Steven Scougall's Journal

More weird dreamings

2009-06-19T22:39:37Z

I guess this LJ has turned into a weird-dreams / games / movies / anime / say-what-weirdness / slice of life blog.

I was going through my notes and found a 'weird dreams' post that I never made. So these are not from last night, but almost two months ago... but they're just as weird now as they were then.

The original post follows:

---
April 30/2009
Weird dreams this morning.

See, I knew it was this morning because an hour before I had to get up, I had to get up for a bathroom break.

In that last hour I had *three* weird dreams, all running into each other.

Dream 1: Was extremely groggy and half-asleep, yet hearing and *feeling* someone in my room. Tried to yell out, "who are you?" but nothing came out. Time passes. I manage to get up and go through the house, looking for what's been done... I hear noises outside, so go check, and there's a special forces unit! It turns out they're investigating a R.A.Abercrombie-Fitch Jr, whose name means nothing to me.

"She changed her name to this," says the leader, and shows me a name, which is V-something S-something. I think it looked like Valxie Smith. In the dream this was a perfectly normal name. I also recognise it as one of the prior tenants of the house. "Oh my god," I say. "She's one of the prior tenants! Her mail kept coming to me for a while!"

The leader says something about how she's very suspicious and has done stuff with 16 bones and they're searching the house and garage for evidence.

"Ah, so this explains it," I say. "I thought I heard someone moving about in my room only a short while ago, I guess that was you guys searching through it."

He looks at me strangely. "No, that wasn't us."
My blood runs cold.
"Okay chief, we're all done," says one of the Special Forces, and they pack up and leave.
Very nervous, I walk up the stairs, dreading what I might find. I am literally only a few steps away from my room when...

Dream 2: I wake up, wondering if the hearing someone in my room was part of the previous dream or if it really happened, I'm not sure.

I hear noises outside and go check - it's the exact same Special Forces team from the previous dream.
"He's awake," says someone.
Annoyed, I walk up to the leader. "R.A.Abercrombie-Fitch Jr, who became Valxie Smith, who used to live here, and is being investigated because of suspicious dealings with 16 bones?"

"How do you know all that?"
"I *just* woke up from a dream where you told me all that."
He looks at me strangely.
Stuff happens that I can't remember exactly - I'm just standing around outside, annoyed and they do their stuff.
Then one of the guys goes into the house and suddenly the glass door slams shut! And the glass darkens to black! People swoop in towards the door, brandishing tools and implements and keys, and for some reason one of them is my coworker Ross. For some reason I now have my keys, so I open the door and we charge up the stairs. No sign of the missing guy, but there's blood on the floor! Aiee!

We look up at the ceiling and see blood dripping from the ceiling, so we charge up to the next floor and find a *big* bloodstain on the floor, but no sign of the missing guy.

Dream 3: I wake up, *again*. This time it's just a normal day, and I make my way to work...
Where things get weird. We're having an end-of-the-IT-team party, and previous members of the team have come in. A weird presentation is given, casting the boss Trevor as a knight searching for other knights, who are members of IT.

"It was during this time that one of IT's traditions started - we got our very first extremely-long-term contractor."
"Then, disaster struck!" says the narration.
A pair of dark knights enter the scene. One of them sounds suspiciously like Geoff, one of the Business Analysts. "Trevor!" he yells. "Your reign of indiscriminately hiring people on your own has come to an end!"

There's a bit of a battle, that Trevor loses.
"Sure, there's nothing against you hiring people," says the BA/dark knight, "but we need much more formalisation."

Real life: My alarm goes and I finally wake up, feeling really cold, not to mention confused, and really scared of the names R.A.Abercrombie-Fitch Jr and Valxie Smith.

Hey, I remember this!

2009-06-19T11:42:02Z

I came across Artpad again, and made this quick sketch. (Make sure to set the speed to Fast.)

So torn

2009-06-19T11:08:58Z

So, World of Warcraft. I've been playing since April 2006, mainly on the Aggramar server. I have two main charactes - both druids, but one on the Alliance side and another on the Horde.

(Yes, the news of new graphics for the druid forms has made me very happy. Especially so for my Tauren druid, who has said several times that he's no cat, but a cowbearpig. But I digress...)

