by giving big bonuses for having 5 or more members in your party. Also, you get exp per hit on your enemies, so even if somebody kill steals from you, if you did most of the damage, you get most of the exp. It may have become a grind game, but with such things in place it may not have been that tedious in comparison with other MMORPGs (except for the ugly graphics and terrible monotonous AI).

All in all, it could've been way better. I also wish they didn't hype it up as being like some super awesome martial arts MMORPG on the website. There's barely anything about martial arts in it (especially in comparison to the superior martial arts game Hero Online). If they think having Asian weapons makes it a martial arts game, then almost every Asian-based game is a martial arts game, and almost every Asian-based game is superior to it in that.

I give the game a score of 15/100.

Oblivion: Tavern Brawl

2007-11-28T14:31:00.001+08:00

I have my Oblivion well set up now with tons of mods and settings adjustments. I have it set up to real-time (1x timescale) so I can sit back and relax when I want to, and I can spend as much time as I want to in the daytime/nighttime without much worry about missing my quests.

So, given the realistic timescale, I had the luxury of traveling around and visiting taverns. Let's just say, I was a little bored one Oblivion day, and looking for some comedy. So I saved and closed the game, set it up to open in a smaller window, and popped up my list of NPC form IDs for summoning via the console on the side.

I found myself a nice tavern in Leyawiin (I think it was Leyawiin? I don't even remember lol), locked the doors via the console, so no one comes in, no one goes out. With tweaks to their HP (giving them each 65535 hp, though you really can give them more than that), I started a tavern brawl, as seen below:

At first it was just me and the innkeeper punching each other, while the other NPCs just watched in horror. That alone was already funny. But I felt it would be funnier if somebody else knocked the innkeeper at the back of the head while we were fighting, like you often see in mindless bar fights in movies. So I popped in a few more NPCs. Random ones. As you see in the image, there's three Argonians, there's a Fallen Knight of the Thorn, a Genghis (never even run into one in the game yet), and a bandit. The innkeeper might be one of the Argonians. The bald dude on the right and the other Argonians were probably the others in the bar when it started.

So anyway, the NPCs started rumbling, and I had nobody to fight, suddenly. So I stood back and took that screenshot, laughing along the way. Though I did feel rather lonely since they completely ignored me.

So I decided it's time to add more NPCs!

Into the fray, I tossed in a nun (a Sister Phebe Jeanard; top middle), another bandit and some random NPC (both not seen in this screenshot, or any other screenshot). It was pretty chaotic, and I regret not taking more screenshots, especially in flying camera mode.

So finally in the chaos, whilst I still laughed, I decided to toss in a guard. Surely, a man of the law could break up this insanity!

(Unfortunately I had no screenshot of after I summoned him.)

Instead of bringing peace to this insane tavern, the guard jumped right in and started attacking the nun. Of all the people lol. After about 20 minutes of me watching the whole mess, sitting back, I checked on their HPs, and nobody even had any HP lower than 55,000 yet. Wow they did slow damage lol. I guess they were more in it for the thrill of the fight rather than just putting their enemies down.

So yeah, after that big brawl, I reloaded and went about my way content.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

2007-11-19T14:37:00.000+08:00

Several years ago, an insanely popular game called Morrowind hit the markets, and pretty much everybody I knew that was into PC games, especially RPGs, was raving about it, except me. I never got to play it. I didn't even have a computer good enough (at the time) to play it.

Suddenly I find myself with the new Elder Scrolls game called Oblivion. And I can safely say that I really missed out. Oblivion is so much fun, and yet some people say that Morrowind was better in some aspects. Though I don't intend on playing Morrowind soon, I'm still enjoying myself in Oblivion. This is a true open-ended RPG, and especially with the addition of the right mods, you can do almost anything you want.

I can't explain too much of what makes it fun, except that it's pretty much a fantasy world where you can do stuff you wouldn't dare or are otherwise impossible in real life. Want to go into a dark, watery cave and fight goblins? Go ahead. Want to run into a pack of bandits on a dark forest trail and single-handedly take them all down? Sure! Want to go hunting for deer or bears with a bow and arrow? What's stopping you?

I'll probably be playing this game for a long time until I'm able to get a lifetime subscription to LotR Online or something.

Wacom

2007-11-19T14:19:00.000+08:00

Abby just got home last Friday from Hong Kong, and with her, she brought hom a 6x8 Wacom tablet. She doesn't bring it to work, so while she's out, I get to use it. And it's fun. Lots of fun. Takes a lot of getting used to, though. Right now I'm still learning to use the stroke pressure properly, and to continue my strokes. I'm too used to a mouse for on-screen drawings. I also have to learn to stop repeated stroking like I do with a pencil, because it doesn't look so good when you draw outlines directly. You can clean it up with the eraser, but it takes too much time to do that.

I'll see if I can draw a decent front-view face by the end of the day.

真・三国無双５

2007-11-10T20:44:00.000+08:00

PS3を買う理由があれば、このゲームだよ。「真・三国無双５」

キャラデサインはニコニコに見えた。超カッコいいなんだ！

Really, if there's any reason for me to get a PS3, this is absolutely it. The creators of the wonderful action fighting game Dynasty Warriors have redesigned pretty much every character in Shin Sangoku Musou 5, and some characters in more ways than others. I found a video that shows pages from the artbook for the game, and I have to say everybody's changed. Some characters even had their weapons and overall appearance change, for the first time in the entire history of the game.

Here's some examples, screenshots from the video itself:

First thing I saw was a red-haired chick with a really sexy costume. Then I noticed the bow. I nodded and said, this looks like an awesome character. Then I saw the 月英. That's right, it's Yue Ying. If I were drinking something at the moment, I'm pretty sure I would've spit it out at my monitor. Yue Ying was already cool in all the previous games. Her redesign is bringing out mixed feelings for me. First off, obviously I'm even more turned on by her now. But I'm really going to miss her scythe-wielding former self. :( I wonder what this archer-based new style will be like. By the way, if anybody asks, I am Zhuge Liang, her husband.

This is Sun Jian. In previous games, I really couldn't see him as being the head of the Sun family. He just didn't look big and commanding enough. He didn't even look old enough. He looked to be only about 10 years older than his sons and daughter, much compliment to him, but unrealistic. According to the story he's supposed to be an old general by the time his children take over for him. And I really see that now with his re-design. He looks like a respectable old general, without being so old that he looks like some geezer. Also of note is that now he's wielding a Chinese wide-blade sword. I wonder if this means a change in his fighting style, too?

Wei Yan. One of my favorites from Dynasty Warriors 4. He was cool in many aspects, but he's even more cool now. He used to look like some kind of barbaric warrior who wants nothing more than fight. Now he looks like a barbaric warrior who wants nothing more than fight BUT at the same time, he looks so badass. And look at that weapon! I wonder how he plays.

Oh man I want a PS3 so badly now. At the very least, I need to get my hands on this artbook...

Neverwinter Nights 2

2007-11-08T23:01:00.000+08:00

First off, NWN2 is very interesting. I have the expansion with me, but I figure I'll finish the main game story first before I play the expansion.

So I picked an elven monk as my main character. I actually started with a rogue, and tried a bunch of other classes, too. But the elven monk was so interesting as I kept playing that I stuck with it, and now it's the only one that's progressed enough.

So anyway, first off, NWN2 wasn't really what I expected. I have to say at first I found it to be rather boring and somewhat annoying. I was a little frustrated and lonely because I got too used to MMORPGs where you have a lot of buttons to press while fighting. NWN2, being a D&D game, relies more on passive effects and luck (dice rolls, after all). You don't actively dodge that trap, you have reflex saves for that. I mean, there's definitely buttons to press in D&D, especially if you choose classes that have micromanagement, such as warlock or even druids. But, it's still not the same as MMORPGs, in a way that I can't seem to properly explain through words. I guess it's just that you don't feel much of the combat action here in NWN, like you're just watching two ants fighting each other...

... That is, until you get the more awesome equipment in the game. When I got my hands on some of those unidentified things I found in some dungeons, I wasn't sure if I wanted to have them identified. I was very poor, after all, only having something like 400-something gold due to my neutral lawful alignment. So I decided to save the game and have 1 or 2 items identified, for 100 gold each. Lo and behold some of them turned out to be pretty valuable. Amongst some of the items I got were a hammer called Storm +1 and other elemental equipment, which do extra damage and have flashy effects.

Suddenly battles became more interesting. And it's not really just because of the flashy effects and stuff. I'm an oldschool RPGer, and I used to play pen & paper and chat RPGs where you actually have character sheets and have to roll dice and stuff. But I never really appreciated the value of equipping the right items in such a thing until I saw how effective the Storm +1 was against all those undeads. So suddenly I'm excited to collect different kinds of equipment for different occasions, and I want to see all of that pre-battle preparation work out.

All in all, so far, despite quite a few bugs, I'm really happy with NWN2. Is there room for improvement? Lots. But it's still fun. I can't wait to finish the story and see just how open-ended it really is.

No rating yet until I get to try out some more stuff.

Lotsa Stuff

2007-11-05T21:42:00.000+08:00

Okay first off, Abby, my beloved sister, is in Hong Kong now on a business trip. Because of that, we ended up buying a bunch of stuff for the PC, including a webcam and a mic. And I also bought for myself a PS2-style gamepad. I'm pretty happy about all these little upgrades to my PC. :D I was thinking of buying a new keyboard to make the whole thing look cool, but I couldn't find a good keyboard that wasn't expensive. At least, I didn't look too hard, cuz I might find something I really like and find out it's really expensive or something. o_o

So anyway, because of the new gamepad, I've been looking around for games that I already have that can use it. Currently it's just Madden NFL '08, which plays awesomely better with a gamepad (heck even my punting/kicking is lots more accurate), and Dynasty Warriors 4.

In other news, I also finally started playing Neverwinter Nights 2. It's a pretty cool game. I'm enjoying it a lot, but it's hard to get the hang of it because I'm too used to MMORPGs. For example, I'm not used to reading it like a MUD/oldschool tabletop RPG, where you're talking about die rolls instead of percentages, and waiting for your turn to happen instead of just attacking whenever you can.

Anyway I'm thinking of getting a flight sim or something to make use of the gamepad's sticks. I feel like some of its features are wasted on fighting games and Madden. I bet even a driving game would benefit from the subtleness of the control sticks.

MABINOGI

2007-10-28T22:09:00.000+08:00

As an avid MMOGer, I have to report this. Mabinogi, a Korean game popular in Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China, is apparently releasing an English version soon (the Korean website reports "late 2007"). I'm looking forward to it. Mabinogi has some very interesting features that I've been looking for in games, especially what Micko calls "mundane" activities, such as farming and tailoring.

Though I don't know much else about the game other than that it has an interesting battle system (which can be turned off, but I'll try it at least), I'm still looking forward to it greatly.

Madden NFL 2008

2007-10-24T15:52:00.000+08:00

Well I finally got my hands on a Madden game, and it's the latest one at that. As far as I know, Madden is the best in the NFL video game business, and has been since the old days of 16-bit graphics. So I was pretty excited about getting this game.

And with good reason. Almost everything is done so well. Graphics are nice, plays are pretty good, and when you're playing you really have to pay attention to the smallest things, which makes American football the great game that it is (unlike in some other games where you only have to pay attention to whoever has the ball). You get points for being a good blocker, or if you're on defense, even putting pressure on the quarterback even if you don't get a sack or anything. That's awesome because it makes you really feel the gravity of all your hard work fighting through the offensive linesmen so you could put a hand in that quarterback's face or make him pass just a split second earlier than he wanted to. These things are priceless in real games, but you never really felt it much in video games, until now.

I only have two major things that I didn't like too much about it and that's it. My first complaint is that, considering it's John Madden, he's not very talkative at all. What he does have is a lot of repetitive lines, especially if the same things happen over and over. And honestly, in a football game you probably want to stick with like 8-10 plays on offense and only a few kinds of plays on defense, like 2 plays for each type of cover/blitz, so that means Madden says the same things a lot. I was actually expecting to hear more exciting commentary, even if it's just the trademarked Madden pointing-out-obvious-stuff. Additionally there are long stretches at times when he doesn't say anything at all. It feels empty really.

The other concern I have is that the game didn't translate too well into keyboard/keyboard+mouse control. The game probably plays extremely well when using controllers (especially PS2 style, with the non-analog sticks and stuff). But when you're using a keyboard+mouse set-up, for example, there are some things you just can't do. For example, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to perform a juke move in keyboard/keyboard+mouse control. If you're using a controller with a stick, you simply flick the stick to the direction and that's it. When you're using keyboard+mouse, it's supposed to be hold left mouse button + move it left, but nothing happens. I feel like I need to buy a controller now, as a result.

Otherwise it's an awesome game. Lots of fun modes including setting up situations, for practice etc.

My rating: 90/100 (one of the best sports games I've ever played)

MMORPG News

2007-10-14T19:54:00.000+08:00

Asda Story is up with its open beta testing phase, and I've had the privilege of getting to play for several hours on two different classes. So I'll be writing a mini-review on it in this post. Also, I got to try Fiesta Story a few days ago as well, and they're also in beta testing phase. I'll discuss it very shortly later on.

Despite some initial bugs with the launcher/patcher window and server channel selection (both now fixed with a patch last night), the game seems to run smoothly. Even the server is pretty good. I haven't seen the channels being completely full yet, though. Americans are complaining about lag, but I don't notice it at all. I don't know where the server is situated (probably Korea, dunno).

Anyway the game's graphics are cute. Bright colors and a lovely design. Music is pretty nice, too, except that their bgms are so short that you really notice their looping. But the sounds aren't very good (yet?). They have some of the worst weapon swing/hit sounds I've ever heard in any MMORPG.

