Recent games…

Posted on March 7, 2007 by baudattitude

After being all “oh, I don’t play games much” yesterday, I realized that wasn’t really true… I start an awful lot of games but I rarely get far before I put them down and forget to pick them up again.

One of the few to get me quite thoroughly hooked lately was Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! which I managed to beat on easy and then played through on Normal until I got to Ready, Steady Go… after beating my head against that for 2 days I used the power of YouTube to look up a video of someone beating it, then decided I didn’t need to beat the game on Normal THAT badly. It somewhat blows my mind that there are two difficulty levels above normal.

Partners in Time stayed in the DS for a long time as well. I haven’t gone back to it in a couple of months, the last thing I remember was being swallowed by a large pink dinosaur. I think I’m stuck in the stomach. I don’t think I’m very near the end… let’s leave that train of thought right there.

Final Fantasy II I haven’t played since flying home from San Jose after Christmas. I need to get back to it and beat it, since I have III, IV, V, and VI sitting unplayed and I feel like they’re important parts of culture I should really see through.

Bought Geist for 10 bucks and quite like the possession mechanic. Played through until I got to a guy with a shield who killed me twice, then I looked up the strategy for how to beat him but haven’t gone back to try it out.

Have the PS2 Vampire collection sitting largely unplayed. That’s five games full of Felicia goodness right there.

Also have Chu~kana Janshi Tenho pai-nyan sitting on the shelf taunting me. I’m a sucker for mahjong games and Kenichi Sonoda. I played it until I beat the first opponent to try it out, then…

My Hoi-hoi san is horribly overlooked, too – I finally managed to save up enough to get her a decent sword and revolver, so she kicks all kinds of insect arse now, but apart from being booted occasionally to show friends how cool she is, she’s been sitting unused for months.

There’s a message here. It’s “I buy too many videogames” – but how can I help it? They’re so shiny…

ps. Wait! I lie – I did finish another game recently.  Granted, it was the pack-in game that came with the PSP I bought in Akihabara last AUGUST, but I did finish LocoRoco, and it was a mighty satisfying ending.  Those last couple of levels you roll through are quite a shock, difficulty-wise, compared to everything that came before them.

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“It’s educational!” justification

Posted on March 6, 2007 by baudattitude

I use my Nintendo DS a lot these days, but not to play games – I’ve gotten hooked on a dictionary, specifically the Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten (漢字そのまま楽引辞典）.

For about 50 bucks at a US video game importer, what you get is a pretty decent Japanese to English dictionary, an English to Japanese dictionary that is unfortunately useless if you don’t already know Japanese, and best of all you get the ability to draw kanji on the DS’s touch screen and have this thing try to look them up for you.

Full disclosure: My handwriting is dreadful in either language.

This thing still does a pretty good job of either dredging up the kanji I’m trying to scribble onto the screen or at least getting something close, at which point I can press a button and get a selector box of similar kanji to choose from.

It’s not for someone brand new to the language – the interface is entirely in Japanese of course, so you need to read a little bit to get around – but if you have a few months of exposure this thing is really cool.

Posted in gadgets, nds, 日本語 | 1 Comment

New gadgets…

Posted on March 6, 2007 by baudattitude

I’m not a printer person, really.  I break them.  I’ve had a computer of some form or another since 1983, and in that time I’ve owned 3 printers.

Now I have the fourth, an HP Photosmart C6180, and it is a thing of glory.  It faxes, it scans, it does photo prints from memory cards, it makes words appear on paper fast, and it’s even 802.11g wireless so I didn’t have to get an Ethernet cable to it.  I suspect it may be smarter than I am.  The windows software is incredibly invasive – what is it with everything you install these days wanting to install an auto-update startup app? – but once I got it wrangled into submission it stopped bugging me.

Printers are not sexy, and they are a thing I rarely think about, but this one… two thumbs up.

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About school…

Posted on March 5, 2007 by baudattitude

So, this is the third time I’ve made a try at college.

The first time, right out of high school and into the local community college. That lasted a term, then it became a question of work part-time and do school or work full-time and make money…

The second time, living in Los Angeles, I made it through one term, halfway through the second, then I changed jobs and added an hour to my commute… one night I decided I was too tired to make it to class and that was the end of it, never went to another class.

So number 3 time is the charm, right?

The truth is, what everyone will tell you about college, that you need to go to get a good job, that’s a straight-out lie. You don’t need anything of the sort – I have a resume 18 years long at this point and financially I’m in pretty good shape. Furthermore, I have plenty of non-college-educated friends who are also doing just fine for themselves – but you DO need it for certain kinds of jobs and if you find yourself in your 30s and wanting to get one of those jobs… well, that’s my motivation to make it through on this run.

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Monday rambling…

Posted on March 5, 2007 by baudattitude

This morning: 205.4.  The walk yesterday seems to have undone some of the “non-approved foods” I had Friday and Saturday, so back on track.  I really need some more sunny days so I can make walking more of a ritual and less of a special event.

My FASFA application is filed, so in a few months I’ll know what kind of student loans are available.  The Grand Plan to go back to school full-time in the fall continues.

On the watch pile: Honey and Clover and Da Capo Second Season.  Honey and Clover is definitely turning into one of my favorites, but I’m having trouble getting into DCSS.  Still, I’m only 8 episodes in and we all know that no show really starts until after the mid-series clips show around episode 13.  🙂  I’ll give it more time to catch me.

I wonder if there’s a term for hyper-cute characters who are there to be abused for our amusement?  Hagu-torture is as fun to watch as Mikuru-torture.

Honey and Clover also gets thumbs up for being about college students with limited wackiness going on, so the spoken language is closer to normal Japanese.   I’m the last to claim that watching anime is in any way a valid way to study, but I’m getting to hear some grammar points straight from my textbooks.

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I do not have a problem…

Posted on March 4, 2007 by baudattitude

If I was ordering the radio drama CDs, that would be a sign of a problem.

I’m not. I don’t have a problem. I can give it up any time I like.

…

Thank you for placing your order from cdjapan.co.jp.
Your order has been received.

*******************************************

LACM-4270 Animation / Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu Character song Vol.2 Yuki Nagato
CDA 1143yen * 1 Released:2006/07/05

LACM-4323 Tsuruya san (CV: Yuki Matsuoka) / Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu Character song Vol.4 Tsuruya san
CDA 1143yen * 1 Released:2006/12/06

LACM-4324 Ryoko Asakura (CV: Natsuko Kuwatani) / Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu Character song Vol.5 Ryoko Asakura
CDA 1143yen * 1 Released:2006/12/06

LACM-4341 Sayaka Aoki / Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu Character Song Vol.6 kyon’s sister
CDA 952yen * 1 Released:2007/01/24

LACM-4342 Yuri Shiratori / Suzumiya Haruhi No Yuutsu Character Song Vol.7 Emiri Kimidori
CDA 952yen * 1 Released:2007/01/24

LACM-4355 Istuki Koizumi(C.V.Daisuke Ono) / Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu Character song Vol.8 Itsuki Koizumi
CDA 952yen * 1 Released:2007/02/21

LACM-4356 Kyon(C.V.Tomokazu Sugita) / Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu Character song Vol.9 Kyon
CDA 952yen * 1 Released:2007/02/21

MECR-1031 THE BLUE HEARTS / Linda Linda / Boku wa koko ni tatte iruyo
CDA 952yen * 1 Released:2002/02/06

ESCL-2917 Animation / Honey and Clover Complete Best[w/ DVD, Limited Pressing]
CDA 3200yen * 1 Released:2007/01/17

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PS Spot… so close to a good idea.

Posted on March 4, 2007 by baudattitude

So, I was at an EB Games the other night with Eternally Patient Wife, and I noticed a sticker near the door proclaiming this to be a “Playstation Spot.” Furthurmore, I remembered that this was Sony’s new marketing push, they have these wireless stations that allow you to download demos and such. Kind of like the Nintendo DS stations, only with more potential.

And I thought to myself, “My PSP is in the car, I will go get it and make use of this”

It turns out that there are certain limitations… unlike the DS Demo Stations you aren’t given a menu of available demos or any such thing from your own PSP. You need to select a demo on the store’s console and choose Share. This seems clumsy. More annoyingly, it downloads to your PSP’s memory and once you turn off the PSP it’s gone. No way to download a few demos and try them out at home, so unless you want to hang out in the store, you’re limited to downloading one, putting your PSP into sleep mode and leaving.

Still, much better than trying to play a demo on a bolted-down store PSP with a scratched screen and missing analog nub. I’ll give them some credit for trying.

Posted in psp, videogames | 2 Comments

And so it begins…

Posted on March 3, 2007 by baudattitude

When you’re a little disappointed is probably not a good time to start a blog, so I’ll try not to go too emo in this.

First, the good:

JLPT Level 4 results came today. That is to say, I’d already gotten an email telling me to go check my score online, so I knew that I’d passed – but getting the official score results and the certificate in the mail still felt good.

Scores:

Writing/Vocabulary: 89/100

Listening: 71/100

Reading-Grammar: 154/200

Total: 314/400

Some less good:

This morning’s weight: 206.6. Yesterday was under 205, so I need to watch myself this weekend.

This morning’s speech class: Panic, freeze, flop. Thank gus it was only a 5 point speech, but still…

Posted in jlpt, school, weight, 日本語 | Leave a comment