It's a bit different from the last time I did a Top 25 (-ish) song listing; I'd hazard that the summer heat and nostalgia make up the prime reasons for this change.
Notes:
Bah. Politics.
thanks to John Moltz for the image. Incidentally, did you know that there's a band named "I Voted for Kodos". Must download.
]]>I blame Zelda: Four Swords, really; I stopped by an EB to gawk at the NES-themed GBA, and was very nearly convinced to trade in my onyx GBA and fifty bucks for, well, what is exactly the same machine, just cooler-looking. I suspect it's the asian ricing genes at work here. So, instead of spending that fifty for a sideways hardware "upgrade", I ended up buying Four Swords instead.
This, unfortunately, was the defining trigger point for 'cube game purchases, as, in the next few days, I picked up a copy of Wind Waker (my only defense was that it was on sale, at $30 CAN -- unheard of, even for this three-year-old game), Skies of Arcadia Legends (yeah, I finished it on the Dreamcast, but I had a hankering for Air Piracy again), a used Action Replay (to make plowing my way through SoA Legends easier), and I pre-ordered Tales of Symphonia (which, sadly, doesn't look like it's going to ship 'til mid-July, which means I won't be able to play it 'til I get back in mid-August).
Because of this buying spree, I've not actually played too much of Four Swords, save for the first few sections, but I have tried it in multiplayer mode with Dave and his brother, and boy, does that rock! Even being "dead", the ability of your shadow-Link to crawl around and push buttons wreaks serious havok on some of the levels. And the horse-racing mini-game accessible from Tingle's Tower is just Too Damn Fun, and makes excellent use of the GBA to GC connectivity.
The other half of this Nintendo equation, and a good chunk of the reason for this little rant, is the aforementioned onyx GBA. I could mention that I finally got back onto Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and that was like being on digital crack. Instead, I'd rather mention the innocuous-sounding PocketNES, and the twenty or so NES roms now loaded into one 44 megabyte .gba image on my GBA flash cart.
Yeah, baby. Crystalis? Got it. Blaster Master? That too. Bionic Commando? Who's got the power-arm? That'd be me. That's right. Add on to the list the entire Dragon Warrior series for the NES, Megaman 1, 2 and 3, the Super Mario Bros. series, Lifeforce, Maniac Mansion, Shadowgate, Kid Icarus and both Zelda's, and you have more old-school cred than even these three limited-edition GBA's combined:
I'm so jazzed by this emulation-via-flash-cart-on-the-GBA situation that I've gone back to one my older sisyphean tasks: resurrecting my non-booting Flash2Advance 256 M cartridge (which I managed to kill while attempting to load PogoShell onto it). If I can get this working, then I can load it full of emulator goodness, and leave the 512 M cartridge for commercial releases.
This should help me while away the downtime hours in Japan as I crash in coffin motels, 24-hour movie theatres, or in fully-equipped rentable game booths (all options if other forms of temporary housing don't make themselves more available).
]]>Now if only the rain would stop and the freakin' sun would show up once in a while. Lousy temperate rain forest.
]]>This should go well with the SCOTTeVEST and the Roadwired Podzilla. For extra geek cachet, I heartily recommend a Fruit Fucker T-shirt.
Now, what would be really cool if this buckle was still fully functional and wireless-enabled. Imagine the fun at parties!
]]>Well, as the 'bot once said: "Bite my shiny metal ass!". No, wait, it was "I'm gonna go build my own theme park... with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the park!"
Truer words were never spoken.
]]>They even mixed in the voiceover from the original cartoon series! I really need to retreat to my fortress of solitude and contemplate the loss of my Transformers collection.
UPDATE 06/09/04: It seems the above link is broken. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Dave B, here's a mirror of the breakdancing transformers.
]]>They seem to be life-sized, and relatively well articulated, and the licenses seem to span CLAMP, Gainax and Pioneer / Geneon's holdings (the Hikari from Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai and the Ifurita from El-Hazard are particularly striking, but Dave, you'll want to pay attention to the Lain-in-her-bear-pajamas and Sakura Kinomoto dolls).
It's either a testament to the bland male character design in most anime or the sheer number of male otaku over female otaku that there is not a single non-female doll in this group. Which could be a good thing, really, because what would you do with a Shinji doll? Have it curled up in a fetal position with a minidisc playing a loop of "I mustn't run away?"
]]>My question is: Why the hell was this show cancelled? In a field of increasingly inspid and mind-rottingly poor programming, good shows like this and Firefly are relegated to the Nielsen ghettos and delivered stillborn, before they can find an audience.
First impressions? This is a show with tight writing, good comedic values, and actual heart. Caroline Dhavernas is absolutely fascinating as the show's central character Jaye Tyler. She's snarky, she's underachieving and conflicted, and she hears voices. In that sense, it's actually quite easy to generate audience-identification.
Plus, the actress is Canadian! And, whilst set in Niagra Falls, New York, it's actually filmed on the Canadian side, where the view is much, much prettier.
Maybe, like that other great, sadly cancelled-too-soon series Firefly, they'll come out with a DVD set. I'm not holding my breath, but one can hope.
Odd factoid: Wonderfalls is Tim Minnear's show. Same Tim Minnear as in Firefly (cancelled). As in Angel (now cancelled). Fox sucks. Is there something not financially viable in fantastical shows with a core composed of equal measures of good storytelling and heart?