Attack speeds are fast by default, which makes the weapon swing/hit sounds even more annoying. You don't feel any impact at all as you attack or when you get hit, (except with some skills, that really look like they shake the enemies up). So you really have to pay attention to the numbers/miss messages popping out of you or the enemy to see if you any damage is being exchanged. I guess better sound effects could've helped cured this problem.

Their quest design is very good, though. Having small level-specific maps helps much with this, and after you're done with all the quests for the map, you're probably overlevelled for the place by then, and so you get to move on to the next map. For the duration of your stay in the map, which isn't very big, they send you to NPCs that are located near or on the way to other NPCs that might give you more quests. And the quests usually have targets in similar areas, so you could grab all your quests from town, go to the quest target location, do all of them, then go back to town, usually levelling you up so that you can get more quests and repeat the cycle. Because the system is so good, questing never seems tedious, and is definitely faster than just regular grinding.

Skill system is awesome too. There are three classes to choose from, with three specializations per class. Warriors can use 1h sword + shield, 2h sword or spears, archers can use bows, crossbows or "ballista", which look like big machine guns or hand cannons, and mages get 3 elements (or more, I never tried them). As you level up with a particular class, you get skill points that you can distribute any way you want among any specialization for your class. You can put them purely into your own specialization, but it's probably a good idea to get some of the most useful skills that can be used with any weapon. For example, there are ballista skills that can be used even if you're using a crossbow. In fact, there's a ballista passive skill that increases the damage of your crossbow-specific nuke attack by 50%. The only question is your timing for getting each skill.

Sowel system is a success. This system allows you to wear whatever you want, while your equipment's defense and attack powers are determined by the sowels you put into them. This being said, I wish the equipment you start off with had sockets for the sowels, so you're not forced to have to find one from monsters or buy one from players or NPCs.

Soulmate system is pretty new and I can't post much on it yet. To test it, I had two of my characters become soulmates of each other, so I naturally can't play with them both at the same time. I was mistaken about my original assumption that you can have soulmates following you around like pets when they're not logged on. What it really does is that you can log in as your soulmate to level it up for them while they're offline. You just can't edit anything like their equipment or their skills. But they'll be getting the exp. I'll post more info as I get more soulmate levels.

All in all, it's a cute game so far. Although it's almost pure hack & slash with nothing else to do, a few bugs, poor sounds, etc., it's still fun. It's worth playing at least now and then, if you can find time to get on at the same time with your soulmate particularly.

I give it a score of: 72/100

Fiesta Online, on the other hand, was far too laggy to get to test properly. It's too bad, because it had wonderful graphics and very nice BGM and sounds. The BGM made me feel like how I did when I was just starting to play RO several years ago. Because of the lag, I couldn't stand staying, so I didn't continue.

最燃２００７　ファイナル (SaiMoe 2007 Finals)

2007-10-14T00:24:00.000+08:00

Somebody on 4chan made this wonderful poster with updates on SaiMoe 2007. Just click to enlarge, because it's pretty big if it weren't thumbnailed.

Much to my shame, the only pair I don't know about is the match-up in D block. Thusly, I have my votes listed up as follows:

A: Nagi
B: Konata
C: Vita
D: ??? (will probably vote for Yuno, since I'm told she's really moe)
E: Ayumu
F: Tsukasa
G: Sayuri
H: Suigintou

First match starts on Tuesday. Please vote responsibly. D:

P.S.: To clarify, I don't visit 4chan regularly, but my friend does, and he gave me the link to that image.

Frets on Fire

2007-10-13T02:42:00.000+08:00

I started playing a fun guitar-based rhythm game called Frets on Fire. It's designed to be played by picking up your keyboard (like a guitar). Ideally you'll want to press the Function keys (F1-F5 by default, but I changed it so I press F5-F9 instead), and hit a pick key (Enter/Shift by default, but I changed it to the numpad 0 and numpad 7).

The game only starts out with three songs, but you can download a lot of songs on various fan sites, or make some yourself. It's a lot of fun, and it's a good excuse to listen to some of the classics of guitar history, such as Sweet Child of Mine, which is my current LSS. I'm also looking for more Deep Purple songs.

アニメ最萌トーナメント２００７

2007-10-09T09:29:00.000+08:00

Currently on-going is the 2007 SaiMoe Tournament. For those who have never heard of it, it's a tournament that pits "moe" characters (simply put, pretty female characters, though the Japanese dictionary refers to it as somebody you can be infatuated with) from various current and recent anime against each other in a battle of popularity. The battle is decided by votes from fans. It's a serious tournament with very strict rules. Anime moe = serious business. D:

Anyway the latest results as of right now pits Shana from Shakugan no Shana against Sanzen'in Nagi from Hayate no Gotoku, in the finals for the A block (there are 8 blocks, A-H). Ironically, both are voiced by the same actress. I was afraid this match-up would come, when I saw Nagi in the list of semi-finalists on the right side of A block. I personally like Nagi. She's one of my favorite characters in Hayate no Gotoku. She's my favorite female character (so far) anyway. Though I'm worried that she might lose because a lot of people certainly like Shana, as Shana has her own following. I've never heard of Nagi fanboys, like a Nagi imageboard or something, while Shana has a few. But I guess we'll leave it up to the voters. :D

Another current match-up that has not yet been decided is Eruruu (Utawarerumono) versus Sayuri (Kanon), which is also a tough battle. Meanwhile Kagami from Lucky Star lost to Rena from Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni in D block, while Konata, also of Lucky Star, defeated Isumi of Hayate no Gotoku to move on to the finals in B block.

EPIC BATTLE IS EPIC

Hayate no Gotoku

2007-10-08T01:13:00.000+08:00

FIRST OFF, sit back and relax. :D I'll be talking about the Hayate no Gotoku fansub by Eclipse/Static-Subs that came out last week. I should've done this last week, but I kept putting it off because I was lazy to resize the images. So here we go! Oh yeah, as usual with my anime posts, spoiler warning. :D

Hayate no Gotoku has just entered the second half of the series. This includes a new opening and ending theme, a couple of new characters, and an introduction into a new flow of the story.

lol Nagi not even knowing she could do that. o_o I lol'ed at this scene so much.

Hmm... Pretty but unnamed member of their student council on the right. :D

A much awaited appearance from Hinagiku. I liked her already the first time she came out, but seeing her in this costume, and as a fighter no less, was a very pleasant treat.
Man that's sexy... Hinagiku kicking the crap out of whatsisname... that other butler guy with the Safety Shutter move.

A great way to kick off the second half! The appearance of new characters (as seen below) is a welcome addition, as they are both funny and interesting considering the current flow of the anime (both are fighters, even if Kuzuha is the superintendent of the school, and Shion is her butler).

Kuzuha. o_o; Apparently possesses the extreme strength, but easily consumes her fuel. She needs to eat sweets to recharge.
Shion. A frighteningly skillful butler. Though... I still don't know what being a butler has to do with fighting. :D

And let's not forget that other Sanzen'in butler, Klaus! Man he's one of my favorite characters no doubt, because of his random and often meaningless appearances in the show. Oh wait, we're not supposed to know yet that this is Klaus. Neither Nagi nor Hayate recognize him. So yeah, let's not forget that masked guy with the masked white tiger! D:
The crisis of the masked guy, Unauthorized K!

I'm getting excited for the next episodes. Hayate was always cool, but with all this new stuff going on, it became even more entertaining to watch, if you ask me.

New MMOs

2007-10-05T14:29:00.000+08:00

There's a couple of new games I'm looking forward to. One is Asda Online (sounds like a gibberish name you type when you can't think of anything o_o), and the other is TwelveSKY Online.

TwelveSKY Online began operation supposedly on October 1st. They boast of its being a martial arts game, where you have different martial arts from various Asian cultures. But the website isn't complete yet, and there isn't much information regarding just how good this system would be. I'm thinking it might end up being something like Hero Online, based on the class system, where you can choose any of the three weapons per class, and your stance and skills is based on your weapon. While I didn't like Hero's system too much because it forced you into cookie-cutter skill builds, one thing that could make this system interesting is freedom of choosing what skills to get. So even if a lot of people have the same class and weapon, their choice of what skills they picked would provide for variety, and still make the game interesting.

I'll wait for more information to be posted on the website before downloading and trying this game. If it's just like Hero, there's no reason to play it, really.

Meanwhile, Asda Online, set to begin international operation in mid-October, sounds like a perfectly interesting game. The key feature that really caught my attention is what they call a Sowel system. The Sowel is short for "Sword" and "Jewel". It's not very clever, but the name isn't as important as what it does. The Sowel system basically allows you to wear anything you want. At character creation, you're immediately given an option to customize even your clothing. From my understanding, the Sowels are what you use to strengthen and upgrade your equipment. Every equippable item has 4 slots for Sowels, and you can attach and detach them whenever you want. So if you have a dagger that you want to have high damage, put in your 4 damage Sowels. If you suddenly decide you want to use the same dagger to help you cast more powerful magic, put in your magic attack Sowels. It's pretty interesting, because it means you really can wear whatever you want. Any armor, any weapon. And from the looks of things, you can play any class at any time. Just that advancing in skill points at a particular class will be harder if you keep switching.

I'm really looking forward to Asda Online. It looks like a game where you can just run around and cut monsters down, and have fun dressing your character up heheh.

Quitting SCO Finally

2007-10-05T14:12:00.000+08:00

Well it's been several months (about 10 I think) since I started playing Space Cowboy Online. It's not a terribly long time, when you think about it, especially since I had several weeks of break sometime around July/August. But I finally got tired of the game.

To be honest, it's not even the game itself that got to me. Sure it was a slow grind game, but the wars were fun, and blasting things out of the sky was also fun. I was having a problem with the entire gaming experience, though, including, but not limited to, relationships with the community, as I explain in detail in this thread on the SCO forums.

So I guess this is goodbye to SCO. If I ever come back, it'll be in a long time. But I'm hoping I don't ever get the urge to come back. I didn't have the time for such a grind game anyway.

Reminiscing About Megumi Hayashibara

2007-10-03T23:14:00.001+08:00

Do you remember the day when Megumi Hayashibara was in like every popular anime? She was possibly the most popular seiyuu in the late 80's and throughout the 90's. I just suddenly thought about it that I don't hear her name as much as I used to like 10 years ago, just as my playlist passed by Successful Mission, a song she sung for the soundtrack of Saber Marionette J. It's very nostalgic. Very oldschool, and dare I say, timeless. She was so popular to me in the 90's that I can't even think of any other seiyuu's name right now off the top of my head of a similar status.

Megumi Hayashibara still works as a seiyuu. She's in some anime here and there, and sings songs here and there. But not in any of the super popular ones (save for the Evangelion 2007 remake).

So who's the new Megumi Hayashibara of this generation? There are a lot of new seiyuus, many of which are very popular, especially because of appearing in some of the top-rated anime. Some of the names that instantly come to mind of this generation are Aya Hirano, Rie Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya. But I can't say any of them are as heavy an influence on anime as Megumi Hayashibara once was.

I dunno, I guess I just like to ramble about stuff like this because I'm old enough to remember the late 80's and early 90's, and a lot of the titles that came out and became popular at that time. o_o Yay age.

Michael Quest

2007-10-02T09:29:00.000+08:00

I stumbled on this random little Flash video here.

CLICK HERE FOR MICHAEL QUEST.

It's fun. :) I lol'ed.

Smart BRO Wi-Fi Internet

2007-09-29T23:27:00.000+08:00

We've "upgraded", if you could call it that. to a new internet service. We're on wi-fi now, and I'm surprised with the result. At first, when I signed up for Smart BRO, I'll admit I didn't know what kind of broadband they were selling. I honestly thought it was another DSL service. I didn't know it'd be wi-fi until they set it up.

Now having never been on a wi-fi connection before, I didn't know what to expect. First off, they advertised 384 kbps speed on the website, which is what enticed me to sign up. It'd be a step-up from our previous DSL connection of 256 kbps, and at about PhP500 less cost. But when we got the connection up, apparently it fluctuates. And it's not like cable internet fluctuation, where there are peak hours etc. It's more like, one second, you're going 46 KB/sec downloads, next second you're at 12 KB/sec, then back up to 35 KB, down to 20 KB, then 55 KB... It's unstable and when you ping some servers you sometimes get a time out.

It's even more unstable now because of the rainy weather, apparently. But it's supposedly pretty stable normally. So we'll wait for sunny weather to see.

However, on average I think it does go faster than our old connection. I tested it a little with online games and it was somewhat laggy (lag spikes, in particular), but that was earlier this morning when it was raining hard. I'll test it more later. But I think lag spikes will be my problem ultimately...

In other words, this sort of connection isn't ideal for gaming. D:

Lineage II Verdict

2007-09-27T16:14:00.000+08:00

In the end, I quickly lost interest in Lineage ][. Why? It's very easy to see why Lineage is ranked as one of the hardest, most monotonous grind games in the online gaming market today. After playing around with the private server, a character that's level 70 with normal attainable equipment and skills can only go around level 5x areas for efficient exp, because the level 70 monsters are way too hard. And healing skills are terrible. So even with a large party it'd still mean some of you will die very often, especially the less-defensive classes. Heck even the offensive skills aren't very damaging.

Here's an example. I was running around with my GM character in the Ketra Orc Fortress, which is supposedly a level 75-85 area. My GM is level 80 with all S-grade equipment upgraded to +100 each (you can't even get +100 equipment in real servers). I still couldn't solo the place without dying. I tried using +30 equipment in a level 70 area and it was still hard. It took ages to kill a single monster, and if you take ages to do that in an aggressive area, you could end up with 5-10 monsters all attacking you at the same time, which means death.

So with a party, I could probably handle the level 70 area alright at level 80. And the killer of exp in this game is that the higher your level in comparison to the monster's, you get greatly less exp as well. That's why it's so hard to grind in this game.

It disappoints me a little. For a game with beautiful graphics, it sure lacks the oomph and excitement of fighting. I guess it's because I got carried by the trailer videos of this pretty elf destroying a bunch of wolves and such. I actually thought fighting would be like that.

If you ask me, I prefer higher damage areas with monsters that die quickly. It means you could die quickly too, but fighting will be fast-paced and action-packed. And in that case, healers are much more useful and necessary in fact (unlike getting a heal of like 800 HP with a long cooldown time when your max HP is like 6K in the current set-up of Lineage).

To conclude, without GM powers, Lineage isn't nearly as enjoyable as I'd hoped.

Oldsk00l

2007-09-26T13:20:00.000+08:00

Been getting a buncha breakbeats and oldschool hip hop music recently. I'm trying to get back into b-boying, especially since I've been gaining weight recently. D: I realized that because I don't break anymore, I've lost my one source of exercise, so even if my diet didn't necessarily change so much, I don't burn any of the excess calories.

So yeah, health talk aside, I downloaded a bunch of songs, and this 44 minute mix of a bunch of songs. I'm looking for more.

Among those I downloaded, which happen to be some of my favorite songs these days:

Lords of the Underground - Chief Rocka
A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario
Redman - Time 4 Sum Aksion

New Old Games

2007-09-22T01:35:00.000+08:00

Last Wednesday I got a copy of Battlefield 2 and its expansion, Battlefield 2: Special Forces. After patching it to its latest version (for co-op mode) I found that this is like several times better than Battlefield 1942, which was already an awesome game that I could play it for hours and hours. And today I just got Need for Speed: Carbon.

Silly me for thinking that I have no time for more offline games. I mean, I still play Dynasty Warriors 4, we just got the old Day of Defeat beta 3.1 working again, and I'm also running my offline private server of Lineage 2 (and Frank got to play on it a bit last night). And even with that, I still semi-actively play the online game Space Cowboy Online, which is the only online game I've been reduced to as of now. I mean, surely I should have no more time for more offline games, right?

Wrong. Sadly.

What makes it sad is that I can't give myself more play time. I think I already play too much as it is. If anything I should be cutting down on play time. So the only reasonable solution is cutting the play time for each and spreading myself thin. So I'm left hanging and clambering for more whenever I play, especially the new games.

Now, you may be thinking: why is this guy just now talking about these games that came out like 1-2 years ago? Well until about July, I was only into online games. Particularly MMORPGs. I have several blog entries on how frustrated I am that I can't find a MMORPG that suits my tastes to at least 50%. And even if I do find one, it turns out to being a game I don't enjoy too much because it forces you to spend like 16 hours a day playing (possible when you're a bum, impossible when you're trying to prove you aren't one).

So let me talk just a little bit about both games right now. Let's start with Battlefield 2 and its expansion.

First I was stunned by all the new features. Grappling hooks, sensible medics, wonderful A.I. including squad-based tactics, and well-built maps with lots and lots of places to hide, and alternate routes to go so that you aren't forced into a big firefight all the time.

Second, it's visually stunning. I mean that. If you play with a headset (it has nice audio, as always) and a nice monitor + a machine able to handle high graphical settings, it can almost blur into reality at a squint, like you're watching a movie. The feel of lying helpless after you've been incapacitated by bullets, calling for a medic. You still hear bullets ricocheting nearby, and some whizzing above you. A grenade goes off somewhere in the distance. Suddenly a medic shows up and picks you up. You realize you're not dead yet, as your vest stopped the bullets. So you get back in the action. Seconds later, your medic is shot in the head, and you end up having to fire on 5 or 6 infantry including one sniper. If you weren't dead yet then, you probably will be now.

They captured all that properly.

Next, Need for Speed: Carbon. I was already a fan of NfS: Underground 2, and I'd missed out on playing NfS: Most Wanted. So when I learned that Carbon is even more terrifying than the other two, I felt obliged to play it.

And the wait has paid off. I'd just finished playing it for about an hour, before writing this entry. And it was awesome. Motion blur makes it feel a little realistic, though I couldn't say for sure because I've never driven a car at over 90 km/h. Not that I could even if I wanted to, in this urban traffic scene.

So anyway, as much as I didn't like the idea of being an underground racer having to always keep an eye out for the cops (who incidentally do chase you and try to take you down), my first car chase with cops on my tail (or second, rather, as when you start the game, you're forced to get into an easy cop chase) turned out to be extremely exhilarating. Considering how rusty I am on playing a high-speed racing game, I hadn't gotten completely accustomed yet to driving, so trying to get away from like 5 squad cars proved to be a bit of a problem. Finally after I think 15 minutes of chasing and causing their cars to crash into walls and stuff, I got away and hid in a parking lot. When it was over, my heart was beating and I was almost laughing. It was a pretty good experience.

Contrary to what people might think, though, it doesn't inspire me to become an underground racer and break traffic rules and want to total police cars. In fact, after that experience, it did the opposite. I want to be careful and never ever have to get in such a situation in real life. D: I guess if I want the excitement of the chase, I can always get it in the game. Cheaper, and nobody gets hurt. :D

Lineage ][

2007-09-19T13:06:00.000+08:00

I've been eyeing this game Lineage ][ since I first heard about it a few years ago (I guess around the time Chronicle 1 came out). And on a whim from a sudden suggestion by my friend Frank, I decided to put up my own private server for Lineage ][.

Now take note, unlike in Ragnarok Online before, where some servers used leaked/hacked official server software for running the game (though eAthena and other server emulators are legal), Lineage ][ has effective server emulators that are perfectly legal under the GNU license. The condition of this legality being that we're not allowed to hack or modify anything in the client. So we can't have super stats, we can't have new custom items or model edits, no nothing. All we can do is modify server-side stuff, like monster spawns, drop rates, etc.

That legal stuff out of the way, I'm working on my super high rate server (65535x everything rates). Why such high rates? Because it's not going to be a 24/7 server. It's not even going to be a big server. Just me and a few friends, like Frank and Micko. We'll dress up our characters, then go to the beefed up dungeons and fight monsters with just us. Yeah I'm boosting the spawn rates in dungeons to make it insane.

So far so good. It's fun. It took a while to get the server set up, because it's in a language that I don't understand (MySQL). When I read on the website that it was Java-based, I thought I could handle it because I'm familiar with Java. But little did I know that while it runs on Java, all scripting and editable databases are in MySQL.

Right now I've been able to, with much trouble, figure out how to make my own custom NPCs and monsters. So that's what I'm doing now.

Anyway yeah, I'll continue fixing up my server later.

らき☆すた (Lucky Star) EP 24 END

2007-09-19T11:05:00.000+08:00

Warning! If you'd ever thought of Lucky Star as being something that could be spoiled, there's a considerable amount of spoilers in both text and screenshot form up ahead. Just saying.

It's all over! D: I've finally watched the last episode of Lucky Star. Since around episode 15 or so I was wondering how they were going to end such an epic series. I guess now I have my unexpected answer.

Kogami Akira finally makes her appearance in the main show. Hooray for her. :)

Also of note is that the teacher in the middle, Sakuraba is hilarious. Voiced by Yuki Matsuoka, the voice behind Osaka of Azumanga Daioh and Tsuruya of Haruhi. She sounds so bored that she forgets to be polite considering that Akira is an idol. And she tries to fix it by adding polite words at the end of her sentences.

Examples:
1.　はぁい桜庭だ．．．です。

2.　後は基本的に白石に任せるので、何かあったら言い付けろう．．．ってください。

最後のらっき☆ちゃねる ( ¯Д¯)/

The last Lucky Channel! D: Could it be the last Lucky Channel ever?! Sad that Minoru and Akira aren't friends yet, but I guess that's what made them funny the last few episodes, as seen below:

D: D: D:

Seconded.

You know, Kagami used to be my favorite among all the characters, but as the show went on, the other characters started to grow on me too, so while I still like Kagami, I ended up liking everybody else as well.

Yay Hiyori. :D Certainly one of my favorite characters.

... lol

Costumes + Everybody look familiar? You actually see this coming as soon as the 4th scene where Patty suggests a cheering thing for the school festival. Now that we've seen the entirety of the dance, can we expect to see even more　「もってけ！セーラー服」　choreographies and parodies floating around? I'm pretty sure Kyoto Animation was going for a 2007 version of the famous 晴れ晴れ dance they popularized in Haruhi.

And the final scene of the main show. Like I said, I'd long wondered how they were to end such a series. In slice-of-life and friendship anime like this, they usually end it either with a graduation episode or some other big event where they realize that they enjoy each other's company, and they're going to miss stuff when it's over.

That being said, the school festival is the big event, and Kagami's tsundere makes the mix. But I certainly wasn't expecting the final curtain for the show to be a curtain raising.

After that scene, and Shiraishi's usual funny singing at the end of the episode, I was actually hoping for something else to happen. But nothing. So I guess it's goodbye to the girls of Lucky Star. I'll see them again on the great interweb, on imageboards and blogs and other things, or when I replay episodes now and then.

さらば、らき☆すた

Music Tests

2007-09-10T21:26:00.000+08:00

Here's the link to a music test on Bored.com.

My results were:

1.65 Hz Pitch Accuracy
72% Rhythm Accuracy
88% Tone Accuracy

To put it in perspective, the average for Pitch Accuracy is around 5 Hz. This is probably their best test for a musician as myself.

The Rhythm deafness test wasn't what I expected. I thought they were going to test our ability to count beats like a metronome. Like two samplings, and pick which is faster or out of rhythm. Turns out it's just differentiating between drum lines. I think I would've done much better in a metronome test.

Tone Accuracy is really easy when you're not tone deaf. Though I'm not sure where I made a mistake (I got 22 out of 25 answers right for 88%).

If you're curious, no I'm not really bored and taking random tests (though the nerd test yesterday was borderline on that). I really was curious to see just how accurate I am, considering I'm a musician.

NerdTests.com

2007-09-09T22:16:00.000+08:00

Well, out of randomness I took this test as the link was given to me by my sister. Unfortunately they didn't have any questions on the things I am nerdy about (mostly particular games and World War II), so I ended up becoming a Cool Non-Nerd. Or does the fact that my nerdiness is concentrated on just some things count for my being a Cool Non-Nerd? Then again, some of their questions were very specific to specific kinds of nerds, like the debate of which superhero is best, and particular novelist I've never heard of, etc. I dunno.

Professional Life?

2007-09-09T21:15:00.000+08:00

Sad. Well I've been looking for a job recently and though I got accepted to what sounded like an awesome job, it turns out it's not what I was looking for. In fact, I'm not the man they're looking for either, although I did get accepted and I'm supposed to begin job training tomorrow. I should've said something right then and there, but I was worried about what mom might think, like she might think I'm being impractical or too picky.

But after thinking it over the weekend, I decided it's not a good idea to go through with a job where I'm pretty sure I won't be happy. I'll attend the assessment tomorrow, just to be sure, but I'm pretty sure nothing good will happen. So at the end (or in the middle) I'm going to jump out while giving them a good exit.

So I've begun my search for another job too. Miracel suggested a job in FEU, and also a job at the Edulynx call center. There's also a job that'll open up in October, which is for online teaching for Chinese students. They all sound good (well the call center job doesn't sound too good, but I don't know the details so I can't say for sure). I'll work on contacting people about them all.

Back in Space Cowboy Online

2007-09-04T14:49:00.000+08:00

After about four months of absence, I'm back playing SCO. It's as fun as ever, but now I have my new souped-up computer to enjoy the graphics and flying around without lag.

There were some problems at the end of August, including the servers going down temporarily, and the Item Shop (the place where you pay for game items with real money; basically how the game is kept up and running) still being down. There were major patches applied since my absence, though I haven't noticed the differences yet.

Ez2Dancer Is Back!

2007-09-04T07:23:00.000+08:00

Haha well I was at Robinson's Galleria yesterday for Urban Hope. So I passed by Tom's World, like I always do when I see arcades, to check if they have Pump It Up or something. When lo and behold, I run across the old game Ez2Dancer! Man that's still fun to play. I'm trying to get my friends and Abby to come play whenever.

GPotato Games

2007-09-01T01:36:00.000+08:00

Well, seeing my drought in the MMORPG world, I turn to my old friend, Space Cowboy Online. Here I am, ready to play, though, when suddenly I'm hit with the news that the servers are down. They've been down all day it seems. Some kind of technical problem, which is expected to be resolved quickly.

Anyway I always remembered SCO to be a game you can play casually despite its grinding nature. You hop in and you can chat around with your buddies of the same nation. You can go out flying for fun, you can shoot stuff down. You can even go to war if there is one, and if there isn't, you can start one. There's always something to do in SCO, which is nice.

Also on the GPotato line-up, I downloaded their golf game called Shot Online. It's a lot less forgiving than Albatross 18 (Pangya). In other words, it's a real golf game. You really have to factor everything in, and getting an even par on a simple hole can be a real challenge until you get used to teeing off accurately, getting on the green, and reading the green. Trying to hit a 5 yard putt proves to be such a big challenge that I only get around 20% accuracy. Trying to hit one from 10 yards away I only get about 11% accuracy. But it's still fun. Not as stress-relieving as Albatross 18 (rather, stress-inducing), but still fun.

Online Games

2007-08-30T23:19:00.000+08:00

These days I don't have enough interest in playing MMORPGs. I've been exposed to more thrilling games where you get action instantly (Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper in particular). That's why even potentially good MMORPGs seem so bland to me. Most MMORPGs force you to work your way up through the low levels, facing really easy enemies, barely doing anything, with no exciting skills or items yet to keep you playing. Or rather, they keep you playing by the idea that at higher levels, you will eventually get the cool skills and/or items.

Additionally, most MMORPGs these days are very limiting. A good example is Rappelz. The game is awesome. Good system, good stability, good graphics. Even if it lacks in character customization, the gameplay is pretty good. However, the game forces to use particular builds/weapons for your class. Like if you're a melee build Gaia Fighter, you need to use 2h axes or dual axes. I mean, it's possible to equip other weapons, but all their skills point to axes, to the point of the other weapons being a bad idea.

In which case, I'm annoyed. I want to play a game where I can build my character the way I want to. I want to use any weapon I want, and the effectiveness of the weapon is dependent on the way you use it (or in game terms, skills). Just like in real life. The only game that came close to that was Granado Espada. And even then it's still a little limiting, because some characters are not allowed to wear some weapons. For example, I wanted my healer to be a battle healer. Why do you have to be unarmed to use a healing spell? If you were using bandages, I'd understand, but it's just a spell. By all logic, you should be able to wear a wand or staff or something. Class-based weapons aren't really that good an idea. I mean, in real life there are archers that are also good swordsmen. In the real world (especially in ancient Japan, China and Europe), being a warrior meant that you knew how to use all military weapons. That includes swords, spears and bows. That sort of thing.

Now that I think of it, another game pretty much got that concept down. It's an old game called Ultima Online. Yeah you could use any weapon you wanted. Though it wasn't very flashy, and there weren't any weapon-based "skills" to speak of (all the skills you had for fighting were passive).

Now... if only a modern MMORPG would come up with the same idea, giving us true freedom to choose and create our own characters.

Shiraishi's Lost It

2007-08-28T11:50:00.001+08:00

Episode 21 of Lucky Star features the return of Shiraishi Minoru to Lucky Channel. Unfortunately, he's gone nuts, no thanks to Akira's insensitivity. :D I say it's about time, though. Now that he's destroyed the Lucky Channel set, and apparently he's been "sold out", and he even quit, what's to happen of that section of the show? :D

Pi Story

2007-08-24T11:59:00.000+08:00

The World of "Pi", a universe contained in a giant egg. Just a background story for a new MMORPG that's in the works for an English translation. But with all the new MMORPGs coming out these days, why am I focusing on a game that doesn't sound like much based on the title?

Well, from the looks of things regarding game features, information I gathered from GameNGame.com, this is quite possibly the most exciting and non-linear MMORPG ever made. I'll give a short description on some of the most striking features that I read about that the game claims to offer.

Adorable Graphics
It's a 2D, horizontal-scroll MMORPG (if you know those old beat-em-ups like Streets of Rage, it's like that). Personally I never liked the idea of 2D, horizontal-scroll MMORPGs, because it rather limits the world. What's beyond the horizon? You'll never know, because you can't even go past the bounds.

But still, the game has cute storybook-style graphics, which is always a big plus factor for me. It also means that even low-end machines can run this game without much problems.

Cute graphics.

Variable Storyline (Freedom of Choice) What this means is that your decisions will affect the storyline you end up with. While many games already offer this, Pi Story took it a step further by allowing you to make alternative choices. E.g., straight from the GameNGame website: "So you went to kill a monster because the village people asked you to… but the monster is begging you to let him go. What will you do? The story changes, according to your decision."

Instant Dungeon System
They have an automatic random dungeon generator, so you don't get tired of monotonous dungeons with the same repetitive strategy for your party. This goes in relation to the variable storyline feature. "Visit another party member's dungeon, or change the structure of the dungeon you are in through our multi scenario quests. The game storyline and dungeon change and adapt themselves according to the choices you make."

In a dungeon.

Character Customization
I don't know the depth of this feature, but anything beyond giving us just 4 choices of hairstyles and hair colors, and changing your outfit only by level-based armor is good. And for them to advertise this, it probably does go beyond that. From the looks of the screenshots on GameNGame.com, it's pretty good. Even clothing seems to be customizable, as I see a lot of characters in fun-looking outfits without being armor. I hope there are dyeing options, as well.

STUFF TO DO
Yeah that's right, there's stuff to do in the game other than hunting. This is a key feature that most games overlook, but I think should be a standard in all games. In Pi Story, you can farm, fish, mine and cook (and the usual crafting options, such as making potions and weapons). And the GameNGame.com website advertises that there are more "fun-filled activities". You can even raise pets.

All in all, it sounds like a fun and dynamic game that you can play casually. There's even a housing system, which is basically a spot on the website that allows you to conduct simple business such as leaving messages for players, and making trades and sales without logging on to the game. It's probably to compensate for the lack of space that 2D side-scrollers have. But the point is, if you don't feel like getting into the game, and you just want to see if something-or-other item has been sold already, you can check it on the website quickly and easily.

I'm looking forward to this game. It's in closed beta, but I'll definitely be there for the open beta.

Rappelz Epic IV

2007-08-23T08:54:00.000+08:00

Recently (August 15) Rappelz upgraded to Epic IV. I'm not sure on all the details on the changes, but there's a new newbie weapon, and stuff can glow now. There's also a new high level dungeon. Micko is inviting me to play Rappelz again, because he misses fantasy-setting MMORPGs. All the other MMORPGs we've been playing have been in real-world-based settings, like Granado Espada and SilkRoad Online. And yeah, playing a game of castles and dragons again could be fun. Not to mention a really well-structured game like Rappelz.

The only problem with the new Epic is that there seems to be a lot of bugs, particularly in the client. I dunno, it could be just my client installation. I'll try reinstalling later, but I didn't seem to get any errors while installing or patching. One example is the messed up configuration program. All the text is "Empty string". Another is the weird pop-up window you get in the client advertising their new high level dungeon, right after you log in. This is alright, but the UI has a problem with it, and doesn't show the channel/server selection window underneath it properly.

Then again, all those could still be with my own installation. I'll try reinstalling later, like I said.

Episode 21: Hayate no Gotoku and Claymore

2007-08-23T02:55:00.000+08:00

Two of my favorite anime, and not just among recent ones, have just had their episode 21's released with fansubs. I'll talk about both a little.

Hayate no Gotoku episode 21

Possibly their funniest episode yet. There were a lot of subtle and random inserts of humor that I found myself laughing hysterically at some points. Even the supposed "drama" part of the episode was hilarious. You could actually see the punchline coming during Hachi-gou's dramatic lines. I think the only part that isn't very funny is the first scene, which comes before the opening theme. Other than that, the rest of the episode is chuckles or more. At least for me.

Claymore episode 21

Kakuseisha have mobilized and started attacking the town of Pieta, where the twenty-something Claymores of varied ranking have gathered. I can't say more than that or else it'd be a spoiler. Let's just say this has got to be one of the more annoying episodes, ranked up there with the death of Teresa. It's not because somebody dies in the episode, but because I was left with the same feeling I had when Priscilla awakened. Not to mention Priscilla actually being there, still annoying. For the record, I never found her appealing, cool, cute or even interesting, even if they were probably aiming for us to consider her as at least one of those qualities when she was a Claymore.

And Raki is as annoying as ever. I actually thought he was going to die, to piss Clare off and make her stronger or something. Oh well. At least Miria was there, being kickass.

Oh and if you noticed, I've been updating a lot more recently. I'm trying to update more often with shorter entries at a time, as opposed to updating once in a while with very long entries.

So that's all for now.

No Interweb Day, Peripheral Problems

2007-08-22T11:17:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was No Interweb Day for our service provider. DSL went down due to an "international cable break", and stayed down for almost a full day. But it's back up now, so it's all good.

My optical mouse, which has been around for about two years, is probably nearing its clicking limit. Dragging releases on its own (even if I press hard), and there are some occasions when clicking doesn't work at all. Meaning, I'll have to buy a new one soon. Also, my computer speakers have been messed up for years (this is the original pair that came with my first PC, which I bought in early 2002). I'll have to either consider getting new ones (Altec Lansing maybe), or getting some decent headphones. I'm voting for the latter, since it's cheaper and with much better sound quality (unless I go Altec Lansing).

Lucky Star 20

2007-08-20T11:10:00.000+08:00

I got the episode yesterday, subbed by a different group. It's hilarious. And Hiyori is my new favorite character. Left-handed, meganekko, and an artist like me.

Here's action-shounen-manga style Hiyori, as seen in episode 20.

And here's little Yutaka. :) Aww, how cute.

It's too bad these characters were introduced so late in the anime, but they probably get more time in the 4-koma. So after the anime, I'll be looking for the 4-koma. I don't like looking for manga/light novels while watching the anime. It always has to be finish one first, then get the other.

Heroes of Might and Magic V

2007-08-19T23:11:00.000+08:00

Well, after a year of waiting, we finally got Heroes of Might and Magic V. Despite a few bugs here and there (such as blaring harp music playing when you switch to overworld map from the underworld suddenly, and some times when the camera doesn't follow properly; also inverted camera doesn't invert up and down as it should), the game is awesome, which is saying a lot considering how terrible HoMM IV did. They got the right idea when they decided to pattern it on HoMM III, which is one of my favorite games of all time.

The main differences between Heroes V and Heroes III include:
- A lot of major changes in the towns/races/creatures (too many to list).
- All new [but fewer] heroes, with more unique characteristics
- Full 3D Graphics (orly?)
- Interface (the new interface is nice, feels like you're playing an old fashioned game, but with nice graphics, but there are times when in town that it can get hard to click certain buildings because the floating UI buttons are in the way)
- No more map/campaign editor :(

I've been playing for hours since yesterday. So far I have a good rating for it.

My rating: 77/100 (good job, despite bugs, map editor would've given it another +10)

Perfect World Online

2007-08-16T00:30:00.000+08:00

Well, just as expected, Perfect World Online is a little bit of a disappointment. But I expected it to be one, so that kinda softens the blow really. Here's a short description of the game experience I had.

The plus side? Well the character creation system really is extremely detailed, and is pretty good. It kinda makes me wonder why, because some of the details you put on your character (such as the little tweaking of cheekbone shape, etc) are only visible when zoomed in substantially. But while you're in-game, you can't really zoom in too much (the character becomes invisible when zoomed in at a certain level). And who would want to play the game zoomed in anyway? There aren't even any screens [as far as I've seen] where the character's face is shown close-up, aside from the character creation screen.

One other thing I liked was the world map. It's one of the better-looking map systems in any MMORPG I've played so far. The one thing it lacked was labels or markers on where NPCs are. Otherwise it's very nice and intuitive.

What I didn't like about the game was that the game system itself is not only generic, but actually below average. It felt really rough and unprofessional, in comparison to a lot of the better, bigger games out there. There was no impact in the animation while fighting. Not even in the form of hit sparks. I mean, it does have hit sparks, and they look nice, but they don't make it feel like you actually hit anything. It feels like you swung your weapon around without hitting and for some reason, some kind of lighting effect happened somewhere around your enemy, then a red number pops up on top of your enemy's head. What does it need? It's a little hard to explain. But basically I'm saying it needs to feel like you actually HIT something. Reeling/reacting, a little shaking here or there, maybe some better sound effects, the works. Heck, 2D games can do a better job than that. Not just using sparks and a number. A good example is Granado Espada. When you hit something in that game it really looks and feels like the enemy took a blow.

A game should provide decent newbie help, not just from NPCs, but from the UI. This can also showcase its features rather early on. New players should be excited to play the game because of what they saw in the help file that popped up when something or other happened. Some of the most successful games did this properly. SilkRoad Online shows you the berserk system (China), and offers lots of newbie help in the form of quests. It also tells you about the open PVP, and the caravan system. Trickster Online has a very nice newbie school also. Granado Espada immediately allows you to use the Multi-Character Control system and the Stance System.

In contrast, the only thing that Perfect World Online makes you excited about is the character customization, which seems to serve no purpose currently other than make your character look different. And it's probably best suited for making really ugly, exaggerated characters, such as those with green skin, large and wide heads, and so on. I mean I love making pretty female characters, and I like that there's lots of options for dressing them up, but if that's all the game has to offer, I'd rather free up the 2++ GB hard disk space and download a good paperdoll game instead or something.

Surely it's got to have some other features to talk about, though. Let's take a look at the website. Oh, apparently, later on, it has territorial battle. Whoopee. Almost every other game out there has that too. Oh wow it has a mail system, and you can mount animals. Amazing. It sounds even more generic now than before.

Oh and back on the topic of newbie help, it's almost non-existent in Perfect World. Even the quests don't tell you much. Yeah they tell you where to go, what to do, but it doesn't help you learn how to play the game, which is one of the most important uses for newbie quests. All you get is a skimpy two-page help dialog that pops up when you make a new character. It doesn't tell you anything you need to know, such as what to do, how to fight, how to use skills, etc. A newbie, especially one with no prior experience with other MMORPGs, would be absolutely lost.

The graphics are also not optimized, so much that my new souped-up computer isn't even capable of running the game at semi-low settings without getting choppy backgrounds (I can run almost all other big-time games at max graphic settings with no problems, such as Granado Espada and SilkRoad Online). In PW, I'm forced to stay on 1024x768 graphics with everything set on medium and shadows turned off. Even like this, the background can get a little choppy at times. I can only imagine what one with a lesser machine (such as myself before I bought this new machine) would be experiencing with this game.

The game is obviously in its early stages still. From reading the forums, there's a lot of bugs, many of which are terrible, like getting you stuck somewhere or other, and major crashes, not to mention the installer not working and you having to manually patch the thing. Maybe in the future they'll implement some better, more unique, and more interesting features, and not just the ones you see in every other game. Even small-time games out now have better features than this one, and to think this game was hyped and marketed so much in the Philippines, like it was going to be the next big game that everybody's been waiting for.

All in all, I feel a little bad about the game. It had potential and it could've been something great. I guess I'd always known it wasn't going to be good, but it went even lower than my already low expectations, so much that I just had to write this review. They really shouldn't be releasing this to the public just yet, in my opinion. Closed beta until all the bugs are fixed and the game is given some more oomph, at the very least.

My rating: 14/100 (And this is me being nice because of the good character customization system)