Boredom + Camera Phone = This

Alvis Hamilton

I took this the other day with my HTC TyTN II (Kaiser) phone when I got bored… It’s actually not that bad of a camera provided you use it with sufficient natural sunlight.  Anything less though and the quality is drastically reduced and you get noise like crazy.  Not that I was expecting much out of a camera phone anyways.  I still haven’t gotten around to buying a real camera yet.  Don’t really have the funds to do so but I’m always looking.  In fact I was almost tempted to buy a Canon Rebel XT body from someone and lens from someone else but I wasn’t sure I was ready to drop such a large sum of cash for all of that since moving that large of an amount of cash would probably raise some flags with my parents…

This figure is of Alvis Hamilton from Last Exile.  I bought it off another user on the figure blog Tomopop which is one of the sites I frequent.  It’s a pretty small trading figure but I love the way it looks. ^^  Nice pose and it captures her cuteness quite nicely.  I probably haven’t mentioned this before but I started my figure collecting with trading figures.  I can’t remember what my first one was, but I bought it during my first few years in high school.  After that, I started buying them like crazy and eventually got my first 1/8 scale figure which was the Monseiur Bome Tohsaka Rin.  And yep, that’s my little story for today of how I got started collecting figures.

I also can’t figure out for the life of me how you embed images that you upload to your gallery in WordPress… So I’ve just been sticking to uploading to an image host and linking from there.  Why must they make it so complicated?  Or maybe I’m just not smart enough to figure it out…  In any case, it’s not immediately obvious how you do it, so I’ll just attribute it to design failure.

And for a little bonus, I also took this picture of a Ferrari 288 GTO Hot Wheels car that my friend didn’t want anymore because the packaging was slightly water damaged. (he’s a collector who likes pristine packaging)  I decided to take it off his hands since he didn’t want it and I like Ferraris.

Ferrari 288 GTO

Anime “Movies” and Figure Sale

If there’s something that annoys me to no end, it’s anime “movies” that aren’t actually movies.  I downloaded the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Guren-hen movie a couple of days ago and when I started watching it… lo and behold it was one of those “Let’s recap the entire series for you in a time span of about 2 hours” movies >_>  I really don’t see what the point of that is… Unless maybe you like watching the same series over and over?  Which I’m all for doing if it’s a good show, but then if you really wanted to watch it again why would you watch the Cliff Notes movie version…  They skipped a lot of details to fit it into 2 hours but wow.  One part they just quickly sped through a bunch of scenes from the movie… with minimal sound too.  And then they proceed to talk about characters that you’re supposed to know about later but might be confused about if you haven’t actually watched the series because they skipped right over it in the movie.  Even though I’m not sure how many people would watch this movie without first watching the original series.  Here’s to hoping the second movie isn’t another recap…

On another note, as noted by a member of DannyChoo.com in the Puchi Blurbs a few days back, HLJ is having a sale on select figures from Xenosaga, Shakugan no Shana, To Heart 2, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, and CLAMP.  Not sure how long it goes for but I think it ends when they run out of “extra” inventory (since that’s the reason they’re having the sale in the first place I guess?)  I want one (or both XD) of these Shana figures but I really can’t decide…

But then again I should probably refrain from spending lots of money since I just spent about $110 on a new graphics card for my desktop since I’m thinking continuing to game on my laptop would not be in my best interests.  I’m pretty sure if I do, one day it will overheat and explode or something   Even though that’s probably still a little extreme but I’m sure the excessive amounts of heat it produces isn’t good for it…

Fat Princess

I managed to get a code for the Fat Princess beta on PS3 so I’ve been playing that every once in a while.  It’s a pretty fun game… a mix of an RTS and action RPG or something I’d say.  The basic premise is to invade the enemy’s castle and rescue your princess. The catch is the opposing team can feed your princess pieces of cake to make her temporarily fatter and thus harder to carry away. Of course your own team can do this as well. So you basically have to strike the right balance of offense and defense to succeed (or rather hope your teammates do as well). There’s five classes you can choose from with 4 of those 5 being attaack classes: mage, priest, archer, and warrior.  Additionally, there’s a worker class which can harvest resources to upgrade units and build structures to invade the enemy castle. Only one map is available in the beta so I can’t wait to see what other maps they’ll have once the game is released.

Higashi no Eden

 

Higashi no Eden

I watched the first episode of Higashi no Eden (or Eden of the East) yesterday.  I was intrigued by it’s art style since it resembled that of Honey & Clover which is one of my favorite anime series ever.  It turns out that it IS the same illustrator.  Anyways, here’s the excerpt for the show from AniDB.net:

On November 22, 2010 ten missiles strike Japan. However, this unprecedented terrorist act, later to be called as “Careless Monday,” does not result in any apparent victims, and is soon forgotten by almost everyone. Then, 3 months later… Saki Morimi is a young woman currently in the United States of America on her graduation trip. But just when she is in front of the White House, Washington DC, she gets into trouble, and only the unexpected intervention of one of her fellow countrymen saves her. However, this man, who introduces himself as Akira Takizawa, is a complete mystery. He appears to have lost his memory. and he is stark naked, except for the gun he holds in one hand, and the mobile phone he’s holding with the other hand. A phone that is charged with 8,200,000,000 yen in digital cash.

Yes, random indeed but perhaps that’s why I like it.  The first episode takes place in Washington DC so it was kind of interesting to watch and hear how they portrayed Americans.  Also they use “Johnny” to refer to the male genitalia so that was kind of amusing.  I’ll continue to follow the show to see how the story unfolds since it seems like an odd mixture of love story and some overarching mind controlling corporation thing… or something.

New Speakers! Also life…

Finally got some speakers today to replace my old Logitech X-230s.  I got some Logitech X-540s to replace them even though I have no room/don’t have an ideal room setup to accomodate 5 speakers.  I just have 3 of the 5 hooked up at the moment although I may hook the other two up later on top of my desk despite the fact that they were designed to be rear speakers for surround sound.

I read the latest motivational post over at dannychoo.com and while it was somewhat inspiriational, I still don’t know how I’m going to go about achieving happiness in life.  It’s easy when you have a defined goal but that’s exactly what I lack.  There are things I want, places I want to go, but as far as a job, there isn’t something I’m truly passionate about that I could somehow turn into a job.  It’s kind of depressing really… I’m just aimlessly plowing through life without a true focus.  I fear for the end of my academic career in college since I have no idea what I will do afterwards.  Oh well, I still have about a year left to figure out…

Rhythm Heaven

Rhythm Heaven Box Art

I have a confession to make.  I have an addiction.  To Rhythm Heaven! XD  I recently started playing this game for the Nintendo DS and I’m hooked!  I’d known about it’s existence for a while (under it’s Japanese name Rhythm Tengoku) but only recently decided to give it a shot when it was finally officially released in the United States.  It is a rhythm game (if you couldn’t already tell from the name) with very simple gameplay.  You hold the DS like a book and tap/flick the touch screen to the rhythm in different mini games.  It’s a lot easier than it sounds though… well actually it might not be that hard and it could just be that I suck at keeping rhythm.  In any case it’s a charming, albeit slightly difficult, little game.  I had to play some levels MANY times before I finally got the hang of how to properly get through them but despite that, I still recommend this game to anyone who enjoys rhythm games (Elite Beat Agents, etc.)  I’ve read reviews that criticized the songs with vocal tracks as being subpar to their Japanese counterparts but I didn’t really find it to be too much of an issue, mostly because I didn’t play the original Japanese game.  I do agree that the dubbing was quite subpar but you probably wouldn’t notice it if you didn’t know the Japanese version existed in the first place and was better.

Valkyria Chronicles

There’s been a lot of new anime releases this season so I’m going to start watching a lot more anime again.  I’ve kind of been on an extended anime break for quite some time since I’ve sort of become more of a gamer and spent most of my time playing games rather than watching some shows that I put off indefinitely.  If there was ever a time to start watching again, now would be that time with the flood of new series.  Some of which I’ve started and/or looking forward to are K-ON!, Full Metal Alchemist 2, Higashi no Eden, and Valkyria Chronicles, the latter of which I will be talking about.

Valkyria Chronicles is based off of the PS3 game of the same name which was released in the US on November 4, 2008.  It is a turned based strategy game which isn’t actually my cup of tea but I decided to give it a shot when the demo came out and I actually found myself liking it.  It actually has a slight twist to the gameplay where you are allowed to move a certain number of your units a certain distance during each of your turns.  The story takes place in a fictional version of Europe where a resource known as ragnite exists.  Here’s the basic rundown of the plot taken from Wikipedia:

When Imperial forces attack the small border town of Bruhl, Welkin Gunther, son of late General Belgen Gunther, is forced to fight for his life alongside Town Watch captain Alicia Melchiott. Along with Welkin’s adopted sister Isara, the three escape to Gallia’s capitol and subsequently join the country’s militia forces. As members of the newly-formed Squad 7, they must work to repel the invading Imperial forces and discover the true purpose of the invasion itself.

The art style is also very unique.  It has a cel-shaded hand drawn look which many have praised as looking like  a drawing/painting coming to life… or something to that effect.  It does look quite neat though.

Anyways, the anime stays faithful to the story of the game.  Also, believe it or not, the art style carries over as well, with the colors and shading looking like they have that hand drawn pencil feel to them.  It doesn’t look quite as impressive as the game but it was interesting to see that they attempted to recreate the same effect in the anime.  The voice acting is pretty good (I believe they used the same voice actors from the game?) and as stated earlier, it sticks closely to the source material.  Overall, I enjoyed the first episode and hope the rest of the series is just as good.  The only slight problem I’ll have is that I haven’t yet finished the game since I’m stuck on a battle so I’ll most likely pass the part I’m at in the game if I keep watching which could “spoil” it for me in a sense but I don’t actually mind that much.

Resident Evil 5 Get!

Yesterday my copy of Resident Evil 5 for PS3 came in the mail after a sort of long wait.  I sort of went through a lot of trouble to get it.  Found it at buynextgen.com a couple weeks ago when they had it for preorder for $42.95 with no tax, no shipping charges so I decided to get it since that’s an awesome price for a new release.  I was hoping they’d ship it out when the game was released but that never happened  I ordered kind of late and it turns out they only got their stock in phases so it took quite a while before they finally shipped my order.  This posed a problem since I wanted the game shipped to my temporary school address but they still hadn’t shipped it and I was about to head home for spring break.  Luckily, I was able to contact support and get the shipping address changed.  So in short, everything worked out and I heartily recommend buying things from buynextgen.com!  I’m sure the process would have been a lot less painful if I ordered something that was actually in stock but I’ll forgive them this time.  And another minor gripe is that the game case was slightly damaged.  There was a small cut across the spine of the case that went through the plastic and cut the actual paper cover with the graphics on it  I’m sure not all of their products ship like that and it isn’t really a big deal to me but it’s still worth mentioning…

Anyways, as far as the game goes, it’s pretty fun so far.  The co-op element is kind of neat and they implemented an interesting item system where all of your items carry over from playing single player or playing online.  It feels like the story mode will be pretty short though… There’s only six chapters and I’ve already played through almost half of them.  Controls are fine for me despite not being able to move while aiming.   I don’t see why people get their panties in a bunch over that… it certainly makes the game more tense but I guess it’s also not very realistic either (not that zombies and crazy viruses are exactly realistic…)  I wouldn’t call myself a huge Resident Evil fan since I’ve only played Resident Evil 4 and parts of the earlier games but I think I can agree with most reviews that say that the atmosphere of Resident Evil 5 has definitely changed compared to past games.  It seems to be more like an action game with a touch of horror elements in it.  Good game overall so far though!

Who knew studying could be so hard?

Didn’t do much today except for go to the library and attempt to study.  I wasn’t very productive there despite the fact that the environment there is conducive to studying.  My final is tomorrow but I’m hardly prepared for it… I think at this point I just want the quarter to be over so I can go home on Friday and not have to worry about tests anymore.  

On another note, I’m slightly annoyed by the fact that the website I ordered Resident Evil 5 from about 11 days ago still hasn’t shipped my order.  I e-mailed them a couple days ago to find out if I could get an estimated ship date but they couldn’t provide me with one… so I e-mailed them again today to see if they could change the shipping address since I won’t be around to pick it up when I go home for spring break.  I don’t think they’re a shady business, they just happened to fail at estimating how many orders they would get and how much stock they actually had to fulfill those orders.  Oh well, it’s probably better that I didn’t get the game this week during finals anyways.

Don’t Call It A Comeback…

Ok actually, yes, you can call it a comeback because I did indeed leave.  I think I’ll start updating this blog again despite the fact that I told myself that I wouldn’t until I got a camera since I like taking pictures and putting pictures in my blog.