Just when I'm starting get a bit more serious about my Horde character and enjoying the guild chatter and even helping out fellow guildies, I find that miggy (and others from the old Impro days?) are running on the Proudmoore server and have Alliance characters.

Le sigh.

Maybe I'll shift my level 80 Alliance druid over to Proudmoore. She's got no guild ties, as all the guilds she's ever joined seem to implode after a while.

...wha?

2009-06-18T09:58:08Z

Lately I've been poking around a few World of Warcraft-related blogs, and been wondering if I should do one of my own... probably not. There are certainly more than enough WoW-related blogs around the place, so why should I inflict yet another one on the world? Would I really have anything interesting to say?

In my perusal of WoW-related blogs, was a blog piece someone wrote about why on earth should it be that sneaky thieves have a greater chance to critically hit opponents, which naturally led to me composing a LJ entry about the nature of hit points. However, lots of people have written about hit points and what they really mean in-game, so why should I, and anyway, I thought of something weird and went off on a tangent again...

...I recently managed to really wallop my toes into a hibachi, made of quite solid wood. Ow. I used my one or two skill points in First Aid and quickly determined I hadn't broken anything but that my toes were really stinging. This was roughly equivalent to lightly hitting my toes with an improvised blunt weapon, so I took maybe 1 or 2 hit points of damage. A couple of days later my toe was *still* sore. I hadn't even healed one or two measly hit points.

Update on the nephew

2009-06-18T09:56:10Z

I haven't written much on nephew Finn, which is probably for the best.

Time has passed and he's grown. He's now nine months old and good at crawling. There was a worrying month or so where he 'commando-crawled': he would stay on his stomach and use his arms to pull himself along. But now he's worked out he can zoom around on his hands and knees.

Combined with the newfound ability at crawling is his desire to get up to his feet. He crawls over to something within reach, such as the sofa, coffee table, or person's leg. He then pulls himself up to his feet and stands there, holding himself steady.

This is something that all babies do as they grow up. So why should it be exciting for people to read about Someone Else's Baby doing something he would normally do anyway? Well, I don't know about you, readers, but when I see Finn doing all these things, it is a) cute, and b) amazing to see his development. I'm watching a tiny person grow up, and I'm seeing him working things out.

He also had another taste of ice cream the other day. He certainly doesn't say no to ice cream. :)

Finally, it seems he's starting to work out the idea of words and that they mean things... except he hasn't quite got the meanings right. He calls both his father and mother "Daddadda" for example.

He's occasionally said "Mumma" but not as often as "Daddadda"... perhaps now we know why. :)

The return of wacky dreams

2009-06-18T09:54:32Z

A few nights ago I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. I would lie there, thinking, "I need to sleep." I tried doing boring things, like counting sheep, counting breaths, breathing deeply... and nothing worked. I tried the warm milk trick. But I just stayed awake. I kept on doing boring things, trying to make myself tired, but no luck.

Eventually it got to the point where it was almost time to get up and I still wasn't asleep. Cursing mightily, I got out of bed and wandered throughout the house. There was a shop in the building whose opening hours changed the closer I got to it. I headed back to my room and passed my brother's; I saw my brother get out of bed, run towards the fence, and change into a dog so he could wriggle under the fence.

And I still couldn't get to sleep. All too soon, it was my usual wake-up time and I'd gotten no sleep at all.

...oh, hang on, that stuff with the shop and my brother had to have been a dream. But how much sleep had I really gotten?

Bizarre dreamings

2009-04-04T21:24:38Z

Another bizarre dream:

I ran into a girl that I went to school in Japan with. We get to chatting, she sort of recognises and remembers me. Then she asks me something about Australian rugby, I make some disparaging remark about Australian rugby and say I don't really watch it, and she gets upset and leaves in a huff. Note that she's from the US and shouldn't know *anything* about Australian rugby. I'm so shocked that I end up on the floor.

How to make a Rorscharch mask for cheap

2009-04-04T09:36:15Z

How to make a Rorscharch mask for $0

You need the following:

Two triangular bandages from the First Aid Kit, which you haven't used for at least four years
A marker you can use to draw on clothes, that was probably left in the house by one of your brothers when they lived there
Three pieces of A4 paper
Some sort of cardboard
Stickytape

1) Fold one piece of paper in half and press it against your face, keeping the half-line in the middle of your face. Mark on the other side of the paper where your eyes, nose, and mouth are.

2) Ink in a symmetrical Rorscharch inkblot pattern on the paper. This is where the other pieces of paper come in - put them under the paper so you don't accidentally put a big black inkblot on your table.

3) Tape the inkblotted paper to the cardboard.

4) Placing one triangular bandage against the next, wrap the now-double-width bandage around your head in a suitably head-covering fashion. Tie a knot or two so that you don't have to work out how to wrap it around your head all over again. Now, with the bandages wrapped around your head, make some marks on the head-covering where your eyes, nose, and mouth are.

5) Remove bandages and realise you can't see the marks. Repeat step 4 until you can see the marks.

6) This bit is important to get right. Tape the suitably marked bandage to the cardboard so you can see the inkblotted paper through it. Stretch out the bandage and line up where your eyes are on it to where they should be on the inkblot.

7) Ink away.

8) Leave mask to dry overnight. You might be excited and want to try the mask out, but not breathing in ink fumes is a good idea.

9) Run a few tests the next night and realise that despite your best efforts, the pattern on the bandage is still askew and looks awful.

10) Wear it anyway.

11) (Optional Step) Get propositioned for hugs by a blue girl.

(EDIT)

12) Be quite embarassed and prefer not to post pics.

13) (Required step) Provide pics anyway.

I've only found one online so far, and it just shows how iffy the costume was.

Rorscharch and Haruhi.

If I ever do this again I'm constructing the mask in a different way. Perhaps like this, or like this.

Supanvoa...!

2009-04-04T09:16:44Z

Rorscharch's journal, 4th of April, 2009

Today very hot, and lots of people. Other people have made it hotter. People dressed in bizarre costumes. Was propositioned by people for photographs, and propositioned for hugs by a blue girl.

...

All right, that's quite enough of those silly ramblings.

Steven Scougall's Livejournal, 4th of April, 2009.

Supanova is on in Brisbane this weekend. As recent entries indicate, last night and some of today, I was cosplaying as Rorscharch from Watchmen.

Dear god, but cosplaying as Rorscharch is really really uncomfortable. The costume is really designed for night time in New York, not during the hot daytime of Brisbane. I was in a heavy leather jacket with the collar turned up, a constricting full-head mask, a cheap hat, and cheap wool gloves. Not a single part of my skin was visible, and this on a hot day in Brisbane. I got very very hot and sweaty. Not only that, it's quite hard to see with the mask on. I could see reasonable detail up close, shapes and colours further out, and it was all rather fuzzy.

Not to mention, after I finished making the mask I realised the Rorscharch inkblot pattern was crooked and I had no time or materials to fix it.

Despite fearing that it looked really cheap and nasty, I still got quite a few appreciative comments last night and was photographed quite a few times. Not to mention, I was propositioned for a hug by a girl cosplaying as a blue Twi'lek this morning. This is a new and strange experience.

I'm not cosplaying as Rorscharch anymore, though.

Other stuff:

Last night I was mainly there for the screening of "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time." Enjoyed it.

Unfortunately a lot of today is a bit of a blur. A white and black blur, to tell the truth. I was out-of-sorts a lot because of the costume, I hadn't prepared, I didn't have any plan or anything I was wanting to buy, and didn't enter any of the competitions. I sat in on the Anime Trivia, as I usually do, and was able to answer all but one of the questions in Rounds one and two. Round Three, the hard round, floored me though.

Iron Artist continues to suck. I remember once when there was a Quickdraw event: Two contestants get up in front of the audience and had a minute to draw something, one would win and the other would lose. I entered it a couple of times. It was fun.

Now, though, there's an event called Iron Artist - five artists in front of the audience have twenty minutes to draw something, and the announcers try to keep people interested in the proceedings. I didn't even bother going this time.

There are quite a few anime goods vendors besides Tamarket these days, which is good to see. Unfortunately, the days of being able to buy the full boxsets of Cardcaptor Sakura seasons 1 and 2 from an import vendor seem to be long gone. I picked up a Claymore poster (of Teresa I think) and an Angela CD, though. They don't compare to the imported full boxsets of shows we'll never get in Australia, but they're certainly a lot cheaper.

The cosplay competition took absolutely forever (and it seemed longer because of my costume, of course). The only things I can clearly remember are:
* Tenten from Naruto dancing to the Numa Numa song
* Gendo Ikari pulling a Seele box down to the ground, resting his elbows on it and doing the "hands folded in front of mouth" pose, and the screen saying "Gendowned." (*)
* A Harry Potter group doing a quick summary of Half-Blood Prince to "Bohemian Rhapsody"

(*) The smart-arsed screen with a mind of its own was back.

The system from last year where a gong would sound and the microphones cut out after two minutes really needs to come back.

Security continues to suck. I realise it's probably out of Supanova's hands, but Security still amounts to "take this armband, put it on, and don't take it off for the entire weekend." Can I just say I really hate this system? It makes it hard to wash, and right now the armband is getting caught on the edge of my keyboard a lot as I type.

Tomorrow I might go in with a better plan - and certainly no Rorscharch costume!

On that, I noticed a couple of other Rorscharchs. I talked to one of them - he was having a bit of trouble with vision too.

More on tomorrow's stuff - in a world first, the new Full Metal Alchemist series is being in shown in Australia at the same time as in Japan, premiering tomorrow night at Supanova. I'm torn. I would *love* to go, but the problem is I haven't finished watching the first FMA yet.

Yeah, I'm really behind the times.

And they shall cry out, "cosplay us!" And I will reply, "No"

2009-04-03T21:14:05Z

Rorscharch's journal, 3rd April 2009

Find myself in strange place, surrounded by strangers. One says will be wearing my face tomorrow. Eerie. Bears investigating.

It could only happen in dreams

2009-03-06T21:10:06Z

An ivestigation that had just revealed someone had been part of the Stargate program (she looked a lot like Martha Jones from Doctor Who), turned seamlessly into a convention planning meeting, which then turned into a Blizzard / World of Warcraft fan convention meeting which revealed who the master of ceremonies was going to be (it looked a lot like one of my coworkers,) which then turned into an in-character in-world (of Warcraft!) planning meeting that revealed the people in charge of security were going to be Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore.

Then I woke up and went, "wait, what the hell?"

Perfect 10 in rolling over

2009-02-01T05:55:46Z

So I decided to take a short home video of my nephew Finn, and ended up getting a video of Finn rolling over for the first time on film.

Ignore my really stupid sounding commentary. It is somewhat of a silly family tradition that we say "We're watching home video," in a really stoned voice. I was continuing the tradition, and then in a happy accident of timing, Finn rolled over.

Return of the curse of the secound cousin of "I live!" MwahahaHAHA!

2009-01-29T11:35:45Z

Once again I have been putting off updating Livejournal.

In matter of fact I have even been putting off reading LJ. I've been letting it fall by the wayside. Is it because I've had this LJ around for so long? Am I getting bored of it?

Anyway, a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts from the past few months:

* In the final showing of BAS for 2008, I saw three anime downer endings, in rapid succession. First was Tower of Druaga, which was great fun up until the last five minutes (except for Ahmey *bawl*), and then we got both a downer-ending and a setting-up-for-the-sequel non-ending.

* Then there was Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, which was also somewhat of a downer ending, which seemed a little out-of-place in a series all about kicking logic and sense and reason out the door.

* Then there was Code Geass R2, which I swore I would never watch any more of after episode 14. It was the end of a long day and I was morbidly curious as to how the whole thing ended. We saw the final culmination of Lelouch's plans, and, yes, it was somewhat of a downer as well.

* What's with Gurren Lagann occasionally deciding to get all logical and sensible and reasonable? (For example the whole deal with the moon.) It seems a little out-of-place.

* Saw a lot of Basilisk recently. I won't bother watching all of it. I know how it ends and the ending doesn't seem all that interesting, but some of the stuff in the middle is fun. Weirdly, I like Kasumi Gyoubu a lot. He has a nifty power, that actually lets him sneak around unseen (usually important for a ninja). It does means he goes around nekkid a lot, though.

* My travels and efforts in the World of Warcraft continue. I don't know if I mentioned that I got the recent expansion pack. Well I did and playing my level 70 druid was much more interesting again, because suddenly she had a whole lot of new things to do. Fairly recently, she made it to level 80, the new maximum level, and rapidly got boring again.

* I also have a Horde-sied Tauren druid, because, dammit, I'm going to level up a Horde character no matter what I do. He's at level 30, and has just got a riding Kodo. I was zooming around as a massive great Tauren on the back of this even-more-massive Kodo, singing and humming "The great Kodo" as I did it.

* The expansion pack for WoW mean that my travels and efforts in the City of Heroes has slowed almost to a standstill. None of my CoH characters seem even half as interesting or as capable as my druid characters in WoWarcraft.

* My nephew Finn is growing up (as babies tend to do). It's amazing to look at him these days and realise just how much he's grown in the past five months. Also, he's making great inroads into solid foods! He's so advanced!
Well, OK, it was really just a mouthful of potato salad.

* Also on the subject of Finn, I got him a little baby shirt for Christmas. It is a shirt for the modern day baby, and says, "iPood."

---

And, for something a bit more recent:

January 26 is Australia Day - it marks the anniversary of the First Fleet arriving here, and the start of English colonisation of Australia. It is a day of great celebrations, marked with large citizenship ceremonies, the naming of honourable Australians for the past year, and so on.

It is also the anniversary of white men arriving here, invading the lands of the Australian Aborigines, and shooting their world all to hell (sometimes literally). To the Aborigines, Janaury 26 is Invasion Day, and they get extremely upset by the fact that it is now the national day. Every year on January 26, there are protests and marches about Invasion Day and that the Aboriginal community doesn't support it.

This year, Australian of the Year for 2009, Mick Dodson, suggested that we, the nation, have a discussion about the suitability of January 26 being the date of Australia Day. Perhaps it should be moved to some other date? Less than 24 hours later, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said, politely but firmly, "no."

Now, maybe he said more - he does like to talk, after all - but the news reports didn't show anything else. So I don't know why he said, "no."

If it's because we should *also* be remembering the Aborigines and what happened to them, and that we should be using the anniversary of Invasion Day to strengthen our resolve to do what we can to help and improve the Aboriginal condition (because it truly is a sad situation they're in) then I can understand why he said, "no."

If, though, he said, "no," for any other reason, then I'm quite upset with our Prime Minster.

The other guy, the Leader of the Opposition, was *worse*. He supported Australia Day staying as Jan 26, and waffled on about how January 26 was the day civilisation came to Australia. Um, foot in mouth, much? Compared to him, our Prime Minister looked like an absolute saint.

---

Saw a very funny description of what a real WoW fight... somewhere. In absence of a link I shall describe from memory.

Far from being a consummate fighter, capable of the most amazing combat feats, the warrior is getting hit a lot. He is perhaps parrying one hit in ten, is using his shield to hit the bad guy in the face far more than he's using it to block, and is calling the bad guy every bad name under the sun.

As he fights, the bad guy is hitting him and giving him absolutely terrible wounds that make the warrior look almost dead. The priest is off in the corner, keeping up an almost constant stream of panicked prayers to the Holy Light, and as a result these absolutely terrible wounds keep on rapidly closing.

Oh, and the warrior is hitting the bad guy, but to no discernible effect.

The rogue and catform druid appear as if from midair and ambush the bad guy from behind. The rogue plunges his poisoned daggers into the bad guy's kidneys and twists, to no discernible effect. Meanwhile, the catform druid is mangling and shredding and biting the bad guy's ankles, even though he should be going for the jugular. It is perhaps understandable that the druid's furious attack is having no discernible effect.

A bolt of fire hurtles from another corner of the room, followed by all manner of offesnive magic. Again, even though this is setting the bad guy ON FIRE, there is otherwise no discernible effect.

Suddenly, the bad guy suddenly just drops dead all of a sudden.

The rogue, druid, and mage start arguing about who hurt the bad guy the most. Meanwhile, the warrior is trying to tell them to not do so much damage, because he's running out of bad names to hurl at the bad guys. Except they're ignoring him. The warrior staggers over to the priest and they commiserate. "You look like hell," says the priest. "I'll heal you once I have a drink of melon juice."

In which Steve blathers on about games and comes to an un-Steve-like conclusion

2008-12-06T09:02:59Z

Today saw me return to my on-again off-again battle to connect my XBox 360 to the Internet and perform a system update, which started here.

As an aside - just looking at that date, I find it amazing to think that this battle has been going on this long. But I digress.

Anyway, I wasted half an afternoon on trying to connect my XBox 360 to the internet. I tried various bizarre network configurations, endlessly fiddled around with the port forwarding and firewall settings on my router, and all for naught. My XBox 360 was resolute and steadfast in its refusal to cooperate with the router and connect to the internet.

After spending so long on this today - and, indeed, over the past few months - I finally came to a decision. I'm giving up. I just don't care anymore. Yes, this means my XBox 360 will probably not be able to play any current-release games.

This in fact helps me out with a couple of game-related questions I was facing:

1) Do I get Guitar Hero World Tour, Rockband, neither, or both? The answer turns out to be "neither". Well, not for the X360, anyway. I'm still deciding on the Wii versions, but what idiot decided that the Wii instruments wouldn't be compatible between the games? I'm leaning towards a "neither", Wii-wise as well. Which is a shame. The various demo versions I've played made me fall in love with the pretend drumming.

2) As pointed by Penny Arcade in this comic and this comic, there are far too many good games coming out around now. Not bothering to get any new XBox 360 games handily halves this problem.

3) I was buying too many games anyway.

Halloween

2008-11-01T06:05:41Z

And finally, yesterday at work, the Business Casual Friday dress code combined with Halloween made for some interesting results.

My boss dressed up as Jason from... whatever that movie series, Ronnie had Freddy Krueger's hat and claws, I was a very black-clad Phantom of IT, but the show was well and truly stolen when Michael and Gabriel walked in in Sith costumes and makeup, with the Imperial March playing from Michael's phone.

It well and truly stopped the meeting I was in at the time. :)

MUGEN stuff - more wootness

2008-11-01T06:01:43Z

In other wootness, in the last couple of weeks I found that there was a Windows version of MUGEN available. I used to run the DOS version, some 7 or so years ago (wow, was it that long ago?) but then I upgraded to Windows 2000 and MUGEN stopped working. Unable to find a version that worked, I shrugged, set MUGEN aside, and went and did other things.

One thing that I'd always wanted to do with MUGEN was make fighting game characters based on my GRIT characters. This would have required drawing all the graphics required, though, which was a daunting prospect.

But now, with the Windows version of MUGEN, I've edited some characters, and, well... I now have a significantly edited version of SFAlpha Ken, with brown hair and a blue gi, that plays a lot like my GRIT character Steve. I also have a not-as-significantly edited version of Wind, that plays a bit like my GRIT character Ann. (They're hardly even overpowered, compared to all the frigging SSJ5 Evil Orochi Shin Holy characters out there.)

This is all very cool.

New PC get!

2008-11-01T05:53:06Z

My old PC was indeed very old. It had not had a visit from the Upgrade Fairy for quite a few years, had holes in the case that dust was getting through, and the fans weren't working optimally. In order to make sure that the PC's internals were getting cooled down, I then had to take the side of the PC off and use a regular floor fan on the PC. This obviously meant more dust to get in and clog things up.

On top of all that, the 512 MB of memory seemed to be getting dodgy again and Windows 2000 decided to get erratic and not boot up half the time. Switching the PC on became an exercise of great difficulty, involving Safe Mode.

So this weekend, I finally went and did the obvious thing - I got a spiffy new HP Pavilion notebook PC. Well, naturally. It has a Sleek 15.4" Flush Glass Display and an Alluring New Ultra Modern Design. In slightly more technical terms, it has an Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz CPU, an nVidia GeForce 9600M GT 512 MB, 2 GB of RAM, and 320 GB hard disk. This leaves my old PC so far behind in the dust it's not funny.

I'm still getting used to the keyboard layout and the overly metallic touchpad, and I have yet to transfer anything from my old PC over to this one, but it is all very spiffy and new.

It also means I have a reliable PC at home again. :)

I have also just discovered how to switch the touchpad off, which is incredibly useful because my thumbs keep hitting the touchpad accidentally, resulting in weird things happening.

In short, it is very spiffy and I'm very pleased. :)

The cliches, I cannot defend against them!

2008-10-07T11:05:21Z

I like the idea of Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu, but after the first few episodes the execution is just so... typical. Episode 4 should have been a look at the result at school of Haruka's secret coming out.

Yet, such a thing is nowhere to be found. We get all the usual stories. Meet these wacky characters! The School Culture Festival! The Love Triangle! (Even though the male protagonist shows no interest in any of the other girls.) Silly misunderstandings! A threatening and overbearing yet ultimately silly and ineffectual father! Oh, and let's have a Cosplay Cafe at the School Culture Festival for the flimsiest of reasons!

Which leads ultimately to the real reason I wanted to make this post: Just once I would like to see a Cosplay Cafe at the School Culture Festival story where someone says, "OK, we'll put on one of these Cosplay Cafe things... just as long as for every girl that dresses up, one of the guys does as well."

Thoughts on various things

2008-09-23T13:11:43Z

I simply can't handle Sonic the Hedgehog, the 2006 XBox360 version. I've been stuck on the Crisis City stage (it's in THE FUTURE!) for the past two days, thanks to various things:
- Bad luck
- Overly touchy controls
- A camera that decides to randomly look behind me instead of in front of me
- Sonic not jumping when I press A
- Running straight off the freeway when the Goal Ring was just in sight
- Sonic deciding to jump into the lava instead of doing a Homing Attack on the enemy I was clearly pointing towards
- Sonic deciding to jump into the lava when all I was trying to do was speed up
- My reflexes not being what they used to be
- Me apparently deciding I don't like Sonic's high-speed style anymore

The way things were going, what with the touchy controls, my bad luck, and my lack of reflexes, if I'd actually made it to the Goal Ring I probably would have run straight past it and into the lava.

That was just this stage. A lot of other things had been annoying me, including the attempt at Grand Theft:Sonic, and the loading screens. Oh god the loading screens. There are SO MANY of them. (Including four in the Crisis City stage.)

I've had enough of this game.

---

I saw Episode 13 and part of Episode 14 of Code Geass R2 on the weekend. A Certain Something happens to a Certain Someone. Sadly, I'd been spoiled and knew the Certain Something was coming, and was pissed off about it. I wanted to see the episode to see how it happened, and how Lelouche and other characters reacted to it.

So the Certain Something happened. A reason was given for it. Lelouche reacted in one way, and then another later. Maybe the later raction was the more genuine one. Yeah well, who knows what Lelouche is ever really thinking.

He can go die in a fire. I've had enough of this show now.

---

I prefer to not be fired for blogging about my job, so I will make this post about me and merely say that changes instituted this week, combined with a few other factors, are kicking my ass.

Fun trivia note. I either:
- Have some form of Asperger's Syndrome
- Or am just resistant-to-change-and-process-oriented-and-bad-at-and-scared-of-communicating-and-have-exhibited-a-few-other-symptoms-of-Asperger's-over-my-lifetime

Seeing as the solution to either seems to be much the same, I've never bothered to get an official diagnosis. Plus, you know, the scared-of-communication bit. It makes talking to strange doctors difficult.

Anyway, that "resistant to change" bit is not helping this week.

---

I recently caught a few minutes of a show on ABC2 called The Hacker Half-Hour (I think that's what it was called, anyway). This week it was talking about the stuff we put online, and how it can jeopardise our future, and how our possible future employers might look at us. I'm looking at what I wrote above and am wondering if I should really post it. Is it a good idea to publicly announce that I am potentially screwed up in the head? But even if I am, I actually do pretty well at work. And if memory serves I think I've put much more incriminating stuff on the net already, and I've been using my real name on it since the year dot.

---

Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword on the DS is absolutely awesome. (See, this is a game that also requires high speed and reflexes, yet I do fine on this one.) The only flaw is that it goes on a little too long.

Then there is more awesomeness during the ending sequence, when you see Ryu without his ninja hood. And he's SMILING. This one bit helps show that he's more than just a super badass ninja, more than any other part in any other game he's in.

Well, more than any other part in any other game that I've seen. Those last three words count. I never saw much of the original NG games, or DoA1.

I went back and tried beating the Chapter 1 Boss. When you play through normally, you almost certainly die against this boss. He does a huge amount of damage to you, is one of the few enemies that damages you even if you block, and your hits against him do piddling damage. But that's okay, the boss is designed to kill you, and the game continues anyway when you eventually, inevitably, die.

If you beat the Chapter 1 Boss, you get a special bonus.

After trying to fight the Chapter 1 Boss (and failing) for something like three hours, I think I'll just have to do without the special bonus.

---

Saw the playable demo for Force Unleashed at an EB, and had a go. It was... OK, I guess, but it didn't feel all that awesome.

Now, the Jedi Knight games, *those* were awesome.

Weird dreamings

2008-09-19T02:57:58Z

I had a really bizarre dream last night. It was like I was in First-Person-Shooter, and I knew it was a First-Person-Shooter, but there were no weapons. So most of the time I was either running, hiding, and/or blending in as best I could.

It started off in a spooky house, shifted into a dystopian world where the masses were oppressed by aliens, then into a spooky suburbia, where I finally was able to pick up a weapon. It was a butter knife. Finally I wound up back in the spooky house, and in a bizarre twist it was my house (except not my *real* house), and I had an actual fight of sorts against a weird goblin/pixie/bat type thing. Somehow I now had a much better weapon - a pair of scissors.

I won against the goblin/pixie/bat thing, by stabbing it while it tried to hide in a bucket of rank water.

The dream sort of devolved from there.

Well, there goes the PC (again)

2008-09-17T12:52:31Z

Well, here goes my PC.

Again.

It's not quite dead yet, but it's starting to glitch and freeze far too many times. Mainly just in City of Heroes, but it's now experiencing the occasional glitch when it starts up Windows 2000. Why, I've even had to start up Windows 2000 in Safe Mode once or twice. Combined with some other oddities that have been piling up, such as the PC not always shutting down properly, it becomes obvious that Bad Stuff is happening and the horribly firey death of my PC is imminent.

When I last saw this type of behaviour in my PC - back in mid 2005 was it? - the problems were resolved by the simple expedient of replacing the RAM. However, I understand that RAM has moved on since then, and that the RAM, CPU, graphics card, and motherboard on this PC are all so ancient that it's probably time to just get a new computer.

I've briefly flirted with the idea of getting a new PC before, but nothing very much came of it. I didn't have the probably-very-imminent death of my PC back then, though.

This of course means that I may not be posting very much, and I certainly won't be on City of Heroes at all for a while. Not that many people reading this actually see me in City of Heroes (*), but I might as well mention it.

(*) If you're interested, I'm mainly the character Earthjet (MA/SR scrapper) on Freedom, and my global handle is @Sukugaru.

Doctor Who

2008-09-16T07:06:16Z

I finished watching all of Season 4 of the new Doctor Who last night.

I saw what happens to Donna.

Writers of Doctor Who, I hate you very very much right now.

Best bit of being an uncle

2008-09-15T03:07:38Z

I was once asked what the best bit of being an uncle was.

Seeing as this was well before Finn was born, I couldn't really say. However, now that he is 3 weeks old and I've seen him a lot lately, I'd say the best bit is when you'd holding him, and he's either peacefully asleep or looking at you with his big dark-ish gray-ish eyes, and he makes a cute little baby noise, and you feel all wubbly and go "awwwww."

Yeah, that right there.

The second best bit of being an uncle to Finn is seeing my brother and sister-in-law interacting with him.

There's a planet still here, for the people who are, still alive

2008-09-10T22:35:58Z

So I got home yesterday and the Hadron Collider was going to be switched on shortly and we were all faced with the possibility of imminent and total planet failure.

So I went jogging.

Thankfully, we are all still alive, which is a nice development.

Silliness with signs

2008-09-08T22:06:29Z

At work we have an In-Out board which we haven't really used since we moved to a new floor a few months ago. I have taken advantage of this by putting my marker halfway between the In and Out spots and sometimes putting this sign on top of my PC:

"I am in a quantum state of presence, both in and out of the office at the same time. To determine if I am in or out, please collpase the waveform by looking over at my desk."

Strangest of all, nobody has commented.