]]>The basic method was as follows:
This project earns geek points due to its ridiculous nature, adherence to the strong foundations of Maxwell's Demon's principles of perversity, and for the sheer cabling mess involved.
The only downside I can think of is that, with four TV's as monitor-sources for the individual GameCubes, each player now knows what the other player's secret objectives for Loot Maximization Earning are. On the other hand, it's now a helluvalot easier to see the overall map / monster stats / treasure locations / etc.
I still don't know what the author of this piece is on when he claims to resist giving in to Nintendo's marketing scheme by not buying a GBA. Because, you know, the other four GC's + wavebirds + TV's are so much cheaper. And, as the owner of a GC and a GBA, I gotta say I use the GBA a lot more than I do the GC. Remember kids, if you don't have friends with GBA's, you can always evangelicize. Right Dave? Dave B? Doug?
]]>I'm proud to shop there; the staff is genuinely friendly and they don't suffer from Comic Book Guy syndrome. And with the ever-increasing range of products out there, it helps to have some input and opinions from the staff on whether or not a certain title or author would suit my tastes. It's not as if they don't know what my tastes are; I've been shopping there (intermittently) since I was thirteen, and regularly since I was sixteen. Together with Orion, I have subscription Box #1 (though with Orion off in the wilds of Alberta, the box is all mine these days). I'd rather pay a bit more for my product obtained from The Comicshop than for the same product bought elsewhere; I know I'm supporting a geek-friendly environment that, in turn, supports geek-friendly activities.
I'm also relatively pleased to see them stocking more manga titles these days. It attracts a different crowd of comics-buyers (it's always good to see more girls reading comics, and it might just help the next generation of young geeks become a little less terrified of interactions with the opposite sex).
]]>Woot! July! That gives me a whole month to put together a cogent review on the first thirteen episodes.
]]>On the other hand, most Movable Type adopters tend to fall into the "web design-geek / server script-monkey" mold (guilty), and these people like being able to set up multiple weblogs for, say, their friends. That was one of the reasons I adopted MT in the first place; many of my friends were scattering across Canada and the States, and I would have liked to see them post about their experiences as a way of keeping in touch (granted, this has not been as easy as some would like, and the hard drive failure from last winter has put quite a few blogs on hold -- my apologies, Orion, Yomimono, and Andy).
I'm not such a total skinflint that I won't pay for good software (I purchased the copy of Opera I use, as well as Trillian, EditPlus and numerous others), but if I wanted to spend $119.95 USD (that's something like three million dollars Canadian, methinks) on a hobby, I'd rather go out and buy a new XBox, or put the cash aside for the Nintendo DS, or buy a better digital camera, or save some for a gashapon shopping spree for Japan. But with MT's new pricing scheme, and no new features to boot? I think I'll stick with MT 2.661. I'll not be so foolish as to return to my old home-rolled content management system, but I'll definately be looking into the alternatives (pMachine, WordPress, Drupal and others come to mind).
Ah, the exciting world of software licensing. Watching the trackbacks from Mena's post has certainly been interesting; there's a lot of negative feeling in the MT community, and a genuine sense of betrayal. While I wish Movable Type and their employees all the success in the world, they're going to have to do a lot of hard work to earn back the goodwill they seem to have squandered.
My personal opinion? All told, $119.95 USD for 6 authors and 8 blogs (which is, I believe, what numenor.ca's maximum load would be if it were functioning at full efficiency), is actually a rather reasonable price -- if MT existed in a content management system vacuum. Compare this to what the average anime / video game hobbyist would pay for their personal vices ($20 - $40 USD per volume of a series, or around $40 USD per game, and that's not including peripherals like new controllers or memory cards), and it's actually quite cheap.
There are, however, other content management systems which cost users absolutely nothing out of pocket. And if a devoted Movable Type non-profit power user were to upgrade, I think that springing a $50 - $70 USD minimum price increase (previously $0 USD) on them is a bit much. This is what seems to have brought the community's wrath down upon Six Apart: expectations simply weren't managed, and they're now paying for it. I'll be very curious to see how this plays out; will this be a Netscape-ish end for Six Apart, with other CMS' like Wordpress stepping to the fore, or will they parlay this as a simple misstep for a growing company, and show some goodwill by changing the pricing scheme?
Hmm. I should really change this category from "Blogwork" to "Oh, god, he's blabbering about website stuff again".
]]>Nothing else to see here, move along.
]]>Rumours have been flying about this new handheld since its announcement, and I'm not sure what to think about the actual device, now that I've seen it. However, Square-Enix is coming out with a release game for the DS, so my RPG heart is all a-flutter (inventory management on the second screen! automapping! who knows, it's all so exciting). I'm not sure I'll buy the first generation DS, though; like the GBA, there may yet be a better form-factor DS SP in the future... and I can wait.
Still, with its specs (more power than a Nintendo 64) and generous price point ($150 USD, and sure to drop quickly, compared to the ridiculously overpriced PSP), I can see early adopters being happy. While I'm waiting for a new form-factor, price drop, I'm sure many viable "extenders" (cough, flash carts, cough) and emulators will surface, so it's a winning situation all 'round.
The other piece of news comes courtesy of Dave (B, damn, I know a lot of Dave's...), who's pointed out that there's a news of a realistic-looking Zelda for the Gamecube. Oh, and check out the next-gen Zelda trailer, too (where I got my shots from, thank you Quicktime). I'll let the following pics speak for themselves: